His hand slides to the side of my neck. His thumb rests beneath my jaw, tilting my face up the smallest amount.
“Tell me this means nothing,” he says quietly.
My pulse is loud enough to drown out thought.
“It shouldn’t mean anything.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He leans in just enough that the edge of his mouth almost brushes mine. The restraint of it is brutal.
Outside the fitting room, I can hear the faint murmur of voices, the muffled music floating through the boutique, the rustle of hangers and footsteps and ordinary life continuing asthough I’m not standing here coming undone in a sundress while the man who ruined my wedding looks at me like he wants to devour me slowly.
I tighten my fingers around the cardigan. “You’re impossible.”
A low sound leaves him. Not a laugh. Something darker.
“And yet I think a part of you loves it.”
Heat floods me. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” He moves so he’s behind me, and we’re both facing the mirror. “Let’s try something, shall we?”
My breath catches. His doesn’t.
In the mirror, his gaze locks with mine, steady and merciless, and I feel it everywhere, like he’s touching me already, peeling me apart layer by layer without even lifting a hand.
Then he does.
His fingers slide to my hips, slow enough to make my knees threaten, firm enough to remind me exactly how easily he could undo me if he chose to. He doesn’t pull me back against him right away. He lets me feel the space between us first, the anticipation of it, the knowledge of what’s coming. The knowledge of what I want.
My lips part.
“There,” he murmurs, eyes on mine in the glass. “That look.”
“What look?” My voice is breathy and I hate that he can hear it.
“The one that says you’re trying very hard to remember why this is a bad idea.”
His hands tighten, just slightly. Then he draws me back until the length of him is pressed along me. The breath leaves my lungs in a shaky rush.
“Oh,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
His mouth curves against the side of my neck, not quite a smile. “Exactly.”
The mirror is cruel. It shows me everything—my flushed face, his broad body at my back, the way my hands clutch the thin cardigan like it might save me, the way it very obviously won’t. It shows the hunger in my eyes, the one I’ve been denying since the moment he walked into my life and set fire to it.
And worse?—
It shows how badly I want him to see it.
His hand glides up, skimming the line of my waist, the soft fabric of the sundress, the trembling rise and fall of my breathing. Every inch he covers feels dangerous. Every inch feels like a risk.
Because I want this.
God, I want this.
But terror is a cold knot under the heat, threaded through every frantic beat of my heart. If he touches me too carefully or notices the faint changes I’ve been hiding beneath careful cuts of fabric and strategic angles?—
