His chest was heaving, his eyes dark and stormy. A muscle jumped in his jaw, that telltale tension she'd teased him about just minutes ago.
Minutes. Had it only been minutes? It felt like her entire worldview had shifted, tectonic plates rearranging themselves to accommodate this new reality where he kissed like that.
"I—" she started.
He stepped back. The sudden absence of his warmth hit her like a splash of cold water. His hands dropped from her waist, leaving phantom pressure points that she could still feel, and he retreated two full steps. Three.
His expression shuttered. and the familiar controlled mask slammed back into place, maddeningly unreadable. But his eyes. God, his eyes gave him away completely. They were still fixed on her mouth, burning with something that made her stomach flip.
"You need to stop provoking me," he growled. The words came out rough, like they'd been dragged up from somewhere deep in his chest.
Her brain finally kicked back online, and a slow smile spread across her face.
"Make me."
The sound he made was a low, rumbling growl that she felt in her bones, vibrating through the air between them. His hands clenched into fists at his sides. For one glorious, terrifying second, she thought he was going to close the distance again and pin her against the counter properly this time. Finish what he'd started.
Instead, he turned and walked away.
Just... walked away. Across the kitchen, through the doorway, and down the hall. She heard a door close firmly—not quite a slam but definitely more force than necessary—and then silence.
She sat on the counter, surrounded by fallen magnets and the wreckage of his color-coded organization system, and laughed.
Oh,she thought.This is going to be fun.
The storm raged for another day and a half. Forty hours of howling wind, driving snow, and temperatures that turned the world outside his windows into a swirling white void. Forty hours trapped in his immaculate cabin with nothing to do but work on her sketches, raid his meticulously organized pantry, and watch him pretend she didn't exist.
He was very bad at pretending she didn't exist.
She caught him watching her constantly. Fleeting glances when he thought she was focused on her work. Longer stares when she stretched or yawned or did anything that made his shirt—which she'd claimed as her own and absolutely refused to give back—ride up to reveal a sliver of skin.
His eyes always gave him away. No matter how stoic he tried to be, no matter how controlled his expression, those dark eyes tracked her movements with an intensity that made heat pool low in her belly.
She loved it.
She'd always loved provoking people and getting reactions. She loved breaking through the careful walls they built around themselves. But provoking Tarmek was different. It felt less like a game and more like a sacred duty. A personal mission to crack that granite exterior and find all the chaos hiding underneath.
And now she knew there was chaos hiding underneath. She'd tasted it. She'd felt it in the desperate grip of his hands and heard it in that growl that still echoed through her dreams.
So she provoked him.
She left cups everywhere. She rearranged his spice cabinet. She sang loudly while making elaborate messes in his kitchen. She fell asleep on the couch in increasingly creative positions just to see his eye twitch when he walked past.
She also touched him whenever she could—casual brushes of her fingers against his arm, playful shoulder bumps, leaning against him while pretending to look at something on his phone. Every contact made him go rigid and made those eyes flare with something that definitely wasn't anger.
And every time, he retreated. He walked away, putting distance between them like it was the only thing keeping him sane. Which, honestly, was probably accurate.
But he didn't stop watching. And he didn't stop leaving extra blankets in every room of the condo, or making sure there was always food waiting for her when she emerged from marathon sketching sessions, or quietly picking up the clothes she left lying around and returning them washed and neatly folded.
He cared for her in all these small, practical ways while refusing to acknowledge what had happened in the kitchen. It was if he thought that if he didn't talk about it, it never happened.
Adorable,she thought, feeling him stare holes into the back of her head while she pretended to be absorbed in a mural composition sketch. Absolutely adorable and completely doomed.
On the morning of the fourth day, the storm finally broke.
She woke to silence—actual silence, not the constant howling that had become white noise—and pale sunlight streaming through the guest room windows. She scrambled out of bed, pressed her face to the cold glass, and laughed in delight.
The world outside was buried under feet of snow, but the sky was a clear, crystalline blue. It was the kind of winter morning that made everything sparkle like someone had scattered diamonds across the landscape.
