"Yes. I understand."
A dark satisfaction flickered in his expression. Approval, maybe. Or hunger. They looked the same on him.
“That’s it,” he said, low enough to make my pulse misbehave.
He straightened and stripped off his shirt in one clean motion. For the first time, the glimpses of ink I’d collected became the full picture. He was a ledger of everywhere he’d been and everything he’d survived, and I wanted to read the ink with my teeth. My eyes tracked the lines wrapping his biceps and disappearing beneath the hard slope of his collarbone. A compass rose over his heart. Coordinates along his ribs. A knife blade down his oblique.
He let me look. Watched me looking with an intensity that made my skin flush.
"You're staring," he said.
"You're a lot."
"I haven't even started."
My laugh was unsteady. "Confident."
"Observant." He stepped into my space again, one arm hooking around my waist to pull me flush against him. Skin to skin now, his heat immediate. “You lean left when you’re tired. Your breathing changes when you see me. And your chin comes up when you’re nervous. Not afraid. Nervous. ”
His grip didn’t loosen.
“I can read tracks. Patterns. That’s the job.”
His gaze held mine. “But you?”
A slight shake of his head.
“You’d still surprise me.”
My throat went dry. "You were supposed to be focused on the animals."
"I was." His mouth found the curve of my ear. "You're the only thing out here I can't predict."
The elephant would like a word.
I wanted a clever answer, one sharp enough to keep the balance between us even. But his hand had slid lower, palming my ass through my shorts, and my brain had stopped forwarding calls.
He must have felt the shift because he smiled against my skin. A real smile, one I'd never seen from him. It changed his whole face.
"There it is," he murmured. "There's the woman who's been hiding behind the CEO."
"I'm not hiding."
"You're not talking, either." His fingers curled into my waistband. "I want to hear you. Every sound. Can you do that for me?"
I could have said no. Could have flipped the dynamic, reclaimed control, reminded him who I was in every other context. But that was the point, wasn't it?
This wasn't every other context.
This washisworld.
And the strange, quiet relief of it softened the ache beneath my sternum.
For once, I wanted to stop being the one in charge.
"Yes," I whispered.
His gaze darkened, and his breath left him in a slow, controlled rush.
