He’s right there. Close enough that I can see the way his pulse hammers at his throat. Close enough that I can watch his pupils blow wide as he looks at me.
“This is a bad idea,” I whisper.
“Probably.”
“It’s going to complicate everything.”
“Definitely.”
“I’m supposed to be helping you process emotions, not—”
His hand comes up to cup my jaw, and the words die in my throat.
“Gisele.” His thumb traces along my cheekbone. “Stop talking.”
“I can’t just—”
He kisses me. Like he’s been holding back for years. Like letting go might ruin him.
The first touch of his mouth is tentative—a question more than a statement. But when I don’t pull back, when my hand fists in the front of his shirt and pulls him closer, the tentativeness evaporates.
All of it combusts in the space between one breath and the next. And I let it burn.
He kisses the way he does everything else—focused, intense, completely committed. His hand slides into my hair, tilting my head for better access. His other arm wraps around my waist, pulling me closer until I’m practically in his lap.
I make a sound against his mouth—an embarrassingly needy one—and feel him smile. I should be mortified. Instead, I chase his mouth when he pulls back to grin, and that makes him laugh—low and rough and so unlike his usual controlled everything that I want to swallow the sound whole.
“That’s not in the breathing exercise,” he murmurs against my lips.
“Shut up.”
I kiss him harder, and he lets me, lets me take control for a moment before he reclaims it, shifting us so I’m pressed back against the mat with him bracing himself above me.
“We should stop,” he says, even as his mouth traces down my jaw to my neck.
“Probably.”
“This is going to make everything complicated.”
“Definitely.” I arch into him as he finds a particularly sensitive spot. “Do you actually want to stop?”
He pulls back far enough to meet my eyes. His hair is a disaster—my fault—and his lips are swollen and his eyes are wild with something I’ve never seen in him before.
“No,” he admits. “I really don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
He doesn’t.
We don’t.
And I can’t regret this. Won’t let myself.
Eventually, we surface. Bennett rolls onto his back beside me on the mat, both of us staring at the flickering fluorescent lights and trying to remember how to breathe normally.
“Well,” he says.
“Yeah.”
