His voice was low, controlled. “Yeah. I kissed you to stop the panic attack.”
A deliberate pause.
“But I didn’t continue kissing you for that reason.”
My head came up.
Through the dark, I barely made out his eyes—just the faintest glint, a suggestion of them—but they held mine with a steadiness I could almost feel against my skin.
“I kept kissing you because I wanted to.”
My pulse picked up immediately, deafeningly loud in the silence between us.
“But why?”
The question slipped out before I could catch it, exposing every insecurity I’d spent years burying under more pressing things. It hung between us.
He watched me for a long moment, his expression unreadable in the dark. His gaze shifted to the city beyond. “Because wanting something you can’t have is a dangerous distraction,” he said, his voice flat.
I swallowed.
It wasn’t an answer, not really. But the hard line of his jaw told me it was the only one I was going to get.
Not exactly what a woman wanted to hear.
“Well,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Libby.” His voice sharpened, not with anger, but impatience. “Stop apologizing.”
His hand flexed against my waist.
“If we hadn’t stopped when we did, I would’ve—” He cut himself off, leaving the rest in the air between us, unfinished.
He didn’t need to finish.
The memory returned all at once—his hands, his mouth, the wall at my back. How close we’d come. How willingly I had been to go.
Heat crept up the back of my neck.
“At least we stopped,” I managed, my voice thinner than I’d intended.
His arm drew me closer, deliberate this time, one hand sliding up my back, stopping at my neck. The heel of his hand pressed there—still, certain. He guided me in until his mouth hovered just beside my ear, his breath warm and unhurried against my skin.
“Libby.”
My name, the way he said it. That close, low and rough and certain of itself.
“We are absolutely going to fuck.”
The words shot warmth straight to my core.
“Maybe not tonight.” His lips barely grazed the shell of my ear, and his hand slid slowly from my neck to the small of my back, caressing there—unhurried, making absolutely certain I understood his intention. A shiver that started somewhere low and didn’t stop moved through me. “But we will.”
“And when we do—” a pause, letting the space do its work— “you’ll be begging me for it.”
The breath left my body in a rush I had absolutely no control over. Heat moved through me—sudden, thorough, pooling lowand insistent, erasing all other thought. My thighs pressed together without my permission. A small, involuntary sound escaped me, the kind that would have mortified me in any other context. I felt him chuckle against my neck in response, slow and satisfied, like he’d been waiting for exactly that.
“That’s the only way I want it,” he murmured, each word placed with the same measured certainty, his breath at my ear. “You completely wanting it. No question. No doubt.”
