“Don’t make me be smart right now.”
That should stop me.
It does the opposite.
He steps inside and shuts the door behind him. The click sounds final.
He is too close. Hospital antiseptic still clings faintly to his shirt beneath the heat of him. His eyes drop to my mouth, then lift.
“There’s no interview tonight,” he says. “No tape. No quote. Nothing you can take back.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I went home and all I could think about was you saying some things aren’t stories.”
My breath catches.
“This is trouble,” I say.
“Yes.”
“It changes everything.”
“Probably.”
“You are my subject.”
“I know what I am.”
His hand comes up, cupping my jaw. His thumb brushes my cheekbone once, rough and careful at the same time.
“Tell me to leave,” he says.
I should.
Instead, I fist my hand in his shirt and pull him down.
The kiss is not soft.
It is hunger and exhaustion and everything Dallas started catching fire all at once. He backs me into the wall, one hand in my hair, the other hard at my hip, and I make a sound into his mouth I cannot blame on anyone but myself.
“Bedroom,” I say.
“Where?”
“Down the hall.”
He walks me backward without breaking the kiss. My knees hit the bed, and then his weight is over me, solid and shaking with the last scraps of discipline he has left.
His mouth finds my throat. Teeth. Heat. The scrape of his jaw against my skin.
“Tell me no,” he says against my neck.
“No.”
He freezes.
I dig my nails into his shoulders. “I mean no, I am not telling you to stop.”
