Page 44

"This stopped being an operation the night I touched your wrist."

The sentence lands between us. Her eyes widen — a fraction. The aperture of a woman who expected deflection and got detonation instead.

"You don't know what you're asking for." Her voice scrapes. "You are nineteen years old and chained to a wall and you are pushing into territory that—"

"That what?" I step closer. The chain pulls across my shoulder. The pain is irrelevant. "That scares you? That makes your pulse do what it's doing right now?"

Her throat works. A swallow. Visible.

"I'm not scared of you, Dante."

"I know." One more step. The chain goes taut. "You're scared of wanting me back."

Her breath catches. Not a gasp — something smaller, more devastating. The sound of a woman whose lungs just betrayed twenty years of control.

Her hand comes up.

Palm flat against my chest. Over my heart. Fingers spread against the fabric where my heartbeat is hammering hard enough that she can feel every beat through the cloth. Her touch is steady for one second. Trained. Controlled.

Then her fingers curl. Just slightly. Gripping the fabric instead of pressing it. The shift is everything — the difference between holding someone away and holding on.

Her eyes are dark. Blown wide. The eyes of a woman standing at the edge of something that doesn't go back into the ground once you bring it up.

"Not yet." Her voice breaks on the second word. Cracks clean down the middle. "Not — Dante. Not yet."

The yet is a grenade.

Not no. Not never. Not the operational shutdown of a woman slamming a door. Yet. A word with a future tense built into its bones. A word that says the door exists and she can see through it and the only thing between us and the other side is time she's asking me to give her.

I don't move.

Her palm trembles against my chest. I feel the tremor through the fabric — her hand shaking the way her hands shook on the steering wheel when she drove away from this room twelve hours ago. The composure is gone. The discipline is gone. What's left is a woman with her hand on a man's heartbeat and her back against a wall and her breathing coming in shallow pulls and her eyes wet at the edges with something she will not let fall.

She pushes. Firm. Controlled. The precise force of a woman who knows how to move a body without hurting it. The push says later. Her hand trembling against my skin says now.

I step back. One step. The chain clinks — a single metallic syllable against concrete.

Her hand drops.

Her eyes stay on mine.

I don't stay back.

The chain unspools again. Her eyes widen — she expected the push to hold.

My right hand finds the wall beside her head. Palm flat. Fingers spread against cold concrete. The chain runs taut from my wrist to the bolt behind me and the steel pulls across my wrenched shoulder and I don't care what the joint is saying because every nerve I own is focused on the woman between my arm and the wall.

My body presses into hers. Chest against breasts. Hips against hips. My cock hard against her stomach through fabric that hides nothing and she arches into the pressure — involuntary, devastating, her spine curving into mine before she can stop it. I feel her breasts flatten against my chest. I feel her hips tilt. I feel the heat of her through two layers of cloth and the heat is demolition.

Her breathing shatters. The trained rhythm — gone. Replaced by something faster. Shallower. The breathing of a woman whose body has stopped taking orders.

My breathing matches hers. The synchronization from the first room — involuntary, immediate. Two bodies generating a frequency neither of us controls.

Her mouth is three inches from mine.

Two.

I can feel her breath on my lips. Warm. Fast. Carrying the taste of coffee and the shape of a word she isn't saying.