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His eyes found mine the moment I stepped in. And just like that—my pulse stuttered. That soft, traitorous flutter low in my belly.

He didn’t smile. Just nodded once and somehow, even that made something clench between my legs.

He crossed the space and offered a hand to help me into the elevator. I didn’t need it. But I took it anyway.

The doors closed behind us.

Silence wrapped around our bodies like tension in silk.

“You look?—”

His eyes swept the length of me, slowly. “You wear that dress like it owes you something.”

I let a smile curl at my lips. “That supposed to be a compliment?”

I couldn’t help but bite with my words a bit. He disarmed me and I didn’t know what to do with that.

His gaze didn’t waver. “It’s truth. You already know that.”

I did.

The dress was a slip of black satin, thin-strapped and bias-cut, gliding over every curve like it had been poured. Slit up the thigh, dipped low in the back. It clung in all the right places and moved like water with each step. I’d paired it with my favorite stilettos and a soft nude lip—but I knew it was the skin that made it sing.

Golden brown. Soft sheen. Collarbone kissed with just a whisper of highlight.

The kind of skin that caught streetlight and candlelight the same way—slow and seductive.

And the way he looked at me?

Like he wanted to touch every inch.

With his mouth. With his voice. With something deeper than either.

I tilted my head. “You’re late.”

He stepped in just a little closer. Barely an inch. Still—it landed.

“Nah. I’m exactly on time.”

The elevator pinged.

Just before the doors parted, I glanced at him, voice low, steady. “This the part where we flirt for the cameras?”

He looked straight ahead. “Nah. This the part where I make sureyoudecide what’s real.”

And there it was again.

That quiet danger. That smooth, unhurried unraveling.

He wasn’t rushing me.

He was letting me come undone in my own time and we hadn’t even reached the rooftop yet.

The rooftop lookedlike wealth dressed in restraint. Gold lights strung like fallen stars. A jazz quartet tucked in the corner—upright bass, brushed snare, a sax that moaned low and slow.

Cocktails shimmered in tall glasses. Executives sipped. Influencers hovered. Designers posed without posing. And all of them… watching. So we gave them something to see.

Taraj and I stood close—like we knew how to share air.