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I gave her a look that saidbe serious.

She sighed, rolled her eyes, then lifted her hand to her mouth. The moment her lips wrapped around her thumb, slowand intentional, sucking the sauce clean—it short-circuited something in me.

My dick twitched under the table.

No lie. I pictured her mouth wrapped around me, that same concentration in her eyes. Wet. Soft. In control.

She didn’t even notice the way my jaw flexed. Or maybe she did—because when her eyes flicked up, they’d gone darker. A shade slower. She played with the hoop in her ear like she needed something to do with her hands.

“Fine,” she murmured. “Maybe I am. But when the world keeps asking you to bleed and smile at the same time? Guarded feels like survival.”

I nodded.

Yeah. That, I knew.

She looked at me then. Really looked. Her lashes were thick and low, but her gaze never wavered. Eyes like a storm rolling in—quiet, but heavy. Measuring.

“What about you?” she asked.

I finished the last bite, wiped my fingers, and leaned back, arm draped over the booth like I wasn’t on fire from the inside out.

“What about me?”

“You always been like this?”

“Definethis.”

“Quiet. Magnetic.” She tilted her head, eyes roaming slow like she was mapping me. “The kind of man who leaves a mark just by looking.”

That pulled a smile from me. Barely.

But I didn’t deny it.

“I’ve had a lot of false starts,” I said. “Music. People. Promises. Learned early that everything loud isn’t lasting. So yeah—I move different now.”

She nodded. Didn’t speak right away. Just licked a drop of sauce from her bottom lip, then let it catch between her teeth before she pulled it back in.

Then her voice dropped.

“Why move with me?”

She asked it softly, like she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer out loud.

I looked at her for a long time.

Not just because I was still replaying the image of her mouth.

But because the question—her—deserved more than something rehearsed.

“You don’t try too hard,” I said. “That’s rare.”

Her lips parted slightly, glistening from the gloss and the heat of the food. She didn’t speak—just tilted her head, that earring swaying, catching light.

I leaned in, kept my voice low.

“You listen more than you speak. You hold your ground. And when you walk into a room, it’s like…”

I exhaled.