Page 27

His eyes were wildfire under ice.
Controlled, but barely.
“Get back in the car.”
“Why?” I asked, tilting my head. “Afraid someone else might see me first?”
That did it.
He slammed the gear into park and killed the engine so fast the entire SUV rocked. Then he was out of the driver’s side, stalking around the hood like a predator off-leash.
But I didn’t back away. Didn’t flinch. I just tipped my chin up and smiled.
“You know,” I said sweetly, “this city’s full of possibilities.”
His steps slowed, his glare sharpening.
I kept going, each word like a match flicked at the fuse of his control. “Maybe I’ll meet someone in a bar. Someone hot. Someone dangerous. Maybe a guy who likes risk the way I do. Not one who hides behind firewalls and orders me around.”
Elias stopped a foot in front of me, his entire body coiled like he was holding himself back by sheer force of will.
“I could use a drinking buddy,” I went on, circling him slowly like I wasn’t the one being hunted. “Maybe someone who wants to climb a rooftop with me after. Or skinny dip in the harbor. Or sneak into a hotel and pretend we’re married just for the thrill of it. Can you imagine?”
I dragged my fingers along my collarbone, slow and absentminded. “He’d smell like bourbon. He’d want to dance. He’d laugh when I pulled him into the shadows. He’d say yes, Elias. You wouldn’t.”
His hand shot out. Fast. Unyielding. And landed on my waist. Not pulling me in—but not letting me go, either.
His voice, when it came, was a rasp dragged over glass. “No one touches you.”
I arched a brow, breath catching. “That a threat?”
He leaned in, mouth brushing my ear, voice low and lethal.
“It’s a fucking fact.”
Goosebumps chased down my spine.
But I still smiled. Still tilted my head back and whispered, “Then you’d better make sure I don’t want them to.”
That broke something.
In him.
In me.
And the air between us? It didn’t sizzle. It detonated.
He just grunted, a low guttural sound.
I turned slowly, my grin sharpened to a blade. “That didn’t take long.”
He didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.
The heat rolling off him made the air feel thick. Suffocating. Delicious.
I felt the moment his restraint cracked—barely a fissure, but enough for the truth to leak out in the way his eyes raked over me, from the flush high on my cheeks to the curve of my hips.
The streetlamps turned my tank top translucent in places, and I didn’t bother fixing it.