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"Don’t dare me, Grace. I’m a fighter."
"I’m not?"
He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, fighting himself. She wanted to break him. Not to hurt him. To reach him.
"What do you want from me?"
"You already know. You’re just scared to admit it."
She ran her hand up his chest, over his jaw, feeling the tension tremble in his muscles. He didn’t stop her. Didn’t move. Just watched her like she might be the end of him.
"Why don’t you lay it out for me? I can be as dumb as a brick."
"You’re not dumb. Just scared."
He gave her a hard look. "Scared of what?"
"Of what this is. What we are. What we could be."
His jaw worked. His voice was rough. "Go. Spare me this torture."
"You think this is torture? You haven’t seen anything yet. Come back to the room and I’ll drop you to your knees myself."
He stared at her like she’d knocked the wind from him. For a split second, he pressed his face into her hand, a raw, human gesture that nearly broke her.
"Nash…"
He pulled away like she’d burned him. "Go, Grace. We have work to do. That’s the priority."
She moved closer, heat prickling in her chest. "Don’t sacrifice your bravery for me, Nash. Goddammit."
He came back at her fast, his body a storm barely contained. Grabbed her arms. Got in her face.
"My bravery? Bravery is looking fear in the face and doing it anyway. You scare me, Grace. I don’t know which way is up when I’m around you. I can’t risk?—"
She saw it before he even finished. The flex of his forearms. The braced tension in his thighs. His chest rising like he couldn’t catch enough breath. Every inch of him was coiled, taut with restraint, and something darker, more intimate. He wasn’t just trying to intimidate her. He was trying to hold himself back.
"What? Feeling something? Losing control?"
His hands slammed the wall beside her head, boxing her in. His breath shuddered. She felt the heat radiating from him, the hum of muscle, the ache. The raw masculine tension of him, wound tight and barely leashed, hit her like a pulse to the chest. Her body responded instinctively, stomach flipping, thighs clenching, skin tingling with awareness. Every breath she drew was full of him.
She wanted to press herself against all that restraint, to feel it crack and surrender. But more than that, she wanted to be the reason it did.
He hadn’t slept. Hadn’t stopped wanting her. His body was still wound around her memory, still hard, still trying to deny itself. It was killing him.
God help her, it wasundoingher.
His breath was hard, face tight with emotion she couldn’t untangle. Agony. Desire. Frustration.
"Come on," she whispered. "I found my courage because of you. Give me a chance."
He bowed his head, whispering like it hurt to speak. "Go back to the room and get ready to go." He took her arm and led her to the door, opened it, and gently guided her into the hallway.
She paused, the silence settling between them like breath held too long, and when she looked back at him over her shoulder, her voice was quiet but certain.
“You’re still pulling the door closed,” she said. “It’s barely a crack now, and maybe that’s safer for you. But that wasn’t our first impact, was it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She didn’t need one. “I’ve felt the echo ever since. That collision. That moment on a path neither of us walked away from, even if we pretended we had.” She drew in a breath, not because she needed to gather strength, but becauseshe had already found it.“I’m asking you now, open it fully. Let me in… or close it completely.” Her gaze didn’t falter, not once. “Come for me if you want what’s real.”
“You don’t know what I carry, Grace. I’ll burn you down.”