Then his mouth was on mine.
I should have resisted.
Should have pushed him away.
Should have remembered where we were, who might see us, and what was at stake.
The kiss was nothing like our first—no gentleness, no question, no careful exploration.
This was possession, demand, the culmination of days of denied hunger. His lips claimed mine with bruising intensity, his body pressing me against the wall as his tongue swept into my mouth.
As I returned the kiss with equal fervor, a small, desperate sound escaped me as his teeth caught my lower lip, tugging with just enough pressure to send heat pooling low in my belly.
His hand slid down my back, pulling me tighter against him until I could feel every hard plane of his body, every evidence of his desire pressing against me.
The gallery, the danger, the world outside this moment—all vanished beneath the onslaught of sensation.
It was his cologne that finally broke through the haze—cedar and bergamot, the scent that had lingered on my pillow after that night, that had haunted my dreams in the days since.
I drew it in deeply, the familiar notes grounding me even as his kiss threatened to unravel me completely.
When he finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard, my lips swollen and tingling from the force of his kiss. Hiseyes were nearly black, pupils expanded with desire, a muscle twitching in his jaw as he fought for control.
"This," he said, voice rough, one hand still tangled in my hair, "is not nothing. Not a game. Not a conquest."
I swallowed, struggling to form coherent thoughts as desire clouded my mind. "Then what is it?"
"A beginning," he murmured, pressing his forehead against mine in a gesture so unexpectedly tender it made my heart clench. "My home. Tomorrow night. Eight o'clock." He pressed a card into my palm. "The address. The gate code. No obligations beyond seeing where this leads."
A thousand objections rose to my lips. A thousand reasons to say no, to walk away, to be the responsible adult I prided myself on being.
Instead, I found myself nodding, my fingers closing around the card as if it were a lifeline rather than an invitation to disaster.
"Tomorrow," I whispered, the word a promise and a surrender.
He stepped back, his composure returning with impressive speed as he straightened his tie and smoothed his jacket. Only the slight redness of his lips and the intensity in his eyes betrayed what had just passed between us.
"Until then, little fox."
With that, he turned and walked away, leaving me leaning against the wall, my body humming with unfulfilled desire, my mind racing with the implications of what I'd just agreed to.
Tomorrow night. His home. His territory. His rules.
And maybe that was the worst part—I wanted to see him.
The card burned in my hand, its weight disproportionate to its size.
I glanced down at the elegant address, embossed in black on heavy cream cardstock, and the gate code, written in precise handwriting, on the back.
I brought it to my face, inhaling deeply—cedar and bergamot, the scent I was beginning to associate with desire itself.
With surrender.
With the terrifying possibility that what had begun as a mistake might become the most significant choice of my life.
For better or worse, I had made my decision.
Tomorrow night would change everything.
