Just like I did when he pushed hard enough.
He scrolled.
Calm, efficient, methodical.
My pulse hammered against my ribs, but I made no move to stop him. There was no point. I had already erased the messages that mattered. The conversation that could damn me. The evidence I refused to let him weaponize.
All he would find now were the messages he had seen before. The harmless ones. The useless ones. The ones with no teeth.
His jaw flexed.
Barely.
But I saw it.
A tiny fracture in his composure, an irritation he did not bother to hide.
“You cleaned house,” he said softly.
Not a question.
A realization.
A warning threaded in velvet.
His thumb hovered over the screen, scrolling through nothing of value, nothing incendiary, nothing he could use to twist me further.
His eyes lifted to mine, dark and unamused.
“Busy little liar,” he murmured. “Deleting the fun before I get to see it.”
The tub felt colder suddenly. The air thinner.
But I still didn’t speak.
Couldn’t.
Not with his body dripping like that, not with my pulse betraying me, not with the weight of his gaze anchoring me in the water.
Then he turned fully toward me, the lines of his body sharp and merciless under the slowly setting sunlight.
“And here I thought,” he added, his tone dropping into something dark and edged with curiosity, “you’d be smart enough to know that the smoke you hide only makes me want to find the fire.”
My breath stilled.
He took a single step closer and angled the screen toward himself, thumb moving with lazy precision as he returned his attention to it.
A beat of silence stretched, long enough to turn the steam heavy in my lungs while it wrapped around him like worship.
Then his brows lifted.
Just a fraction.
But enough to tell me he had found entertainment.
A slow, amused breath left him.
He almost smiled.
