I frowned. “Didn’t you?”
“No, Rabbit. I enforced the terms of a position I negotiated. A position you earned.”
I adjusted my glasses, and then adjusted them again, even though they never moved.
“You still didn’t have to do that.”
Henry moved closer, and my breath stalled as his scent hit.
Ohmygod.
I wanted to shove my nose into his collarbone.
“Yes, I did.”
I nodded. “Because you would’ve done that for anyone in the position.”
“If the terms are altered without cause, I correct it. That is part of my responsibility.”
Right.
“So that’s all this is. You doing your job.”
“For anyone else that would have been the end of it.”
“And for me?” I asked, because apparently I had zero self-preservation when he looked at me likethat.
Henry closed the remaining distance between us. His fingers settled along my jaw as if they always belonged there, his thumb brushing once beneath my eye.
“No,” he said quietly. “For you, I shouldn’t have let it get that far.”
I had to fight the instinct to lean into his chest like that was where I was meant to be.
“You don’t walk out of a room thinking you’re on your own to fix something that was never yours to carry. You don’t line up a second job because someone decided to see what they could take from you.”
His thumb shifted, brushing just barely along the edge of my bottom lip before settling against my jaw.
“You don’t get handled like that. Not in my space.”
“That sounds a lot like you deciding I’m yours to manage.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
“Not to manage,” he whispered. “To take care of.”
My hands shook at my sides, fingers flexing like they didn’t know what to do with themselves.
“Go ahead, sweetheart. You can touch me.”
Everything in me stalled.
My brain. My lungs. My ability to pretend this was normal.
“I—I think if I do that, I’m not going to stop.”
His eyes darkened. “That’s not a deterrent.”
Christ.
