He’ll know.
I go still for just a second too long.
His gaze narrows in the mirror. “What was that?”
“Nothing.” The word comes too fast.
His hand pauses at my middle.
I stop breathing.
Just for a heartbeat. Maybe two.
His eyes flicker down, then back to mine, and the world seems to hold itself suspended on the edge of that glance. My pulse pounds so loudly I’m sure he can hear it. I force myself to relax, force a tiny, shaky smile I don’t feel.
“You’re awfully tense,” he says softly.
“You’re in a fitting room with me,” I manage. “What did you expect?”
Something unreadable moves through his expression. Hishand shifts, sliding higher so he can cup my breast, sparing me and destroying me all at once.
“I expected resistance,” he says.
My laugh breaks in the middle. “You got it.”
“No.” His mouth brushes the sensitive place just below my ear, and his voice drops into something that makes my whole body ache. “I got surrender dressed up as attitude.”
My eyes close.
He uses the moment, one hand anchoring at my hip while the other tips my chin up, forcing me to look at us in the mirror. Forcing me to witness exactly what I’m becoming under his hands—flushed, shaken, needy. A woman on the verge of giving him everything she shouldn’t.
“Look at yourself,” he murmurs.
I do and wish I didn’t.
His gaze never leaves mine. “Tell me you don’t want this.”
I should say no and step away and snatch back all the pieces of myself still left intact. I should remember every reason he is dangerous. Every reason this ends badly. Every reason I cannot let the father of my child look at me too closely or touch me too long.
Instead, my fingers loosen around the cardigan. It slips from my hand and pools forgotten on the little bench.
His eyes drop to watch it fall.
When they come back to mine, they’re darker.
“That,” he says quietly, “is what I thought.”
His hand grips my hip through the thin dress, and I can’t hide the way I lean into him. Can’t hide the soft, broken sound that leaves me when he drags his mouth along my throat. Can’t hide anything, not from the mirror, not from him, maybe not even from myself anymore.
“I hate you,” I whisper, and it comes out like a confession.
His hand slides into the dress, cupping my breast and rollingmy nipple just the way I like. “No,cara,” he says against my skin. “You’re scared of how little you do.”
Maybe it’s the hormones. Maybe it’s the raw, aching truth that I’ve missed him more than I’ve let myself admit. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me in the mirror—like he can already see every weak place in me and means to press his mouth to each one.
Whatever it is, it breaks me.
“Please, Lorenzo,” I whisper, and my voice is so thin that it barely sounds like mine at all.
