I don’t react. She’s waiting for it—for irritation, amusement, anything that shows she still has access to me. She doesn’t. I learned a long time ago not to hand Tessa Whitmore the satisfaction of a reaction.
She climbs into the back seat and the car rocks slightly as she drops into place beside the dog.
“Sorry, buddy,” she says to him as she pulls a sundress from her bag. “Apparently, modesty’s a luxury now.”
The sound of rustling fabric fills the silence. A zipper slides, shoes hit the floor, and she keeps talking loud enough to make sure I hear.
“I hope the entire state of New York enjoys this strip show. Why doesn’t this car have tinted windows? Isn’t that, like, standard for uppity people like you?”
I keep my eyes on the road. I don’t answer, don’t look, don’t breathe any louder than necessary. The alternative is watching her undress, and I already know how close I am to losing focus. My control has boundaries, and Tessa Whitmore testing them in the back seat pushes against every single one.
But the second her hoodie comes off, I feel the shift.
The temperature spikes. The cabin shrinks around us. My lungs forget how to expand properly. The air turns thick, charged with tension that has nothing to do with traffic or timing.
I hear the rustle of fabric behind me. The soft whisper of cotton sliding against skin. I can feel her presence becoming more exposed. My body responds without permission. My fingers grip the steering wheel until the leather creaks underthe pressure. Three years of careful distance and practiced indifference are threatening to collapse because she’s changing clothes.
Focus. Eyes forward. Don’t be that man.
Except I’ve always been that man when it comes to her. The one who loses composure. The one who forgets his own rules.
“This dress better not wrinkle or I’m blaming you personally, King.”
A muscle twitches in my jaw. The sound of her voice sends heat crawling up my spine.
I hear her sharp intake of breath as she struggles with something. The sound is intimate, unguarded. It makes me think of other times she’s made that sound, in different circumstances, when my hands were the reason for her breathlessness.
I keep my eyes on the road for an entire three seconds longer than I want to.
Then I glance in the rearview mirror.
And everything stops.
Her back is completely bare. She’s twisted in the seat as she shimmies out of her leggings, fighting gravity and her own stubborn pride. The afternoon light streams through the windows, turning her skin golden, highlighting the elegant curve of her spine, the subtle shift of muscle beneath skin as she moves. The movement reveals the curve of her waist, the smooth skin that disappears beneath her bra strap, the long line of her legs as they stretch and bend.
I shouldn’t look. I know better than this.
I’ve built a career on restraint, on reading people without letting them read me. But Tessa Whitmore has always been my exception. My complication. The one variable I can’t quite control.
My hand moves toward the mirror before I catch myself, and my mouth goes dry, the impulse too familiar to be anything but dangerous. Every careful wall I’ve built starts to fracture as I watch her move, beautiful in ways that make disciplined men reckless and smart ones forget they ever valued control.
“This strapless thing is a joke,” she mutters, twisting to adjust the fabric. “If my tits fall out in front of some partner’s wife, you’re the one getting sued.”
Her bra isn’t provocative. It’s gray, cotton, practical. There’s something devastating about the intimacy of it, about seeing her like this again: unguarded, ordinary, wholly herself. The kind of honesty I used to earn in pieces and squander all at once. I remember how it felt to slide that strap off her shoulder with my mouth, to hear her whisper my name.
Before she left.
Before she decided I wasn’t worth an explanation.
And now she’s back here, half-dressed and fearless, moving with the same thoughtless confidence that once made me believe she’d never walk away. The wanting comes fast, and absolute, threaded with the memory of skin I used to touch and the sound of laughter that used to belong to me. I remember mapping every inch of her body like I was claiming land, knowing I’d lose it anyway.
She reaches for the sundress, the fabric sliding over her arms and torso, the yellow cotton clinging in ways that feel deliberate, not accidental. The motion is painfully familiar; I’ve watched her dress before—slow mornings, tangled sheets, sunlight cutting through blinds while she hummed under her breath and pretended not to notice me watching.
The memory blindsides me: her standing in my dorm room, laughing at something stupid I said, pink fabric pooling at her feet instead of covering her. That was before everything went wrong, before we learned how silence can sound like betrayal.
She smooths the bodice now, fingers trailing down her ribs with practiced ease. She knows exactly what she’s doing. None of this is innocent. It’s strategy.
She looks up and catches my eyes in the mirror. She doesn’t flinch. She just lifts her chin and smiles the kind of smile designed to test the tensile strength of my restraint.
