"Okay," she says, and that one soft word does more damage than anything sharp she's thrown at me all night.
The road narrows. Trees close in black on both sides and the city falls away behind us like something I'm done needing.
I keep my eyes forward. I have to. Because every lamp we pass throws her at me in pieces and I can't afford the whole picture, not while I'm driving, not while my hands have a job to do.
A streetlight slides across her and I get her anyway. The line of her throat. The way the dress pulls when she breathes. She's softer than that bright loud room let on, fuller, the kind of body a man doesn't get handed, he earns the sight of it. My mouth goes chalk dry.
The car's AC is chilly, the cold air finding her. Her nipples tightening under the silk.
I see it all at once, too clear. Two soft points pressing up against the fabric, there in the light, gone in the dark, and God help me I clock the next lamp coming just so I can slide my eyes back to her at the exact right moment to see them again. There. Gone. There. Gone.
My cock strains against the zipper of my trousers.
Eyes on the road.
My eyes are not on the road.
She catches me. I feel her notice and expect a cutting remark, but it doesn’t come.
Instead, she adjusts slightly in her seat, turning her body just enough that I get a better view.
She lets me look. Lets the quiet go thick and hot, like the half second before a storm finally cracks the sky.
"You're staring," she says.
"Yes."
"That's it?Yes?" Her voice has dropped though. Gone rough, like she swallowed sand.
"You're cold." My own voice comes out wrecked. I don't know it. "I can see you're cold." I lean forward to turn the AC off, regretting being so obvious.
She doesn't pull her arms around her. That's the thing that nearly kills me. She lifts her chin instead and lets the cold keep doing what it's doing, and the look she gives me says she knows exactly what I'm seeing, and she's decided I get to keep seeing it. On her terms. Everything with her is on her terms.
My jaw's clenched so hard my back teeth ache.
Her mouth curves in a dare.
The steering wheel has gone slick under my palms and I'm a grown man coming apart over nipples like I’ve never seen them before. I've held my nerve through worse than this. Rooms full of men who'd have put me in the ground. None of it ever cost me what she is costing me now, one streetlight at a time.
The gate is already sliding open. My men saw the headlights and they know better than to make me wait.
She sees the house rise up out of the dark. Stone and lit windows. Her breath snags.
"That's yours," she says.
"Yes."
I bring the car to a stop. The engine ticks down. In the quiet there's just her breathing and mine, both gone ragged, the corners of the windows fogging from the heat we've made without either of us even touching the other.
I turn to her. She's already turned to me.
"This is your last chance," I tell her, low. "You can still..."
She fists the front of my shirt and pulls.
Amelia
I kiss him.
