I lead him back through the workshop, and he reaches back without breaking stride, hitting the button on the wall.
The roller door grinds shut behind us. My heart is beating so forcefully that I can sense it in my throat. Because I know where we are going. So does he.
The first step creaks under my foot. The sound drags up a memory so suddenly I nearly miss the next step entirely. Me at eighteen, following him up these same stairs, my whole body full of nerves I was covering with sarcasm, my heart going twice as fast as I was willing to let on. Him glancing back at me over his shoulder, eyes dark and mouth crooked, making some stupid joke because he couldn’t let me sleep in front of the library.
Now he follows me with his hand in mine—the air between us thickening with every step we take.
By the time we reach the top, my skin feels too tight for my body.
I stop in the doorway.
The room sits quiet and the ghosts of who we were are everywhere in it. Every surface holds a memory I didn’t ask to carry and can’t seem to put down. I can sense her in here, that eighteen-year-old girl, standing at the foot of that mattress with her heart going too fast and her mouth ready with something sharp in case she needed it.
Zane stands behind me. Close enough that the heat of him is solid against my back. That steady warmth my body has been reaching toward since the moment I first came here.
He doesn’t touch me. He just waits.
I release his hand and walk into the room.
He follows.
I make a decision somewhere between the doorway and the center of that small, memory-soaked space. I am not here for the ghost of us. I am not here to stand in the past and grieve it. I know exactly why I’m here and I am done pretending otherwise.
I turn around and notice his eyes are on me. Dark and entirely, helplessly honest.
“You are unfairly hot for someone I am still furious with,” I say.
His mouth curves at the corners. “I can work with furious.”
“And tomorrow,” I say, holding his gaze, “I am still going to be mad at you. That is not going to go away overnight.”
His smirk deepens into something more dangerous. “Then I’d better make tonight count.”
“You’d better.” I hold his gaze. “Kiss me, Rivera.”
I reach for his wrist and bring his hand up to my breast, holding it there.
The sound that tears out of him is immediate. Rough and starved in a way that sends heat flooding through me from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. His hand cups me and his thumb drags slowly over my nipple through the fabric.
Pleasure sparks through me so sharp and sudden that my mouth falls open around a breath I cannot steady, slow, or make quiet.
He walks me back toward the mattress, his mouth finding mine again.
This kiss is different from the one outside. That one was a collision. This one is intention. His hands move to the buttons of my blouse, each one undone with a patience that is at complete odds with the tension in his jaw and the darkness in his eyes. The blouse falls. His hands find my waist, then the clasp of my skirt, and when that pools to the floor too, he steps back.
He just looks at me.
I watch it happen to him, watch it move through his body. His chest rises on an unsteady breath. His eyes move over me the way they always did, not fast, just taking their time with the unhurried reverence of a man who has thought about this moment and is in absolutely no rush now that it is here. I see his throat move. I notice his hands clench at his sides, the knuckleswhitening slightly with the effort of keeping them there when every line of his body tells me he wants them on me.
The sight of what I do to him sends heat flooding through me so fast that my knees weaken.
I have been looked at before.
I know the difference between a man seeing your body and a man seeing you.
Zane has always looked at me like I am the whole thing, not just the convenient parts, as if every inch of me is worth his full, unhurried attention.
I have never once found an adequate defense against it. To be honest, I have stopped looking for one.
