I swallow hard, my throat dry.
This isn’t attraction.
It’s hunger. It’s the biological imperative of life recognizing life in the face of death.
I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet a man who wouldn’t have to pretend to be everything I need.
He turns back, catching me staring.
For a second, the air in the room goes thin. The silence stretches, tight as a piano wire.
His gaze is dark, unreadable, but there’s a flicker of something there. Awareness. He knows I’m watching. He knows how I’m watching. He tracks the flush on my neck, the dilation of my pupils.
He leans back against the counter, crossing his arms. The biceps flex, hard and distinct.
“See something you like, Doc?”
His voice is low, gravel scraping over velvet. It’s mocking, yes. Arrogant, definitely. But there’s an undercurrent there. A challenge. An acknowledgment of the electricity arcing between us.
Heat rises up my neck, burning my cheeks. I pull his jacket tighter around me, as if the leather could hide my thoughts.
“I see a lot of weapons. For a man who claims he’s just ‘security.’”
“Tools of the trade.”
“And what trade is that? Specifically.”
I step closer. It’s a mistake. The closer I get, the more real he becomes. The heat radiating from him is palpable, a physical force pushing against the house’s cold air. I can smell him again, that cedar and sweat scent drugging my senses.
“Protection.”
He picks up a glass from the counter and fills it from the tap. He drinks, his throat working. The movement of his Adam’s apple mesmerizes me.
“I protect things needing protection.”
“Is that what I need? Protection.”
He lowers the glass. He looks at me then. A slow, drag of a gaze starting at my boots and traveling up my legs to the oversized jacket, pausing at my throat before locking onto my eyes.
“You’re compromised.”
The word hangs between us. Compromised. It means in danger. It means exposed.
But the way he says it sounds like ruin.
He sets the glass down with a definitive click, breaking the contact.
“Go wash up. You have five minutes before I start cooking. If you’re not back, I eat your portion.”
He turns his back on me again, opening the refrigerator. The domesticity of the action clashes violently with the guns on the counter and the tension in the room.
I stand there for a heartbeat longer. Something beats a fast, unsteady rhythm between my ribs, fear mixed with something else entirely.
Possibility.
I turn and walk toward the hallway he indicated. My socks slide on the polished floor. His gaze burns a hole in my back, but when I glance over my shoulder, he’s cracking eggs into a bowl, focused, efficient.
I find the bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s like the rest of the house, marble, glass, and austere modernity.
