The room seemed smaller than it had been a breath ago. He didn’t look proud. He didn’t look sorry, either. He looked steady.
“I do think about you that way,” he said.
The line between us went hot.
“You should stop.”
“I have tried.”
“Try harder,” I snapped.
“I do.”
His voice stayed level. “I try every day. Mostly I succeed.”
My throat went dry. “Dominic.”
“You live under my skin,” he said.
The sentence landed in my gut. It sounded dragged out of him, the polish missing.
“You are always thinking. Always standing half a step outside yourself, watching the room, watching the exits, watching me. But under that.” His jaw tightened. “Under that, you are in me. Your scent.Your voice. You look at me like I am a problem you intend to solve with a knife and a spreadsheet.”
I went still for a moment because there was too much to reject at once.
The intimacy.
The accuracy.
The fact that my body had reacted before I could build a useful argument against either.
I resented his words more than I resented the dream.
“You don’t get to make this romantic,” I said.
“I am not making it anything.”
“You just told me I live under your skin.”
“Yes.”
“That’s romantic.”
“It is accurate.”
“Dominic.”
He held the look a beat longer than was comfortable. “I know the difference,” he said.
Something behind his eyes released and I could see him suppressing a smile.
His good survival instincts, finally clocking in for their shift.
“You said I do not get to think about you that way,” he said. “I understand why you said it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
