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His breath caught in a way I did not think he had intended, and I understood that nobody had done that before. Nobody had looked at the mark of his whole life inside his hand and recognized it.

He watched me touch him with an expression that undid me. Not only want, though that was there, heavy in his eyes. Something underneath it. Wonder. Like he had spent so long defended that someone choosing to enter gently felt impossible.

“Stay with me,” I whispered.

Not a request about tonight.

About everything.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I believed him.

That was the dangerous part.

I kissed the scar along his ribs, and his hand closed around the edge of the desk hard enough to make the wood complain. The sound went straight through me.

“Sam.”

My name in his mouth had changed again. Not warning. Not question. More like the last piece of control he had left was using my name as a handhold.

I looked up at him.

The hallway light cut across one side of his face, leaving the rest in shadow. He looked too controlled for what was happening between us, except for the pulse moving hard at his throat and the way his breath kept breaking before he could catch it.

I reached for him.

He caught my wrist gently.

Not stopping me.

Slowing me.

His thumb moved over my pulse, the same place he had touched in the parking garage, and the memory of that concrete pillar and his mouth at my neck hit me with enough force to make my knees tighten around his hips.

His eyes sharpened.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

The question should have cooled the room.

It did the opposite.

Because Evan McKinney, with every muscle in his body locked down and his mouth still hot from kissing me, had stopped to ask. Want was not the problem. He had too much of it, and he still cared what I chose.

I slid my wrist free and brought his hand to my mouth.

“Yes.”

The word barely cleared my lips before his control slipped another notch.

He kissed me harder.

Not careless. Never careless. But no longer distant from what he wanted. His hand went into my hair, angling my face to his, and the desk edge pressed into the backs of my thighs as he stepped closer. My hands found his shoulders, then his back, following the flex of muscle under skin as he moved against me with the same exactness he brought to the ice.

Only this was not a game.

There were no boards. No whistle. Just Evan, breathing like control had become a job he was tired of doing, and me, deciding I liked him better when the job started to fail.