He doesn’t move at first. “Do you think you can walk.”

His voice is low, a vibration in the quiet. I feel the question more than hear it. I watch his shadow separate from the cart’s, growing longer as he rounds the hood. The gravel shifts under his shoes, a slow, grating rhythm.

He stops beside me. The heat of the day radiates from his skin, a different warmth than the sun’s. His hand appears in my lowered vision, held out. I see the lines across his palm, the faint dust from the drive, the patient curl of his fingers. The air smells of dry earth and diesel and the salt of my own sweat.

I stare at that hand. The world narrows to the space between his skin and mine. My breath catches, a shallow hitch in my throat.

The challenge hangs in the air, thick as the humidity. I swing my legs out, my sandals hitting the warm tiles.

I don’t look at him as I take one deliberate step, then another, not toward my villa but toward the golden light spilling from his open door. The world narrows to that threshold, to the sound of his footsteps following behind me, a silent concession that shatters the last pretense. My heart is a frantic bird against my ribs, but my head is weirdly, dangerously clear. This is the scene. Walk into the light.

I cross the courtyard, the citrus and night-blooming jasmine scent so heavy it’s like walking through perfume. I stop just inside his doorway, my back to him, and let my eyes adjust. It’s neat, predictably so. A book open on the side table. A sweater folded over a chair. It smells like him—clean linen, that faint, expensive sandalwood, and underneath, just a trace of the sun on skin. I hear him stop behind me, a careful foot away. The silence isn’t empty. It’s full of every unspoken thing from the last year, buzzing between my shoulder blades.

“Lost your way, Crane?” His voice is low, closer than I expected. Dry, but there’s a new thread in it. Not anger. Not civility. Something tauter.

I turn slowly. He’s standing there, framed by the dark courtyard, his blue eyes catching the lamplight. He hasn’t moved to turn on more lights. “You followed me,” I say, my own voice coming out softer than I intended. “Seems like you’re the one who’s lost.”

“Merely ensuring you don’t vandalize the premises in a drunken fit.” A beat. “Or fall and crack your head open. The paperwork would be a nightmare.”

I let out a short, breathy laugh. The golf cart lager is a warm, distant hum in my veins now, everything else sharpened to a point. Him. This room. The three feet of charged air between us. I take a step further in, letting my sandal drop carelessly from my foot. It hits the tile with a definitive click. A threshold. “Well. Here I am. Safely delivered. No vandalism yet.” I look at him, really look, from his damp, dark hair to the defined lines of his chest under his thin polo. “You can stand down, Professor.”

He doesn’t stand down. He steps inside and closes the door. The click of the latch is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. The outside world vanishes. It’s just this room, this light, him. He leans back against the door, arms crossed, watching me. The casual pose is a lie. I can see the pulse in his throat. “What are you doing, Imogen?”

My name in his mouth. It undoes something. I take the last step that brings me right in front of him. I have to tilt my head back. I can feel the heat coming off his body. “I’m accepting your challenge,” I whisper. My hand lifts, not to touch him, but to hover near the collar of his shirt. My fingers are trembling. I let him see it. “You waited to see if I could walk on my own. I walked. Right to you.” His breath hitches, a tiny, fractured sound. I finally let my fingertips graze the cotton at his chest. The warmth of his skin beneath is a shock. “Now it’s your turn,” I say, my gaze dropping to his mouth. “Do something about it.”

He doesn’t move. Not a muscle. His blue eyes are fixed on mine, unreadable as sea glass. The only sign he’s even breathing is the slight, steady rise and fall of his chest under my hovering fingertips. It’s a test. A brutal, beautiful test. He’s forcing me to bridge the final, terrifying inch from possibility to fact. My courage, so vast and dramatic a second ago, shrivels into a hard, aching knot in my throat. All my performances, all my declarations, and here I am, frozen by the reality of his skin.

“Coward,” I whisper, but the word has no heat. It’s a confession. My hand is still trembling. I watch it as if it belongs to someone else as it finally, fully settles against the solid wall of his chest. The heat is immense. I can feel the strong, steady drum of his heart through the thin cotton. It’s beating fast. Faster than mine. The discovery is a bolt of lightning up my spine. He’s not calm. He’s holding himself still by force.

“Is that what you need to believe?” His voice is rough, scraped raw. He hasn’t uncrossed his arms from where they’re anchored over his chest, trapping my hand between our bodies. A prisoner. A chosen prisoner.

I shake my head, my eyes locked on the point of contact. I slide my palm up, over the swell of his pectoral, my thumb finding the notch of his collarbone. The cotton is soft, worn. I curl my fingers into it, a fistful of fabric and resolve. “I need you to stop being a professor for five seconds,” I breathe, and I pull.

It’s not enough to move him, not really. But it’s an answer. A surrender. His arms drop, and his hands come up to cradle my face, his touch shockingly gentle against the fever of my skin. His thumbs stroke my cheekbones, a whisper of a caress that makes my knees weak. He studies me, his gaze tracing every feature—my eyes, my mouth, the frantic pulse at my throat—as if memorizing a text. “And what should I be instead?” he asks, his breath mingling with mine.

“Real,” I say, and I rise onto my toes to close the last space between our mouths.

I kiss him. My lips are soft, tentative against the firm line of his. For one terrible, suspended second, he doesn’t kiss back. He’s a statue, his hands still cradling my face, his breath held. Then, as if a wire has snapped, his mouth yields. It’s a gentle press at first, a testing. Then it’s not gentle at all. His lips part, and he’s kissing me back with a hunger that steals the air from my lungs. It’s open-mouthed and deep, a year of wanting poured into the slide of his tongue against mine. I taste salt and the faint, clean bitterness of iced tea. I make a sound, a muffled whimper against his mouth, and my hands fist in his shirt, pulling him with me as I blindly walk us backward toward the bed I can sense behind me.

He lets me guide us for two staggering steps, our mouths fused, his body a heated wall against mine. Then he tears his face away. His hands are still framing my jaw, his thumbs pressing into the hinges. My eyes flutter open, heavy-lidded, my vision swimming with the gold of the lamplight and the dark intensity of his gaze. He’s breathing hard, his chest rising and falling against mine. He looks wrecked, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“When you kiss me again,” he says, the words ragged but precise, carving the air between us. “When I have you again. It won’t be a drunken mistake, a reaction to the tension of the day.” His blue eyes search mine, leaving no room for performance. “It will be real. That’s the only way.”

He lets go of my face. The loss of his touch is a physical chill. He turns, his movements stiff with restraint, and walks into the en suite bathroom without another word. A second later, I hear the sharp, percussive sound of the shower being turned on, the spray hitting the tile. The water’s roar fills the silent villa, a wall of sound separating us.

I stand there in the middle of his room, my lips tingling, my body humming with a thwarted, aching need. The scent of him is on my skin, in my mouth. I look at the rumpled bedspread behind me, the indentations our stumbling feet made in the plush rug. He’s in there, washing away the sweat of the day, the taste of me. Making it clean. Making it *real*. The professor, even in his surrender, is laying down the terms. I wrap my arms around myself, feeling the ridiculous flutter of the silk camisole under my palms, and I understand the challenge has just been reset. He didn’t send me away. He left me here, in his space, with the water running. A promise. A torment. An excruciatingly proper way to say *not yet*.