Her bare feet found the concrete. Cold. Each step deliberate, the way she used to walk across a stage before a performance, knowing every eye was on her. His eyes were on her now, dark and waiting, and she watched his throat move as he swallowed.
Her palm met his chest. The leather of his jacket was warm, worn soft from years of wear, and underneath it his heart slammed against her hand—fast, uneven, a rhythm she’d never heard in a man who always seemed so still. The surprise on his face cracked something open in her chest. He'd expected her to hesitate. To retreat. To give him the careful smile and the polite excuse and disappear back upstairs to the bed where Julian was probably waiting, one eye open, counting the minutes.
She pushed. The Mercedes gave beneath his weight—a soft groan of metal, the suspension creaking—and his back hit the door. His hands caught her waist, and they were shaking. This man who drove her through the city for months, who watched her in the rearview mirror with those knowing eyes, who never flinched, never fumbled—his fingers trembled against the silk of her robe.
His mouth opened. Closed. No words came out.
The silence between them was thick as the gasoline smell hanging in the air. She could feel his ribs expanding under her palm with each breath—shallow now, faster. The chain at his neck caught the harsh light, glinting once before it settled against his collarbone.
"You're shaking," she said. Not a question.
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "Yeah." His voice was rougher than she remembered, scraped low. "You do that to me."
The confession landed somewhere below her sternum, a heat that spread through her ribs. She pressed her palm harder against his chest, feeling the muscle beneath, the frantic beat that was answering only to her. His hands tightened on her waist, fingers dimpling the silk, and he didn't pull her closer—just held her there, like he was afraid she'd shatter if he moved too fast.
The garage light flickered. Held.
She leaned in, and his breath caught—a sharp, broken sound that she felt against her lips. An inch between them. Maybe less. His eyes dropped to her mouth, and she watched everything he was feeling cross his face: want, fear, want again, all of it raw and unguarded. His thumb pressed into the curve of her hip, a plea she could feel through the silk.
"Mira." Her name in his mouth, low and wrecked. A question and an answer at once.
Her fingers found the cold metal of his belt loop. Small. Insignificant. But his whole body went still beneath her hand—that frantic heart, those trembling fingers, all of it freezing as if she'd pressed a stop button somewhere inside his chest.
She wrapped her finger through the loop. Pulled. Just a fraction of an inch, just enough to feel the leather of his belt give against her knuckle. His hips shifted, a reflexive movement, his body following where she led.
"Mira." Her name again, but different this time—a warning wrapped in a question, his voice scraping against something raw in his throat.
She looked at his mouth. The shape of her name still on his lips. She wanted to taste it there.
Instead she held his belt loop, her thumb resting against the worn leather, and watched him fight himself. His jaw tightened. The muscle in his neck pulled taut. His hands stayed on her waist, fingers spread, pressing hard enough to leave marks she'd find in the morning—but he didn't pull her closer, didn't push her away, didn't move at all except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest under her palm.
"I asked you what you wanted," he said. The rasp was almost gone now, replaced by something thinner, more fragile. "You didn't answer."
"I'm answering now."
His eyes closed. A long, slow blink, like he was trying to reset himself. When they opened again, they were darker, the pupils blown wide in the dim garage light.
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"Then show me."
The words hung between them, heavier than the gasoline smell, than the dust motes spinning in the single bulb's harsh glow. His hands tightened on her waist, then loosened. His thumb traced a slow line across her hip bone, a question pressed into the silk.
He didn't answer. But his hand slid down her arm, slow, deliberate, until his fingers found hers where they hooked through his belt loop. He curled his hand around hers, holding her there, and she felt the calluses on his palm rough against her knuckles.
"If I show you," he said, "you don't get to pretend it didn't happen tomorrow."
She didn't look away. Didn't blink. "I'm done pretending."
Something shifted in his face—the last wall coming down. And when he pulled her hand from his belt loop, she thought for a moment he was letting go. But he just turned her palm up, pressed his lips to the center of it, and held them there, his breath hot against her skin.