She didn't answer. She just stared.
"I see something that doesn't belong in anyone else's arms."
I stepped closer. She didn't move away.
"I see something so dangerously mine, it scares the hell out of me."
I leaned in, and this time my hands moved from hers to her waist, just above the hem of her shirt. Barely touching. Like a flame licking up the edge of a page.
"I see the woman who asked me to let her go… and I hear her asking to be pulled closer instead."
Her lips parted.
"But I won't ask for permission again," I said, voice dipping lower, dead serious now. "Because you're not walking away from me, Aria. Not when I still crave you like this. Not when I'd burn everything just to keep you looking at me like that."
Silence. Her chest rose and fell. Her fingers trembled. And still, she didn't run.
So I touched her again.
Not roughly. Not sexually. Just… utterly.
A palm against her lower back. A whisper of my knuckles grazing her cheek.
