Page 23 of Ava After Midnight

I should stop this. Should be the voice of reason. Should?—

Lightning illuminates her face, and all my hesitation burns away at the raw need in her eyes.

“But we shouldn’t…” I try, the last thread of my sanity unraveling. “He’s coming?—”

She pulls her phone from her pocket, thumb hovering over the screen for a moment before she kills the power completely. The clatter as it hits the floor echoes like breaking chains.

Thunder punctuates her phone’s death like nature’s endorsement. I can barely see her in the dark, but I feel her—heat and hunger radiating between us. The scent of rain sneaks through a cracked window, fresh and electric. I don’t trust myself to move.

“Your turn,” she whispers.

I don’t hesitate.

My phone joins hers.

We’re truly cut off from the world.

Lightning strobes through the skylights as I back her against the mirror. “Last chance to be good,princesa.”

“I don’t want to be good.” Her hands find my chest, my shirt bunching as she grabs at the material, trying to anchor herself. “I want to be real.”

The words land deep. So deep I don’t know if she fully realizes what she means. But my body does. My restraint snaps like a breaking wave.

Rain lashes the windows as I cage her in, one hand braced beside her head, the other gripping her hip. “Let me show you what ‘real’ feels like.”

I find her mouth in the dark, but this isn’t the desperate kiss from earlier. This is slow, devastating, a promise of everything I want to do to her. She melts into me with a sound that shatters what little restraint I have left.

Chapter Seven

AVA

The storm thrums against the windows, powerful and relentless. Inside the dance studio, the air is thick—with humidity, with tension, with something neither of us want to name. My pulse is steady, but my hands aren’t. I flex my fingers, watching Domingo from where he stands in the middle of the room, watching me.

Not impatient. Not pushing, not guiding, not even teasing. He’s waiting.

For me.

It’s the only thing keeping me grounded. If he had smirked, if he had reached for me, if he had spoken first—I might have wavered. But he’s giving me the choice.

And I take it.

I should hesitate. I should question this, second-guess what I’m about to do, overthink it until I ruin the moment. But I don’t. Because right now, he’s mine to do anything I want with.

I take a step forward. Then another. His chest rises and falls in slow, controlled breaths, but when I press my palm flat against him, dark eyes locked on mine, watching, wanting.

“You’re really going to let me do this?” My voice is quieter than I expect.

Domingo’s eyes don’t waver. “I need you to want to.”

Something tightens in my chest.

No one’s ever asked me what I want before.

I glance down at where my hand is pressed against him, at the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my palm. At the way his muscles flex—not in resistance, but in waiting.

Do I want this?

The answer is obvious.

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