Page 55 of Without a Trace
My chest seized. “What are you doing?”
He stepped inside. Slow. Deliberate. Silent. His eyes never leaving mine.
The door shut behind him, sealing us in.
“Trace,” I said, but it came out wrong. Too breathless. Too soft.
He didn’t stop moving.
He pulled off his swim trunks. Slow. Like this was inevitable.
And then he was under the water.
With me.
The water hit his chest, steam curling around us, thick and ghostly. My back hit the wall, hard. He didn’t touch me. Not yet. Just stared, eyes burning through the steam. As if he needed to see the wreckage himself. As if he already knew exactly what he’d done to me—what I’d let him do.
My voice caught. “What the fuck are we doing?”
He stepped closer.
I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to.
“You’re going to break me,” I whispered.
“I already am,” he said.
His hands rose—hesitating—before sliding to my waist. My ribs. The back of my neck. His touch was reverent. Desperate. My body responding before my brain could stop it.
Tell me to leave, his eyes said.
Our mouths crashed like punishment. All tongue and teeth and memory. I kissed him like I wanted to ruin him. Like I wanted him to ruin me back.
“Scarlett,” he growled.
“Trace—” My legs wrapped around him, instinct and madness and something that had lived too long in the shadows.
He pressed me into the tile, his hips hard against mine, his breath shaking.
I wanted it.
God, I wanted it.
Wanted him to take me. Wanted to forget everything else. I wanted to disappear in his fucking mouth, in his hands, in the way he used to say my name like it meant something.
But he stopped.
Right when I needed him most.
He froze, forehead pressed to mine, chest heaving.
“Scarlett,” he rasped. “If I do this… I won’t stop.”
I blinked. “Then don’t.”
His eyes closed, then opened. Pain. Lust. A thousand what-ifs.
“You’ll never forgive me.”
