Page 57 of Fractured Allegiance
That hits like a kiss spoken in code.
She finishes the bourbon. Sets the glass down. Doesn’t step away from me.
“You’re still not my type,” she adds.
I close the gap between us.
Her chin tips up—defiant, but not retreating.
"I'm not trying to be your type," I murmur. "I'm here because I can't stay away from you, no matter how many times I try."
That unlocks something in her.
Her pupils widen. Her pulse flickers at her neck.
She doesn’t move away.
She doesn’t move at all.
Not yet.
The moment folds in on itself.
Not a kiss. Not contact. Just the static that hums between two people who have already crossed the line without touching.
She’s still. I’m stiller.
Everything loud in my head goes quiet when she looks at me like that. Like she’s already opened the door inside herself but hasn’t decided if I’m meant to enter or be buried behind it.
My hand rises to her chin. I don’t touch. Just… hover. Inches away. The space where want lives before it’s acted on. Her mouth parts slightly, but she doesn’t lean in.
“Do you want me to leave?” I ask.
“No.”
Her voice is too soft for games.
“Do you want me to stay?”
Stillness.
Then she steps forward and places her mouth on mine.
It's not soft.
It's not sweet.
It's raw.
The first taste of her is bourbon and something darker—desperation, maybe, or the kind of recklessness that comes from wanting something you know will ruin you. Her lips part against mine and I'm drowning in it, in her, in the heat that radiates off her skin like fever.
Her hands slide into my shirt, over my skin, nails grazing where they shouldn't. Every touch is deliberate. Claiming. My belt is undone before I realize she's even touched it, her fingers working with the kind of urgency that makes my breath catch.
My hand finds her hip, fingers sliding under the silk, and her skin burns under my palm like she's branded with everything we can't say. She makes a sound—low, needy—and it unravels something in my chest.
Her robe slips off one shoulder, exposing the curve of her collarbone. I trace it with my mouth, tasting salt and something floral—jasmine, maybe—mixed with the scent of her skin. She tilts her head back, throat exposed, inviting more, and God help me, I want to give her everything.
My other hand fists in her hair and I kiss her back like a man who's dying of thirst and just found water that might kill him. She arches into me, her body flush against mine, and I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my ribs—or maybe that's mine. I can't tell anymore where I end and she begins.
