Page 152 of Heartless Stepbrother
Moonlight ran over his cheekbones, his jaw, the line of his throat.
I could feel the heat of him, a warm current rolling off his body and into mine.
“It is true,” he said softly. “And you hate that I know it.”
I exhaled a shaky breath. “You’re twisting things.”
“No.” His voice dipped lower. “I’m clarifying them.”
He lifted a hand but didn’t touch me.
He hovered his fingers near my cheek, deliberately not closing the distance, the ghost of a touch without the mercy of contact.
The absence of touch was worse.
More intimate.
More charged.
“Tell me you didn’t feel anything,” he said quietly. “During that kiss.”
My pulse thrashed. “I don’t owe you confessions.”
He smiled then.
A slow, devastating thing that reached his eyes in a way that made my knees soften, because it wasn’t mockery this time.
It was knowing.
It was certainty.
“You don’t owe me anything,” he agreed. “But you feel it anyway.”
“Stop.”
“Why?” he asked, leaning in just enough that his breath warmed the space between us. “Afraid of where the truth will take you?”
“I said stop.”
“I heard you.”
His voice turned silkier, darker.
“But you’re not walking away.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Because he was right.
Because I hated he was right.
Because I didn’t know how to take a step away from him without feeling like the gravity of the night would yank me back.
He watched that realization flicker across my face.
And his expression changed again.
Sharper.
