I’m upset with myself when I lean into his touch automatically instead of pushing him away.
“You could have just as easily turned around and found your seat, but you didn’t.” His hand drops, eyes flicking up to my mouth. “Why?”
I swallow again. Cole’s going to make me say it.
I don’t want to admit it.
I’m not sure if I should be relieved or terrified when I take too long to respond. His mouth parts like he expected this reaction from me. His answer already on the ready.
“The truth is, you like it.” Scanning over me, my pulse quickens as he rakes over my face, closer now. His voice a low hum on my lips. “You hate that you do, but you like the control, dependability. You like it because it’s something you never had. Something I carry in spades.”
His mouth hovers over mine.
My heart pounds. He’s too close. My senses are overwhelmed with him. A frenzy of chaos sizzling everywhere.
“You said you wouldn’t touch me again until I initiate it,” I warn.
Not trusting my self-restraint more than his.
“I’m not,” he whispers. Peppering my cheeks with his warm breath. The mintiness overwhelmed my already heightened senses. His lips a hair’s width away from kissing me.
How did we end up like this? My chest thunders while he seems calm.
Cole is close, and I want him closer still instead of farther away. It’s torture, bones-snapping, limbs-breaking torture.
I came in here furious and swinging and now I want something polar opposite and I can’t decide if I’m okay with it.
The seconds tick by slowly, but neither of us moves. The tension thickens, heightening like a fog around the room.
My tongue pokes out, touching his, and he lets out a low grown. My nerves fire off at the sound. Tingles shoot down my spine. Settling right beneath the growing ache between my legs.
I become impulsive with my desire. The small touch as agonizing for him as it is for me. I knew I couldn’t trust myself.
I do it again, I can’t help it. Flicking it this time, I run it along the softness of his more plump bottom lip. It’s been too long since I’ve felt them.
Cole is like a drug I can never deny once I’d had that first hit. The bareness of our touch isn’t enough. I want—need—the swell of his lips pressed to mine. Crave it.
“How do we keep ending up like this?” My voice is raspy.
I can’t say I’m losing my mind because I’ve already lost it.
His face stays drawn like he suddenly can’t read me. “Isn’t it obvious?”
My mouth pulls in. Should it be?
It’s then that I feel the tug in my chest. It’s been there a couple times, but I don’t know what it means. I don’t have time to wonder long, Cole deciding then that whatever he sees on my face is his answer.
The moment breaks like a bucket of cold water over the head.
His features shut down. Hardening back to a stone wall right below my very eyes. Shoulders stiff, jaw inflexible, eyes as deep as a frozen chunk of iceberg buried in the ocean.
What just happened? We are one thing, and before we can collide, turn into something completely different. The strain explodes around us in a fleet of silence.
Iceman watches me through sobered eyes, and I despise it. I use it as fuel to ignore the pang of hurt that pulsates, flashing inside my chest.
This type of hurt shouldn’t be here, but it is.
I bite back my sneer. “You always did know how to rip hearts straight from the chest.”