She had made a rule. No touching unless necessary. Zane had agreed to that rule. Signed the contract with it written in clean black ink. She had watched him sign it herself. So she had absolutely no explanation for why his hand was at the small of her back right now, or why she hadn't moved away from it yet. "You're staring," he said. Not looking at her. Eyes still on the room full of people ahead of them. "You're touching me," she said back. Same tone. Same forward gaze. A pause. His thumb moved. Just slightly. Just enough to press a little warmer through the fabric of her dress. "Contractual necessity," he said quietly. "We're supposed to look convincing." "There's no one even looking at us right now." Another pause. Longer this time. "No," he said. "There isn't." She looked up at him then. He was already looking down at her. And the thing about Zane Whitmore was that he never let anything show on his face. Not ever. That was the rule of him. But his eyes. His eyes were doing something they were not supposed to be doing. She forgot what she was going to say. His head dipped. Just slightly. Just enough that she could feel his breath against her temple when he spoke. "You're doing it again," he murmured. "Doing what?" "Making it very difficult to remember the terms of our agreement." Her heart did something stupid and inconvenient. She looked back at the room ahead of them and said nothing because there was nothing safe to say and his hand was still at her back and neither of them moved away from the other for the rest of the night.

And suddenly, while we stared at each other under the pouring hot water, I could not take it anymore. I wanted more. More than just looks that lasted a second too long. More than arms brushing in a hallway and legs touching in the back of a car and the stupid endless push and pull that had been slowly driving me out of my mind since the night I met him on that bench. I wanted to taste his lips and his neck and the sharp line of his jaw. I wanted to run my hands through his blonde hair and feel whatever that electricity was that I had read about in every book I had ever secretly loved and never believed was real. I wanted to pull him in and never let go. He looked at me the way he always looked at me, like he was fighting something, like he had been fighting it since the very beginning and was very slowly losing. "Kiss me," he whispered. And that was all it took. I kissed him like every single part of me had been waiting to and he was the only thing that could make it stop. Like I had been running on empty for twenty years and he was everything I had been missing without knowing what to call it. And oh, it felt exactly like that. Because suddenly I was more alive than I had ever been. Stronger. Lighter. Like something that had been wound tight inside me my whole life had finally, finally let go. His arms felt like home. And god, I had never had a home before. Not a real one. Not one that chose me back. I never wanted to leave. ..... She had nothing. No home. No family. No one who remembered her birthday except a Google Calendar notification and a discounted cake with a single candle. Evelyn Sonnett made one wish that night. She should have been more careful about what she wished for. One midnight. One bench. One man who sat down beside her with a gun at her ribs and a voice so calm it should have been illegal. She kissed a stranger to save his life and ended up in his car, his home, his world, before she even knew his name. He is dangerous in the way that beautiful things are dangerous. The kind of man people cross streets to avoid. The kind of man whose name makes rooms go quiet. The kind of man who looks at a girl with nothing and sees exactly that. Nothing. But he brought her home. And he does not do that. Not ever. Not once. Christopher has rules. He has walls. He has an empire built on silence and fear and the kind of power that does not ask for permission. He does not bring strays home. He does not lose sleep over brown eyed girls with scarred hands and oversized hoodies and a slap that left a mark on his jaw for reasons that had nothing to do with the force behind it. He does not take one step toward a hallway and then stop himself. He does not. And yet. One birthday. One wish. One man who was never supposed to be anything. This is not a love story. Not yet.