The red dot did not waver. It rested exactly between her breasts, a tiny, glowing insect of light painting her bare, sweat-slicked skin.
Jane stared at it. Her brain, trained for twenty-two years to catalog threats and file them away into neat, emotionless boxes, tried to calculate the distance from the elevator to her chest. Three point five seconds. Maybe less.
She didn’t have time to ask for a glass of water.
Michael didn’t calculate. He erupted.
The physical separation was catastrophic. His knot had not fully receded, and the violent, tearing pull of him ripping himself out of her sent a blinding spike of pure trauma straight up her spine. The pain shattered her clinical detachment instantly. She gasped, tasting copper, her hands flying out to catch herself.
He didn't give her the
