Whispered Temptations

Chapter Ten

The second time we stepped outside together, the air felt different.

Not cooler, though it should have. Not quieter, though the backyard still held only scattered groups and the distant thud of bass from inside the house.

No.

It felt charged now.

As if the night had been split into a before and an after, and somewhere between the first look across the living room and the mocktail in my hand, I had crossed into something that would not let me go again easily.

Hero kept pace beside me without touching me.

That should not have felt as intimate as it did.

The restraint of it. The awareness in it. The way he moved close enough that I could feel him there but never so close that I had to step away.

By the time we reached the oak tree, my pulse had already gone uneven again.

The old swing waited in the shadows, but this time I didn't sit.

Neither did he.

We stopped facing each other in the silvered dark, close enough now that I could make out every shift in his expression without needing moonlight to help me.

For a few seconds, neither of us spoke.

I wrapped my arms loosely around myself, more to contain the restless energy inside me than because I felt cold.

Hero's gaze dropped to the movement and then rose again.

"You do that when you're nervous."

I blinked. "Cross my arms?"

"You hold yourself." His voice had gone low again, softer than the beat shaking the windows behind us. "Like you're trying to keep yourself from spilling open."

That struck far too deep.

I tried for levity because it was either that or give him the truth and watch him turn my bones inside out with it.

"You're very observant. It's honestly becoming a problem."

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth.

"Only for you?"

"Almost definitely."

The smile remained.

It should have made him less dangerous.

It didn't.

If anything, it made him worse - because sharp edges are easier to avoid than warmth.

Hero tipped his head slightly, studying me like he had all night, but now there was less hunger in it and something rougher beneath. Curiosity. Care. Want tempered by restraint.

That was what undid me.

Not the lust.

The control.

The way he looked like he could take too much if he wanted to and had decided not to.

The way he kept choosing gentleness where another man might have taken liberties.

I hadn't realized until tonight how hungry I was for that.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

The words should have been harmless.

They still made my stomach dip.

"You've been asking me things all night."

"And you've been answering just enough to keep me interested."

The corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it.

"So now you're admitting this is strategic?"

His eyes flicked over my face.

"No." A pause. "This is me trying not to scare you."

My breath caught.

I looked at him carefully.

There was no arrogance in the statement. No smug awareness of his own effect.

Just fact.

Just this impossible, unsettling man being honest in a way most people never were.

"What if you're too late?" I asked softly.

He went still.

The dark seemed to tighten around us, the distant party noise receding again until all I could hear was the blood in my ears and the quiet drag of his breathing.

"Are you scared now?" he asked.

I swallowed.

"Yes."

His jaw flexed once.

"Of me?"

The right answer should have been easy.

It wasn't.

Because yes, in a way.

But not in the way he meant.

Not because I thought he would hurt me.

Because I thought he might matter.

Because every instinct I had built out of caution and humiliation and slow recovery was telling me not to stand under a tree in the dark with a man who made me feel newly skinned alive.

Because what if this was another lesson dressed as attention?

Because what if it wasn't?

I looked down.

"Of how much I want you to keep talking to me," I whispered before I could stop myself.

The confession dropped between us like a match.

When I looked back up, Hero's expression had changed completely.

Not smug.

Not victorious.

Struck.

Like I'd hit him somewhere vulnerable and he hadn't prepared for it.

He took one slow step closer.

Still not touching.

Close enough now that if I leaned forward even a little, I'd feel the heat of him.

"Halsey."

My name sounded wrecked in his mouth.

I curled my fingers into my own elbows.

"This is the part where a normal person pretends she didn't say that."

"I don't want normal."

Something hot and dizzy rushed through me.

I should have been embarrassed by how badly I wanted that to be true.

Instead I was only aware of my own breathing. The ache gathering low in my belly. The pull in the center of my chest, sharp enough to almost hurt.

Hero lifted one hand.

Not to touch me.

To show me.

Permission.

A question.

My whole body stilled.

He waited.

God, he actually waited.

No pushing. No taking. No assumption that because I had stepped this far into the dark with him, the rest was his.

I nodded once.

That was all it took.

His fingers touched my cheek so lightly I almost thought I'd imagined it. Just the back of two knuckles grazing the warm curve of my skin. My eyes fluttered shut before I could stop them.

His hand stilled there.

I could feel every point of contact. The faint roughness of his skin. The devastating gentleness in the gesture. The way my whole body leaned, traitorous and needy, into a touch that barely existed.

"You shake when I get close to you," he murmured.

I opened my eyes.

"You notice everything."

"Only what matters."

That should not have been the thing that broke me.

But it was.

Not fully. Not loudly.

Just enough that I stepped forward without thinking and ended up close enough to feel the breadth of him in front of me, close enough that the clean heat of his body wrapped around me like another climate.

Hero's hand slid from my cheek to the side of my neck. Broad, warm, unhurried.

I should have stopped.

I didn't.

His thumb traced once beneath my jaw, and every nerve in me answered.

"You still haven't kissed me," I said, and immediately wanted to die from the boldness of it.

Hero's eyes darkened so fast it felt like the entire yard did with them.

"No," he said, voice gone rough. "I haven't."

"Why?"

His grip tightened by a fraction. Barely there. Impossible to miss.

"Because if I do it before you're ready, I'll spend the rest of the night hating myself."

The raw honesty of that nearly undid my knees.

I stared at him.

At the rigid control in every line of his body. At the restraint vibrating through him like a second pulse. At the fact that he wanted me - I knew he wanted me, I could feel it in the air between us, in the way his breath had changed, in the way his hand at my neck seemed to be fighting its own strength - and still he was waiting for me to choose.

No one had ever made me feel safer by wanting me.

The realization shattered the last thin strip of distance I had left.

So I rose onto my toes and kissed him.

For the first half second, he didn't move.

Not because he didn't want to.

Because he was giving me the space to stop.

When I didn't - when I pressed closer and let my trembling mouth fit against his more fully - something deep in his chest broke loose in a rough exhale.

Then Hero kissed me back.

God.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for that first real touch of his mouth.

Heat shot through me so fast my entire body jerked. His lips were firm and soft all at once, moving over mine with terrifying patience, like he was memorizing me already. One hand stayed at my neck, steadying, while the other found my waist and held me there with enough strength to make my head spin and enough care to keep me from feeling trapped.

I made a helpless sound into his mouth.

Hero's response was immediate - a low, wrecked groan that seemed pulled out of him against his will.

The sound went straight between my legs.

My hands found his shirt without permission from the rest of me. I fisted the black fabric at his chest, needing something solid because the world had tilted beneath my feet and nothing felt stable except the man kissing me like he had been starving for it.

He deepened the kiss slowly.

Not greedy.

Not rushed.

Devastatingly thorough.

His mouth coaxed mine apart, and I let him. Of course I let him. By then I would have let him ruin me if he asked sweetly enough.

When his tongue touched mine, I shuddered hard enough for him to feel it.

His fingers flexed at my waist.

"Halsey," he breathed against my lips, like he was warning himself, not me.

I should have taken the chance to stop.

Instead I kissed him again.

This time with less fear.

This time with want.

Hero answered instantly, his control fraying at the edges. The hand at my neck slid into my hair, fingers tangling in the loose waves at the nape. He angled my head and kissed me deeper, harder, until my knees weakened and I ended up half pressed against him, all my balance gone to his body.

My God.

No one had ever kissed me like this. No one had ever kissed me at all like this.

Not like they intended to learn me from the inside out.

Not like they couldn't quite believe I was real.

A pulse of raw need rolled through me so strong it made me dizzy. Between my thighs, my body tightened and ached in a way that was deeply humiliating and completely impossible to ignore.

I broke the kiss with a gasp, forehead falling against his chest.

Hero's arm came around my back immediately, holding me upright.

Neither of us spoke.

We just stood there, breathing.

His heart was pounding so hard beneath my cheek I could feel it through his shirt.

That shouldn't have comforted me.

It did.

"Well," I whispered finally, because silence had become too full. "That was deeply irresponsible."

His laugh was low and rough and close to wrecked.

When he tipped my chin up again, his eyes were almost black in the dark.

"You kissed me."

"Only because you were being unbearably noble about it."

One corner of his mouth twitched.

"So now it's my fault."

"Obviously."

He stared at me a second longer, something like wonder and hunger and disbelief moving through his expression all at once.

Then he said, with dangerous softness, "Come home with me."

My entire body flashed hot.

The words landed exactly where they were meant to.

And yet, beneath the immediate rush of want, something cautious inside me stirred.

Not no.

Never no.

But not yet either.

Hero seemed to read that in my face because his hand slid from my hair back to my cheek, grounding, steady.

"You don't have to answer now," he said. "I'm still taking you back inside."

The gentleness of that nearly finished me off more thoroughly than the kiss had.

So I nodded once.

Because that was all I trusted myself to do.

And because I already knew the night had shifted again.

This time toward something neither of us was going to be able to walk back from.