The light had been a betrayal.One moment, she was a confessional shadow, her voice weaving a tapestry of old dust and childhood fear in the warm, private dark. The next, the clinical glare of a hundred hidden LEDs had exposed them: her tear-tracked cheek, his body angled toward hers like a compass needle finding north, and the intimate void between their lips reduced to a measurable, breathless inch.He hadn’t moved away.That was the detail that haunted him now, pacing the length of his penthouse after she’d left. He had sat there, frozen in the sudden brightness, and let the moment stretch. Let her see that he wasn’t startled by their proximity but arrested by it. The professional reflex to withdraw had been utterly absent. A deeper, more fundamental instinct had taken hold: Stay. Claim. P
