My fingers itched with the urge to reach out and trace the shape.
To restore.
To remember.
To renew.
If he was beautiful then, he was devastating now.
Every line of him was hard and severe. Wide shoulders and defined chest that led to a trim waist. Tall and almost thin, though from the feel of him earlier, I knew the muscle hidden beneath his clothes was rigid and packed.
Rippling with strength and intimidation.
The fitted suit he wore over his chiseled form only amplified that truth.
He glanced at me.
Energy cracked in the dense air.
Those green eyes sharpened with a threat. “You’re doing it again.”
My brow furled in question.
He released a cruel chuckle that skated over my skin, a harsh, seductive caress. “Looking at me like you have the right to know.”
“And you act like I’m not going to wonder.”
Pushing out a sigh, he let the words fall as if they were trivial. “It was a long time ago.”
“Yet it feels like yesterday.”
Only an eternity had been woven in between.
He shrugged a nonchalant shoulder that weighed a million pounds. “Yesterday…a lifetime ago…it doesn’t matter, does it, Aster? Not when it can’t be undone.”
“But you haven’t forgotten.” I didn’t know if it was a question or a plea.
He came to a quick stop at a red light, and he whirled on me. A gasp rocked from my lungs when his hand curled into my upper thigh. The flesh burned hot when he dug his fingers in and squeezed. “Do not toy with me, Aster.”
My mouth went dry, and I gulped on the scorching air. On his anger. On his hurt. “I’m not.”
His hand moved to my face, his thumb on my jaw, far too gentle for the darkness that reigned in his eyes. “Such a sweet little liar.”
The light turned green, and he skewered me with that gaze for the barest flash that felt like he could see through to the marrow. Penetrate and cut me down to nothing.
Then he turned and accelerated through the intersection, that powerful body slung back so confidently, but there wasn’t anything casual about it.
Fierceness radiated from his pores, spilling free like brutality.
Suffocating.
Compelling.
I didn’t know if I felt hollow, wrecked and ravaged and laid to waste by that single glance, or if for the first time in seven years, there was a part of me that felt alive.
That blooming of what I shouldn’t allow to take root.
I forced my attention out the window. I had to be careful. Guard myself, or I wasn’t going to come out of this better on the other side.