That steady, searching look of his should not cause such a fluttering in her belly, such a tightening. But it does and she finds that it leaves her just a little breathless. She wants to smooth the furrows from his expressions. She wants to find the velvet skin next to his mouth where the spice of him is concentrated. She wants to linger there, wants to feel his pulse thunder beneath her lips, wants to jumpstart her heart.
But neither of them are willing to give an inch and she feels the willow of her spine protest.
The storm of him—just his mere presence—whips around her and her throat grows dry.
His humor is not lost on her, nor the meaning, and she feels it like whiplash. Her breath gets sucked from her lungs, and she doesn’t say anything for a moment. She just stands there, tall and straight, her sage green eyes guarded as she looks into the shadow and reminds herself of all the different ways to hide.
“I’ve thought of a place like this before,” she confesses. It would seem she would always be the one to be the first to confess, to be the first to lay bare her sins. “Too much, perhaps.” It does not full describe just how much she has thought of it. How much she has lost sleep over it. How much she has wanted—
She swallows hard.
For a second, there is nothing again but the silence that continues to stretch between them. It grows taut and too thin and she is afraid for what will happen to her when it finally snaps.
She finally lets herself laugh, the sound dry in her throat.
“But I have always been a foolish girl.”
Something like pain flashes across her features that she chases away with indifference, with another failed attempt at apathy as she rolls a scaled shoulder and feels the chill settle into her bones.
“I should probably go,” because like she is the first to crumble, she is also the first to run.
ADNA
