We were parked.
I hadn’t registered the turn off the street, the coded gate lifting without hesitation, the slow descent into the underground garage that swallowed the city whole.
My car idled for a beat longer than it should have.
“You good?” Bea asked, her tone careful. Observant.
“Yeah.” I nodded once, killing the engine, the low purr cutting off.
The air met me—tempered, dry, engineered. A deliberate buffer between what this city was and what people like me paid not to feel.
The door shut behind me with a muted thud.
We moved toward the building together, our footsteps soft against the sealed floor, the space swallowing the sound before it could carry.
Didn’t speak.
The elevator ride was quick. Too quiet. The kind of space where awareness had nowhere to go but inward.
I felt her before I looked at her. The shift of her weight. The subtle adjustment of her stance. The heat of her body.
My jaw tightened.
Focus.
The doors opened. I stepped out first.
My apartment was exactly the way I’d left it. Dark wood. Clean lines. Shelves that weren’t decorative so much as necessary—lined with books that had been read, notdisplayed. A low couch that had seen use. A table with a stack of papers I hadn’t touched in days. Lamps instead of overhead lights, casting the room in a softer, contained glow.
It wasn’t empty. But it wasn’t built for anyone else.
Bea stepped in behind me.
Paused.
I felt it.
The way she took it in. The way her attention moved—not quickly, not obviously, but thoroughly. Reading the space the same way she read people. Understanding it. Understanding me.
That should have irked me more than it did.
Instead—my focus dropped.
To her. Standing in my space.
The thought hit fast. Abrupt. My body reacted before my brain caught up—sharp, instinctive, pulled tight against something that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with proximity and pheromones.
I saw it.
Her against the wall.
My hands on her hips.
Teeth digging into her bare shoulder.
Her breath panting against my skin.
The tension between us snapping clean in a way that would leave nothing controlled behind.