Instead, I cross to the bar and reach past her for the spray bottle on the shelf behind the sink.
She turns at the same time.
And we're there. Six inches apart, my arm extended past her shoulder, her face tilted up, her eyes on mine.
Neither of us moves.
Her breath is warm on my chin. Her eyes are brown and wide and the guard is down. Not all the way. Not enough to call it open.
But enough for me to see what lives behind it. Fear and warmth, and a question she's not asking out loud.
My hand is still on the shelf. The spray bottle is behind her.
I don't reach for it.
"Rookie." She says the name the club uses because she still doesn't know my real one.
Hearing it in her voice is a collision I wasn't prepared for.
My road name in her mouth, low and uncertain, shaped like a question that has weight behind it, weight she's been carrying around for a while.
"Yeah?"
She doesn't answer. Her eyes drop to my mouth and come back up, and the movement is so fast it could be nothing, but it isn't nothing, and we both know it.
The air between us shifts. Thickens. The loaded silence that happens right before something breaks open.
My hand comes down from the shelf and lands on the counter beside her hip. Not on her. Near her.
Close enough for my knuckle to graze the fabric of her jeans. I can feel the warmth radiating off her through the denim. My fingers twitch with the want to close that last inch.
"Tell me to walk away." My voice comes out lower than I intended. Rougher. Scraped raw from somewhere deep in my chest. "And I will."
She doesn't tell me to walk away.
Her hand comes up. Fingers press against my chest, over my heart, not pushing, not pulling. Resting there.
Feeling the heat of it, like she's checking whether it's real before she decides to trust it.
Her palm is warm through my shirt and I can feel my own heartbeat kicking against her hand, giving me away completely.
Her fingers spread, just slightly, like she wants more contact. Like she's trying to read something written underneath my skin.
I lean in and kiss her.
Not gently. Not carefully. Hungrily, the way you eat when you've been fasting and didn't know it.
My mouth finds hers and the first press of her lips is soft, giving, and then I tilt my head and deepen it, and she opens for me and the kiss turns filthy.
My tongue slides against hers, slow and deliberate, tasting, and she meets me there, matching me stroke for stroke.
I bite her bottom lip, just enough pressure to feel the plushness of it under my teeth, and her breath hitches, a sharp little inhale that goes straight through me.
My hand leaves the counter and finds her waist, pulling her forward.
My fingers dig in, gripping the curve of her hip through the denim, feeling the heat of her body sink into my palm.
I pull her flush against me, close enough to feel her stomach press against mine, close enough to feel the way her body fits against the hard line of me.