The Threshold

The door clicked shut behind me, and the room seemed to inhale.

She stood by the mirror now, watching me in its surface rather than turning. Lamplight caught the curve of her hip where silk gathered, the slow rise and fall of her breath. Every line of her body spoke a language I was only beginning to translate.

"Come here," she'd said.

But my feet had forgotten how to move properly. The air between us felt thick. Charged, like the moment before lightning chooses where to strike.

"Second thoughts?" Her reflection smiled, but there was something else there. A flicker of genuine curiosity beneath the calculated seduction.

"No." My voice came out rougher than intended. "Just... taking you in."

She turned then, slowly, letting the silk follow the motion. Her eyes were darker than they'd been at dinner. Pupils wide in the low light, perhaps. Maybe from something else entirely.

"Take your time." She settled back against the dresser and her fingers found the edge of it, gripping. I wanted them to grip something else.

"We have all night,” she said.

The way she said it—all night—made heat pool low in my stomach.

I took a step closer. Another. Each one felt like crossing into territory I couldn't return from. The floorboards sang beneath my socks, and she watched my approach with the patience of someone who knew exactly how this would end.

When I was close enough to smell her perfume (something with amber and vanilla) I stopped. We were maybe three feet apart. Close enough that I could see the faint flush along her collarbones. Close enough that when she breathed, the silk shifted in ways that made my mouth go dry.

"You planned this," I said.

Her smile was slow, wicked. "Which part?"

"All of it. The door. The light. That nightgown."

She glanced down at herself, then back up through her lashes. "This old thing?"

"Liar."

The word hung between us, intimate as a kiss.

She pushed off from the dresser, closing half the distance between us. I held my ground, but my pulse hammered so hard I was certain she could see it.

"Maybe I am," she said, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Maybe I've been planning this since you walked in three days ago with that distracted poet look and those hands that don't know where to rest."

My hands, traitors that they were, clenched at my sides.

She noticed. Of course she noticed.

"They could rest on me," she offered, tilting her head. The movement exposed more of that long elegant line in her throat I'd been trying not to stare at all week.

"Is that what you want?"

She moved closer still. Now I could feel the heat radiating from her skin, could count the faint freckles across her shoulders if I let myself look.

"I want," she said slowly, "to see what happens when you stop overthinking."

She hovered her hand near my face without touching. I could feel the almost-contact like static electricity, every nerve ending aware of how close she was. How easy it would be to lean into her palm.

"I want to know," she continued, her thumb nearly brushing my jaw, "what you taste like when you finally stop running."

My breath caught. "I'm not running."

"No?" Her hand dropped, but she didn't step back. "Then what are you doing?"

I looked at her. Really looked. Past the performance, past the seduction. The way her lower lip trembled, just barely, between breaths. The tension in her throat when she swallowed. Her fingers, no longer perfectly still against the dresser. There was something raw there, barely visible. A hunger that matched my own.

"Savoring," I said.

Something shifted in her expression. The smile softened into something more dangerous. More real.

"Show me," she said.

I lifted my hand, mirror to what she'd done, letting it hover near her waist where the silk gathered. Not touching. Not yet. But close enough that I could feel the warmth of her through the fabric.

Her breath hitched.

"Your move," I whispered.

Her eyes flashed with something that might have been surprise, might have been delight.

Then she leaned in, her mouth so close to my ear I could feel her breath.

"Careful," she murmured. "I play to win."

She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes.

And smiled like a woman about to prove it.