Page 58 of Power Play

“I thought—”

“Don’t.”

The word wasn’t sharp, but it stopped me.

I looked away, and that made his expression change.

Ryan stepped closer again, enough that his knees touched the counter between mine, though his hands stayed away from me.

“Charm.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing?”

“Deciding what I’m thinking before I fucking say it.”

My face burned hotter. “I didn’t.”

“You apologized.”

“Because you stopped.”

“Yeah.”

The quiet answer hurt more than it should have.

I stared at the neckline of his shirt because looking at his face felt impossible. “Why did you stop?”

“Because I want you.”

My eyes lifted. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Ryan’s jaw flexed. For one brief second, something close to fear passed through his expression, too fast for me to understand before he buried it beneath the control I knew better.

“Because I’ve wanted you for years, and if I fuck you tonight, you’ll spend tomorrow deciding whether you did it correctly.”

Everything inside me went still.

The apartment seemed suddenly too quiet around us.

I couldn’t decide which part of the sentence had hit harder: that he had wanted me for years, that he had just admitted exactly where this had been going, or that he knew me well enough to understand what tomorrow would probably look like.

“That’s not fair.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know what I’d think tomorrow.”

“I know what you did after answering one question wrong in front of Klein’s teaching assistant last spring.”

“That has nothing to do with this.”

“You spent two days deciding whether you sounded stupid.”

“That was academic.”