The space between us collapses.
James's mouth finds mine with a fury that matches the argument still echoing off the walls. This is nothing like the hotel—that was escape, oblivion, two strangers using each other to forget. This is a confrontation. A continuation of the fight by other means.
I grab the front of his shirt, pulling him closer even as part of me screams to push him away. His hands grip my waist, fingers pressing into the curve of my hips like he's trying to hold onto something that keeps slipping through his grasp.
"I hate you," I breathe against his mouth.
"I know." He walks me backward until my shoulders hit the wall, the impact sending a shudder through both of us. "I hate you too."
The lie tastes like copper and want.
"This is insane," I gasp as his lips drag down my throat, teeth grazing the pulse point that betrays exactly how much my body has already surrendered. "We're supposed to be enemies. You're supposed to be someone I despise."
"And yet here we are." His voice is rough against my skin. "Your hands are in my hair, Caroline. Your body is pressed against mine. Tell me again how much you despise me."
I arch into the contact, my fingers raking through the dark strands at the nape of his neck, and the sound he makes—low, desperate, nothing like the controlled man I've come to expect—sends heat pooling through my core.
"This doesn't change anything," I manage as his hands slide beneath my shirt, palms hot against bare skin.
"Everything has already changed." He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and the intensity there steals my breath. "You know it. I know it. We've been pretending otherwise for weeks."
"I don't want this."
"Liar." His thumb traces the line of my jaw. "You want this as much as I do. The difference is I'm done pretending I don't."
"James—"
"Tell me to stop." The words come out fractured, stripped of every layer of control he usually wears like armor. "Tell me to stop, and I will. Right now. I'll walk out that door and we'll go back to pretending this is nothing but a business arrangement."
I should. I should tell him to stop, should retreat to my side of the bed and the careful distance we've maintained for weeks. I'm carrying his child. I'm keeping secrets that would shatter whatever fragile thing is building between us.
Instead, I pull his mouth back to mine.
We make it to the bed in a tangle of discarded clothing and whispered accusations. His shirt joins mine on the floor, and the heat of his chest against mine burns through every defense I have left.
"You're infuriating," I tell him as he lowers me onto the mattress, his weight settling over me like something I didn't know I was missing.
"You threw a paperweight at my head twenty minutes ago." His laugh vibrates against my collarbone. "I think we're evenly matched."
"I missed on purpose."
"You have terrible aim. Don't flatter yourself."
I pull his mouth back to mine to stop the laughter, but it transforms into something else—something slower and more dangerous. James maps my body with his hands, his mouth, his focused attention, learning me the way he learns everything. With ruthless precision. He already knows the places that make me gasp, the spots that make me writhe, but he explores them anyway, cataloging every reaction.
"You're thinking too much," he murmurs against my stomach. "I can feel it. Your mind is racing when your body should be drowning."
"I can't help it. There's too much between us. Too many reasons this shouldn't happen."
"Give me one." His fingers trace patterns on my inner thigh, teasing, deliberate. "One reason that matters more than this."
I open my mouth to answer, but his hand moves higher, finding exactly the pressure that makes my vision blur, and the words dissolve into a sound I barely recognize as my own.
"James." His name escapes me like a confession. "James, I—"
"I know." He watches my face as he works me higher, his dark eyes missing nothing. "I know what you need."
I hate that he's right. Hate that my body responds to him like it was made for this, like every nerve ending has been waiting for his touch since that first anonymous night. I hate myself for wanting him—the brother of the woman who killed Will, the man who represents everything I'm trying to escape.
"Stop looking at me like that," I gasp.
"Like what?"
"Like you can see everything I'm trying to hide."
"Maybe I can." He presses a kiss to the curve of my hip. "Maybe that's what terrifies you most."
When he finally slides inside me, I stop hating anything at all.
The rhythm we find is slow at first—a conversation without words. His forehead presses against mine, our breath mingling, and for a moment the anger and the secrets and the impossible situation fade into irrelevance. There's only this: his body moving with mine, his hands cradling my face, the devastating intimacy of being seen.
"Look at me," he says, his voice wrecked in a way I've never heard before. "Caroline. Look at me."
I open my eyes and find him watching me with an expression that terrifies me more than any cruelty ever could. Tenderness. Vulnerability. Something that looks dangerously like reverence.
"Don't," I whisper. "Don't look at me like that."
"I can't help it." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "You're the most infuriating, impossible woman I've ever met, and I can't stop looking at you like this."
The pace builds. Desperation replaces deliberation. I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper, chasing the release that's coiling tighter with every movement. He buries his face in my neck, his control finally shattering, and when I fall apart, I take him with me.
Afterward, we lie in the wreckage of Oliver's guest room—scattered glass, shattered ceramics, discarded clothing—and neither of us speaks. His hand rests on my hip, his breath warm against my shoulder.
"This complicates things," I finally say.
"I know."
"We can't pretend it didn't happen."
"I don't want to pretend." He pulls me closer. "For once in my life, I don't want to pretend anything."
The admission settles over me like a weight I don't know how to carry. I close my eyes and let exhaustion pull me under.
Sometime before dawn, I wake to find myself curled against his chest, his arm wrapped around me like he's afraid I'll disappear. I should pull away. I should retreat to my side of the bed and rebuild the walls that crumbled somewhere between the argument and the aftermath.
I don't.
I tell myself it's because I'm tired, because the warmth of him is too comfortable to abandon, because moving would require energy I no longer possess.
But my hand finds his in the darkness, and our fingers intertwine like we've done this a thousand times before.