Chapter 14
MILA
Iwoke with my body already ahead of my mind.
Heat lingered between my thighs, low and insistent, like it had been banked overnight instead of spent.
My sheets were twisted. My muscles ached in the best way—from tension, from restraint, from wanting something and not having it. Connor’s mouth, Connor’s hands, Connor stopping when everything in me had been screaming don’t—it all replayed in fragments, sharp and vivid.
I lay there staring at the pale ceiling, listening to Paris wake up outside my window, and realized something that made my pulse jump.
I wasn’t embarrassed by how much I wanted him.
That was new.
Back home, desire had always come with an apology attached. A quiet negotiation. A sense that if I leaned too far into it, I’d lose something—dignity, safety, control. But this morning, wanting felt like momentum. Like direction.
Amaya had been right.
I didn’t want to be protected from myself.
What I wanted was to be met.
The thought unfurled slowly, dangerously, like a truth I’d been circling for years without naming.
I didn’t want safety rails or careful pacing or to be talked down from my own desire. I wanted to feel him lose something—just a little—because of me. I wanted to see what happened when his discipline slipped, when the careful distance cracked and something raw pushed through.
I imagined it without trying to censor myself.
His hands on my hips, sudden and decisive, lifting me like my weight didn’t register.
My back against a wall I hadn’t chosen. His mouth claiming mine in public, unapologetic, like he’d decided I was worth the risk of being seen.
The city watching and not watching at the same time.
The heat of it—the danger, the immediacy—making my knees weak.
I imagined him kissing me where anyone could see.
I imagined him not caring.
It wasn’t about being fucked in public—not really. It was about being wanted so fully that restraint became a choice instead of a rule. About knowing he could stop and choosing, just once, not to. Choosing me instead.
My body reacted to the thought, heat pooling low and insistent, my breath going shallow as if the fantasy itself were already pressing me back against stone and glass and night.
I wanted to tempt him.
To make him see me as I was now—awake, intentional, unashamed—and decide, all on his own, that he was done holding back. That whatever rules he lived by bent when it came to me.
The thought made my pulse race.
So the question now wasn’t what I wanted.
It was how to let him know—without surrendering the power I’d just claimed—that I wanted his control to snap.
I showered and threw on clothes without overthinking them—black jeans, a soft top that clung more than I usually allowed, boots I could walk fast in.
I slung my camera over my shoulder, the familiar weight grounding and provocative all at once. The lens cap clicked off with a sound that felt suggestive in the quiet room.
Everything felt heightened.
The scrape of denim against my thighs.
The stretch of fabric across my chest.
The way my body seemed hyperaware of itself, as if it had finally been invited into the conversation.
I didn’t check my phone.
If Connor had texted, I didn’t want to see it yet. I wanted this choice to be clean. Mine.
The café was already busy when I arrived—the same one by the river, all narrow tables and scratched wood and sunlight slanting in like it knew exactly where to land.
The barista nodded at me like we were old acquaintances.
The smell of coffee and warm bread hit me hard, sensual in a way that made my stomach tighten.
Everything was doing that this morning.
A woman laughed too loudly at the table near the window, head tipped back, throat exposed.
A man leaned in to murmur something in her ear, his hand settling at her lower back like it belonged there.
A couple argued softly over pastries, tension flickering between them like a prelude instead of a problem.
I lifted my camera without thinking.
Click.
A hand gripping a coffee cup too tightly.
Click.
A mouth stained faintly with foam.
Click.
I told myself it was about composition. About light and texture and human closeness.
It wasn’t.
I was seeing everything through the lens of my body—angles that suggested friction, pauses that felt like anticipation. I photographed a man’s wrist resting on the table, veins visible beneath skin. Like Connor’s. I had the vivid thought of what it would feel like if Connor pinned me down.
I swallowed hard.
Get a grip.
I ordered coffee I didn’t need—something strong, something bitter—and took my usual seat, camera resting against my ankle. I tried not to look at the door every five seconds.
Tried and failed.
Every time it opened, my back straightened. Every tall silhouette made my breath hitch. My body had apparently decided that Connor Ward was now the axis around which it oriented itself.
I hated how much I liked that.
Ten minutes passed. Then twenty.
I took more photos. A man reading the paper, brow furrowed in concentration. A woman adjusting her scarf, fingers brushing her collarbone. The barista steaming milk, his forearms flexing as he worked the machine.
God.
I shifted in my chair, suddenly too aware of the way the seat pressed against me. Too aware of the fact that last night had ended with my body revved and abandoned, like an engine cut mid-race.
Maybe he wouldn’t come.
The thought landed heavier than it should have.
Maybe I’d misread everything. Maybe dinner had been a one-off. Maybe restraint had been the point, not the promise.
I could have texted him.
I could have called—asked if he was nearby, if he wanted coffee, if last night had meant what it felt like it meant. The option sat in my pocket, warm and easy and entirely too safe.
But there was something unbearably romantic about not doing that.
About sitting here instead, letting the city decide. About seeing whether we were the kind of people who found each other without asking—drawn back to the same place by instinct instead of planning. About believing that if something real had started between us, it wouldn’t need arranging.
I took a slow sip of coffee, forcing myself to breathe.
And then the air changed.
It was subtle—no dramatic hush, no cinematic cue—but my body recognized it instantly. The same pressure shift. The same quiet certainty.
I looked up.
Connor stood just inside the door, sunlight catching the edge of his jaw, his coat open, his posture relaxed. He scanned the room once, sharp and efficient.
Then his gaze found me.
And stopped.
Something passed between us—recognition, relief, heat. His shoulders loosened by a fraction, like he’d been braced for something and just realized he didn’t have to be.
He walked toward me.
I didn’t pretend not to watch.
Every step felt like a decision. Controlled, unhurried, the kind of movement that suggested he knew exactly how much space he was taking up. When he stopped at my table, the scent of him—clean, dark, familiar—hit me all over again.
“Morning,” he said.
“Is it?” I replied, my voice lower than usual. Rougher.
His mouth curved slightly. “You look like you’ve already lived through one.”
I smiled, slow and unapologetic. “I woke up awake.”
His eyes darkened. Just a shade. Enough that my pulse spiked.
My gaze dropped—deliberately this time.
To his mouth.
Normally, I would’ve caught myself and looked away, embarrassed by the intimacy of it. By how revealing it felt to linger there, to notice the shape of his lips, the faint shadow at the corner. Normally, I would’ve swallowed the thought before it finished forming.
But I didn’t look away.
I let myself imagine it instead—how his mouth had felt against mine last night, firm and controlled, like he’d been holding back something far more dangerous.
I imagined the taste of him lingering, the heat of that restraint turning into pressure, into something that could make my knees weak, if I let it.
I imagined that mouth lower, closer.
The thought sent a sharp wave through me.
Good.
I met his eyes again, letting him see exactly where my attention had been.
I didn’t give him time to recover.
“You left me frustrated,” I said, matter-of-fact, like I was commenting on the weather.
A beat.
Then his brows lifted, surprise flickering across his face before it smoothed into something wary and amused. “Did I?”
“Yes.” I leaned forward, elbows on the table, closing the distance deliberately. “And I decided I don’t want to be polite about it.”
His gaze dropped—to my mouth, my collarbone, the camera strap cutting between my breasts—then returned to my eyes.
“Careful,” he said quietly.
“No,” I replied just as quietly. “Not careful.”
The words seemed to land. His jaw flexed. He pulled out the chair across from me and sat, slow and measured, like he was choosing proximity instead of falling into it.
“What are you doing here, Mila?” he asked.
I didn’t deflect. Didn’t soften it.
“I came looking for you.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and electric.
“Why?” he asked, though his body language suggested he already knew the answer.
I lifted my camera and aimed it at him.
Click.
He stilled, caught mid-breath.
“You,” I said, lowering the lens just enough to meet his eyes, “have been haunting my frame since last night.”
His lips parted slightly, then pressed together again, like he was reining himself in.
“That’s dangerous territory,” he said.
“I’m a photographer,” I replied. “I go where the tension is.”
A corner of his mouth twitched despite himself.
I stood abruptly, the movement decisive. He tracked me instantly, alert.
“Come with me,” I said.
“To where?”
I slung the camera fully into my hands, pulse thrumming. “Outside. The light’s better.”
He hesitated just long enough for me to notice.
Then he stood.
We stepped out onto the narrow strip of pavement by the café, the river glinting nearby, the city moving around us like it didn’t realize anything important was happening.
The sun hit him just right—carving shadows along his cheekbones, catching the faint scar on his hand, lighting him from the side like a study in restraint.
I lifted the camera again.
Click.
Click.
He watched me watch him, something feral and contained flickering behind his eyes.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered without shame. “I’m done pretending I don’t.”
I circled him slowly, photographing the way his hands curled loosely at his sides, the tension in his shoulders, the way his gaze never left me even when my lens wasn’t on his face.
“This is new for you,” he said.
“So is being stopped,” I shot back, and his breath hitched.
I stopped directly in front of him, close enough that my camera brushed his chest when I lowered it.
“I don’t want to be managed,” I said. “And I don’t want to disappear into you. But I do want you.”
The words felt dangerous and true.
He held my gaze for a long moment, the city blurring around us.
“Then you should know,” he said slowly, “that if you keep pushing like this, I will push back.”
My pulse leapt.
I smiled. “Good.”
For a split second, something like hunger flashed openly across his face before he masked it again.
He leaned in—not kissing me, not touching—just close enough that his voice brushed my ear.
“Tonight,” he murmured. “We talk.”
I swallowed. “And after?”
His gaze dropped to my mouth.
“We’ll see how brave you still feel.”
He stepped back then, creating space even as the promise lingered between us.
I watched him walk away down the street, my body humming, my camera heavy in my hands, my desire no longer quiet.