Chapter 3 #2
His expression sharpens, and when he answers, his voice drops into something that feels far too intimate for the space between us.
“You still think this is about scandal? I’ve been wanting the version of you that slips when no one else is paying attention, the one underneath all that glistening cheese, and I’m well past pretending. ”
That should have comforted me. It should have landed like reassurance, or at the very least the kind of flattery I could roll my eyes at and recover from later, but instead it sinks into me far too deep and finds something already raw.
The warmth low in my center sharpens at once, turning more intimate than physical, because there is a world of difference between being admired and being seen, and he has just stepped straight past the version of me I know how to present and put his hands, metaphorically speaking, on the part I keep hidden under all that fake celebrity.
It feels invasive. It feels exhilarating.
It feels dangerous in exactly the way things always do when they matter more than I am prepared to admit.
“And you think you know what’s under all that?” I ask, though the question comes out softer than I intended, with less bite and far more awareness than I would ever willingly hand him in a room full of donors and cameras.
His mouth curves then—slowly—the kind of smile that looks controlled until you notice the appetite underneath it.
“I think,” he says, and his voice laced with gravel, “that you’ve spent a very long time being what everyone reaches for first because you make wanting you easy.
I think you’ve been packaged as comfort for so long that people stopped asking whether comfort was ever enough for you.
And I think some part of you is exhausted by it all. ”
I don’t answer, mostly because I can’t. The intimacy of it lands too hard, and I’m left standing there in the middle of a charity awards show trying to recover from the deeply unfair experience of being understood that precisely by a fruit in a tailored suit.
My silence does the talking for me anyway, because the second his eyes lock on mine again, I know he’s heard everything I didn’t say.
He sees it. I know he does because the look on his face shifts and settles into something that feels far too intent to be casual.
He’s done performing for everyone else. All of that sharp attention is on me now, moving over every reaction I fail to hide with a patience that feels almost indulgent, as though he’s enjoying the slow work of discovering where my control thins and what it might take to make it give.
The heat in my center turns liquid for one awful second, and I have to press my thighs together to keep from reacting in a way that would give him far too much satisfaction And my edges, unfortunately, are not holding as firm as I would have liked.
His gaze drops to that movement and comes back up without hurry, and the sheer nerve of him makes my face flash hot.
“You can handle the heat without melting,” I say, because I need to claw back at least a shred of control, and because he so obviously can.
He walked into that room wearing the outrage of half the industry like it had been custom blended cologne for his skin, and somehow the whole thing only made him look hotter, smugger, more wickedly at home.
He dips his head, slow and arrogant, and the movement does something deeply offensive to my pulse. “I actually enjoy it,” he whispers into my ear, like heat is something he likes to roll around on his tongue before he swallows it down and asks for more.
“I can tell.”
His gaze drifts over me with the kind of lazy hunger that makes every inch of me feel overexposed, and when he speaks again, his voice lands low and rich enough to feel like it’s being poured instead of spoken. “You’re trembling.”
“I am not trembling.” The lie comes out fast, mostly because my body has already gone traitor on me, that low, aching pull in my center that has been getting steadily worse the longer he stands there looking at me like I’m one breath away from becoming his favorite bad decision. “I’m annoyed.”
His mouth curves upward again, and there’s something filthy in the way amusement settles into it. “If you think this is annoyed, sweetheart, give me a few minutes and I’ll have you calling it something much more interesting.”
I should tell him to go to hell. I should tell him to stop acting like he can read me just because my skin feels too warm and my composure has gone a little slick around the edges. Instead I hear myself say, “If this keeps up, I just might.”
That lands exactly the way it should, hot and obvious and thick with everything I did not mean to hand him in plain language. His smirk widens with slow, dangerous satisfaction, the kind that tells me he heard me and liked it far too much.
“No,” he says, his eyes dropping to my mouth before they rise again, “I don’t imagine you will. Not yet, anyway.”
I close my eyes for the briefest possible second, because if I keep looking at him while saying things like that, I’m going to lose what little remains of my professional dignity in front of a stack of folding chairs and a suspiciously judgmental artificial ficus.
When I open them again, he’s still there, still watching, still entirely too interested in me for someone who should be busy terrorizing food critics in the main ballroom.
“You should go back out there,” I say, though there isn’t nearly enough force behind it to count as a proper dismissal. “If you came to make me uncomfortable. Mission accomplished.”
“And leave you here all overheated and pretending that has nothing to do with me?”
The pulse in my center answers for me.
I hate that pulse.
I hate that he can probably see the exact second it hits.
And I hate, most of all, that none of this makes me want him farther away. It makes me want to know what other reactions he could pull from me if I let him stand there another minute, another inch closer, another sentence deeper.
He watches the thought happen, and something pleased moves through his expression.
That does it.
I step into his space just enough to make my point, because if I’m going down, I’m taking the upper hand with me.
I can feel my traitorist nipples rub against his chest with how closely I’ve put myself.
“You keep acting like this is just a matter of time,” I tell him, and there’s more breath in the words than I want there to be.
“Like you’ve already tasted the part where I quit resisting and let you have your way with me. ”
He doesn’t move.
He doesn’t blink.
He looks down at me like this is exactly where he wanted me.
“I think,” he says, and his voice drops until the words feel poured like the molten center of a flourless chocolate cake, “that you’re already imagining me topping you, and it’s making you needy.”
The breath goes out of me in a soft, involuntary sound that is humiliatingly close to agreement.
His gaze flickers lower, then back up. Mine does the same, because apparently neither of us is committed to behaving with dignity tonight.
The hallway feels smaller now. Hotter. The scent of him and stage heat and my own rising arousal makes the whole world feel like it’s beginning to turn.
I should walk away.
I should absolutely walk away.
Instead, I stay there one impossible second longer and let myself feel exactly how warm my center has gotten, how slick the tension is now, how dangerously easy it would be to stop pretending I don’t know what he means.
That is the moment I realize the real problem with Pineapple.
He isn’t trying to just take me.
He is trying to change the whole flavor of me.
And the most frightening part is how badly some hidden, greedy, publicly polished part of me wants to know what that would taste like.