“W-wrong,” I breathe out, nervous.
He narrows his eyes. “I thought I’d like it.”
“But you d-don’t?” I ask fearfully, because isn’t that what I was afraid of?
He shakes his head. “No.”
My heart drops. “Shepard?—”
“I fucking love it,” he says, squeezing my neck.
I blink. “What?”
“And Ifucking love it somuch”—he squeezes my neck again, as if for emphasis—“that I don’t know what to do about it. That I don’t fucking know how I’m gonna live without it.”
I dig my nails in his thighs, confused. “Without what?”
He lets a beat pass, licking his lips. “Without you on your knees for me.”
I blink again, my heart racing and racing andsoaringin my chest. “Is that why…”
“Is that why what?”
“You always,” I swallow, “insisted that I dance in my heels. Is that why you did it? Because you wanted me to stumble and fall.”
It just occurred to me, and isn’t that the truth? Because every time I stumbled, he’d go all alert. His gaze would sharpen. His spine would snap straight, probably waiting for me to finally fall for him.
He stares into my eyes for a beat. “I insisted that you dance in your heels so when you eventually fell on your knees for me, I’d get to watch the prettiest fucking eyes I’ve ever seen stare up at me from my feet andknowthat I’ll never see anything more beautiful than that.”
I whisper, my heart racing, “You think my eyes are pretty?”
“I think your eyes are more than pretty,” he tells me, his voice a rough caress. “Everything about you is more than pretty. Everything about you is fucking beautiful and luminous andalive and full of color. But that’s not the point. Anyone can be those things. What you are is something else.”
“What am I?”
He takes his time answering, taking me in, tracing my features with his dark, intense eyes. “Unforgettable.”
I’ve never been that, unforgettable. For anyone. In fact, I think people forget about me easily. People ignore me easily. People that matter to me, at least. But not him, apparently. The man who’s more important to me than he should be. Who also just gave me the best compliment he could’ve given me. The best compliment, wrapped up with a bow of thorns. Just like him.
“You don’t have to,” I whisper then.
“I don’t have to what?”
“Live without watching me on my knees.”
His features rearrange themselves then, harden up, go tight, and so do his fingers on my neck. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“What—”
Keeping his eyes on me, he shifts then and fishes something out of his pocket like before. It’s not a wallet or money or anything remotely similar to that. It’s his phone, and when he holds it up in front of me, I’m confused. Until he says, “Tell me what this is.”
I don’t know what it is that makes it clear to me. Maybe the look in his eyes, the hard slant of his jaw. Like he already expects me to not only know what it is but why he has it out.
“You’re not…” I begin, my words stuttering. “You’re not allowed to?—”
“You’re not an employee anymore,” he reminds me.
“But I?—”
