His pupils were dilated wide with desire, turning his eyes almost black. She couldn’t look away. It felt like they were locked in position, turned toward each other on the couch, so close but not yet touching. This was the moment they had to decide: leap over the cliff or back away.

John exhaled, and the stream of warm air brushed her lips, making her viscerally aware of how close they were, that the slightest shift of weight by either of them would bring them together. She wanted that, to touch him, to be touched by him, even more than she’d wanted his couch just seconds ago.

She just wasn’t brave enough to take that final step, and she wanted to smack herself for her cowardice. Chasing criminals over fences and tackling them to the ground? Sure, no problem. Kiss a guy who clearly—unless she was reading all the signals very wrong—wanted her? Run away! Girl, you’re messed up, her brain scolded, and she could only agree.

“John?” she managed to say, needing to do something to break the tension that had wrapped around them like a whole roll of barbed wire.

“Yeah?” The problem was that it hadn’t worked—the tension was still there, the wire pulling even tauter, dragging them closer together through sheer desire and, she had to admit, a huge, heaping load of affection that had sprung up completely unexpectedly over the past harrowing days.

Now she’d started a conversation, though, so she had to finish it. “What are we doing?”

“What do you want to do?”

Very dirty things to you. “So it’s all on me?” She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

His lips twitched up just the slightest bit, although it didn’t dim the heat in his gaze. “You know what I want—what I’ve wanted since we met. The question is if you want the same thing.”

“But I don’t know!” The words burst from her in a panic. “I know you want me to work for you, but I told you that one of us would end up killing the other one if we tried that.”

The crease of his dimples dented his cheeks. “I don’t think we’d kill each other.” His gaze darted down to her mouth again before meeting her eyes. The dark, smoldering depths sucked her in, and she instantly lost track of the conversation. “It’d be…explosive, but not how you’re thinking. And I would love for you to come work for me, but that wasn’t why I kept seeking you out.”

“It wasn’t?” Her blood felt like it was on fire as it coursed through her, heating her skin and turning her insides molten.

“No.” As if he couldn’t help himself, his fingers brushed across her cheek, tracing her jaw to the point of her chin before dropping away. She immediately missed that featherlight touch. “I like being around you. You wake me up, make me laugh, make me swear.” She huffed a laugh at that last one, and he closed his eyes for a moment as if he was in pain. When he opened them again, they were hotter than ever. “You make me hungry.”