His mouth didn't stop.
That was the problem.
She'd expected him to read her hesitation — the stiffness in her spine, the way her fingers kept alternating between gripping his collar and pressing flat against his chest like they couldn't agree on a direction — and pull back. Give her the inch she needed to rebuild whatever wall she'd been maintaining for seventeen days.
He didn't.
His hand slid from her lower back, trailing down the curve of her spine with the slow, deliberate patience of someone who had decided on a destination and wasn't in any hurry to pretend otherwise.
Her breath hitched into his mouth.
His palm settled on the back of her thigh — warm, wide, the heel of his hand just below the hem where her skirt had bunched — and he pulled upward. Slowly. The fabric rode up her thighs in increments, cool air following the path it left, and Marla felt every centimeter of it.
'Stop him.'
She didn't stop him.
