One for My Enemy

by Olivie Blake

“Are you cold?” she asked him, and he cleared his throat. “Freezing,” he assured her, and she nodded gravely, reaching up to brush her charmed fingers across his lips. She waited for a moment, drawing the tip of her index finger back and forth along the line of his mouth, until finally his lips parted, his breath warm and tinged with a smoky hint of whisky. “This,” he said, her fingers still hovering above his lips, “is what they call mixed messages, Sasha.” She blinked, startled, and drew her hand away. “Right.” She exhaled. “Right, of course, sorry, I was just, I wasn’t—” “Oh, hell,” Lev rumbled softly, and before Sasha could respond, he had pulled her into him, wrapping one arm around her waist to slide his free hand beneath her jaw, tilting her face up toward his. He leaned close, pausing a matter of breaths from her lips, and then he stayed there, his nose poised delicately alongside hers. She felt his swift exhalation like a breeze against her cheek, the pounding of his heart visible beneath the line of his throat. The implication was clear; he’d come as close as he was going to. He’d come close enough to imagine her, to taste the proximity of her in the air between them, but no closer—that was up to her. She paused for a moment in the stillness, in the paralysis between motions, in the cliff edge between what was and what could be, and for a pulse or two of time she simply luxuriated there, feeling the warmth of his breath against her lips and thinking, foolishly, t...