She moved.
Instinct, maybe, or panic at how close I was getting, how much space I was taking up, how the air between us had gone thick with want that neither of us could deny anymore.
She tried to pull back, to create distance, but her body was still weak from the river's healing, still remembering what it meant to almost die, and the movement made her lose balance entirely.
I caught her.
Of course I caught her.
Hands closing around her waist, pulling her toward me instead of letting her fall, and somehow, somehow, the logic of it all conspired to land her exactly where every forbidden part of me had been imagining her:
Straddling my lap.
Facing me.
Close enough that I could count her eyelashes and catalog every shade of color in her eyes and feel the warmth still radiating from her skin despite the river's cold.
She froze.
