He thought she might flinch, look away, or shift in her seat when his gaze wandered. Instead, she did the opposite. Her body remained still, her posture unbroken, but her lips—soft, parted just enough—gave him an unspoken challenge. The air between them tightened, every second stretching into something heavier, sharper. She could have chosen modesty, but she chose defiance, and the smallest curve at the corner of her mouth told him she knew exactly what she was doing.
His breath slowed as if caught, each blink stealing another glance he couldn’t resist. Her lips stayed parted, wet with the faintest glint of light, inviting without a word. She tilted her head ever so slightly, letting her hair fall forward in a curtain, not to shield herself but to frame her face—so that he would keep staring, so that he wouldn’t look away. The silence grew thick, layered with all the things neither dared to speak. Her chest rose with a quiet rhythm, and he realized she wanted him to notice, to measure her breath, to follow the curve of her body without apology.
When he finally dragged his gaze back to her eyes, she was already watching him, steady and unblinking. The room around them blurred, forgotten, as if the rest of the world had collapsed outside those few feet of distance. Her lips parted just a little more, deliberate, almost cruel in their slowness, and he knew the dare wasn’t accidental. It was her way of giving him permission without words—permission to want, to linger, to take what she refused to hide. And in that moment, he realized the danger wasn’t in looking—it was in the fact that once he started, he might never be able to stop.