It was the smallest of exchanges, the kind that should have gone unnoticed. She lifted the teacup with steady hands, steam curling softly upward, and set it down before him. But as she pulled her hand back, her fingers didn’t leave the porcelain cleanly.
They grazed his. Lightly, fleetingly, almost as if by accident. But it wasn’t an accident—not with the way her touch lingered half a second too long, not with the way her eyes flickered to his as it happened.
The touch wasn’t bold. It didn’t need to be. The brief contact carried more weight than an embrace, because it was restrained, deliberate, calculated to blur the line between chance and intention.
He felt the warmth of her skin, a quick flash of softness that left behind a burn long after she pulled away. His hand twitched, wanting to follow, but she had already withdrawn, her fingers folding around her own cup as though nothing had happened.
He studied her, searching for a sign that she had meant it. And there it was: the faintest curve at the corner of her mouth, a smile she didn’t bother to finish.
They drank in silence. The tea was hot, but not as hot as the memory of her touch. Every time he lifted the cup, he felt it again—the brush of her fingers, the deliberate withdrawal, the space left heavy with suggestion.
She didn’t touch him again, not directly. But each movement seemed to echo that moment. The way she cradled her cup, the way her hand lingered on the table, the way she let the air between them hum with tension.
It wasn’t the teacup she had given him. It was permission. Permission to feel, to imagine, to want.
And as he set his cup down, careful this time not to let their hands brush again, he realized it was already too late. That one graze had said everything she intended, and everything he wasn’t supposed to admit.