She moved slowly, deliberately, as though the inches between them were a distance she wanted him to feel. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder, her eyes holding his with a steady, unblinking focus. He knew what was coming—he could see it in the tilt of her head, the soft parting of her lips.
But she didn’t close the gap. Instead, she hovered there—so close he could feel the faint brush of her breath, smell the trace of something floral and warm on her skin. His body leaned forward instinctively, chasing the connection, but she didn’t give it.
It was a game, but not a cruel one. She was showing him that sometimes the power of a kiss lies in the almost. That the wanting can be more potent than the having, if you know how to draw it out. Her lips lingered near his for a moment longer, then she shifted—just enough to let the heat of her presence wash over him without the contact he craved.
His pulse quickened, his chest rising in shallow breaths. He could have closed the gap himself, but something about the way she held the moment made him wait. Maybe it was the unspoken promise in her eyes, or the knowledge that the first kiss—when she decided to give it—would feel ten times stronger because of this.
And in that pause, he learned that anticipation, in the right hands, isn’t the absence of intimacy—it’s its sharpest form.