The room was quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that magnifies every small sound. He sat close to her, closer than he should have, when she leaned in. The shift of her body was slow, deliberate, her perfume reaching him before her words did.
She lowered her voice, her tone dropping to something soft, something secret. The sound wrapped around him like velvet, and then he felt it—her lips hovering near his ear, so close he could almost imagine their shape brushing his skin.
She whispered something ordinary, nothing that should matter. But the words became irrelevant in the way they were delivered—in the warmth of her breath, in the faint tremor it sent coursing through him. He nodded too quickly, not because of what she had said, but because of how she had said it.
And still, she didn’t pull away. Her lips lingered close, a fraction too near, as though she knew the effect she was having on him. The space between them shrank until it felt dangerous, intimate in a way that had nothing to do with the content of her whisper and everything to do with the pause that followed.
When she finally leaned back, her eyes caught his. There was no apology in them. Only amusement, and something deeper—something that dared him to acknowledge what had just happened.
The next time she leaned in, he was ready. Or so he thought. Her lips hovered even closer this time, so close he could feel the ghost of a touch that never came. The whisper was slower, more deliberate, her breath stirring the fine hairs at his temple. His pulse raced, his body tightening with the unbearable tension of almost-contact.
She pulled away with a smile, leaving him restless, unsettled, and aching for more. And he knew—this was not accidental. This was a game of proximity, one she was winning with every whisper.