EMBER’S POV

He stops.

And he’s grinning down at me, both of us breathing hard, my wrists still caught loose and warm in the cage of his hand above my head, my whole body gone soft and shaking with the last aftershocks of the laughter.

And something in his face shifts as he looks down at me, the grin easing into something else, something that changes the air in the room, thickens it.

“There,” he says, low. “Was that so hard?”

“I confessed under torture. It won’t hold up.”

“You looked happy under torture.” His thumb strokes once, slowly, over the frantic pulse in my wrist. “You’ve looked happy all...