Steam and Static
Flora Reyes balanced the still-warm lasagna dish in one hand and knocked with the other, already rehearsing the sarcastic quip she would deliver the second the door opened.
Here’s your pity dinner, Mr. Self-Made Billionaire.
Try not to choke on my father’s overprotective love.
The door swung inward on silent hinges.
Water slid in slow, deliberate paths down the man’s chest. An eagle stretched its wings across thick muscle and inked skin, feathers dark against the damp sheen.
Lower, an infinity loop curved around the hard plane of his abdomen like a promise he had no intention of breaking. The towel hung low—dangerously, obscenely low—and the man holding it up with one casual hand was six-foot-four of pure, unapologetic trouble.
Matthew Hale.
Her former babysitter. Her father’s oldest friend. The neighbor who had somehow become a billionaire while she was still figuring out how to adult at nineteen.
Her brain short-circuited.
Matt’s stormy gray eyes dropped to the dish, then lifted to her face. Recognition flickered, followed by something hotter, heavier, that made the air between them feel suddenly thick. A single droplet traced the line of his collarbone and vanished beneath the edge of the towel.
"Flora", he said, his voice low and rough from disuse, like he had just woken up or just finished something far more interesting than a shower.
“Your father sent you?”
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out except a small, strangled sound that might have been a yes if it had bothered to finish forming.
Matt’s gaze glanced down her body once—quick, assessing, possessive in a way that made her stomach flip—then returned to her eyes.
The corner of his mouth twitched, the beginning of that signature sarcasm she remembered from years ago, only sharper now, adult and dangerous.
“You’re staring,” he murmured.
Flora’s cheeks burnt. She thrust the dish forward like a shield.
“Uh...Dad made this. Said you’ve been working too hard.
Or something.
I wasn’t really listening after the part where he guilt-tripped me into walking next door in this heat.”
Matt took the dish. Their fingers brushed. Electricity snapped up her arm and settled low in her belly. The towel shifted.
She caught the unmistakable outline of him, thick and heavy, pressing against the thin cotton. Her gaze snapped back up so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
Matt’s eyes darkened further, pupils swallowing the gray. The towel twitched. Actually twitched. Flora’s heart slammed against her ribs so hard she felt dizzy.
“Still the same little terror who used to hide my shoes,” he said, almost conversational, as if they weren’t standing six inches apart while he was half-naked and visibly affected.
“Only now you’re all grown up and blushing like you’ve never seen a man before.”
“I’ve seen plenty of men,” she shot back, sarcasm automatic even as her voice wobbled.
“Just not… dripping. In my face. With an eagle trying to fly off your chest.”
Matt’s laugh was quiet, dark, and far too intimate. He leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, the movement making every muscle shift and the towel slip another dangerous fraction lower.
“You always did have a smart mouth. Your father still keeps you on that tight leash?”
Flora’s spine straightened.
“He tries. I slip it when he’s not looking.
Perks of being the overprotected only child of a man who thinks the world is out to ruin me.”
Something flickered across Matt’s face—too fast to read and gone before she could pin it down. His free hand rose, almost like he meant to touch her hair where it fell in long waves over one shoulder, then dropped again.
“Smart,” he said instead.
“Keep slipping. Just make sure you don’t slip somewhere I have to come drag you out of.”
The words landed like a hand at the back of her neck. Flora’s pulse roared in her ears. She should say something cutting. Something that would wipe that knowing look off his stupidly handsome face.
Instead, she stood there, frozen, while her body did things her brain absolutely did not authorise—likee leaning the tiniest bit closer, like noticing how the water still clung to his eyelashes, like wondering what that infinity tattoo would taste like under her tongue.
Matt’s nostrils flared. His grip on the towel tightened. The evidence of exactly how affected he was became impossible to ignore.
Flora’s blush deepened to a full-body burn. She took a step back, then another.
“I should—Dad’s probably wondering if I got lost on the lawn.”
“Tell him thanks,” Matt said, voice steady even as his eyes tracked every inch of her retreat.
“And Flora?”
She paused, one foot already on the grass.
“Next time you bring me dinner", he continued,
“wear something that doesn’t make me think about peeling it off you with my teeth.”
Her jaw dropped. Matt’s smile was slow, wicked, and entirely unrepentant. He stepped back, the door beginning to close, and gave her one last look that felt like a brand.
“Welcome home, little terror.”
The door clicked shut.
Flora stood on the porch, lasagne-less, her heart trying to claw its way out of her chest, and the distinct, terrifying realization that the man who used to read her bedtime stories had just looked at her like he wanted to ruin her in every possible way.
She pressed both hands to her burning cheeks.
“Oh,” she whispered to the empty air. “Oh, fuck.”
From inside the house, just barely audible through the door, came the low, satisfied sound of Matt Hale laughing.
Flora turned and fled across the lawn as if the devil himself was at her heels.
She didn’t see the way he watched her from the window, one hand braced against the glass, the other still loosely holding the towel that did nothing to hide how thoroughly she had undone him.
She didn’t see the way his smile faded into something darker, hungrier, and more possessive than any prank war could ever contain.
And she definitely didn’t see the moment he whispered her name like a vow he had every intention of keeping.
The first crack in her armor had already begun to spiderweb.
