"Kissing you," Cassian’s voice purred against her earlobe as he cunningly added, "Lousy Kisser."

Cixi gulped dry. "That is not what we agreed up—" Her words stumbled on the last word when Cassian chose that exact moment to lower his mouth to the back of her neck and press a lingering kiss into the warm skin just below her hairline.

Her eyes fell shut and her back arched at the electrifying sensation. Her shoulders loosened against her will. Her head tilted forward by a fraction, exposing more of her nape as though her body had signed a separate treaty with Cassian that her brain had never authorised.

Something deep inside her chest crumbled, and she felt herself melting backward into the solid wall of him, ready to surrender every ounce of control she had barely held on to. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

She cursed herself with such violence that the words nearly scorched the inside of her skull.

She would not let him do as he please. She would not dissolve into his arms like some witless heroine in a paperback romance. She would not hand him the satisfaction of knowing that his mouth on her skin turned her knees into water and her thoughts into white noise.

The contract existed for a reason. She had drafted it for a reason. And the terms were specific.

"Stop!"

The word erupted from her throat with enough force to shock both of them. She directed it at Cassian, but it also conveyed her feelings about herself. She could still feel the sensation of his kiss on her skin, the warmth spreading in her lower belly, and the heat rising in her chest and face.

Cassian unwound his arm from her waist and chest and stepped back.

He did not rush his actions. Instead, he released her with the same controlled composure with which he had taken hold of her, and he let her stumble forward two steps before she caught her balance and turned to face him.

She spun around to glare at him, but every bone in her body throbbed with embarrassment, her skin still burning from every point where his lips had touched. Her pulse still hammered at a speed of light. She wanted to look away and steady her messy heart and thought. She wanted to press her palms against her hot cheeks and disappear into the floor, even if it meant falling twenty stories down into the parking garage.

But she held his gaze.

She locked her grey eyes onto his and refused to blink. "You are violating the contract!" She intended for her voice to come out perfectly sharper, and it did, edged with the brittle fury of a woman who knew that if she stopped being angry, she would have to confront what she had felt during those thirty seconds in his arms. "Such behaviour is unacceptable!"

Cassian cocked his head to the side. He looked at her the way a professor looks at a student who has confidently delivered the wrong answer in front of an entire lecture hall, with the particular brand of bemused fascination reserved for people who do not realise how wrong they are.

"Now that," he spoke softly, "is quite the allegation."

Cixi could not believe what she was hearing. Was he being serious? Was this man standing two feet from her with that infuriatingly serene expression on his face, the same mouth that had kissed her nape, her neck, her earlobe, actually challenging her accusation?

She pointed at herself. Her index finger jabbed toward the back of her neck, then to the side of her throat, then to her earlobe, where his lips on each location sent a fresh wave of crimson flooding across her cheeks.

"Does that look like my lips to you?" She spoke through gritted teeth, fighting to keep her voice steady while her face betrayed her completely. It stated precisely in the contract. You kiss me. The kiss on my lips. You were supposed to kiss me on my mouth. My neck isn’t involved. Not my ear. Not the back of my head. My. Lips." Why did she sound like a child throwing a fit? Cixi pondered, but shook those thoughts away.

Cassian sauntered toward the balcony door in one stride. He leaned his shoulder against the glass frame, crossed one ankle over the other, and folded his arms loosely across his chest, while the city skyline stretched behind him.

He watched Cixi with the patient, and had a faint entertained expression that settled in for a show he had already predicted would be spectacular.

It made Cixi even more furious how she was raging and he was simply smiling and standing so composed. "And do not even think," Cixi continued, jabbing her finger in his direction, "about inventing some new definition of a kiss to worm your way out of this. I know what a kiss is."

"I can see you did your homework." Cassian’s gaze drifted from her eyes to the exact spot on the back of her neck where his lips had rested moments ago, and it lingered there for purposely longer period. "Then what do you call what I did?"

"Breaking the contract! That’s what you did." Cixi pointed at her neck again, her voice rising. "You violated the terms."

She was ready to spar. She had memorised every line, every clause, every word of that contract they had drafted together. He could not talk his way around this. She would not let him.

Cassian tilted his head the other way. His arms remained folded. His posture remained loose. And when he spoke, his voice carried the authority of one who was about to dismantle an argument so thoroughly that the other person would question whether they had ever understood the English language.

"You might want to reconsider your position, Cixi." He held her stare. "A kiss, by its most fundamental definition, is the act of pressing one’s lips against another person or a part of their body as an expression of love, affection, desire, or greeting." He let his every syllable settle into the air between them before continuing. "The definition does not specify location. It specifies contact. Lips pressed against a person. Any part of that person."

Cixi opened her mouth to retort, but she closed it before considering Cassian’s words.