Chloe lay rigid beneath Elias's hand, her entire body a live wire of sensation and terror. His palm was flat against her stomach, his long fingers spanning the width of her soft belly, the heat of his skin searing through the thin white tank top. The touch was so light, so careful, so deliberate in its slowness that it felt like a question. Like a test. Like he was waiting for her to flinch, to gasp, to wake up, so he could pull away and pretend it was an accident, an unconscious movement of a sleeping man.
She didn't flinch. She didn't gasp. She forced her lungs to expand and contract in a slow, steady rhythm, the exact breathing pattern of a person in a deep, heavy sleep. In and out, slow and even, her chest rising and falling gently beneath his forearm. Her heart was hammering so viole
