The kiss hit Catherine like shock... sudden, overwhelming, completely outside her capacity to process.
'Push him away.'
Her mind screamed the command with desperate force.
'Push him away now before this goes further before you lose everything you've... '
But her body didn't move.
Couldn't move.
Remained frozen beneath his mouth while every instinct she possessed warred against conscious thought with intensity that felt like tearing herself apart.
'Give in.'
The whisper came from somewhere deeper than logic, deeper than decades of carefully constructed control, deeper than everything Catherine had built to protect herself from exactly this kind of vulnerability.
'Give in to him.'
'You want this. You need this.'
Her mind rejected the thought with force that should have been enough to break the paralysis, should have been enough to reassert control, should have been enough to push Alexander Hale away and end this before crossing a boundary that couldn't be uncrossed.
