Letting the rhythm take over and the shadows blur the edges of my mind.
Because for those few seconds, I wasn’t a weapon. I wasn’t haunted.
I wasfree.
Until—
A hand gripped the guy’s wrist.
Hard.
“Don’t. Fucking. Touch her.”
The music was still pounding, but I heard it like a gunshot.
I froze, breath catching, spine snapping straight.
The guy spun around, ready to swing—
Then stopped.
Because standing there, fury carved into every line of his face—
Was Noah.
Jaw clenched. Eyes wild. Chest rising and falling like he’d just run through hell to find me.
He shoved the guy’s hand off my waist and stepped between us like a wall of heat and fire.
“This some kind of joke?” the guy asked, eyeing Noah with a drunken scowl.
Noah didn’t even blink.
“She’snotyours to touch.”
His voice was low, dangerous. No room for arguments.
The guy muttered something under his breath and backed off—probably realizing that whatever line he’d crossed, it wasn’t worth bleeding over.
Then Noah turned to me.
His eyes dragged over my dress, the heels, the curls.
For that second, he didn’t say anything. Just…looked.
Possessive.
Wrecked.
Like I’d just taken a piece of him and walked away.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I snapped, trying to sound angry. Trying not to shake.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he growled. “What are you doing? Grinding on some stranger in the middle of a club like you don’t know who you are?”
“I knowexactlywho I am,” I shot back, my heart hammering. “And I don’t need your permission to dance.”
His jaw clenched. “I’m not giving youpermission,Elizabeth. I’m reminding you whoseesyou.”
