Miss. Not Mrs. Sharov. Not Eden. It’s so impersonal it leaves my mouth dry.
His gaze dips to my belly before he looks back at my face. The cold rush that hits me is instant.
“I don’t know you,” I mutter, voice trembling despite my best effort to sound firm. “I’m going inside.”
Something shifts in his face—a flicker of disappointment, or irritation—but he masks it quickly. I don’t wait to decipher it.
I turn and move fast toward the house. My heart slams in my chest. Every instinct screams run run run.
The back doors come into view—tall glass, sunlight gleaming off the panels.
There’s Simon, standing by the doors with his arms folded. The moment our eyes meet, my fear breaks like a wave. Relief surges through me with such force my knees nearly buckle.
I reach the doors, stumbling inside just as Simon strides forward. He catches my arms before I can even speak. His grip is firm—too firm—but I don’t pull away. Not when the warmth of his body surrounds me. Not when his breath brushes my cheek.
“What happened?” His voice is low and deadly calm.
“There was a man…” My breath comes out in shaky bursts. “Delivery uniform. But he—he asked about you. He just—he looked at me like—like he knew something he shouldn’t have.”
Simon goes still. The kind of stillness that means something inside him has snapped.
His eyes flick past me to the garden. His men are already moving—Viktor, two others—racing across the patio with guns drawn, searching the grounds for a man who I now realize was never a delivery worker at all.
Simon steps fully in front of me, blocking my view, one hand sliding instinctively to my belly. His palm is hot and steady, a silent promise written in touch alone.
“You did exactly what you should have,” he murmurs. The softness doesn’t match the fury radiating off his body. His jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind.
I rest a trembling hand against his chest, feeling the rapid drumbeat beneath my palm. The world narrows to just him—the hardness of his body, the warmth of his breath, the lethal restraint vibrating under his skin.
Simon’s hand cups my cheek, and his thumb sweeps over my lower lip. His forehead drops to mine, breath shaking with barely contained rage.
“I should have been there,” he says softly, but the softness makes the promise more terrifying. “He shouldn’t have been able to get within ten feet of you.”
“You can’t predict everything,” I whisper back.
His eyes flash. “No, but I need to do better.”
I should argue. I should tell him he’s being unreasonable, overbearing, obsessive.
All I feel is relief and a strange, dark comfort that his possessiveness isn’t a cage, but a shield.
His hands slide down my arms, wrapping around my waist, pulling me flush against him. I melt into the warmth of his chest, the solidness of him, the certainty that nothing in this world terrifies him except the thought of losing me.
He holds me like he’s anchoring himself.
When he finally speaks, his voice is a raw whisper against my ear. “I’ll find out who this man is, and I’ll carve out his eyes for daring to look at you.”
His hand moves over my stomach again, protective, reverent, possessive.
My heart twists—not with fear this time, but with something deeper, something frighteningly close to love.
I press my forehead to his chest, letting his arms surround me completely.
***
The sun sinks behind the city, bathing the garden in uneasy gold. My nerves are frayed, every sound outside making me startle.
After what happened earlier—after that strange delivery man’s probing questions—I can’t settle, can’t shake the sense that something is coming.
