The driver's gaze stayed locked on the entrance.
My pulse hammered against my ribs, hot and violent. I should've driven away. Let her have her space. Let her hate me in peace while I went to practice and pretended everything was fine.
I didn't move.
The passenger turned his head slightly, just enough that I caught the edge of a smirk—not directed at me, but at the door she'd just walked through. Like they knew something. Like they were already three steps ahead.
My vision tunneled, the world narrowing to that sedan and the predators inside it.
Someone was hunting my woman.
The thought slammed into me with brutal clarity. Not a woman. Not Belle Reiss, bookstore owner, pain in my ass.
Mine.
And someone had their eyes on her.
I reached for my phone, my other hand still gripping the wheel hard enough to make my knuckles ache. One text. That was all it would take. I had people who could make problems disappear. People who owed me favors. People who understood what happened when you looked at something that belonged to Gideon Jones.
The sedan's engine revved once—a low, deliberate sound—and then it pulled away from the curb, slow and unhurried.
Not leaving.
Circling.
My jaw locked, teeth grinding together as I watched them disappear around the corner.
They'd be back. And when they came for her again, I'd be fucking ready.
I pulled my hood up, tugging it low over my forehead, and sank deeper into the seat until the dashboard cut my line of sight to just above the steering wheel. The tint on my windshield was dark enough to hide me, but I wasn't taking chances.
The plan had been simple. Drive her to work. Go home. Shower off the guilt clinging to my skin like sweat. Maybe sleep. Maybe drag her back to bed tonight and finish what her defiance had started.
Now?
Everything had shifted.
The world narrowed to the bookstore entrance, the street corner where the sedan had disappeared, and the cold, sharp certainty settling in my chest like a blade.
This wasn't about punishment anymore.
This wasn't about making her submit.
This was something older. Something that bypassed my brain entirely and lit up every nerve ending with a single, brutal imperative:
Protect.
I watched a pedestrian cross in front of my car, coffee in hand, oblivious. A delivery truck rumbled past. The town moved around me like nothing was wrong, like Belle wasn't inside that building with predators circling.
My fingers drummed once against the wheel, then stilled.
Discipline.
I'd learned it young. Learned to ignore hunger, ignore pain, ignore the screaming voice in my head that said run. My father had beaten patience into me with fists and silence, and hockey had honed it into something sharper.
But sitting here—watching, waiting—felt different.
This wasn't patience.
