Without turning care into possession and protection into a cage.
My fingers loosened their death grip on the counter, trembling slightly as I forced myself to breathe through the tightness spreading through my chest.
This was dangerous. More dangerous than his dominance, his punishments, his carefully calculated cruelty disguised as consequence.
Because this?
This felt like the beginning of something neither of us knew how to survive.
He exhaled slowly; the sound filling the quiet bookstore like a confession. "You're coming to lunch with me."
I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself, old defiance rising like muscle memory. "Absolutely not."
"It wasn't a question."
I opened my mouth to argue—to tell him exactly where he could shove his commands and his arrogance and his suffocating certainty that I'd just follow along like a trained dog.
He held up a hand.
Calm.
Firm.
The gesture stopped me cold.
"Someone was outside the store earlier." His voice stayed level, but something darker moved beneath the surface. Something that made my stomach clench with dread I didn't want to name. "In a car. Watching you."
Ice slid down my spine, vertebra by vertebra. "No one was?—"
"Belle." My name cut through the protest before it fully formed. "I saw them. Two men. Not here to buy romance paperbacks."
My heart sank so fast I felt the drop physically—a plummeting sensation that left me dizzy and hollow.
Because that matched.
Perfectly.
Horribly.
The men from yesterday.
The card with the scrawled number.
The threat wrapped in smiles and leather jackets.
Tell Daddy we came by.
I tried to hide the fear crawling up my throat, tried to school my expression into something neutral and unaffected—the same mask I'd worn when Gideon first walked through my door and announced I belonged to him now.
I failed.
Completely.
Gideon saw it instantly, pupils dilating as his gaze locked onto mine with predatory focus. Recognition flared—not of weakness, but of danger. Real danger. The kind that made his entire body go rigid, shoulders squaring like he was preparing for a fight.
His jaw tightened until I could see the muscle jump beneath skin.
There was murder in his eyes.
