Chapter 21 #2
And knowing led to vulnerability I couldn't afford to give him.
"Belle… I'm not good at this." His voice was soft. So uncharacteristically soft.
I crossed my arms, armor snapping back into place even as my pulse hammered traitorously against my ribs.
"At what? Kidnapping? Controlling me? Manipulating—"
"Talking," he interrupted.
The single word landed heavy between us.
He swallowed once, throat working visibly.
"I'm not good at talking."
I stared.
Because that felt real.
Too real.
The kind of honesty that made my carefully constructed walls tremble at their foundations.
Gideon ran a hand through his damp hair, the gesture uncharacteristically uncertain.
Frustrated with himself in a way I'd never witnessed before—not during arguments, not during punishment, not even in the rare quiet moments when his guard slipped just enough to remind me he was human underneath all that ruthless control.
"I came because I didn't like the thought of you being alone."
My entire body stiffened, spine going rigid against the counter's edge.
The admission settled between us like a live wire—dangerous, electric, impossible to touch without consequences.
"You shouldn't care." The words scraped out of me, raw and defensive and terrifyingly fragile.
He stepped closer. Not prowling. Not commanding. Just… moving toward me like I was gravity, and he'd stopped fighting the pull.
"I don't want to care."
My breath caught. Trapped somewhere between my ribs and my throat, refusing to move in either direction.
Because I believed him.
For the first time since he'd locked that contract between us, since he'd stripped away every illusion of choice and rebuilt my world in his image, I believed him completely.
The confession wasn't manipulation. Wasn't strategy. Wasn't another layer of control designed to break me down until nothing remained but compliance and surrender.
It was vulnerability.
Messy and unwanted and spilling out of him despite every instinct screaming at him to lock it away where nobody could use it against him.
He didn't want to care.
But he did anyway.
And that terrified him exactly as much as it terrified me.
His jaw worked, muscle jumping beneath skin as he searched for words that clearly didn't come naturally. Words he'd probably never spoken to anyone before—not teammates, not coaches, not whatever ghosts haunted the childhood photograph hidden in his study.
"I don't know how to do this," he admitted finally, voice dropping lower. Rougher. "How to want someone without…"
He trailed off.
But I understood exactly what he meant.
Without destroying them.
Without consuming them whole.
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.
Not directed at me.
At whoever had put that fear there in the first place.
"Lunch," he said softly, voice dropping to something lethal and immovable, "isn't optional."
The gentleness made it worse somehow. Made the command feel less like control and more like protection—the kind I'd been denying myself because accepting it meant admitting I needed him.
That I was vulnerable.
That two men in a car had reduced me to prey without even touching me.
For a moment—just one fractured, terrible moment—I stopped fighting. Stopped resisting. Stopped pretending I had any armor left that could protect me from whatever was closing in.
I nodded once.
Barely.
Enough.
He moved toward the back office without hesitation, grabbing my coat from the hook and returning with it draped over his arm. Not throwing it at me. Not demanding I hurry. Just… helping me into it with careful precision, hands settling briefly on my shoulders before falling away.
The touch steadied something inside me I hadn't realized was shaking.
And that terrified me more than anything.
Because being near him—accepting his protection, his presence, his overwhelming certainty that he could keep me safe—felt infinitely more dangerous than facing down loan sharks alone ever could.