Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Seraphina
My lips burn where Knox's mouth claimed mine, but there's a deeper heat unfurling in my chest, an uncomfortable warmth that I recognize as desire. Not guilt—I refuse to feel guilty for responding to a kiss stolen against my will. But there's no denying the way my body lights up under his touch, like a circuit completed after too long in the dark. I shove against his chest as the helicopter settles onto what looks like a private helipad, desperate to put space between us before I do something truly stupid, like kiss him back properly.
"Get off me," I hiss, pushing harder, my palms meeting the solid wall of his chest through his expensive suit. Even that brief contact sends unwanted electricity up my arms. "You've lost your mind, Knox. You can't just?—"
"Can't just what?" He raises an eyebrow, not budging an inch despite my efforts. "Save you from a loveless marriage? Bring you back where you belong?"
"I don't belong to you!" The words come out louder than intended, echoing in the confined space of the helicopter cabin. The pilot studiously keeps his eyes forward, probably paid enough to be selectively deaf and blind.
Knox finally shifts his weighteen, allowing me to scramble out from under him, but his hand immediately captures my wrist in an unbreakable grip. "We both know that's not true."
The helicopter rotors slow to a stop, the sudden silence deafening. Through the windows, I can see we've landed on top of a building—one of Knox's properties, undoubtedly. The Manhattan skyline spreads out around us, the late afternoon sun glinting off glass buildings like we're surrounded by stars.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," I say, trying to sound firm despite the way my pulse races beneath his fingers. "Take me back to the cathedral. Now."
His laugh is low and without humor. "So you can marry that cardboard cutout of a man? Not happening, angel."
"That 'cardboard cutout' is a decent human being who doesn't kidnap women from their own weddings!" I wrench my arm, trying to break his hold, but it's like trying to bend steel with my bare hands.
"No, he just tries to marry women who belong to someone else." Knox's eyes darken dangerously. "Did you really think I would let that happen, Seraphina? Did you think I would watch you bind yourself to another man and do nothing?"
Before I can answer, he's moving, sliding open the helicopter door and pulling me with him onto the helipad. The sudden rush of cool air against my overheated skin makes me shiver—or maybe it's the intent in Knox's eyes as he walks purposefully toward a rooftop entrance, dragging me alongside him.
I dig in my heels, the satin shoes I carefully selected for walking down the aisle now sliding uselessly against the concrete surface. "Let me go! This is kidnapping, Knox! Actual, criminal kidnapping!"
He stops abruptly, turning to face me with an expression that would make lesser women cower. I lift my chin, refusing to be intimidated despite the way my heart hammers against my ribs.
"Call the police then," he challenges, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket and holding it out to me. "Go ahead. See how that plays for your career. 'Art Director Calls Cops on Billionaire Ex After Wedding Disaster.' I'm sure the board at your gallery will love that headline."
I stare at the phone, hating him for knowing exactly which pressure points to push. My career has always been my vulnerable spot—the one thing I've built entirely on my own, without family connections or inherited privilege. Knox knows how hard I've worked to be taken seriously in the art world, knows that a scandal like this could set me back years.
"You're despicable," I whisper, ignoring the offered phone.
"I'm determined," he corrects, pocketing the device again. "There's a difference."
When he tugs me forward again, I realize fighting him physically is futile. Knox has always been stronger—not just in the obvious ways, with his broad shoulders and the body he maintains with ruthless discipline, but in his will. Once Knox Vance decides on a course of action, the world either moves with him or gets flattened in his wake.
So I change tactics, digging deep for the calm, diplomatic voice I use when negotiating with difficult artists or demanding patrons.
"Knox, please. This isn't reasonable. We broke up over a year ago. Whatever we had?—"
"What we had," he cuts in, voice razor-sharp, "was everything. And you ran from it because you were scared."
"I wasn't scared!" The diplomatic approach evaporates instantly. "I was suffocating! You wanted to control every aspect of my life—my job, my friends, my schedule. You couldn't handle that I needed space to be my own person."
He pulls me closer, his face inches from mine. "I wanted to give you the world on a silver platter, and you called it control. I wanted to protect you from people who would use you to get to me, and you called it isolation. I wanted every part of you because I gave you every part of me, and you called it suffocation."
His words hit with surgical precision, reopening wounds I thought had long scarred over. Because there's truth in what he's saying, truth I've denied even to myself during these eighteen months apart.
The first time Knox Vance kissed me—really kissed me, not the polite brush of lips that ended our first date, but the devouring claim he made the night of our third—I felt like I'd been living in grayscale and suddenly experienced color. His touch awakened parts of me I didn't know existed, desires I'd never acknowledged, needs I'd never voiced.
"You're mine," he'd whispered against my neck that night, his hands everywhere, stripping away not just my clothes but my inhibitions, my carefully constructed walls. "Say it, Seraphina. I need to hear you say it."
And I had. God help me, in the throes of the most intense pleasure I'd ever experienced, I'd gasped those words against his mouth. "I'm yours. Only yours."
I'd meant it then. That was the terrifying part. For those months we were together, I was his—body and soul. I craved his possession, thrived under his attention, bloomed beneath his touch. But it was too much, too intense, too all-consuming. I started losing myself in him, forgetting where Seraphina ended and Knox's possession began.
So I left. Walked away. Told myself I needed someone safer, gentler. Someone who wouldn't demand every atom of my being as his due.
"Let me go, Knox," I say now, trying to sound resolute despite the memories flooding back. "Whatever you think this is going to accomplish?—"
His mouth crashes down on mine, cutting off my words, my breath, my thoughts. This isn't the controlled, determined kiss from the helicopter. This is raw possession, a claiming so thorough it leaves no room for argument or resistance. One of his hands tangles in my hair, pulling just hard enough to send sparks of pleasure-pain down my spine. The other wraps around my waist, crushing me against him until I can feel every hard plane of his body through the layers of my wedding dress.
I should bite him. Scratch him. Knee him somewhere anatomically vulnerable and run. That's what any self-respecting woman would do when manhandled by an ex who crashed her wedding and kidnapped her.
Instead, my traitorous body melts against him, my lips parting on a gasp that he swallows hungrily. eighteen months of denial incinerated by the heat of one kiss. My hands, which should be pushing him away, fist in the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. A moan rises in my throat as his tongue strokes against mine, familiar and foreign all at once.
He tastes the same—expensive coffee and pure male heat. Smells the same—that custom cologne that probably costs more than most people's monthly rent. Feels the same—hard and demanding and perfectly, devastatingly right.
This. This is what I've been missing. What Richard's careful lovemaking never came close to providing. This consuming fire that burns through reason and pride and self-preservation.
Knox breaks the kiss only when we're both gasping for air, but he doesn't release me. His forehead presses against mine, his breathing as ragged as my own. "Tell me you don't feel it," he challenges, voice rough with desire. "Tell me he makes you feel even a fraction of what I do."
I close my eyes, unable to look at him while my body still pulses with want. "Physical chemistry was never our problem."
"Look at me." His hand tightens in my hair, not painful but insistent. When I reluctantly open my eyes, the naked hunger in his gaze makes my knees weak. "You're mine, Seraphina. You've always been mine. Walking away didn't change it. Dating other men didn't change it. Almost marrying one wouldn't have changed it. Some things are written in stone, angel. This is one of them."
"You can't just decide that for me," I protest, but even to my own ears, the words lack conviction.
His thumb traces my lower lip, swollen from his kiss. "I'm not deciding anything. I'm simply accepting what we both know is true." His gaze drops to my mouth, then lower, to where my chest rises and falls with quick, shallow breaths. "Your mind can argue all it wants, but your body remembers exactly who it belongs to."
And God help me, it does. Every cell, every nerve ending, every inch of skin crackles with awareness under his touch, like a home recognizing its rightful owner after a long absence. There's a reason I never felt this way with Richard, with anyone before Knox. There's a reason I've spent eighteen months trying to convince myself that mind-altering passion isn't necessary for a happy life.
Because once you've experienced it—once you've been consumed by it—nothing else comes close.
"I hate you," I whisper, my voice breaking on the lie.
Knox's smile is slow and knowing. "No, you don't. But you can keep telling yourself that if it makes this easier."
With a fluid motion that reminds me of exactly how strong he is, he bends and sweeps me into his arms, cradling me against his chest like I weigh nothing at all. My wedding dress spills over his arms in a cascade of white, a silent testament to the future I almost had—safe, predictable, hollow.
"Welcome home, angel," he murmurs as he carries me through the rooftop door and into the building.
And despite everything—the outrage, the violation, the sheer audacity of what he's done—a treacherous part of me whispers: Yes. This is where I belong.