ADRIEN POV
The second the elevator doors shut, silence fell heavy.
I stood there, motionless, staring at the polished steel reflection of myself. Controlled. Untouched. Exactly as I had trained myself to be.
And yet my hand still burned where it had cupped her jaw.
Damn her.
I crossed the penthouse in long strides, tugging the tie loose from my throat. The city glittered on the other side of the glass, but for once I didn't care. The view meant nothing. The towers, the river, the light—what was any of it, when I'd had something infinitely more dangerous in my arms just minutes ago?
She'd almost let me kiss her. Almost.
I poured myself a drink, neat, and swallowed it in one motion. Useless. The burn in my chest wasn't whiskey.
Nora Quinn.
Every instinct screamed at me to leave her alone. To let the photographs, the press, the storm ahead crush this before it grew teeth. I'd done it before—cut ties, stepped away, let people vanish from my world like they'd never existed. It was the only way to survive at this altitude.
But she wasn't like them. She didn't look at me like everyone else did. She didn't chase the shine. She didn't want the prize.
And for that very reason, she had already become the most dangerous thing in my life.
I set the glass down with too much force. Crystal cracked. I didn't care.
I thought of her eyes when she'd whispered No. It wasn't rejection, not really. It was fear. Self-preservation. She was smart enough to know what it meant to let me in. Smarter than me, maybe.
But she was already in. She had been from the moment I saw her.
The phone buzzed on the counter. Marcus. Persistent as ever. I ignored him. Let him fight the fires for once; it's what I paid him for.
Instead, I stood at the glass and watched the Seine coil like a dark ribbon beneath the city lights.
I told myself I was planning, calculating, running through contingencies. But the truth was simpler.
I was thinking of her.
The way her breath had caught when my fingers touched her skin. The way she had looked at me—furious, torn, alive.
I could still hear her voice in the elevator, tight with nerves, insisting she couldn't.
Both.
Both.
I almost laughed. She thought this was a choice. That she could step back into her quiet world, pull the door shut, and forget me.
But I'd seen the truth in her eyes.
She wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
And if there was one thing I knew about myself, it was this: I never lost. Not in business. Not in war. Not in love.
Especially not in love.
I picked up the phone, thumb hovering over her name in my contacts.
Not yet. Not tonight. She needed space to convince herself she was free.
Tomorrow, I'd remind her she wasn't.