ADRIEN POV
She didn't move.
Her back was against the wall, my arm braced just beside her head. We were balanced on the knife's edge of something inevitable, dangerous, intoxicating.
Her breath mingled with mine, her lips parted, her eyes wide and dark as if daring me to close the last inch.
And I would have. God help me, I would have.
My body ached with the need to taste her, to break every rule I had written for myself. It wasn't just lust—it was the pull of her defiance, her stubborn pride, the way she never bowed, not even here, trembling but unyielding.
She wasn't telling me to stop.
Then her phone lit up on the counter. The sudden vibration rattled against the marble, shrill in the stillness.
Both of us froze, the spell shattering like glass.
Her gaze flicked toward the sound, and just like that, the moment fractured.
I pulled back slowly, deliberately, my jaw tight enough to ache. The ache of restraint.
Nora pushed past me, her hands unsteady as she grabbed the phone. She didn't look at me as she answered, though her voice betrayed the same breathlessness that still raked through me.
"Hello?"
I caught only fragments—her sister's name, the sharp concern in her tone—but I didn't linger. The interruption was enough. Too much.
I straightened my sleeves, forced composure back over the storm, and when she turned half-away from me to pace, I let her.
By the time she hung up, I was already near the door.
Her eyes met mine across the small apartment, wide with something that looked far too much like regret. She opened her mouth, then shut it again, as if words would only make things worse.
I gave her what I could manage: a faint, controlled smile. The kind that hid more than it revealed.
"Take care of yourself, Nora."
My voice was rougher than I wanted, betraying more than I allowed.
She didn't answer. Just stood there, clutching the phone like a lifeline, watching me leave.
The morning was sharp and bright when I stepped onto the street, the sun glinting off windows, traffic humming steady below. But none of it cooled the fire still thrumming through me.
I told myself the interruption had been a mercy. That if her phone hadn't rung, I would have crossed a line I couldn't uncross.
But that didn't stop the hunger gnawing at me as I slid into the waiting car.
And it certainly didn't stop the soft click of a camera shutter from the shadows.
No flash, no giveaway. Just a grainy image that, by afternoon, would spread like wildfire.