The passionate moment between Knox and I continued, a furious, beautiful storm where I could no longer tell where he ended and I began. I felt myself chained by him, not by force, but by a desperate, willing surrender to the current pulling us under.
Then, a shrill, electronic ring shattered the silence.
It was his phone.
He broke our kiss with a low growl of protest, but not before giving my lower lip a sharp, possessive bite that sent a jolt of pure lightning straight to my core. It was a brand, a promise, a mine.
In one fluid, frustratingly efficient motion, he pulled away, the cold air rushing in to replace the heat of his body. He reached into his pocket, his eyes still locked on my kiss-swollen lips, and pulled out the buzzing device. The spell was broken, the real world crashing back in with the insistence of a ringing phone.
The look on his face as he glanced at the screen shifted instantly from heated hunger to icy, deadly focus. The lover was gone. The Don was back.
Knox's POV:
The phone kept ringing, a shrill insult to the sacred space that had just existed between her lips and mine. I broke away, leaving the taste of her on my tongue and the sting of my bite on her lip, a temporary mark to hold the place of the permanent one I'd given her.
I answered, my voice a low, dangerous growl. "This had better be important, Jack, or I will personally cut off your hands."
"Boss," Jack's voice was tense. "The cleaners are compromised. Cops are swarming the east wing. They've found the body. You need an exit. Now."
Before I could process the threat, a blur of movement caught my eye. Bella, her face a masterpiece of flustered fury, was already at the door. In a move so swift and silent I hadn't even felt it, she slipped the bump key from my pocket.
The lock clicked open.
She threw a single, triumphant glare over her shoulder, a rabbit who had just outsmarted the panther, and fled into the hall, leaving me trapped in the storage room. The hunter, caged by his own prey. The irony was as sharp as a knife to the gut.
She'd stolen the key. And with it, my only clear path to escape.
The door slammed shut, the click of the lock a final, mocking sound. For a single, suspended heartbeat, I was frozen. Not by fear, but by a surge of pure, undiluted shock, and something dangerously close to admiration.
She'd played me. In the middle of a kiss that felt like the end of the world, her fingers had been in my pocket. The little bunny had fangs after all.
A brutal, unexpected grin sliced across my face. The game had just gotten infinitely more interesting.
The shriek of a police radio from the hallway shattered the moment. The grin vanished. The body. The cops. Bella, alone and fleeing right into their path.
Rage, cold and immediate, washed over me. My escape was secondary. Her safety was now the only mission that mattered.
I turned from the door, my gaze sweeping the cramped storage room. The small, grimy window was the only way out. It was too narrow, too high. Useless.
I was trapped. And my omega was running headlong into a swarm of police who would detain her, question her, and discover the mark that tied her irrevocably to a crime scene, and to me.
My phone was still in my hand. Jack's frantic voice buzzed like a distant insect.
"Boss? Status!"
My voice was dangerously calm. "Change of plans, Jack. The priority is Bella. She's fleeing the east wing, likely disoriented. Find her. Intercept her before the police do. Get her to the safe house."
"And you?"
I looked at the solid door, then back at the window, a new, reckless plan forming.
"I'm taking the front door."
"Just get it done."
I ended the call. The silence in the room was a held breath. They had Bella's description now. Jack would find her. He had to.
My control, already frayed by her scent and her betrayal, finally snapped. The man receded; the beast saw a path. A low growl rumbled in my chest, a sound that belonged in a jungle, not a storage closet. The air around me shimmered with a predatory heat.
I didn't shove the shelving unit. I slammed into it, a blur of unleashed power. The metal shrieked in protest, buckling and tearing free from the wall as if it were paper. It crashed into the door, exploding it outwards in a shower of splinters and twisted metal.
I emerged from the cloud of dust, not as a man, but as a shadow given form. My panther instincts narrowed the world to a single objective: Draw the hunt. Protect the mate.