Page 7 of The Chains that Bind
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 aspectof 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, hisbreathing 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.
Chapter Six
