The Embarrassment

Liliana Grace Harlan POV

Elias’s gaze flicked from me to Dante, then back. “How long?” His voice was low and gravelly, rough, breaking the silence like a stone dropped in still water.

Dante didn’t answer right away. His thumb kept stroking calmly and deliberately, but I felt the shift in him, the doctor retreating, the protector rising. “Until the threat’s eliminated,” he said quietly. “Days. Maybe weeks.”

Nikolai let out a soft, dark laugh that lifted every fine hair on my arms. “Well, princess…” He stepped closer, hands still buried in his pockets, grin curling slow and wicked. “Looks like you’re moving in.”

My pulse slammed so hard I was sure they could hear it echoing off the walls.

Dante’s fingers tightened just a fraction around my wrist. “You’re safe,” he murmured, the words velvet-soft but edged with steel, meant only for me. “No one touches you unless I say so. Not even them. Not until you’re ready.”

But the way the others looked at me now, Jaxon's jaw ticking with barely leashed hunger, Elias’s gaze dark and unreadable, Nikolai’s eyes gleaming with dark, patient promise, said something entirely different.

I was safe from the killer outside but definitely I'm I safe from them?

From the men who’d just been handed temporary, legal ownership of me?

From the men who’d heard me come apart screaming their names?

That was a different kind of danger that I can't be safe from and it was already closing in.

“Your dad told us everything too,” Jaxon said, voice flat and final. “So we’re taking you now.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t Dad fucking tell me you were coming?” The words burst out sharper than I meant, frustration and humiliation twisting together.

Dante’s eyes softened instantly, that baby face of his still unfairly youthful for a man in his late thirties tilting toward me with quiet concern. Those huge, luminous eyes, the kind that made people instinctively coo “aww” before remembering how dangerous he could be, held mine without flinching.

"Lily", he said gently, the warning wrapped in velvet, “no need for the f-word." Like I was still twelve. Like the girl who’d just soaked the sheets calling their names didn’t exist yet.

God, the embarrassment burnt hotter than ever.

He noticed, of course he did. His thumb paused its slow circle, then resumed even softer.

“It’s normal,” he said, his voice low, clinical yet achingly tender. “For women your age, especially during ovulation, hormonal surges can heighten libido, sensitivity, and even emotional intensity. The body’s responding to natural cycles. I understand.”

He leaned in just a fraction, blonde hair slipping across his forehead, those big, adorable eyes crinkling at the corners with that sad, sweet worry that always made my heart stutter and, traitorously, made everything lower clench harder.

One gentle poke to my cheek with his gloved finger and heat rushed through me all over again. He looks too soft, and too kind to be the one holding the reins.