CHAPTER 6: TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT.

Adrian’s POV

It turned out near-death experiences came with house rules.

Noah’s face was carved from stone when he brought me back inside. He didn’t say much at first, just locked the doors, checked the windows, rechecked the locks, and double-checked the security feeds like he didn’t trust them anymore. Maybe he didn’t.

I certainly didn’t trust anyone right now.

Except him.

“You’re never alone again,” he said finally. Voice flat, final, no room for argument. “Anywhere you go, I go. Understood?”

I gave him my best unimpressed arch of the brow. “You make it sound romantic.”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t take the bait. Not this time. “This isn’t a joke, Adrian.”

“I didn’t think it was.” I sat, watching him pace like a caged animal, dangerous, disciplined, furious beneath his skin. “You’re not wrong, you know. I do feel safer with you around. Even if your bedside manner could use serious work.”

He ignored that. “We’re done negotiating. You don’t leave my sight again.”

“You’re very commanding when you’re angry. I think it’s starting to grow on me.”

His glare should’ve frozen me in place. Instead, it only burned. I wondered if he realized how easy he made it for me to want him. Not just his protection, not just his body in some idle fantasy, but all of him. The part he locked away behind discipline and duty.

“You can flirt all you want,” he said. “But nothing changes the rules.”

I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Fine. You win. I’ll be a good little ‘wanted-dead’ billionaire and follow orders.”

He didn’t smile. But something in his shoulders eased, just a fraction. Enough to tell me he wasn’t as immune as he wanted me to think.

The safehouse felt smaller by the hour. Walls closing in. Tension thickening.

Noah hovered. Always near. Always watching. He moved through rooms like a shadow stitched to my steps, silent, imposing, impossible to ignore.

Once, I caught him watching me make coffee. Just standing there, arms crossed, gaze pinned to the curve of my spine like he didn’t mean to look but couldn’t stop himself. Our eyes met over the rim of my cup, heat sparking low between us.

“Something you need?” I asked.

His answer came slow. Heavy. “You alive.”

God help me, I felt it everywhere. That quiet, brutal devotion. It settled beneath my skin like something sacred.

“I’m not that fragile,” I said, softer than I meant to.

“No,” he agreed. “But people want you dead. That’s fragile enough.”

We fell into a rhythm neither of us admitted aloud.

I let him hover. He let me pretend it didn’t matter.

Meals shared in silence. Rooms crossed in proximity too close to be accidental. My breath catching every time his hand brushed too near, his body passed too close.

Once, I nearly reached for him. Just to see if he’d let me. Just to know what his skin felt like beneath my fingers when he wasn’t saving my life.

Instead, I sat on the couch and watched him pace. Again. Always pacing. Like stillness might kill him faster than bullets ever could.

“You’re exhausting to look at,” I said, tilting my head to watch the flex of muscle beneath his shirt. “Sit down before you wear a hole through the floor.”

He did. Reluctantly. Across from me, tense and silent, his gaze fixed on something I couldn’t see. His thoughts, probably. His ghosts.

“You don’t sleep much, do you?” I asked.

“Enough.”

“You look like hell.”

“So do you.”

Fair.

But it didn’t stop me from watching him. From letting my gaze drift over the hard lines of him, the scar on his temple, the shadows under his eyes. I wondered if anyone had ever told him how beautiful he was when he wasn’t trying to be. When he wasn’t armored in detachment and duty.

I wondered what it would take to break him open.

Night fell. Again. And with it, a quiet that settled too deep between us.

Noah pulled out the couch cushions like it was routine, probably because maybe it was. For men like him, comfort didn’t exist. Rest wasn’t luxury; it was permission rarely given.

“You’re sleeping there?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe with arms folded.

“Where else?”

“There’s a perfectly good bed in here.”

He gave me a look. Hard. Flat. The kind meant to shut down questions.

“You’re my client.”

“And that means you can’t sleep somewhere soft?”

“It means I sleep between you and danger.”

I didn’t push. Not really. Not out loud. But something in me pulled tight watching him stretch out across thin cushions, body still tense beneath exhaustion he wouldn’t admit.

The lights dimmed. The silence deepened. I lay awake longer than I should’ve, listening to the steady rhythm of his breath, the subtle shifts of his weight.

Safe. Protected. Watched over.

No one had made me feel that in years.

It was later. Much later. When I got up. Quiet steps across colder floors.

I didn’t know why I moved toward him. Not really. Curiosity, maybe. Or loneliness. Or something softer I didn’t want to name.

He lay half-curled, hand near the weapon tucked beneath his pillow even in sleep. His face in shadow. His mouth relaxed in a way I’d never seen when he was awake. Younger, almost. Less haunted.

I wondered who he was before this job broke him into pieces of vigilance and violence. I wondered if he’d been softer once. Warmer. Easier to love.

I wondered, too, what it said about me that I wanted to touch him now more than I ever had.

Not for sex. Not for power.

Just to know what it felt like to hold something steady for once instead of watching it slip through my hands.

My fingers hovered, almost close enough to trace the scar on his temple. Almost close enough to map the shape of his jaw. His breath stirred the air between us, steady and quiet and safe.

I realized then, really realized, that I hadn’t felt this much safety in years.

Money hadn’t bought it. Power hadn’t earned it. Love hadn’t offered it.

But Noah?

Noah did, even without trying.

Without asking. Without wanting anything in return. Just by being who he was: immovable. Unbreakable. Relentless in a way that made me ache in places I didn’t know still lived inside me.

“You idiot, get a grip on yourself.” I whispered to no one. “You’re falling for him.”

And maybe I was.

I watched him a while longer, memorizing the shape of peace where it lived, however briefly, across his features, and silently smiling to myself. Watching his beautiful sleeping face in the dark, under the reflection of the moonlight, did things to me it shouldn't do.

For the first time in years, I let myself feel it too.

Safety. Security. Not because the world had changed, but because he stood between me and it.

I turned away eventually. Back to bed. Back to dreams that didn’t haunt.

But not before one last glance over my shoulder.

At Noah. Still there. Still breathing. Still mine, whether he wanted to admit it or not.