Blood & Silk

Chapter 4: The Breach

The second beep was louder.

Lucien moved like he had been waiting for this exact second his entire life. One hand closed around Isabella’s wrist and yanked her off the bed. The towel slipped. She barely registered the cold air on her bare skin before he shoved her into the narrow space between the wardrobe and the wall, pressing her back against the wood.

“Stay,” he breathed against her ear. “No matter what you hear.”

Then he was gone.

Glass shattered in the front room. Soft. Professional. No alarm. Footsteps—two, maybe three—moved across the floorboards with practiced silence. Isabella’s heart slammed so hard she was certain they could hear it. She was naked except for the half-fallen towel clutched against her chest. The only light came from the thin moon leaking through the edges of the blackout curtains.

A shadow passed the bedroom doorway.

Lucien struck first.

There was a dull, wet impact—fist meeting throat—then the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor. A second man cursed. A suppressed shot cracked. Wood splintered near the doorframe. Isabella flinched hard enough that the towel dropped completely.

Another shot. Then the sound of a body being driven into a wall hard enough to crack plaster.

“Two down,” Lucien’s voice came, low and cold. “One still moving.”

A third set of footsteps retreated toward the kitchen. Lucien followed without hesitation. Isabella heard the struggle—grunts, the scrape of a chair, the sharp crack of bone. Then silence.

Long. Absolute.

She stayed pressed against the wall, breathing in short, shallow pulls, every muscle locked. Her bare skin prickled. She could feel the ghost of Lucien’s hand still wrapped around her wrist.

Boots returned to the doorway.

“Bella.”

She stepped out.

Lucien stood in the shadows, chest rising and falling harder than usual. Blood streaked across the knuckles of his right hand. A thin cut ran along his left forearm where a blade had grazed him. His eyes moved over her once—quick, clinical—then slowed when he registered that the towel was gone.

He didn’t look away.

Isabella’s voice came out rough. “Are they dead?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed. “How did they find us?”

“Tracker. Probably on your phone from the office. Or the car.” He stepped closer. The heat of him rolled over her naked skin. “We leave in three minutes. There’s a secondary vehicle half a mile through the trees. Can you run barefoot?”

“I’ll manage.”

His gaze dropped again—over her breasts, the soft plane of her stomach, the dark triangle between her thighs—then dragged back up to her face with visible effort. “Clothes. Now.”

She didn’t move. The adrenaline was still screaming through her blood, mixing with something hotter and far more dangerous. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Let me see.”

“Isabella—”

She closed the last of the distance and caught his injured forearm. Her fingers were steady even while the rest of her shook. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was open. She looked up at him.

Lucien’s free hand rose and settled at the side of her neck, thumb resting against her pulse. His voice dropped to something almost broken.

“You were naked in the dark with men coming to take you. Do you understand what that does to me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

His forehead dropped against hers. For one suspended second neither of them breathed. Then his mouth found hers.

It wasn’t gentle.

The kiss was pure possession—hot, desperate, years of restraint snapping in the same instant. Isabella made a soft sound against his lips and opened for him. His hand slid into her hair, tilting her head so he could take more. The taste of him flooded her. She pressed closer, bare breasts against the hard wall of his chest, and felt him shudder.

He broke the kiss first, breathing hard.

“We don’t have time,” he said against her mouth. “If I touch you the way I want to right now, we both die here.”

She nodded, still dazed.

He pulled one of his shirts over her head, then helped her into the sweatpants again with efficient, almost impersonal hands. The contrast between the roughness of the kiss and the careful way he dressed her made something twist low in her stomach.

They left through the back. Three bodies lay still in the main room. Isabella didn’t look at their faces.

The woods were cold and wet. Twigs cut her bare feet. Lucien kept her slightly behind him, gun up, moving fast but silent. When they reached the second vehicle—an unmarked black SUV hidden under a tarp—he opened the passenger door and practically lifted her inside.

Engine. Headlights off. They rolled onto a dirt track that eventually met a secondary road.

Only when the house was miles behind them did he speak again.

“There’s a clinic I trust two hours from here. We clean the cut. Then we keep moving.”

Isabella stared at his profile in the dark. Her lips still burned. “You kissed me.”

“I did.”

“You’re my godfather.”

“I know exactly what I am.” His hands flexed on the wheel. “And I know exactly what I’m going to do to you the next time we’re alone and no one is trying to kill us.”

The words landed like a promise and a threat at the same time.

Her phone—the one they had left behind—would be found eventually. The men who sent the first three would send more. The forty-six hours had become forty-four.

And the man beside her had finally stopped pretending he could keep his hands off her.

Isabella leaned her head against the window, pulse still racing, and whispered the only truth she had left.

“Don’t make me wait too long.”

Lucien’s answer was quiet. Final.

“I won’t.”