He looked deathly serious for a moment, but when he caught my eye, he gave me a lopsided smile.

Damn him and his lopsided smile. Without even knowing I was doing it, I found myself smiling back at him.

Like an idiot.

He closed the gap between us, so I turned towards the door to avoid making a fool of myself by kissing him in front of everyone. I jerked in surprise when I felt him slide his hand over mine. It was impossible not to notice how huge his hand was compared to mine, but more than that, there was something warm and reassuring about it. I could get way too used to warm and reassuring.

“What’s with the nonconsensual hand-holding?” I attempted to extricate my fingers from his.

It was frustrating that I was comfortable binding a relative stranger’s genitals with rope, could happily spank bare asses, torture someone with nipple clamps, or have my toes sucked all day long, but this man holding my hand threw me into a tailspin of panic every fucking time. He didn’t even mean anything by it. He’d probably just gotten a text instructing him to do it.

He gripped my hand tighter. “Bunch of paparazzi are out there.”

“And?”

“Come on, sweetheart. You’re going to want to hold my hand. They’re relentless and I can’t protect you if we get separated.”

“I can handle myself.” I pulled away. I was annoyed at the flip my stomach did when he mentioned protecting me.

He looked like he might argue, but shrugged and squared his shoulders as two security guards pushed the doors open and began clearing a path through the chaos outside.

I was prepared for the madness of making it through a mob of paparazzi with one of the most famous men in the world. I was not prepared for the mob to be directed at me.

I’d never experienced anything like it. The barrage of camera flashes disoriented me and all of the photographers were screaming questions at us, some of them truly vile. Alex tried to yell something to me, but I couldn’t hear him. As he’d predicted, we’d quickly gotten separated and it felt like the mob was going to smother me.

Objectively, the things they were shouting about me being a whore, the lewd propositions, didn’t upset me, but there was just so many of them and the flashes wouldn’t stop.

Panic constricted my lungs as I tried to keep moving forward, knowing if I could just reach the car it would be fine, but they’d blocked the way and were aggressively taking pictures instead of letting me through. What I wouldn’t give for a whip right about now, I thought. But even a whip requires room to swing it.

They were so close they were flashing straight in my face. They wanted a reaction and I was determined not to let them see how scared I was.

I forgot about moving forward and on instinct tried to step back from the guys crowding me from the front, only to bump into another photographer whose camera was almost certainly pointed up my skirt from the back. I stumbled, catching my heel on something. I felt it buckle and the stiletto snapped off, sending me tumbling to the ground in a heap.