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He released her wrist with precision, letting her skin slide from his grip like a line being cut. The corner of his mouth twitched once. But nothing was funny. This was darker. Something patient. “I’ll call the car.”

“I can walk.” Jaxi spun and headed for the main lobby.

He followed casually, keeping two feet between them. Her jealousy still rolled off her in sharp, clean pulses that he tracked like blood trails.

“Is this how you protected your queen? Hovered like a plague?”

“I took what she couldn’t carry,” he said, happy to continue the elaboration.

Jaxi scoffed. “Right, right. So you held her hand and fed her soup. Rubbed her temples while she whispered sacred mantras?”

“As I said—through intimacy.”

Her glassy laugh cracked the air. “Of course. How spiritual of you.”

They reached the exit, and she burst through it like a bullet. “Is that how you kept her functioning?” She marched to the vehicle that waited right outside the door. Fredrick opened the door just in time for her to dive right in.

“Thank you, Fredrick,” Kaos said, climbing in. “Take us home.”

Jaxi sat pressed into the door while Kaos moved to the center of the seat, wanting to be as close to the erotic madness as he could get.

“Just so you know, I’m not sleeping in your apartment,” she informed. “I’d rather sleep in a grave.”

“Fine,” he said. “But wherever you sleep, I’ll be there.”

She snorted. “Let me guess. For safe sleeping. Like safe sex. You’re like a human condom.”

“I block bad decisions and seal the heat in.”

“You’re such an elite dick.”

He let his powers roam freely now. “If you’re trying to anger me, just know it’s having the opposite effect on my professional cock.”

Her mouth opened. Then she turned and shoved him—hard. “You’re disgusting.” She turned to the window, jaw locked. “I don’t want to be anyone’s holy burden. I don’t want to be measured like a cracked container with divine leakage.”

Kaos was back to tracking the rhythm in her words. She wasn’t spiraling. She wasburning. Controlled. Composed. But burning.

“I’m not trying to fill some sacred vacancy,” she continued. “You can take that part and give it back to whatever altar you came from.”

The shake in her breath danced in his blood.

She exhaled. “You think I’m angry because you gave something to her.”

“You’re angry because I allowed her to need what you’ve claimed.”

Jaxi’s expression fractured for a half second. “In your dreams, jackass.”

Kaos remained still, eyes on the street ahead, his powers locked on the pain wrapping her breaths.

The vehicle slowed next to their apartment and Jaxi threw the door open and stepped out, heels cracking against the pavement like warning shots.

“Thank you Fredrick,” he muttered, climbing out.

“Anytime, Mr. King,” he said as he pulled away.

Kaos followed the heat of her jealousy. It was tight, brutal and seething. It fed his system like fuel, stirring something volatile and brutal in him. He wanted every drop of it.

She entered her apartment through the broken door and Kaos followed, his steps deliberate. She walked straight to her bedroom and stopped at the doorway, one hand gripping the frame.