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She hopped to her feet and broke into a ridiculous jig—knees high, arms flapping with exaggerated rhythm. “Look at this! You could build an empire on this table!”

Then, without warning, she jumped off.

Too fast. Too high.

She landed wrong, arms pinwheeling, boots skidding across the floor as she thudded on the tile.

She burst out laughing, completely unembarrassed.

Kaos took a breath that didn’t fully make it into his lungs, watching her roll onto her back, still laughing. She sat up and looked around like she'd forgotten why she fell in the first place.

“This place is dangerous,” she said, grinning right at him. “I could live here. Like,live. We could just bring in a mattress, a case of soup, a radio, and call it heaven.” She blinked as the words caught up to her, stealing half of her smile. “Okay, that sounded unhinged. Just delete that from your memory. Erase it. Except don’t. Unless you want to. Do you love it? No? Yes? Maybe?”

She jumped to her feet and spun in a circle, arms stretched out to the ceiling while his tongue filled with fiftyyesesto each question and invitation.

“This is the first place I’ve ever walked into that didn’t make me feel like I had to shrink. Itwantsmess. It wants volume. It wants me to scream and spill things and not say sorry for it.”

She turned to him, wild and flushed, eyes burning with joy that hadn’t asked for permission.

Lust surged, coiled low and thick, swelling in his blood, pressing down his spine. It wanted her mouth, her breath, and the soft underside of her chaos. It didn’t want to ask. It didn’t want to hesitate, it wanted to mark her, bruise her, bury itself in her until the air reeked of both of them.

Rage rose behind it, slower, heavier. It draped itself over her like smoke. It wrapped around her laugh, her movements, her hunger for life. It didn’t reach to hold her. It settled over her like she already belonged to it. Both parts of him recorded every shift, every footfall, every sound like it was mapping a territory already promised to him. But which him? There was no order in him now. Only response. Only ache. Only fire. She wasn’t the assignment. She wasn’t a moment. She was an altar. And his entire being was on its knees.

It was Kohl that broke the spell. “What is your plan?”

The studio suddenly breathed again as Jaxi blinked once, then looked down as if remembering her own feet. Her voice came out quiet. “To let my hands figure out what my mouth couldn’t explain to him.”

Fuck. He couldn’t love an answer more.

Whatever she was about to create—it wouldn’t just be art, it would be revelation. Confession. Worship. And he would be watching. Not to guard her or guide her. But toknowher. Down to the place where her soul bled color and dreams and hope that confounded.

She was moving through the studio like a priestess searching for a prophecy. One by one, she tested mediums—touched, weighed, smelled—holding each in her hands like a relic that might speak if she stayed still long enough. But nothing answered.

Kaos watched from the wall, arms folded, eyes devouring every gesture. The space had gone quiet, reverent again. Except this time, she didn’t look sure. She looked...lost.

Then she stopped.

Turned.

Looked straight at him.

Kaos watched her stillness break with a breath.

“I need to prepare,” she declared as if just remembering. Not to him, but to the air, to the gods. She spun on her heel with purpose, like the next twenty-four hours had just been dictated by divine order and she was its executioner.

Chapter Nine

Hour One: Cookie Chaos

The kitchen lit with war.

Flour detonated, a cloud of white rising as she launched into motion without an apron, without measuring cups—just chaos and intent. She slapped a record on a nearby turntable—real vinyl—and let it scream something jazz-heavy and barely sane into the space.

She cracked two eggs. One splattered. She cursed it like it had insulted her ancestors, muttering with flour in her hair, smudges on her cheek, and one sock higher than the other. She cared less than nothing while Kaos remained in the doorway, motionless and aroused out of his wicked mind.

“Are you going to stand there like an emotional vampire,” she accused, “or are you going to smell vanilla with me?”

She marched over with two bottles, popped their lids, and shoved one beneath his nose. “Too soft, right? That’s not what the Muse wants. We need the bolder one.”