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Lust snaked around his muscles and bones.

“I’m gonna keep talking until you say something. Or at least flinch. Or maybe you’ll combust.”

Rage tracked her racing pulse.

“That would be exciting. Hope you do it without fire though—I’ve got flammable hair.”

Kaos finally turned his head, just enough for her to see the slow narrowing of his gaze.

She stared back. Eyes big. Blue. Brimming with amusement and wonder and the kind of chaos he’d once called home.

But that home was gone.

“You push for conversation like it doesn’t come with a price,” Kaos said, opening that wall inside him as he anchored his gaze in hers. “So maybe I’ll shove my fingers past your lips…” Her mouth opened with a soft inhale as he allowed his gaze to move there. “….drag them along your tongue… like apromise.” He raised his eyes back to hers, his Lust and Rage burning through his veins. “…andfuckyour mouth until even your silence knows who it belongs to.”

She didn’t blink. She couldn’t. Nothing on her face moved at all. She stared right at him like she hadn’t heard a thing. But she had heard. Every word. He’d placed them in every single egg inside her quiveringovaries.

She turned her face to the front. Then looked out of her window. Gave a little shrug like she was still thinking about birds.

Kaos faced his own window and opened the wall between them.

Oh my fucking God. Okay. Okay. That was... okay. Don’t react. Don’t flinch. You flinch, he wins. You blush, he wins. You pass out, he wins twice.

A smile claimed the corner of his mouth.

Was that real? Did that just happen? Is that legal? Was that a spell? That was a spell. He saw me. He saw me. He actually looked and saw me. Do not smile. Do not melt. Do not imagine it. Too late. You're already imagining it. His hand. That voice. That weight. That stare.

Be cool. You’re fine. You’re just… in a vehicle with the most beautiful man in the universe and he just said that to you and you’re breathing like a pig in a paper bag.

Kaos closed the wall when a rogue urge to laugh hit him. He took in a breath, rage curling tight around the want she put in him.

She stayed angled toward the window, body still, but her pulse beat against the air like a drum too loud to ignore. His Lust reclined in satisfaction, relishing her glowing silence. She’d been burned clean through… and she never wanted the fire to stop.

Kaos leaned back against the door, jaw locked, hands flexing once, then twice. He had no name for the sensationclawing up his spine. He only knew one thing with certainty. He should never have spoken. Because now he wanted to finish what he started.

****

Jaxi stood in front of the cottage, still trying to remember how to breathe like a person whose mouth hadn’t just been the subject of a threat she now desperately wanted fulfilled.

She’d kept it together. Somehow. Through the meet and greet, the introductions, the smiling, the nodding. She even remembered some names. Maybe.

But now that she was here—actually here—alone with a forest behind her and cottages all around, she could feel it again. His words. Still in her mouth. Still echoing.

“For you, and for your temporary assistant until your permanent one arrives,” the nice lady said, both hands sweeping toward the cottage like it was a prize on a game show. Sheryl. Head of something. Beautiful, confident, probably very good at her job—and very into Mr. Tall, Dark, and Verbal Destruction.

But who could blame her?

Kohl didn’t say a word the whole walk-through. Not one. Sheryl tried though. Oh, how she tried. Her voice got softer every time she addressed him. Lower. Suggestive.

“And this door here is in case of emergencies,” she murmured, aiming herself at him like he was the emergency.

Jaxi looked around like she was part of the tour. “Very nice,” she offered, because someone had to say something besides inhale and ogle.

Sheryl barely blinked in her direction.

“And if you need anything at all,” she added to Kohl, “each residence has a list of all the numbers you could possibly want or need. Mine’s under…” Something. Jaxi missed it. Shewas too busy watching Kohl absorb it all like a wall absorbs impact. No reaction. No shift. Just intensity.

Boy oh boy, the look all her efforts got her. He was pure silence. A thunderstorm that didn’t break. A temptation that didn't blink.