Page 16

Kaos walked beside her, the meeting still echoing behind his ribs.

She had watched all three payloads without flinching, named them ineffective with that maddening, soft finality of hers—like she was discussing the seasoning on a plate instead of psychological warfare.

And Kildare had agreed. No, not just agreed—he’d been pleased.

She’d dismissed weeks of calibrated strategy, and the man leading it had smiled like he couldn’t wait to see what she’d do instead.

On top of this, she moved through the day like her body hadn’t been broken open in the night. Kaos ached to repeat it while Kohl burned to be chosen. And now, walking beside her, she moved like neither version of him had touched her. But she had touched all of him.

Now, he was fixated on the lightness of her walk. Not flippant—unguarded and open. Like the weight of the meeting hadn’t settled in her bones yet.

She was talking again. Something about the light, the way the clouds moved like slow dancers. The strange, gold warmth bleeding through the chill. Her voice hopped frequencies like she couldn’t quite stay on one station—didn’t know she was supposed to be burdened.

He watched her through the corner of his gaze, looking for the shape of this immunity Kildare mentioned. Whatever had spared her from the digital rot infection didn’t feel like protection with her. Closed off from the loop, yes—but maybe just as closed off from the thing that should’ve replaced it.

His eyes drifted past her shoulder, then lower.

Just enough to imagine the shape of her.

The warmth of her thighs, the way her shirt moved like it didn’t belong on her skin.

Lust hit Kohl. Clean, violent. Human. It slammed into his core with no divine buffer—no sacred filtering, no spiritual absorption—just raw, biological fire surging through flesh made to feel it.

He exhaled too sharply, a sound caught between restraint and need. A low growl tore free.

She froze mid-sentence and spun toward him, eyes lit with something too sharp to be fear. “We’re doing this now?”

He stopped inches from running her over.

“Alright, spill it,” she snapped, then quickly took a step back.

“I could feel you staring me down in that room, judging me with those abysmal stabby orbs of yours.” She gestured wildly, arms slicing the air.

“Why not give it a voice and lay it out? Or give it wings and let it fly? Or hell, give it a cliff to fuck off of!”

She breathed hard, brows lifted like she dared him to respond.

“Do you even know where you’re going?”

She blinked once. Not confused—highly offended. “Yes,” she clipped. “I’m going to my art studio to get what needs getting, so I can give what needs giving. I figured with all your recording skills, you already knew that.”

“I did,” he said flatly. “Along with the thirty-two times you adjusted your ass in the chair and the way your foot tapped when Kildare leaned in, and the breath you caught—once—when the screen flashed column two.” He stepped closer.

“And the man opposite you scratched his neck when you stood, watched your waist, then dropped his gaze after seven seconds.”

She planted her hands on her hips like she anchored a planet. “Alright,” she snapped, cheeks flushed. “You forgot one.”

She stepped forward, eyes sharp. “Kildare. Posture that doesn’t bend, shoulders like steel and a voice that never needs to rise.” She bravely leaned in even closer. “He doesn’t need to do anything to own the room. He breathes—and the room makes space.”

The heat in that sentence slammed both sides of him in the gut.

He was seconds away from punishing her mouth with his when eyes went big and she looked down at herself.

“Oh no! I need to change!” She spun in the opposite direction and shot out, calling over her shoulder, “This is not what you wear when meeting a muse for the first time. I look like a brochure!”

He stalked after her, Lust and Rage going over punishing options the entire way there. She vanished into the house while Kaos paced on the porch, blood vibrating with heat and wrath as his powers zipped through walls and found her mumbling voice and… fuck, she was naked.

Memory crashed in, her mouth on his, the arc of her body, the tremble in her thighs when she begged the dream to keep going. And her world shattering cry at his first thrust and her moans when he stayed.

He moved to the edge of the porch, a bomb ready to detonate.

Restraint coiled in his spine, sharp and full of iron teeth.

Inside, she changed clothes. Just that. Not some ceremony.

Not a contract. But somehow, her nakedness was exactly that.

His mind said it meant nothing, but his instincts knew it meant everything.

Rage and Lust didn’t want to fuck her. They wanted her vow.

They wanted her loyalty. They wanted the proof that what happened in that dream had planted itself deeper than she knew.

Her steps through the apartment moved in his cock and blood and the door opened. He turned as she stepped out and struck a pose like she was daring the universe to judge her. “Try not to fall too hard,” she said, voice light but steady. “I dress for gods, not mortals.”

He stared as she stood there like a paradox painted in human form.

An oversized shirt splattered in years of color got knotted at the waist with half a care.

Striped pajama pants shoved into combat boots like she’d fought with the closet and won.

A crooked bandana crowned her head, tilted like a flag raised by the wrong army.

Two brushes gripped like weapons, a belt slung loose over her hips, all crowded with useless tools she wore like armor.

His gaze made it back up, landing on her grin that was too wide, her stance too proud.

She looked fucking absurd and she looked like revelation.

The contradiction caught his breath mid-pulse.

Rage fell still. Lust dropped its claws.

Every part of him—instinct, ruin, reverence—paused in awe.

She hadn’t dressed to impress him. She hadn’t considered him at all. And somehow, that made her divine.

He stepped forward, steady and exact, until only a breath lived between them. He didn’t look at her boots, didn’t acknowledge the shirt or the riot of color she wore in defiance, he only looked at her.

“Good thing I never claimed to be mortal.”

She blinked. He watched it hit her—the shift behind her eyes, the way her mouth parted, suddenly remembered him in places she hadn’t consciously placed him.

He didn’t move. Didn’t press. He let her feel it, waiting to see what she’d do.

Kaos didn’t turn and walk away, Kohl did.

Without a word, he just headed for the studio like that was the only place he’d ever intended to be.

And he didn’t need to look back to know she was following, he could feel it in the air—the eager clump, clump, clump of her steps, the way her energy caught on his like a thread pulled through rough cloth.

Soon she ran ahead of him, done with her near revelation and on to more relevant things like art.

She paused at the door of the small building, her gaze roaming over the frame like she was already making a list. “I hope it has string,” she murmured.

“The strong kind, not the fake kind. And some brushes that haven’t been ruined by rage.

Maybe wire. Maybe something odd, like a cracked mirror or a ball of old keys.

Something with texture.” Her fingers hovered near the handle.

“I really, really hope there’s a big table with burn marks.

Like somebody made fire on it and didn’t regret it. ”

She swung the door open and ran through it like she’d been caged for years. Before Kaos could take a full step inside, her boots pounded the floor, arms thrown wide, voice rising like some half-wild hymn to freedom.

“Oh my God, look at this light!” she shouted. “Kohl! Do you see this?! This is actual daylight!” She spun, fast, nearly slipped, didn’t care. Her hands grazed the edge of a long wooden countertop, and she let out a delighted gasp.

“Stone! It’s not that fake stuff—it’s real ! And the stove—oh yes , gas burners! You hear that?” She flicked the knob, clicked it twice, grinned like it lit her up from the inside. “That’s the sound of real culinary power!”

Kaos stepped into the main space. He didn’t speak because there was no room in the air for anything but her.

She vanished down a hallway. Cabinets opened. A door slammed. Water ran for a second, then shut off. “Bathroom!” she shouted from somewhere around a corner. “A tub! With a ledge for candles! And the towels are burgundy! Not hospital white. I swear this place has personality. ”

She returned at a jog, short hair fluffed by her wrecking ball energy. She moved to the center of the space, where a massive worktable dominated the room. She stopped, stared at it. Then jumped up like it had challenged her. She rolled across the top dramatically, limbs flailing like a dying fish.

Kaos arched a brow.

She flopped to her back and let out a sigh that was half howl. “Absolutely unshakable. I love this thing.”

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 fifty yeses to 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. It wants mess. 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 to know her. 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.