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I huff a breath that might have been a laugh in another life, nipping at his lower lip in retaliation.

“Management is on indefinite sabbatical. And if you keep talking, Crowe, I’ll have to remind you that undertakers aren’t supposed to be this insufferably charming mid-seduction.”

His amber eyes spark with delight, the petal-soft Silas giving way just enough for a flicker of the showman.

“Insufferable? Darling, I’m wounded. Mortally, even. Perhaps you should kiss it better before I expire dramatically on this rug.”

The bickering is absurd, a rom-com interlude in the middle of my unraveling, and it loosens something knotted deep in my chest.

I kiss him again to shut him up—properly this time—and he rewards me with a low, appreciative hum that vibrates through his chest into mine. His hands move with purpose along my body, skimming the curve of my waist, tracing the ridges of old scars without hesitation or pity. Where others have faltered or claimed ownership, he validates. Each stroke affirms the terrainof me:the dancer’s discipline etched into muscle, the survivor’s map of raised lines and faded burns.

No flinch. No recoil.

Only a slow, worshipful glide that makes heat pool between my thighs and sends a spike of unexpected power singing through my veins.

I feel... beautiful.

Not the cracked, glittering beauty Vex weaponizes in courtrooms or on poles, but something deeper, truer. As if his touch polishes the fractures until they catch light like kintsugi gold.

It echoes that distant first surrender—the night I handed over purity without regret, back when the world still pretended tenderness could last.

Here, in the flickering glow of a dying fire in a town built for the condemned, I breathe. No performance. No rush to power through rounds of lust before the illusion shatters by morning.

Time stretches, languid and permissive, and for once my splintered selves do not claw for control.

Silas trails kisses like precious jewels scattered across my flesh—light, reverent presses along the column of my throat that make my pulse flutter wildly.

He lingers at the hollow there, sucking gently until a bloom of heat rises, a hickey forming like a signature only we will see.

Down to my collarbone, where his teeth graze with exquisite restraint, leaving faint marks that throb in time with the growing ache between us. His scent intensifies, lilies and cedar deepening into something headier, laced with the warm undertone of arousal that calls to the Omega in me like a siren's note.

Strawberries and dark ganache rise from my own skin in response, tangled with that bright metallic edge—blood andlightning, the scent of a mind that never stops calculating even as my body yields.

“Every inch of you,” he whispers, lips brushing the swell of one breast, “is a masterpiece of defiance. Scars and all. Especially the scars.” His tongue circles a peaked nipple, slow and deliberate, drawing a gasp from me that echoes softly in the quiet room.

He sucks, then bites just hard enough to spark pleasure-pain, and my back arches into him of its own accord. The mastermind observes:possessive obsession threaded through tenderness, his intrigue a living thing that studies me as intently as it worships.

The others guard me like treasure; Silas dissects the treasure and finds it flawless in its brokenness.

Lower still, his mouth maps the plane of my stomach, leaving a constellation of kisses and faint bruises along the way. I thread fingers through his pale hair, not directing but anchoring, and he glances up with eyes gone molten amber.

“No haste tonight,” he says, voice roughened at the edges. “We have the valley, the fire, and an eternity in this stolen hour. Let me show you what it means to be savored, Genevieve.”

The use of my truest name sends a shiver cascading down my spine.

No one else has earned it so completely. I pull him back up for another kiss, tongues entwining in a slow dance that builds like distant thunder. His body presses against mine, lean and elegant yet corded with hidden strength, the coolness of his skin a delicious contrast to the fever building in mine.

Desire spikes sharp and sweet, a coiling tension that has nothing to do with the frantic heats I have known and everything to do with this deliberate unraveling.

When he finally slides into me, it is a homecoming wrapped in velvet relief.

His thick shaft stretches me with exquisite care, adjusting to the pulsing heat of my core as if he were made to fit precisely here. A shared groan escapes us both—his low and reverent, mine breathy and unguarded. He stills for a heartbeat, forehead pressed to mine, our breaths mingling in the firelit space.

“Perfect,” he breathes, the word heavy with obsession. “You feel like absolution and ruin all at once.”

We move together in unhurried rhythm, his hips rolling with that same artistic precision he brings to every creation. Hands pinned at the sides of my head, he cages me gently, not with force but with the weight of his devotion.

I wrap my arms around his neck, nails tracing light patterns across his shoulders as our bodies find their cadence. Kisses deepen, tongues stroking in time with each thrust, the wet slide and building friction drawing soft sounds from my throat that I do not bother to stifle.