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“Harder. Don’t you dare hold back, Riot.”

I don’t. I fuck her like the world outside this room doesn’t exist—like the murders, the institute, the carefully arranged cage of Arch Hollow are all distant noise.

Just her tight, throbbing heat gripping me, her scent wrapping around us both like smoke and sugar, her mismatched eyes locked on mine with that terrifying intelligence that says she’s cataloguing every second, every thrust, every growl, filing it away for whatever long game she’s playing.

I lift her hips higher, angling deeper, pounding into her with single-minded focus. The silk sheets are ruined beneath us, damp with sweat and her slick. Her moans climb higher, turning into whimpers, then a shattered scream as her orgasm crashes through her.

She clamps down on me so hard my vision whites out at the edges, her body seizing in rhythmic waves that try to pull me under with her.

“That’s it, baby. Sing for me.”

She’s still trembling, breathless and glassy-eyed, when I start moving again. Relentless. Chasing my own edge now but determined to drag her back up with me.

“Brace yourself, Vex. You’re gonna be Daddy’s good girl and take every fucking pump until you come all over my cock again.”

Her laugh is half-sob, half-challenge.

“Fuck yes.”

We’re naked messes now, skin sliding against sweat-slick skin, bodies moving on pure instinct. I can feel my knot beginning to swell at the base, heavy and aching, the first time in years it’s threatened to lock.

The sensation is almost painful—too much pleasure edged with warning. I know what it means. If I let it happen, if she lets me, there’s no coming back from this. Not for me.

Her scent shifts again, deeper, richer, the chocolate note turning molten. She feels it too—the growing pressure, the way my rhythm stutters as the knot fights to expand.

Her nails dig into my shoulders, eyes wide and wild and utterly present.

I press my forehead to hers, voice reduced to a gravel rasp.

“Yes or no, Omega. Tell me now.”

She curses, a filthy, perfect sound, and wraps her arms around my neck, pulling me impossibly closer. Her legs lock around my waist.

“If you leave me I’ll kill you.”

The laugh that rips out of me is sudden, raw, and delighted. I thrust deep once more, grinding the swelling knot against her entrance, teasing the lock we both know is coming.

“I’d never want to be the prodigy of your ex, my pretty little Omega.” Another shallow grind. The pressure is agony and ecstasy braided together. “I’ll die for you, Omega. Remember that—I’m your new Puddin.”

Her new fucking pet that will burn the world for her.

CHAPTER 15

~Vex~

The knot had held us locked for what felt like an eternity of exquisite torment, his swollen base pulsing deep inside me, stretching me to the brink of delirium while wave after wave of aftershocks rippled through my core.

I had blacked out somewhere in the middle of it—consciousness fracturing under the relentless pressure of fullness, the heat of his release flooding me, the way his chest rumbled against my back like distant thunder promising more storms to come.

When awareness returned, his mouth was already on mine again, devouring the remnants of my cries even as the knot began its slow, reluctant deflation. Strawberries and scorched sugar clung to the air between us, tangled with the heavy smoke-and-iron of him, a perfume so potent it should have been classified as a controlled substance.

Now, minutes or hours later—I have lost all reliable measure of time in this sun-drenched fever dream—he has me perched on the edge of the ornate dresser, legs draped over his broad shoulders, his face buried between my thighs like a man starved for sacrament. His tongue moves with devastating precision,lapping at the mingled evidence of our joining, and the wet, obscene sounds fill the room alongside my fractured gasps.

I stare down at him through half-lidded eyes, one hand fisted in that dark hair, the other braced against the mirror behind me, and marvel at the sight: Riot Vale, the man who turned a prison into a slaughterhouse, lips and chin glistening with my slick, eyes half-closed in reverent hunger.

I have never encountered an Alpha capable of matching the furnace that lives beneath my skin.

Most falter after one round, spent and smug, as if biology itself owed them rest. This one shows no sign of slowing. His scent surges with every stroke of his tongue—woodsmoke curling thicker, leather warmed by friction, the bright metallic bite of bloodlust transmuted into something far more intimate.