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For once, the madwoman wins.

He spins me again without warning, bending me over the foot of the bed this time.

“Hands on the ledge. Don’t you dare let go.”

I obey—barely—gripping carved wood as he drives into me from behind. Dominance rolls off him in waves, yet there’s reverence beneath it, the obsessive fixation of a man who has found the one puzzle worth solving with his body.

I love it. Crave it.

The way he takes charge without erasing me. My moans fill the room, loud and shameless, mingling with his grunts. Silas and Lucien must hear every second.

Pressure builds again, sharper this time.

I shatter around him with a keening wail, walls fluttering wildly. He follows moments later, flooding me once more, hips stuttering as he catches me when my legs finally buckle. Strong arms scoop me up before I can collapse, cradling me against his sweat-slick chest as if I weigh nothing.

I expect the bed. A dismissive toss.

The transactional end most Alphas offer. Instead he carries me toward the adjoining bathroom, somehow managing to start the tub with one hand while holding me secure. Water rushes, steam rising with the faint herbal scent of whatever salts he’s added. Confusion cuts through the post-orgasm haze.

“What are you doing?” I murmur against his neck, tasting salt and smoke.

“Cleaning up my pretty darling.” His voice is rough but gentle, a contradiction that fascinates the strategist in me. “Such a performance, and I’d leave you filled and dirty? I’m a killer, sure, but I was raised with some standards on women’s hygiene.”

I smirk, nuzzling closer despite myself.

The water smells of lavender and something earthier, grounding.

“Standards. From the man who just fucked me on every available surface like the world was ending.”

He lowers us both into the filling tub, arranging me between his legs, my back to his chest.

The warm water laps at oversensitive skin, soothing and arousing in equal measure. His hands begin a slow, possessive exploration—washing away sweat and slick with surprising tenderness while his scent cocoons us.

I blink slowly, realizing the spiral that gripped me upon waking has quieted.

No impending doom pressing at my temples. No frantic cataloguing of exits.

Just the steady thrum of his heartbeat and the glide of callused palms.

“Does it feel like your spiraling now?”

“No,” I confess softly, almost wonderingly. “Doesn’t feel like impending doom.”

He smirks against my hair, arms tightening around me.

“Then let’s soak in the bath and get to know each other, my pretty darling.”

CHAPTER 16

~Vex~

Idon’t know when the switch happened.

That’s the trouble with the flick of it—it never asks permission, never announces itself, just clicks somewhere behind my eyes like a light thrown in a far room, and by the time I notice the new quality of the dark, the trade has already been made.

One of me went under. One of me surfaced.

Somewhere in the lavender steam and the deflating ache and the slow tidal pull of his heartbeat against my spine, I slipped from one self into another, and now I’m awake in the cooling water with no clear seam to mark where the change occurred.