Good thing.
Viper drew Titus away from the group and toward the dim corridor off the main lounge. Titus didn’t stumble—he never stumbled—but he jerked once, sharp and offended.
“Let go,” he snapped under his breath.
“No.”
The hallway swallowed the word whole.
Titus’s eyes flared—ice-blue, furious, gorgeous. “You don’t get to drag me around.”
“You’re the one who called me your fiancé,” Viper said, voice low and edged.
Titus’s jaw flexed. “That was for Hale. Not for—”
Viper didn’t stop until they were half-hidden in the narrow security alcove, light cutting across Titus’s cheekbone, shadow slipping down the line of his throat.
Music thumped through the floor—muffled now.
Voices blurred.
Heat pressed between them like a third body.
Viper stepped in. Close.
Close enough to feel the breath Titus was trying—and failing—to steady.
He hadn’t crossed a continent for Titus just to stand there and pretend he didn’t want him.
“Titus,” he said quietly. “Kiss me.”
And every shred of discipline he had left frayed to threads.
Titus’s hands came up fast—gripping the sides of Viper’s face.
They fit together too easily—no angle to adjust, no space to breathe—just need dragging them closer.
Then Titus yanked him in, and the kiss slammed into him open-mouthed and hard, almost painful—a violent pull of heat and fury.
Viper answered in the only way he could—his hand sliding to the back of Titus’s head, fingers locking in, dragging him closer, holding him there.
Titus didn’t fight it.
He leaned into it—into him—and the kiss shifted, easing, slowing, deepening.
Still fierce.
Still claiming.
So fucking possessive, Viper felt it all the way down to bone.
Viper nudged deeper, tongue sweeping inside—not forcing, not taking, just testing—expecting Titus to meet him with teeth or temper.
Instead, Titus let him in with a low, harsh groan that shuddered between them.
Heat. Wet. Decadent.
Slow enough to feel every inch of it.
