"I've been working with Logan."
The words hang in the air.
"Logan knows everything. About Julian, about the vault, that it might contain evidence that will expose the Delgados. You. We meet when you're handling family business, when you're in one of your compartments where I don't exist."
My chest tightens, something hot and sharp lodging between my ribs. "You told Logan before you told me?"
"I told Logan the day after Milo's briefing." Her voice is steady now, unapologetic. "You were sitting in that chair staring at nothing, wallowing in your father's sins. I needed someone who could act, not someone having an existential crisis about family legacy."
"So you went to him." The words come out rougher than I intend.
"Logan could actually do something. He has resources, connections, the ability to move money and information without leaving tracks. You were too busy building walls between every version of yourself to be useful. You made yourself useless to me when you started those fucking boxes."
The profanity in her voice, the rare break in her control, makes something crack inside me.
"We have a plan for Friday," she continues, relentless. "A dinner at Reyes's estate. I'll go as the grieving widow and Logan will be my business associate helping with Julian's complicated estate. We'll get the final pieces. The vault location, the secondary authentication requirements. Everything we need to crack it open."
"And you didn't think I needed to know this?"
"What would you have done?" She challenges. "Which version of you would have helped? The priest who can't reconcile breaking vows? The Delgado prince who's drowning in daddy issues? Or the man who fucks me like he's angry about wanting me and then can't look at me in daylight?"
The words hang between us, the kitchen suddenly charged with something that isn't quite anger anymore. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, silk pajama top clinging to her skin with perspiration. My hands clench at my sides, fingernails digging into my palms. The distance between us feels electric, dangerous, like one spark could ignite everything.
"You're right," I say, and watch surprise flicker across her face. "I've been a coward. Keeping everything separate so I don't have to face what I am. What we are."
"And what are we, Gabriel?" Her voice breaks on my name. "Because I can't keep doing this. Living with three different versions of you, never knowing which one I'm going to get, neverknowing if the man who holds me at night will acknowledge me in the morning."
We stare at each other across three feet of kitchen tile. Her lips are parted, breath coming fast. My pulse pounds in my ears. The fluorescent light flickers once, and in that split second of darkness, something shifts.
I cross the kitchen in two strides, and she meets me halfway, both of us colliding with angry, desperate force.
My mouth crashes into hers, and she bites my lip hard enough to draw blood. The metallic taste mixes with her familiar sweetness, and the contradiction of it makes me growl against her mouth. I press her back against the counter, but she's not submitting. Her nails rake down my back through my shirt, pulling me closer, demanding more.
The kiss is a continuation of the fight, raw and urgent, neither of us yielding. Her tongue battles mine for dominance while her hands knot in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. I grip her waist, lifting her onto the counter in one motion, shoving aside the spice bottles that crash to the floor. Glass shatters somewhere. Oregano and cumin scatter across the tile, but neither of us cares.
She yanks my shirt over my head while I push her skirt up her thighs, both of us claiming the other with bruising intensity. Her legs wrap around my waist, pulling me against her, and I can feel how wet she is through the thin fabric of her underwear. The evidence of her arousal despite her anger, or because of it, makes my cock throb painfully against my zipper.
"Fuck," I growl against her mouth, fumbling with my belt. "I need—"
"Now," she demands, shoving my pants down with her heels. "Stop thinking and just—"
I tear her underwear off, literally tear it, the delicate fabric giving way under my desperate grip. She gasps at the violence ofit but doesn't protest, just pulls me closer, nails digging into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood.
When I thrust into her, we're both still furious, her pussy clenching around my cock like she's fighting me even as she takes me deeper. The counter height puts us at eye level, forcing us to see each other's anger and need reflected back. She grabs my hair and pulls hard enough to force my head back, then bites my exposed throat. Not playfully. With intent to mark.
I pin her wrists above her head against the cabinet with one hand, but she breaks free immediately, too strong in her fury to be contained. Her hands scratch down my chest, leaving red trails I'll feel for days. The pain only feeds the desperate edge of this. Not making love, not even fucking, but something rawer. A physical argument neither of us can win.
"Is this what you wanted?" she gasps against my ear, then bites the lobe hard.
I respond by gripping her hips and changing the angle, making her cry out. But she doesn't go passive. She meets each thrust with her own force, grinding against me like she's trying to climb inside my skin or push me out of hers.
The power shifts constantly. One moment I'm in control, setting a punishing pace, the next she's wrapped her legs tighter and is using the leverage to take what she needs. She bites my shoulder when I hit particularly deep. I suck a mark into her throat in retaliation. Neither of us is gentle. Neither of us wants to be.
"Look at me," she demands, grabbing my face with both hands, forcing eye contact. "All of you. Look at me with all of you."
The command breaks something in me. The compartments shatter. Priest, prince, man, all colliding into this moment. I'm everything at once: the sinner and the sacred, the controlled and the chaotic, the man who killed a woman and the one who wouldkill for this one. It's too much, overwhelming, but Sera holds my gaze steady, taking all of it without flinching.
"There you are," she breathes, and then she's coming, her pussy clenching around me in waves. But her eyes never close, never look away, holding me in place as she falls apart.
