Chapter Five #2
“There’s nothing small about wanting to be seen,” he continued. “Wanting the world to stop when it finds you.” He kept his voice steady, but inside, the edge drew close. Her phrasing gave him the opening he needed. Her moment. Her fantasy. Her desire to be chosen.
“She had moments like that,” he said. “The Queen.”
Jaxi looked up, her mouth still held in a halfway smile that no longer matched her eyes.
“She burned too hot sometimes,” he said. “The power built until she couldn’t carry it. Then she passed it to me.” His words moved quiet and clean. “She used breath. And skin.” A pause. “She used everything.”
Her hand shifted, knocking her glass. Water spilled across the table and down her lap. She stood fast, chair legs dragging against the floor. “I need the bathroom.”
Kaos stood with her. “You’re not permitted to leave without me.”
She turned hard, her voice sharp. “Right. Because I’m a job.” He followed her pace as she stormed away from the table. “I’m not your Queen,” she said, not looking back. “I don’t need to be recharged or restored or whatever holy crisis she went through. I’m fine .”
He closed distance. “Jaxi.”
She took the stairs, her words trailing behind her like a trail of blood. “I don’t collapse under my own power, I don’t require divine touch therapy. I’m not some chosen receptacle for your sacred energy transfer.”
“Stop.”
She hurried faster. “I don’t want your training or your protection. I’m not some cracked container waiting for your hands to fix me—”
He caught her before the next corner, one hand gripping her arm, the other braced beside her head. He pressed her back against the wall, his body anchoring hers in place.
“Don’t move.”
Her breath rushed past his neck. Her skin burned against his hands. His power surged through the point of contact, drinking in every signal, every fracture, every need.
He touched her waist, her ribs. Felt the shape of her breath. All while her heartbeat fed directly into his restraint.
She stared up at him, lips parted, chest rising fast.
His mouth hovered just above hers, breath aligned, pressure building. He traced her shoulder, the edge of her neck. Every point of contact widened the current. Her body gave him more than her words ever had.
A sound escaped her throat. Soft. Shattered.
Then he remembered the hallway camera. The listening devices shaped like art.
His body tensed. Hands pulled back. His chest stayed close, but the connection broke. “This isn’t the place.” He stepped away fully, the air between them buzzing, charged with everything that needed finishing.
Human etiquette offered one word. “Sorry.”
She blinked, fire still rising in her eyes. Her mouth opened, then shut again. “No need for divine escort.” She shoved past him. “I’ll scream if I need soul surgery.”
She vanished around the corner.
Kaos followed, yanking down the wall between them. His power flooded in and formed anchor points in every molecule she possessed. It wasn’t protection protocol, it was something deeper. Something wired through power and obsession.
She entered the bathroom. He stopped just outside. Posted. Present.
He drew a breath through his teeth. Jealousy shaped every step she took, every word she threw, every glance she refused to give.
She carried it sharp. Raw. Complete. Now he had proof.
And it plugged directly into his Lust and Rage in a way he hadn’t expected.
It hit him like sustenance—clean, high-voltage, poured straight into the core of him.
The emotion moved through him like fuel, like a current he was built to run on.
Rage responded first—tight, coiled, territorial. Lust followed close behind, slower but heavier, dragging need through every inch of his skin. The combination didn’t spread. It locked.
She hadn’t touched him. Hadn’t offered anything. But her jealousy had. And the purity of it—undiluted by shame, unspoken but violent—fed something in him he hadn’t realized was starving.
He reached inward and opened the battlefield. His power traced along the edges, searching for an entry, a door that allowed him to see every inch of her without her seeing him.
His Lust and Rage deposited the answer like a war hammer in his blood.
In her dreams. In your true form. Her instinct rendered in motion, her spirit without human filters.
Nothing impure, nothing touched by defense or misdirection.
She will speak through sensation, and you will learn every inch of her without interference.
The bathroom door opened hard, striking the stopper with a metallic thud. Jaxi stepped out fast, hair pushed behind her ears, mouth tight.
“I’m ready to go.”
Kaos straightened from the wall, falling into step beside her before she could say anything else.
“I’m no longer hungry,” she added, voice clipped.
He didn’t press. “Good. You need a proper night’s rest.”
She stopped short and turned to him. “Did you just say that to me like I’m a cranky child?”
He stared at her. “Yes.”
She slapped him. Quick. Sharp. Right on his jaw.
His power surged.
She breathed harder.
His Lust flared and he caught her wrist before she could step away, grip firm enough to lock her pulse under his fingers.
Her eyes widened for a half-second.
Kaos leaned in. The growl rolled up his throat, low and slow. His breath shook in the space between them. “Do that again.”
Her expression didn’t falter. “I’m not afraid of you.”
He waited.
She stepped closer. “I’ve had blank canvases more intimidating.”
He released her wrist with precision, letting her skin slide from his grip like a line being cut. The corner of his mouth twitched once. But nothing was funny. This was darker. Something patient. “I’ll call the car.”
“I can walk.” Jaxi spun and headed for the main lobby.
He followed casually, keeping two feet between them. Her jealousy still rolled off her in sharp, clean pulses that he tracked like blood trails.
“Is this how you protected your queen? Hovered like a plague?”
“I took what she couldn’t carry,” he said, happy to continue the elaboration.
Jaxi scoffed. “Right, right. So you held her hand and fed her soup. Rubbed her temples while she whispered sacred mantras?”
“As I said—through intimacy.”
Her glassy laugh cracked the air. “Of course. How spiritual of you.”
They reached the exit, and she burst through it like a bullet. “Is that how you kept her functioning?” She marched to the vehicle that waited right outside the door. Fredrick opened the door just in time for her to dive right in.
“Thank you, Fredrick,” Kaos said, climbing in. “Take us home.”
Jaxi sat pressed into the door while Kaos moved to the center of the seat, wanting to be as close to the erotic madness as he could get.
“Just so you know, I’m not sleeping in your apartment,” she informed. “I’d rather sleep in a grave.”
“Fine,” he said. “But wherever you sleep, I’ll be there.”
She snorted. “Let me guess. For safe sleeping. Like safe sex. You’re like a human condom.”
“I block bad decisions and seal the heat in.”
“You’re such an elite dick.”
He let his powers roam freely now. “If you’re trying to anger me, just know it’s having the opposite effect on my professional cock.”
Her mouth opened. Then she turned and shoved him—hard. “You’re disgusting.” She turned to the window, jaw locked. “I don’t want to be anyone’s holy burden. I don’t want to be measured like a cracked container with divine leakage.”
Kaos was back to tracking the rhythm in her words. She wasn’t spiraling. She was burning . Controlled. Composed. But burning.
“I’m not trying to fill some sacred vacancy,” she continued. “You can take that part and give it back to whatever altar you came from.”
The shake in her breath danced in his blood.
She exhaled. “You think I’m angry because you gave something to her.”
“You’re angry because I allowed her to need what you’ve claimed.”
Jaxi’s expression fractured for a half second. “In your dreams, jackass.”
Kaos remained still, eyes on the street ahead, his powers locked on the pain wrapping her breaths.
The vehicle slowed next to their apartment and Jaxi threw the door open and stepped out, heels cracking against the pavement like warning shots.
“Thank you Fredrick,” he muttered, climbing out.
“Anytime, Mr. King,” he said as he pulled away.
Kaos followed the heat of her jealousy. It was tight, brutal and seething. It fed his system like fuel, stirring something volatile and brutal in him. He wanted every drop of it.
She entered her apartment through the broken door and Kaos followed, his steps deliberate. She walked straight to her bedroom and stopped at the doorway, one hand gripping the frame.
“I’m going to need privacy ,” she warned, her breaths sharp, mouth tight.
Kaos stepped right up to her, and she retreated into the bedroom. He followed, closing the door behind him. Then locking it.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s the only door that still secures,” he said. “Unless you’d prefer we stay in my apartment.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’d rather sleep inside a collapsed tunnel.”
“Then I’ll stay here,” he said.
She grabbed a pillow off the bed and tossed it on the floor. “Then you’re sleeping there.”
Kaos looked at it. Then at her. “I’ll sleep in the bed. With a barrier. To ensure you don’t molest me.”
Her jaw locked in fury and fear.
Kaos didn’t smile.
But he burned .