35. CHAPTER 32 #2
He was right. My celibacy wasn't a choice; it was a consequence. And having my oldest friend tallying the days of my starvation made the whiskey in my glass taste like battery acid.
“I told you I was going to stage an intervention, Kade.” He leaned forward. “Because what the fuck is going on? You’re putting your entire business on the line. You know what’s at stake here.”
How could I not? The reminders held me hostage every single day. The clause. The heir trigger. The governance shares that wouldn’t fully consolidate without a child. The board wanting everything to be in place before anything happens to my father. A ticking time bomb essentially.
Elias finally sat up, suddenly attentive. “Wait…you mean you still haven’t?”
I stared at the ice melting in my glass, trying to tune them out, to retreat into the chilling, familiar silence I’d lived in for six weeks.
But the lawn was too open, the sun too bright, and my friends too sober to ignore.
I could feel Elias’s eyes on me, not mocking like Julian, but searching, as if he could see the my sanity fraying through the expensive weave of my shirt.
How do I begin to explain to them that things felt different for me now, that the anonymity of the masks had started to feel hollow?
How do I tell them that the specifications I used to demand—the things I used to enjoy—were nothing compared to the unpredictable, fierce reality of the woman inside my house.
“It’s been six months,” Marcus announced, his voice toneless. “Six. And you’ve missed six sessions.”
He edged closer, his shadow falling over my glass. “Six months since the Sanctum has seen its priest, Orion. Six sessions where the thrill just… wasn’t there.”
He shook his head, his annoyance finally bubbling over.
“We built this to be our escape, but it doesn't work without you. You’re the one who brings the edge.
You said it youself, “We'll set the rules together and make them beg for it.” He threw his hands up, his gold ring catching the dimming sunlight.
“We were supposed to fuck our way through the horror of our lives together, remember? That was the deal.”
He gestured vaguely toward the house, his lip forming a smirk.
“But now you’re here, playing house. You’ve traded the altar for a cage, and for what?
You aren’t even getting the Kade treatment in your own bedroom.
You’re starving yourself for a woman who doesn't even want you. Have you forgotten who you are?”
I gripped my glass until the crystal threatened to shatter.
They were right. We weren't built for love; we were built for dominion.
I had been the one to emphasize that in the past. But Léa had done something to that foundation.
I was a man who had suddenly forgotten the taste of water because I was obsessed with a vintage that was never meant to be bottled.
I should have told them the truth. That the Sanctum was dead to me because I had found a new temple to worship in, and a singular, devastating religion that lived and breathed inside my house.
I didn't want a body, or the nameless, or whatever emptiness they were chasing. I only wanted her. I wanted her mind to break before I did. I wanted the moment she realized she couldn't breathe without me, just as I had realized it about her.
“I’m not discussing my wife with you,” I muttered.
“Why not?” Marcus demanded. “She’s hot, she lives in your house, she’s legal, and she clearly wants nothing to do with you right now—”
“She has to want it,” I snapped.
Marcus blinked. Julian lifted a brow. Elias just stared.
“How hard is it to make her want it?” Marcus asked, genuinely confused, as if seduction were nothing more than basic arithmetic.
He leaned back, spreading his arms wide.
“You make women want it all the time, Orion. I’ve seen it.
” He looked at Julian and Elias, gesturing toward me like I was a specimen in an exhibit.
“We’ve all witnessed it. You walk into a room and more than half the people in it are ready to strip for a single glance.
So why the hell are you sitting here waiting for a woman who shares your last name… hmmm?”
Julian arched a brow to emphasize Marcus’ point.
I tipped my glass back to empty its content, hoping the burn would neutralise the bile rising up to my throat. Pouring another drink, I noticed the bottle was almost empty. I’d need another bottle for this.
“It’s different,” I mumbled, sitting up, though even to my own ears, the words sounded weak.
“It’s not,” Julian countered, his voice smooth and cold. “You’re treating her like a person, Orion. That’s your first mistake. She’s a Kade now, and you’re letting her dictate the terms of your own house. You aren't waiting for her to want you, you’re letting her hold you hostage.”
He angled in, the ice in his glass clinking. “You shouldn't be asking for permission to own what’s already yours.”
I opened my mouth to tell them to fuck off in five different languages—to tell them they didn't understand the first thing about my wife—but that’s when the sound interrupted us.
The crunch of gravel, followed by a car door closing. She was home.
I hadn’t heard the ping from the tracker on my phone mid-bickering with these fuckers.
We all turned, and saw Léonie stepping out of her car looking sinful in pastel.
She had on a light pink dress that hugged her hips, the hem scandalously short, her legs long and bare, white heels clicking against the driveway.
Sunglasses perched on her nose, her hair pulled up in a tight high ponytail.
My entire body reacted so violently I almost dropped my glass. Heat shot through me so fast, my cock pressed against my trousers with humiliating efficiency.
What the fuck was she wearing?
The dress was so short that if she bent down even an inch—No. Absolutely not.
I tapped Marcus’s knee. “Eyes. Off.”
He ignored me completely.
Sunlight caught the sheen on her legs as she walked toward us, graceful, confident, like the fight never happened, and we hadn’t spent weeks avoiding each other. As though she hadn’t carved me open weeks ago and walked away.
She pushed the sunglasses to her hair.
“Hi, guys,” she said with a warm smile, then she walked straight to me and kissed me.
The press of her lips on mine wasn’t friendly or teasing or even performative. It was soft and very intentional. Her hand resting briefly on my chest in a gentle touch that I found myself desperately wanting to hold on to.
For a split second, I forgot how to breathe.
I fucking froze. Every calculated argument, every bitter thought I’d nursed for six weeks, vanished in the heat of her scent. My hands tightened on the glass—the only part of me still functioning—as I was paralyzed by the sheer, impossible weight of her mouth on mine, and the warmth of her hand.
What the fuck? What the actual—
Was this a dream? A hallucination? Had I drunk more than I thought?
My friends were staring at her too, so no—this was real.
The glass in my hand was real. So was the deafening pound of my own pulse.
Her lips brushed mine again when she pulled back.
“I didn’t expect you to be home early.”
My voice felt stuck somewhere in my chest. “Meetings ended fast.”
Her eyes traced over me—my hair messy from the wind, sleeves rolled up, no tie, whiskey on the table. Then her gaze dipped, subtle but loaded with that mischief that made my blood roar, and she asked:
“Do you like it?” Her fingers brushed the hem of her dress.
I swallowed. Hard.
Marcus made a strangled sound. Julian smirked. Elias just blinked like he’d been hit with a bat.
I gave the smallest nod. She smiled.
My pulse damn near choked me.
“I’ll be inside,” she said gleefully, as if we hadn’t spent six weeks in emotional warfare. She touched my arm like a fucking invitation, then walked into the house—her hips swaying, the back of that dress taunting every fiber of my self-control.
All three idiots at my table tracked her path to the door with the focus of starving men. I slapped my hand against their heads in succession.
“Ow—fuck, Orion!”
“Not our fault your wife is hot,” Marcus complained, rubbing his skull.
Elias chuckled into his glass.
“I’m warning you,” I said flatly.
Marcus grinned, unrepentant. “Relax. We’re not the ones you should be worried about. The problem isn’t us looking at her. It’s you not fucking her.”
I glared at him.
Julian was still watching the doorway where she’d disappeared, a slow, knowing smile touched his lips.
“And you say she’s not willing,” he tipping his drink toward me. “Kade, if that wasn’t an invitation, I don’t know what is.”
I stared at the doorway she had disappeared through. The air out here suddenly felt empty. The whiskey in my hand was useless; the conversation with my friends was now white noise.
The wall between my wife and me hadn't just cracked, it had shattered, and a fire had been set. Because she hadn't just kissed me; she had marked me. She had walked into my territory and reminded me exactly what I was starving for.
I felt a violent, unhinged surge in my gut. The need I'd been trying to bury for six weeks, the discipline I'd spent perfecting vanished in seconds.
I didn't just want to go inside after her. I needed to.
LéONIE
I didn’t wake up this morning planning to dress like a woman with an agenda.
I hadn’t meant to buy the dress. I’d meant to buy fabric.
Isolde and I had gone into the city for trims and swatches, and nothing else.
We were desperate for a specific type of silk tulle and a few yards of French Chantilly lace to match the last-minute structural changes Céleste and I had made to the fall collection.
It was far too late to put in import orders for fabrics, so I was forced to source locally, scouring the city for anything that wouldn't look like a cheap compromise.
I’d promised myself that all it was going to be was work—a simple form of distraction and clear avoidance.