“There is no way I am doing that,” Rhys hissed, his voice a frantic, raspy whisper that barely scraped through his tight throat. “You’re out of your mind, Vespera. I won’t do it.”
Yet, even as the desperate refusal left his lips, his body betrayed him with terrifying clarity. Locked against the granite countertop, the primal, illicit adrenaline coursing through his veins was making his pulse hammer in his ears, his core burning with an electric heat he couldn’t extinguish.
Vespera’s slitted amber eyes glittered with dark, triumphant amusement. She leaned in, her pointed cat ears twitching forward as her breath brushed against his earlobe.
“Let me convince you,” she purred.
Without breaking eye contact, she caught Rhys’s hand, wrapping her manicured fingers around his wrist. She guided his hand down, sliding it beneath the hem of her champagne silk dress, tracing up her thigh until his fingers pressed directly against the damp, burning center of her lace panties. She pressed his fingers firmly into her heat.
“Look at that, Omen,” she whispered, her voice thick with satisfaction. “Look at how ready I am for you. Look at what you do to me just by standing here, terrified.”
Rhys’s breath caught in his chest, a jolt of pure fire shooting straight down his spine. The undeniable, slick heat of her sent a shudder through his frame, his mind reeling from the sheer, shameless obscenity of it.
Suddenly, a voice echoed down the hallway, slicing through the heavy, suffocating atmosphere of the kitchen like a crystalline blade.
“Rhys? Is everything alright in there? Do you need me to come help?”
It was Lira. Her clear, powerful tone carried effortlessly from the dining room, mere feet away from where they stood.
Panic exploded in Rhys’s chest. His heart slammed against his ribs like a sledgehammer. He jerked his hand back, his eyes wide as saucers as he stared at the kitchen door.
“I—I’m fine, honey!” Rhys called back, desperately forcing his voice to sound steady, smoothing out the frantic tremor in his breath. “It’s all good! Just... wiping down the last of the wine from her dress! We’ll be right out!”
“Alright, don’t take too long,” Lira replied, her voice drifting back into the ambient chatter of the League members discussing cosmic threat assessments.
Rhys exhaled a long, shaky breath, letting his forehead drop for a fraction of a second as relief washed over him. But when he snapped his head back down to enforce some distance between himself and the loan shark, his jaw dropped in sheer shock.
Vespera was already gone from his line of sight.
In the fraction of a second he had looked away, she had dropped to her knees with terrifying, feline silence. Before Rhys could even register the movement or take a step back, her clever, manicured fingers deftly unbuckled his belt and lowered his trousers.
“Vespera, wait—” he gasped in a choked whisper.
She didn’t wait. With practiced, ruthless efficiency, she took his fully erect length straight into her warm, wet mouth.
Rhys’s head snapped back, his eyes flying open as a choked groan threatened to burst from his throat. He clutched the edge of the granite island so hard the polished stone felt like it might crack under his fingers.
Vespera took her absolute time. She didn’t rush; she hollowed her cheeks and enveloped him slowly, sliding down until he hit the back of her throat, her warm tongue swirling in agonizingly deliberate circles around his most sensitive nerve endings. The contrast was maddening—her mouth was liquid heat, gentle and deep, but her hands were like steel clamps, her manicured claws digging firmly into the backs of his thighs, locking his lower body in place with a vice grip. He couldn’t retreat an inch.
“Please... Vespera, stop... let’s talk about this,” Rhys tried to bargain, his voice trembling, tears of shame and overwhelming sensory overload pricking the corners of his eyes. “We can... we can figure something else out...”
Vespera didn’t pause. She simply tilted her head up, her slitted amber eyes looking directly into his from below, framing him against the soft glow of the under-cabinet lighting. A slow, wicked smile tugged at the corners of her mouth around him, her eyes dancing with malicious victory, before she buried her face back into his lap and resumed the rhythmic, agonizingly deep suction.
Inside Rhys’s mind, time seemed to dilate, stretching out into an endless, agonizing crawl. Psychological terror and physical ecstasy collided in a violent storm within his chest. He was hyper-aware of every single noise: the clinking of wine glasses in the dining room, Marcus’s booming laughter, the low hum of the refrigerator, and the soft, slick, rhythmic sounds Vespera was making at his waist. He was panicking on the inside, his soul screaming as he realized how utterly helpless he was.
Vespera felt the shift in his muscle tension. Sensing his internal collapse, she accelerated her pace. Her head moved faster, her tongue working him with relentless, expert precision, driving the intensity up to a fever pitch.
The overwhelming sensation hit Rhys like a tidal wave. His knees buckled, his legs giving out beneath the sheer force of the climax building at his core. He began to fall backward, but Vespera’s vice grip on his thighs held fast, her feline strength catching his full weight effortlessly and keeping him anchored right where she wanted him. She refused to let go.
With a muffled, shattered gasp, Rhys arched his back and finished hard.
A violent wave of pleasure ripped through his nervous system, leaving him utterly breathless and trembling. Vespera swallowed every drop without missing a beat, taking all of it, her throat working in smooth, greedy swallows until he was completely spent.
Silence rushed back into the kitchen like a heavy vacuum.
Rhys slumped against the granite island, breathing in ragged, hollow gasps, his mind slowly snapping back from the euphoric haze into the cold, crushing reality of what had just happened. He stared down in dazed horror.
Vespera was still on her knees, taking her sweet time. She wiped her lips with the back of her wrist, humming softly, clearly reveling in her stolen meal like a predator licking its chops after a hunt.
She slowly rose to her feet with fluid grace, smoothing down the front of her champagne dress as if she hadn’t just degraded a retired savior of the universe five feet away from his wife.
She leaned in close, her amber eyes burning through him, her voice dropping into a dark, velvet whisper that left no room for argument.
“You’re going to meet me in my car in twenty minutes, Omen,” she purred softly, patting his cheek with a lingering, possessive touch. “And while you step outside... you’re going to tell your lovely little goddess and her heroic friends that I’m currently in the guest bathroom, feeling a bit under the weather.”
She gave him a slow, wicked wink, turned on her heel, and casually strolled toward the hallway bathroom, leaving Rhys standing alone in the quiet kitchen, bruised, spent, and hopelessly trapped.
Retreating to the Living Room
Rhys pulled himself up from the cold granite countertop, his legs trembling so violently he had to lean against the edge of the island just to keep his balance. His breath came in shallow, uneven hitches. Forcing his hands to steady, he adjusted his clothes, zipped his trousers, and meticulously straightened his collar. He scrubbed his face with cold water at the sink, desperate to wash away the flush of intense heat and humiliation that burned on his cheeks.
When he stepped back into the dining room, the warm, golden light felt almost blinding. The ambient sounds of laughter, the clinking of heavy silver forks, and Marcus’s deep, booming voice hit him like a physical wall.
“Everything alright back there, man?” Marcus called out, raising a glass of red wine. “You look like you just went twelve rounds with a dimensional rift.”
“Just... taking care of that wine spill,” Rhys lied smoothly, forcing a relaxed smile onto his face as he slid back into his chair. “Vespera’s in the guest bathroom down the hall. She said she felt a little under the weather all of a sudden, so she’s taking a moment to collect herself.”
Lira offered a small, indifferent nod from the head of the table, not even looking up from her plate. “She probably shouldn’t have opened that reserve so fast. She can take all the time she needs.”
Rhys nodded, jumping right back into the conversation to keep anyone from looking at him too closely. He laughed at Valerie’s jokes, passed the roasted vegetables to Soren, and nodded along to Marcus’s stories. But as the minutes ticked by—five, ten, fifteen—an agonizing, suffocating anxiety began to claw at the inside of his throat. Every glance at the wall clock felt like a countdown to his own execution.
When twenty minutes finally hit, Rhys stood up with a polite, measured movement. “Let me just quickly check on her to make sure she doesn’t need anything before we serve coffee.”
He walked down the long hallway, bypassed the empty guest bathroom, and unlatched the front door.
The cool night air hit his face, but it offered no relief. Sitting in the dark, cobblestone driveway was Vespera’s sleek, matte-black luxury sedan. Leaning lazily against the driver’s side door was Vespera herself. Despite the dark wine stain down the front of her champagne silk dress, she looked breathtaking, almost unfairly gorgeous under the pale moonlight. A slender clove cigarette burned between her fingers, sending a thin trail of sweet, violet smoke drifting up into the dark sky. Her slitted amber eyes caught Rhys the moment he stepped off the porch, a slow, wicked grin spreading across her face.