This penthouse wasn’t like Sovereign Tower, that one back in Paradise had three floors stacked — a three story apartment within a tower, a dragon’s lair built upward because the city’s skyline demanded it.

This one spread outward. The Infinity Chaos penthouse filled entire top floor of the hotel in a single sprawling horizontal plane that made Phei’s old suite look like a starter apartment with ambitions above its station.

The ceilings were just as high — cathedral-high, absurdly high, the kind of ceilings that existed solely so a man could look up and be reminded that the space above his head had also been purchased — but the width of the place was something else entirely.

Five bedrooms, each one larger than his old room back in Paradise, it spread across the floor with so much distance between them that walking from one to the next required actual commitment.

Phei walked barefoot through the corridor, the polished dark floors cool beneath his feet like the palm of some ancient, approving deity, the black-white trousers silent against his legs as though even cloth understood the gravity of what was about to unfold.

Morning sun poured through the glass walls in long, warm columns that felt less like light and more like the hands of a lover — open, reverent, and far too knowing.

The walk to Catrina’s room took longer as the penthouse swallowed distance the way it swallowed everything else — quietly, expensively, without apology. He passed a living area, the second kitchen and an entire lounge that existed, apparently, for the sole purpose of providing a place where no one currently was.

The corridor turned once, opened into a wider section with higher ceilings, and at the far end stood a set of tall double doors — dark wood, polished, heavy enough to keep out sound and pride in equal measure.

Phei knocked. Silence. He waited in the quiet stretch as the morning settled around the closed doors like warm water filling a glass.

’Is she even—’

"Come in."

Her voice was small and almost careful; carrying enough controlled composure to fill about half a sentence before the tremor underneath swallowed the rest.

’She is already awake.’

Phei knocked again — softer this time, the courtesy of giving her one more second to prepare herself for whatever she’d decided to do — and then opened the door...

...And stopped.

The bedroom was enormous. Floor-to-ceiling windows and the same golden morning light flooding through glass, catching every surface, turning the whole room into an amber cathedral.

The bed was a sprawling white monument to excess, nearly as large as his own, silk sheets tangled from a night of restless sleeping or not sleeping at all.

But none of that was what made him pause. What made him pause was her.

Standing beside the bed, waiting, as though she’d gotten up when she heard his footsteps in the corridor and had arranged herself here, in this exact spot, with the morning light falling across Catrina in exactly the way it was falling now, and had been holding this position while her courage built itself brick by trembling brick.

Catrina was like an offering the light itself had arranged but in an alluring thin nightie clinging to the soft curve of her hips and the gentle round of her breasts; the fabric was translucent enough in the golden glow to hint at the darker shadows beneath, and the tight peaks already betraying her anticipation.

Every line of her body screamed vulnerability and invitation in the same breath.

’So that’s what the long silence was for...’

She’d been preparing; the room — herself, gathering whatever she had left in whatever reservoir of bravery she drew from, the same reservoir that had driven her onto her toes in a golden hallway last night to kiss a man she called Boss with a mouth that had never kissed anyone before.

Phei stepped inside and closed the double doors behind him.

The sound of them shutting was a deep percussive thunk that sealed the room from the rest of the penthouse and landed in the quiet like a period at the end of a long sentence.

A period that marked the end of hesitation and the beginning of something far more dangerous and exquisite.

He leaned back against the doors his hands sliding into his pockets settling against the dark wood.

His bare chest was catching the morning light, the black-white trousers sat low on his hips, his amethyst eyes finding hers across the room with the unhurried precision of a man who had walked into this room knowing exactly what was happening and intended to let her set the pace anyway.

She was looking at him but not at his face; lower...

...at the bare expanse of his chest and shoulders and stomach that had been sculpted into something that made women forget their own names.

Her mouth was slightly open, eyes moving across him with the helpless, involuntary hunger of someone trying not to stare and failing so completely that the failure had become the statement.

"We can’t keep dragging this on," Phei said quietly. "Can we?"

She shook her head, while the movement was small and shy.

Her eyes pulled away from his body and then snapping back because they couldn’t stay away, her fingers which had been gripping the hem of her nightie in tight anxious fists, knuckles pale, the fabric bunched and twisted from minutes of nervous wringing; she was releasing the fabric slowly, one finger at a time, as though letting go of it was letting go of the last barrier between her and the words she’d been building toward since last night.

"I—" she started, stopped; her chest rose with a breath that was too big for her lungs. Her eyes were bright and wide and terrified and desperately, achingly brave.

"I want you to take... my v—"

The word died and collapsed in her throat like a bridge that had been asked to carry more weight than it was ever designed for, and Catrina’s face flushed scarlet — not the shy pink of embarrassment but the deep, full-body crimson of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted to say and whose mouth had staged a last-second rebellion against her own courage.

Phei’s mouth curved, slow and dark with something between reverence and wicked amusement.

Of all the battles he had survived, none had prepared him for the sight of this girl — this brave, yet trembling creature choking on the single most important word of her life while her body already screamed it in every line of her stance.

Silence...

But the silence could not hold. Not with the air between them thick as honeyed sin, not with her scent — warm skin, clean soap, and the faint, sweet musk of awakening desire — already curling around his restraint like smoke.