The reinforced glass of the passenger window groaned as Jannah slammed the palm of her hand against it one last time. Dorrent was dragging her back into his territory.

She turned her head sharply, her breathing ragged, her dark hair stuck to her sweating forehead in messy, damp tendrils. The grip he had just used to yank Shadron’s shirt down over her thighs still burned against her hip bone, a phantom heat that refused to cool.

"I am horny, Dorrent," Jannah spat out suddenly, the words sharp, shameless, and deliberate. She leaned back against the seat, her chest heaving beneath the oversized white cotton fabric, her eyes flashing with a wicked, calculated malice. "I am horny, and I need to go and see my boyfriend. Let me out of this car."

It was a lie. A massive, desperate fiction. Jannah had no boyfriend; she lived entirely alone with her grandfather’s company in the squalor of 3rd Street, her heart fiercely guarded against the very concept of intimacy. She was throwing the word into his face like a handful of gravel, wanting him to know that as filthy, unkempt, and wretched as he found her, she still had someone who cherished her. She wanted him to know that outside the glass walls of his pristine palace, she was desired, touched, and held by a man who wasn’t disgusted by her existence.

But beneath the elaborate lie, there was a raw, agonizing truth that her own biology was currently fighting. She was aroused. The heavy, suffocating atmosphere of Shadron’s penthouse—had acted like a catalyst on her untouched, highly sensitive system. Her omega core had been stimulated against her will, the residual heat of that hyper-sexual environment settling deep in her lower abdomen like a heavy, throbbing weight.

Dorrent’s head didn’t turn, but his jaw clenched so hard the muscles along his neck stood. The word boyfriend seemed to physically agitate his aura.

"How crazy is your line of work?" Dorrent asked, his voice dropping into a dangerous, jagged rasp that cut through her words. "Did you truly have to stay in that apartment? Did you have to sit there and listen to them having sex like a dog waiting for scraps?"

Jannah let out a sharp, bitter laugh, tilting her chin high as she stared at his cold profile. "It is my line of work, Alpha Grefo. I am a herbalist. It is my duty to endure, to sit there and ensure that the patient responds correctly to the treatment and is completely well before I take my leave. What happens in the other room is none of my concern. You shouldn’t mind me at all." She leaned closer toward the center console, her voice dropping into a piercing whisper. "In fact, I wonder why you even followed me. Why does a grand, untouchable CEO care where a gutter-rat spends her night?"

"My father," Dorrent replied instantly, the lie slick and fast as it left his lips, though his eyes flared with a sudden, volatile intensity behind his lashes. "Guron told me to ensure your safety. If you are murdered or compromised in the lower districts, the Hodin Oil merger falls through. You are nothing but an insurance policy to me, Jannah." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Jannah’s eyes narrowed, a ruthless, intuitive smirk touching her lips as she caught the subtle tremor in his grip on the steering wheel. She knew exactly where his blade was buried, and she chose that exact moment to twist it with everything she had.

"Safety?" she sneered, her voice dripping with an intoxicating, lethal mockery. "Then why lock up a horny woman in your car, Dorrent? Why trap me here when you know you can’t satisfy me? You’re a king who can’t claim anything. Let me go to a man who actually can."

The words shattered the final thread of Dorrent’s composure.

An explosive, feral rage completely consumed his mind, burning away five years of corporate discipline, logic, and self-restraint in a single fraction of a second. With a violent, sweeping motion of his arm, Dorrent slammed his foot onto the emergency brake. The car shrieked as its thrusters reversed, the vehicle fishtailing sharply before slamming to a dead halt in the middle of the deserted, dark highway lane.

Before the engine could even settle into an idle, Dorrent unbuckled his seatbelt and lunged across the central console like a striking predator.

His hand clamped around her tiny waist, his fingers digging into the fabric of the shirt with enough force to bruise her skin. With a brutal, effortless yank, he dragged her small frame across the leather divider, slamming her back down against his own lap, trapping her between his massive chest and the steering wheel.

Jannah froze instantly, the breath knocked completely from her lungs, her eyes widening in absolute, paralyzed terror as his suffocating, dominant Alpha musk crashed over her senses like a tidal wave.

"You think you’re so brave," Dorrent hissed, his face inches from hers, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, unhinged crimson light. "You think you can stand in my territory and lecture me on what I can and cannot possess?"

Without a single word of warning, driven by a primal, vindictive need to shatter her arrogance, Dorrent reached down. He grabbed the hem of the shirt and violently bunched it upward, pulling it past her waist, completely exposing her to the cool air of the cabin. His hand slid between her thighs, his fingers navigating the heat of her skin until he reached her womanly junction.

His palm pressed firmly over the thin, damp fabric of her cotton underwear.

The moment his hand made contact with that untouched garden, a violent, electric shockwave seemed to rip through both of their bodies simultaneously. Jannah let out a sharp, fractured gasp, her hands locking onto his shoulders as her entire frame began to tremble uncontrollably. The sheer, raw proximity of his heated chest and the expert, heavy pressure of his hand triggered a catastrophic reaction in her highly stimulated omega core.

She got very much wet. Within a matter of seconds, her body turned completely traitor against her mind, producing a sudden, intense wave of natural lubrication that soaked through the thin cotton barrier, becoming so thick and heavy that it began to drip onto the bare skin of Dorrent’s fingers.

Dorrent felt the liquid heat coat his hand, and for a terrifying, breathless beat, the dead nerves in his lower abdomen seemed to scream. He looked down at her face. Jannah was gasping for air, her chest heaving, her eyes dazed and clouded with a sudden, intense pleasure she couldn’t control. Her soft, full lips were parted, glistening with her own saliva under the blue dashboard lights, calling onto him—practically begging him—to lean down and consume her.

The temptation was an abyss, yawning open beneath his feet.

But as his lips hovered a mere inch from hers, the dark, rotting memory of his impotence slammed back into his consciousness like a physical barrier. The self-loathing returned, colder and sharper than before. She’s wet for you, his mind mocked him. But if you take her, if you slide beneath that shirt, you will remain a dead statue. You will fail, and she will see it and mock you.

The illusion broke. With a low, disgusted snarl, Dorrent violently pushed her away, shoving her back into the passenger seat as if she were a piece of burning iron.

He lifted his hand, looking at his fingers that were completely coated in her clear, sweet-smelling omega cream. His face twisted into a mask of pure, icy condescension. He reached over, and with a slow, deliberate, and brutal motion, he smeared the slick moisture from his hand directly onto the white fabric of her dress shirt, staining the clean cotton with her own undone arousal.

"You are a pervert, Jannah," Dorrent whispered, his voice dropping into a flat, freezing register that dripped with an absolute, untouchable malice. He reached for the ignition switch. He looked at her dazed, gasping form through the shadows, his eyes narrowing into thin, lethal slits. "And you are dead wrong if you think I will ever want you."

He slammed the vehicle into gear and ignited the engine, the car shooting forward into the night toward the high walls of the Grefo estate.