[Ava's POV]
The return from the mountain was a journey made in a silence more profound than the roar of the engine had been. Lucien’s body, a rigid wall before her, thrummed with a tension that had nothing to do with the winding road and everything to do with the new, sweet-rotten truth perfuming the air between them.
He’d driven with a ferocious, focused speed, as if pursued by the scent itself. Back at the penthouse, he’d delivered her not to a couch or her room, but to Rhett in the main living area with a series of clipped, technical instructions that sounded like a field medic’s report:
“Monitor for thermal spikes. Hydration. No stimulants. The containment field in the east solarium is active if needed.”
His eyes, when they finally met hers, held no tenderness, only a stark, calc
