Page 96 of Mane Rival in Store

The mark on her right shoulder pulsed gold in the dim light. The claiming mark. His teeth, his choice, her acceptance. He pressed his lips to it and the warmth flared—not a glow visible to anyone else, but a heat between them, a frequency they shared, the biological confirmation that the bond was alive and mutual and permanent. She arched into the contact. Her fingers found his hair and the strands rose to greet her touch and neither of them cataloged it or joked about it because the joke had evolved into a language and the language said I know you, I want you, I’m here.

They made it to the floor. The cape spread beneath her—purple silk on industrial concrete, a detail that was so perfectly them that she started laughing and couldn’t stop. He was above her, braced on his forearms, his hair falling around her face, and she was laughing and he was watching her laugh and the wanting and the joy lived side by side without competing for space.

“We’re on a floor.”

“We are.”

“In a stockroom. On a cape.”

“I’m aware of the setting.”

“This is the most ridiculous place anyone has ever⁠—”

He kissed her quiet. Not forcefully—gently, the way he’d learned to, the way she’d taught him by refusing to accept the version of him that only knew intensity. Her laughter faded into the kiss and then returned, softer, mixed with a sound that was lower and warmer and had nothing to do with humor.

The rest of their clothes found the floor. His trousers folded over a box of lipstick samples. Her skirt draped across an authentication kit. The organizational absurdity of their combined inventory surrounded them—villain merchandise and rare editions and preservation equipment—and he moved inside her with a rhythm that started slow and built, built, and the building was joyful.

She said his name. He said hers. His back scraped the concrete through the silk and he didn’t notice because her legs were around his waist and her hands were in his hair and the mark on her shoulder was warm against his lips and the sound she made when she came was a gasp followed by a laugh that broke into his name again, which was the most beautiful sequence of sounds he’d ever heard in any language.

His own release followed—a wave that crested and broke and left him breathing against her neck with his hair flat and peaceful and his arms trembling from the effort of keeping his weight off her. She held him. Her fingers traced patterns on his back—lazy, satisfied, basking.

“Your hair is doing the happy thing,” she observed.

“Mm.”

“It’s very calm. Post-performance contentment. I’m adding it to the guide.”

He pressed a laugh into her collarbone. She raked her nails lightly across his scalp and his entire body went limp—a lion whose mate was touching the mane and the world was warm and the stockroom floor was uncomfortable but leaving it would require moving and moving would require releasing her and that was structurally impossible.

Her elbow shifted. Nudged a box on the bottom shelf.

The box nudged a display stand that had been stored upright.

The display stand tipped. Slowly. With the inevitable, catastrophic grace of a domino engineered for maximum property damage. It struck a second stand. The second struck a cardboard display tower. The tower—a six-foot promotional standee for the new Celestial Ronin collection—toppled sideways into a shelf of Villainette candle stock, which crashed to the floor with a sound like a percussion section tuning up in a china shop.

The store alarm triggered.

The sound was deafening—a shrieking electronic wail that filled the stockroom and echoed through both stores and out into the SoHo street.

They lay on the floor. Naked. On a silk cape. Surrounded by the wreckage of a promotional standee, fourteen spilled candles, and a slowly spreading puddle of authentication-grade cleaning solution from a bottle that had been knocked off the shelf in the cascade.

The alarm screamed.

“We need to explain this to insurance.” Her voice was thin with laughter. Tears were forming.

“No, we don’t.”

“We absolutely do. There are itemized losses. That standee was a limited promotional asset.”

“I will replace the standee.”

“And the candles. Fourteen candles at thirty-two dollars retail. My inventory tracking is going to have a seizure.”

“I will also replace the⁠—”

Her phone rang. The screen lit up on the floor three feet away, face-up, the caller ID glowing in the alarm-lit darkness.

BREEZY VEGA.