She fought to regain control, to think clearly, but nothing about what they’d just done allowed for reason.

Aftershocks hit her lower abdomen, sending shivers down to her toes, while Sethios calmly kissed her neck and whispered something foreign in her ears. She thought it might be Coptic, or another ancient language born before her time, but it was lyrical in sound.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered, her throat sore from screaming.

“I’m keeping you.” He kissed her throat again. “For the time being, anyway.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.” He rotated her onto her back and gazed down at her with his alluring eyes. “I’m keeping you, Caro.” He kissed her cheek and rolled off the bed while she gaped after him.

“You can’t keep me.” A wave of dizziness hit her as she tried to sit up, forcing her to lie back down in his bed. Okay, that was bizarre.

“I can, actually.” He opened a drawer while he spoke. “And I am, until we’re done.”

“That is not our agreement.”

“Perhaps not,” he said as he pulled on a pair of gym shorts. “We can renegotiate over lunch.”

“I… This is not a negotiation.”

“Not yet, no. But it will be. In the dining room.” He smiled at her and opened his palm to reveal all her knives. How? Where? “Join me when you’re able, angel. And don’t even think of misting or disappearing on me. I have that well under my control.”

He winked and sauntered off through the bedroom door while she struggled to determine how best to respond to any of that.

How did one fight such foolishness?

She couldn’t stay here, not with her uncompleted mission. Nor did she want to remain with him.

Lie.

Right, well, her body wouldn’t mind the extended holiday, but her brain required much more than a few seductive games to flourish.

She pushed off the bed and flinched at the onset of dizziness again.

What is happening to me?

Seraphim did not suffer from disease or bouts of weakness. But she felt positively awful.

Had he done something to her while she slept? Given her a command to respond to his acts in a human manner?

She frowned. Could he do that?

No.

This wasn’t him so much as her—a reaction to the onslaught of foreign sentiments. Nearly a century living in stoic silence had numbed her and crafted an impenetrable armor around her angelic soul.

But Sethios had cracked it and forced her inner vixen to come out to play.

She expected regret to join her other emotions, except it didn’t. Instead, she felt a strange surge of satisfaction and an equally strong desire to teach Sethios a lesson. Not out of anger or retribution, but out of pure challenge.

He’d commanded her as one would a child, spanked her as well, and then proclaimed to be keeping her. Well, she was not an object to be possessed.

It seemed he was in need of a lesson, one where she reminded him that Seraphim were the superior beings for a reason.