Maddie placed a hand over her heart as if touched. "Honey," she told Jade warmly, "that is the most romantic thing anyone has said to us in at least an hour."

Jade’s brow lifted by a hair, but the princess held her composure.

"We do not need padding," Maddie added, her eyes sparkling with ruin. Then she tilted her head at Phei. "Do we, honey?"

Phei turned and kissed her quickly on the lips, a swift affectionate kiss that managed to be both reassuring and provocative because he had long ago become offensively good at those.

"The faster and more dangerous," he said as he turned back to Jade, "the better."

Jade’s gaze flicked once to Maddie, then returned to him, and if she judged either of them for being two attractive lunatics standing in a palace of machinery and asking how to make a death missile less safe, she gave no sign of it.

Maddie then leaned up and whispered something into Phei’s ear.

His expression changed.

Only slightly.

But enough.

He looked back at Jade. "How much does this car shake?"

The question should have sounded innocent.

It did not.

Unfortunately for Phei, unfortunately for Jade, and perhaps most unfortunately for civilization, Maddie was standing right there wearing a smile like a devil who had just successfully bribed gravity.

Jade, however, answered with perfect calm.

"It does not shake at all," she said. "The chassis remains extremely composed, even under aggressive output."

"Good," Maddie said at once.

Then she turned to Jade with sweet treachery. "You should show the others around. Phei and I will check the interior."

Now, there were two possibilities:

Either Jade Park truly took the sentence at face value, pure and mechanical and innocent, or she understood exactly what Maddie meant and simply possessed too much grace to react like a flustered schoolgirl in front of her staff, the women, and the absurdly handsome boy currently trying very hard not to laugh.

Phei honestly could not tell.

That alone fascinated him.

Jade merely nodded, flawless as moonlight on polished glass. "Of course. Call me when you are done. I still have more surprises for you."

More surprises.

As though tonight had not already become a sustained attack on his peace, wallet and romantic stability.

Phei nodded once. "We will."

Jade turned smoothly and guided the others onward, Noor and Soraya following with wide eyes, Cassiopeia drifting after them, Valentina smiling faintly to herself, Sierra glancing back once with a look that said I know nonsense when I see it, and the staff wisely pretending they were too professional to notice anything.

Within moments, Phei and Maddie were left beside the crouching black beast, alone enough for trouble to stretch its limbs comfortably.

Phei turned to her slowly.

"You Chaos demoness," he said, voice low and amused, "I hope you know what you just asked for."

Maddie leaned back against the car with lazy confidence, one hand sliding along the dark bodywork like she had every right to claim both machine and man in the same breath. She let the silence sit a moment, let him look, because she knew precisely what she was doing when she arched her spine just slightly against the cold black metal and tipped her chin up so the showroom light traced the line of her throat.

Maddie had never once mistaken seduction for surrender.

She wielded her own beauty like she wielded everything else, deliberately, with relish, and a complete absence of mercy.

"Did I ask," she said sweetly, "or did I simply create an opportunity for you to prove you deserve me?"

He stared at her for a second.

Then laughed.

"That mouth of yours is eventually going to get you into trouble."

Her smile sharpened. "With you? That is rather the point."

Phei stepped closer.

The huge glossy body of the Pczinger loomed behind her like a witness with expensive taste.

The purple lines along the car’s sides gleamed softly under the showroom lights, and Maddie stood between that predatory machine and his own rising appetite with the infuriating ease of a girl who had never learned the useful art of caution. She did not shrink as he closed the distance:

If anything she expanded into it, uncoiling against the bodywork, one knee lifting to brush slow along the outside of his thigh, her whole posture an invitation phrased as a dare.

"You really want to test the interior that badly?" he asked.

Maddie tilted her head, golden eyes bright with wicked amusement. "What, are you scared of your second real beast?"

He placed a hand on the car beside her, caging her in just enough to make the intent obvious without making the moment heavy. The trap, of course, was that caging Maddie never worked the way it was meant to.

She simply looked up at him from inside it, delighted, like he had built her a very small and very flattering throne.

Her hands found the front of his shirt, not pushing him away, just resting there, fingertips spread over his chest where she could feel exactly what her nearness was doing to his pulse, and the slow satisfaction that bloomed across her face told him she had felt it and intended to be insufferable about it.

"The beast does not worry me," he said.

"No?" she murmured. Her thumb dragged a small idle circle against his sternum, and her voice dropped into something lower, something that lived several rooms away from innocence. "Then why is your heart going like that?"

"That is the engine."

"The engine is off, dragon."

He looked at her — at the lush curve of her mouth, the heat rising beneath her skin, the way she had arranged herself against ten million credits of carbon and menace like she was the most expensive thing in the building and knew it.

"No?" she said again, softer.

"No." His mouth curved. "But you, Maddie? You are beginning to look like a maintenance hazard."

She laughed, soft and delighted, the sound vibrating where her body had drifted flush against his, and then reached up and caught his chin between her fingers, tilting his face down to hers with lazy authority — she had decided, somewhere in the last minute, that ownership between them ran in both directions, and she intended to exercise her half.

"Bold words from a man who asked how the car shakes."

Phei lowered his face a little. "That was a perfectly respectable engineering concern."

"Liar." Her fingers slid from his chin to the back of his neck, into his hair, and tightened just enough to be a statement. "You wanted to know if it would survive us."

"And will it?"

"That depends entirely," she breathed against his lips, "on whether you do."

"Demoness."

"Dragon."

He kissed her then—not long, not yet, but enough to make her hum against his mouth and enough to tell her exactly what sort of "interior inspection" he had in mind if she kept testing him like this.

She melted into it without an ounce of the surrender melting usually implied, kissing him back like she was still winning, her body curving up into his until the cold of the car behind her and the heat of him in front were the only two facts left in the room.

When he pulled away, Maddie’s lips curved with slow satisfaction, kiss-bruised and entirely too pleased with the state she had reduced them both to.

"Well," she whispered, glancing toward the sleek dark cockpit of the Sovereign, her hand already finding the door seam and her voice gone honey-dark, "are you going to show me what this fighter jet can do inside?"

Phei’s grin returned, beautiful and dangerous.

"Oh," he said, opening the door with a smooth, deliberate motion, "challenge accepted."