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I lower my glass, rapt.

“Vaughn liked red wine. I gave him foxglove. It’s a poison.” Maggie ticks them off on her fingers, her voice calm and detached. “Hargreaves injected his own insulin. I swapped the concentration. Rook slept in a panic room. I sealed the ventilation. Morgan ignored maintenance reports. I redirected a generator exhaust pipe into his bedroom.”

“And the fifth?” I ask, my voice scraping the bottom of my throat.

“Pike kept a chained infected in his cellar to torture his prisoners.” The warmth leaves her eyes, replaced by a cold, hollow shadow. “I let it off the chain. The beast tore into him, and the infection did the rest. I walked away.”

She finishes the rest of the Vasari spirits, setting the empty glass on the map.

“Nobody knew the deaths were connected,” she murmurs, staring at the empty crystal. “They blamed heart failure, dosing errors, faulty equipment, and a wild husk. By morning, London had no leaders. The garrisons were in chaos. I stepped in. I had the access codes, the keys, the supply routes. I built this bunker on their graves.”

She looks up, meeting my gaze, perhaps waiting for the horror. Waiting for the judgment.

Instead, I’m absolutely awed by her.

Five funerals. Zero witnesses. One perpetrator.

She out-monstered the monsters. She didn’t use a heavy gun or an army. She used her beautiful mind. She turned their own paranoia and vices into weapons and systematically dismantled their empires in a single night without leaving a single fingerprint behind.

SUBJECT: ELMSLEIGH, MARGARET.

THREAT ASSESSMENT: APOCALYPTIC.

The admiration morphs instantly into lust. Heat roars through my veins, a flash fire igniting every nerve ending as my hearts pound a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

I set my glass down on the table with a sharp clink.

Maggie blinks, the haze of the alcohol slowing her reactions.

I push off the edge of the table and step around it. The space between us vanishes. She remains seated, her head tilting up to track my movement. The flush on her cheeks is vibrant. Her breath catches, her chest rising and falling rapidly under the crisp white cotton.

“You are a masterpiece,” I breathe, stopping inches from her chair.

She stares at me, her eyes wide. She doesn’t reach for her icy barrier. She doesn’t deliver a deadpan insult. I see a reflection of the sensations coursing through my system in the way she looks at me.

My body reacts with complete possession.

My cock hardens, a heavy ache pressing aggressively against the seam of my synth-weave trousers. The fabric stretches taut over the ridged length. There is no hiding it, and I don’t attempt to. I stand before her, an apex predator completely brought to his knees by a human politician.

Maggie’s gaze drops.

She looks at the undeniable evidence of my arousal. Her lips part, and a soft, shaky exhale escapes her mouth.

She doesn’t look away in disgust. She doesn’t scream at me to step back. She stares at the dark fabric, her pupils dilating until the blue of her eyes is almost entirely swallowed by black.

I lean down, bracing one hand on the back of her chair and the other on the metal table, caging her in. The glowing orange neural filaments along my neck pulse brightly, casting a warm light over her flushed skin.

“Maggie,” I whisper, my voice vibrating with raw need.

She lifts her chin. Her eyes lock onto mine. The calculation is gone. The defiance is gone. There is only the heavy, magnetic pull drawing us together.

“If you intend to continue staring at my mouth,” she murmurs. “I suggest you do something useful about it.”

Her fingers close around my shirt.

I lean in and press my mouth to hers.

The contact sends a jolt of electricity through me. She tastes like salt spray, starlight, and dark tea. She gasps against my lips, a tiny, startled sound, but she doesn’t pull away.