The thick, hand-woven wool carpets of the top-floor corridor completely swallowed their footsteps.
Victoria clung tightly to Caspian's arm, deliberately pressing the heavy, soft swell of her breasts against his firm bicep. Her breathing was ragged and scorching. Beneath her ribs, a heart overfilled with toxic vanity and primal, hypergamous lust beat at a frantic, deafening rhythm.
Just minutes ago, she had believed Tyler Thorne was her golden ticket to the apex of high society. But now, the fiancé who had literally pissed himself in front of the city's elite was nothing more than rotting sludge in the gutter of her mind.
The man walking beside her—he was a true god. If she could just get him on his back, if she could conquer him between the sheets, she would permanently crush her lifelong rival, Chloe, under her heel!
Beep—
Victoria pressed her thumb against the biometric scanner, unlocking the most opulent, exclusive VIP suite in all of Sancta Lodo.
The moment they stepped inside, she eagerly slammed the heavy, solid oak door shut. She engaged the electronic deadbolt and activated the room's high-grade Aetheric soundproofing barrier. The world outside ceased to exist, leaving only the dim, seductive warmth of the crystal wall sconces.
Victoria leaned back against the locked door, exhaling a long, shuddering breath. Her meticulously painted eyes glimmered with the feverish greed of a hunter who had just trapped the ultimate prey.
She thought she had successfully locked a beast in a cage. She had absolutely no idea she had just sealed her own tomb.
Caspian didn't lunge at her. He didn't tear at her clothes, blinded by the aphrodisiac as she had expected.
Instead, he walked with unhurried, aristocratic grace toward the center of the room and sat down on a wide, single-seater leather sofa. He casually crossed his long legs. Beneath his skin, the High-Grade Spiritual Aphrodisiac he had swallowed was violently detonating the dormant [Destruction Toxin]. Boiling, apocalyptic magma roared through his mortal veins, screaming to tear the world apart.
His abyssal purple eyes already flickered with terrifying, dark lightning, yet his mind remained horrifyingly lucid. He sat there, quietly looking down at the woman by the door.
There was not a single trace of love or lust in his gaze. It was the cold, calculating stare of a man evaluating the capacity of a trash bag.
But Victoria, thoroughly blinded by her own hubris and arousal, failed to sense the lethal danger. She interpreted his statuesque stillness as the tantalizing 'push-and-pull' of a powerful man.
"Mr. Vane, whatever are you waiting for? Your body is practically radiating heat..."
Victoria bit her glossed red lip coquettishly. Reaching up with crimson-painted nails, she slowly pulled down the thin strap of her black evening gown.
The expensive silk pooled at her ankles, revealing a set of outrageously provocative, high-end black lace lingerie that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She proudly displayed her flawless, snow-white curves and long, slender legs to the man sitting in the shadows.
She had absolute confidence in her flesh. In the elite circles of Sacred Heart, no mortal man could resist this sight.
Stepping out of her dress in her six-inch red-soled heels, Victoria slithered across the plush carpet like a seductive viper, stopping right between Caspian's parted knees.
"I bet Chloe, that boring little ice block, doesn't know how to properly serve you, does she?" Victoria purred, making no attempt to hide her bitter rivalry.
Breathing heavily, she naturally parted her thighs, intending to straddle Caspian's lap. Her greedy hands reached eagerly for the cold metal buckle of his bespoke Hermes belt, wanting to personally unleash the beast she believed she had ignited.
However.
The exact millisecond her crimson nail grazed the metal buckle.
Smack.
Caspian's eyes turned glacial. His large, pale hand shot out, clamping down on Victoria's wrist with the bone-crushing force of an industrial vice.
"Ah!" Victoria cried out in sudden agony. Her seductive advance was violently interrupted, and she crashed to her knees on the rug before the sofa.
The temperature in the suite plummeted to absolute zero.
Caspian sat perfectly still. He hadn't even unbuttoned his suit jacket. He leaned forward slightly, his purple eyes swirling with universe-shattering malice and a suffocating, physiological revulsion.
He looked down at the breathtaking, half-naked woman kneeling between his legs. There was no trace of seduction in his heart. There was only the extreme, god-like disgust of a sovereign looking at a cockroach.
If my Genesis Core had recovered even a single percent, Caspian thought, his internal monologue dripping with cold, clinical mockery, I wouldn't need to dirty my own hands with a lowly 'Vessel' like this. I could just sit here and telepathically dump my toxic waste directly into her spiritual sea, letting her soul be hollowed out in the void.
But not today.
His newly reborn, mortal shell was simply too fragile. Compounded by the high-grade aphrodisiac, the Destruction Toxin was at the absolute brink of a catastrophic blowout. Without higher-dimensional administrative privileges, he had no choice. He needed a physical medium. He had to use this woman as a crude, biological 'grounding wire' to safely conduct the volatile dark lightning out of his system through raw, physical friction.
To reclaim the throne, one must occasionally wade through the most disgusting mud, Caspian sneered internally.
"Mr. Vane...?" Victoria's voice began to tremble. A primal, instinctual terror finally breached her lust, gripping her heart like a vice. "Y-You drank the wine... Don't you need me to help you find release?"
"A release? Certainly."
A demonic, cruel smirk curled Caspian's lips. He slowly stood up. His towering, six-foot-three frame cast a long, imposing shadow that completely engulfed the trembling woman on the floor.
"But I find you filthy."
Caspian's voice was the icy judgment of a reaper. Using only one hand, he unbuckled his belt. But he did not take off his expensive suit jacket, nor did he offer her a single kiss or the slightest caress of human affection.
"Since you went through so much trouble to drug me, delivering yourself to my door to act as a container..." Caspian reached down, his large hand violently gripping a fistful of Victoria's perfectly styled hair.
He forced her up and roughly spun her around, slamming her lush upper body face-down over the armrest of the leather sofa. He didn't even allow her the privilege of looking at his face.
"Then shut your eyes, act like the trash can you are, and swallow every last drop of this waste!"
With that apocalyptic decree, Caspian offered zero foreplay and zero mercy. Driven by the agonizing need to purge the boiling, aphrodisiac-laced Destruction Toxin, he entered her from behind with a brutal, unforgiving savagery.
"GAAAHHHH—!"
Victoria threw her head back, unleashing a blood-curdling shriek. It was a terrifying, paradoxical scream—torn between the agonizing sensation of her soul being ripped apart by high-dimensional dark matter, and a wave of mind-melting, cosmic pleasure that completely bypassed human biology.
The deadbolt was locked. The prey was pinned to the slaughtering block. A merciless, degrading execution—purely to keep the Sovereign alive—had officially begun in the VIP suite.