The morning light filtered through the floor-to-ceiling window, casting soft gold across the white sheets tangled around their bodies. The bedroom was wrapped in stillness, luxurious and sun-soaked, with high ceilings and ivory walls that made every movement feel slow, deliberate, sacred. The faint rustle of linen was the only sound, blending with the distant hush of the city below. Beyond the glass, Barcelona stretched wide and endless, terracotta rooftops glowing under the rising sun. The bed—a vast expanse of cloud-white fabric—sat at the center of it all like a throne, its only occupants wrapped in a rare kind of silence.

Malakai lay half-propped against the headboard, bare-chested, the smooth lines of his frame catching the morning warmth. One hand rested lazily against the edge of the sheets, the other trailing the faintest imprint along her spine. His expression, always unreadable in crowds or contracts, had softened here—unguarded. The world beyond the glass didn’t exist in this moment. No violence, no contracts, no calculated silence. Just her. Just the sun painting lines across her skin, and the unbearable stillness of a man who never allowed himself to want anything—except this.