She stepped forward.

Two fingers raised.

Snapped.

The yellow portal opened directly in front of Vivienne.

Not large. Not dramatic. Just a clean circle of amber light that existed in the office air where nothing had existed a half-second before, edges sharp, interior depth suggesting somewhere else entirely.

Vivienne looked at it.

She looked at Thalia.

Then, with the resigned acceptance of a woman who had run out of options before breakfast, she stepped through.

Gone.

Sugar walked through after her without adjusting her pace.

The portal closed.

The office was silent.

Thalia exhaled.

She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

"Sigh."

She actually said the word.

Not the sound. The word.

She opened her eyes.

Looked at the desk.

Looked at the city through the glass.

Rolled her neck once.

"Right. Jenny is still somewhere in the—"

The floor disappeared.

Not literally. But the amber portal that opened beneath her feet had the same practical effect — a clean, perfectly-sized circle that swallowed the space she was standing on, and gravity did the rest.

"Kyaaaah~!!"

The ceiling of her office was the last thing she saw before the drop took her.

She fell through grey sky for approximately one second.

Which was enough time to register: outside, daylight, cold air, and the roof of a vehicle directly beneath her.

The impact was softer than it should have been.

Because the roof had a sunroof.

Which was open.

Thalia landed in a lap.

Both of them registered the impact simultaneously — her, with a strangled noise that she would never describe as a squeak under any circumstances, and him with a soft grunt and the automatic reflex of both arms coming up to catch whatever had just fallen out of the sky onto him.

Princess carry.

She was in a princess carry in the back seat of a small car with his arms under her knees and behind her back and her face twelve inches from his face.

Cruxius looked at her.

He was chuckling.

The low, unbothered sound of a man who had arranged exactly this and was satisfied with the execution.

"If you wanted to bounce on my lap," he said, "you could have asked me to unzip first."

"No." Thalia’s voice arrived in rapid succession. "No. No. ’No’—"

She planted both palms against his chest and pushed.

"You absolute—’why did you’—how did you even—"

She pulled her right hand back.

He moved.

Not fast. Just efficient — the specific economy of motion of a man who has done this exact thing before, the twist of his body and the single controlled shift of his grip that transitioned her from princess carry to face-down across the back seat before she fully processed that the movement had started.

Her stomach hit the seat.

Both her hands came together behind her back, caught in one of his, and she felt the seatbelt come across her wrists twice before the buckle clicked.

Her hips were up.

Her face was down in the seat fabric.

"’Leave me’—" She pulled against the seatbelt with both hands and got nowhere. "Right now—I mean it—’Cruxius’—"

His hand came down on her ass.

A single, flat, open-palmed slap across the back of her skirt that landed with a crack and sent the full, heavy flesh beneath it jiggling in a long, rolling wave that the tight fabric did absolutely nothing to absorb.

"AAANHGH~!!"

The sound that came out of her was not the sound she intended to produce.

She pressed her face into the seat.

"I ’hate’—"

He slapped it again.

Same spot. Harder.

"HIIEEK~!!"

The jiggle rolled outward from the impact in both directions this time, up toward her lower back and down the back of her thighs, the skirt straining across the full curve of her ass with the kind of outline that the garment had not been designed to advertise.

Both his hands moved.

Down to her stockings.

Black. Fine denier. The specific quality of something chosen with care and worn with intent.

His fingers found the waistband at her hips.

"Don’t you—" She pulled the seatbelt again. "Don’t you ’dare’—"

He gripped both sides and pulled.

The tearing was quiet and deliberate. Not violent — just the specific, careful destruction of fabric by someone with enough hand strength to make it look easy, the black material splitting from the waistband downward and peeling back to reveal the white underwear beneath.

He held the torn stockings in both hands and looked at them.

Set them aside.

Looked at the white panties.

"Your taste in underwear hasn’t changed."

His voice was carrying the same tone as always — flat, mildly curious, the tone of a man making an observation about weather.

"Bare cotton." A pause. "Still."

"I will kill you," Thalia said into the seat fabric. "When I get my hands free I am going to kill you so many times—"

His fingers found the waistband of the panties.

He pulled.

Not off. Upward.

The cotton stretched, pulling tight between her legs, the fabric gathering against her cunt in a sharp, concentrated pressure that dragged directly across the freshly grown pubic hair beneath it.

"AAANGHH~!! ’STOP’—that ’hurts’—the hair—"

He held the tension for two full seconds.

Her whole body arched backward against the pull, heels coming up off the seat, hands straining against the seatbelt at the small of her back, the white cotton taut to its limit.

Then he let go.

The elastic snapped back.

The waistband hit her cunt with a flat, sharp crack that sent a shockwave directly through every nerve ending in the vicinity.

"AAAAHHH~!! HIIEEK~!! YOU—"

She kicked both legs.

Her heels hit the back of the front seat and bounced.

She pressed her face into the seat cushion and breathed in rapid, shallow bursts while her whole lower body processed the impact and her hands pulled uselessly at the seatbelt.

"I’m going to—" The words came out broken and furious. "I am ’genuinely’ going to—’Cruxius’—"

"I’m sorry."

He said it with the tone of a man who has accidentally bumped someone’s coffee.

Flat. Sincere. Completely without meaning.

She lifted her face from the seat just enough to look at him sideways.

"You are not sorry."

"You’re right." A pause. "I’m not."

His hand moved.

Down the back of the torn stockings, over the white panty, pressing flat against the fabric between her thighs.

He held the pressure there.

Through the cotton.

Over the heat beneath it.

Thalia went still.

Her breathing changed.

The rapid, furious pace of it slowed and deepened involuntarily, the way breathing always does when a body receives the right kind of pressure in the right location regardless of what the person attached to it has decided.

His thumb moved.

One slow circle through the fabric.

"You’re wet."

He said it the way he might say the weather had changed.

Matter-of-fact. Observational.

Her face went back into the seat.

"I’m not."

"You are." His thumb continued its circle. "Should I drink it?"

The question sat in the car.

Outside, the city moved. Traffic. Pedestrians. The ordinary mid-morning indifference of a world that was not aware of what was happening in the back seat of a small parked car on its periphery.

Thalia’s hands had stopped pulling the seatbelt.

Not because she had given up.

Because her arms were no longer entirely reliable on the question of what they were supposed to be doing.

"I will find a way," she said, voice muffled against the seat, "to make you regret this."

His thumb pressed down.

Harder.

"Hngh~!!"

The sound escaped her before she had time to prevent it.

Small. Involuntary.

The specific sound of a body betraying a decision.

He heard it.

She knew he heard it.

The chuckle was very quiet.

"Pfft... I guess, I trained your body and pussy well enough."

"Y-you shameless— HIEEEK~~~!! Anghh~?!"