The morning after the explosive dinner arrived without raised voices.

Elena woke on the study couch with Marcus’s arm around her and the thick residual heat of the night still inside her. He had taken her after the dinner detonation—quiet, intense, wrists pinned, the claim pressed back into her body like a refusal to let the explosion at the table change the ownership. The lower marks under his forearm ached in the deep claimed way. The master bedroom upstairs had stayed closed all night. Victoria had not come down. The house felt scraped raw and strangely quiet, as if the detonation had burned through the held breath and left something...