The jealousy did not fade with the drive home.

It settled into Marcus like a second heartbeat and stayed there through the night and into the next morning.

Elena felt it in the way he looked at her across the breakfast table while Victoria scrolled through emails—longer than usual, darker, the public distance still intact but the private current underneath it charged with something sharper than the ordinary hunger. She felt it in the brief brush of his fingers against the small of her back as he passed behind her chair, a touch so light Victoria would never notice and so deliberate it left a trail of heat through the...