Hugo raised his hand to her face. His thumb traced her lower lip, collecting the last trace of honey, and he brought it to his own mouth. Her breath hitched.
“Turn around,” he said.
She turned. His fingers found the buttons at the back of her gown, and he unfastened them one by one, pressing a kiss to each inch of skin as it appeared. The nape of her neck. The curve of her spine between her shoulder blades. The warm hollow at the small of her back. With each button, the gown loosened, and with each kiss, her breathing quickened, until the silk slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Lilystood before him in nothing but her chemise and the firelight.
He turned her to face him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her lips were parted. Her green eyes held the vulnerability of a woman standing on the edge of something enormous and choosing not to step back.
Hugo cradled her face in both hands and kissed her. Slowly. With none of the urgency of the terrace or the lake. This kiss was a conversation. A question asked with his mouth and answered with hers, patient and thorough and achingly tender.
He drew back. He lifted the chemise over her head and let it fall. He looked at her, all of her, in the firelight, and the sight drove the air from his lungs.
He laid her on the bed. He undressed himself while she watched, and the way her eyes moved over his body made him feel more exposed than the nakedness itself.
He lowered himself over her, bracing on his forearms, his body hovering above hers without touching. Close enough to feel the heat of her skin. Close enough to count her heartbeats.
“Look at me.”
Lily lay beneath him in the candlelight, her hair fanned across the pillow, her chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. Hugo braced himself above her on his forearms and waited. He was not going to rush this. Not tonight. Not the first time.
Her eyes opened. Green and gold in the flickering light, wide, uncertain, and wanting.
“There she is,” he murmured.
“I am nervous.”
“I know.” He lowered his mouth to the curve of her jaw and pressed a kiss there, soft and unhurried. “We go as slow as you need. If you want to stop, we stop. No questions. No judgment.”
“I do not want to stop.”
“Then look at me.” He held her gaze. “Stay with me.”
Hugo traced the line of her collarbone with one finger. Slowly. The way he might trace a sentence into a book he wanted to memorize. Her skin pebbled beneath his touch, and her breath caught, but her eyes stayed on his.
His finger trailed lower. Down the center of her chest, between her breasts, following the curve of her ribs. He watched her face as he touched her, cataloging every flutter of her lashes, every hitch in her breathing, every place where her body responded before her mind could intervene.
“You are beautiful,” he said.
“You are stalling.”
“I am savoring.” His finger traced the dip of her waist, the swell of her hip, and the soft skin of her stomach.
Her hands gripped the sheets. Her chest rose and fell. Her eyes never left his.
He lowered his mouth to the place where his finger had been and kissed his way along the same path, retracing every inch with his lips. Lily’s back arched off the bed, and the sound she made was not a word but something deeper, something that lived beneath language.
He shifted above her, his weight braced on his forearms, and looked down at her face. Her green eyes were dark in the candlelight, her lips swollen from his kisses, her hair fanned across the pillow. She was trembling, but not from fear. He could read the difference. This was want, pure and urgent, and it mirrored his own so precisely that the restraint nearly broke him.
“Lily.” He brushed a curl from her temple. “Are you certain?”
He eased into her. Slowly. Watching her face, reading every flicker of her expression the way he had learned to read her over months of arguments and lessons and charged, complicated silences.
Her breath caught. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. He stopped.
“I can stop.”
Lily opened her eyes. In response, she drew her knees wider and pulled him deeper, and the sensation that flooded through him nearly shattered the last of his composure. Her body was warm and tight around him, and he bit back a groan and held himself still, giving her time to adjust, giving her space, though every instinct screamed at him to move.
He wanted to ravish her. Possess her. Claim every inch of her until the boundaries between his body and hers dissolve into nothing.
