“This is it,” she whispered. “Thirty days.”
“Yes.” He looked at her, and she had never seen such tenderness in his eyes. “It is.”
She waited.
Any moment now, she told herself. He would take her hand. He would unlock her door. He would say it was time.
But he didn’t.
He lifted her hand instead and pressed his lips to her knuckles—not with hunger, but with something that felt like a vow.
“Celine,” he murmured, “tonight… I don’t trust myself to touch you the way I feel for you now.”
Her breath stilled. “Elias—”
“It isn’t restraint,” he said quickly. “Not lack of want. Goodness knows I want you more than air.” He exhaled softly, heavily. “But tonight, what I feel isn’t desire. Not just desire. It’s…” He searched for the word. Found one that shook him. “More.”
She felt it too. This wasn’t the urgent, hungry fire that had tormented them for weeks—this was gentler, steadier. Frightening in a different way.
A beginning, not an end.
“If I take you tonight,” he said, voice low and aching, “I will not be thinking as a man who won a wager. Or ended an agreement. I will be thinking…” He paused, throat working. “As a man giving himself to the woman he… cherishes.”
Her heart fluttered painfully. “And that is wrong?”
“No.” He shook his head. “It is too right. Too important for tonight. For exhaustion and gossip and the wreckage of old wounds.”
She stepped closer. “Elias—”
He touched her cheek with the back of his fingers, so lightly it made her shiver.
“I want our first night to be chosen,” he whispered. “Not simply allowed. Not the end of a bargain. I want it to be the beginning of us.”
Her eyes stung with something dangerously close to tears.
“So do I,” she whispered.
He dipped his forehead to hers, their breaths mingling. For a moment, they simply stood there, suspended in a closeness that was almost holy.
Then he drew back.
“Goodnight, Celine.”
“Goodnight, Elias.”
She entered her room. Closed the door.
On the other side, she heard him pause. Heard him rest his hands against the wood, his breath catching ever so faintly.
Then footsteps. Slow. Steady. Not fleeing desire this time—only protecting it.
Protectingher.
Celine touched the door with trembling fingers.
She had thought the greatest proof of his want would be when he finally reached for her.
But now she knew—
