“You didn’t.” His voice was rougher than he wished. “You only… caught me.”
A silence stretched—delicate, weighted.
Then he began walking toward her.
She did not move.
Not back.
Not away.
Her eyes followed him, wide and steady.
When he reached her, neither spoke. He simply lifted one hand—slow enough for her to stop him—and touched the escaped tendril of hair that clung to her collarbone.
“Celine,” he murmured. “You shouldn’t be wandering the hall dressed like this.”
“I only stepped out for some water.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” A quiet breath. “I’m not cold.”
“No,” he said. “Neither am I.”
His thumb brushed the hollow of her throat.
She shivered—the kind of shiver that made his restraint fracture.
The glass in her hand trembled.
He took it gently, set it on the small table along the wall.
“Elias,” she breathed.
“Tell me to leave,” he said. “And I will.”
She did not tell him.
Instead, she looked up at him, luminous and vulnerable and impossibly brave.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
That was all.
He kissed her.
Slow at first—unbearably slow—his lips scarcely brushing hers, as though the slightest pressure might shatter them both.
She inhaled sharply, her hands lifting of their own accord to his shoulders, fingers curling in the soft linen of his nightshirt.
The kiss deepened.
Heat unfurled between them—not the wild, reckless heat of their previous encounters, but something deeper, more deliberate, anchored in everything they had come to mean to each other.
He backed her gently toward her chamber door.
Her breath hitched when her spine met the wood.
