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She found the ache I'd been choking down since waking. The hunger I'd tried to bury beneath control. It spilled into her—and hers spilled back into me.

Her lips parted. Mine parted with them.

The bond didn't let us hide. Every quickening pulse, every flush of heat, every place her body grew aware of mine—I felt it. Tasted it. Drowned in it. And she drowned right back, her want threading through my chest like a hand closing around my heart.

“August.” My name was barely a whisper, but it shattered something in my chest. It had been a command in my father's mouth. In hers, it was reverence and recognition. The sound of someone who saw me—truly saw me—and chose to stay anyway.

My hand moved without permission. Settled against the curve of her hip. Just resting there. The lightest touch.

Fire flashed through the bond.

Her eyes fluttered closed. Her body arched into my palm, and the want that poured through the bond buckled something in my chest. All of it narrowed to this single point of contact—her skin, my hand, the heat between us building into something I couldn't control.

My grip tightened, and the gasp it pulled from her hit me through the bond before the sound even reached my ears. My vision went narrow, my breath jagged, every thought in my head dissolving into the single white-hot point where my hand met her skin.

A knock at the door.

We froze.

“Breakfast in ten minutes,” Diana's voice came through the wood. Utterly indifferent to what she had interrupted. “Planning session after. I shall not come up here again.”

Footsteps retreating down the stairs.

Lily's forehead dropped against my shoulder. A sound escaped her—half laugh, half groan.

“Of course,” she murmured against my skin. “Of course there is a planning session.”

“We are preparing for war.”

“War can wait.”

“Diana cannot.”

She groaned again but pulled away, taking her warmth with her. The loss was immediate—a cold absence where her body had been, and an ache through the bond that echoed my own.

I watched her stand. Watched her stretch—arms above her head, spine arching, the borrowed nightgown pulling tight across her shoulders. Through the bond, every muscle she woke became mine. The pull across her back. The pleasant ache of her body warming. The way the stretch traveled down her spine and settled low. My attention narrowed to a blade's edge. The house could have burned around us.

She went still. Over her shoulder, her gaze found mine—and the bond betrayed me completely. Every hungry thought. Every place my eyes had lingered. The exact shape of what I wanted to do to her.

Her lips curved. She didn't look away. “You are staring.”

“Yes.”

No denial. No apology. I was staring. She knew precisely why.

Something shifted in her expression. A decision made.

She turned her back to me. Reached for the hem of her nightgown. Drew it slowly—impossibly slowly—over her head.

I stopped breathing.

The long line of her spine. The dimples at the small of her back. Skin I had touched once, in Oxford, in stolen moments before everything fell apart. Now laid bare before me while the bond carried every sensation—the cool morning air raising goosebumps, the whisper of fabric sliding away, her acute awareness of my gaze like a hand running down her back.

This was deliberate cruelty. This was mercy. I would worship at the altar of her spine if she would let me. I would spend the rest of my life learning every curve, every freckle, every place her breath caught when touched just so.

The sheets twisted beneath my fists. My knuckles blanched, bloodless, while my heart fluttered like a trapped thing begging to be free.

She reached for fresh clothes. Pulled them on with deliberate care. Each layer a small death. Chemise sliding over her head—silk whispering against skin I had memorized in the dark. Corset tightening, laces pulling, her breath catching at the pressure—and mine catching with it. Petticoat. Dress. Her fingers worked buttons with agonizing patience while the bond sang with every brush of fabric, every inch of her disappearing beneath layers I wanted to peel away with my teeth.