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“Tell me if it’s too much,” he said, holding still, his body taut with the effort.

“Alexander, don’t hold back.”

Those were the last words I spoke before he was all the way inside me. There was only one way to describe what it felt like to have him this close. Completion. Not because I had ever been incomplete on my own, but because this intimacy filled a space only he could have filled.

We moved together with the same effortless rhythm that had existed between us from our very first dance. I felt everything. His hand gripping my hair. His lips on my neck. His hand on my hip as he held me close to him. My orgasm began building deep within me, winding tighter with his every thrust.

I was almost there. Somehow, even now, he already knew my body.

He pulled my face to his, exhaling across my lips. “Don’t disappear.”

I ran my fingers through his hair and drew his lips back to mine. Before they could meet, I whispered, “I’m here.”

The tension that had been winding tighter finally snapped as I pulsed around him. I closed my eyes, listening as this composed man reached his peak and finally allowed himself to be heard.

Neither of us moved, both of us undone, his breath ragged against my skin and his pulse hammering under my palm. Then he drew me against him, one arm curving tight around me, holding me to him as if he meant to keep me there. I rested my head over his heart and listened to it race, and then slowly settle.

Later, the fire had burned down to a low amber glow and the rain was falling steadily against the glass. Alexander’s hand traced slow, absent patterns along my arm.

“I keep waiting to feel afraid,” I said eventually.

His hand stilled. “Of this?”

“Of how much I want it to stay.”

His lips brushed the top of my head. “Then let it stay.”

I lifted my head enough to look at him. Firelight moved across a face I had been learning to read, one that was now entirely unguarded. Whatever he had kept behind his careful stillness all this time was simply gone.

“You’re not very good at hiding anymore,” I said softly.

The corner of his mouth lifted. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t seem to be.”

I leaned back against him. Outside the windows, the city blurred into rain and distant light, and somewhere down the corridor Winston sighed in his sleep. Blackwood Hall held the quiet around us the way it always had. Patiently, as though it had been waiting a very long time for exactly this.

“Rain beneath glass,” Alexander whispered.

My heart fluttered. “Rain beneath glass.”

After a while, he pressed a lingering kiss to my forehead. “I’d like to take you somewhere tomorrow. Can I steal you at 10?”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Good.” He stood, then held out his hand to me. “Come.”

Still holding my hand, he led me toward the bedroom, and before long, sleep found us both.

Chapter 19

Emilia

After breakfast, Alexander walked me back to my suite, pausing just outside my door.

“Enjoy your morning. I’ll come for you at ten.”

“I’ll be ready.”

He waited until I’d stepped inside before continuing down the corridor with Winston at his side. I closed the door behind me and stood there, letting the silence welcome me home. Nothing had changed. The books still rested where I had left them the previous afternoon. Sunlight had drifted farther across the sitting room while I had been away, warming the hardwood floor in long, golden rectangles.