Chapter 13 #2
Heat shot up her arm and straight down through her body so fast she almost inhaled sharply in front of the entire court. Her stomach tightened. Her thighs did. Everything in her went suddenly, helplessly alert.
Lucien felt it too.
His eyes darkened. His hand closed fractionally over hers before he let go.
The room watched.
Sabine lifted the cup and drank, though her mouth had gone dry enough that swallowing took effort. The wine tasted of clove, smoke, and something sweet that hit the back of her tongue and made the whole moment worse.
Or better.
She set the cup down with deliberate care.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
Lucien inclined his head once and returned to the dais.
Conversation resumed.
But too late. The room had seen it. Not just the offering. Not just the symbolism. Something in the pause. Something in the touch.
The rest of the banquet blurred.
Sabine ate what was required. Refused what seemed dangerous. Accepted what protocol demanded. Survived the moving sequence of service, pressure, and coded insult.
But under everything ran the memory of his fingers against hers.
Once Tavi made a refusal too sharp and paid for it moments later with a visible spasm of pain low in her body. The trial punished her and called it correction. Brinna nearly dropped a cup. Yselle remained perfect enough to be uncanny.
Sabine made it to the end through discipline and fury and the simple fact that she now wanted something in the room more than food, and that had changed the shape of hunger entirely.
When the final blessing was spoken and the brides were dismissed, she rose too quickly and felt the room tilt for half a second.
Then she walked.
Out of the banquet hall. Down the side passage. Past two servants and a priest.
A hand caught her wrist and pulled her sharply into darkness.
Lucien.
He backed her into the stone wall of a narrow service corridor so fast she barely had time to breathe before his body was there, close and hard and furious with restraint.
“What were you doing?” he said.
His voice was low and ragged, nothing like the one he had used in the hall.
Sabine stared at him, pulse hammering. “Accepting the cup you offered me in front of the entire court.”
“You looked at me.”
“You came to me.”
His hand braced beside her head. The other was still around her wrist, right over the mark. Heat moved through her in wild, punishing waves.
“You could have taken it without making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that made me think about the archive when I was supposed to be watching seven women navigate a ritual banquet.”
Sabine’s breath hitched.
The corridor was narrow. Too narrow. He filled it. She could smell wine on him now. Spice. Leather. Skin. She hated how much her body responded before thought had a chance to intervene.
“And what,” she said, “did the archive make you think about?”
His jaw flexed.
Then he laughed once. Soft. Strained. Not amused.
“You know.”
Maybe she did.
Maybe that was the problem.
He looked at her for one more second, then his gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed there too long.
That was enough.
Sabine grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him down.
This time there was no hesitation at all.
Lucien kissed her like a man already angry at himself for wanting her and too far gone to stop. Hard. Hot. Immediate. One hand sliding from her wrist to her waist, the other flattening on the wall behind her as if he needed the leverage not to lose control entirely.
She kissed him back harder.
The mark flared so sharply she made a sound into his mouth, and that sound broke the last of him.
His hand tightened on her waist. His body pressed her into the stone. His mouth opened over hers with open hunger now, nothing restrained, nothing careful except the parts of him still fighting to keep from taking more.
Sabine’s fingers went into his hair.
He groaned.
The sound went straight through her.
His mouth left hers and moved to her jaw, then her throat, and Sabine’s head fell back against the wall because there was no point pretending composure in a corridor no one was supposed to find them in.
His mouth on her skin was rougher than she expected, not polished, not courtly, and the scrape of his teeth made heat tighten low in her body so hard it hurt.
“Lucien.”
His name came out breathless. Barely a word.
He went still for half a second, then kissed the base of her throat harder.
“We cannot do this here,” he said against her skin.
“Then stop.”
“I can’t.”
The honesty of it made her dizzy.
Sabine dragged his mouth back to hers and kissed him again with all the hunger the banquet had sharpened and all the hunger the archive had left unfinished. He answered with a violence of restraint finally giving way.
His hand slid down, then back up her thigh beneath the heavy silk just enough to make her gasp and arch against him. He caught that sound in his mouth like he wanted it. Like he had been starving for it as much as she had.
“God,” he said, low and wrecked.
Her leg lifted almost without thought and he took the opening instantly, gripping the back of her thigh and pulling it over his hip. The new angle brought her flush against the full hard shape of him and any remaining illusion of control disappeared.
Sabine’s breath broke.
He was hard enough to make her whole body tense. Hard enough that even through layers of cloth she felt exactly what he wanted and how little distance remained between wanting and taking.
Lucien pressed his forehead briefly to hers, breathing hard.
“This is a mistake.”
“Yes.”
“You should push me away.”
“You first.”
Something like helpless hunger crossed his face.
Then he kissed her again.
Harder. Dirtier. Nothing ceremonial left in it.
His hand on her thigh tightened, spreading heat higher, and Sabine’s head hit the wall again with a soft thud because there was nowhere for the sensation to go except through her.
The bond pulsed with every breath now, with every shift of his mouth, with every drag of his hand over silk and stocking and skin not far enough, never far enough.
He moved his mouth down her throat again and Sabine’s hands clenched in his shoulders.
His hand slid higher.
Not enough to fully touch where she most wanted him. Enough to make her body already ready and desperate for more. Enough to make her realize with a flash of hot humiliation how easily he would know that if he kept going.
“Lucien,” she said again, this time warning and plea both.
He understood.
Of course he did.
His mouth lifted from her throat. His eyes met hers. Dark now. Burned open.
“If I keep going,” he said, voice wrecked, “I am not stopping in a corridor.”
The words hit her like a blow.
Sabine’s pulse was so hard she could feel it in her teeth. “Then don’t stop.”
For one terrible second it looked like he might not.
His hand flexed high on her thigh. His mouth parted. The whole corridor held its breath with them.
Then footsteps sounded beyond the turn.
Lucien tore himself back so fast the loss of him felt violent.
He steadied her immediately, hands gripping her waist, then let go like even that was too much. His breathing was shot. His mouth swollen. His hair ruined. There was a faint mark where her nails had caught his neck.
“Go,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Now,” he said, lower. “Before I drag you somewhere with a door.”
Sabine’s entire body flashed hot at that.
He saw it happen.
His eyes closed once, briefly, like pain.
Then he stepped back into shadow and rebuilt himself by force. By the time the footsteps passed the corridor mouth, he was almost composed again.
Almost.
Sabine smoothed her gown with shaking hands and slipped away.
When she reached her chamber, Lysa looked up from the fire and went very still.
“You passed,” Lysa said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
Sabine set both hands on the edge of the writing desk and looked down at the wood grain because if she looked at another person right now she might combust.
“And I need another dress,” she said.
Lysa was quiet for one beat.
Then, “That bad?”
Sabine let out a short, unbelieving laugh. “Worse.”
Lysa stood. “Did anyone see?”
“Not at the corridor.”
“That is not the same as no.”
“No.”
Lysa came closer and stopped. “Look at me.”
Sabine did.
Lysa took one long look at her face and exhaled slowly. “So it’s crossed that line.”
“Yes.”
“Far?”
Sabine thought of Lucien’s hand on her thigh. The weight of him between her legs. His voice when he said if he kept going he was not stopping in a corridor.
“Yes,” she said.
Lysa closed her eyes briefly, then reopened them. “Then the next mistake will not be a small one.”
Sabine turned away and went to the window, pressing her hot forehead to the cold glass.
Outside, the palace gardens sat quiet under late light. Formal. Controlled. Full of buried things.
Inside, her body was still burning.
She could still feel him between her thighs. Still feel the shape of his hand. Still hear the rough, ruined honesty in his voice.
This was no longer flirtation.
No longer just tension.
No longer something she could file under strategy while pretending the rest was the bond’s doing.
She wanted him.
He wanted her.
And the only thing more dangerous than the rite itself was the fact that both of them were now one locked door away from proving exactly how much.