Chapter 37
CHAPTER
Sabine
The hour was indecent when supper ended.
Sabine and Azrian reached the end of the main corridor at the same time, each halting as if they’d forgotten who was supposed to lead and who was meant to follow.
Sabine folded her hands together at her waist, feeling ridiculous in her borrowed house, in her too-fine dress, in her new skin.
“Do we… retire separately, then?” She hated the way her voice sought permission.
Azrian blinked, caught off guard. “You are the mistress of the house now.” He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “You may do as you please. The staff will follow your instructions.”
“You misunderstand. I meant… do you expect me to… join you?”
The silence was not a pause but a seismic event. Azrian straightened at once.
“I…” A flicker of uncertainty, a faint tremor in his jaw. “Sabine, these marks may have forced us into each other’s lives, but I shall not force you into my bed, too. Despite what you and the rest of the Gilt may think, I am not that kind of monster.”
Sabine’s cheeks flamed. “I never fashioned you as such.” She tried to look at him, but the force of his gaze was too much to bear. “It is the first night of our marriage, after all. I’m aware it comes with… obligations.”
His expression softened, a slow thaw that made her want to weep.
“I have known obligation my entire life,” he said. “I have little interest in adding more. Least of all with you.”
He reached for her with deliberateness, stopping just shy of her cheek, fingers hovering in the air as if awaiting a sign. She nodded, the smallest inclination of her head, and he closed the distance, his fingertips grazing her skin. The touch was featherlight, yet Sabine felt it like a blow.
She held her breath as his palm cupped her cheek. His thumb traced the arc of her cheekbone, then traveled up to the loose tendrils of her hair. He found one of the pins—there were a dozen, and they always hurt by evening—and withdrew it with a gentle, practiced movement.
Another pin, then another.
He let them fall to the floor as if they’d personally offended him. With each pin removed, her hair fell a little looser, until the front pieces spilled across her face in soft waves. Azrian brushed them back, tucking them behind her ear. His thumb lingered at the base of her jaw.
Sabine closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the sensation, the ache for something she could not articulate.
The mark beneath her collarbone hummed. When Azrian’s skin met hers, she felt not just the pressure of his hand, but a ripple of his state: the tight coil of restraint, the flares of affection and guilt and longing, each vibrating at the edge of her consciousness.
It was like listening to a song whose lyrics were half in a language she barely understood, but whose melody moved her all the same.
She did not dare move. Did not dare speak.
Azrian’s breath caught. “If I were a better man”—his voice held a coarseness, like sand at dawn, that sent a chill rippling across her skin—”I would let you go now, and save us both the trouble of—”
She placed her hands on his chest, where the Hand pin was notably missing. “Let me decide what trouble I wish to court.”
He exhaled, the sound equal parts surrender and apology. Then, with infinite care, he bent and pressed his lips to her forehead.
“I should let you rest.” He withdrew his hand, but only slowly, as if the act required the severing of actual sinew.
Sabine nodded, unable to trust herself with words.
He turned and walked away, the measured click of his boots breaking the silence of the night. She watched his back retreat into darkness. The corridor felt empty in his absence, as if he’d carried all the air with him. She touched her cheek, then her collarbone, mark pulsing in lazy aftershocks.
Sabine went to her rooms, undressed herself in darkness, and crawled into bed with her hair still loose around her face, Azrian’s scent lingering where he had touched her.
She did not sleep for a long time.
When sleep finally did come, it was fractured and unsatisfying, a thin film stretched over boiling water. She drifted in and out of uneasy dreams, each one haunted by the ghost of Azrian’s touch, by the low music of him saying her name.
She woke in darkness, hair tangled across her face, pillow still marked with the scent of him, though he’d never set foot past the threshold.
The city outside was silent, save for the occasional shudder of wind against the windowpane.
If she listened closely, she could pretend she heard Azrian’s own footfalls as he paced some other sleepless corner of the house.
Sabine lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling’s unlit vault, and let her mind inventory the evening. It was a habit she’d formed as a governess: review the day, tally every mistake and triumph, file the lessons away for later.
Tonight, the only lesson seemed to be that she was a creature of equal parts flesh and fear.
She could have asked him to stay. She could have crossed the corridor in her nightgown, left her pride at the door, and let him undress her with those grave, careful hands.
She could have let the strange new magic between them resolve itself in the oldest way known to history.
In her mind, the scene played out with mortifying clarity.
Herself in Azrian’s lap, his hardness pressed to her stomach, the heat of his mouth against her neck, his fingers threaded through her hair not to unfasten pins but to hold her steady as he devoured her.
The shame that followed was swift and stinging. Sabine had never been a prude, but she’d never considered herself particularly lustful, either. She had taken lovers before, primarily to indulge her own academic curiosity about what the act itself might feel like.
It’d never felt like this, like the images conjured by her mind might catch her on fire. She shifted under the covers, trying to banish the sensation, but her body was a traitor. Her thighs pressed together of their own accord, breath catching in the space between one wish and the next.
Her fingers trailed down her body, reaching the hem of her nightgown.
The fabric was thin, soaked with her shame and need, and it clung to her thighs like a second skin.
She let her palm press flat against her stomach, breath hitching, pulse pounding between her legs like a drum.
Lower, her fingers dipped, teasing the slick heat that pooled there, her center already throbbing, aching for something—for him.
She closed her eyes, and there he was: Azrian, his body a map of sinew and scars, his cock heavy and thick, curving toward his stomach like it was begging for her mouth. She could almost taste his skin, salted with the day’s anxiety.
Her fingers brushed over her swollen clit, sending a shockwave of pleasure through her body.
It was not the first time she’d brought herself comfort, but tonight felt different.
Tonight, she was not alone in her skin. She teased herself, tracing slow, agonizing circles, the pressure so light it was closer to torture than pleasure.
She wanted more, needed more, but she didn’t trust herself not to scream if she gave in too soon.
She tried to be clinical about it, to see the act as a release valve and nothing more.
But her thoughts betrayed her, filling her head with visions of Azrian’s naked body, his hardness exposed and ready for her.
She imagined his mouth replacing her hand, his tongue swirling around her clit and licking into every sensitive crevice while he coaxed and encouraged her toward climax.
Her body arched off the mattress as she inserted two fingers inside herself while massaging her clit with the other.
She imagined it was him instead of her fingers, thick and unyielding as he pushed inside her, stretching her open, filling her up until she couldn’t breathe.
She bit her lip, holding back a whimper that would have been humiliating in the daylight but felt necessary in the dark.
The pressure built quickly, a bright pulse of pleasure that bordered on pain.
And then, just as she was about to come undone by his imagined touch, a jolt of something foreign flickered through her, a spike of longing and hunger that was not her own. It radiated from the mark, up her neck and down her spine, crashing into her as if she’d touched a live wire.
The sensation was overwhelming. Sabine gasped, knuckles white on the bedsheet. Her climax hit in a series of hot, crashing waves, braided so tightly with the feeling of him she wasn’t certain it belonged entirely to her anymore. She felt herself dissolve, felt the world fragment into stars and ash.
And through it all, she held the absolute certainty that somewhere in the house, Azrian was just as awake. Just as undone.