She was standing here, by the fire, flushed from praise and whisky, looking at him like she wanted a kiss or a life, and he was not sure which unsettled him more.
But as she looked up at him, lips parted, eyes luminous, he knew one thing with absolute, bone-deep certainty. She wanted him to kiss her. And God help him, he wanted to.
Maxwell let the silence stretch for another breath.
Then another.
He could have stepped away then. Could have said something practical about guard rotations or O’Douglas or the hour. Could have put a length of stone-cold distance back between them.
He did none of those things.
Just stepped closer.
It was just half a pace, but it changed everything. Her breath hitched. The flame’s glow skated across the hollow of her throat. He could see now that she was trembling with every inhale, as if she was shivering, but he knew that it was not with fear. It was with the same tight, coiled anticipation that had been burning in his own veins since the first time he kissed her.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.
He watched her eyes, the way they searched his, wanting something she was too proud to ask for twice. Her fingers tightened around her cup, then loosened, as if she could not decide whether to reach for him or not.
He decided for both of them.
He lifted his hand, slowly, giving her plenty of time to flinch away if she chose, and brushed his knuckles along her cheek.
Her skin was warm. Soft. A little too soft for his battle-rough hands.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
The trust in that simple gesture nearly undid him.
“Ariella,” he murmured.
“Aye,” she whispered.
He wanted to be certain. “Are ye?”
She opened her eyes again. They were dark and bright all at once, reflecting firelight and something deeper.
“I am nae made of glass, Maxwell,” she said. “Ye will nae break me.”
He huffed out something like a laugh, low and strained. “I might.”
“I trust ye nae to.”
That was worse. That was so much worse.
He couldn’t bear the distance between them another heartbeat. He leaned in and kissed her.
Softly at first. Just his mouth against hers, slow and searching, as if relearning what he’d already learned in fragments in a library, in a study, in shadows. She sighed into it, lifting onto her toes, one hand fisting in the fabric at his chest.
The taste of her. The whisky and warmth and something purely her hit him like an unexpected blow. He deepened the kiss without thinking, his other hand finding the small of her back, drawing her flush against him.
She answered with sudden boldness, fingers sliding up to his shoulders, then around his neck. Her lips parted beneath his, and he took the invitation, tongue brushing against hers in a slow, hungry stroke that pulled a faint, helpless sound from her throat.
He swallowed it greedily.
The hall around them still smoldered with embers, lanterns low but not out. The doors were closed, but a guard could pass through. A servant might slip in. Any clansman too far into his cups might stumble back down for one last drink.
He knew all that.
