She snapped her lips together, suddenly aware of the cool air on her mouth.
Oh no.
She had longed to kiss him.
She still did.
I don’t even know how to kiss!
The thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. She hadn’t meant to think it so plainly, so openly, but it was the truth. It had settled low in her belly and bloomed like something shamefully beautiful. She wanted to know what his lips would feel like. She wanted to tilt her face up, stand on tiptoe if she had to, and just feel him.
She imagined his palm cupping her cheek, steady and sure. How he might tilt her chin up and whisper something. Something that would undo her. Would it be slow? Gentle? Or would he kiss her like he couldn’t bear to wait another second? And if he did… would she melt? Would she forget the whole of the world the way she had by the fire? Her lips parted at the thought. She curled deeper beneath the covers, torn between shame and a strange, dizzy kind of happiness. His mouth, his hands, the sound he might make if…
Maddie shut the etui.
She couldn’t think about this. It wasn’t right.
And yet…
No matter how tightly she pressed the lid, no matter how she tried to calm her heart, the thought lingered. The memory of his smile. The smell of warm beer and spice. The gentle press of his thumb to her upper lip.
She’d never felt so seen. So wanted. So… deliciously undone.
And the worst part—the most dangerous, wonderful part—was that she didn’t want to forget.
Lying back against her pillows, she clutched the etui to her chest and whispered into the night.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
The words hung in the quiet like a secret meant only for shadows.
And Maddie, her heart aching with the truth of it, closed her eyes—and dreamed of egg-flip, firelight, and the way Sebastian looked at her like she was something worth breaking all the rules for.
*
The fire haddwindled to a low glow, its soft flicker casting long shadows across the stone walls of his chamber. Stillness had settled around him like a second skin. But inside, he was anything but still.
He was all chaos and storms.
Sebastian leaned back in the large, high-backed chair before the hearth, his boots kicked off and discarded somewhere near the bed. His shirt was open at the collar, sleeves rolled to his elbows, yet still he felt too warm. Stifled. Like he’d walked straight into the heat of the kitchen again. Or maybe it was memory that made him sweat now.
Maddie with froth above her lip.
The feeling of her skin beneath his finger as he swiped it away.
And theway she had looked at him…
Like he mattered in a way that no one had ever made him feel before.
Maddie.
He let her name tumble silently through his mind, the sound of it… almost magical. Too intimate, perhaps, and yet—he had called her that. Softly. Almost daringly.
Maddie.
He exhaled and tilted his head back against the chair, eyes drifting shut. He could still see her in the kitchen. The way the firelight danced in her hair, the way she held that cup with both hands. And then she’d looked at him, just over the rim. Lips parted. Foam on her mouth.
That had undone him.
