His hands lowered slowly from her face.
Every inch of him looked restrained now. Not cold. Restrained. As if this room had taken all the hunger between them and demanded it become honest before it became anything else.
“Do you want me to touch you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Because you choose it?”
Sabine held his gaze. “Because I choose you.”
The words moved through the chapel like a match struck in dark.
Lucien kissed her again.
Slower. Hotter for the restraint beneath it.
His hands moved to her waist, then stopped until she nodded. Only then did he pull her closer. Sabine felt his body against hers, solid and warm, the heat of him answering the cold stone at her back.
This was not the chamber’s command.
This was not Serast’s language pressing into her mouth.
This was not blood forced into a chalice while men watched from behind screens.
This was Lucien’s hands waiting for permission. Sabine’s fingers undoing his collar because she wanted the skin beneath.His breath catching when she touched him. Her mark warming, not burning, as his mouth moved down her throat with a reverence that made her knees weaken more than urgency ever had.
He backed her toward one of the kneeling stones, then stopped.
“No,” he said roughly.
Sabine looked at him.
He swallowed.
“Not with you below me. Not here.”
The words hit deeper than any touch.
Sabine took his hand and led him between the two stones instead, where neither stood higher.
There, in the center of the old chapel, they chose each other carefully, hungrily, with the ruined First Consent carved beside them and Isolde’s warning hidden against Sabine’s body.
The intimacy did not feel safe.
Nothing in this palace was safe.
But it felt theirs.
That made it more dangerous than any trial.
The mark spread as Lucien held her. Fine dark lines moved from Sabine’s shoulder toward her collarbone, warm and delicate, as if the bond had found a path the corrupted rite did not know how to block.
Lucien pressed his mouth to the new marks.
