His hand left the shelf and came to her waist, gripping hard enough to pull her flush against him. His mouth opened over hers, and the kiss turned rougher, hotter, more immediate than anything Sabine had imagined in the restless hours before dawn.
The mark on her palm flared.
Heat surged up her arm, down her spine, pooling low in her belly with enough force that her knees nearly buckled.
Lucien felt it too. She knew because his grip tightened, his breath broke, and he backed her into the shelf hard enough that ledgers shifted behind her.
“Sabine” Her name came out ragged.
She did not let him finish.
She kissed him again, deeper this time, her hands sliding from his coat to his hair, pulling him down, and he answered by turning the kiss into something that felt less like restraint breaking and more like both of them finally admitting what the bond had known from the first moment he pressed his thumb to her marked palm in the Hall of Selection.
This was not just ritual magic.
This was want.
His mouth left hers and traced down her jaw to her throat, and Sabine’s head fell back against the shelf, her breath coming too fast, her body arching into his without permission from her mind.
“We should not” he said against her skin.
“I know.”
“If someone comes in”
“I know.”
His hand moved from her waist to her jaw, tilting her face back up to his, and for a moment they just stood there, breathing hard, staring at each other with the kind of clarity that only came from crossing a line you could never uncross.
Then footsteps sounded in the outer corridor.
Lucien released her and stepped back so fast Sabine nearly stumbled.
By the time the archive door opened, he was standing on the opposite side of the table, hands braced on the wood, face composed except for the faint color high on his cheekbones and the fact that his breathing was not quite steady.
An attendant entered carrying a stack of ledgers. “Your Highness. The border taxation records you requested.”
“Leave them on the far table,” Lucien said. Voice level. Controlled. As if the last five minutes had not happened.
The attendant set down the ledgers and withdrew.
The door closed.
Silence returned.
Sabine straightened her gown with shaking hands and forced herself to meet Lucien’s eyes.
He looked at her like a man who had just made a mistake he would absolutely repeat given the chance.
“We cannot do that again,” he said.
“Why.”
“Because if I kiss you again, I will not stop at kissing.”
The honesty of it hit her like a physical blow.
Sabine’s breath caught. “Lucien—”
