His jaw flexed.
Then he laughed once. Soft. Strained. Not amused.
“You know.”
Maybe she did.
Maybe that was the problem.
He looked at her for one more second, then his gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed there too long.
That was enough.
Sabine grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him down.
This time there was no hesitation at all.
Lucien kissed her like a man already angry at himself for wanting her and too far gone to stop. Hard. Hot. Immediate. One hand sliding from her wrist to her waist, the other flattening on the wall behind her as if he needed the leverage not to lose control entirely.
She kissed him back harder.
The mark flared so sharply she made a sound into his mouth, and that sound broke the last of him.
His hand tightened on her waist. His body pressed her into the stone. His mouth opened over hers with open hunger now, nothing restrained, nothing careful except the parts of him still fighting to keep from taking more.
Sabine’s fingers went into his hair.
He groaned.
The sound went straight through her.
His mouth left hers and moved to her jaw, then her throat, and Sabine’s head fell back against the wall because there was no point pretending composure in a corridor no one was supposed to find them in. His mouth on her skin was rougher than she expected, not polished, not courtly, and the scrape of his teeth made heat tighten low in her body so hard it hurt.
“Lucien.”
His name came out breathless. Barely a word.
He went still for half a second, then kissed the base of her throat harder.
“We cannot do this here,” he said against her skin.
“Then stop.”
“I can’t.”
The honesty of it made her dizzy.
Sabine dragged his mouth back to hers and kissed him again with all the hunger the banquet had sharpened and all the hunger the archive had left unfinished. He answered with a violence of restraint finally giving way.
His hand slid down, then back up her thigh beneath the heavy silk just enough to make her gasp and arch against him. He caught that sound in his mouth like he wanted it. Like he had been starving for it as much as she had.
“God,” he said, low and wrecked.
Her leg lifted almost without thought and he took the opening instantly, gripping the back of her thigh and pulling it over his hip. The new angle brought her flush against the full hard shape of him and any remaining illusion of control disappeared.
Sabine’s breath broke.
He was hard enough to make her whole body tense. Hard enough that even through layers of cloth she felt exactly what he wanted and how little distance remained between wanting and taking.
