Page 159 of Nikolay

Her eyes grew softer, not triumphant. Maddie, in one of the countless ways she was better than I deserved, looked at my confession as though it wounded her on my behalf.

“In the dream,” she said again, voice unsteady now for a different reason, “I kissed you immediately.”

My hand tightened gently on her waist. “Did you?”

She nodded.

“Show me.”

She went very still.

I watched her wet her lips. Watched the courage gather again. Her hands rose, one settling lightly against my chest as if to steady herself against the breadth of me. Then she came up onto her toes and pressed her mouth to mine.

Soft. Tentative. Barely a question, and yet somehow more intimate than anything greedier could have been. It was the kiss of a woman offering truth without ornament. No game. No performance. Only Maddie.

I cupped her jaw at once and deepened it before I could stop myself. My other hand slid into her hair, fingers threading through chestnut silk as I angled her face and took the kiss properly. Her lips parted under mine with a breath that felt like surrender and victory both. I kissed her the way I should have kissed her the first time I knew. Thoroughly. Reverently. With all my restraint bent toward worship rather than avoidance.

She tasted faintly of tea and wine and the last sweetness of dessert from downstairs. Underneath that she tasted like herself, and I was lost quickly enough to know I had never truly been found before.

When I finally drew back, it was only far enough to look at her.

Her pupils had widened. Her mouth was pink from my attention. Her blouse hung open now, loosened beneath my hands, and desire had written itself over her face in a way so honest it threatened what remained of my self-command.

I finished what I had started.

Slowly, because anything faster would have insulted the moment. I eased the blouse from her shoulders and let it slide down her arms. Her lace bra came next. My knuckles skimmed the soft under swell of her breast on their way. She trembled. So did I, though I suspect less visibly.

I kissed her again while my hands found the fastening of her trousers. She made a small sound against my mouth when I opened them, not protesting, only startled by how quickly wanting could become action once truth had been admitted. I dropped to one knee before her, not from calculation but instinct, and looked up.

Her breath caught hard at that.

“Easy,” I murmured.

“You keep sayin’ things like that,” she whispered, “and then doing the opposite to my heart.”

I smiled despite the ache in my body. “Your heart seems formidable.”

“It is not feeling formidable right now.”

“No?” I slid the fabric down over her hips, then lower. “What is it feeling?”

“Like if you keep lookin’ at me like that, I might die happy and embarrass us both.”

A laugh escaped me then, low and wrecked by hunger. I helped her step free of her socks and trousers and the small scrap of lace beneath them, then rose again in one smooth motion until she stood bare in the lamplight before me.

I forgot speech.

She was curved exactly where I had wanted her curved, soft exactly where I had imagined softness might undo me, strong through thigh and hip and belly in a way that made beauty seem too weak a word for her. Lamplight gilded her skin. Her breasts rose and fell with the quickness of her breathing. Her hair spilled over one shoulder like a dark, living thing. She should have looked vulnerable standing naked before a man of my size, but there was courage in the way she held herself, chin lifted, gaze fixed on mine, as if she would endure being seen even if it frightened her.

I stepped close and laid my hands on her waist.

Not possession. Recognition.

My palms moved over the flare of her hips, then upward along the generous line of her ribs. She shivered when I cupped the soft weight of her breasts, not squeezing, merely learning. I think my face must have given away everything in me then, because Maddie’s expression changed. Some last uncertainty eased.

“What?” she whispered.

I looked at her as if looking could make amends for every hour I had wasted. “I am trying to understand how I survived this long without losing my mind.”