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I didn't speak. Couldn't. The words had been stripped away by the intensity of his gaze, like he was already imagining all the ways he wanted to worship my body.

Instead, I reached for the buttons at the back of my dress with deliberate, agonizing slowness.

His breath hitched audibly as I let it fall. It slipped down my body like a lover's sigh, pooling at my feet in a whisper of silk and surrender. The night air raised gooseflesh across my bare skin, but I didn't reach for cover.

I wanted him to look. Wanted to watch him unravel.

I stood bare in the golden lantern light, skin glowing, heart hammering so loud I was certain he could hear it in the hushed space between us.

August stepped forward—slowly, like a man in a trance, afraid I’d vanish if he moved too quickly. His eyes swept over me with reverence, drinking in each curve, every shadow.

“You're. . .” His voice cracked, broke, reformed. He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing, the struggle for control etched across every line of his body.” Christ, Lily. You're the most exquisite thing I've ever laid eyes on. That night in the sitting room, when you dropped the towel, it was all I could do to keep from falling to my knees. You unsettle me completely. Mind, body, and soul. I cease to belong to myself the instant you are near.”

His chest expanded slowly, ribs lifting like each inhale scraped against broken glass.

“And I don’t know whether I want to worship you or run from you. Because if I touch you, really touch you, I won’t be able to stop.”

The raw honesty in his confession made my knees weak, made something deep in my core clench with want. I closed the distance between us, watching his pupils dilate as I reached for his coat.

“Then don’t stop,” I whispered against the hollow of his throat.

I stripped him slowly, savoring each reveal of golden skin. He stood before me like a God carved from marble. Lamplight played across his chest, highlighting the planes of muscle, the shadows between his ribs, the white lines of scars mapping his skin.

I traced the edge of a particularly wicked scar along his ribs. He caught my wrist—not to stop me, never that—but his fingers trembled where they held me.

Then his mouth found mine, and the kiss was reverent at first. Tender. Like he was still trying to be the controlled man his father had raised.

But I didn't want controlled.

I nipped his bottom lip hard enough to make him gasp, and his eyes went dark—pupils swallowed the hazel. His grip on my wrist tightened.

“Lily.”

“Stop treating me like I'll break,” I breathed against his mouth, running my other hand down his chest, his abdomen, lower. “I won't.”

When my fingers brushed the hard length of him through his trousers, he made a sound low in his throat—half groan, half growl.

I worked the fastenings, freeing him completely. He was hard and wanting, and the sight of him—all of him, finally bare before me—made my mouth go dry. I let my fingers trail along his length, velvet over steel, and watched his jaw clench, watched the muscle jump in his throat as he fought for control.

A shudder ran through him. “If you keep touching me like that, this will be over before it begins.”

My smile turned wicked as I wrapped my hand around him again, dragging my palm from base to tip. He throbbed hard against my touch. “Then maybe you should stop me.”

His lips crashed down on mine, his tongue claiming my mouth with desperate hunger. He lifted me with ease, steps deliberate even as his kiss frayed the last threads of his control.

My nipples tightened and a sharp wave of need rolled low between my legs. Awareness flooded me all at once. Every point where our bodies touched. Every place his hands skimmed or gripped as he moved me toward the bedroll. I was touching him too. Touching him everywhere. Hard-packed muscle under my palms, the heat of his breath against my skin, the wild scent of him—cedar, mossy woods and⁠—

“God! August!”

The hard length of him pressed against my thigh as he laid me down with maddening gentleness. My skin erupted in goosebumps the moment his mouth touched my neck. He dragged his lips along the line of my pulse, a low hum vibrating in his chest. The sensation sank deep, curling low inside me until my knees weakened and the world narrowed to the heat of his mouth on my skin.

“Christ.” The ragged whisper broke against my skin as he pressed his mouth to the crook of my neck. His body surged up into mine, and the sudden hardness of him stole the air from my lungs. He rocked upward again, slow and sure, and the jolt of pleasure that followed blurred every coherent thought I had left.

I needed. . .

“August, please!” The plea tore out of me before I could stop it.

He didn’t pause, didn’t even breathe differently. His hand slid between my thighs, fingers parting me with a certainty that stole every coherent thought. He found my wetness at once, pressing into it with slow, claiming pressure that made my hips rise into his palm as if my body already knew who it wanted.