Jules’s mouth ticks up in response, his kiss slow and lingering, and Lucretia lets herself go pliant beneath it, immersed in their desire for each other laid bare. His lips skim over her mouth to kiss her cheek, his hand caressing the edge of her jaw, careful and deliberate.

His lips still on her temple. “Have you ever been with anyone, Lu?”

Lucretia smirks at Jules’s question, warmed by the sense of the desire that rides just under his careful touch, yearning to give way. “I’m a good and pure Gardnerian maiden.”

Jules lets out a sultry laugh at this. “Well, it’s high time we put an end to that.”

Lucretia returns his heated look. “Agreed.”

An affectionate gleam lights his eyes. “I’m teasing you, you know.” He reaches up, his fingertips gently skimming the edge of her jaw, his expression warmly serious. “It’s an honor to be your first.”

“And only,” Lucretia adamantly states, the events of the world clamoring at the edges of their happy Xishlon moment.

A shadow passes over Jules’s features, his caress of her cheek stilling as his expression grows ardent. “That would be my fondest wish.”

Lucretia returns his passionate look, then glances at Jules’s messy, unmade bed, suddenly nervous. Yet ready to cross this threshold after so many years of wanting him.

Clearly noticing her hesitancy and where her gaze is drawn, Jules pulls her into a closer embrace and kisses her temple as he rubs a deft line down her spine. “I’ll treat you with care, Lu.”

The threats bearing down on the Realm are suddenly rearing up inside her. “Don’t,” she counters, moving back a fraction to meet his gaze, acutely aware of what a bright, shining, and possibly tenuous thing this moment is. “I’m not fragile,” she insists. “And Vogel’s coming for all of us. So, don’t hold back. I want to know exactly how much you’ve wanted me all these years.”

Jules studies her, his brow creasing. “Are you sure?”

Lucretia nods as heat blooms all along her skin, eddying through her lines. “Show me what you’ve imagined during all those late nights together.”

Jules lets out a short laugh, looking at her now with a speculative heat. There’s a stronger hunger in his eyes, like a curtain has been brushed away, and it sends a swift current of desire straight to her toes.

Ah, Lucretia thinks. I always imagined there was more to you than the private, contained Jules. She’s seen hints of it, this passion in him. Fleeting looks through the curling steam of the tea that sent quick flares of heat through her—looks always so quickly composed she’d find herself wondering if she’d imagined them.