The old leather of the armchair creaked as she shifted her weight onto my lap.
It was a sound I knew intimately, but now it felt like a gunshot in the silent room. Her thighs settled against mine, a warm, solid pressure that should have been comforting but felt like a sentence. Her eyes—those dark, bottomless oceans I'd spent twenty-one years dreaming of—locked onto mine, and in them, I saw a terrifying, fragile hope.
"Do you not want to kiss me, Lucian? Kiss me."
My head snapped back as if she'd struck me. A reflex. A flinch from the purity of her touch after the filth of my own.
I don't want to. I shouldn't. This is a sacrilege. My hands on her hips are still imprinted with the memory of another woman's shape.
But my body betrayed me. It was a puppet whose strings were pulled by a deeper, desperate need. Before the thought could fully form, I was kissing her.
Her lips were soft, yielding, tasting of the mint tea she always drank.
Camilla.
