Page 10

This whole night, I’ve observed a spark and sass in Lilibeth that claws at my mind, urging it to dig deeper.

She’s so different from that trembling mess I saw on our wedding night, and I wonder which version of Lilibeth is closest to the truth.

I want to understand her, to know her, to test her.

For that, I know I have to get her to myself.

The orchestra begins a waltz, and I make a decision. “Dance with me.”

Her eyebrows rise slightly at my commanding tone. “Always so polite with your requests, Agafon.”

“Would a please have made it better?” I retort as I fling out my hand in an exaggerated motion.

“Oh, absolutely,” she says, smirking as she takes it. “A please , a bow, maybe a sonnet about my eyes. You know, the basics.”

I walk her onto the floor and twirl her in until my hands rest on her waist and shoulder. She looks up at me and winks. Literally, winks.

“I don’t know what basics you grew up with, but where I come from, a sonnet about a woman’s eyes is very eighteenth century,” I tease with a straight face as I lead her into a waltz.

“Maybe we can learn something from the past, don’t you think?” She follows my lead and tilts her neck away from me as I drop her low. When she does, I catch the scent of that delicate floral perfume from the nape of her neck, and my heart nearly lurches.

I sweep her up, and when she risks losing her balance, I pull her close with a tight hand on her lower back.

Once she regains her balance, I wait for her to move back, but she stands dangerously close, and my hand remains dangerously low.

This time, she doesn’t cower like she did in what she presumed was our bedroom on our wedding night.

I decide to test her and see if she’ll be bolder this time around on similar grounds.

“I don’t recall you having such a fond take for borrowing ancient traditions on our wedding night. What was it you called the concept of consummating a marriage, again? Archaic?”

Just like that, her eyes widen and she blushes as she gasps. Not so bold now, is she?

In shock, her hand moves to my chest, and then her eyes travel to that spot before she quickly slides it back to my shoulder, as if she’s been burned. My chest, where she touched me, sears .

When my heart begins to race and I feel my blood turn into a river of desire, I slide my hand up her back to a safer distance.

“Well, we don’t have to take everything from the past. Some modern concepts are here to stay, you know?” she restarts the conversation with a trembling voice.

“Like?”

“Like… plumbing,” she offers up a measly excuse. “Plumbing is something we should embrace.”

In that moment, I try very hard to hold back a smile. Her eyes fall to my lips, to the upward curve of them, and she breaks into a dazzling smile of her own.

“So, plumbing, we keep. And not consummating a marriage for the sake of it, we leave?”

“Exactly.” She nods vigorously. “You get it.”

“Sure I do,” I murmur, a smirk playing on my lips as I spin her out and back into my arms.

“Are you making fun of me?” Lilibeth’s eyes hold a challenge that stirs a spark of excitement at the banter we’re sharing.

“Making fun of you?” I repeat with a twinkle in my eye. “I’m only enlightening myself on your views.”

She arches a brow, her smile never faltering. “Oh? And what have you enlightened yourself on so far, wise scholar?”

I dip my head closer, and my voice drops an octave as I lean in to whisper in her ear. “That you have a surprisingly firm stance on plumbing… and an even firmer one on restraint.”

I see the tiny hair on her ear prickle and hear her breath hitch. When she looks up at me, our lips hover an inch away from each other. The music fades away, the people disappear, and the room stills when she whispers, her doe-eyes glued to mine. “Well, someone around here has to have principles.”

I lean in just a bit more. “And someone has to test them.”

Her breath falters just as I feel my blood turn into a river of agony at keeping restraint. A memory gushes back, from our first night as a couple, how I had her backed up against a wall, how desperate I was to kiss her.

I should move back, I think to myself, but I am unable to bridge the distance. What I truly want is to stay out here on this dance floor for the entirety of the night, to keep her talking and sassing until the sun comes up, to see how far I can push her.

She tilts her head slightly, her lips parting before they close. I can almost taste her in the air between us, and for a brief moment, I consider closing the distance that remains between us.

But then I hear a glass crash and break in the distance, see a couple dancing next to us a little too closely, and remember where I am, who I’m with.

What the hell just happened? One moment, I was bantering with her.

Next, I wanted more; I was drawn right into her orbit.

Memories rush back of just who Lilibeth Agafon is and how she became a part of my life.

She’s the very reason I lost my brother, even though I never understood how he could let a woman break him as he did.

Suddenly, the weight of my realizations crashes down on me like a ton of bricks. How Lilibeth, in the course of one dance, made me forget our shared history is a reminder of how easily she swayed Nikandr with her charm and manipulation. She’s doing it once again, to me this time.

I suddenly step back. “Well, we put on quite the show for a power couple. I think the room’s convinced, but you don’t have to play wife much longer,” I say icily as I motion to the general direction of the main doors.

“Agafon—” She stands frozen on the dance floor, her eyes wide with hurt and shock.

“It’s getting late. We should leave.”