She felt it before she was fully awake.
The second wave did not announce itself the way the first one had.
It came in quietly while she was half asleep, sliding under her skin like warm water rising.
By the time she was conscious enough to register it, it had already settled into her bones and lit every nerve ending she had on fire.
She turned over.
He was already awake.
His eyes found hers in the dim room and she knew from the look in them that he felt it too, the scent match between them had deepened overnight into something that belonged to both of them now, impossible to separate back into its original parts.
She did not say anything.
Neither did he.
He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the back of his fingers brushing her cheek, and the heat surged at even that small contact.
“Second wave,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“It is going to be worse than last night.”
“Good,” he said, and pulled her toward him.
✦ ✦ ✦
He started with her throat.
His mouth moved against the side of her neck slowly, unhurried, and she felt his teeth graze her pulse point and her fingers curled into the sheets.
His hands were on her waist, warm through the thin fabric, and he took his time the way he had taken his time last night, deliberately, with the focused thoroughness of a man who had paid attention and intended to apply everything he had learned.
“You are doing this on purpose,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, against her skin, and did not speed up.
He reached for the sash on the nightstand, she saw him reach for it and her breath caught.
“Yes or no,” he said.
“Yes,” she said immediately.
He folded it into a strip and brought it to her eyes.
The knot at the back was careful, firm, and comfortable.
The room went dark.
The darkness made everything sharper.
His scent hit her fully without the distraction of sight and her omega instincts went absolutely certain.
She could hear everything, his breathing, the small sounds of the room, the distant birds outside, and underneath all of it the low controlled exhale of a man keeping himself in check.
His hands found her shoulders and moved down slowly.
His mouth found her breast.
She made a sound she had not planned, sharp and immediate, and her back arched off the bed.
His tongue moved against her nipple in slow circles and she felt it everywhere, a direct line from his mouth to the heat pooling low in her belly.
He took his time.
He was thorough and deliberate and completely unhurried and she was already unravelling.
“Aldric….”
“Mm,” he said, not stopping.
His hand moved down her stomach, fingers splaying against her skin, and she knew where they were going, and she needed them there immediately, and he was taking his time getting there, and she was going to lose her mind.
“Please,” she said.
She had never said that word like that in her life.
It came out low and desperate and entirely genuine, and she did not care because the blindfold had taken her last ability to manage herself and the heat was rising fast, and his fingers finally, finally… found where she needed them, and she stopped caring about anything else entirely.
He worked with her slowly at first.
She could feel exactly how much control he was exercising, how deliberate every movement was, and she was soaking wet against his hand and making sounds that had no resemblance to anything she produced in daylight.
He added a second finger and curled them and she gasped, sharp and broken, and her hips moved toward him without her permission.
“There,” he said, low and certain, like he was noting something important.
He did it again.
And again.
“Please,” she said, for the second time, and this time it came out broken in the middle.
He kissed her, deep and unhurried, while his fingers kept moving and the heat kept building and she was trembling against him and when she came it crashed through her hard, her whole body pulling tight and then releasing, and she said his name loud enough that she would have been embarrassed about it later if she had any capacity left for embarrassment.
She did not have any capacity left for embarrassment.
She was still catching her breath when he moved over her.
✦ ✦ ✦
She pulled the blindfold off.
She wanted to see him.
He was above her, his grey hair undone, his eyes dark with the blue almost entirely gone, and he looked at her the way he looked at everything that mattered, fully, without reservation, with his whole attention present and accounted for.
She reached up and pulled him down.
When he pushed inside her, the heat surged up to meet him like it had been waiting specifically for this, and her breath left her in a rush.
He stilled for a moment, giving her time; she understood, checking in the way he checked in without words, and she answered by wrapping her legs around him and pulling him deeper and the sound he made then was not the controlled exhale she had been hearing all morning.
Good, she thought.
She wanted him as undone as she was.
He started to move. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
The second wave was nothing like the first.
The first had been urgent, blunt and overwhelming, and over quickly.
This was something else entirely.
He set a pace that was deep and deliberate, each thrust rolling through her fully, and the heat built differently this time, not spiking but rising, steady and enormous, like a tide coming in.
She made sounds she had no names for.
She said his name.
She said please again, and he responded by going deeper and harder, and she dug her fingers into his shoulders and held on.
The scent of him surrounded her.
Her omega instincts had stopped making recommendations and had simply taken over; she was entirely animal, entirely instinct, entirely his in a way that should have frightened her and did not because it felt like the most honest thing she had ever been.
He thrust harder.
She cried out.
“Again,” she heard herself say.
He gave her again.
And again.
The pace built until the deliberate slowness was gone entirely and what was left was raw and urgent and the headboard knocked against the wall and she did not care and he clearly did not care and the heat peaked and she came apart completely, shaking and loud and entirely undone, and he followed her over the edge with her name in his mouth like it was something he was holding onto.
✦ ✦ ✦
They lay tangled in the wreckage of the bed for a long time afterward.
She was facing the ceiling.
Her chest was still rising and falling faster than usual.
Every muscle in her body had been thoroughly consulted and was requesting leave.
Her hair was beyond description.
He was beside her, one arm across her waist, breathing slowly.
She turned her head and looked at him.
He looked back.
“You,” she said, “are nothing like I expected.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
“You said that already.”
“I am saying it again because it keeps being true.” She looked back at the ceiling.
The sky through the window was pale gold now, proper morning arriving, the palace already waking up around them.
“You should go before the morning staff.”
“In a minute,” he said.
She did not argue.
She lay in the warm wreckage of the last several hours and felt the heat finally, fully recede, cooling degree by degree, the fever dissolving, leaving behind something quieter and deeper and entirely new.
She felt the scent match between them settle.
Not a pull anymore.
Not urgency.
Something that had found what it was looking for and had simply, stopped looking.
Settled into place like a key turning in a lock, like the last piece of something sliding home.
She pressed her lips together.
She was not going to say that out loud.
Not yet.
Possibly not ever.
But she felt it and she knew he felt it too because she could feel him feel it, which was a new and startling capability she apparently now had and was going to need some time to adjust to.
He sat up eventually.
Found his clothes.
Dressed with the quiet efficiency she had come to recognise.
Found his coat.
Put it on.
He looked at her in the bed.
She looked back at him, hair destroyed, thoroughly and completely wrecked in every possible way, making no effort whatsoever to pretend otherwise.
He crossed to the bed and leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead, brief, certain, no ceremony, and straightened.
“Breakfast,” he said.
“Breakfast,” she agreed.
He left.
She lay still for exactly three minutes.
Then she got up.
✦ ✦ ✦ Get faster updates on g.com.
Esther was waiting.
She took one look at Isadora and held out the robe without a word.
Isadora put it on.
Looked in the mirror.
Her hair was a lost cause.
Her lips were swollen.
She looked like a woman who had spent the last twelve hours doing exactly what she had spent the last twelve hours doing and there was nothing to be done about that except walk through the palace and arrive at her rooms and have a bath.
“Right,” she said.
“Right,” Esther agreed.
✦ ✦ ✦
The walk was two corridors.
She walked them with her spine straight and her chin up and the robe belted tight and her hair in the state that it was in.
The first person she passed was a young housemaid who looked up and immediately back down with the focus of someone trained not to see things.
The second was a senior footman she had known since she was twelve who looked at her face and then her hair and then back at her face and whose expression did not change by a single muscle because he was exceptional at his job.
The third was her mother’s personal attendant coming around the corner.
Isadora met her eyes directly.
The attendant dropped into a curtsy, said good morning Your Highness in a perfectly neutral tone, and moved aside.
Isadora said good morning and kept walking.
Her door.
Right there.
Esther opened it.
She walked through.
It closed behind her.
She stood in the middle of her bedroom and felt the composure she had held across two corridors and three witnesses dissolved entirely.
She sat on the edge of the bed.
She pressed her hands over her face.
Not crying.
Just sitting with the full weight of the last twelve hours settling around her.
The heat.
The blindfold.
His hands and his mouth and his voice saying her name in the dark.
The way everything she had spent twenty-one years keeping behind glass had simply — gone.
The way it had felt to be that open, that undone, that entirely without armour, and to find that the world had not ended.
The way he had pressed his lips to her forehead before he left like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She pressed her hands harder against her face.
“Isadora,” Esther said softly.
“I am fine,” she said.
“I know.”
A pause.
“He pressed his lips to my forehead,” she said.
To her hands.
To no one.
Esther sat down beside her on the bed.
Said nothing.
Just sat there, steady and present, the way she always was.
They sat together for a moment.
“Right,” Isadora said.
She dropped her hands.
Looked at the ceiling.
“I need to bathe. And go to breakfast. And sit across from him and be a normal person.”
“You can do that.”
“I know I can.” She stood.
“I simply want it noted that I did not plan for any of this and I find it extremely inconvenient.”
“Noted,” Esther said, in the tone she used for things that were the opposite of inconvenient.
Isadora went to bathe.
She was smiling before she reached the bathroom.
She stopped it.
It came back.
She let it.