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Her brows tipped. “No?”

“No.” He dragged air in. “You are making it impossible to think.”

Color warmed her cheeks. She did not step back. Her palm smoothed once over the fresh bandage—light, approving. His control snapped and re-formed on a gasp.

Stand still. Pull her up and show her what healing feels like.

He kept still. Barely. “Thank you,” he managed. “Rosine… enough, or I will forget myself.”

Stand still. Drag her up and kiss her senseless.

“You should have told me it hurt,” she said.

“It didn’t.” It did hurt now—not his leg as much as his heart.

One curl had slipped from her hair and brushed her cheek. He wanted that curl wrapped around his fingers. He wanted her breath in his mouth. He wanted—

“Thank you,” he said, because gratitude was a bridge to civility when nothing else was.

She rose—near enough that the hem of her gown brushed his boot—and stopped there, as if the air between them needed testing. Her fingers toyed with the rim of the salve jar, then stilled. Her mouth parted, closed, parted again.

“You took me home,” she said at last, voice steady only because she willed it. A breath. Another. “At the door I thought—”

She lost the thread. He felt the gap like a hand around his ribs.

Say it.

Her lashes lifted; the candle caught the shine at the corner of her eye. “Yesterday,” she tried again, softer. “I thought you might…”

His body answered the unfinished word; want tightened every inch of restraint he wore.

“…kiss me,” she finished, the faintest color rising. “You didn’t.”

Silence held. Not empty—dangerous.

“I waited,” she admitted, fingers tightening on the jar. “And now I don’t know, and I wonder if I’d imagined it.”

“You didn’t,” he said, voice low. “I wanted to kiss you—at the door, and now—but only if you want it too. I will not take what isn’t offered.”

Air snagged in her lungs; color lifted in her cheeks. “I did,” she said, steady as a vow. “I do.”

Take her. Wait. Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

His hands stayed at his sides, every muscle strung to breaking. “Then say when,” he murmured, the words rough with restraint.

“I am telling you now.” She breathed out. “Teach me your board, Sander. Three moves. Then I’ll go down before someone sees us.”

A lesson. A mercy. A torment. “Now?”

She nodded. “Teach me.”

Oh, where to begin when everything you’ve ever wanted is suddenly offered?

He had to pace himself. Too much all at once, and he’d scare her. And the only way he knew how to pace himself was in chess. If he couldn’t be the master of his heart or body, which had become too hard to think about, then he had to show her that he could be the master on the board.

He took her wrist lightly and set her fingers on the white knight. “He doesn’t go straight,” Sander said. “He turns. He is the only piece on the board that can leap.” My heart is leaping for you.

Her smile tipped a little crooked, bright and unhelpful to his restraint. “Like you?”