//CLARA//

I lay on my back, my head resting on Casimir’s outstretched arm, our fingers intertwined like vines clinging to each other. His other hand traced lazy circles on my shoulder. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest against my back, his coat bunched beneath us, the wool scratchy against my bare skin.

Above us, the Milky Way stretched across the sky. No pollution, just stars. Millions of them. I’d forgotten the sky could look like this.

I exhaled and tilted my head slightly to catch his face. His eyes reflected the starlight, his expression unreadable, but his touch spoke volumes.

"When was this place abandoned?" I murmured softly, afraid that speaking too loudly might shatter the quiet magic of the moment.

"Long before I was born," he said. "I used to come here as a boy. When the world felt too loud. This was where I’d escape. Just me, the stars, and the silence."

I turned my head just enough to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist.

"And now?" I asked softly. "Do you still come here to escape?"

"No. I only come here to remember what it feels like to be free."

His hand slid from my shoulder to my waist, pulling me closer, his body molding against mine like we were two halves of the same whole.

"But tonight, I’m right where I want to be."

A shiver ran through me. I could feel the heat of him, the way his thighs bracketed mine. His cock, already half-hard, nestled against the curve of my ass. His fingers tangled with mine like he never wanted to let go.

"Your birthday is coming up." His lips brushing the sensitive skin behind my ear.

I blinked.

My birthday. Eleanor’s birthday.

I had no idea when it was. I’d been so busy surviving that I’d never asked. Never thought to ask. It didn’t even occurred to me.

My twenty-six-year-old mind kept forgetting that this body was only eighteen. Well, now turning nineteen. Damn. The things we’d been doing to Eleanor’s body were enough to land us both in jail. She was still practically a teenager. Legal age, yes. But still too young.

"When?" The word slipped out before I could stop it.

He pulled back just enough to look at me, his brow furrowed.

"Don’t tell me you forgot your own birthday."

Shit.

My mind scrambled, racing through excuses, alibis, anything that didn’t sound like I was a time-traveling imposter who didn’t even know what year she was born.

"With everything that’s happened—" I waved a hand vaguely, gesturing at the dome, at the past month, at the wreckage of my sanity. "I stopped tracking the days. They all blurred together."

He studied my face for a long moment. I could see him weighing my words, searching for the lie.

I held my breath.

Then his expression softened. He brushed a strand of hair from my face and pressed a kiss to my forehead.

"Three weeks," he said quietly. "The same week as the banns."

Of course it was. My—Eleanor’s—birthday fell the same week she was supposed to marry Bartholomew.

The universe had a sick sense of humor.

Casimir must have felt me tense, because his grip on my waist loosened. His thumb stroked soothing circles over my hip.

"What do you want for your birthday, little bird?" His voice rumbled against my back. "A ball? Jewels? A night where the entire court bows at your feet?"

His lips curved. "Name it, and it’s yours."

I swallowed hard. My mind raced.

I thought of Felipe’s foundation. The children with no one to celebrate their birthdays.

"I don’t want a ball," I said quietly. "I want to spend my birthday at the foundation. With the children. If that’s alright with you."

He went so still I wondered if he’d stopped breathing. Then his body relaxed, though his grip on me tightened just a fraction.

"Felipe’s foundation?"

"Yes."

I turned in his arms, rolling onto my back so I could fully see his face. His features painted with silver and shadow, the sharp angle of his jaw, the dark slashes of his brows.

I reached up and cupped his cheek. My thumb brushed over his overgrown beard.

"Felipe and I are friends. Like Oliver. Nothing more."

A muscle twitched in his jaw. But he didn’t pull away. He turned his head and pressed a kiss to my palm. His lips lingered.

"I know," he murmured. Like the words were being dragged out of him. "But knowing and liking are two different things."

His hand slid up my side, fingers splaying over my ribs. Just beneath the swell of my breast.

"You are the most admirable woman I have ever met, Clara. And I am a selfish, wicked man for wanting to keep you all to myself."

Before I could answer, his knees pushed between my thighs, spreading me open to the night air and the heat of his skin.

"May my brother forgive me," he growled, "for all the things I have done and will do to you."

He didn’t wait for divine permission or my response.

His cock, already weeping a thin trail of fluid against my hip, pressed firm and demanding into the cleft of my ass. I hadn’t prepared myself before he angled his hips and found my entrance.

I gasped, my spine arching as my body seemed to reach for him, to suck him inside with a wet, greedy sound. One smooth, fluid slide and he was buried to the root, stretching me open around his girth until I could feel my own pulse beating against his length.

"God, Clara," he groaned, the vibration traveling through my spine like a plucked string. "There’s nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for you."

A moan. That was my only response.

He didn’t rush. This was slower, more agonizing worship. His hand found the back of my knee, hooking my leg into the crook of his elbow and pulling it wider, until I felt the stretch in my hip and the deeper angle of his penetration.

He began to move in languid, rolling thrusts.

He took his sweet time.

His mouth found the tender hollow behind my ear, his tongue laving the skin there before trailing down the line of my jaw. He was marking me with every taste, every soft nip of his teeth.

He found my mouth.

The kiss began as a prayer, soft, lingering, our tongues met with the same unhurried rhythm as our hips, tangling and retreating in a dance that matched the slow penetration of his cock into my clutching heat.

"Casimir," I breathed.

"Again," he whispered against my lips.

"Casimir."

The kiss deepened. The hunger built. What started as slow became something more, a tide rising, a fire catching. My fingers tangled in his hair.

He pulled back and shifted. He rolled onto his back, pulling me with him, and I found myself straddling his hips, his cock buried inside me. His hands gripped my waist, guiding me, but he didn’t rush. He paced me down into the rhythm.

I braced my palms on his chest. Leaned down and kissed him.

His hands slid up my back, pressing me closer, and I moved against him, rolling my hips slowly.

He sat up, wrapping his arms around me, and buried his face in my chest. His mouth found my nipple, sucking, lapping, drawing out every inch of pleasure without being rough.

His thumb found my clit, circling in slow, torturous strokes. I was sobbing, my hands fisting in his hair, holding him there—or pulling him closer, I no longer knew.

Then he laid me back down without ever breaking the connection between our hips. He spread my legs wider still, pinning my knees toward my shoulders in a position that left me utterly open, utterly vulnerable.

It was heavenly torture.

Every glide of his cock inside me was perfectly timed with the pull of his lips on my breast, the suction and release creating a rhythm that had me trembling on a wire tuned too tight. I could feel every vein of him, every ridge, every slow withdrawal that made me clutch and every return that filled me to bursting.

"Casimir," I whimpered, my eyes fluttering shut as the stars above fractured into streaks of light. "Please—"

"I know," he murmured against my skin. "I’ve got you."

The hunger took over at the end. The slow pace that had tortured us both so sweetly broke into a frantic chase. I came with his name on my lips, my body arching into his. He followed moments later, buried to the hilt, his forehead pressed to mine.

The silence in the dome was broken only by the distant whistle of the wind against the glass. I was still floating, thinking about charities and birthdays and a future that felt almost... normal.

"Come away with me, little bird. "Casimir blurted, his voice flat and terrifyingly serious. "Let’s elope."

My eyes snapped wide, the stars above suddenly blurring as my heart kicked against my ribs.

"What?"