Lara's smirk should have come with a warning.
Sarisa felt it before Lara even touched her again, that shift in the air between them when teasing turned into something slower, more deliberate, something that made the whole little house seem to draw closer around them.
The room was warm, the hearth still carrying the last breath of heat, the lamplight soft against wood and books and wildflowers.
Outside, the world still existed somewhere, full of smoke and ruins and a wedding that had died in white silk and shock.
Inside, there was only Lara.
Lara stepped closer until there was barely room left between them, one hand lifting at last to the veil still pinned into Sarisa's hair.
Her fingers were warm and careful, and that carefulness was somehow worse than urgency would have been.
"You're looking at me like you're about to start trouble," Sarisa said, though her voice had gone softer than she intended.
Lara's mouth curved. "I already started trouble."
"That is true."
"Then I may as well finish it properly."
Sarisa should have answered something sharp.
Something clever. Instead she stood there in the wreckage of her wedding day and let the woman who had stolen her from the altar reach for her like she had all the time in the world.
Lara removed the veil first.
Slowly.
She lifted each pin with a patience Sarisa did not possess, setting them one by one on the low table by the wall.
With every pin that came free, Sarisa's hair loosened a little more, silver strands spilling down over her shoulders in soft disarray. Lara's gaze followed every inch of it.
When the last pin was gone, Lara let the veil fall to the floor.
"There," she murmured. "Better."
Sarisa exhaled, not quite steady. "You say that as if you've been waiting all day to ruin this dress."
Lara's eyes dipped to the white silk, to the fitted bodice and the long clean line of the skirt, and then rose again with open, dangerous appreciation. "I have been waiting all day to get you out of it."
The heat that moved through Sarisa at that was immediate and impossible to deny.
Lara reached for the fastening at the back of the gown.
Her hands did not rush. That was the cruel part. She traced the line of buttons first, the small, elegant row of them running down the back like little pearls of obedience, and Sarisa shivered before the first one even came undone.
"Lara."
"What?"
"You're doing that on purpose."
"Yes."
The answer came so easily that Sarisa laughed under her breath, helpless and a little breathless. Of course she was.
Of course Lara, who could fight like a storm and act on impulse like it was religion, would choose now to become unbearably patient.
One by one, the buttons gave.
With every small release, the dress loosened a little around Sarisa's body, though it still held close enough that she could feel Lara's fingertips brushing warm skin beneath silk.
The sensation was maddening. A slow unraveling. A ceremony undone by gentleness.
Lara bent her head and pressed a kiss to the back of Sarisa's shoulder.
Then another, lower.
"This," she said softly, voice rough against her skin, "is mine."
Sarisa's breath caught.
It should have sounded possessive. It did. But beneath it was something deeper than ownership. Not a claim made to control.
A claim made with devotion. With that fierce, impossible certainty Lara had when it came to loving her.
Lara's hands kept moving. The gown slipped lower, baring more of Sarisa's shoulders, the pale line of her back. Lara kissed each place as it was revealed, slow enough to make Sarisa tremble.
"This too," Lara murmured against the curve where shoulder became neck.
Another kiss, lower.
"And this."
Sarisa turned her head, half to protest, half because she needed to see Lara's face or she might simply melt where she stood. "You're impossible."
Lara smiled against her skin. "You've said."
"And yet you sound pleased every time."
The dress loosened enough then that Lara could slide it carefully from Sarisa's shoulders. It slided over her body in a long white hush until it pooled at their feet like the remains of someone else's life.
Sarisa stepped out of it slowly, standing now in the softer layers beneath, suddenly much less bride and much more herself.
Lara looked at her like she had been handed something sacred.
That gaze alone might have destroyed her.
Sarisa's hands drifted automatically to cover herself in places, not from shame but from the sheer intensity of being seen like that. Lara caught one wrist gently and lowered it.
"Don't," she said.
Sarisa looked up at her.
Lara's face had gone unguarded again, all teasing burned away into something steadier and far more dangerous. "You have no idea what you do to me."
Sarisa felt the answering warmth rise all through her, fierce and soft and almost enough to make the day vanish.
"Maybe I do," she whispered.
Lara laughed very quietly at that, then bent to press another kiss, this time to the inside of Sarisa's wrist. Her thumb brushed the pulse there.
"This is mine too."
Then the other wrist.
And the line of her collarbone.
And the soft place just beneath her ear.
Every kiss came with the same reverence, the same dangerous tenderness, as if Lara was not merely undressing her but peeling the day away piece by piece. The wedding. The palace. The queen. Vaelen's smile. The altar.
All of it falling away with the silk until what remained was just Sarisa, warm and real and breathing too fast in the middle of a small beautiful house.
When Lara finally straightened, she caught Sarisa's face in both hands and kissed her properly.
Not frantic this time.
Just deep and slow and full of everything that had been almost lost. Sarisa went into it willingly, one hand finding Lara's waist, the other tangling in the front of her shirt.
Lara tasted like heat and relief and the aftermath of battle, and Sarisa kissed her harder because she could. Because Lara was here. Because the dress was on the floor.
When they broke apart, Lara rested her forehead briefly against Sarisa's.
"You can't stay in those layers either," she murmured.
Sarisa's mouth curved. "So demanding."
"I'm being practical."
"That is not a word I associate with you."
Lara kissed the corner of her mouth once. "Rude."
Then she stepped away just long enough to cross to a chair near the hearth where a black shirt lay thrown over the back. She picked it up and turned, holding it out.
"Here."
Sarisa took it automatically.
It was one of Lara's shirts, dark and soft from wear, still faintly warm from the room. When Sarisa pulled it on, the fabric swallowed her whole.
The sleeves fell well past her hands. The hem reached to the middle of her thighs. It smelled unmistakably of Lara.
Lara stared.
Sarisa became suddenly, acutely aware of how she looked standing there in nothing but that oversized black shirt and the last trace of wedding silk tangled at her ankles.
"What?" she asked.
Lara's eyes went slow and dark over the sight of her. "That is…" She let out a breath that sounded halfway to a laugh. "That's unfair."
Sarisa looked down at herself. The shirt hung loose enough to be innocent and yet somehow managed the opposite too. It was absurd. Comfortable. A little ridiculous. And, judging by the look on Lara's face, devastating.
"Well," Sarisa said lightly, though warmth curled low in her stomach under the weight of Lara's gaze, "you're the one who gave it to me."
Lara came back to her at once, one hand catching the hem of the shirt where it brushed against Sarisa's thigh.
"Mm," Lara said softly. "And now I'm reconsidering whether that was wise."