CHAPTER EIGHTY THREE – A FLAME IS LIT

Despite herself, Cassie leaned shamelessly into his touch, craving the addictive warmth and reassurance it supplied like a talisman against the world right now. She'd crossed the Rubicon now - no going back to the confines of what she'd previously considered impossibly out of reach for someone like her. "What does that make us, then?" She asked breathlessly, searching Florian's expression with naked vulnerability. "Where do we...where can this even go from here?" Her mind whirled with the sordid implications, feeling wholly out of her depth even as her body and heart still thrummed in the afterglow of their unprecedented connection. Even if she resigned from the mansion, what future could she and Florian possibly share? Their worlds were simply too disparate, she a lowly maid and he a wealthy heir to an aristocratic dynasty... "Hey." Florian's tone was low but insistent, his thumb stroking her cheekbone reverently to recapture her fractured attention. "We'll figure all that out as w