Find me in your labyrinth (Stella and Jonathan) novel Chapter 2700

The party continued until the early hours of the morning. By the time Estelle and Jonathan got home, showered, and climbed into bed, it was nearly two o’clock.

The night was deep, but Jonathan’s eyes were still bright. He held Estelle in his arms, stroking her smooth black hair. “Ella, we’re getting married,” he whispered.

“Mmm,” she murmured into his chest.

Jonathan’s long, cool fingers traced the side of her face. “Besides the time we didn’t know who the other was, our first real meeting was at the University of J City. Do you remember?”

Estelle shifted, looking up at him, her eyes like stars. “I remember. You stood up for me.”

“It’s strange,” he chuckled. “I didn’t know it was you then, but seeing you being bullied made me angry. I just had to help.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you weren’t just captivated by my beauty, Mr. Lamont?”

In the warm lamplight, his gaze was deep and tender. He pinched her cheek. “If we’re talking about being captivated, that would have been later, when you came to the Lamont estate to tutor Henson.”

“Oh,” she feigned realization. “So you had wicked intentions for me that early on.”

“I suspect you were trying to seduce me back then,” he said, his lips curling into a smile. He remembered her on the lawn, teaching Henson archery. Her legs were so pale, her waist so slender. When she drew the bow, her curves became even more defined, a perfect silhouette for his eyes only. “I confirmed it later.”

Estelle took his hand, playing with his fingers. “Confirmed what?” she asked softly.

“Confirmed,” he murmured, his fingers tilting her chin up, “that we were both hungry for each other.”

Her smile was exquisite, but she denied it. “I wasn’t.”

“No?” he challenged. “That night you saved Emily’s brother, you called me on purpose. You’d been planning it for a while, hadn’t you?”

She looked at him, their faces inches apart, her gaze clear and bright. “After we were rescued, someone became different in my mind. I found myself trying to find out which mercenary group he was with, what missions he was on. I came to J City to find out what that ‘different’ really meant.”

His gaze deepened. “I was looking for you, too.”

A soft smile touched her lips. She raised her head and kissed his chin. “So it wasn’t just me who felt it was ‘different.’”

He kissed her deeply, branding her lips, her neck, her collarbone with his touch. From that first spark in the darkness to the slow, inevitable fall, he knew that if he could live his life over, he would choose to fall in love with her every single time.

The bedside lamp dimmed and finally went out, allowing the soft moonlight to spill into the room, gentle as a lover’s kiss. It started slow and deepened, a continuous, enchanting rhythm. In the dark, their breaths tangled together, rising and falling in a chaotic harmony. His voice was a low, rough whisper.

“Did you cry that night?”

Her reply was a murmur, lost in the moonlight, a soft, stubborn sound.