“Gwenaëlle,” he says, and the way he draws out her name is a low warning, but it’s also the sound of a man who’s probably stuck in a losing fight. This is the sort of terrorism where she reigns supreme and plays him like a harp, while he turns skittish and self-conscious even over little things like her pressing a fleeting kiss to the corner of his mouth if they’re somewhere others might see.

A reason their original flirtation played out behind closed doors, in those private spaces where no one else could stick their nose into his business: they’re technically at work, like, all the time.

But he’s playing with fire now, as his hands slide down the angles of her shoulderblades and dip further beneath the edge of her chemise.

“The last time you threw off your clothes on a beach in front of me,” Stephen muses, “it was nighttime. I was incredibly gentlemanly and didn’t sneak a peek.”

It’s odd, casting his mind back to those days in pseudo-New York. He had been unerringly comfortable with her even then; if there had been any burgeoning awareness of more, he’d kept it buried at the time. Had only let himself see and notice and acknowledge his attraction to Gwenaëlle the way you might dispassionately note a good-looking painting.