He gathered her up and held her in his arms, just held her as she pressed her face to his throat, wound her arms around his neck. The wind shivered at the windows as they lowered themselves to the bed.

The mattress gave beneath them with only a whisper. The sheets rustled. He buried his face in her hair and let her scent slice holes in his control. She flowed against him, not just pliant but willing.

A touch and a tremor. A taste and a sigh. Slowly, savoring, shivering, they discovered each other. She was so soft here, so firm there. The strength in someone so small never failed to astonish him. Fragrant. Her skin was a garden of delight to all his senses. If he ran his tongue over it, he could taste both passion and delicacy.

How was it she had never understood the compassion, the gentleness, the goodness in him? Yet she’d loved him, anyway. Discovering it all now, she was swamped by feelings deeper than she had believed herself capable of. Here was a patience she’d never seen. A sweetness she had never dreamed of. He gave it all to her, without her ever having to ask. He gave her touches of romance she thought herself too wise to need.

It wouldn’t always be like this. No, she knew that. There would be demands, greed, recklessness. That she could accept when the time came. But this time, this first time, he seemed to know she wanted gentleness. More, much more important, he seemed to want it, too.

So her hands caressed. Her lips lingered. She showed him she could cherish as well as be cherished. Even when their breath began to merge together in shudders, there was no rage to complete. Prolong. Only to prolong.

When he filled her, they moved together without the haste of first passions. This was a hunger that had waited seven years to be sated. Together they burrowed in a beauty that came as quietly and as inevitably as a sunrise.

The moonlight still glowed. The curtains still billowed. Apparently the world had decided to go on with routine though everything had changed. The sheets were rumpled at the base of the bed, untended and unneeded as the man and woman fed off each other’s warmth.

Eve lay with her head on Alexander’s shoulder, a place that seemed to have been reserved for her. A place she’d never thought she would claim. His heart beat, still far from steadily, under her hand. His arm was around her, holding her close, and though she knew he was as awake and aware as she, there was a peace between them that had never existed before.

Had love done it, or the act of love? She didn’t know, and wondered if it should matter. They were together.

“Seven years.” Her sigh was long and shimmered through the silence. “I’ve wanted this for seven years.”