She wouldn’t have believed it. But here, now, she felt beautiful. She felt powerful. She felt loved. Just for today, she thought, and met his mouth with hers.

He drank from her, with thirst but without greed. Held her close but without desperation. Here, they both knew, time could spin out. Time could be taken.

Tongues met and tangled in a slow, intimate dance. Breath mixed. Murmurs melded.

She stroked her hands along the silk of his robe, then beneath to flesh. So warm. So smooth. His mouth on her throat, urging her to tip her head to give him more, and the light nip of teeth where her pulse beat. The erratic bump of it tempted him to slick his tongue over her skin, to fill himself with the flavor that was only her.

He parted her robe, lightly as air. When his hands, his mouth took possession of her, she arched gently.

Enjoy me, she seemed to say. Enchant me.

She sighed with him, moved with him, while the air swam with scent and the warm, soft wind caressed her naked skin. Sensations glimmered, tangled with delights both bright and dark. Lost in them, steeped in them, she rolled with him, rose languidly over him.

Her body was wand slim, white as marble in the delicate light. Her hair was lifted by the wind, her eyes full of secrets. Captivated, he ran his hands up her thighs, over her hips, her torso, closed them over her breasts.

And there her heart beat in the same hammer blows as his own.

“Rowan,” he murmured, as those secrets, as that power, glinted in her eyes. “You are all manner of witch.”

Her laugh was quick and triumphant. She leaned down, took his mouth hungrily with hers. Heat, sudden and brutal, slammed into him, leaped into his blood like the fire she’d made only hours before.

She felt it, too, the quick change, and that she had made it. That, she thought wildly, that was power. Riding on it, she took him into her, bowing back to revel in the shock of it, watching stars wheel in the black sky overhead.

His hands gripped her hips, his breath exploded from his lungs. Instinctively he struggled for control, but his already slippery grasp broke as she took him.

She took. Her hips moved like lightning, her body soared with a wild whip of energy that pushed him, raced ahead, dragged him with her.

She rocked herself to madness, then beyond, and still she drove him on. He said her name. She heard the sound break from him as his body plunged with hers. And she saw as they flew up, how his eyes flashed, then went dark and blind.

She all but wept with triumph as she grabbed hold and fell over with him.

*  *  *