“Finally, Amy. Finally.” His words were desperate and deep and her body rose to meet him, and then completely join him, in a slow choreography of bodies rediscovering a forsaken but not forgotten dance of being one.

Tangled together she felt their release spread like fire, felt the peace of completion like a benediction. She curled up next to him and traced his face with her finger. He shifted beside her.

“Don’t move,” she said, suddenly afraid that if he pulled his body from her she would once again live in the nether-world of longing and wanting where this intimacy was just beyond her reach. He began to move inside her again and she cried out.

He touched her face. “Am I hurting you?”

“No, no.” She grabbed on to him, pulled him closer, desperate to escape the ache of him gone to a place where she couldn’t find him. He kissed her again and again, keeping his lips to hers even as he spoke.

“Dear God, Amy. I have never loved anyone but you.”

She tried to distinguish her hand, her leg or arm from his—her want and longing from his—but they were wrapped too tightly to separate.

“If only there was a word stronger than love, stronger than desire. I wish I could find it—find a way to tell you everything you are to me.” He closed his eyes.

“Nick . . .” She arched her back, surrendered all of herself to him. She had words stronger than love, larger than desire; they were in her body, in her flesh and bones, and at last she’d found them.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-seven

She shivered, freezing. She reached down for the Irish quilt on her bed and felt her bare leg and a slippery piece of material. She opened her eyes to a filtered and fogged light. Damn, Phil had forgotten to turn the bathroom light off. She moved to stand and go to the bathroom but fumbled, landed on hard, cold wood.

Memory flooded in with the icy realization of where she was and why. She lifted her hand to her neck, grabbed the diamond cross in a flash of awareness: Oystertip, the house, Nick.

The languid memory of his touch washed over her; the pure lovemaking they had once again found in each other still throbbed through her.

“Nick,” she murmured. His face was soft in the early-morning light—a mix of moon and predawn sun coming in the one window where he had kicked out the plywood the night before, a lifetime ago. Morning approached—she had a class, she had a job, she had a family.