She told him what she’d never told anyone but Shree Kaka in the hospital more than thirty years ago. She told him how the inside of her head had changed. How the visions had taken over her body.

“The day you landed on my balcony, it stopped. The fact that I’m touching you and I have not passed out from the pressure inside my head from your feelings, your past, your future, everything. I don’t understand it. But you’re my miracle.”

“That explains so much.” His words fell on the part in her hair. Simple. Easy.

An entirely unfamiliar warmth ran down the back of her neck and traced her spine. It was a hunger she’d experienced through others but never for herself. Like so much she’d been feeling with him, she separated what she knew but wasn’t hers, from what was only hers and tried to claim it.

He was watching her, eyes so dark she could barely distinguish his pupils from his irises. Her gaze slid down his face. The wide, strong ridge of his nose. His scar, which this close was a complicated constellation of star shapes. His wide, bright teeth. The hollows beneath his cheekbones. The inky darkness of his beard. And finally his generously lush lips.

The sensation that had slid down her spine pooled in her belly, warm and sharp. The world seemed to find its center in his mouth.

“Are you going to kiss me?” she asked, making a smile break across his face.

“Only if you want me to.”

“Do you want to?”

“Very much. You?”

“I think so. But I’m also scared.”

The thumb on her back started stroking again. He swallowed. “I am too.”

“Why are you scared?”

“Honestly? I’m not sure. I’ve never discussed a kiss in such detail before doing it.”

She started laughing. A strange feeling when your body was pressed flush against someone else.

He dropped a kiss on the corner of her mouth, and it made such a wild feeling rush through her that she pressed into it. Then his mouth slid across hers, until their lips were touching, fitting. Sensitive skin to sensitive skin. And then he was kissing her.

She’d expected to fall, to let consciousness go. The way her body had always reacted to stimulation. Instead something inside her reared up and roared to life. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around him, grabbing his head to find purchase, reaching up on her toes. Her mouth seemed to take over everything. Pushing and pushing and feeling.

He smiled into her lips.

“Why are you smiling?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“Examining your own body’s reactions against me.”

“Sorry.”

“No. Don’t be. Tell me how you feel.”

“Like I want to eat you up.”

Now he was laughing. Having someone laugh into your lips was the most amazing feeling.

“What?” she asked.