“I’m patient, though, you must agree.” Hæra’s face was changing in a way Madeleine couldn’t explain. Not like someone about to change their shape into a magical being. More like someone changing from a person into…into… “I’ve waited a long time. So have you.”

“What about envy?” Madeleine croaked.

“Oh yes.” Hæra rubbed her nose against Madeleine’s—a gesture that might have been sweet, even silly in another context. Here, it just felt like another step toward the edge of a cliff.

What a thrill it would be to fall at last.

“I envied everyone who spent that time with you,” Hæra said. “Now I want all the time with you I can get.”

Was it Madeleine who was moving her right hand to rest on Hæra’s shoulder, and her left to touch Hæra’s cheek, just beneath the sharp cheekbone? Was that Madeleine’s thumb brushing over Hæra’s bottom lip? It must be.

Hæra inhaled shakily. She opened her mouth. She must be about to say something else, and Madeleine held her breath for it.

Hæra didn’t speak. Instead, she closed her incisors gently around Madeleine’s thumb. The tip of her tongue flicked against Madeleine’s flesh. As she tasted it, Hæra’s eyes fell shut, as if in bliss.

This wasn’t like the kiss they’d shared on the beach: cathartic, sweet, almost innocent. Nothing was innocent about Hæra’s mouth savoring Madeleine’s skin. It couldn’t be, not when Madeleine’s whole body lit up hotter than the fire at her back.

Too fast, she tried to tell herself, this is too much, too soon. She was still wrestling with so many things.

Hæra’s eyes opened again. The firelight reflected in them. She released Madeleine’s thumb from her mouth with a soft, wet noise, and in that moment, Madeleine Laurent’s walls collapsed into rubble. It wasn’t too soon.

It was much too late, in fact.

Madeleine opened her arms. As Hæra’s own arms wrapped around her, as Hæra bent to take her mouth, her soul whispered: Better late than never.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The sex books hadn’t prepared Hæra for this.

Not the basic books that explained the mechanics, nor the longer ones that focused on pleasure and technique. Even with illustrations, they’d all been so abstract.

Madeleine wasn’t abstract. Her body in Hæra’s arms was soft, real, and warm.

Quite warm. They were on the rug right in front of the hearth, closer to fire than Hæra had ever dared approach. Now its heat crept over her skin, more primal than if it came from a radiator or stove, unconfined by device or design.

As Hæra kissed Madeleine, the heat swept through her from within and without, and she welcomed it as she never had before.