She tasted of salt, smelled of the sea. Her body was solid and warm and—naked. A naked woman was lying on top of Madeleine, between her spread thighs, her breasts pressed to Madeleine’s own as she kissed her with a hot mouth.

For a moment, the pain and cold vanished. Only the heat of the kiss was real. It spread through Madeleine’s limbs, warming her like coffee on a cold morning. It called her hips upward, until they rubbed against the weight atop her. She raised her knees, cradling the naked woman between her thighs—unthinking, instinctual, something she’d been waiting to do all her life.

Madeleine’s deepest, most secret dreams had suddenly come true, here on a stony beach. This time, her moan wasn’t one of confusion. There was nothing confusing about how good this felt.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was lifting her heavy arms in their soaked sleeves to embrace the stranger. She felt wet skin, surprisingly warm, taut with muscle. Was this what it was like to touch a naked woman? Softness and strength all at once? Blessed—no, divine⁠—

The woman seized Madeleine’s hands and pressed them to the ground. Kept kissing her. Her teeth curved over Madeleine’s lips and chin as if she were about to bite down, and she moaned again. She was so strong that Madeleine couldn’t have struggled even if she’d wanted to.

Madeleine couldn’t imagine struggling. She didn’t want to do anything except lie here beneath this—this⁠—

She remembered now. She’d fallen. Hit her head. She must have gone into the water. Nobody else had been there. She would have drowned, if not for this unnaturally strong, long, shadowy…

“Angel?” Madeleine croaked.

There was a pause. The woman’s—the angel’s?—breath blew hot against her mouth. Her lips moved against Madeleine’s as if she were about to say something.

Then, Madeleine heard a voice in the distance, a man’s voice. “Hello there!” it called. “What’s going on, then?”

The angel hissed. She squeezed Madeleine’s wrists, and then one of her hands let go to tug at Madeleine’s waist. The rosary beads there loosened, and Madeleine felt them slide from around her.

She tried to speak and only managed to whisper, “Wh…”

A warm mouth brushed against her ear and whispered three words that would haunt Madeleine for the rest of her life.

Then she was gone, and Madeleine could hear only the crash of waves upon the shore.

Rocks poked her in the back. She looked dizzily up at the stars as clouds passed over them, her mouth tingling, her forehead burning.

“Bloody hell!”

Another person knelt next to her: a man, this time. Madeleine couldn’t see his face clearly either.