But gently. Dragging himself back, he eased his possessive grip into a caress. When he lowered his mouth to her breast, the sound of pleasure came from both of them. He used his tongue to tease, his teeth to torment. He could feel her skin hum under his hands and lips.

She was small, delicate. It helped to bring out the tenderness he wanted to show her. But when he laid her back there was a strength and demand in the hands that pressed him against her.

So long. The thought raced in and out of her mind as he did things to her, for her, things she had never imagined. She had waited so long for this. For him. Her response came freely and fully, her loving of him totally instinctive. There was no way for her to know as she spun in the world he had opened for her what she brought to him.

He was skilled, and he used his skill to take her beyond those first flashes of pleasure into the velvet space reserved for lovers. She was innocent, yet, just as truly, just as easily, she took him. He slipped into her. She closed around him.

It was a merging of bodies, and of hearts, and of time.

***

Clouds. Dark, silver-edged clouds. Libby was floating on one. She wanted to go on drifting forever. Her arms had slid from around him, limp, to lie on the rumpled sheets. She couldn’t find the strength to lift them and encircle him again. Nor could she find her voice. She wanted to tell him not to move—not ever to move. With her eyes closed and his body fitted so perfectly against hers, she counted each beat of his heart.

Silk. Her skin was like hot, fragrant silk. He was certain he could never get enough of it. With his face buried in her hair, he felt his system drift back to earth like a feather on the breeze. How could he tell her that no one had ever moved him as she did? How could he explain that at this moment he was more at home than he had ever been in his own world, or in the sky he loved so much? How could he accept that he had found his match in a place, and in a time, where he was a stranger?

He wouldn’t think of it. Cal turned his lips into her neck. For as long as it was possible, he would live from minute to minute.

“You are so lovely.” He propped himself on an elbow so that he could see her face, the paleness of it in the moonlight. It was flushed from the afterglow of lovemaking. Her eyes were clouded with the last dregs of spent passion. “Very lovely,” he murmured, and kissed her. “Your skin’s still warm.” He began to nibble, as though she were a delicacy he couldn’t resist.