MISTRAL DREW OUT OF ME WITH A SIGHING SHUDDER THAT RAN down the length of his body. Seeing him affected to that degree made my breath short and fast. At first I thought he had rain in his eyes to match the lightning; then he blinked, and I realized it was tears.

If we had been alone I would have questioned it, talked about it, but with this many other men around us, I could not. I could not point out that he was crying in front of them, nor could I ask him why and hope to get a truthful answer. But it meant a great deal to me that Mistral, master of storms, cried after he tasted my body.

Abeloec said, softly, "It's been too long."

Mistral looked at him, and he simply nodded with the shine of those few hard tears gliding down his cheeks. He looked down at me, and there was a gentleness on his face, a raw pain in his eyes. He kissed me, and this time it was gentle. "I have forgotten my manners, Princess, forgive me."

"You can kiss me with force, just don't choke me."

He gave a small smile, and an even smaller nod. Then he laid his body carefully along the length of mine so that his testicles pressed against my groin, and the hard length of him touched me from groin to my upper stomach. He let his weight settle on top of me with a sigh, then wrapped his arms around me. He put his face to one side of mine, and it was as if he let some great tension fall away from him. It was almost as if he grew lighter at the same time that his actual weight became heavier. I laid a soft kiss against the curve of his ear, because it was the spot I could reach.

He shuddered against me again, but because he was pressed so hard against the front of my body it made me shudder, too. The wind trailed his hair and mine across my face, mingling the red and grey strands together, almost in the way the neon glow of power had wound itself together. Stronger together than apart. The clouds in his eyes spun so fast across them that it was almost dizzying to watch.

He unwound his arms from me and raised up enough to see my face. "I don't want to kiss down the front of your body. I want to bite my way down it."

I had to swallow hard before I could answer, in a breathy voice, "No blood, no permanent marks, and nothing as hard as what you did to my breast. You haven't done enough prep work for that."

"Prep work?" He made it a question.

Abeloec said, "Foreplay." He had been kneeling above my head, so still that I had forgotten he was there.

We both looked at him. "Give us a little more room," Mistral asked. "I am the only one inside this circle with you, and I must remain."

Circle, I thought, then I realized that he was right. The lines of blue, green, and red encircled the three of us. Everyone else was covered in them, but they formed a barrier around the three of us. It was a barrier that the wind could cross at will, but there would be other things that could not cross it. I wasn't sure what those other things would be, but I knew enough of magical circles to know that they were meant to keep some things in, and some things out. It was their nature, and tonight was all about the nature of things.

I ran my hands up Mistral's back, tracing the line of his spine, playing along the muscles that held him just above me. He closed his eyes and swallowed before he looked down at me. "You wanted something?"

"You," I said.

That earned me a smile. A real smile, not about sex, or pain, or sorrow, just a smile. I valued that smile the way I valued Frost's smile, and Doyle's. They had all come to me without a real smile, as if they had forgotten how to do it. By the standards that the other two men had set, Mistral was a fast learner.

I moved one hand around so I could trace his lower lip with my finger. "Do what you wanted to do. Just remember the rules."

His smile held an edge of something that wasn't happy now, and I wasn't sure if the parameters that I'd put on him were actually that taxing, or if I'd reminded him of something sad. "No blood, no permanent marks, nothing as hard as what I did on your breast, because I have not done enough foreplay for that, yet."

It was almost word for word what I'd said to him. "Good memory."

"Memory is all I have." As he said it, that raw pain was back in his eyes. I thought I understood now. He was enjoying himself, and determined to enjoy himself, but when he was finished, there would be no more. The queen would put him back in the lonely cell of her rules, her jealousy, her sadism. Would it be worse to have had this moment and then be denied again? Would it cause him pain to watch me with my men, and not be a part of it? It wasn't that I was so special to him, or to them. It was simply that I was the only woman with whom the guards could break their long celibacy.

I raised myself off the ground and kissed him. "I am yours."

He kissed me, gently at first, then harder. His tongue thrust between my lips. I opened my mouth and let him explore my mouth. He thrust deep inside, then backed off a little, enough so that it was just a good deep kiss. The feel of his mouth drew my mouth closer to his, made my body rise up to press tighter against him, sent my arms across his back, pressed my breasts firm against his chest.

He made a small sound low in his throat, and the wind suddenly felt cool against my skin. He drew his mouth from mine, and the expression in his eyes was wild. Storm clouds rode in his eyes, but they had slowed, so that it was no longer dizzying. If I hadn't known what I was looking at, I might simply have thought his eyes were the grey of rain clouds.

He laid his face in the curve of my neck. He didn't so much kiss me as lay his lips against my skin. His breath went out in a heavy sigh that spread warmth across my skin. It made me shiver, and that was it. He set his teeth in the side of my neck, and bit me. It made me cry out and tense my fingers along his back, to trail an edge of nail across his skin.

He bit my shoulder, quick and hard. I cried out for him, and he moved again. I don't think he trusted himself to hold my flesh in his mouth for very long. I knew he wanted to bite down harder, and I could feel the effort required to fight that urge in his lips, his hands, his entire body. He was enjoying himself, but he was struggling to keep his impulses in check.

He put his mouth into the side of the breast he had not marked and barely laid teeth. I grabbed the side of his face, not hard, but it stopped him. He lifted his gaze to mine, his mouth half opened, and I watched his expression fall. I think he expected me to tell him to stop. Even if that had been what I meant to do, I wouldn't have had the heart to say it. But regardless, it hadn't.

"Harder," I said instead.

He gave me a wolfish grin, and again I got that glimpse of something in him that would have made me hesitate to be alone with him. But I was no longer certain if that was truly Mistral's nature, or whether centuries of denial had made him wild with need.

He set his teeth into my side and bit down hard, hard enough that I writhed under him. He moved just a little farther down my side, to my waist, and this time when I felt him begin to let go, I said, "Harder."

He bit me deeper this time, bit me until I felt his teeth almost meet in my skin. I cried out and said, "Enough, enough."

He lifted his face as if to stop completely. I smiled at him. "I didn't say stop, I just meant that was hard enough."

He moved to the other side of my body and bit me again without urging, hard enough that I had to tell him, almost immediately, not to go farther. He looked up at me, and whatever he saw on my face satisfied him, because he bit next to my belly button, setting his teeth so hard and fast that I had to tell him to stop.

He'd left a press of red teeth marks on my stomach. There were red marks here and there on my body, but nothing as perfect as that. A perfect set of his teeth marks in the white flesh of my body. Looking at it made me shiver.

"You like it," he whispered.

"Yes," I said.

The wind held an edge of dampness as it trailed across my skin. He licked low on my stomach, and the wind seemed to blow across that wet line, almost as if the wind had a mouth, too, and could blow where it wished.

Mistral pressed his mouth where he had licked, and bit me. Hard and sharp, enough to make me startle, and raise my upper body off the ground. "Enough," I said, and my voice was almost a yell.

The wind began to pick up, blowing more dead leaves across my body. Streaming my hair across my face, so that for a moment I couldn't see what Mistral was doing. The wind was damp, as if it rode an edge of rain. But it never rained in the dead gardens.

I felt his mouth laid on the mound between my legs, resting on the tight, curling hair. I couldn't see, but I knew what he was doing. He bit me, and I yelled, "Enough."

I used one hand to push my hair out of the way, so I could look down my body and see him. He gave one quick flick of his tongue between my legs. That one small touch sped my pulse and opened my mouth in a silent O.

"You know what I want to do," he said. He spoke with his hands around my thighs, fingers digging in just a little, his face just above my groin, so close that his breath touched me there.

I nodded, because I didn't trust my voice. On the one hand, I didn't want him to hurt me; on the other, I did want him to come just to that edge of truly hurting me. I liked that edge. I liked it a lot.

I finally found my voice, and it almost didn't sound like me, so breathy, so eager. "Go slow, and when I say enough, you stop."

He gave that smile again that filled his cloud-dazed eyes with a fierce light, and I realized it wasn't my imagination. Lightning played through the heavy grey clouds of his eyes. It had gone away, but now it was back, and it filled them with a flashing white, white light, so that his eyes looked blind for a second. The wind slowed, and the air felt heavy, thick, and I felt an edge of electricity in the air.

He spread me wide, using his fingers, so strong, so thick. He licked the length of me, back and forth until I writhed under his mouth and hands. Only then did he press his mouth over me. Only then did he let me feel the edge of his teeth around the most intimate parts of my body.

He bit down slowly, so slowly, so carefully.

I breathed out, "Harder."

He obeyed.

He took as much of my flesh down there into his mouth as he could fit, and bit me. Bit me so hard that it raised my upper body completely off the ground, and I screamed for him. But I didn't scream stop, or enough. I just screamed, full-throated, spine bowing, staring down at him with wide eyes and opened mouth. I orgasmed for him, from the feel of his teeth in my most intimate flesh. I orgasmed for him, and even through the pleasure of it I changed my scream to "Stop, stop, oh, God, stop!" Even through that most overwhelming of pleasures, I could feel his teeth going just a little too far. When something hurts in the middle of orgasm, you need to stop - things usually only hurt when the afterglow begins to fade.

Again I screamed, "Stop," and he stopped.

I fell back onto the ground, eyes unable to focus, fighting to breathe, unable to move. But even while my body lay helpless with the afterglow, I began to ache. I ached where his teeth had touched me there, and I knew that it was just going to hurt more later. I'd let my desire - and Mistral's - send us too far over that fine edge.

His voice came. "I did not bleed you, and I did not bite you as hard there as I did on your breast."

I nodded, because I couldn't speak yet. The air was so dense with the coming storm that it made it harder to breathe, almost in the way the queen could make the air too thick to breathe.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

I found my voice. "A little." The ache was becoming sharper. I had only a limited time before it was simply going to hurt. I wanted him to finish before the pleasure truly did become pain.

He crawled over my body on all fours, so that he wasn't actually touching me, but he could see my face. "Are you all right, Princess?"

I nodded. "Help me turn over."

"Why?"

"Because if we finish this with you on top, it's going to hurt too much."

"I was too rough," he said, and he sounded so sad. Lightning flashed first in one eye then the other, as if it traveled from one side of his mind to the other. The light blue lightning bolt on his cheek paled in the brightness of it.

He started to crawl off me as if he were going to stop. I grabbed his arm. "Don't stop, bright Goddess, don't stop. Just help me roll over. If you take me from behind, you won't be brushing up against the part of me you bruised."

"If I have hurt you so badly, we must stop."

My fingers tightened on his arm. "If I wanted to stop, I would say so. Everyone else has been too afraid of hurting me, and even if you went too far, I do like it. Mistral, I like it a great deal."

He gave an almost shy smile. "I did notice."

I smiled back at him. "Then let us finish what we started."

"If you are sure." In the moment he said it, and meant it, I knew that I would be safe alone with him. If he was willing to pass up some of the first intercourse he'd been offered in centuries for fear of my being hurt, then he had the discipline to control himself in private. Consort preserve us, but he had more discipline than I would have had. How many men would have turned down the finish, after a start like that? Not many, not many at all.

"I am sure," I said.

He smiled again, and something moved above us. Something grey was in motion near the high domed ceiling. Clouds - there was a tiny knot of clouds up near the ceiling. I looked into Mistral's face and said, "Fuck me, Mistral."

"Is that an order, my princess?" He smiled when he said it, but there was an edge of something that wasn't happy in his voice.

"Only if you want it to be."

He looked down at me, then said, "I would rather do the ordering."

"Then do it," I said.

"Turn over," he said. His voice did not have quite the firmness it had had earlier, as if he wasn't sure I would obey.

I had recovered enough to roll over, though I was slow. He moved back until he knelt by my feet. "I want you on your hands and knees."

I did what he asked, or ordered. It put me looking at Abeloec, who still knelt, motionless, at the top of our makeshift blanket. I expected to see lust, or something to let me know he was enjoying the show, but that wasn't what was in his face. His smile was gentle, peaceful. It didn't match what we were doing, at least not to me.

Mistral's hands stroked my ass, and I felt him rub against my opening. The front of me was sore, but the rest of me was eager.

"You're wet," Mistral said.

"I know," I said.

"You really did enjoy it."

"Yes."

"You really do like it that rough."

"Sometimes," I said. The tip of him rubbed around the edge, so close, but not inside.

"Now?" He made it a question.

I lowered my upper body, so that my lower body lifted toward him, pushing against the feel of him. Only his slight movement backward kept me from taking him into my body. I made a small sound of protest. The wind held the smell of rain, the press of silent thunder. The storm was coming, and I wanted him inside me when it came.

He laughed, that wonderful masculine sound. "I take that as a yes?"

"Yes," I said. I pressed my cheek into the brittle leaves, my face, and hands, touching the dry ground. I had to close my eyes against the push of dead leaves and plants. I pushed my ass up at him, and asked, wordlessly, that he take me. I didn't realize I was saying anything out loud, but I must have been. For then I heard my own voice chanting, "Please, please, please," over and over, soft under my breath, my lips closer to the dead earth than to the man I was begging.

He pushed just the tip of himself inside me, and the wind changed instantly. It felt almost hot. I could still smell rain, but there was also a metallic smell. The scent of ozone, lightning. The air was hot and close, and I knew in that moment that it wasn't that I wanted Mistral inside me when the storm broke, but that the storm would not come until he was inside me. He was the storm, as Abeloec had been the cup. Mistral was the heavy press of the air, and that neck-ruffling promise of lightning.

I raised up and shoved my body onto him. He actually stopped me with his hands on my hips. "No," he said, "no, I will say when."

I went back to pressing my upper body to the dry ground. I said, "Mistral, please, don't you feel it? Don't you feel it?"

"Storm," he said, and his voice seemed lower than it had been, a growling roll, as if his voice held an echo of thunder in it.

I raised up, but not to try to control him. I wanted to see him. I wanted to see if there had been other changes besides the growl of thunder in his voice. He still glowed with power, but it was as if dark grey clouds had moved in over that glow, so that I saw only the shine of his power through the veil of clouds.

He stared down at me, and his eyes flashed bright, so bright that for a moment his face was half obscured by that white, white light. The brilliance faded, leaving afterimages in my vision. But without the lightning, his eyes weren't the grey of rain clouds; they were black. That blackness that rolls across the sky at midday, and sends us all running for cover, because just by looking at the sky, you know that something dangerous is coming. Something that will drown you, burn you, concuss you with the power that is about to fall from the sky.

I shivered, gazing down my body at him, shivered, because I wondered...was I too mortal to survive this? Was his power going to burn along my flesh, and hurt me in ways that I did not want?

It was as if Abeloec heard me thinking. He spoke, in a low, soft voice that made me look at him. He was still kneeling in front of us, but it was as if his pale skin were fading into the growing dark, as if he, himself, were dissipating into the circle of power. His hair was shot through with lines of blue, red, and green, and those lines traced the circle that held us, and on into the dark to the men beyond. His eyes held sparks of all those colors, but it was as if his power grew. He began to be that power, and not be as much Abeloec. I could tell that if he were not careful, he would become only the lines of power that traced out into the dark.

"Earth and sky is a very old dance, Meredith," he said. "Do not fear the power. It has waited too long for you to allow you to be harmed now."

I found my voice in a hoarse whisper. "Look at him."

"Yes," Abeloec said, "he is the storm come to life."

"I am mortal."

I thought he smiled, but I couldn't be certain. I could not see his face clearly, though I knew he was only a few feet in front of me.

"In this time and place, you are the Goddess, the earth to meet the strike of the sky. Does that sound like someone who is merely mortal?"

Mistral chose that moment to remind me that he was there. He bent over my body, and bit me on the back, as his body shoved inside me. The combination of the two made me push myself tighter against him. He bit me harder, and I writhed against him, trapped between his body and his mouth.

His mouth let go, and he wrapped his arms around me. His weight lay along the back of my body, in a warm, solid line. I was supporting most of his weight, for his hands played lightly over my breasts and stomach. He was inside me, but as he had done the first time, once he was in, he had stopped moving. He spoke with his face next to mine. "It has been too long. I will not last if you move like that."

I turned my head, and he was close enough that when the light flashed in his eyes, I was blinded for a second. I closed my eyes and saw white and black explosions against my eyelids. I spoke with my eyes still closed. "I can't help moving."

He sighed, and didn't so much push himself farther inside me as writhe while he was inside me. That made me writhe, and drew a sound from him that was half pleasure, half protest.

Thunder rolled through the cavern, echoing against the bare rock walls, like some gigantic drumroll that seemed to thrum across my skin.

"Hush, Meredith, quiet. If you move, I will not last."

"How can I not move with you inside me?"

He hugged me then, and said, "So long since anyone reacted to my body." He moved off my back, so that he was again on his knees, still with his body sheathed inside mine. But he pushed his hips against me and let me know that, bent over my body, he had not been completely sheathed inside me, because now the tip of him found the end of me, and I realized he might be too long for this position. If the man was too long, entering from behind could hurt. It didn't hurt yet, but it held the promise of it as he pushed gently against the inner limits of my body. The thought of what he could do to me was exciting, and a little frightening. I both wanted to feel him pound himself into me, and didn't. The thought was exciting, but it was one of those pains that worked better in fantasy than real life.

He pushed the head of himself inside me, gentle at first, then more firmly, as if he were trying to find a way deeper. He pushed slow, and firm, and tight, until I made a sound of protest.

Thunder rumbled again, and the wind gusted. I could smell rain and ozone, as if lightning had struck somewhere near, though the only lightning had been in Mistral's eyes.

"How much do you like pain?" he asked, and his voice held thunder the way that Doyle's could hold the growl of a dog.

I thought I knew what he was asking, and I hesitated. How much do I like pain? I decided honesty was safest. I gazed back over my body until I could see him, and whatever words of caution I was about to utter died in my throat. He was something elemental. His body still held an outline, a solidness, but inside that solid line of skin were clouds, grey and black and white, boiling and writhing. The lightning flashed in his eyes again, and this time it rode down his body, a jagged line of brilliance that filled the world with the metallic smell of ozone. But it didn't affect my body like real lightning would have. Instead it was just a brilliant dance of light.

His eyes glowed in his face, lit by strike after strike of bright, white light. About every third flash, the lightning shot down his body and decorated his skin. His hair had come free of its ponytail, and that grey sheet of hair danced in the wind of his power, like some soft grey blanket trapped on a wash line as the storm thunders closer.

As many times as I'd made love to warriors of the sidhe, to creatures of faerie, the sight of him behind me still stole my words. I'd seen many wonders, but nothing quite like Mistral.

He asked again, "How much do you like pain?" But as he spoke, the lightning flashed, the glow filling his mouth and pouring out with his words.

I said the only thing I could think of: "Finish."

He smiled, and his lips held an edge of that glow. "Finish; just finish?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"Will you enjoy it?"

"I don't know."

His smile widened, and his eyes flashed, and that line of light sparkled down his body. I was blind for a moment in the brilliance of it. He began to draw himself out of me. "So be it," he said in that deep, rolling voice. Thunder echoed him along the roof, and for a moment it seemed as if the very walls thrummed with him.

He shoved himself inside me as fast and hard as he could, and he was too long. I screamed, and it wasn't all pleasure. I tried not to, but I began to writhe, not closer, but farther away, crawling away from that hard, sharp pain.

He grabbed my hair, tight. Held me in place while he pounded himself into me.

I screamed, and this time, it held words. "Finish, Goddess, please finish. Go, just go."

He jerked me up on my knees, using my hair like a lever to press our bodies against each other. He was still buried in me, but the position was better. It was a little less deep and didn't hurt.

He wrapped his other arm around the front of my body, and held me tight against the front of his. He tightened the hand in my hair, drawing a sound from me that wasn't pain.

He spoke with his mouth pressed against the side of my face. "I know that I hurt you before, but already your body forgives me. So soon, and you make pleasure noises for me." He jerked my head back with his handful of my hair. It did hurt, but I liked it anyway. I just did.

"You like this," he whispered against my face, and I felt wind against my face.

"Yes," I said.

"But not the other," he said, and the wind buffeted us, hard enough that we swayed for a moment. I rolled my eyes past him and found the ceiling crawling with clouds. Clouds that could have been the twins of the ones moving under his skin.

He jerked my hair again, brought me back to his face. "I thought I would come too soon, and now I am taking too long."

"You will not come until the storm does." It was Abeloec's voice, but strangely not.

Mistral loosened his hold on my hair, so we could both look at the other man. What I saw was eyes that spun with crimson, emerald, and sapphire, as if they were full of liquid jewels. His hair was flared out around him, but not because the wind pulled it - more like the tail of a bird, or a cloak held carefully out by some invisible hands. The lines of color glowed through that hair, and went out into the dark like rope. The ropes of glowing color found dark shapes outside our circle of power. All the men out there in the dead gardens were covered in those lines. I tried to see if they were all right, but the thunder rolled through us, and it was as if the world itself shook with it.

Mistral shuddered around me, inside me, and that made me shudder. He hugged me tight with both of his strong arms. Not hurting me for a moment, not trying to. "If taking you from behind is too much, then what else is left? I have hurt you in front, as well."

I leaned back against his body, letting myself rest against him completely. "If you're strong enough to keep yourself up off my body while we fuck, you won't brush the front of me."

"Off your body?" He sounded puzzled.

"I will be facing up, you on top, but the only thing that touches me is what is inside me now."

"If you are flat, I will not be able to get as much inside you."

"I'll rise up to meet you." Then I asked, "Are you?"

"Am I what?" he asked, and the lightning in his eyes blinded me for a moment.

"Strong enough," I said with my vision full of bright white spots.

He laughed, then, and it was like a low rumble of thunder not just in my ear, but along my body, as if the sound traveled through his very bones and into mine. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I am strong enough."

"Prove it," I said, and my voice was a whisper that was almost lost in the sound of wind and thunder.

He let me move off him and helped me to lie down on what was left of our makeshift blanket. If we had been about to make love in standard missionary position, then I would have been more concerned about the blanket. But if we did this right, very little of me would be touching the ground.

I lay back against the hard, dry ground for a moment, my knees bent. Mistral hesitated, kneeling between them. Lightning flashed in his eyes, danced down his body, so that it looked for a moment as if the jagged bolt went from his eyes and out his leg into the ground. I heard a more distant crackle, and saw the first lightning bolt dance in the clouds at the ceiling. The smell of ozone came faint; the scent of close rain was stronger.

"Mistral," I said, "now - enter me now."

"I will brush against the front of your body," he said. "It will hurt."

"Enter me, and I'll show you."

He lowered himself to me, keeping his arms locked and his body above mine. He slid himself inside me, and before he was finished, I moved up to meet him.

I raised my upper body in a sort of sit-up, more like an abdominal crunch. I couldn't hold the position forever, but I could hold it a long time, if I put my hands on either side of my thighs and held on. It held me simultaneously in position and open wide.

I watched him push himself inside me by the white moonlight glow of my own skin, and the distant flash of lightning that he'd released into the clouds above. It was almost as if now that the lighting was up there, there wasn't so very much inside him.

He began to pump his body into mine. Just the long shaft of him in and out of my body, while I held myself in a tight little ball, and he held the rest of his body above mine.

"I love watching your body move in and out of mine," I said.

He lowered his head so that his hair trailed over me, and he could watch his own body work in and out of mine. "Yesss," he breathed, "yesss."

He started to lose his rhythm and had to look away from the sight of our bodies locked together. Soon he resumed his long sure strokes. Thunder pounded the world, lightning crackled and smashed into the ground. The storm was coming.

He began to go faster, harder, smashing himself into me. But from this position, it didn't hurt. From this position, it felt wonderful. I could feel the beginnings of my own pleasure growing inside me. "I'm going to come soon," I said, and it was almost a yell over the sound of wind and storm.

"Not yet," he said, "not yet." I wasn't sure if he was talking to me or himself, but he suddenly seemed to give himself permission to fuck me as hard as he wanted. He drove himself in and out of me with a force that rocked my body, ground my ass into the leaves, and made me cry out with purest joy.

Lightning began to rain down from the clouds. One white-hot bolt after another, as if the clouds were screaming, and this was as fast as they could throw lightning down upon us. The ground shuddered with the beating of the lightning and the roll of the thunder. It was as if the lightning was hitting the ground as often as Mistral's body hit into mine. Over and over and over again, he rammed inside me, and over and over and over again, the lightning struck the earth. The world smelled metallic with ozone, and every hair stood to attention with the electric dance of it.

He brought me screaming, fingers digging into my own thighs, holding my place, holding my place, while the orgasm shook me, took me, and my body spasmed around his. My screams were lost in the violence of the storm, but I heard Mistral cry out above me, a second before his body thrust inside mine one last time. He came inside me, and the lightning struck the earth like a huge white hand.

I was blinded with white light. I dug my nails into my thighs to remind myself where I was, and what I was doing. I wanted his release to be everything he wished. But finally, I had to collapse to the ground, had to let my legs unbend. I lay on the dry ground, panting, trying to relearn how to breathe.

He collapsed on top of me, still inside my body. His heart was beating so fast that it felt as if it would spill out his body and touch me. Rain began to fall, gently.

His first words were breathless. "Am I hurting you?"

I tried to raise my arm to touch him, but still couldn't move. "Nothing hurts right now," I said.

He let out his breath in a long sigh. "Good." His heart began to slow as the rain fell harder. I turned my face to the side so the drops wouldn't be hitting me full on.

I'd thought the weather inside the cavern would stop with Mistral's orgasm. But though the storm had ended, there was still a sky above us. A cloudy, rainy sky. It had not rained underground in faerie for at least four hundred years. We had a sky and rain, and we were still underground. It was impossible, but the rain on my face was warm. A spring rain, something gentle, to coax the flowers out.

He raised himself up enough to pull himself out of my body and lie by my side. I felt moisture on his face, and thought at first that it was rain. Then I realized it was tears. Had the rain come because he cried, or did one thing have nothing to do with the other? I did not know. I only knew that he cried, and I held out my arms to him.

He buried his face against my breasts, and wept.

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