Did not life became most vivid in the face of death? Was that not why her body cried out for his when the world was crumbling about them?
Her gown was loose fitting enough that she was able to remove it by herself. The skirts puddled at her feet, and she kicked them aside.
Hartley had turned his head to watch her. She had learned to be a bold lover in his arms, but her boldness now was so much more than desire. She climbed onto the bed and knelt beside him.
“What should I do?”
“You do not know?” The corner of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile, and then he grew grave and intent. “I need your nakedness, Eden. Your complete surrender.”
She pulled her chemise over her head and straddled his hips, highly aware of the sleek fabric of his pantaloons against the inside of her thighs.
“Free me,” he whispered.
Her fingers slipped on the buttons of his trousers and found him hard and ready. The rest of him might be near death, but once more life found the way. She wrapped her hands around him and bent low to kiss his face.
He responded with lips and tongue. No weakness could disguise his desire or his need. His mouth moved so softly that it was as if butterflies danced upon her lips. His tongue slipped inside with the same tenderness. Their breaths mingled, a sweet alchemy of Fane and mortal.
She feathered her hands over Hartley’s skin, caressed his jaw, traced the corner of his mouth and his parted lips. His fingers lifted to stroke her neck and shoulders, the touch as light as his kiss. If she had not come to know his body so intimately, she might have believed that he was a ghost, only half within this world.
He caressed her as if he were no longer convinced of his right to touch her. Yet already she sensed that he grew stronger. His manhood pulsed against her abdomen, seeking its true home. She understood that she must become something other than human this night, a creature of the elements, the pure force of life that beat in every mortal breast. Nothing must taint what she gave him. All fears, all despair must be forgotten for these few, fragile moments.
Take me, Hartley. I withhold nothing. Take my body and my strength and my love. Be whole again. Save yourself and Donal and you will save me. Let us light a bonfire of our own, and burn the veil between worlds to ashes.
But she did not speak. She proceeded, instead, to show him. She arched her back, curving her body into his, and seized his lower lip between her teeth.
His mouth fitted itself to hers in fierce demand. His palm cupped her breast, rolling her nipple to a hard peak. Arrows of desire that were almost pain shot into her womb and below.
She felt gloriously, wonderfully, tumultuously alive.
Hartley pulled her down and suckled her as if he drank some sweet and mystical nectar. She abandoned herself and moaned, lashing her hair across his face.
He slid his hand between her thighs. She wanted him so much that she nearly exploded before he’d done more than brush her with his fingertips. He drove her to the edge, but she could not make the leap alone. He must come with her, else the magic was void.
The magic was succeeding. Hartley felt his blood surge with renewed vigor as his fingers stroked inside her. He tasted her wetness on his own skin, and her body’s elixir charged him with energy.
Death, such as the Fane knew it, stood by the bed like a jealous paramour. He had known She followed all the way from Hartsmere in hopes of claiming him. If not for Donal, he thought, he would gladly die here, in Eden’s arms.
But Eden drove Death screaming back to Her dark and dismal abode. His golden mortal gazed down at him, the cascade of her hair sweeping over his waistcoat and loosened neckcloth. There was exultation in her eyes—the sweet madness that came of reaching for perfect union.
The same madness gripped Hartley. He sensed the inhuman tides within his body carrying a potency even Fane seldom knew. On this night, with this woman, he was a god in the old way, and Eden was his priestess. On such a night he knew he could give her a child of her own.