I hold fast, guiding her so that she can find her way back to me.
“Do you feel that?” I pant between thrusts. “How connected we are?”
Her muscles tremble. Her eyes roll back in her head.
I keep my eyes on her. Reading her face as she rocks up and down to meet my thrusts. Gauging her need as I angle my hips to slide even deeper inside her.
The moment before she comes, a flock of blackbirds alight. Mist pours into the amphitheater basin. The trees groan andbend, their roots writhing underground. Lightning forks across the sky to illuminate roiling black clouds.
Every shudder of her body is echoed by the land and weather and creatures around us.
Her pulse shallows, and it’s all I can do to hold myself back, to let her ride out her release instead of letting my own need loose.
I clamp my molars, grimacing to hold back.
The sky opens, and snow falls around us, gentle and silent, but heavy as a goose-down blanket. It lands on her brow, her hair, her eyelashes. She might be oblivious to the way she’s tearing apart the land with fistfuls of emotion, but I’m not. Everywhere snow touches, my nerves spark.
The snow thickens, falling faster, harder.
She’s so damn close. I rock my hips with her, guiding her toward the release she needs to survive—to transform into whatever she’s supposed to be.
Vines squeeze tighter around my chest until I see stars. Her fingernails dig against my scalp. The earth shakes, and another crack opens near my head. Steam hisses out from the fissure, soaking my brow.
The snow turns to hail.
It falls so damn hard against my face, it’ll leave bruises.
That’s when Sabine comes.
She comes harder than ever before. Her breath is as quick as butterfly wings. Her fingers twisted painfully in my hair, holding on hard. Shivers of adrenaline course through me as I find my own release.
Gradually, the fight pours out of her.
The earthquake that shattered half the amphitheater subsides into nothing more than slight tremors. The snow stops, the last flake catching on her cheek. The wind fades to a whisper. And at last, those damn vines let go of their death grip on me.
And she lets go of her death-grip on my hair.
But her eyes are glassy.
“Breathe with me,” I murmur, not wanting to lose her now. “Focus on me.”
I guide her lips back to mine. As I lead the kiss, melding my lips to hers, tracing my tongue over the seam of her mouth, her heartbeat slows to normal.
I look up at her straddling me, her statue looming overher. Like that, I see the two souls in her at once. Human and fae. Goddess and girl.
For a brief flicker, I mourn the mortal life I thought we’d have. A future together, growing old and gray, living a simple life.
But that’s not her anymore—and I make a vow to fight to the ends of the known world to defend both sides.
As though an invisible cord has been cut, she slumps over my body, my cock still buried deep inside her, and with a final sharp exhale, she passes out.
Satiated.
Spent.
At long last, nature itself shudders to rest, and one final snowflake settles at my feet.
Chapter 3
