“I’ve done nothing but tell you from the day I came here,” I said, tense against his hold. “I want you to come home and be the person you were. And then, then, if you still wanted me—”
“Pleasewant something else. You’re a mortal, you can change your mind.” He spun me around so that we both faced the empty clearing.
“Just look at it. Take ten minutes, take ten years, until you can see it. This whole world was built of mortal dreams. Can’t you have just one about staying here with me?”
When he didn’t slacken his grip, I tried.
The midday glow was bright and golden, so I had to slit my eyes to look past the meadow and the distant creek. I imagined a palace with cool marble floors on my bare feet and the sounds of running water on the summer breeze. It was more solid than the stone house had ever been in my mind, easier to picture, but the warm rise and fall of Taran’s breathing against my back distracted me. That was more precious than any building could have been.
Taran pressed his cheek against my neck, and I wished I had those ten years to memorize the difference between the rough texture of his jaw and the silk of his lips, becausethathad been my dream. I turned my head to catch his mouth, but his kiss was brief.
“Keep looking,” he said, lifting one hand to my chin and pointing my face at the vacant square of earth. “Do you see it yet?”
I imagined morning light pouring through the window in a stone room, lying on a bed with Taran, tangling my fingers in hissun-warmed hair. It was an old daydream, but if I unfocused my eyes, I could place it here. Quiet days with him, both of us free from every purpose we’d been put to that ran counter to our natures. Our only task loving each other.
Taran’s arm was wrapped around me, but he slid his palm across my stomach and brought it back to rest at my hip, then placed the other to match. He slowly rubbed them over the small curves of my body, hands catching against the beaded fabric of my dress. I had to swallow past a knot of yearning to answer him.
“I’m trying,” I promised him.
“Can you imagine this?” he asked, voice lower. “Imagine that you want me the way I want you, and you let me touch you even when you remember who I am.”
I did. I do.
His lips turned into the fragile skin of my neck again, but this time he opened his mouth to taste the salt of my skin and roll it over his teeth. I shivered, body tightening as his hand wandered up to cover my breast.
“I’m imagining it,” I whispered, closing my eyes as he gently cupped me through the bodice of my dress, thumb circling a nipple until it stiffened to a tight peak. It wasn’t the sun’s warmth spreading through me anymore, it was that long-banked ember of desire in my center flaring bright and needy as the lid lifted on my own wants.
“Did you want this?” Taran asked into my skin. His other hand caressed the curve of my thigh, then fisted in the fabric. He spread his fingers to gather more, and the hem of my skirt crept an inch up my shin. He spread them again, and the beaded hem climbed higher. My breath swirled in a heady round in my chest as he bared me inch by inch, walking his two smallest fingers along my hip.
“I—yes.” The silk trickled up the entire length of my leg, from my ankle to the apex of my thighs.
I’d clasped my hands together in front of me, needing somethingto push against, but Taran prized them apart and put the wadded fabric of my skirt into one hand. “Can you hold on to this for me, darling?”
It didn’t occur to me not to comply, because it freed his hand to sweep over the bare skin of my thigh, his fingertips pressing in and releasing. His mouth and nose rubbed hard into my neck in tandem, rough enough to leave a mark. It was an agonizing contrast to his hands, which were carefully light on my body. I pulled my shoulders back to press my breast into his hand; I shifted my thighs against each other, silently asking for something I didn’t have words for.
“This is how I’d touch you,” he murmured. “If you wanted me to. If you lived here with me.”
“Just like this?” I asked, uncertain of what the flare of desire in my belly demanded, except more.
“Whatever you can imagine.”
I imagined falling back into the soft grass and spreading my arms and legs wide, a real sun overhead until I felt warmed through forever. I imagined enough time to hold a sip of wine in my mouth so that the sweetness would pour down my throat and cover the memory of ashes. I imagined Taran’s mouth on my body, my hands, my feet, kisses enough to erase every pain I’d felt. Everything beyond that was too vague for me to picture. It was sensations I craved: the weight of his body, some deeper pressure, a tighter embrace.
“You’re going to have to show me,” I whispered, cheeks heating at the admission.
Anything he could have said in response to that risked embarrassing me to death, so I was glad he didn’t speak. He just slid his hand from my thigh to my stomach, tenderly stroked his thumb across the delicate skin, then ducked his fingertips under the wrap of linen that was all I wore under my dress. The only pressure I feltwas from the heel of his palm as it slid down to the curls between my thighs, even though that left his fingertips covering the most intimate places in my body.
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, not sure what to expect, only for that breath to drift out my lips in hitching half steps as Taran stayed precisely still behind me, only the tip of his nose moving along my neck.
It felt like ages, eons, glacial time we didn’t have before two callused fingertips curled minutely against me. They delicately explored me while I shifted my weight, seeking to understand the resolution of this movement. The tiny circles, just the pads of his fingers. The motion didn’t change, but I did. My body was turning into cables of gold that wound tighter with every pass.
“It could just be this for the first ten years. Or always, if you liked. Do you like this?”
“Yes,” I said again, though shakily, because I was starting to feel pleasantly dizzy, and the idea that this was all it took was a bit of a revelation. Like being able to fly simply by thinking about it hard enough. I understood the place that the twisting of desire in my core would take me, but I hadn’t realized I could reach it with only this small, gentle touch. “I just thought you would do, ah, more—”
My voice broke when he changed the direction of his fingers and the edge of a nail brushed against me. I jumped, that coiled wire of sensation in me tightening.
“Oh, I’d do more,” Taran said, a low chuckle. “But I didn’t want to overwhelm you while you’re still trying to imagine this. Are your eyes open, darling?”
