It lingers at the corner of my mouth, pressing just enough to reveal the pink of my inner lip. The playfulness has vanished, replaced by a devastating, raw yearning as he looks down at my mouth. His gaze tracks every shallow, jagged breath I take, before flicking back to meet mine with a desperation that borders on agony.
“Saints, Elara…” He swallows hard, the movement of his throat stark, his restraint a hum in the air like the prickling tension before lightning strikes. “Tell me you truly want this kiss. Say you long for it as much as I do.”
Glove pulled from my hand, I glide my fingers up to his jaw until I feel the frantic strike of his pulse against my own, the curse all but forgotten. In its place is an urge as raw as it is old, a longing for the solemn quiet of the grave, the calming fragrance of carnations, the familiar comfort of Death.
“I want to kiss my husband,” I whisper, my voice thick with quiet honesty, my gaze dropping to his mouth before rising back to his, steady and unflinching. “And my husband…is Death.”
A sound breaks from him, part sob, part growl—a visceral release of an eternity of loneliness.
It vibrates against my lips as they meet his, connecting in a kiss that makes my eyes flutter shut. Within that darkness, I sense the shift. Smooth teeth against my mouth. Skeletal fingers cupping my cheek. Stuttered breaths catching on tendons.
As my palm glides higher, the smoothness of his jaw vanishes, replaced by polished bone that shifts with our kiss. A kiss heavy with the gravity of every soul he ever took, yet focused entirely on the one in his arms.
His skeletal hand slides from my cheek into my hair, cradling my skull with a gentleness that contradicts the desperate sounds tearing from his throat. “Touch me more. Please.”
I gaze up at him, at how he stands hunched over to make himself smaller. My fingers slip between his cloak to explore the transition at his sternum—smooth skin yielding to curved ribs—sending a shudder through him so violent that the air trembles around us.
What follows is a slow unraveling of layers. His cloak, black and heavy, falls to the straw. My dress, unlaced with agonizing care by fingers of bone and flesh alike. My shift, dragged down with a patience that makes me ache, the linen catching on my nipples before whispering free.
Each reveal earns a sound from him, low and starving, and each touch of his bony fingertips on my bare skin sends a bolt straight through my center. Warm thumb tracing one breast while ivory fingers cradle its weight. The contrast alone could undo me.
“So beautiful,” he whispers, gathering my skirts, stripping the last scrap of cotton from my legs before he lifts me as though I weigh nothing. “So fucking made for me.”
My back meets the chilled timber wall. His arms hook beneath my thighs, and my legs wrap around the impossible breadth of him, heels barely catching behind his hips.
I look down between us, and my breath fails. His cock is thick, the grayish-pale skin flush, weeping a glistening thread that stretches between our skin like a filament of light.
“We’ll be careful,” he rasps, reading every flicker of concern on my face. His forehead drops to my temple. “Like the first time, in the tower.”
“Yes,” I all but breathe, reaching down between us to guide his broad crown through my slickness to my entrance. “Slow.”
He pushes forward and up, making me clench against the blunt, staggering pressure as my hand flies to his chest. A sharp hiss leaves my teeth. He freezes instantly, every muscle locked, breathing thin and controlled.
“Give me a moment.”
He gives me an eternity.
Standing there trembling, barely inside me, his forehead drifting to mine, the restraint is costing him. I feel the violent tremors that run through his thighs. Feel the desperate clench of his jaw, bone grinding on bone.
I exhale. Will myself open. Rock my hips a fraction, and I slip down on him by an inch.
The sound he makes has no name. Broken. Reverent. Older than language.
“Now,” I whisper. “Slowly.”
He feeds himself into me in careful, devastating increments. A thick inch. A pause to read my breathing. Another inch. Each one stretches me further past what should be possible, the burn blurring the line between pleasure and pain. I bury my little whimpers against his neck, tasting salt on the tendon there.
“Shh,” he hushes, nuzzling my temple with what’s left of his nose. “Almost.”
When his hips finally press flush, seating him so deep, so completely that the fullness pushes the air from my lungs in one shuddering rush, Death goes still.
Utterly, absolutely still.
His forehead drifts against mine again. Bone to skin. Breath to breath. The frantic beat of his heart reverberates through my entire body, syncing with my own until I can’t tell which rhythm belongs to whom.
“Elara,” he whispers, and it sounds like the first word spoken after an eternity of silence.
I tighten my arms around his neck, pulling us closer until my breasts meet pectoral and ribs. “I’m here.”
