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Why not?he mouthed and probed half an inch deeper.

‘You can’t fuck people on altars! You … you …’

My sentence dissolved into a gasp. Stringing words together was becoming harder and harder as an increasingly sizeable part of my brain decided to devote its full attention to that presence inside me instead – to the soft, tantalising friction of his finger spreading me open.

I clenched my jaw and tried to ignore the irresistible amusement tugging at his lips as I ground out, ‘It’s a place of worship, Creon!’

He abruptly pulled back his finger, and for one dazed moment, I thought I’d accidentally won that argument – an argument that I now realised, confronted with the brand new emptiness at my core, I desperately needed to lose. But he pushed forward before I recovered, spreading my legs wider before him, and settled the taut tip of his cock between my thighs with a single deliberate motion.

Every fibre of my body abruptly shifted its focus to that single point of skin meeting skin, to that unbearable last touch that came just before ecstasy. But he paused there – ready to conquer. Ready to claim.

Raising his hand between us, he slowly brushed a glistening finger down my cheek, filling the air with the fragrance of my pleasure. I didn’t dare to breathe. Didn’t dare to risk him pulling away again, to repeat whatever point I’d unwisely and unintentionally made.

He met my eyes. Smiled that heart-stopping lover’s smile of his.

And signed,Exactly.

Then he slammed into me, and every thought evaporated from my mind at once, to be replaced by the far more immediate, far more all-encompassing sensation ofhim. I curled up to the tips of my toes, clinging to his shoulders for dear life. My body moulded to his girth at that first thrust, found his rhythm in the heartbeat it took for him to fill me to the hilt; another thrust, and we blended into one glorious cadence of cries and gasps and panting breath. Fingers tangled with hair. Nails dug into flesh. His pounding cock drove moan after moan from my lips, the sounds echoing through the low room like a sacred hymn.

A place of worship, indeed.

Ecstasy built fast and unstoppable, our union too fraught with relief and frustration to think of slowing down. Creon fucked me with quick, blunt strokes, keeping one hand on the small of my back to pin me in place. His other hand was everywhere, clawing and brushing and pinching, his skilled fingers winding me up like a coil about to snap – until there was no thought on my mind but the need for release, nothing my senses registered but the merciless force of his thrusts.

Far too soon did he lower his hand to that burning bundle of nerves between my thighs. Calloused fingers found the right spot at once, flicking over my hungering flesh as he buried himself inside me one last time.

That was all it took to set me free.

Light-headed bliss washed over me, reducing the world to nothing but his arms around me. I sagged against his muscular chest as I convulsed through my release, only partly aware of the warm seed spilling over my thigh or his frayed breath into my hair … There was just his scent, musky and sweet. His strong pulse, pounding against his ribs. His warmth, as comforting as a fuzzy woollen blanket around my shoulders.

And for a few everlasting moments, nothing was complicated.

He was here.

I loved him.

And somehow we would figure this out.Somehow we would survive this mess. Despite those bloody phoenixes and the bloody Mother and …

And bloodyeverything.

Anxiety seeped in too easily as my mind caught up, the sting of it numbed by the delirium of my lust but not at all painless.

The safety of this room, the warmth of his embrace … Did they even matter? The world was still waiting for me. I had to venture out again, rumpled dress and seed-stained thighs be damned – had to deal with the watching eyes and the opinions and the expectations again, and somehow try not to drown in it.

Somehow.

‘What do we do now?’ I whispered into his shirt, wishing I could have held on to his gift of blissful peace for a moment longer, wishing I wasn’t that frightened little coward who went straight from fucking to fearing again. The panic tightened my throat, and I wished he couldn’t hear that, too. ‘What … what do I do?’

Creon raked his hand through my hair and wound the messy strands at the back of my head around his fingers. With a gentle tug, he forced me to lift my face and meet his gaze, bringing our lips mere inches from each other.

The look in his eyes …

As if I was the universe itself, every star and galaxy in it, laid out before him in its infinite glory.

Next time you tell yourself you don’t know what you want, he signed, the motions of his scarred fingers slow and deliberate in the eerie green light,you remember this.

This. Lightness and simplicity, love and admiration. A sense of devotion, a sense of belonging, that burned strong enough to make me forget even about saving the world for a moment.

My breath caught in the back of my throat. Wasn’t it interesting how saving the world never made me forget about him in return?