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She hadn’t known joy in a very long time, or peace, or even a surcease to the constant, clawing anxiety that formed her world—with one exception. When she was with the man beside her. Who looked at her with shining eyes and, somehow, didn’t see the scars.

* * *

Kit didn’t know what had changed, but something had. A procession of thoughts had flitted across Gillian’s expressive face, too fast for him to try to decipher them. But the one she’d finally landed on . . .

He didn’t want to let himself hope.

He didn’t move, didn’t even breathe, as she struggled with her thoughts. It has to be her decision, he told himself harshly. It has to be!

Do not interfere!

And he didn’t, although the urge was so strong that it felt like the words were battering against his lips. Yet he swallowed them back down ruthlessly, knowing that Gillian’s silence about her late husband likely hid more pain than he knew. He had no idea of the breadth of her struggle and anything he said was likely to remind her of it.

Sometimes he had wondered if that was why she spent more time with him than with some of her own kind, these days. Because she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to live in that place forever. That time with him, a man who had had his own struggles but of a very different nature, was a relief.

Now he wondered how wise that had been, and if she cared about him at all except as a distraction.

But when she finally moved, and very deliberately pulled his head down to hers, there was no doubt on either of their parts. They simply came together like waves spilling onto a beach, and then surging against it as the tide pushed them relentlessly forward. It felt fated, ordained.

He dropped to her neck, mouthing a kiss over the pounding pulse, but didn’t bite. He didn’t need to; this coupling didn’t require a magical assist. Didn’t require anything.

Just us, he thought, pulling her into his lap as her skirt rode up and his hand found the smooth skin of a thigh. Just this, as he went back to her lips, which were plump and sweet and yielding. Like the flesh of her breast under his hand as he caressed her, and marveled at the softness and the warmth and the little sounds she made.

Which were rapidly getting louder. She wasn’t shy, and if she had any reservations left, she didn’t voice them. Kit was nonetheless trying to hold back, to tell her that they could wait, could leave it for another day, could—

Could do something, but he was finding it hard to think with her hands roaming over his body, as if she’d longed to touch him as much as he had her. Or with her teeth finding an earlobe and torturing it into submission. Or with her breath catching when she grasped him through his clothes, and realized just how badly he wanted her.

Kit felt himself jump in her hand and she laughed, before plundering his mouth as he worked to free himself, which was tricky with only one usable hand, the other being buried up to the knuckles in stone to anchor them. And he wasn’t letting go, not at this dizzying of a height. Reckless he might be, and hotheaded and wild, at least according to some, but he wasn’t stupid.

Frustrated, on the other hand, didn’t come close to describing it as he fumbled about, the multiple sensations making him uncharacteristically clumsy. So, Gillian helped him, giggling as he swore. And then assisted him in finding her body beneath the enveloping fabric of her skirts, what felt like miles of it, until—

“Dear God!” Kit groaned, as he finally sank into yielding heat.

“I thought you didn’t believe,” she gasped.

“I’ll believe anything you want,” he told her, and meant every word.

And yet, instead of dealing with the matter at hand, as he finally had the chance to do, he stared about wildly for an instant. At the vividly colored sky, at the impossible creatures in the clouds, at the beautiful woman in his lap. And realized: in this moment, he had everything in life he’d ever wanted, and was utterly and completely happy.

It was terrifying.

“What is it?” Gillian asked, her brow wrinkling.

He wondered how to tell her that this all felt like an illusion. Some beautiful dream that he’d conjured up, because life did not work this way. The poor starved; the merchant class envied; and the wealthy fought and strove and stabbed each other in the back to keep their positions. And even then, they often failed.

That was why the fairy tales had been invented, stories about great caldrons that never ran out of food, about tiny men who helped with the house chores, about escaping the cares of the world to another, which was fairer and more just. It was the same reason that people used to pray to the saints, and kept praying despite their desperate cries falling on deaf ears. For what choice did they have?

“The gods,” he said, swallowing, “if gods there be, become angered when their creation experiences anything too perfect. That is something reserved only for them, and they make us mere mortals pay for it.”

“Too perfect,” she repeated, as if reassured instead of frightened as she should be. But her face was clear and her eyes bright as she stretched luxuriously in his face, her pretty breasts bouncing just below his lips. “Yes, that is how I would describe it.”

“I’m going to be punished for this,” he said, and the words felt true on his tongue, like a prophecy.

But Gillian just smiled wider. “Then let us make the pleasure worth the pain.”

Kit blinked at her, caught off guard. “That may be the best philosophy of life I have ever heard,” he said fervently.

And then set about making her wish a reality. He rolled her underneath him for safety, in case either of them forgot themselves in the throes of passion, causing her gasp at the speed with which he could move. And then to gasp again, and to writhe and moan and shudder as he slowed way, way down.