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Rai settled into a glide, gazing down into her face. “I have wanted to show you this,” he said. “But the rains either came too late for the sun, or I required hydration too much to rise above the torrents with you.”

“It’s amazing,” she said, but she could not look at anything but his face now.

It was warmer up here than she would have expected, almost too warm for her hoodie.

Was Rai making it warm? Or was it the sunlight that shone on them?

If it had been clear, it would have been over a hundred degrees on the ground at this time of day.

He kissed her. “Do you trust me?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes. Always.”

“I will not let you fall,” he vowed, and then his wings changed direction, backwinging like an eagle coming in to land atop a tree, and their motion slowed, and he gently, impossibly nestled her into the mist of the clouds, as if it were a feather bed, solicitously tucking the trailing edge of her poncho beneath her.

Poppy’s heart clenched and she waited to fall through, but…

she didn’t. They didn’t. They lay atop the clouds as if they truly were made of cotton, except no, because they were moving.

She could feel them moving beneath her, swirling and heaving, could even feel herself moving with them like she was riding in an exceptionally fluid, fluffy car, but she wasn’t moving down , even though Rai’s wings were still, furled behind him as he gazed at her, his bare torso cast in chiaroscuro by the sun.

“This isn’t possible,” she managed to whisper, and he smiled, eyes bright and soft and open.

“This is how I ride the storms, sometimes,” he said, stroking hair back from her forehead.

“Sometimes I wish to fly and to rage, but sometimes I desire repose. And so I make the clouds…” He made a fist between them, turned it into another caress.

“The water obeys me. It will not let me fall. And I have told it that I will not have you fall, and so it obeys.”

Poppy wanted to argue, tried to dredge up everything she knew about climatology and physics and chemistry and even mythology to prove that this was impossible, but then Rai’s lips were on hers, and she surrendered to it all, to the beauty and the romance and the sheer unbelievable magic, and kissed him back.

His lips were cool in the warm sunlight, cool like refreshing water, tasting more of rain than ever before, and oh, she finally understood.

All the mysteries of their early meetings had coalesced into knowledge now.

He was rain, rain and lightning and hail, gentle rivers and rushing rapids and pounding waves and mysterious seas.

That was what he had been from the very first moment, falling on the desert of her soul, nourishing her, bringing her into bloom, and she opened herself to him completely, her arms and her thighs and her foolish, foolish heart.

His hands stroked along her body, soothing yet electric, and she caressed his chest, beaded with raindrops that sparkled like diamonds in the sun, letting him set the pace. And apparently he was setting it to glacial , his hands unhurried as he explored her .

He reverently reached under her poncho to unzip her hoodie and drew it slowly down her arms, then tossed it aside into nothingness—into his magical space, she guessed, but in the moment she didn’t care if he’d actually flung it into the void to be borne away by the wind and deposited on the ground somewhere, because Rai’s hands were already on her T-shirt, pushing the hem up as he tucked his head under to kiss tenderly at her belly.

It had to already be turning pink, the pink he loved to draw from her skin.

She felt like a goddess, a rain goddess for her rain god.

Like this bed in the clouds was her true home.

His lips traveled to her breasts, and she gasped and dug her hands into his hair.

He nibbled at one, then the other, his hands and lips and tongue urging her nipples to hardness, and the hell with it, she wriggled her arms out of her T-shirt sleeves, then reached into the hood of the poncho and wrestled the fabric over her head and off.

She bunched the fabric in her fists at his back and watched through the veil of the clear poncho as Rai explored her bare skin beneath it, gasping and whimpering with pleasure.

He was in no hurry, though he did laugh and relieve her of her T-shirt at some point, which she only noticed because it set her greedy fingers free to explore his shoulders and his back.

And though the slow seduction was intoxicating, she took advantage of her new freedom to urge him on, dizzily determined to drive him as senseless as she was.

She knew him now, knew where to touch his wings to make him crazy, and soon he was muttering incomprehensible Portuguese or Japanese or Faerie-ese curses into her flesh and his hands were desperate and he was devouring her, every inch of her.

Lightning was crashing below them, around them, tendrils even licking at the quivering tips of Rai’s wings, but she wasn’t afraid, she was safe in Rai’s arms, and she knew however the storm raged, it would obey him, and so it would never hurt her.

Her leggings were gone, her boots and her socks and her underwear, and somewhere along the line he’d gotten rid of his jeans as well, and somewhere else along the line she had gotten greedier, braver, and without even caring if it sent them plummeting to earth she pushed him back, rolled him over, pressed him into the hazy bed of clouds until the lightning of his wings was shrouded in mist, and she ducked down and took his hard cock into her mouth, as deep as she could before drawing back and running her tongue around the head.

He arched back and shouted her name. Lightning and thunder crashed beneath them, around them, through them.

He tasted of clean rain and musk and man, salty and sweet, and they didn’t fall, because Rai controlled the clouds and ah, now she had Rai, he was hers, her own, and so were the clouds.

She wanted to savor the moment, to make it last forever, but they were riding the storm now, in every way, and she understood this now, too, the power and the glory Rai had spoken of.

She could feel him building beneath her lips, her tongue as she licked long stripes along his length and sucked him deep into her mouth and pressed tender kisses at his tip, until he groaned and dragged her up to meet his lips, the poncho crinkling deliciously between them.

It was a barrier now, though, a final degree of separation, an obstacle, and Rai wasn’t the only one who could break things down.

She ripped it over her head, tossing it out into the clouds. It disappeared into the white.

“I did not catch it,” Rai gasped into her mouth, laughing. “It is gone.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I’ll buy another one.”

They rolled and writhed in the clouds, skin against skin, the sunlight sparking off their bodies and casting great looming shadows upon the storm.

Rai’s mouth was everywhere, kissing her thighs, her toes, the line of her back, and she was just as hungry, her hands and her mouth exploring every part of him until they came again face to face and stilled for the barest moment, gazing into each other’s eyes.

He thrust home, filling her, stretching her.

“Poppy,” he whispered, his voice fragile as a leaf. “Ah, Poppy. I—” But he did not say more, just buried his head in her shoulder and started to move within her, desperate deep drives that drove all thoughts out of her mind except yes and more and don’t stop .

They strove together for what seemed like forever, pounding feverishly close to release, then drawing back, calming to tender pulses as sweet and inevitable as the tides.

The storm beneath them responded to their moods, raging when they raged, sighing when they sighed, and through it all Rai was with her, worshiping her as if she were the one made of magic, as if she were the ruler of these torrid skies.

His hands were never still, roaming her breasts and her back and her thighs until they slipped between them, his fingers stroking implacably at her slippery bud until she broke, electric tingles spreading out from her belly to her fingertips, her toes, even her hair.

She shuddered into release, convulsing around him, and he grunted and held her close, pounding into her as she quivered and spasmed, then relaxed into floaty damp bliss.

At last he followed her over, his shout of ecstasy lost in a crack of lightning.

Or maybe his voice was the lightning. She could not tell, not anymore. It was all the same.

They lay there amid the swift-moving clouds for a long time, trading languid caresses and sloppy kisses until the storm beneath them seemed to be quieting and Rai lifted his head, eyes narrowing.

“We have traveled far,” he said, his voice rough. “I would stay here forever with you, but if we do not return soon, the storm may abandon us.”

She trailed her foot up the back of his thigh. “I thought the water obeyed you.”

He smiled down at her gently. “It does,” he said. “Mostly. But it cannot obey me if it is not here .”