Page 495 of Kingdoms of Night

“You’re glowing,” he said wondrously. “I want to see how much brighter you can get as we go on.”

I combed through his hair as he came over me. “I wish it were visible to me, then I could see you in its shine.”

“I wish you could be seen how I see you, you’d put the brightest stars to shame.”

Stars. A smoke trail of my consciousness hooked over that concept; if sunlight was too harsh, could he be seen in starlight?

That trail was cut off by him reaching between us, angling for my drenched entrance. Tension sunk its claws into me, threatening to wash off the throes of excitement with lingering fear of human men and the pain they wrought.

“Do you want to stop?” he asked.

“Don’t you dare.”

Pleased, he rewarded me with a distracting kiss as he sank into me, filling me within three thrusts. At a loss for how to react, I clung to him, legs around his waist, arms under his to grip his shoulders as he began to move.

Each thrust stroked a spot deep inside me, scraping at a maddening itch I could never reach before, and pulling moans from my mouth and into his. Exchanging wound up, desperate noises, the bass of his grunts and groans reverberating through my shaking bones. I knew I couldn’t last any longer.

He sped up the pace, rising to change the angle of his hips against mine, and growing louder. I twisted beneath him, and the throbbing reached a heart-stopping rate as I ran out of breath.

It hit me in a burst. Back arched and overtaken by a silent scream, I saw his wings spread as he followed me off the edge.

We collapsed into a heaving mass of limbs, covered by his membranous wings. Drowsiness flooded in post-release, coaxing what remained of my consciousness into the darkness that hovered over my face, lips to my own.

* * *

It took a few blinks to realize I was awake. There was a hand in my hair and a chest beneath my cheek, rising and falling at a tempo that tempted me back towards sleep.

Then I remembered what had exhausted me to begin with and shot up, heart in my throat. “Tamuz—”

Tamuz was a dark spill in the center of the bed, body in a mildly reflective casing, like translucent glass on black velvet. Only his hands were a pale grey, like thin smoke.

My hopes plummeted. “It didn’t work.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? I’m the one that—that—”

“Miscalculated?” he suggested. “It’s all right, I doubted it would work.”

While he spared me from dubbing myself a failure, his certainty that my attempt wouldn’t succeed sliced off a chunk of my lingering buzz. “But why didn’t it?”

“Ashtara didn’t curse me to teach me a lesson, or however it works in the tales meant to humble children.” His frustration was expressed in a long exhalation through his nose. “She did it to ensure her success, so it must be something virtually unachievable.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you don’t love me, and probably can’t.” He sat up, somehow acquiring more inexplicable angles, like he truly were made of black glass. “I don’t blame you. How could you when I’m likethis?”

“I could,” I found myself saying. “The way I see you has changed since we met. Before, you were some amorphous blotch of writhing darkness, and now, you’re closer to an ebony sculpture.”

“So, you’re saying something is happening and it’s gradual?”

“It must be.” I rested against the pillow by his, angled on my side to face him. “I do feel something for you, not quite love. Not yet.”

“But it could be, if we had more time?”

I reached for him, heart fluttering when his face met my palm halfway. “Do we have time?”

“Not long, no.” He sighed. “What was your other idea, lightning in a bottle?”

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