“Then I’ll do it again.”
“That’s my selfish, curvy queen,” he quips, his waist strumming into her, pushing her to insanity. “Then make me feel, Wildflower. Unravel me.”
She nods, starting with this: “I love you.”
Malice’s pupils swell. And this: “I love you more.”
Not true. In this, the score is equal. She would say so, but then his pelvis swings forward, his length plying into her, filling her to the brim.
Wonder’s head thrashes back, her spine snapping. “Uh…”
He gives her no chance to recover, thrusting fully and without reserve. The pace kills their debate, robbing them of logic. Her thighs splay around him, rocking each pass of his body into hers. All sense pivots to where they’re joined, and joined, and joined.
They reel over the grass, crushing the blooms, chanting under the sky, exploding beneath the stars. He groans in rapture, and she cries in pleasure.
“Who’s inside you?” he entreats. “Who’s pumping into you?”
“You are,” she moans. “You are, Malice.” She clasps his laboring backside. “And who’s surrounding you?”
“You are, Wonder. You are.”
Who are you?
That question. It’s the most vital inquiry they’ve ever encountered, the most elusive answer they’ve ever chased.
This is who they are. Wonder and Malice.
She’s a goddess of libraries and blossoms, a wandering deity who dabbles in legends and defies the odds. She’s a wisher, a muser, a fighter who has gifted her heart to a demon.
He’s a god of pages and pomegranates, a scheming deity who dabbles in secrets and curses the odds. He’s a plotter, a thinker, an offender who has offered his heart to an archeress.
Together, they’re tempters of fate.
Rising high to peer at her, Malice braces himself on his forearms, the fletching-and-quill tattoo straining across his bicep. He moves inside her, and she sheaths him deeply, their bodies whisking in union. And they watch each other, and they study each other, and they disarm each other.
Grabbing one of her limbs, he changes the angle, fucking into her sweetly. Her pulse crests, her voice fluttering to the firmament, about to come undone—to come with him. But it isn’t until he steals one of her hands, it isn’t until his lips sketch her scars, it isn’t until he kisses the starbursts that she actually does.
Exertion produces beads of perspiration. Their bodies tense like springs, then splinter into a thousand fragments of light, the sound of it rattling two realms. Malice’s mouth returns to hers, opening with hers as they shout across the hills, shaking the roots and constellations. Clinging naked to him, she bursts to life, and he follows her there.
When the frenzy subsides, they go limp. Malice lands, and she catches him. The breeze stirs petals over the panorama.
He raises his head, a golden sphere against the ink of night. Their stomachs rub as they hunt for air, staring at one another in amazement. That was…that was…
They laugh. He nuzzles her breasts, then kisses her face, then flirts in her ear, muttering intimate puns.
“We’ve got centuries to make up for. Know what that means?” he asks, propping his cheek in his palm while they’re still entangled.
“It means you’d better get comfortable,” she says, pecking his lips.
And he agrees, “Because we’re not done yet.”
And finally, they don’t have to be.
Epilogue
Malice
The stars are out.