Zan lifts his other hand and cradles my face. The depth of emotion shining in his silver-threaded eyes reaches in and tugs at the tender, vulnerable thing in the center of my chest, and I hear his answer before he says it.
“Of course I’ll come with you, Roslyn. Wherever you are in this vast universe, that is my home.”
I don’t know who moves first, but our lips meet a moment later. It’s searing, this kiss, hungry and wanting. A vow.
In it, all those infinite possibilities become one.
Just one.
Just us, with the cosmos stretching wide above and certainty settling into our bones like stardust fallen from the heavens.
But it’s not just stardust, this feeling. It’s not ephemeral at all.
It’s visceral and earthy and the embodiment of need itself. It’s all the months we’ve spent apart distilled into the singular want to be together again. Heart, soul, body. All of it and more.
We’re a graceless mess of hands and lips and need as we tug at each other’s clothes and sink naked to the roof, its tiles carrying their last bit of warmth from the unforgiving Severin suns. Zan sits back against the wall where I’d been waiting for him and pulls me down so I’m straddling his hips. He rises to meet the damp, aching place between my thighs, but before I can sink down onto him, he takes my face in his hands once more.
“Look at me, Ros.”
Holding his steady gaze, I relax into his body, melt into his touch, and take him deep within me.
47
Zandrel
I am home.
Here, now, with my warrior in my arms, I am home.
We could be on any planet circling any star in any of this universe’s infinite galaxies and there would be no other place for me but here. Right here with her.
Ros moves on me, taking me even deeper within the sweet embrace of her body, and I catch her lips in a brief kiss before pulling back and tilting her chin up so she has to meet my gaze.
“I love you, Roslyn.”
Her emerald eyes widen and her breath hitches in her throat. “I love you, too.”
Has there ever been a creature who the fates blessed more kindly?
Impossible. Utterly impossible to believe there could be as I settle my hands on her hips, thrust into her with slow, deliberate intent, and feel her tighten around me as she cries out her pleasure.
I imagined a thousand scenarios of how this trip to Severin might go. I imagined a thousand things she might say, a thousand ways this could all go wrong.
And somehow, in all that imagining, I wasn’t even close.
How could I have ever imaginedthis?
Roslyn clings to me, kisses me, shudders against me, pours herself into me and accepts every piece of me in return.
Our hearts race together and our desperate moans meld into one, until we’re both breathless and boneless, wrapped up in each other on a rooftop under the stars, perfectly at peace.
All those paths and purposes have coalesced right here, with us, and nothing in the entire universe makes more sense than this.
We are broken, the both of us. We are broken and healing and stronger together.
As I breathe in her scent and bask in the warmth of her, I murmur vows to my Roslyn. I tell her she will never be alone. I tell her I will be by her side as long as she’ll have me. I tell her I’ll love her until the last lights of the universe burn out, and even then, our love will still persist in the lingering shadows of stardust left behind.
The words come from some soft place of myself I’ve never ventured into before. A crack opened wide as they pour out of me, unstoppable. I almost think they’re too much—too vulnerable, too honest, too tender.