More than content.
Joyful.
Nimue lets out a soft moan as heat and magic glimmer between us, and I know what I’ve shared is the memory of us in this lifetime. For the first time, she’s seeing and feeling my love for her as acutely as I felt it; she’s hearing my thoughts, my wonder, my hurt.
The glimmer is everywhere between us, surging at every point of contact, making even the most innocuous of touches, like her hand in my hair, feel unbearably sensual. And of course, hardly any of our touches are innocuous right now. We are grinding, thrusting, grabbing, slick. Mouths dancing, skin sliding. Breath sharing.
Nimue comes.
She keens against my lips, her entire body shuddering and I follow her over, not sure if I’m allowed, but I’d be helpless to stop it. In the sparkling cloud of magic between us, all the pain and power and ecstasy of this life made manifest between us, I’m helpless. Her own memories flood mine as I give her my own, as I give her the essence of my body along with the essence of my soul, and now I can feel her pain, her ecstasy. Her wounded confusion as I left her, her youthful optimism before that. Her sliver of wisdom in looking at my dark eyes and knowing she wasn’t ready.
She’s ready now.
We rise and we crest together, both on the same flooding tide of magic, each peak longer and more beautiful than the last, and she writhes and flutters above me as I surge inside her over and over again, spilling heat and love inside the most tender part of her body. Every pulse, every pump, is heavy and hot and wet and it’s all for her, every last drop. Every single iota of my pleasure has belonged to her for twenty-three years, and an eternity before that.
Gradually, our bodies settle, and the glimmer between us recedes, leaving the shared memories in its wake. But I feel as Nimue reaches for it again. She’s slumped against my chest, her eyelashes ticklish and sweet against my skin, and I feel as she inhales and searches for that glimmering sight with her mind.
She finds it, but she can’t hold onto it, and it pulls back from her again, like the sky as a child swings backwards and away from it.
“It takes practice,” I say. My voice is husky with spent pleasure—and maybe a little fear.
The sooner Nimue finds her power…the sooner the end comes for me. And now I realize what Nimue truly meant by surrender, by t
ake what I needed. At the end of her crop, I become helpless to her. Under her body, I’d die to make her happy.
I’d give her anything. Including the key to my life.
“Practice,” she says dreamily. “I can do that.”
She moves off me, my cock leaving her body in a regretful slide, and noticing my wince, she cups me again. “We’ll do more. But for now…” She leans in and kisses me as she continues to cup my manhood, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to do, as if it belongs to her all the time.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For the memories. For sharing with me. I’m—” she struggles for words “—deeply moved.”
“I’m glad,” I say simply, honestly. “I loved you.”
She pulls back to see my face. “Do you love me still?”
I’ve already surrendered magic…why not the truth?
“Of course, little moon. I’ve loved you for eternity, and eternity stretches both ways.”
“Then can you forgive me for what’s happened between us?”
“Can you forgive me for hurting you when I left?”
She considers, and I think of how strange this all is.
She’s angry that I left.
I’m angry that I died.
It’s the trouble with our two lives, I suppose, that we don’t only have one past to work through, but two. Double the pain, twice the betrayal. A million times the tragedy.
But I set that aside for now as she says softly, “I forgave you the moment it happened, I think, even though I didn’t know it yet. I wasn’t ready for you, for this gift of yours, and it wasn’t fair to trap you until I was ready. Jack and I split the very next month, because it also wasn’t fair to him when I only could love you. And I still do, you know. Love you.”
She looks almost shy as she says it, and I think she won’t mind so much if I break protocol and pull her into a searing kiss.
She doesn’t mind.
