The reception room held nothing but the broken rhythm of Venna's ragged gasps and the low answering drag of my own.
Heat had climbed all afternoon. It sat on her face in a sheen, damp along her hairline, slick where her skin met mine in every place we were tangled. The polished stone was warm under us, almost hot, and the air above it barely moved.
We were on the countertop. Her hands locked hard across my back, fingers digging into muscle. Her legs had closed around my hips and stayed there, heels pressing in as I moved into her like a man who had just eaten—steady, deep, unhurried now that the worst of the hunger was gone.
We'd eaten. We'd drunk. We'd talked until the words ran out and arrived at the same discovery from opposite directions: nothing left in this building to do, and one thing left in it worth doing.
Her fingers slid up the length of my spine, found the base of my skull, and closed in my hair, pulling. The tug was sharp and exact.
