Josh started to rise but she clung to him. “Please, just a little longer.” She had refused to beg to Raze the Ruiner for her life, but she would beg Josh for these last moments.
He relented, and she pulled him in to kiss him again.
A deep kiss, a musetta’s kiss. She kissed him down to his soul where he kept the passions that drove him. She tasted herself on his tongue, then, past that, she found the wide-open sky and deep mountain valley that echoed his big heart. She kissed him until her own heart ached, breaking at the simple, unbounded beauty.
Too much. She couldn’t hold it all, couldn’t hold him...Her musetta tricks honed in the phaedrealii failed her, and her only hope was to crack herself apart and take what he had to give. In the skylight above, the first stars were gathering in the darkening sky, but tears blurred her vision as if the sunlit world was fading away.
She inhaled, filling herself with the scent of sex and snow and Josh. She held the breath...
And Josh slumped across her.
For a moment, she held him, feeling his heart thud steadily against her breast. Then she rolled him over. His eyes were closed, lashes a pair of short crescent fans that trembled with her breath when she kissed him one last time.
He sighed, but did not wake.
A musetta could rouse to action, but her withdrawal caused exhaustion in equal measure when she took her power away from a man.
Not for long, perhaps, not with a man like Josh who would not let himself be stopped by a mere lack of inspiration. But he would rest for awhile, and that was all the time she needed.
She rose from the bed and dressed in her phae veils which, left to their own devices, had shed most of their filth. She combed her fingers through her hair as the silky folds settled around her.
Josh’s lashes fluttered and she caught the faint gleam of his eyes. He would think he was dreaming this. And that’s all it had been, all it could be: a dream. Without her presence to remind him, she would fade into the darkness of his mind.