It felt as if it had been a thousand years since that night on the beach. Her hands rediscovered his body, the hard planes of it, his scars rough under her palms. He had once been so skinny-she could still see him as he had been even two years ago, awkward and gangly. She had loved him then even if she hadn't known it, loved him from the center of his bones to the surface of his skin.
Now those bones were clothed and covered in smooth muscle, hard and unyielding. She ran her hands up under his shirt, relearning him, tracing him, embedding the feel and the texture of him in her memory.
"Julian," she said. "I-"
I love you, she was about to say. It wasn't ever Cameron, or Mark, it was always you, it will always be you, the marrow of my bones is made up of you, like cells make up our blood. But he cut her off with a hard kiss. "Don't," he whispered. "I don't want to hear anything reasonable, not now. I don't want logic. I want this."
"But you need to know-"
He shook his head. "I don't." He reached down, grabbed the hem of his shirt, dragged it off. His wet hair showered droplets on them both. "I've been broken for weeks," he said unsteadily, and she knew what that cost him, that admission of lack of control. "I need to be whole again. Even if it doesn't last."
"It can't last," she said, staring at him, because how could it, when they could never keep what they had? "It'll break our hearts."
He caught her by the wrist, brought her hand to his bare chest. Splayed her fingers over his heart. It beat against her palm, like a fist punching its way through his sternum. "Break my heart," he said. "Break it in pieces. I give you permission."
The blue of his eyes had almost disappeared behind the expanding rims of his pupils.
She hadn't known, before, on the beach, what was going to happen. What it would be like between them. Now she did. There were things in life you couldn't refuse. No one had that much willpower.
No one.
She was nodding her head, without even knowing she was going to do it. "Julian, yes," she said. "Yes."
She heard him make an almost anguished sound. Then his hands were on her hips; he was lifting her so she was pinned between his body and the wall. It felt desperate, world-ending, and she wondered if there would ever be a time when it wouldn't, when it could be soft and slow and quietly loving.
He kissed her fiercely and she forgot gentleness or any desire for it. There was only this, his whispering her name as they pushed aside the clothes that needed to be pushed aside. He was gasping, a faint sheen of sweat on his skin, damp hair plastered to his forehead; he lifted her higher, pressed toward her so fast his body collided with hers. She heard the ragged moan dragged out of his throat. When he lifted his face, eyes black with desire, she stared at him, wide-eyed.
"You're all right?" he whispered.
She nodded. "Don't stop."
His mouth found hers, unsteady, his hands shaking where they held her. She could tell he was fighting for every second of control. She wanted to tell him it was fine, it was all right, but coherence had deserted her. She could hear the waves outside, smashing brutally against the rocks; she closed her eyes and heard him say that he loved her, and then her arms were around him, holding him as his knees gave way and they sank to the floor, clutching each other like the survivors of a ship that had run aground on some distant, legendary shore.
* * *
Tavvy, Rafe, and Max were easy enough to locate. They'd been in the care of Bridget, who was amusing them by letting them annoy Jessamine so that she knocked things off high shelves, thus sparking a "Do not tease ghosts" lecture from Magnus.
Dru, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found. She wasn't in her bedroom any longer, or hiding in the library or the parlor, and the kids hadn't seen her. Possibly Jessamine could have helped them more, but Bridget had reported that she had flounced off after the children were done bothering her, and besides, she only liked talking to Kit.
"Dru wouldn't have left the Institute, would she?" Mark said. He was stalking down the corridor, shoving doors open left and right. "Why would she do something like that?"
"Mark." Kieran took the other boy by his shoulders and turned him so that they faced each other. Cristina felt a throb in her wrist, as if Mark's distress were communicating itself to her through the binding.
Of course, Mark and Kieran shared another kind of binding. The binding of shared experience and emotion. Kieran was holding Mark by the shoulders, concentrating on nothing but him in that way that faeries had. And Mark was relaxing slowly, some of the tension leaving his body.