Charon's Crossing

His eyes widened. "What did you say?"

"I said shut up and... oh, never mind."

She rose on her toes and kissed him. Her mouth was warm and sweet and moved gently against his. For one whispered heartbeat, his lips softened under hers. Then he blinked and pulled away.

"Don't," he said sharply.

She smiled. Her hands lifted to his chest. Slowly, slowly, she began to move them down his torso.

"Kathryn." He caught hold of her hands. "Kathryn..."

His breath caught as her fingers trailed over his belly and down into the thick curls that surrounded his sex. "Sweetheart, don't..."

"This is what I want, Matthew, what I've always wanted, ever since you first came to me in my dreams."

"Dammit, woman, you don't know what you're..."

"I'm not a fool. You think we mustn't make love because—because of our situation."

He jerked back and glared at her. "Don't speak in platitudes, dammit. What I think—what I know—is that you're alive and I am not. If that's not the best reason in the world for stopping this before it begins—"

Had she touched him, had she moved against him, he could have resisted her. Instead, she did the one thing he was powerless to fight.

She smiled into his eyes and said, "I love you."

"Nay," he said, "you cannot..."

He groaned, caught her to him, and carried her down to the bed. How could he fight destiny? This moment, wrenched out of the fabric of time, was theirs. To have denied it would have been to deny whatever warped laws of the universe had brought them together.

He kissed her over and over, with a hunger that was insatiable. Right and wrong no longer had any meaning. He only knew that he would never be the same after this night.

* * *

She would never be the same after this night.

Never, Kathryn thought in wonder, not if she lived for another thousand years.

Matthew was everything she had imagined, and more. He was beautiful, the purest form of masculine grace, all hard planes and long muscle. Looking at him was intoxicating. Touching him was driving her to the edge of sanity.

His skin was hot under her hands and carried the scent of his passion. His flesh was hard and exciting, and his kisses were all the nourishment her heart would ever need.

How could she have ever imagined making love would be like this?

She was a rainbow of brilliance, a symphony of dazzling, dizzying sensations. Her body was electric and alive with response, and now all of it was centering in one place, that hidden, secret part of her.

Matthew's thigh, hard and powerful, lay locked between hers. He was moving his leg against her, up and down, back and forth...

Ah. Ah! She was moving, too, sliding against his flesh, lifting herself to him and pressing against him while she made breathy little sounds of pleasure.

She was soaked, so wet and hot... She felt like a flower, opening to the burning heat of a hot summer sun. All these years, all her life, she'd thought this was nothing, really, that to lie with a man could not be any great miracle or mystery. Sex was nothing she'd wanted and it had been easy to avoid in this era of caution.

And then she'd dreamed of Matthew.

She moaned as he kissed the hollow of her throat, then trailed open-mouthed kisses to her breast. His hand cupped the soft weight and she caught her breath and watched as he bent his head to her, his hair falling like sun-kissed silk over her flesh.

The sight of him taking her nipple into his mouth was so erotic that she sobbed his name.

"Matthew," she said brokenly, "Matthew..."