I thought I knew what he was asking, and I hesitated. How much do I like pain? I decided honesty was safest. I gazed back over my body until I could see him, and whatever words of caution I was about to utter died in my throat. He was something elemental. His body still held an outline, a solidness, but inside that solid line of skin were clouds, grey and black and white, boiling and writhing. The lightning flashed in his eyes again, and this time it rode down his body, a jagged line of brilliance that filled the world with the metallic smell of ozone. But it didn’t affect my body like real lightning would have. Instead it was just a brilliant dance of light.

His eyes glowed in his face, lit by strike after strike of bright, white light. About every third flash, the lightning shot down his body and decorated his skin. His hair had come free of its ponytail, and that grey sheet of hair danced in the wind of his power, like some soft grey blanket trapped on a wash line as the storm thunders closer.

As many times as I’d made love to warriors of the sidhe, to creatures of faerie, the sight of him behind me still stole my words. I’d seen many wonders, but nothing quite like Mistral.

He asked again, “How much do you like pain?” But as he spoke, the lightning flashed, the glow filling his mouth and pouring out with his words.

I said the only thing I could think of: “Finish.”

He smiled, and his lips held an edge of that glow. “Finish; just finish?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Will you enjoy it?”

“I don’t know.”

His smile widened, and his eyes flashed, and that line of light sparkled down his body. I was blind for a moment in the brilliance of it. He began to draw himself out of me. “So be it,” he said in that deep, rolling voice. Thunder echoed him along the roof, and for a moment it seemed as if the very walls thrummed with him.

He shoved himself inside me as fast and hard as he could, and he was too long. I screamed, and it wasn’t all pleasure. I tried not to, but I began to writhe, not closer, but farther away, crawling away from that hard, sharp pain.

He grabbed my hair, tight. Held me in place while he pounded himself into me.

I screamed, and this time, it held words. “Finish, Goddess, please finish. Go, just go.”

He jerked me up on my knees, using my hair like a lever to press our bodies against each other. He was still buried in me, but the position was better. It was a little less deep and didn’t hurt.

He wrapped his other arm around the front of my body, and held me tight against the front of his. He tightened the hand in my hair, drawing a sound from me that wasn’t pain.

He spoke with his mouth pressed against the side of my face. “I know that I hurt you before, but already your body forgives me. So soon, and you make pleasure noises for me.” He jerked my head back with his handful of my hair. It did hurt, but I liked it anyway. I just did.

“You like this,” he whispered against my face, and I felt wind against my face.

“Yes,” I said.

“But not the other,” he said, and the wind buffeted us, hard enough that we swayed for a moment. I rolled my eyes past him and found the ceiling crawling with clouds. Clouds that could have been the twins of the ones moving under his skin.

He jerked my hair again, brought me back to his face. “I thought I would come too soon, and now I am taking too long.”

“You will not come until the storm does.” It was Abeloec’s voice, but strangely not.

Mistral loosened his hold on my hair, so we could both look at the other man. What I saw was eyes that spun with crimson, emerald, and sapphire, as if they were full of liquid jewels. His hair was flared out around him, but not because the wind pulled it — more like the tail of a bird, or a cloak held carefully out by some invisible hands. The lines of color glowed through that hair, and went out into the dark like rope. The ropes of glowing color found dark shapes outside our circle of power. All the men out there in the dead gardens were covered in those lines. I tried to see if they were all right, but the thunder rolled through us, and it was as if the world itself shook with it.

Mistral shuddered around me, inside me, and that made me shudder. He hugged me tight with both of his strong arms. Not hurting me for a moment, not trying to. “If taking you from behind is too much, then what else is left? I have hurt you in front, as well.”

I leaned back against his body, letting myself rest against him completely. “If you’re strong enough to keep yourself up off my body while we fuck, you won’t brush the front of me.”

“Off your body?” He sounded puzzled.

“I will be facing up, you on top, but the only thing that touches me is what is inside me now.”

“If you are flat, I will not be able to get as much inside you.”

“I’ll rise up to meet you.” Then I asked, “Are you?”

“Am I what?” he asked, and the lightning in his eyes blinded me for a moment.

“Strong enough,” I said with my vision full of bright white spots.

He laughed, then, and it was like a low rumble of thunder not just in my ear, but along my body, as if the sound traveled through his very bones and into mine. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am strong enough.”

“Prove it,” I said, and my voice was a whisper that was almost lost in the sound of wind and thunder.

He let me move off him and helped me to lie down on what was left of our makeshift blanket. If we had been about to make love in standard missionary position, then I would have been more concerned about the blanket. But if we did this right, very little of me would be touching the ground.

I lay back against the hard, dry ground for a moment, my knees bent. Mistral hesitated, kneeling between them. Lightning flashed in his eyes, danced down his body, so that it looked for a moment as if the jagged bolt went from his eyes and out his leg into the ground. I heard a more distant crackle, and saw the first lightning bolt dance in the clouds at the ceiling. The smell of ozone came faint; the scent of close rain was stronger.

“Mistral,” I said, “now — enter me now.”

“I will brush against the front of your body,” he said. “It will hurt.”

“Enter me, and I’ll show you.”

He lowered himself to me, keeping his arms locked and his body above mine. He slid himself inside me, and before he was finished, I moved up to meet him.

I raised my upper body in a sort of sit-up, more like an abdominal crunch. I couldn’t hold the position forever, but I could hold it a long time, if I put my hands on either side of my thighs and held on. It held me simultaneously in position and open wide.

I watched him push himself inside me by the white moonlight glow of my own skin, and the distant flash of lightning that he’d released into the clouds above. It was almost as if now that the lighting was up there, there wasn’t so very much inside him.

He began to pump his body into mine. Just the long shaft of him in and out of my body, while I held myself in a tight little ball, and he held the rest of his body above mine.

“I love watching your body move in and out of mine,” I said.

He lowered his head so that his hair trailed over me, and he could watch his own body work in and out of mine. “Yesss,” he breathed, “yesss.”

He started to lose his rhythm and had to look away from the sight of our bodies locked together. Soon he resumed his long sure strokes. Thunder pounded the world, lightning crackled and smashed into the ground. The storm was coming.

He began to go faster, harder, smashing himself into me. But from this position, it didn’t hurt. From this position, it felt wonderful. I could feel the beginnings of my own pleasure growing inside me. “I’m going to come soon,” I said, and it was almost a yell over the sound of wind and storm.

“Not yet,” he said, “not yet.” I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself, but he suddenly seemed to give himself permission to fuck me as hard as he wanted. He drove himself in and out of me with a force that rocked my body, ground my ass into the leaves, and made me cry out with purest joy.

Lightning began to rain down from the clouds. One white-hot bolt after another, as if the clouds were screaming, and this was as fast as they could throw lightning down upon us. The ground shuddered with the beating of the lightning and the roll of the thunder. It was as if the lightning was hitting the ground as often as Mistral’s body hit into mine. Over and over and over again, he rammed inside me, and over and over and over again, the lightning struck the earth. The world smelled metallic with ozone, and every hair stood to attention with the electric dance of it.

He brought me screaming, fingers digging into my own thighs, holding my place, holding my place, while the orgasm shook me, took me, and my body spasmed around his. My screams were lost in the violence of the storm, but I heard Mistral cry out above me, a second before his body thrust inside mine one last time. He came inside me, and the lightning struck the earth like a huge white hand.

I was blinded with white light. I dug my nails into my thighs to remind myself where I was, and what I was doing. I wanted his release to be everything he wished. But finally, I had to collapse to the ground, had to let my legs unbend. I lay on the dry ground, panting, trying to relearn how to breathe.

He collapsed on top of me, still inside my body. His heart was beating so fast that it felt as if it would spill out his body and touch me. Rain began to fall, gently.

His first words were breathless. “Am I hurting you?”

I tried to raise my arm to touch him, but still couldn’t move. “Nothing hurts right now,” I said.

He let out his breath in a long sigh. “Good.” His heart began to slow as the rain fell harder. I turned my face to the side so the drops wouldn’t be hitting me full on.

I’d thought the weather inside the cavern would stop with Mistral’s orgasm. But though the storm had ended, there was still a sky above us. A cloudy, rainy sky. It had not rained underground in faerie for at least four hundred years. We had a sky and rain, and we were still underground. It was impossible, but the rain on my face was warm. A spring rain, something gentle, to coax the flowers out.

He raised himself up enough to pull himself out of my body and lie by my side. I felt moisture on his face, and thought at first that it was rain. Then I realized it was tears. Had the rain come because he cried, or did one thing have nothing to do with the other? I did not know. I only knew that he cried, and I held out my arms to him.