“That wouldn’t be all,” she breathed. “You’d be hard, and aching. Wanting inside me.”

His lids lowered, and he dragged in a breath. “Yes.”

“I’d undress you. This time fast, but there will come a time when I’d go slowly, peeling away layer after layer to bare your skin and your body. But for this moment, I’d be swift, because I would not be able to wait. I’d have you naked before ten grains of sand hit the bottom of the hourglass.”

She had already seen him unclothed, but picturing it now within the illusion they shaped made her tight and ravenous. The moonlight would be silver upon the wide expanse of his shoulders, tracing the solid arcs of his muscles, disappearing into dips and hollows.

“And I would see how hard you’d be,” she continued. “Curving up, as if made to fit precisely within me. The head pulling upward. There’d be a small drop weeping from the slit, because you’d want inside me so badly.”

His breath came raggedly, and he pressed his hand against the hard ridge of his cock. “Yes—just there.”

“But not yet. I wouldn’t let you between my legs right away. I’d stay on the bed, just where I lay, and make you kneel on the mattress beside my head. Your cock would be so close to my lips. I’d lift up, like this.” She raised herself onto her elbows. “My mouth would open. You’d put one hand behind my head. And then . . . I’d take you into my mouth.”

Bram gave another groan. His groin pressed into his hand. Yet he held himself back.

“Go on,” she urged. “Let me see you.”

His fingers flew over the fastenings of his breeches. With a hiss of relief, he freed his erection, his hand wrapping around its thickness.

Never had a crude piece of flesh been so tempting. His cock was dark, flushed with blood, and just as she had predicted, fluid glistened at the top of the round head. She wanted him within her so badly. But she was only spirit, so she gave him what she could with words.

“I’d lick you to start. Run my tongue around the top, and just beneath the ridge. There’d be a bit of salt on my tongue from your own need, and I’d lap that up. Then I’d draw you deeper into my mouth. Slowly. Inch by inch, stopping along the way to taste you. But I would take more and more of you within me, until I could go no further. And that’s when I’d begin to suck.”

His hand slid up and down his shaft as she spoke, yet she saw how he kept his strokes slow, light, as if trying to prolong the pleasure. No hurried release for him. He was a voluptuary, taking delight from sensation even more than the release.

“You’d feel my tongue on the underside of your cock. I’d run it all over you as I moved up and down. Every so often, I’d lightly scrape my teeth along the shaft, just enough to remind you that I’m a woman who is always in command, even with your cock in my mouth.”

“And when you’d do that,” he breathed, “I’d push a little harder on your head. Making you swallow more of me.”

“Both of us could not be in charge. Someone has to follow.”

“Neither of us are followers. We’ll make it succeed. That I don’t doubt. See, as you’d be sucking me, I’d reach over to stroke your sweet quim. You’d already be hot and wet from your climaxes, and I’d slip easily between your lips and inside you. Two fingers, I think.” His fingers tightened around his shaft. “See? The two of us in command.”

It would be a wondrous thing—the pull and push of each other, yielding and obdurate at the same time.

“But this wouldn’t last,” he went on. “Only so much I’d be able to endure before I had to have my cock truly inside you. I’d pull from your mouth—”

“And I would stay on the bed, my hips at the edge of the bed—”

“I’d stand between your legs and hold tight to your hips—”

“My breath would hold, and I’d watch you—”

“As I slid my cock into you.”

She felt a bright radiance gathering within, coalescing. Trying to look away from Bram stroking himself was impossible. His hand moved faster, his grip tense, and his shirt clung as sweat filmed his body.

“You wouldn’t move,” she whispered. “We’d allow ourselves a moment to just feel one another, you thick and hard in me—”

“Your tight softness all around me. God.” A rough animal sound reverberated from his chest. “Then I’d move. I’d pull back, only a little, then thrust forward. A few slow strokes as we’d learn each other.”

“Then you’d move faster, and I’d push to meet you.”

“I’d watch your breasts shake with each thrust. I’d watch my cock as it slid in and out of you, wet with you. I’d watch your face as I filled you, watch the pleasure build, watch your eyes close, your mouth open.”

“My hands would grip the blankets. I’d see you, the tension in your neck as you’d clench your teeth, the flex of your muscles as you’d move.”

“I’d not be able to be gentle. I’d take you, hard, so hard, you’d be pushed further back onto the bed, and the bed itself would shudder and groan.”

The brightness continued to build as she envisioned and felt him. She had always liked her lovemaking to be tempestuous, and Bram promised precisely that.

His touch upon himself was brutal, fascinating. “Release would call to you. It would demand your surrender.”

“I don’t surrender.”

“To this, you would. I’d fuck you so powerfully, you’d have no choice. You’d come. So hard you’d lose your breath, lose your name, lose everything but the pleasure I’d give you. Come, Livia. Come now.”

Sensation tore through her. It was a magnificent devastation, molten and unstoppable. Impossible. She had no body, no way to feel or experience release. And yet she did. Through his words alone, he tore down the barriers between the spirit and the flesh.

Oh, gods, it had been an eternity.

Her climax rolled on in endless waves. As she bowed up with release, she heard his guttural moan. She managed to pry her eyes open enough to watch him spend, his head thrown back, face carved sharp. Beautiful agony.

Had she been flesh, his semen would have coated her belly and run down her thighs. But she had no body, and the droplets passed through her and onto the mattress.

He sprawled onto his back, chest heaving. After a few moments, he tucked himself back into his breeches and fastened them. He lay back, a man wrung dry.

“I never thought . . .” She struggled to find words, to gather her shattered mind. “To comprehend such marvels . . . How was that possible?”

“Because we are meant to be lovers,” he said.

Such a simple explanation, yet it felt exactly right.

He gazed at her, and she could not stop her hand from stroking along his bristled cheek, as if she could truly feel him. His eyes slowly closed. Being mortal, and a man, Bram’s breathing soon deepened and slowed. Livia lay beside him, listening to the sounds of his sleep. The blood on his face had dried. There would be more blood—his, countless others’. That was certain.

Tonight had been revelatory. Her magic drew strength when Bram fought; she was not as powerless as she had believed. And the pleasure he had given her afterward, here, in this derelict home that once housed his father’s mistress, on a bed that was shabby and worn . . . that pleasure had been a wonder. It still was, echoing through her in golden reverberations.

More than physical release. An unexpected connection as intimate as two spirits might know. What was this man? Sinner, soldier. Lover.

Her lover—for now. Each hour that passed meant another hour lost, never to be regained. She could not rely on the future. It was a fragile web, and the impending storm would tear everything to tatters.

From his vantage at the window, Bram watched the street. Christ Church’s bell chimed the nine o’clock hour. The hour of business and industry—or so he’d been told, possessing neither the need to do business nor the impulse to industry. Good people walked the streets of London during the daylight hours. Silk weavers concentrated their shops here in Spitalfields, and, as the price of imported silk was exorbitant, the weavers were never idle. After all, England needed its finery.