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‘I would have been thinking about you, too—wanting to see you.’ Her hands moved up and slid down his open shirt, and she saw the shoulders she had leant on, the arms that had held her, the rise and fall of his chest and the lick of his lips as still he looked where no one had, as her body beckoned his mouth there, so badly she did want to see him. ‘Let me see you.’
    Nico stood and undressed and Constantine watched—excited, curious and, when she saw him, filled with trepidation, but her mind quietened that, for he was too beautiful to fear.
    ‘And then?’ Constantine asked, because she wanted what came next.
    ‘And then …’ Nico said, as he knelt back on the bed between her thighs and looked down at her waiting body, and for a moment tried to think of what next to tell her, what the next instalment of their story might be. Then he found it, and no imagination was required, for it was all right here.
    ‘He waited,’ Nico said. ‘Till the night he took his bride to bed.’ He paused for a moment, felt as if he
had
dated her, had lived his life here, that this moment, the future, truly was theirs. He looked down at her nervous, brave, but somehow trusting, and he felt like he would have had—had he loved her.
    His hands slid down her panties and she moved her hand to hide herself, but there beneath such a tender gaze there was nothing Connie wanted to hide from.
    He turned, annoyed with himself, for his jacket was on the floor, but she halted him as he went to climb from the bed.
    ‘I went on the Pill for my wedding.’
    Foolish girl to say that. Later he would warn her to trust no one with that knowledge but him. But he did not want to think of others and later he wanted to stay in a place where this was their night.
    And selfishly, too, he wanted.
    Wanted her in a way he had never before, a way that made him disregard his own strict rules, but only for her.
    ‘Will it hurt?’ Connie asked, but did not require an answer, because she knew there and then that whatever the pain it would not compare to the pain of tomorrow when Nico was gone.
    ‘A little, perhaps.’ His mouth was on her ear and then on her mouth and he kissed her in a way that she wanted, a fierce, deep kiss, his arms wrapped around her. She could feel the roughness of his thighs between hers; but his kiss was so urgent it claimed most of her attention. It was a kiss she had to race to keep up with, a kiss that bruised her mouth and scratched at her face, and she would not have had it any other way for even a moment.
    His kiss was so hard it took away her breath and demanded her mind, so much so she could not fear those first explorative probes, and then his kiss stopped and she felt a sear of pain as he entered and, even stretched by his fingers, still it hurt more that she had thought it would. Her breath clamped in her throat as she bit down a sob, and then he moved when she prayed that he wouldn’t and then he moved back and then in deeper again, and then it hurt, but not as much, and then his mouth was there at her ear and then she wasn’t hurting. His words soothed, his endearments real, said as if he were her husband, and then when he moved faster within, Connie moved, too, forgot forever that once she’d been hurting and rose and wrapped around him.
    She welcomed him in deeper. The last rapid thrusts from Nico, a signal her body heeded, and with him she went to a place that would live forever in her heart. The sound of his release met her scream and she wanted to stay there, with Nico, in the place they had created. But the pulse of her body slowed and slowly she remembered to breathe again, and a little later, when surely she should go back to her room, surely it would be dangerous to fall asleep, she let her body rest when he rolled into her. She would sleep a while in his arms and be with Nico on her wedding night.
    He could hear the clock chime five times and for once fought the instinct to instantly awaken. He wanted to pull