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busted loose the same in her. She wanted to feel something that wasn’t panic or the crowding misery of gaping loss. She wanted to hold him so tight she’d feel safe again. Working one hand, she twisted free, bunched her fist into his robes and found softness. But that wasn’t anything she wanted.
    She wanted not to have a mind for five minutes. She wanted insensible, because the opposite wasn’t working and she was shaking now but no longer with fear. She could call it reaction, but—oh, hell, she’d never crossed realities before, but she knew the bitter taste of grief. And the only way she knew out of that was a plunge into the next damn thing. Which was him.
    That was mad. He had to be, too. But, dear god, the warmth of him—she needed that. Needed holding, to be held together, and maybe he could stop her fragmenting into even smaller pieces. She wanted the comfort she could see lurking in his eyes, begging to be taken.
    He leaned closer, stopped when his mouth hovered a kiss away from hers. His eyes stayed open but dark lashes lowered. She could trace the rough texture of his skin and almost taste it on her tongue. Unbearable not to have. So she lifted her chin and met his lips with a whisper.
    Just a touch—a benediction.
    Hunger sparked.
    He covered her mouth with his, took the air from her on a pull that wasn’t demand but was desperate as her soul. That tentative supplication for more stripped the last drops of sanity’s resistance.
    His fingers loosened, trailed up her arms, his touch leaving behind rough shivers. And that heat. Sweet heat. Her right hand left his robes and her fingers found his neck and slid into soft, ragged hair. She held on as his mouth opened, went from soft lips to sharp teeth and a questing tongue. She couldn’t breathe, had to grab gasps around his, but he was breathing hard, too, and that still wasn’t enough. So she started fighting again.
    She fought to peel his clothes from his skin and to tug hers free. It wasn’t anything pretty or nice, but it’d get her through this, and she had one leg bared and his jeans dropped and his hand caught her leg, lifted to wrap her calf and thigh around him.
    Her breath rasped raw in her throat because this still wasn’t enough skin and hadn’t taken away the emptiness she wanted obliterated. She was alive, dammit. She was, and this was real and she wanted his heart beating against hers, and to have good reasons for her tears.
    She wanted his scent—something like wood smoke and earth—around her. She wanted the taste of him in her mouth, salt and good things remembered. Leaning into all of that, she opened to him, her back arching.
    “Yes,” she said, voice so low a growl she didn’t know it. She wanted to curse and to cry and maybe scream, but she didn’t because what she really wanted was to hide from all that she had seen outside and everything she didn’t remember. She wanted to crawl into him.
    She did when he rocked into her.
    She shuddered and her body burned into white cinders, vanished into a place where she forgot what was her and what was him. She gave and took and lost the rest of herself. The sizzle shot up her spine as she came, came alive with heat. He followed her with a sharp, fast, startled gasp, sounding surprised and amazed as he trembled in her arms.
    Clinging to him, to that fracture of time that didn’t exist anywhere but between two sweating bodies, she tried to stay there, wanted to keep clawing into him. Impossible, she knew.
    But still she wanted.
    Only her brain had started up again, had started to howl. This was more than insane. She wouldn’t get pregnant. She’d made sure of that back when she’d had a working mind, what seemed long years ago. But there were worse things she could get without any protection and they hadn’t used anything—god, she really had lost it.
    Slowly, her breathing eased. His skin still tasted of salt—she knew because she’d taken a lick from his neck. He had a taste