He had crossed so many boundaries in himself, he had no idea what this new, foreign place held for him.

Stroking his fingers down her long, silken braid, he eased away to look down at her. A dark rose color flushed her cheeks, and her eyes shimmered. At the sight, a thread of alarm streaked through him. She wasn’t teary, was she?

She made a soft, urgent sound at the back of her throat, took his head in both hands, and reached up to kiss him a second time.

This time, she slanted her mouth over his and touched his lower lip with her tongue. The caress was so intimate, so needy, shock washed over him again.

It was all the invitation he needed. Crushing her against his chest, he ravaged her mouth, plunging into her with his tongue over and over.

Her fingers worked against the back of his skull, threading through his short hair, while she matched his kiss eagerly. Only half aware of his actions, he took hold of her long braid and wound it around one hand until he made a fist at the nape of her neck.

He was burning, burning. He felt too big for his clothes, on fire for her. Every goddamn breath he took was filled with her luscious, feminine, unique scent. Suddenly starving for every new sensation, he pulled away from her mouth and ran his lips along the petal soft skin of her cheek.

Either he was shaking, or she was, or perhaps they both were. He held her tighter.

“Bel,” he whispered, drunk on the delight of saying her beautiful name. “Beluviel.”

She shuddered and sobbed out something in his ear. What she said, he didn’t know, but the sound of her trembling voice snapped him back into himself.

He could have pretended it hadn’t. Clearly she wasn’t rejecting him, so he could have pressed on. He didn’t want to stop, but he lifted his head anyway.

The golden firelight gilded her rosy skin. Her lips were slightly swollen from his kisses, and the long, graceful arch of her throat as she bent her head back in willing acquiescence of his grip in her hair was utterly perfect.

With a quick glance, he committed the sight to memory, and then he focused on the expression in her gaze. She gazed at him with a combination of such pleasure and pain, conflicting impulses threatened to tear him apart.

He whispered, “I shouldn’t want you so desperately, but I do.”

“I shouldn’t delight so much in hearing you admit it,” she whispered in reply. “But I do, and I want you too.”

He tightened his fist in her hair. “Tell me we shouldn’t be together, just once.”

He watched as her trembling mouth shaped a stunning reply. She whispered, “I can’t think of a single reason why we shouldn’t be together, just once.”

“We can steal this hour for ourselves,” he said slowly, watching every telltale, tiny shift in her expression for any sign of refusal. He couldn’t bear the thought she might think of him with regret. If she showed a single hint of remorse or reluctance, he would stop.

There was none.

Stroking her fingers through his hair, she murmured, “There’s no reason why we can’t. No harm will be done.”

There was something wrong in what they said to each other, but his fevered brain couldn’t quite puzzle it out. His growing hunger for her was louder than any other instinct or doubt.

“No harm,” he agreed hoarsely. “We can take this time together. Just until dawn, just you and me.”

“And we don’t tell anybody about this,” she whispered, searching his gaze. “Afterward, we go on living our lives, just like before? You’ll go back to your demesne, and I’ll return to mine?”

“Yes.”

Loosening his grip on her hair, he pulled her braid apart. The long, dark strands cascaded over his fingers. Against his callused skin, it felt incredibly soft, like water or silk. Obeying an impulse, he buried his face in a handful of her hair.

That was when he began to realize where they had gone wrong. There was no way he could make love to this incredible woman and go back to his life as if nothing had ever happened. The very fact of her threatened to change him at a fundamental level.

He was beginning to think she might be everything he could ever want or need. She certainly embodied far more than he had ever thought he might find in a woman.

And she was nothing he could ever have for himself.

Not truly, not past dawn.

Just as he couldn’t turn away from her earlier at the masque, he couldn’t turn away from her now. It would be a terrible thing to close the door on spring and never venture forth to experience all the wonder that living his life to the fullest could bring, even if he could only have an hour with her.

Easing out of his arms, she undid the fastenings of her leather vest, pulled it off and set it aside. The jacket was heavy, he noted, and stitched with a thick lining, a good solid understated piece of armor. Underneath, she wore a white silk shirt, embroidered along the neckline and wrists with a curling green vine.

Touching the vine with one forefinger, he murmured, “Pretty.”

She gave him a luminous smile. “I stitched it last month. I like to remind myself that winter is temporary, and spring always comes.”

“You’re not too cold?” he asked her again, stroking her cheek. She shook her head, leaning into his touch. “We can spread my coat on the ground.”

“And we can use my cloak as a blanket,” she murmured.

“You deserve a much finer bed than this.” Unable to resist, he leaned forward to caress her lips with his.

She said against his mouth, “This is the best bed I could hope for.”

He shrugged out of his coat and laid it out on the ground. The fire was beginning to die down, so he took a moment to add the last of the wood to the blaze. As it flared up, he turned back in time to see her pull off her leather boots and pants.

Her long, bare legs were flawless. Muscles flexed over narrow, graceful bones as she bent to scoop up her pants and drape them over the log. Her hair fell longer than her shirt, the feathery ends brushing against her thighs. As she bent her head, the tip of one pointed, elegant ear peeked out of the dark, shining strands.