Page 135 of Gates of Rapture
And in the same way, she let her love flow toward him.
Leto, I want to go deep into your soul this time.
Yes, please, yes.
She pushed against his mind, then fell in, because he wanted her there.She dove to the limits of his mind, then fell again through the cloud that separated his soul.
But once inside his soul, it was as though an iridescence surrounded her and covered her—and she knew it was his love, newly birthed in the past few hours.She let him feel her love as well, and the iridescence brightened.
I love you so much,he sent.
Delight filled her, a layer over the physical pleasure, a gentle coloring over the depth of the love that now flowed back and forth, two waves meeting and passing through each other, returning to meet and pass again.
Then suddenly thebreh-heddenstruck, so unexpected, like a wonderful fire that erupted to great heights.
The iridescence burned bright; pleasure filled her deep within her soul, then her mind, then shooting outward to wash in heavy waves over her body.She knew she was screaming, and Leto’s cries wrapped around her own, rising high into the sky.
She felt his pleasure as he began to come, which ignited hers.All the years of loneliness and separation burned away in the face of thebreh-hedden,as though a fire ripped through her and through Leto.On that fire burned, forging a rapture that simply exploded.
She withdrew her fangs.He withdrew his.
“I’m coming again,” he cried against her ear.He pumped into her, that great hulk of him, hard and fast and true and honest and beautiful.
She received what he had to give.Her body responded with ecstasy again and again, pleasure flinging her into the stratosphere, waves of heat driving her back to be flung wide again until her screams resounded through the room and his roars could be heard all the way to the edge of the universe.
After a time, she floated back into her body.
She felt him float back into his.
He lay on top of her, sated, beyond sated; she could feel in him the intensity of his satisfaction.
She was moved beyond words as she embraced him.His wing-locks wept.She was damp beneath her back as well.
“The gates of rapture,” she said.
“What?”
“It was something I read in one of Beatrice’s collections, something like, ‘Approach the gates of rapture with wonder, Lay down the past, Then fall.’”She chuckled.“I fell hard.”
“Me, too.”
Only the deepest, most unexpected changes
Can conquer great evil.
—Collected Proverbs,Beatrice of Fourth
CHAPTER 20
The following morning, Endelle stared at James.She sat on her purple couch, her heart now pounding in her chest.“We’re that close?”
“Yes,” he said.“Very nearly home on this one.”
“You really believe that, don’t you?That the war against Greaves could be over soon?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t believe it.
