I impatiently pushed his hand away and continued on to my goal. He aided my cause by unabashedly holding himself rigid as I reached for an anchor, clasping both hands around the back of his neck. Heads bowed together, his pirate mustache tickling my cheek, silver halo mingling with gold, we both watched as I slowly slid down upon him.

Neither of us drew a breath during the first shallow stroke. But as my body accommodated him, I broke the silence with a gasp. He pulled his head back, and grass-green eyes peered at me through narrowed slits. “Goddamn,” he murmured reverently.

As we settled into a rhythm, he continued speaking to me in a hushed, urgent voice. A stream of whispered sentiments, instructions, and praise spilled from his lips—some tender, others downright crude and filthy. He’d never been so chatty. Surprised by the unexpected intimacy, I listened carefully to each word, answering his questions between metered breaths as he thrummed his fingers across every inch of my skin within his reach.

Halfway through, he staged a coup and pried me off. I protested weakly until I found myself on my back, him above, his weight resting on his forearms. My legs fell open around his hips as he plunged into me, over and over, with ardent zeal.

Drunk with lust, mouth open, my teeth gripped the side of his neck. Lightly at first. But the harder I bit, the faster he labored. When I tasted copper, I eased up, but he begged in a rough whisper, “Don’t stop.” I repeated the plea to him in turn with an urgent arching of my hips; we both got what we wanted.

“Arcadia …” He groaned in desperation as he slipped a hand between us to ensure victory. I knew he couldn’t last much longer; it didn’t matter, because I was already there. Straining against him, I shook uncontrollably, crying out. His head reared back, then he joined me, releasing into my body with abandon while I spasmed beneath him.

As my tremors calmed, he slumped in exhaustion, then rolled us to our sides and clung to me like death. “Jesus,” he said between breaths, “Je-sus.”

Amen to that.

After a long moment, he made a low, satiated noise in the back of his throat, then kissed my forehead. “Et in Arcadia ego,” he murmured with a crooked grin.

I laughed in surprise. “I don’t think that’s what that phrase means.”

He grunted, cracking one eye open. “It does now.”

Though spent, I suddenly thought of a hundred things I wanted to tell him all at once. “Lon—”

“Shh, hush now.” He ran a tender hand over my hair, holding me firmly against him. “I’m trying to listen to you.”

I buried my face in his neck and didn’t say another word.

I was groggy; Lon’s twitching woke me. It took me three panicked heartbeats to realize where I was. Head nestled on his shoulder, I’d dozed off in the small cottage bed, with one leg slung over his hips, staking a stubborn claim on my newly won territory. He was still asleep. Droplets of sweat hung on his forehead and matted his hair.

I tried not to wake him as I lifted my head to glance at the hands of the tiny battery-run alarm clock on the bedside table. Six thirty. We should be leaving soon, I thought with a reluctant, silent whimper. Leaving, as in trudging several miles back down the beach to get his car, after only bits and pieces of sleep. Worse, leaving behind the safety and comfort of the tiny cottage that had provided me hours of pleasure and joy … maybe more than I’d ever allowed myself. Certainly more than I’d ever been offered.

Lon inhaled sharply through his nose and lifted his head. I waited for reality to register for him. He tucked his chin to his chest and looked down at me, grunted, then smiled and let his head loll on the pillow as he stretched his legs.

“I had another dream.” His deep voice was graveled with exhaustion as he shifted his arm around my shoulder to draw me closer.

“My memories?”

“Mmm-hmm. Maybe sex helps the spell along. We should make a note of that in the Memory grimoire,” he said with amusement.

“Go on, tell me.” I quickly cleared cobwebs from my sleepy brain.

“You were older this time. You were sneaking inside a large, dark room. A temple. A large silver hexagram hung in the front of the room on a wall above a raised sanctuary with two ornate thrones. There were four doors leading into it from the back. They had roses carved in them.”

“The main lodge in Florida!” I lifted my head to prop my chin on his chest.

“You sneaked in through one of the doors and hid behind a column.” He looked down at me. “Do you remember this?”

“No.”

“Your mother was having an argument with someone. I could only see his back, but they were all in purple ceremonial robes. The man had long white hair, halfway down his back—”

“Caliph Superior,” I confirmed without reservation.

“Oh? He looked like an old wizard from a fairy tale.”

“He used to. His hair is short now. Go on.” My hand trailed lightly across his ribs, down the slight concave of his stomach, back up again.

“Well, he was saying that you—his words—‘should have already manifested qualities that would indicate deification.’ He kept insisting that his guardian told him that you should be able to pull energy from the moon by now. That you could use Heka inside you to kindle moon energy and harvest it for more powerful magick. That some ancient text claimed that you should be able to do this after you started menstruating.”

“Wait, what?” My roaming hand stopped, taut on his ribs.