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Aeryn loved that for him. She hoped it hurt. Just a little.

Maybe more than a little.

And then, as her intense and addictive explosion became more of a simmer, his hands slid from her hips to grip her bottom. With purpose, it was clear.

Sure enough, he flipped them both over and came down heavy on top of her—still deep inside her as he anchored her to the bed. One of his hands slammed down beside her head and gripped the bedclothes as he began to thrust.

With a singular, focused, heady intent.

Oh, the agony of this. The glory.

It was just as she remembered it. It was better, maybe.

It was a festival of sparks flying and that wildfire they made between them shimmering as he pulled himself out and then thrust deep again.

Vesuvius always started like this. He always began with this deliberate, demanding pace, because it drove them both so out of their minds. It made everything fraught and hot and good.

Every single deep, hard stroke.

It was only here with him deep inside of her, driving into her and driving her mad, that Aeryn fully appreciated the man’s attention to discipline.

Because she knew from experience that he could go on forever.

That he would torture himself if necessary, so that she would keep coming and coming, her hips rising to meet each thrust. Sometimes helplessly, sometimes with intent. Her arms were thrown back above her head in total abandon. Her hair was a forgotten tangle all around her. Her breasts shuddered with every hard, deliberate thrust.

Once again, there was no such thing as time. There was only this.

This impossible perfection. This symphony that only they made.

Aeryn came closer and closer again, and she felt it like a crisis building inside of her. She’d had no reason to think that this would happen in the first place. Probably she should have avoided it, knowing how irresistible he was with his clothes on.

There was even less reason to imagine it might happen again, when this long, long night was over.

Might as well take as much of this with me as I can, she thought.

Aeryn pulled his head down to hers and kissed him with everything she had, full of all the emotion she’d done her best to lock up inside of her all this time. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her legs around him so she could lock her ankles in the small of his back.

He came down on her with all of his delicious weight, pressing her deep into the mattress. And as her tongue played with his, his cock lost that deliberate, steady pace he loved to torture them both with and everything got hotter.

So hot it almost hurt.

Until, when her body went stiff and then seismic, she hurtled off into the constellations. Then waited there as he roared out his release, then followed after her.

They tumbled like that, weightless and yet one. Finally, forever, one.

Coming back down into her own body felt a betrayal. Like a terrible loss, even worse than usual after all this time.

Vesuvius was still deep inside her. Aeryn could still feel the aftermath of all of that joy. This life-altering passion that had changed both of their lives, certainly—but hers, she thought, far more than his.

He had started out a king and was still one—aside, of course, from his abdication, which she couldn’t quite believe.

She, on the other hand, had started with him as a single woman with a very cool job that she loved. Like him, she still had her job—or a version of it. But she’d also become a mother. She’d had to build a life for not only herself, but her daughter. She’d had to look toward the future and get right with the idea that it would be her and Faith and nobody else for at least the next eighteen years.

Aeryn had done that. Because there was no other choice, not if she wanted to truly give her child the best life possible.

And suddenly, it was all too much.

The years themselves. The three years of the affair and the two years attempting to recover from that affair, with a newborn baby besides.