He is intoxicated by the heady feel of her and the dulled pain. It is ecstasy to forget, to lose himself in this blurring of body and heart and memory. The release of himself from the cage of his agony makes his head swim with relief, with joy, and with a carnal need for more—for the moment to never end. He waits though. Holds himself back until she sighs, until she gives him that final word. He groans low and deep in his throat as he rises, lifting himself and then pulling her under him in one swift, definitive movement.
“I love you,” he groans, and he is too lost in the moment to think it’s a mistake. To think of anything except how real it feels right now. How easy it is to forget about everything that exists beyond this moment and to just think it is the two of them again. Plume and Anonya, young and carefree and facing a world that feels so utterly simple in retrospect. It is just the two of them, and she feels so right.
It’s the only truth he knows.
Each joining of them brings the truth closer and closer to its core. He groans her name. Whispers it into the silk of her mane. “You’re mine,” he says because his mind has anchored on this idea. Because this is the only thing keeping him alive right now. The only thing keeping him on this plain at all. “I’m yours,” because this is the other side of the coin and because he is drowning, because he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe and all he can do is kiss her neck, pull her closer, grab her and drag her into the undertow.
Let them drown together.
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to