Electra has never felt powerful before. Not like this.

She undresses him slowly, beneath the press of his lips and the heat of his eyes in turns, as if he cannot bear to stop kissing her but equally cannot resist watching as she strips him bare. Her hands are trembling but unhurried, sliding the belt from its loops, prying open the stiff buttons. Her breasts rise and fall with these deep, shaking breaths.

There is too much of him to take in. She is torn between watching each inch of skin as it’s revealed, and his face as every feeling breaks across it in waves. The way his breath hitches as her thumbs brush over him, pulling fabric free, sends her heart into her throat. The hunger in his eyes, warring with restraint, makes her want to press her fingers into his mouth. But they are busy feeling their way around his waistband. Pulling his trousers down, with a rasp of rough fabric.

“I am yours,” she answers, breathless. Leans her cheek against his mouth. “All I want is to be yours.”

Her own silks make no sound as they fall like water, rippling. And Electra is silent as she sinks to her knees, pressing a kiss just below his navel. Another, to the point of his hip.

She pulls the last of his clothing down to his feet. Looks up at him, beneath long lashes that cast shadows down her cheeks. Forgets to breathe.

He is magnificent. She is sure she would feel the same no matter what shape his living body chose to take, but as he stands over her, honed like marble into this body, this shape, she cannot help but marvel. She has never noticed the subtlety of color in a person’s skin until this moment. Has never traced the lines of blue veins with her eyes, the red of joints, the shadows of dark hair. Her hands skim reverently back up his thighs, grip his hips to lever herself to her feet. Her breasts slide up his body as she stands, an emerald glinting between them.

She loops her arms around his neck and slants her mouth across his mouth. They fall into a rhythm of breaths and touch, toeing a line between tenderness and ravenous need. One hand fists tightly into his hair as she kisses him, a tear sliding down her cheek, his name caught in her throat. His chest pressed to hers with nothing but skin between their hearts feels primordial and electric, like the spark at the creation of all life. She leans into it, not close enough until they share one form, one heart, and moans against his lips. A wordless prayer, flung to the void, that they will never part again.

Even though she knows they will.

Jack lowers her to the mossy ground, as gently as a templar knight handling the grail. They have no time, but they move as if they do, as if by sheer force of will they can stretch this moment out into infinity and make up for the lifetime of lost moments they will surely face. Every touch a distillation of their devotion, potent and pure enough to last.

He calls this making love. She has never heard this term – in her own world, these are not interchangeable concepts. But with him she begins to understand how, by cleaving her body to his body, she might express what is beyond words, in his language or hers. There is no sound in the universe more beautiful than a lover’s name, drawn from one’s lips like hymns.

She repeats his, over and over: an incantation to save him for herself.