A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

I rolled onto my back so I could watch thetrees moving in the wind, feel the heat of the sun on the front of my body. I don't know if I heard a noise or just felt him standing there. I turned my head, my cheek lying on a bed of my own hair, and there he was.

Galen stood lost in the tossing green of the leaves and the small whispering trees. His hair lifted in a halo of green curls around his face. That one thin braid that was all that was left of his long, long hair trailed over his bare chest.

As he stepped out of the trees I could see that he wore nothing. His skin was a flawless white with a shade of green to it like the gleaming underside of a seashell. His waist looked longer without clothes, a slender expanse of flesh and bone leading up to the swell of his shoulders, and down to the slenderness of his hips. He was bigger than I'd thought he would be, longer, thick, growing as I watched, as if he felt my gaze travel down his body. His legs were long and muscled as he moved toward me.

I think I stopped breathing for a second or two. I hadn't really believed that he would come. I had grown tired of hoping. Now, here he was.

I raised my eyes to his face and found his smile. Galen's smile, the [ one that had made my heart skip a beat since I was old enough to care. I sat up on the blanket, holding my hand out to him. I wanted to run to him, but I was afraid to move out of the circle of trees and wind and ground. Afraid almost to look away from him because if I blinked, he would seep away into the trees like a summer dream.

He stood at the blanket's edge just out of reach and slowly lifted his hand toward mine until our fingers brushed, and that small touch sent a fluttering like a cloud of butterflies inside my body. It drew a sigh from my lips. Galen dropped to his knees on the blanket, hands at his sides, making no effort to touch me again.

I came up on my knees to mirror him. We knelt staring at each other, so close that we almost didn't need hands to touch. His hand raised slowly and hovered over the bare skin of my shoulder. I could feel his aura, his power, like a warm breath coming from his body. His hand skated across the trembling energy of my own aura, and those two separate warmths flared, reaching for each other. I'd feared that it would be hard to raise the magic, but I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten what it truly meant to be fey, to be sidhe. We were magic, as the earth and the trees were magic. We burned with the same invisible flame that bound the world together. That warm flame swelled between us, filled the air around us with a shimmering, beating energy like the sound of wings.