When night comes, he loves her fiercely, his fingers, his every movement, guided by a quiet desperation that burns like slow fire. I am a killer. I make the bloody rain fall. He is a child, practically still a child, and she is not much older. Their moments together feel like borrowed time, a hopeless race against the inevitable. He loves like he kills; there is a certain deadliness, a frightening intensity, beneath the tender, almost tentative, caresses. It always starts out a bit clumsily at first; he is awkward, shy, unwilling to believe she is real. But then the kisses get rougher, the gestures more brusque--- a slight tugging at her already open robes, teeth suddenly clamping down on the soft skin of her neck--- and she looks into his narrowed eyes and remembers he is the Battousai. Dangerous, volatile, stained with countless ended lives, yet forever hers in the moonlight. I will protect you. They lose themselves in each other, sword-callused fingers running through hair like black silk, limbs tangling with blankets, while somewhere the war rages on and the fate of the country hangs in the balance. It is the only way they can forget. He holds her until the sun rises. We are doomed, she thinks, gently stroking his pale cheek. You shouldn't cling to things that smell of blood. She knows that. She knows.