"Would you like to dance?" He asked, a silent purr rolling from his words. The violinists, the guitarist, and the drummer began to play. The song filled the air around them, wisping under the fancy tablecloths and around their ankles, rising upwards to send prickles up their arms and warmth through their hearts.

"Oh Desmond," Ilse whispered, reaching out across the table to gingerly touch his knuckles. He smiled, knowing how much it meant to her, knowing how it made her feel, and relishing that he could give her this moment. The candles flickered, and a brilliance in her eyes sent excitement and love racing up the puma's spine like electricity. They rose from their seats in unison as the vocalist began the opening verse, coming together with a fluid motion of fabric and skin and loving gaze. Light touches on the piano accompanied their first smooth steps. Other people at nearby tables looked up and smiled to see the young couple, touched by the love between them that overflowed and reached anyone to turn their eyes upon them.


The door closed quietly behind them, and they both slipped out of their shoes. No words passed between the two- only the quiet energy that leapt between their eyes and danced from their fingertips. Desmond cupped her cheek with his hand, exhaling gently, and traced her lips with his calloused thumb. Ilse's eyes slid closed at his touch, her own hands sliding up his silk black shirt, tingling with the feeling of the soft material shifting against his chest. Breath fell from their lips like heavy, invisible steam, each movement as graceful and predetermined as any bird's wing beat.

Lips touched: soft, devoted, passionate and true. His fingers became tangled in her dark hair, her arms bent and pressed between their bodies as he drew her closer. Delicate blue light caught her eyelids and cheek bone, her eyelashes seeming all the darker as he breathed in her appearance with gasping glances. His hands found her bare shoulders in the darkness without a fumble, his fingers the zipper down its back. There was no panic to their movements, no desperation as they loved and lived and cried their devotion to one another.


Red material slid gently against black as they turned, drinking the music and each other, speaking the lyrics softly to themselves. The leader of the Blood Meridian found himself lost, caring nothing for the issues of the word, feeling no pain or loss at all within the depths of his soul, holding this beautiful woman in his arms and declaring to the word that she was his, and he was hers, and he loved her with all his heart, body, and mind. "Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure," he exhales into her ear along with the vocalist, and then, "Is this moment how you'd imagined, my love?"

"Yes," she sighed, the smile that came irrevocably to her face rich and full of joy. Pressing her face to his shoulder and risking the smudging of the modest eye makeup she'd donned for the evening, Ilse allowed the moisture collecting in her eyes to dribble quietly into his collar. "How did you know?"

"Navarre told me," he replied, a soft pride in his tone.


Gentle fingers brushed through the short hair at the nape of his neck, circling his collar and proceeding to methodically undo his buttons with a slow, purposeful motion. He continued to kiss the beautiful wolf shifter, his soft, gentle lips barely grazing hers one heartbeat and then seizing them passionately the next. As the last button relinquished its grip and the shirt hung open, Desmond pulled back and slipped the dress from his lover's shoulders. Without giving her time to feel naked or cold, he dipped his head down to tenderly kiss her exposed collarbone and then, with a happy sigh, run his cheek against her neck. Ilse smiled with a warmth that radiated from somewhere deep inside herself, sliding her hands between his shirt and his inviting skin, pushing the clothing from him and dropping it to the floor with her dress.
The entwined surprise and elation that erupted in Ilse's face made Desmond smile back even more broadly, showing off his teeth in a wide, relaxed grin. "He's given us his blessings, Ilse.," he whispered, still rotating delicately on the dance floor. "There is nobody to hide from anymore. Not Muldoon, not the Blood Meridian, not Navarre… not ourselves." Even as the puma looked to her, smiling, anybody could have seen the rapture and love shimmering in his rich brown eyes.

"Desmond, you…?"

"Ilse," came his words, a wind tickling the brittle leaves of an autumn tree, "Marry me."

"Yes," she said, hardly able to believe it, any of it, even her own mouth forming the heartfelt reply. New tears crept to her eyes.


Desmond slowly undid his belt, drawing it from the pants' loops carefully as he stood back to admire his Ilse, his beloved, his mate. Confidence and love spoke to him from the beautiful woman's bright eyes as he slid the dress pants from his legs. Then they were all but bare, longing each other and loving each other and needing each other and quite naked in their feelings for one another.

Ilse stepped back and lay herself down on the matress, inviting him with her eyes. Drawn without a second thought the man eased himself onto the bed, settling on top of her and leaning forward to place a bristly kiss to her stomach. Her fingers caressed his face, exploring the contours of his jaw, cheek, brow as if she'd never seen them and might never see them again. Her back arched as his teeth touched sensually along her midriff, and languidly Desmond reached up with one hand to the clasp of her bra. She too slid a hand behind her back and, together, they undid the garment. They paused and smiled at each other impishly, and Desmond sat up, pulling her gently to come up with him. He drew the bra down along her arms and brought her hands to rest on his hips in conclusion. Ilse had begun to say something when gentle fingertips covered her mouth. No words. They needed no words. He loved her. She loved him. It was enough.

That night they made love with tenderness that neither had experienced before, roiling together with a perfect rhythm as though they were dancing still to the music, singing still to the lyrics. His face twisted in fervour, her lips parted in gasps of ecstasy, and all the while their eyes remained locked together. Long into the night even after the crashing waves of intimacy and sex had died down, they remained joined and awake, inhaling each other's scents and whispering beautiful things, and staring with awe at the wonderful person that each had the fortune to be with.