As soon as the door closed behind us I ran. When I reached the bed I collapsed onto my stomach and closed my burning eyes. A moment later Derek dropped down beside me. His hand felt around until it found mine.

“This is a really nice duvet,” Derek said.

I stroked the silky surface. “It should be, at that price.”

The manager of the Inverness Inn had stared at us in disbelief when we banged on the door of his upscale establishment at two a.m., covered with dirt and bloody scratches, but he had enough discretion not to ask any questions, especially after Derek produced a platinum AmEx card to cover two rooms at five hundred dollars each.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired,” I said.

“For you, that’s saying something.” Derek stroked my hand. I turned my head and met his smiling brown eyes.

“Thank you, Maggie,” he said.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“Why not? You risked your life for me.”

“I did it for myself as much as for you.”

“How’s that?”

I couldn’t look at him when I said this, for fear of what I might see, so I turned my face toward the window. The fog had cleared, and the moon smiled in on us from a purple sky. “I couldn’t bear to lose you. I need you, Derek.”

He touched my cheek and turned me to face him. Tears glimmered in his eyes. “I love you.”

Now it was my turn to cry. So much had happened in such a short time that my head was still reeling from it all. I felt like I’d been living inside an egg, self-contained and protected, with no idea how tiny my circumscribed world was compared to what was outside it. And then the egg cracked and I emerged into a world that contained other people, and wide horizons, and love.

“I love you too.”

Derek enfolded me in his arms and kissed me gently. He molded my hips to his, and I could feel that he was hard and ready.

“I want to make love to you again,” he whispered into my ear before he licked the tender skin behind it.

“And I would too,” I replied.

“But I’m too tired,” we both said simultaneously.

We barely managed to crawl under the covers before we both fell asleep.

The next morning we were awakened by an insistent tap on the door.

“Did you order anything?” I grumbled.

“How could I?” he answered. “I was asleep.”

He stumbled to the door, still in the dirty jeans and T-shirt he’d worn the night before. A hotel employee was waiting with a plate under a silver dome and a pot of delicious-smelling coffee.

“That smells awfully good,” Derek said, “but I didn’t order it. Besides, there’s two of us here.”

“Oh!” The young man looked chagrined as he checked the ticket. “This is for the room next door. Please accept my apologies, and if you would like breakfast today, of course it will be on the house.”

Derek shut the door on his retreating back and turned to me. “Do you want breakfast?”

I lifted a corner of the duvet. “Maybe later.”

Derek didn’t immediately climb into bed. Instead he treated me to a slow striptease as he removed the clothes he’d been too tired to take off the night before. We had forgotten to close the curtains, and the sun gleamed through puffy cumulus clouds, surrounding Derek with a honey-colored halo. When the T-shirt came off my gaze lingered on his taut chest muscles and chiseled abdomen. He turned slightly, revealing the tattoo of the Celtic cross on his bicep that I’d first seen at the hospital. Then I’d tried to avoid looking at his sinewy back and high, round buttocks, but now I was free to feast my eyes. My mouth went dry as he unbuttoned his jeans, tantalizing me with their slow progress down his jutting hipbones. Finally he revealed his manhood in all its glory.

“That is a beautiful picture,” I said.

“Do you want me to stay like this?” He flexed a bicep and struck a pose, turning his head so that the sun burnished the long waves of his hair.

“Hell, no, I want you to come here.”

He slid between the sheets. After a bit of scrambling I was divested of my own clothes, down to my bra and panties. Derek kissed me so deeply I felt it all the way down to my curling toes, which he trapped between his own feet as he flipped me onto my back. He held my hands down, rendering me immobile. I could do nothing but gasp as he slid up and down, pressing himself into the cleft between my legs, the silk of my panties generating a delicious friction between us.

“Oh, yes,” I moaned, as he stripped the panties off my legs. “Come inside.”

“No, not yet.” He freed my hands so that he could slide down the length of my body, kissing and licking all the way. “I’m going to make sure this gets done right.”

I tossed the duvet aside so that I could look at him. His hair fell in a curtain around his face, and the ends swept my skin, causing a tickling pleasure that was so exquisite it made me laugh out loud. Digging my fingers deep into his curly hair as he dove between my legs, I started to guide him with my hands, but quickly realized he needed no assistance. He found the spot where I wanted him to go and worked it expertly with tongue and teeth until shooting stars appeared behind my eyelids. My world contracted until nothing was left but that tiny knob of flesh and the sensation pulsing through it. Then everything exploded. The world expanded again, and I felt it all, in every part of me. I sobbed with the pure joy of it, of being alive and having Derek with me, wholly and entirely himself.

“Are you okay?” he asked, lifting his head. “You’re crying.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. I hauled him up, locking my ankles around his thighs and pulling him in hard, so that he had no choice but to slip inside me.

He gasped as he went in. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Move with me, Derek.”

He did. We rocked together in flawless rhythm and perfect harmony, performing a duet that was timeless, ageless, shared by all humans and yet entirely unique to us. It was our song of love.