Directly across from her was the projection of flat rock where they had been lying when they had first heard Joe singing, and Elizabeth noted how it looked like a stage from where she sat. It was just as this thought crossed her mind that the dog came out of the shadows and into the sunlight.

He was very large, even larger than she had thought him this morning. He stood in the light, his rough coat shining deep red, his tongue lolling, and looked toward her. He was not all that far away; she could see the rim of red in each of his eyes, and the glint of his teeth. Elizabeth sat very still, wondering what he would do if she should swim over to him and try to coax him back to the clearing to prove to Nathaniel that she had not imagined him. So concentrated was she on the animal that she didn't notice Nathaniel until he had already stripped and entered the water.

She stood up then, waving her arms above her head in an attempt to direct his attention to the dog.

* * *

He felt the cold of the water in his gut, but the sight of Elizabeth brought his blood up warm. She stood on the bank waving at him with her arms pulled over her head. She couldn't have any idea how she looked, how that gesture made the wet shift strain against her. Her skin, impossibly pale, and the dark circles of her nipples, and the darker triangle between her thighs, all this was brought into relief as she stood there waving at him with no hint of the turmoil she was causing. The wet fabric clung to her breasts, perfectly round. Nathaniel concentrated on moving himself through the water because the sight of her was too much to bear.

He came to his feet and walked onto the bank knowing that his arousal was plain to her; his breech clout revealed rather than hid it. He saw this in her dazed look, her eyes half closed in anticipation already, before he ever touched her. He heard her draw in breath, but then she looked away behind him to the far shore, distracted. He frowned, and pulled her to him without discussion. Her mouth was warm and she came to him willingly, pressing up against him in spite of the cold lake water that ran off him to soak her again.

"The red dog," she mumbled when he came up for air.

He would have laughed, if there hadn't been the fire in him, the need to have her now, and without delay. "Forget the godforsaken dog," he said, lowering his head to hers again, and then lowering her to the bank.

Before he got her shift off her he had broken two ties, but she didn't complain; instead she reached for the thong on his hip. But there was no time for that. He pushed her hand away, and his breech clout with it.

"Come, come to me," he whispered to her, pulling her underneath him.

Elizabeth looked up into Nathaniel's face, felt his breath on her skin.

There was something of pain in his expression, in the deep lines etched on his forehead. He was frantic with it, with the need; she had never seen him like this before, and it excited her deeply. She cried out then, at the strength and persistence of him, at his urgency. There was a sudden sharp pain in her lower belly; she tensed, but it was gone before she could even gasp. But Nathaniel wasn't. Nathaniel was still with her, murmuring to her, sweet words at her ear, the flat of his tongue on her neck, holding himself over her with one arm, the other hand beneath her, pulling her up to him again and again, harder and then harder still. When she began to shudder he raised his head and watched her, a look of fierce satisfaction on his face.

"Have mercy," she gasped.

He shook his head, spattering her with lake water and sweat. "I'm nowhere near finished with you yet."

Nathaniel knew he was pushing her, maybe too hard. He moved in her without any concern for her comfort, focused only on the gathering tension that boiled up from the center of him in response to her heat.

She pulled his face to hers and kissed him, then, and he felt the first trickling break in the dam inside her. He thrust himself deeper into her, met her tongue with his own, and then it happened; she let go, every muscle in her first relaxing and then flexing around him. It was the kiss, the depth and intensity of it, that sent her over the edge. He wondered if she heard, from a place deep inside herself, the sounds of her own surrender, but he couldn't stop to ask her, or even to comfort her.

Nathaniel found himself up on his knees, holding her tightly in his arms, her legs wrapped around his waist. He had no memory of lifting her, or how they came to this position, but her bottom was cushioned against his tensed thighs and her arms were wound around his neck. He pulled her waist in with one arm and thrust one last time, searching with his mouth for her ear in the wild confusion of her hair.

"Open to me," he whispered. "Open to me now." His release came then with hers. It left him in long, slow ribbons, spooling endlessly into her. She reared back with her head to look into his eyes, and he saw it there, her awareness of each pulsing, and the power of her response.

* * *

She was near sleep almost as soon as he lowered her to the bank, a stunned look on her face and the deep flush that ran from her breasts to her hairline already beginning to mottle.

Nathaniel curled himself against her on one side, brushed her hair away from her face.

"Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head, and then with a visible effort, turned on her side to fit herself to him. "Never," she said. And then, sleepily: "What got into you?"

Nathaniel said, "Joe died, just before I came down. In his sleep."

She tensed for a moment. He expected tears, but she simply put her face against his and trembled a little.

"That blessing of Robbie's," she said. "What was there in it about healing?"