On the final night, their lovemaking reached a crescendo that felt like a star collapsing, a final, earth-shaking union that left them both exhausted and blissfully spent. He held her with a grip that was both fierce and fragile, his breath warm against the crook of her neck as the first hints of dawn began to grey the sky. The intensity of this night surpassed all others; it was as if he were trying to pour his entire essence into her through the contact of their skin. Elena felt herself shattering into a million pieces of light, her thick body vibrating with a frequency that felt like it might shake the walls down. She clutched at his pale shoulders, her nails leaving crescent marks that glowed with a faint, dying silver light.
The climax was so deep, so all-encompassing, that she felt her heart stop for a heartbeat, suspended in a void of pure, golden ecstasy. He followed her into that void, his own voice breaking in a cry that sounded like a choir of glass. They lay in the aftermath, their limbs entwined, the sweat on their bodies cooling in the early morning air. Elena felt a sense of completion so profound it brought tears to her eyes, her soul finally at rest within its magnificent, curvy housing. She drifted off to sleep to the sound of his fading heartbeat, a rhythmic ticking that seemed to be slowing with the rising sun. She was unaware that the universe was reclaiming its loan, that the fire she had shared was a brief, impossible gift.