His jaw can avert stone—there is a hint of lust in her eyes. When she coughs a laugh from her hissing secrets, he knows she's trapped. The fire of her boundaries combust under the command of his split personas; cold, cruel and unusual: her eyes devour his. And when their lips meet, their mouths are a fury of justifications; of submit and serve, only she knows the need of his tongue, bitter-nails etching the back of leathery resistance. He is like a man-trick in a jungle of berries, and her legs once crossed in seduction. They were the colour of sun- blush, cherry-meadows, ripening clay, like the taste of fresh spring water, until a drop of a curse inked her cup, and her echoes curled pines in the breeze. But his chest is the salt of hills in the rain, thighs smell of the unseen deep of the ocean; his arms, a habit of possession— she parselbirth— he with rippling climber's calves— she baroque-tragedy— he siren-lurer. First published in Freezine of Fantasy and Science Fiction