Since the day he'd met her, he wondered how it might have been. At first, these thoughts were just idle daydreaming of barely possible what-ifs, then they morphed into nightmares, the ones that left him exhausted and empty inside, and finally, when he didn't have to look for excuses to hold her hand, and kisses didn't taste like they were stolen anymore, his interest turned into aching anticipation. He wondered if it would be in the dark when eyes were blind but hands sighted, or in the bright morning light, as a greeting of the new day and the new life, or under the fluorescent lamps of the office, with their coldness that was so dissonant to his feelings.  

In the end, when she took his hand and led him with the unspoken promise, it was the evening sun that lit her room, flooding it with liquid honey. It changed her as well — the sunset gleams colored her hair auburn, and the pale green of her wide eyes turned into warm amber. 

He'd never seen her like this and wouldn’t be able to forget her, not even in a million years. 

'I didn't know you had freckles,' he said as he spotted tiny dots of dark gold on her chest. He'd never had an opportunity to notice those before. 

'I was told freckles were ugly,' the other name remained unsaid, but it made her hand fly to cover herself. 'I'm trying to get rid of them.'

'Don't,' he asked, and it was half a demand and half a plea. 'They are so beautiful.'

He greeted every little freckle with his lips, and she welcomed his kisses with quiet sighs. 

Her hands were roaming his bare shoulders and his back as if they were reading Braille and memorizing every inch of his body. 

'How did you get that?' her fingertips were brushing a scar she couldn't see, a long patch of skin with slightly convex edges. He was surprised she'd noticed. 

'It's a silly story,' and that was true, and he wasn't in the mood to tell it now, not when she was so close to him, and so warm, and her flesh was so soft and yielding under his hands. 

'I want to know it,' she said. 'I want to know all of you.' 

And he couldn't say 'no' to that request. 

He wanted to savor every moment; he knew he had to be careful as he felt strong enough to leave bruises with his ungraceful touches. But she was so inviting and encouraging, and every rational thought was dimmed with a need to imprint into her. 

She didn't seem to mind. 

And then, when she threw her head back in a silent scream, he buried his face in the crook of her neck; he saw nothing, heard nothing — all his body was a single exposed nerve, enclosed in her warmth. He felt like his heart was trying to escape his ribcage; he felt like it would meet hers on the halfway.

He tried to move then, just a little, to give her some space and to catch his breath. But her limbs tightened around his body as if she was scared of letting him go even for an inch, as if she wanted to pull him closer than their bodies allowed them to be. 

As if she wanted for them to stay a single entity for the rest of their days. 

Melting in her embrace, he remembered as someone had told him about amber inclusions. Millions of years ago, some unlucky ancestor of dragonflies had been trapped in a drop of resin and had met, probably, a pretty agonizing end. But while its contemporaries had lived their short lives and turned into dust, this one had been preserved in a fossilized time capsule for eons. 

He wouldn't mind dying if that meant spending eternity in her arms.