Her head lolled back against his shoulder.
Her hair fell across his face. Her neck was exposed — marked already from his mouth, the skin reddened where he had worked it — and her face was turned up toward the stopped sky, her lips parted, the muffled sounds leaving her open mouth with every impact.
Her expression had entirely left her.
The jaw that had been clenched for an hour was slack now. The controlled fiction of the face she had worn as armor for however long — gone. What remained was the raw face underneath: soft, young, open, every thought visible because there were no thoughts left to hide. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes were soaked. The tears that the temporal field had been holding against her skin were running freely now, tracking down her temples into her hair, her body having overridden even that final suppression.
Her snot ran.
