Snippet/vignette of an intimate moment from a future chapter of my current WIP, which was submitted for The Art Challenge on HASA (posted there with a photomanip of The Awakening of Adonis by John William Waterhouse).
He held her firmly against him, overcome by the heartbreaking certainty that they would not be able to easily leave this night behind them. He knew she felt it too, but in her youthful brashness chose not to ponder the consequences.
Instead, elated, she grasped his face in her hands, said, "I love seeing you like this—out of breath and sweating. Completely done in ... Your face is all splotchy and red. Your hair is everywhere. What a tangled mess. My image of you as a perfect superior Elf lord is gone forever. If you could only see your face…"
His heart was still pounding. He wanted to speak and could not. Finally, he asked, as lightly as he could manage, "You wish to remember me like this?"
She nuzzled closer to him, burying her face between his neck and shoulder. She murmured, "I want to hold this memory of you always."
Then she looked up with a nearly Elvish aplomb, grabbed a fistful of tousled hair, and playfully pulled his head back to gaze into his astounding grey eyes, at his flushed handsome face.
He grinned and said, "Good. Then we will imprint it on your memory with indelible Elven clarity before we leave Lothlórien."
"Yes. How will we do that?" she asked.
He responded, with a devastating smile, almost self-assured again, "How else? Through frequent repetition, of course." Then his face shadowed. He said, "Time has little meaning here. All else seems far away. I intend to make the most of it before we must leave and everything alters for us."