They were at the opposite ends of the spectrum, physically speaking - she was stronger and faster than Terrence remembered, not that he minded - but the same was true for him. Wounds, some of them open and some of them closed over and in the early stages of healing, covered the front of his body from his face to his hands and feet; some were cursed, some were from being half-mauled by the jaguar, some were deeper than he knew, and others were shallow. His bones hurt, too, from the blasts he'd taken on the battlefield, from the way the jaguar had wrestled him around, and from the way Ella herself had slammed him into the pole.
He probably shouldn't have even been standing, but that wasn't his body's decision. The fire that burned inside him, whether it burned with hatred or violence or desire or something else (usually a combination of multiple things), was not going to flicker and dim, ever. If it was ever extinguished, it would be quick, burning hot until the very end. And it never burned hotter than when he was here, in her arms.
He returned the kiss just as fiercely, and his lungs did burn with it, until he felt a bit dizzy, even with his eyes closed. It hardly registered compared to the feeling of her hands breaking his skin, adding new sensation to the places where it was already torn and making fresh wounds where there were none yet. If he'd had air to breathe, the sounds he made would have been louder; as it was, they came out breathless and muffled against her mouth.
And he wasn't showing her any mercy, either - her having been dead to the world only hours ago was no cause for that, as far as he was concerned. It was all the more reason for him to break her skin with his fingers and teeth, all the more reason to roughly push inside her with his hips and prove beyond a doubt that she was alive, with all the sensations that came with it. Not just for her, or just for him, but for them both. And as for the risk to his health, well, bedding the devil had always come with those kinds of risks.