“Do you have a problem?” I ask. I’ve never used this particular tone with him during this particular activity, but I’m still in the grip of defiance. And this is Jack, who knows defiance like a second skin.

Smirking, he says in a husky voice, “Yeah, I do,” and drops his hands to his sides. “You are too fucking beautiful. Take off the rest.”

Words and voice—both are a turn-on. Simmering inside, I remove the bra and step out of the panties, dropping both on the chair with my dress. When I turn back to him, his eyes are on my naked body. For a minute, I don’t move—and not out of shyness. Shyness was when we first made love, when I was grateful for the night, which hid the fact that my right breast was fractionally smaller than my left and that I had nicked the notch at the top of my thighs in an attempt to remove the hair there. Shyness was when I was grateful for a moonless night that hid the details of his body, which I desperately wanted to see but didn’t dare, and, besides, we were rushing to do “it” before we were caught.

Last Sunday night, I had wanted to lose myself in his body and forget the rest of the world, but my need here is different. This need is for certainty, and Jack offers that. This need is for defiance, and what we’re doing in this cottage offers that. This need is to feel my own power as an antidote to being powerless in so much else.

Standing before him, I watch his gray eyes smolder and his arousal thicken behind the placket of his fly. He wants to touch me but is controlling himself, and something about that control snaps mine. Closing the little distance between us, I go at his clothes, tangling with his hands when they go at my breasts.

“Jack,” I breathe roughly, “help me.”

“You’re doing a fine job all by yourself,” he rasps but takes pity on me with the last of his clothes. The instant his pants are off, he takes my thighs from behind, lifts me so that I straddle his hips, and, telling me to hold on, tosses the duvet away with a single hand and takes me down to the sheets. In the next breath, he is inside me and then, with only the slightest shift of his hips, deeper still.