“Well, the child’s gone to bed. Just grown men left awake now.” He grabbed two glasses with one hand. He pulled the cork from the bottle with his teeth and spat it out onto the floor. “They’re all down for the night. Come on,” he said.

I followed him up the stairs. The wine was still a bad idea: I had to work the next morning, and besides that I do not handle it particularly well. I get drunk very fast, and I am prone to wicked hangovers. But…he was right. It was a celebration.

We piled into bed. I turned on the lantern but set it glowing low. Sorcha had brought the glasses, but they sat untouched at the foot of the bed. We passed the bottle back and forth, back and forth. The movements were precise in their sobriety at first, but grew looser as the wine took root. When he passed me the bottle, my hand lingered on his. I stopped listening to the things he said. His voice washed over me, warm and dark and safe and familiar. At first I simply drew close to him. I slipped my arm behind him, and Sorcha leaned into my chest. I sat turned towards him, but he faced out into the dark room. My eyes slid along the planes of his profile, took in his face which one second was so masculine and the next so feminine. I had drunk enough, by then, that the gift was in slumber. I had no idea what he was feeling just then, if he noticed my attentions. The thing with wine, though, is that it makes me reckless. Sorcha said something, he laughed, and he looked over at me with his eyebrows slightly raised, waiting for a reaction. And I kissed him.

It was not a gentle thing, or a timid kiss. It was an expression of hunger and desire. The force of it knocked the wine bottle from his hand. He drew back from me like he’d been shocked. His face froze on the edge of a question. I nodded, wild-eyed, breathing in the smell of him and kissed him again. Sorcha fell into it with an unbridled ferocity. He was a current, a spark. We devoured each other, breaking apart for air in sudden violent movements. We grappled like boys wrestling after school, but our hands lingered, teased, and grasped. He was strong. The sinuous strength of his arms set me on fire. The push-pull push-pull of us hypnotized me. Sorcha shoved my hand to his breast. His nipple was hard, the flesh damp with leaked milk, and my hand slipped along it, frictionless, smooth, electric.