There’s a list of things you learn about someone the first time you spend the night together: whether they steal the blankets, whether they snore, if they’re a cuddler.

Sara was a sprawler: all limp arms and legs, her whole body draped over me like a starfish.

We’d made love again when the sky started to lighten, soft and pink and blue smudging its edges. She’d collapsed on me, boneless and grinning, and immediately fallen back asleep.

It was half ten now and I trailed my finger down her arm, not wanting to wake her, certainly not wanting to leave. My camera still sat on the nightstand and I reached for it, sitting carefully on the edge of the mattress as I began scrolling through the photos. I’d taken hundreds of her last night, some of her undressing but even more of her desperate and arched below me. The sounds of our bodies moving together and her soft cries broken by the click of the shutter would forever be branded into my brain.

I went back to the pictures of the beginning of the night and stared at the photos of her expression as I’d admitted I loved her. She’d let me take so many pictures of her face last night; I relished the memory of the moment she’d brought it up. Our last rule, broken. Her permission said more than words ever could. As I clicked through the series, she went from desperate at first, to relieved, and then to mischievous in rapid succession.

And the photos from later, on her bed, looked just as intimate and carnal as I’d remembered feeling.

I stood quietly, crossed the room, and retrieved my laptop. It took only a moment to boot up and I removed the SD card from my camera, fitting it into the attachment for my computer. I logged into my favorite photo site, a small, discreet company that specialized in printing professional photos. I uploaded the ones I wanted and then erased the files from my hard drive, removing the card and stowing it safely in my bag.

With everything but my camera packed away, I leaned over her, whispering, “I have to go,” against the shell of her ear. Goose bumps broke out along her skin and she stirred. “I’ve a flight to catch.”

She mumbled, then stretched, and I watched as her eyelids slowly fluttered open.

“Don’t want you to,” she said, rolling to look up at me. Her voice was thick and raspy with sleep, and I immediately thought of a thousand things I wanted her to say.

She was too fucking tempting, eyes still tired and pillow creases lining her face, but it was her naked breasts that had my full attention. I braced my hand on either side of her head and hovered above her.

“You look fucking phenomenal in the morning. Did you know that?” I asked.

I reached down and ran my thumb across her bare breast, and had to take a shaky breath, overwhelmed by the immediate and almost suffocating closeness of her, how she seemed to fill up every space inside my chest.