Cat can’t hear the compliment, her concern to appease Ben, to undo any wrongdoing, her sole focus.

‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ she says.

‘I’m pretty flattered, actually,’ Ben says, ‘that you should have thought me such a gigolo and so in demand.’

‘What can you think of me?’ Cat laments, looking at her lap but immediately yearning for Ben’s gaze.

‘I think you’re a feisty girl who won’t tolerate any crap,’ Ben says openly. ‘Fuck, what a challenge!’

They regard each other in the fading light, the soft tones, the hush of the evening, enhancing their reciprocated allure. Cat flops herself backwards on to the bed, her arms above her head, and scours the ceiling. She hears the Loom chair creak. Her heart is beating fast and goes into overdrive at the touch of Ben’s fingers on her knees. Goosebumps tingle their way over her skin as she feels her dress being lifted up and then lowered back.

‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben marvels in a low voice, leaning over her, his hands either side of her torso, ‘where are your knickers?’

‘Obviously, they were in a twist!’ Cat jests softly. Ben sits on the edge of the bed and Cat runs her hand lightly up and down his back. She pulls at his shirt, gently at first, then with an insistent tug. He lies next to her. They look up at the ceiling and then, with film-worthy timing, they turn and look at each other. The shared gaze, the mutual desire caught in a sealed second of fabulous intensity before they are at each other’s mouths; kissing and tasting and biting and uncontrollable.

Ben flings Cat’s dress up so that she is naked apart from one breast and her shoulders. He has a hand enmeshed in her hair. The other is everywhere and fast. Trickling over her legs, brushing her bush, sweeping over her stomach, up her waist, into her armpit, over her exposed breast where he stops awhile. She wants to taste every part of his mouth. His body feels so tantalizing behind his cotton shirt. Off. Off. She pulls at buttons, at the tails, she slips her hand underneath and finds his flesh. Warm, prickling under her touch, a strong body, a little hair to the chest, to the lower stomach. His skin is so soft, almost incongruously so for his defined musculature and masculinity. She straddles him, she has to get that shirt off. As she is unbuttoning, he runs a hand up her inner thigh, cups it over her sex and inserts his finger effortlessly, deep inside her. She’s gasping, he’s glazed. He’s moving his finger and she’s moving on it. His thumb is stroking her clitoris. She wants the shirt off his back. Get it off. She wants to come. Fuck the shirt. Her whole body wracks with the orgasm, her voice comes through her gasping. She’s coming on his finger, his thumb, in her stomach, through her nipples. Her body crumples with the pleasure of it all. She lies beside him, her leg slung over his, her sex grazing his jeans. He brings his finger to his mouth and sucks it and then he takes it to her mouth and she sucks it too. That’s me. That’s you.