I smiled, but I doubt it was much of one.

She rose up on her elbow and looked at me for a long time. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said softly.

I raised my left hand, used the backs of my fingers to brush a strand of hair off her forehead, then allowed the fingers to drop slowly down the edge of her face, along the soft warmth of her throat, and then the small, firm curve of her right breast. I grazed the nipple with my palm as I turned the hand, moved it back up to her face and pulled her down on top of me. I held her so tightly for a moment that I could hear our hearts drumming through our chests like hail falling into a bucket of water.

“My father,” I said, “burned me with an iron to teach me a lesson.”

“Teach you what?” she said.

“Not to play with fire.”

“What?”

I shrugged. “Maybe just that he could. He was the father, I was the son. He wanted to burn me, he could burn me.”

She raised her head and her eyes filled. Her fingers dug into my hair and her eyes widened and reddened as they searched mine. When she kissed me, it was hard, bruising, as if she were trying to suck my pain out.

When she pulled back, her face was wet.

“He’s dead, right?”

“My father?”

She nodded.

“Oh, yeah. He’s dead, Grace.”

“Good,” she said.

When we made love again a few minutes later, it was one of the most exquisite and disconcerting experiences of my life. Our palms flattened against each other and our forearms followed suit and at every point along my body, my flesh and bone pressed against hers. Then her thighs rose up my hips and she took me inside of her as her legs slid down the backs of mine and her heels clamped just below my knees and I felt utterly enveloped, as if I’d melted through her flesh, and our blood had joined.

She cried out and I could feel it as if it came from my own vocal cords.

“Grace,” I whispered as I disappeared inside her. “Grace.”

Close to sleep, her lips fluttered against my ear.

“’Night,” she said sleepily.

“’Night.”

Her tongue slid in my ear, warm and electric.

“I love you,” she mumbled.

When I opened my eyes to look at her, she was asleep.

I woke to the sound of her showering at six in the morning. My sheets smelled of her perfume and her flesh and a vague hint of hospital antiseptic and our sweat and lovemaking, imprinted into the fabric, it seemed, as if it had been there a thousand nights.

I met her at the bathroom door and she leaned into me as she combed back her hair.

My hand slid under her towel and the beads of water on her lower thighs glided off the edge of my hand.