Helen went. Her head found a comfortable hollow in the crook of his shoulder, and his chin rested in her hair. In front of them the fire crackled and spat. Helen let her eyes close, thinking of nothing but the sound of their breathing and the immediate sensations that lapped around her. Oliver’s sweater was rough against one cheek and the heat of the fire was reddening the other. She felt his mouth moving in her hair.

‘Comfortable?’

‘Mmm.’

Gently, Oliver began to stroke her cheek. Instinctively, Helen turned her face closer to his. Her body felt soft, warm after the day’s bright cold and relaxed with the ebbing of tension.

Very slowly, Oliver bent his head and kissed her mouth. Even as she felt herself respond to him, answering his kiss with a kind of hunger that surprised her, Helen heard a cold little voice inside her head.

You know that there will be no going back, after this?

You could still stop him.

You could still play safe.

No. I don’t want to be safe. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t care what happens. This is all that matters now. This room, the firelight, the roughness of the rugs beneath us. Oliver.

His hand was on her breast now and his mouth was more urgent over hers. Like a suicide pushing away the lifebelt that drifted within reach, Helen shut her ears and eyes and let herself be submerged in him.

‘You look so fragile,’ he whispered, ‘but your strength is all inside, isn’t it?’

He lifted her from the cushions and peeled her sweater off. Her eyes focused on his hands, portrait hands, insistent as they took off the rest of her clothes. Helen’s skin was creamy-pale, but the light and warmth made it rosy now. Intently Oliver’s fingers traced the line of her collarbone and the tilt of her small breasts, ran over the smooth flesh that stretched tight over her ribcage and then grasped her waist. She felt herself pulled towards him and her hands reached, in turn, at his clothes, wanting to touch him too.

At last, they faced each other, kneeling naked in the red glow.

‘Now,’ he said, and she echoed him on a long breath. Helen’s fingers slid over him as he waited for her.

The dreamy languor which had bathed them both was gone in that instant. A flash of longing for him swept through her, making her gasp aloud. Her fingers knotted in his hair as they came together and her head arched back, and further back, as his mouth slid from hers to her throat, and then to the hardness of her nipples. His hands explored her, relentless now, and she felt herself open to him like a flower.