In fact they got halfway there—desperate, mismatched undressing, Nora pushing Will’s shirt up while he shoved her pants down, Nora pulling at his belt while his hands smoothed beneath her top to get to the clasp of her bra. He had her legs wrapped around his hips before he even realized the impossibility of it, before he smiled against her mouth and tucked two teasing fingers beneath the waist of her underwear, tugging to remind her of their presence. She leaned her head against the wall with a soft thud, inhaling through her nose before she breathed out the word bedroom, in a voice laced with the same quiet sort of command she’d used to tell him to stay, and it made his body turn unexpectedly harder.

When she slid down his front and stepped away he had a brief, panicked moment of insecurity—that losing her touch would mean losing his focus, that the cut cord would reconnect and remind him why this was all a dangerous idea. But then she walked by him, her legs bare, the back of one thigh pink from where his hand had been holding her, and to him it might as well have been another command. That looked the same as having the words follow me whispered right into his ear. He’d never really thought of himself as a man who liked to be bossed around during sex, but damn if he didn’t walk toward the cool, dark quiet of Nora’s bedroom and want her to tell him every single thing she wanted him to do, exactly how she wanted him to do it.

And Nora—perfect, particular Nora—she gave him exactly what he craved.

As soon as he crossed the threshold she set her hands back on his chest, guiding him to the foot of her bed before pressing his shoulders down.

“Stay there,” she said, smiling as she stepped out of reach of his grasping hands, all at once pulling her shirt and already-unhooked bra over her head. She stood, backlit by the light that spilled into the hallway from the bathroom, and he thought he’d never seen something as beautiful as that—every curve and angle of Nora’s body shown to him, mostly in silhouette, with small, intimate details coming clearer as his eyes adjusted. When she hooked her thumbs at the sides of her underwear and pushed them down, he thought he might’ve stopped breathing, seeing the movement of her body while she bared herself to him. All those blurry images from before got sharper, more distinct: his tongue licking across the rosy tip of her nipple, his teeth set against the slope of her shoulder, his thumbs smoothing their way up the inside of her thighs.