“Not yet,” she said, another whispered command, and only then did he realize he’d been reaching for her. He pulled his hands back, setting his palms flat on the bed and trying not to clutch too obviously at her comforter. But then she reached up and took down her hair, and he stopped trying; he took two whole fistfuls of her bedding as he watched it fall over her shoulders, her breasts, the full, straight length of it hitting right at the top of her rib cage.

“Nora,” he said. “You’re beautiful.”

She stepped between the V of his thighs and reached up, gently pulling his glasses from his face, and when she moved to set them down on the dresser behind her, he made a demand of his own, catching at her hips roughly and stilling her. “Stay close,” he said, low and serious, because it felt so serious.

He did not want to lose sight of her. Not even for a second.

She made quick work of coming back to him, setting her hands against the stubbled skin along his jaw before bending to kiss him, and the next thing he knew they were both on the bed, Nora’s warm, soft skin running the length of him. It took all his concentration to let her explore first: her mouth on his neck, down the center of his chest, across his abdomen as she worked the button and zipper on his jeans. He could tell something about the way she moved over him, the way she straddled him, the way she touched and tasted him—it was an assertion, a claiming, the demands she was making as much about herself as they were about him.

I can give her that, he thought, clenching his jaw tightly as she took down his jeans and boxer briefs and socks all at once, as she climbed back over him, the damp heat between her legs pressed against one of his thighs. He breathed out his frantic impatience, his desperation to tug at her again, to set her where he wanted her. He breathed in his focus, and for the first time in his life it felt truly easy, truly natural to sharpen his attention.

It was easy because it was all for her.

To give her this, whatever she wanted. Whatever kept making this feel like a first for her.