I didn’t have to ask twice. He released my breast and used his hands to divest me of my pajama bottoms and panties.

Freed of restraints, my legs fell open as his name fell out of my mouth on another wanton beg. “Josh…”

“Yes, I need inside you….” He sounded just as frantic as me as he settled between my legs—only to groan when he remembered out loud. “Condom…”

“I’m on birth control, and I’m clean,” I assured him. “But I know it’s hard for you to trust, so….”

He stilled above me, and his voice vibrated in the dark. “It is hard for me to trust—other people. But with you, Neisha….it’s easy. I’m clean, too.”

Not Ms. Winters. Neisha. He’d said my name….and told me he trusted me.

All the flower storms. All the fluttering fairy wings. All the feelings I’d been trying to suppress for years—they exploded inside of me.

“Okay,” I whispered. “I trust you too.”

We’d talked so much that evening, but the time for talking was done.

He thrust into me, and the exquisiteness of taking his length in one deep stroke washed over me like a balm.

I didn’t understand before…how much I’d been aching. How much I’d needed to be with Josh. Just like this.

Josh. Josh Grant. He was inside of me. He’d finally come home.

He rode me like he kissed me. Slow at first, then increasingly urgent, until I started coming with a helpless cry.

“Neisha…” he whispered as he shoved into me one last time…deep. As deep as he could go. So deep it felt like he was touching my soul as he spilled inside of me.

Afterward, there wasn’t any more awkward shifting in the bed.

We both turned to the right, and he wrapped his arms around me from behind. Then we wordlessly fell asleep. Truly happy and beyond satisfied.

*     *     *

I had the most amazing dream that night. Josh delivered a speech to a shocked crowd. In it, he finally spoke the truth of who he really was. He told his constituents that he’d been a good soldier for most of his life. Now it was time to follow his own path, make his own dreams come true.

The speech was so glorious. I woke up with tears of pride stinging my eyes. But then I realized…

I wasn’t in a crowd of people watching the soon-to-be-former Congressman Joshua Greenlee Grant speak.

I was all alone in a cold bed. Sunshine streamed down on me, and birds tweeted a happy morning song outside. All the snow that had caked the window above the bed last night had already melted.

If it had ever been there at all….