“You’d never be able to get it up in the presence of clutter.”

He snorts, but he’s rock-hard. That wet spot, expanding.

“And then?”

“And then, you look up, and smile. Come to me. Welcome me home.”

I wait for him to continue. “And…?”

“I kiss you, and you kiss me back. And I close my arms around you, because I can. And you’re warm, and you like it, what I’m doing to you. I press you against the table and you’re soft under me and…” Conor sighs. Like just saying all this stuff is turning him on beyond belief. He reaches for his cock and holds the base tight.

“What happens next?”

“I’m usually finished before it escalates. Most times, really. But if I play it further, usually I take you to my room, and—”

“Conor.” I tilt my head, amused. “Are you saying that the peak of your erotic fantasies is doing it in a bed?”

His fingertips trace the pale skin of my thigh, the place where the muscle turns into fat. A touch so light, his fingers may just be hovering over me. “In the fantasy, you’re my girlfriend. My…More than that, maybe. I figured out a way to have you and also set you free. And you are—” He looks away, like out of all the embarrassments, this is the one that burns the brightest. “I’m not afraid to hurt you. You are mine, and used to me touching you. You welcome it. It’s…We have a life, Maya. That’s ours.”

You could have it, I think. Something tears inside me. You could have had it for the past three years, if you hated yourself just a little less.

“That sounds like a highly problematic fantasy,” I say, not sure whether I’m joking. “Am I older, in it? I don’t have the tragic past that makes me highly susceptible to the undue influence of father figures?”

His hand closes around my knee, warm. “You’re not. You’re just you.”

Heartbreaking, that he would change nothing about me. “It’s you who’s different, then. You have found a way to give me the world, and take me, too.”

He nods with some difficulty. All I want is to take this self-loathing man and make him happy.

Next to us, his phone lights up with a work call that he ignores in favor of lifting a hand to my rib cage. It hovers there until I say, “You may,” and then his thumb brushes around my nipple, softly, delicately, like it’s made of a highly explosive substance. When his cock twitches, I lean forward, not letting my hips make contact with his. The front of my panties is wet and slick. I’m sure I’ve soiled his sweats by now. “Do you want to know my fantasy?” I ask, rubbing my cheek against the scratchy surface of his throat.

“That feels like a trick question.”

“It’s odd. It hasn’t exactly been my thing. Alfie used to complain that I didn’t do it enough.” My eyelashes flutter against his jaw. “But I think about going down on you all the time.”