Draining the rest of my beer, I set it on a nearby ledge and then I put my hands on her hips. Give her a rough yank toward me, guiding the sweet roll of her ass as I begin to move, too.

“Never,” I say in her ear. “I can keep up.”

“Show me.”

The whiskey and the beer and the freedom hit me all at once. I’m wearing a suit, my hair carefully parted and combed in responsible-corporate-citizen style. Tattoos mostly covered up. Phone on vibrate in my pocket just in case my sitter calls.

On the outside, I’m about as square as they come.

But I go to town anyway. I make a conscious decision not to think about emails, or how Bryce is running out of socks which means it’s time for laundry, or my super early Saturday morning wakeup call in the form of my daughter calling my name from down the hall.

I make the decision not to think at all. I just go with the beat, losing myself to the feel of Eva’s body moving against mine. The boom of the music.

The beat of my heart inside my chest.

Eva screams—literally screams, jumping into the air—when LL Cool J’s “Doin’ It” comes on. I laugh. She turns around and loops her arms around my neck. Eyes on mine, she starts to really move, curling her hips in tight arcs. Side to side, back to front.

The way she’d move those hips while on top of me, riding my dick. Rolling and swaying. Slower, then faster. Palms flat on my chest, tits bouncing in time to her movements.

I bite down on my bottom lip with such violence I taste blood.

And even then, I can’t help but smile. Her energy and abandon is infectious. She opens her mouth and dips low, dips to the side. I dip to the other side, swaying my ass. We keep going like this, switching sides, dipping with our arms out to the side. She laughs and I laugh and it feels so good to move like this, to have fun like this, that I can see myself getting addicted to it.

This is the opposite of going through the motions. Of checking line items off my to-do list.

This is good, unclean fun, and I haven’t had nearly enough of it in my life lately. The two of us always took our studies seriously. We worked hard. But we played hard, too. It was a good balance.

Somewhere along the way, the work part of my life chipped away at the play until there was virtually none of it left.

Tonight, I’m reclaiming it.

My body is throbbing. Eva’s all over me, her hands on my sides, her fingers gliding into the hair at the nape of my neck when “I Wanna Sex You Up” comes on next.

I take her lead. I keep my hands—just barely—above her ass. Caressing her hips. My thumbs moving up either side of her spine when she turns her back to me.