“I’m sorry,” was all she could manage, delirious with the sensation of him.

“Is that still what you want?” he asked, repeating his own words from their lunch on the Verseau. His hands moved to her waist, guiding her rhythm. “To be my friend?”

She shook her head, feeling tears of physical intensity sting the corners of her eyes. “No,” she said, the word heavy with remorse. “No, no, no,” she repeated.

“Good.”

At this, they had no more words, only the involuntary cries which surfaced at their movement. Her whole body felt weightless, electrified with pleasure and disbelief. And because she could not say half the things she actually wanted to, she enjoyed other forms of self-expression, repeating his name like an incantation at turns and whimpering at others.

She could feel him listening to her, using these sounds like a map to her body, doing more of what she loved. His hand had found its way to her, moving in deft rhythm with his hips, a beautiful concentration on his face. She smiled at the sight of it, at how similar it was to his expression over a chess board, the intensity of his need to excel. And he was excelling, filling her with waves of rolling pleasure that caused her thighs to tremble around him.

He could sense that pleasure rising beneath him, coming to an exquisite peak, and his eyes met hers with silent insistence that she reach it. She nodded in encouragement at the movement of his hand on her, leaning forward onto him. As they worked together to ensure her total satisfaction, Alex had the almost out-of-body thought that this was the most erotic thing she would ever experience, that any encounter after would be a shadow of this exact moment. And the thought of that—the perverse joy of knowing he had ruined her forever—sent her over the edge.

A cry she didn’t recognize escaped her, low in her register and decidedly un-performative, nearly agonized. At this, he wrapped his free hand in the curls at the nape of her neck and brought his mouth to her ear, slowing his movements to her fading voice.

“I know, baby,” he said. “I know.”

Baby.

Her heart pounded in her chest against him, as much from the sound of the word as the aftermath of her orgasm. She knew it was only the kind of thing you say during sex, when nothing really counts, but it still took her straight back to her former self. It pained her to think of that poor girl, the one who fell asleep night after night with her pillow between her legs, imagining it was Danial. The reality of him now felt so intense, and yet so temporary, that she ached with desire to prolong it.

“Don’t stop,” she insisted, guiding his head once more toward her breast.