Sam pulled her to her feet and kissed her, and it was as though she’d been crossing a desert for days and weeks and months and finally he was giving her a drink of water. She sank into his lips like she was coming home, and for a few moments their embrace was about nothing more than meeting those basic needs: nourishing each other, sheltering each other.

“I missed you,” she heard herself say, surprised to discover it was true.

“Thank god,” Sam said, his hands busying themselves with her blouse. “It would have been depressing if I was the only one.”

She laughed, and when he pushed her blouse off her shoulders, picked her up, and tossed her with more haste than style onto the bed her laugh rang out even more, throaty and bright and reckless.

“Mock me all you like, madam,” he said, stripping his shirt off with inelegant speed. “You’re at my mercy now.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, pushing herself to her knees and trailing one dainty finger down the middle of his bare chest. “It seems to me it’s the other way around.”

He closed his eyes and groaned as she made her slow progress downwards, until finally her hand was loosening his trousers. “You’re right. I admit it. The statement was entirely bravado.”

“I thought as much,” she said, pulling him onto the bed with her and then pushing him back, straddling his waist with her legs as her skirts pooled around them. “Since we have that established, let me show you what I’m going to do with you.”

With one confident motion, she freed him from his trousers, rose up above him, and sank down upon him through the slit in her drawers. He hissed a breath in through his teeth, his eyes going wide and blank. Power surged through her. She affected him this way. She brought him this pleasure.

Slowly she rose up, lingering at the top of his penis before sinking down once more. “I’ve thought about doing this,” she said, speaking carefully through her own pleasure as she continued the slow, aching rhythm. “Riding you until your completion. Feeling you spasm inside of me.”

“When?” His voice was rough, his words choked, and she smiled wider.

“Hmm?”

“When. Did you. Think about it?”

“Oh, lots of times. And it wasn’t just this particular position, either.” She leaned forward, allowing his hands to free her breasts from her corset, and gasped as he found her nipples.

“Details,” he growled.

“Yesterday,” she said, closing her eyes to allow more room for sensation. “On the train.”

There was a silence, punctuated only by the sound of their breathing. “Alva,” Sam said, his voice thick with outrage. “It was a private car. Are you telling me there were three hours in which I could have been experiencing this and I didn’t even know?”

She laughed, breathlessly. “Yes.”

“We discussed irrigation,” he said.