With that less than erotic exchange, he carried me all the way into the bedroom and put me down on the bed as if I was breakable.

“Just like a man,” I said, nursing my resentment with full-on gender bias while curious about what would come next. “You think sex solves everything.”

“No, I don’t,” he answered. “I promise you, this isn’t about sex.”

Sentimentality is out of fashion, so instead of letting myself feel, I reached playfully for him. If that’s how he wanted to go, who was I to turn down an orgasm?

“Right. So tell me, what am I gifted at?” I asked. “This?”

He drew a sharp breath. “This and that.” He sighed.

“Oh. That.”

Then he said, in a tone of voice that said we were having any old conversation, almost as if he was talking quietly and solemnly to himself, “Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy, / Until I labor, I in labor lie.”

While he whispered those lines he was gently unbuttoning my blouse. He had never spoken to me in poetry before. Was it part of his nature that he thought I wouldn’t have understood? That I would laugh, or wasn’t intellectual enough? How would Jane have responded? I struggled to keep Jane out of the bed.

“That’s hot,” I said, still guarding myself with detachment.

He didn’t answer immediately, his mind on other things. More curious than aroused, I helped with a slight rise of my hips so he was able to pull off my jeans, and then I watched him next to the bed, doing the same, slipping off his jeans, leaving his shirt on but unbuttoning it the way he had unbuttoned mine.

“Want more?”

I shrugged.

“You’re going to have to tell me you want more.”

“More, please,” I said, but still playfully.

He lay down beside me, his fingers roaming as he whispered, “License my roving hands, and let them go, before …

behind …

between …

above …

below.”

This time I was the one to catch my breath. I lifted my chin and closed my eyes. I lost the contact of his hands. Then I sensed more than felt him over me, but while I anticipated what would come next, he stayed still.

“Brigid,” he said. “Open your eyes.”

I did, and found his face close to mine, his own eyes staring into me as he started to move. “No, keep them open,” he said in response to my natural reaction. “Keep them on mine.”

“It’s hard.” I smiled. “To keep my eyes open.”

Instead of kissing me he rubbed my nose gently with his own.

“Open your eyes, my love,” he said softly.

And when I did, he repeated, “Keep them on mine.”

“Why?”