“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says, but there’s undeniable tension in his voice.

After a long drawn-out pause, I hear hushed sounds as he removes his clothes, the unzipping of his pants, the soft brushing of fabric against skin, the muted thuds as his garments hit the ground, so I undress as well. I am not the kind of person who enjoys being naked, and the coldness of the air on my skin makes me anxious as I wait for him.

The mattress depresses next to me, and I sense his nearness. I feel a charge in the air in the instant before he stretches out beside me. He gathers me close, warms me with his own heat, kisses my forehead, and my mind and body unravel and relax.

I expect to feel the insistent prodding of his erection against my belly. But I don’t. He’s gone soft in the minutes since we came in here. And now that I’m paying attention, I notice the fine tremors claiming him.

“You’re shaking,” I whisper.

“Things suddenly got really noisy in my head,” he says.

“What are you thinking?”

He releases a heavy breath. “Stupid stuff.”

I edge forward and kiss the first thing I encounter—his nose. Then his mouth, his beautiful perfect mouth. “I think stupid stuff sometimes. What kind of stupid stuff is it?”

“That I have a lot to prove tonight, to you, but mostly to myself. That I need to please my woman like a man should,” he says.

My heart clenches painfully at his confession. “You do please me.”

“You know what I mean,” he says, and he grabs my hips and pulls them flush with his, where his sex remains flaccid. “How can I with this? So fucking embarrassing.” His voice is gruff with mortification, and I hate that. I never want him to feel that way with me.

“You’re not a robot. You’re a person. You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” I say firmly. “It’s not like you can dick me to orgasm anyway. I don’t work that way.”

He makes a choking sound before he breaks into laughter. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

I grin before I laugh along with him, strangely proud of myself. “Well, it’s true. You’re the one who made sex between the two of us about me. For my part, I’ve always been more interested in you liking it.”

“We have the same exact problem,” he says. “How is it that I’m only realizing that now?”

“Because we’re so different.”

He hugs me tighter and presses his cheek against mine, and for a stretch of time, that’s all we do. We breathe together.

“Where do we go from here?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Where do you want us to go?”

He kisses me on the lips, the chin, my jaw, and nips my ear. The sharp bite of his teeth, coupled with the heat of his breath, covers me in goose bumps. “I want to kiss you.”

“Just kissing?”

“Just kissing.” His mouth opens against the side of my neck, and his tongue touches my skin, making my breath catch.

“Kissing is good,” I hear myself say.

“Very good.”

His lips find mine, and he licks me, sucks on my bottom lip, before plunging his tongue deep, claiming my mouth with a drugging kiss. His hands rove over my body, squeezing my curves, palming my breasts. He teases my nipples until I’m gasping into his kiss and digging my nails into his shoulders as my body responds to him helplessly. My inner muscles tighten and clench on nothing, and I move my legs restlessly, run the soles of my feet along his calves. That’s when I feel him, hard now, between my legs. When I roll my hips, my sex strokes over his length, and he breaks the kiss as he makes a hoarse sound.

“Quan, you—”

“Just kissing,” he repeats before he takes my mouth in another deep kiss.

That works for me, so I lose myself in the moment. I stroke his tongue with mine, I revel in the taste and texture of his mouth, I glory in the feel of his body against my body, against my hands, against my sex. I arch my back, and the tip of his length dips inside me. It’s so tempting, so good, that I push into the sensation, taking more of him.

He stills my movements with a firm hand on my hip. “I should—we should—a condom.”

“You said just kissing,” I murmur before I brush my lips across his, giving him tiny teasing kisses.

“This is more than just kissing.” As if to prove the point, he flexes his hips, and we both moan as I take another inch of him.

“Do you want to stop?” I ask in a breathy voice.

“Fuck no.”

“Then don’t.” I kiss him lightly and undulate my hips, loving the feeling as my body stretches to accept him.

He makes a pained sound as he pushes in deeper, pulls out a fraction, pushes in again. “You don’t want me to use a condom?”

“I got tested after Julian … changed our relationship. Because I thought he might have started seeing other people before he told me,” I manage to say. It’s hard to focus when he’s just inside me like this. Instinctively, I crave a more complete joining, even though I know it won’t satisfy the ache in my body. “I don’t have anything. Do you?”

“I don’t have anything.” He kisses me, but only briefly, like he can’t help himself. “Are you sure?”

“Ye—es.” The word turns into a moan as he pushes in the rest of the way.

Breathing hard, shuddering, gripping my hip tightly, he says, “Nothing has ever felt as good as you do right now.”

His words make me light up with happiness despite the fact that I have very little responsibility for what he’s enjoying at the moment. It’s not like I dutifully practice Kegels every day to optimize my vaginal muscle tone for his maximal pleasure. For lack of anything better, I say, “Thank you.”

A rough laugh cracks from his chest. “You’re the only person who could make me laugh at a time like this.”

Smiling into the dark, I say it again, whispering in his ear, “Thank you.”

He laughs as he kisses me, and I feel his smile on my smile. I wrap my arms around him, wondering how I don’t light up the room when I glow like this.

He moves between my legs with a slow sinuous movement of his hips, pulling away and returning to me like waves on the seashore. It’s so sexy that I wish the lights were on. I want to see him moving against me. I can’t help arching into the motion, claiming as much of him as I can. I’ll never orgasm this way, but my body craves what it craves. It craves him.

Our position changes slightly as he urges me onto my back and captures one of my hands. I don’t understand what he wants until he eases it between our hips and whispers, “Make it feel good, Anna.”

Unease threads through me. I can’t shake the feeling that it’s wrong. I hide my face against his neck, saying his name in protest.

“So I’m not alone,” he says, and there’s such stark vulnerability in his voice that I can’t deny him. He matters more to me than the voices in my head.

Here in the safety of his arms, here in the dark, I touch myself. And I cry out as I tighten around him.

“Just like that,” he whispers, kissing my temple, sucking on my ear, biting my neck, licking the sting away.