"All the more reason I should be there," Grillo said.

"Well, I'll do what I can, especially after you getting sick on my account. I guess if there's sufficient guests you could melt into the crowd..."

"I'd appreciate the help."

"More coffee?"

"No, thanks." He glanced at his watch, though didn't register the time.

"You're not going to go," she said. It was not a question, but a statement. The same was true of his response.

"No. Not if you'd prefer I stay."

Without another word she reached and touched his breastbone through his shirt.

"I'd prefer you stay," she said.

He instinctively looked towards Philip's room.

"Don't worry," she said. "He'll play for hours." She looped her finger between the buttons of Grillo's shirt. "Come to bed with me," she said.

She got up and led the way through to her bedroom. By contrast with the clutter outside, the room was spartan. She crossed to the window and half closed the blinds, which lent the whole room a parchment tint, then sat down on the bed and looked up at him. He leaned down and kissed her face, slipping his hand inside her robe and lightly rubbing her breast. She pressed his hand to her, insisting on severer treatment. Then she pulled him down on top of her. Their comparative heights meant his chin rested on the top of her head, but she turned this to erotic advantage, pulling his shirt open and licking at his chest, her tongue leaving wet trails from nipple to nipple. All the while her hold on his hand didn't relax for an instant. Her nails dug into his skin with painful force. He fought her, dragging his hand away to reach for the sash of her robe but her hand was there before him. He rolled off her, and was about to sit up to undress, but she took hold of his shirt, this grip as fierce as its predecessor, and kept him at her side, her face at his shoulder, while she untied the loose knot of the sash one-handed, then threw the robe open. She was naked underneath. Doubly naked in fact. Her groin was completely shaved.

Now she turned her face away, and closed her eyes. One hand still gripping his shirt, the other limp at her side she seemed to be offering her body to him as a plate to be dined from. He put his hand on her stomach, running his palm down towards her cunt, pressing hard on skin that looked and felt almost burnished.

Without opening her eyes she murmured:

"Anything you want."

The invitation momentarily flummoxed him. He was used to this being a contract between partners, but here was this woman waving such niceties away, offering him total command of her body. It made him uneasy. As an adolescent her passivity would have seemed unbearably erotic. Now it shocked his liberal sensibilities. He said her name, hoping for some sign from her, but she ignored him. It wasn't until he once again sat up to pull off his shirt that she opened her eyes and said:

"No. Like this, Grillo. Like this."

The expression both on her face and in her voice was like rage, and it unearthed in him a hunger to respond in kind. He rolled on top of her, taking her head in his hands and pushing his tongue into her mouth. Her body pressed up from the mattress, rubbing so hard against him he was sure there was as much pain as pleasure in it for her.

In the room they'd vacated the coffee cups trembled as though the mildest quake were underway. Dust crept across the table, disturbed by the motion of an almost invisible something which slid its wasted shoulders from the gloomiest corner of the room and drifted rather than walked towards the bedroom door. Its form, though rudimentary, was still too recognizable to be dismissed as mere shadow, yet there was too little of it to deserve the name ghost. Whatever it had been, or was to become, even in its present condition it had purpose. Drawn by the woman who was presently dreaming it into being, it approached the bedroom. There—denied access—it mourned against the door, awaiting instructions.

Philip emerged from his sanctum and wandered through to the kitchen in search of food. He opened the cookie jar, dug for chocolate chip, and headed back the way he'd come, a cookie in his left hand for himself, and three in his right for his companion whose first words had been:

"I'm hungry."

Grillo raised his head from Ellen's wet face. She opened her eyes.

"What is it?" she said.

"There's somebody outside the door."

She raised her head from the bed and bit on his chin. It hurt, and he winced.

"Don't do that," he said.

She bit harder.

"Ellen..."

"So bite back," she said. He didn't have time to curb his bemused look. Catching it, she said: "I mean it, Grillo," and hooked her finger into his mouth, the ball of her hand locked against his chin. "Open," she said. "I want you to hurt me. Don't be afraid. It's what I want. I'm not fragile. I'm not going to break."

He shook her hold off.

"Do it," she said. "Please, do it."

"You want that?"

"How many times, Grillo? Yes. "

Her dislodged hand had gone to the back of his head. He let her draw his face back down to hers and began to nibble at her lips and then her neck, testing her resistance. There was none. Instead, moans that became louder the harder he bit. Her response drowned all misgivings. He began to work down her neck to her breasts, her moans becoming steadily louder, his name breathed between, urging him on. Her skin began to redden, not just with bite-marks, but with arousal. Sweat broke out on her suddenly. He put his hand down between her legs, his other hand holding her arms above her head. Her cunt was wet, and took his fingers readily. He'd begun to pant with the exertion of holding her down, his shirt sticky on his back. Uncomfortable as he was, the scenario aroused him: her body utterly vulnerable, his closed up behind zipper and buttons. His cock hurt, hard at the wrong angle, but the ache only made him harder, hardness and ache feeding on each other as he fed on her, and on her insistence that he hurt her better, open her wider. Her cunt was hot around his straight fingers, her breasts covered with the twin crescents his teeth had left. Her nipples stood like arrow-heads. He sucked them in; chewed on them. Her moans became sobbing cries, her legs convulsing beneath him, almost throwing them both off the bed. When he relaxed his hold for an instant her hand took his and drove his fingers still deeper into her.

"Don't stop," she said.

He took up the rhythm she'd set, and doubled it, which had her pushing her hips against his hand to have his fingers inside her to the knuckles. His sweat dropped off his face on to hers as he watched her. Eyes clenched closed she raised her head and licked his forehead and around his mouth, leaving him unkissed but gummy with her saliva.

At last, he felt her entire body stiffen, and she arrested the motion of his hand, her breath coming short and shallow. Then her grip on him—which had drawn blood—relaxed. Her head dropped back. She was suddenly as limp as she'd been when she'd first lain down and exposed herself to him. He rolled off her, his heartbeat playing squash against the walls of his chest and skull.

They lay for a time out of time. He could not have said whether it was seconds or minutes. It was she who made the first move, sitting up and pulling her robe around her. The movement made him open his eyes.

She was tying the sash, pulling the front of her robe together almost primly. He watched her start towards the door.

"Wait," he said. This was unfinished business.

"Next time," she replied.

"What?"

"You heard," came the response. It had the tone of a command. "Next time."

He got up from the bed, aware that his arousal probably seemed ridiculous to her now, but infuriated by her lack of reciprocity. She watched his approach with a half-smile on her face.