At that first sight, awe and everything else leave me. I become ruled by instinct. Male and female.

He is watching me, amused and hungry.

“It’s not that scary, is it?” he teases. “Trust me, it works out.”

I nod. He would know better than I. He takes the small step between us blindingly fast. In the same move, I am in his arms, my legs wrapped around his waist, and my bra is off. Maybe he is a magician. Or maybe my bra melted on its own. Whatever it is, I can’t be bothered with it, because he is kissing me with a desperation I’ve never felt before. I give him back everything I have. I must have gotten it right because my moan mingles with his. His abs ripple against the hot wet spot between my legs. My lower belly trembles. I flex my legs around him, half-afraid of the motion, half-mad with need for it.

He walks the two steps to the bed and lays me on it, my legs on each side of him. He looks at me so intensely that my hands fly up to cover my breasts, but he grips them and shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he says. “Let me look at you. Not your paintings tonight. You.”

I can’t hide. Under his eyes, I feel like a woman. Not because my breasts feel tighter, heavier, but because a man is looking at me this way. I arch my back instinctively for his touch. But he takes the feather quill to my skin. I feel like a blank page.

The feather moves over my cheeks, jaw, neck, collarbone, shoulder, breasts, ribs, waist, hipbone, knickers and thighs. The trail of the paintings. He brings it back up, drawing other lines, blazing new paths. With every whisper of the feather, I turn more incandescent.

“I knew it. Not a single mark anywhere else,” he says as the feather traces circles around the three freckles on my hip. He switches between the feather and the tip of the quill. Soft and hard, smooth and sharp. Drawing circles around my nipples, over my breasts. It feels like he is writing on me. I try to make out the letters, the words. I miss some. I get others. I. Mine. A.H. The trembles in my lower belly become tremors with a life of their own.

The feather trails up to my lips and flutters over them.

“Tell me what you want, Elisa,” he whispers as the feather sweeps back to my breasts and nipples. Round and round. They tighten, they hurt, they need something stronger and, though comparatively small, they lift the rest of my body toward his hand.

“I don’t have the words,” I gasp, and he smiles. He drops the feather and lowers his body over mine. Skin on skin for the first time.

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, innocent as you are. Let me give them to you. Repeat after me.” He brings his face close to mine.

“Mouth,” he says.

“Mouth,” I whisper, and his mouth closes on mine. His lips are hot and wet. They mold, coax, flex and enfold my own.

“Tongue,” he says between kisses.

“Tongue,” I breathe back, and his tongue dances with mine again. Soon, his pace leaves me behind.

“Throat.” His lips travel over my chin, hovering and waiting for me to speak.

“Throat.” My voice is part of the silence, my breathing too loud to allow any other sounds but his to interfere.

“Skin. Perfect skin.”

I say it back, and his lips trace my collarbone.

“Shoulder.” He blazes a new path and plants soft kisses there.

“Now the hard words, Elisa. They’ll get harder and harder. Say them,” he commands.

He speaks and moves, my words sounding more and more like pleas. He stops at my breasts. His mouth closes around my left nipple and pulls on it gently, while his hand pinches the other one. Kissing, sucking, biting, some bites light like nibbles, some harder than even his pinch or the quill’s tip. My tremors turn violent. He moves to my other nipple and sucks hard, alternating between sharp bites and gentle rolls of the tongue. Every muscle below my waist flexes and burns. Every flick of his tongue sends a new jolt through me, and right as I’m reaching a precipice, his mouth moves lower.

Belly. Belly button. Waist. Hip. Hipbone. Thigh. I repeat his words in a daze. Every time his lips touch me after a word, the pulse between my legs beats faster.

“Speak up, Elisa,” he says, and only now I realize that I missed the last word. The final word. The one that is making the world go around. He says it again—carnal, dirty, vital—as he hovers lightly over the knickers he chose that are now trembling. His hot breath inflames my skin. I know he is waiting for me. Oh, what the hell. I repeat the final word like it’s a call for salvation, and he presses his lips and nose into my knickers. I writhe and he pulls back. The pleasure becomes painful. Please. Now, I beg him in my head.

“These have been wet all day today, haven’t they?” he asks. My moan is confirmation enough and my hips lurch toward him on their own. “I’d like to shred them but I’ve grown rather attached.” He slides them off in one swift move. Naked for the first time, my hands fly down to cover myself.

“None of that.” He shoves my hands away not at all gently. He looks exultant. His control is slipping too. Good, he can’t wait much longer, and frankly, I will go up in flames if he does. He starts a trail of kisses inside my thigh. His destination is obvious. Once there, he blows a warm gust of air that makes me hiss. He places a small kiss on my pubic bone. His stubble tickles. His words rain on me again, sentences now, commands, dirtier and, oddly, more romantic. More intimate. Some I can repeat, some I cannot. He continues undeterred and finally, finally, he is at the center where the frenzy is at its worst.

His mouth closes on the spot at the same time that one of his fingers slips inside me. My cry rends the air and I grip the bed cover. My hips start to writhe on their own. He restrains me with his other hand and sucks in rhythm with his finger, sending another cry in the air. Then his tongue takes over, circling, and a second finger joins. The pressure of his mouth increases. My thoughts break. Faster. Deeper. Harder. I’m tensing. Rising. Falling. Tunnel vision. Darker at the edges. Breaking. Burning. Calling. Fire. Ice. Air. Aiden. Aiden. Aiden.

A scream is echoing on the walls and in my head. I crash back on the bed. Was I levitating? As the world resurfaces, I still feel his mouth on me but now in kisses, like a soothing, hushing motion.

I feel new. Almost sacred. Benediction through sin—what a concept. I gaze at him, and he looks victorious. He traces kisses up, up and up until he comes flush against me, face-to-face.

“Hey,” he whispers, his voice bending under his own need.

“Hey,” I whisper back hoarsely.

I wonder if he can see the worshipful adoration in my eyes. He kisses my lips and my single rational brain cell registers where his mouth has just been. I can’t quite care. His desperation breaks through the kiss, and he knots his fingers in my hair, pulling at it almost angrily. His teeth clamp down on my lower lip and his tongue begins an encore performance inside my mouth.

When he breaks the kiss, his voice is guttural, husky. “I need you. You still want this?”

“Yes,” I say confidently, “more than anything.” I sound needy even to myself. How can I crave him so desperately after what my body just went through? Although, maybe it is precisely because my body knows now, and it is finally free to soar and fall.

He watches me for an instant, as if he cannot believe it. There is something new in his eyes. Beyond the raw need, the beast, the darkness—something far in the back that is seeing the light for the very first time.

He rains kisses on my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks. His hands travel down my body. Their caress is unbearably sweet. Different than his previous demanding possession. I get lost, focusing on the dusting of hair, rough against my newborn skin, and the flexing of his muscles on my chest, my belly, my thighs.