“Mmm. I think I could actually sleep now.”

“Hmm.” The sound of consternation.

I reach back and tickle his stomach, then slide my hand farther down. “Feels like somebody needs some special attention before anyone goes to sleep.”

He tries to look nonchalant, but he’s not fooling anybody.

I reach back and undo his belt and trousers, then try to fit the condom on him with one hand. “This is like you learning to unhook a bra when you were a teenager, right?”

He laughs. “You’re doing pretty well.”

“There. Everything okay?”

He pulls my face down and kisses me again, gently despite his need. I playfully bite his bottom lip, waiting to see how desperate he is, but he just keeps kissing me. Before long I realize what he already seems to know: I want him inside me as badly as he wants to be there.

“You win,” I tell him, sliding backward.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I will be in a minute. Go slow.”

“I’m counting.” His eyes twinkle. “Not easy to be still now.”

He lays his hands on my thighs and slowly presses up into me, taking my breath away. Then he begins to move, sliding me forward and back with maddening regularity. The mere presence of him there is enough to scramble my thoughts. It’s been almost a year since I made love with a man, and I feel as though I’m recovering from a sort of physical amnesia. To be so full and still need to be filled, to feel utterly vulnerable and yet primally complete, all of it comes back in the grip of his strong hands and the slow ebb and flow of him in my softest place.

I can tell he’s happy, but I also sense that he’s holding back. That at the core he sees me as fragile.

“I’m not a china vase, John.”

“I know that.”

“You’re thinking about what I told Thalia.”

He slows his movement, then stops. “You can’t pretend that’s not part of you. That you’re completely over it.”

“I’m not over it. But I am above it. Is it you that has a problem with it?”

“Absolutely not. I’m just worried about you. I want to take care of you.”

“Then do that.” I start to move against him, but he still looks uncertain. There’s only one way to get past this awkwardness, and that’s to rip him out of his preconceptions. It’s a risk, but one I feel I have to take.

“Did Lenz tell you about my affair with my teacher?” I ask, watching his eyes as I move.

“No. But I saw something in his notes.”

“Lenz showed you his notes?”

“They were on the table in the conference room.” He looks troubled now. “I took a quick look.”

“Only natural, right?”

“I’m an investigator. Nosy by nature.”

“What did you think about what you read?”

“I don’t judge anybody, as long as they don’t hurt someone else.”

“Good. Because I was really in love with him.”

“I’m sorry about what happened.”

I arch my back, and John closes his eyes and groans deep in his throat. “You know one thing I really liked in that relationship?”

“What?”

“When I went to school after being with him the night before, or that morning, nobody knew. But I knew. I could still feel him. I felt marked, you know? I belonged to him.”

“That doesn’t sound like you. Wanting to belong to somebody. Anybody.”

“Shows how much you know. I’m as independent as they come, right?” I settle my weight and begin moving in slow circles. “But you know what?”

“What?” he asks hoarsely.

“After we’ve been together long enough for the CDC or whoever to clear us, you know what I want?”

“What?”

“I want you to fill me up. I want you to mark your territory every day, so I can always feel you.”

“Jesus, Jordan-”

Tightening my muscles, I plant my palms on his chest and push. He moans with ineffable pleasure, and his eyes go wide, searching mine, trying to discover all that I am in a span of seconds. Foolish man. My neuroses alone would take years to plumb. He bites his lip against the pain of his leg and grasps my wrists in his hands.

“Now you see me,” I whisper. “And I see you. I know what you want… how you want it. I’m all grown up, John. You can do what you want. Anything.”

At last he snaps out of himself, out of the man who sees me as someone to be protected and into the one who wants me beyond restraint. His hands fly to my hips, pulling me down as he flails into me, not caring anymore about my feelings or his leg, nothing but getting as deep into me as physical limits will allow, making me his alone. The bed, which only squeaked before, hammers the wall. The lamp on the end table crashes to the floor. None of it matters. I grip the headboard with all my strength and hold him against the mattress until he screams and goes into spasms you’d think would kill a man but which in fact bring him gasping and sweating back to life. When he collapses onto the pillow, I fall beside him.

“Jesus,” he says breathlessly.

“I know.”

“You’re amazing.”

“Hardly.”

“How do you feel?”

“The same way you feel about me. You think all the boys get this treatment?”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.”

He smiles with contentment. “I love you, Jordan.”

“Take it easy. You’re in shock.”

“I think you’re right. I haven’t been – I mean, I haven’t felt like that since…”

“When?”

He blinks and looks at the ceiling. “I was going to say Vietnam.”

The mild euphoria I felt before slips away. “You slept with Vietnamese women over there?”

“Everybody did.”

“They were beautiful?”

“Some.”

“Different from other women?”

“How do you mean? In bed?”

“Yes… but not just that. I don’t know. Like de Becque said. Like that Li, that woman we met on Cayman. Did they make you fall in love with them?”

He’s looking in my direction, but his mind is focused thousands of miles away. “I saw it happen a lot. People over here think it’s because Vietnamese women were more submissive than American women, but that’s not it. They just – I’m not talking about the city girls, now, the bar girls, but regular Vietnamese women – they had a naturalness about them. They were very demure, yet open about certain things. It’s seductive without trying to be. I knew a guy who deserted to be with one.”

“And I just made you feel like they made you feel?”

“Not the same. Only the intensity.” He touches my cheek. “You’re thinking about your father, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“That he may have left you on purpose?”

I nod, unable to voice my fear.

“I’m not like your father, Jordan.”

“I know. You’re like the men he took pictures of.”

“What do you mean?”

John’s ceiling has a water stain. The house isn’t perfect after all. “They were more real than he was. He seemed to make them real, to bring them into existence with his camera. And in a way he did. The way I do. We make certain things real to the rest of the world. But the rest of the world doesn’t really matter. My father’s photos didn’t make soldiers eternal, the way someone wrote they did. What those soldiers did made them eternal. And whatever they did, I think, is still happening somewhere. All of it. All things, all the time. I probably sound nuts. That’s what comes from living on the West Coast, right?”

“You don’t sound nuts. The things I saw and did in Vietnam have never stopped for me. You know why I don’t have post-traumatic stress disorder? Because there’s nothing post about it. It’s just something I live with. Sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away.”

“Tell me something, John. The truth. Do you think my father is involved in this thing?”

“No.” His eyes are steady and guileless.

“But you did before.”

“I wondered, that’s all. I still don’t know what’s happening. But if your father’s involved, the only way I can see it is if he’s in with de Becque somehow.”