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“Not there.” I put his palm on my waist instead. “Here.”

He keeps it exactly there.

I unbuckle his belt while he watches my face. My knuckles brush the hard ridge of him through his jeans and he breathes out sharply through his nose.

“You can make noise,” I tell him.

“I know.”

“Evidence suggests otherwise.”

He turns me so my back is against his chest, careful to keep me clear of the bed frame and the door. His mouth finds the side of my neck, and his hands move over my shirt, tracing the weight of my breasts through the cotton. I press back into him and guide one of his hands under the hem.

His palm is rough and hot on my stomach. The muscles there jump under his fingers. He moves up slowly until he’s cupping my breast through my bra, and I cover his hand and show him how hard I want it.

He learns fast.

I turn in his arms and pull my shirt off over my head and let it drop. There’s nothing uncertain in it, nothing given because he fed me or guarded a road or finally gave back what he should never have taken. I want him to see that. I think he does. His whole face changes.

He bends and puts his mouth on the curve of my breast. I push my bra down myself, and he takes my nipple into his mouth, and my head drops back. Over his shoulder, the bedroom door stands open to the hall, and past it the front door, and past that the white side of the service truck in the dark yard. Every direction I could go, lined up one behind the other, right there.

I don’t go anywhere.

I point at the wooden chair. It’s back by the wall where he left it this morning, the chair he carried to that doorway last night and sat in until dawn with his back to me.

“Sit,” I say.

He sits.

I open my work pants and push them and my underwear down, and he helps only when I put my hand on his shoulder and lift one boot at a time. Then I stand between his knees in nothing but an open bra and a blue grease-pencil mark on the back of my hand.

His whole body is braced like he’s holding back a horse. He waits until I take his right hand and guide it between my legs.

I’m wet enough to coat his fingers on the first stroke. He makes a sound I’ll be thinking about for days. He strokes through me slowly, learning where I push into the pressure and where my thighs tense, and when he finds the place that makes my hips jerk, I grip his shoulder hard.

“There,” I say. “Keep the rhythm.”

He keeps it. I brace my hand on his shoulder and rock against him with my eyes open, watching his face. He’s watching mine like there’s nothing else in the world to look at.

“More,” I tell him.

He gives me more. When I guide one finger inside me, he groans, and the sound finally satisfies whatever objection I had to his silence. I come with my knees braced against his and my hand flat over his heart, feeling it slam against my palm.

He keeps his hand still inside me until my breathing starts to slow. Then I rest my forehead against his.

When I straighten, he reaches for the clean towel on the end of the bed. I take it from him and clean his hand myself. Then I look at the erection straining against his open jeans.

“Your turn,” I say.

“You don’t owe me one.”

My expression goes flat. “If you explain my own choice to me again, I’ll leave you like that on principle.”

He closes his mouth. I smile at him, brief and a little mean, and his eyes drop to my mouth and stay there like he’s been waiting four days to see it. It makes him want me more. I can see it.

I open his jeans and take him in my hand. He covers my hand once to show me what he likes and then lets go. I watch what it does to him. He grips the seat of the chair with his free hand and lets me set every stroke.

“Look at me,” I say.