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She let loose a low moan that sounded almost pained. He froze, his pulse beating its way through his whole body, down his arms, into his prick, down his legs.

“Don’t stop,” she said, and the next stroke elicited another moan, which, now that he knew it signaled pleasure and not distress, almost did him in right then and there.

He applied himself to the taut muscles, aiming for a pressure that might loosen them but not cause pain. She continued to make the most astonishing, bordering on lewd, noises, and he had never heard anything better.

“I should have done this sooner,” he murmured. What a wasted opportunity.

She fell back against his chest, sighing and letting her head loll against him. From here, he had a view of the front of her—her long, elegant neck, her small, pink-tipped breasts that looked like they would fit perfectly into his hands.

Sighing, she angled her head back farther. He deduced that she wanted him to kiss her neck, as she had last night. It was his pleasure to oblige. He lowered his head and put his mouth where his hands had been a moment ago. And, his hands now free, he indulged his wish to see how her breasts fit in them.

They groaned in unison when he made contact. “Perfect.” He whispered his verdict across the taut skin of her neck as he kneaded the soft flesh he was holding, circling his thumbs around periodically to tweak nipples made hard by the attention.

He tried to pull his hips back, away from her enough to sever the contact between her bottom and his prick. He wanted this to last. He needed this to last. It would have to last him the rest of his life.

He only made it a few inches before she noticed—and objected. Attempting to turn in place, she became tangled in her dress and shift, both of which were still bunched around her waist. He moved to help her emancipate herself, but it didn’t quell her frustration. She let loose a vaguely irked noise, batted away his hands, stood, and swiped at her clothing until it fell to the floor.

“Dear God,” he mumbled, for there she was, standing before him in all her glory. He had thought, that night they were in the pools together, that he could see beneath the surface of her. And perhaps he could. Perhaps he had. But now he was seeing the literal surface of her, the container for all the wisdom and suffering and joy and pain that made her who she was. He had the feeling that most men preferred the order of events to be reversed: One saw the naked lady and then later—perhaps—one got to know her well enough to see beneath the surface.

She cleared her throat, and he realized that at some point in the last few moments while he’d been waxing poetic over her body and soul and the relationship between them, she had placed her hands on her hips and acquired an expression he could not parse.

“What is the matter?” he asked urgently.

“I have completely disrobed and you remain fully attired, that is what is the matter,” she said, and he realized that expression had been wryness.

He laughed, and she did, too, and they started jointly on his clothing, smiling like idiots as they did so. She set to work on his cravat while he shrugged out of his coat and waistcoat. He untucked his shirt from his breeches, and she pulled it over his head. He sat back down and struggled with his boots, and she, playing valet, helped him tug them off.

“Finally,” she huffed as they divested him of his breeches and small clothes.

He stood to join her. If he were Effie, he would have been able to make an observation about feeling like he was the first man and she the first woman and this, this very moment, the beginning of the world. But he wasn’t, so he told himself not to bother with words and just drank her in, from her mussed dark hair to the tips of her toes, which he was sure were the loveliest toes ever to walk the earth.

He never would have expected Diantha to be missish, and she wasn’t, but there was something about the way she pressed her lips together and clasped her hands behind her back that suggested bashfulness. But on the other hand, there was something about the way she was openly staring at his member—which was throbbing and at attention, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it—that suggested the opposite of bashfulness.

“May I touch it?” she asked, and the question made him laugh. Not at her. There was no mockery in it. It was the unlikely, astonishing fact of being here, with Miss Diantha Brown, to begin with. And possibly also the fact that while he was trying and failing to find the proper poetical terms to describe her soul, the first thing out of her mouth was to ask whether she could touch his prick.

“By all means,” he said.

And then she did, and that stopped him laughing quick as anything.

“I knew it was meant to be hard, but I didn’t think it would be that hard,” she said, and he groaned. “Am I hurting you?”

“No. Yes. But please continue doing so.”

She stroked him, and he thought better of his invitation. This needed to not be over before it could truly begin, so he put his own hand on hers, and drew her to him. “You are making it that hard.”

He kissed her again, deeper this time, shamelessly sweeping his tongue into her mouth and gathering her body against his. He stroked down her back, cupped her arse in his hands. She lifted a leg, trying to wrap it around his body.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He picked her up and carried her to one of the beds, sparing a moment to chuckle over how two weeks ago, he had thought this space very like his school sleeping quarters.

He had never done this at school.

He arranged her gently against the headboard and proceeded to kiss her everywhere. He started with her ankles and worked his way up, stopping when a brush of his lips against an inner thigh summoned a breathy moan.

His progress was interrupted when she grabbed his head and pulled on it. Chuckling, he came up so they were eye to eye, and they kissed again. It felt simultaneously like it could go on forever and that it would be over too soon. Pleasure was building at the base of his spine. He willed it to recede.

He thought back to her describing the experience of immersion in the pool. She had likened it to being overwhelmed in a good way. To being heated from within.

He had agreed.