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I put my face in my hands at that. “Oh god, this is like that one episode of Star Trek: Voyager. I need Captain Janeway to help me decide which of you should live and which of you should die.”

“And you do not believe that she would choose the one who was here first?”

I see him tilt his head between my split fingers. Then I drop them entirely.

I’ve lost, and I know it.

“Jesus, how the fuck is a tenth-century Viking better at this debate than me.”

“Because you are only saying all of this to avoid what you know in your heart to be true. You desire me, as I desire you. It sings through you, so strongly you can scarcely resist it. Despite your fears, despite all this body and this face have done to you, you see my soul and cry out for it to sustain you, as you shall sustain me,” he says, then while I am busy not being able to breathe or think or speak, he reaches forward. He touches just the very hem of my nightdress.

Such a little thing, and yet it wastes me.

Suddenly I can’t recall a single objection I might have.

I just hold his gaze, and give the very smallest of nods.

And the second I do he slides his hand up, under the material, so slow and easy it’s almost as if he’s doing nothing at all. He lost his keys up there, and simply needs to retrieve them. I asked him to check me for broken bones, and he’s just doing his duty. He’s definitely not doing anything sexual.

It just almost makes me moan anyway.

And doubly so when I feel him find my underwear.

His hand moves over the soft scrap of cotton all wonderingly—like he was expecting something bigger, I think, like the TV shows didn’t really reveal what we wear down there and even if they did he wasn’t sure what he would find. Then he hooks one finger underneath the elastic—just at the side, not in the center.

But even that is enough to actually force a sound out of me.

It comes out like the one I made in the library: high and tight and desperate.

And he knows it. “How did I not see the desire in your reaction,” he murmurs, as he slowly works that material down my legs. Honestly it feels like a miracle that I can answer, once I’m absolutely bare beneath my nightdress.

“I have no idea. I thought I was so obvious.”

“Perhaps it just seemed too impossible to me.”

“And how does it seem now?” I ask, even though it feels like a mistake to. We’re passing the point of no return so fast. He has my panties in one hand and his other is already pushing up my nightdress. In a second he’ll be able to see me, and what then, what then?

I don’t know.

I just know that the panic recedes when he speaks. “Like I have been blessed, and shall not squander such a blessing. I intend to savor you, my sorceress. I intend to fill you with such an excess of pleasure that you overflow,” he says, voice so low it strokes me as sweetly as the hand that’s almost between my legs.

It’s not a surprise that I sink down into his arms.

Or that I let him spread me out on the bed.

But it is one when he doesn’t immediately bury his face between my legs. I hold my breath for it, eager and shy all at the same time. Only to have him touch me first. Just with his fingertips, I think—exploring in that same way he did with my underwear. He finds my downy curls and gently brushes them. Like someone might do with fur they enjoy feeling, it seems to me.

And his reaction says the same.

His eyes are heavy with bliss, and those soft lips are parted around those sharp incisors. Then he gets a hint of something I already know is there, and he bares them just a little bit. He makes a sound, halfway caught between excitement and a kind of ravenous hunger. Like an animal, scenting prey.

Though he doesn’t rush onward.

He keeps up this agonizingly slow pace. Always these slight touches, and little else. Near tentative, it seems to me—but there’s another quality to it, too. I see his gaze slide up to my face as he almost, almost parts the lips of my sex. And it stays there as he strokes, in this very deliberate manner.

Like he’s waiting for my reaction.

The one that shouldn’t be all that much.