I’d tell him I changed my mind, I’ll come with him, if I could find words, but with his arms braced beside my head he starts to move and it’s unlike anything else. It’s unlike everything else. The slow, solid drag of him inside me builds an ache so good it’s enough to make me feel a little unhinged at the thought that the feeling will end at some point.

He’s giving me a gentle warm-up, his eyes on mine as he pulls slowly out, even more slowly pushes back in, occasionally ducking down to slide his mouth over mine. But when I scrape my tongue over his teeth, and he jerks forward, sharp and unexpected, I hear my own tight gasp, and it unleashes something in him. He starts to move, hard and smooth over me, perfect curling thrusts of his hips.

I don’t really know how many times we had sex the other night, but he must have figured out what I need, and he seems to love to watch himself giving it to me. He pushes up on his hands, kneeling between my spread legs, and already I know that when I come it will be unlike anything I’ve felt before. I can hear his grunting breaths and my own sharp exhales. I can hear the slap of the front of his thighs against the inside of mine and the slick, smooth strokes of him moving in and out of me.

I won’t need his fingers or mine or a toy. We fit. His skin slides across my clit again and again and again.

Lola was right when she teased about how it would be with Ansel and me: it is missionary, and there’s eye contact, but it isn’t precious or soft-focus the way she meant. I can’t imagine not looking at him. It would be like trying to have sex without touching.

The pleasure climbs up my legs like a vine, building into a flush I can feel spreading across my cheeks, across my chest. I’m terrified I’ll lose this sensation, that I’m chasing something that doesn’t really exist, but he’s moving faster, and harder, so hard he has to hold my hips with his hands so he doesn’t push me off the bed. His eyes rake over my gasping lips and my br**sts that bounce with his thrusts. The way he f**ks me makes my slight body feel voluptuous for the first time in my life.

I open my mouth to tell him I’m falling and nothing comes out but a cry for more and yes and this and yes and yes. Sweat drops from his forehead onto my breast and rolls onto my neck. He’s working so hard, holding so much back, waiting waiting waiting for me. I love the restraint and hunger and determination in his beautiful face and I’m at the edge, right there.

Warmth rushes throughout my body a split second before I fall.

He sees it happen. He watches, mouth parting in relief, eyes blazing in victory. My orgasm crashes over me so hard, so consuming, I’m not myself anymore. I’m the savage pulling him down onto me, rutting up into him and gripping his ass to pull him in deeper. I’m pure desperation beneath him, begging, biting his shoulder, spreading my legs as wide as they’ll go.

The wildness unhinges him. I can hear the sheets pop away from the mattress and feel them bunch behind me as he grips them for leverage, moving hard enough that the headboard cracks into the wall.

“Oh,” he groans, rhythm growing punishing. He buries his face in my neck, groaning, “Here. Here. Here.”

And then he opens his mouth on my neck, sucking and pressing, shoulders shaking over me as he comes. I slide my hands over his back, relishing the bunching definition of his tense posture, the curve to his spine as he stays as deep as he can. I shift beneath him to feel his skin on mine, mixing my sweat with his.

Ansel pushes up to his elbows and hovers over me, still pulsing inside as he presses his palms to my forehead and slides them over my hair.

“It’s too good,” he says against my lips. “It’s so good, Cerise.”

And then he reaches between us to grip the condom, pulling out and slipping it off. He drops it blindly in the vicinity of the bedside table and collapses beside me on the mattress, dragging his left hand down his face, across his sweaty chest, where it comes to rest over his heart. I’m unable to look away from the gold band on his ring finger. His stomach tightens with each jagged inhale, jerks with each forceful exhale.

“Please, Mia.”

I have one last refusal in me, and I squeak it out: “I can’t.”

He closes his eyes and my heart splinters, imagining not seeing him again.

“If we hadn’t been drunk and crazy and ended up married . . . would you have come with me to France?” he asks. “Just for the adventure of it?”

“I don’t know.” But the answer is, I might have. I don’t need to move to Boston yet; I plan to—soon—because I had to leave my campus apartment but don’t want to move back in with my parents for the entire summer. A summer in Paris after college is what a woman my age should do. With Ansel—only as a lover, maybe even just as a roommate—it would be a wild adventure. It wouldn’t carry the same weight of moving in with him for the summer, as his wife.

He smiles, a little sadly, and kisses me.

“Say something to me in French.” I’ve heard him say a hundred things while he’s lost in pleasure, but this is the first time I’ve requested it, and I don’t know why I do it. It seems dangerous, with his mouth, his voice, his accent like warm chocolate.

“Do you speak any French?”

“Besides, ‘Cerise’?”

His eyes fall to my lips and he smiles. “Besides that.”

“Fromage. Château. Croissant.”

He repeats “croissant” in a small laughing voice, and when he says it, it sounds like a completely different word. I wouldn’t know how to spell the word he just said, but it makes me want to pull him on top of me again.