Clara took a bite of her steak, her eyes closing involuntarily at the savory burst of flavor. Since the hospital, her sense of taste seemed to have intensified. All of her senses, in fact, everything coming alive again just as she was reborn to this amazing reality. It was all so vivid, as was Clara’s appreciation for her unique second chance. And for Sam, especially.

Clara had a hard time not smiling when she opened her eyes, when she saw that he was still there, that they were still in a restaurant. That they were still together and, so far, feeling like nothing terrible had happened only a few days before.

He’d caught her staring. “What?”

“You’re back in front of your shrimp and grits,” she said. “All must be right in the world.”

“It feels that way.” Sam put his fork down and reached for a glistening glass of white wine. “Back at Maison Rouge.”

“Mm-hmm . . .”

“Back in front of you. I think it’s all about that last part.”

“Back in front of me?”

He took a sip of wine, his eyes on her throughout. He licked his lips after, and said, “I wasn’t sure if I would have any of this ever again.”

“Well, the restaurant would still be around. You could go without me.”

He shook his head. “It would be dead to me. Everything would, this whole town.”

“And then you’d finally have to move back to D.C.”

“See?” Sam said. “The world would just be so much more of a shitty of a place without you.”

“But I think that was always the attraction, though. That I was your excuse to stay away.”

“Well, at least it shows I was thinking about the long term. I was taking my excuse very seriously.”

“And how about now?”

“Now? Hmm . . .” He took another sip, contemplating. “Well, I think now you’re not so much of a reason to stay away from D.C. so much as you are . . . a reason to live.”

The man was way too damn smooth sometimes. “Alright,” she said, a smile playing on her lips despite her best efforts to hide it. “Just shut up and eat your grits.”

“With pleasure.”

They finished their meal in a comfortable silence, the type that lingered over the dinners of seasoned married couples. But this one was still feeling fresh and exciting even in its quiet comfort. How long could they keep that up? With her new appreciation, her new senses, she felt like it could linger like that forever. Their relationship: one giant, suspended, and delayed gratification. She knew her heart had the endurance for it.

When the bill came and he’d left for a moment to take care of it, Clara reached down into her bag, poking around. It wasn’t a cigarette pack she’d felt, but several pages stapled together. She ran her finger down the side, feeling the razor sharpness of the paper’s edge. It made her shiver a little, thinking about what was to come. She had less than an hour before it was show time. But at least this time, she had Sam. He would be the only person in the audience, the only one she’d see. And forty-five minutes later, he was indeed the only one. A warm, glowing light in the darkness. He was everything.

“My name is Clara Miles,” she said into the microphone, feeling vaguely absurd, but persevering on. “And, some of you might have listened to me read last week.” Clara took a breath, subconsciously waiting to hear someone, or the whole room, crack into laughter at the memory of her last excruciating performance. But the room was silent. She continued, “And . . . some of you might have seen my name, or my picture, in the news.”

There was some quiet murmuring in the crowd.

“I was at the courthouse, one of the hundreds of people exposed to the gas. And just like everyone, I was lucky to have no lasting effects. But I do have lasting impressions. And those are of the brave men and women who risked everything to help all of us, from the first responders rushing into the danger of the unknown . . .” She kept her eyes on Sam. He nodded encouragingly. “ . . . to every member of hospital staffs of this great city. I want to take this opportunity to share my thanks and appreciation. And I dedicate this to you.”

The room burst into applause, even before she’d read a single line of poetry. But it didn’t matter. Her thank-you note was the truest, most sincere thing she’d ever written, and now, read aloud to a large crowd without a single quiver of nervousness.

* * *

After her performance, Sam had spent the first fifteen minutes being nice and supporting, and so much the gentleman. He had stood by her side in the crowd that surged for her afterward, smiling at the countless introductions, and looking fine as hell in that tight sweater while doing it. Clara was amused at how many of her well-wishers assumed that he was one of her first responders. Built like a firefighter, he looked the part. They could probably all see it playing out in their minds, her and Sam’s first meet in the form of a storybook’s brave rescue. The funny thing was that they were half right. He had been there immediately after, rushing in, looking for her. But their real courtship, their romance, had been stretched out much longer. Theirs was a slow, yet extremely hot smolder.

Yes, he was so much the gentleman, so well behaved for the first while after her show. But once they had a second alone, he made sure that his hard body was pressed up to hers, his hips and his lips, and something else harder, pinning her against the side of his car in the underground parking garage of a downtown hotel.

It was supposed to be this five-star fancy resort, The Grand Marais, a hotel she’d never imagined affording, let alone stepping foot in. But all that was lost on her now. She couldn’t care less if it was the Grand Marais or a one-star highway hideaway. All she wanted was four walls and a locked door.

Even the bed was optional.

No room service. No thousand-channel cable package. No time to waste.

All she’d wanted, for the last week, was his body stripped naked with hers. His body, his hunger, his choice in how they’d make love. His discretion. His wants and needs as fulfilled as hers.

They stumbled into his hotel room, into the darkness that smelled so much of fresh bed linens, his cologne, him. He pushed her back, deeper into the room, rougher now with his arms picking her up, sliding and bouncing her onto the bed.

He knelt onto it between Clara’s legs and then began crawling up to her, his heavy palms coming down on either side of her shoulders, the bed rocking in the dark, until his lips pushed against hers, suckling, kissing like he’d never done before. Their breathing, hard against each other’s faces, locked so naturally into a rhythm, the same rhythm that had set their bodies writhing together in unison.

And then his rhythm eclipsed hers, shakily, hungrily, speeding up so that his mouth dipped under her jaw and tasted down her throat, tonguing along her collarbone, to the top of her shirt and down to its first button. He stayed there, waiting for his hand to arrive and unbutton her, to handle her bra with a touch of savagery, a firmness that told her it would be best to stay out of his way.

Clara laid her head fully back on the mattress, happily submitting, happily waiting for him to decide how he’d best devour her. For now it was his teasing, Sam’s breath at her neck. It tickled her so barely, so softly, making her feel squirmy and tight. Her muscles constricted in little spasms when Sam’s mouth encircled and consumed the tip of her breast. For a moment, he’d owned that part of her. Her nipple, bare and hardening in the hot darkness of his mouth. It made her squirm faster. It made her only just a little aware of the tiny pleading whimper she’d just made, a sound quickly swallowed up by the black emptiness of his hotel room. Even her weight, small under his mass, had been taken. Her breath, her spirit, her mind consumed so effortlessly by this man.

There could be no rejection of it. His mouth, on just her nipple now, made sure of that, made it form a thick and swollen point between tongue lashes, made her squeal out loud, too loud, when he held it between his teeth. When he pulled back.

How did he get into her pants? How? When did his hand slide under and in and over her? Back and forth, opening her to his gaze. How did he wipe her mind away like that, breaking her down and transforming her into pure feeling? To primordial lust?

Only it wasn’t his hand but hers. He had gotten her to do that, too, somehow. His way with her, his mouth, his intensity, it had somehow sent a message directly to her body, bypassing her conscious mind and convincing her hand, quite easily, to do his bidding like an extra extension of him and his uncontested assault on where she’d needed him the most.

“Oh,” he whispered, sounding very pleased. “Look at you.”

Clara rubbed herself harder.

But Sam grabbed her wrist and took her away from the hot, wet work, taking her hand up to his face, bringing her fingers into his mouth. He sucked them hard, tonguing, working, until she almost became part of him. Just another part of her taken. Consumed wholly. But there was more. Much more. She needed it all gone. It all to disappear. Please. Her body and her mind. Please do that.

For now, he was happy to continue her work for her, his hand replacing hers between her widening legs. She groaned for it, for his hand, his fingers sliding inside her. His hands were much larger than her own, his fingers stretching her as he worked one, and then two, deep into her core. Her mouth fell open, silently. Fuck.

Good. His pants were off. Good, the sound of elastic waistband siding over his skin until getting stuck on something, and then suddenly unstuck. Good. He was good and hard and hot in her hand. Good boy.

Clara sat up, bending forward and down, her face traveling blindly to him. The first point of contact was her cheek, her flushed warm cheek barely feeling the change, and then as she moved in closer, he slid up the whole of her face, burning now against the air-conditioned cool of her forehead. God, it was wild and unwieldy, and very fucking big. And he seemed to enjoy toying her with it, letting her mouth gape and stretch and aim and still trying to find the right angle for it in the dark. She liked feeling this way. She could be a mouth if that was what he needed, her body, protecting him, letting him inside and squeezing him. She could be fucked so thoroughly that she would forget, for an hour or four, or forever, forgetting anything pertaining to the outside real world of Clara. Forget that she was human. Forget that she needed air.

“Oh, God,” he said, breathy and weak. His breath and body shook as her mouth moved up and down, lips squeezing on their way up, and squeezing, and squeezing. And then his hand at her head, tapping for mercy. Clara pulled back, catching her breath after taking him all the way.

He was a man possessed now, ripping down what was left of her clothes, pant legs pulled from the cuffs, panties discarded like the wrapper of some forbidden treat. And now she felt his close-cropped hair, his stubble, his breath between her thighs as he moved in to taste that treat.

Yes, Sam. Taste it.

Her fingers gripped onto his head, squeezing at his hair, holding him until she felt something glowing deep inside her.

“Sam,” she said. “Give it to me.”

His cock. It was still hard when she grabbed it one last time, sliding down a condom over his length. He was still wet from her mouth. He pushed deep inside her, growing harder still with every inch as he stretched her. With each bit of progress he made, Sam groaned, deep and low. Underneath him, Clara kept silent. She kept still as he slid his cock deeper. There was no other sensation in the world than him filling her. She wanted all of him, right now. She told him so, and Sam became a little less patient with his strength.

He had always been careful with her, with his strength and size advantage. But now, with her claws pushed into his flexing ass, and with her pleading, he succumbed to the lowest and most animalistic instinct and fucked her. Hard. Finally, fucking, the sound of their colliding bodies echoing off the walls, the bed’s headboard smacking into her every time, and the feeling of almost unbearable tension before the glow spread through her body. It radiated out through her limbs, and then out of her mouth in a moan of guttural, sexual completion. In here, in the four walls and behind the locked door and in the bed, as long as they were in here, as long as he was in here, in her, as long and as deep as she could stand.

“Ohh . . .”

He filled her and then left a gaping hollow, and then filled her again and again. She exploded, that warm glow burning up her insides, blurring her vision of a completely dark room, quivering her body tight around his surging cock in a long and intensifying rhythm, until she collapsed under him and gave way to the sensation of him driving deep into her once again, shuddering above her as he filled her.

* * *

It was a few more minutes of her life, a small gap this time, that she had no recollection of. Sam had made her cum so hard that her memory, her mind, had been momentarily destroyed. It was only when her mind returned a moment later, that she could finally open her mouth and say something halfway intelligible. “Oh, my fucking God.”

And then she stayed quiet enough to catch her breath after the devastation.

Somewhere during that time, Sam had slipped out and away from her. And thank God for it. She was so sensitive now, so raw. The gentlest breeze up her legs would’ve given her a seizure.

“That was so good,” he said, his face coming closer in the dark. His lips on hers. And then he said it again. “So good.”

She could feel his cock, hard again and twitching against her thigh. It excited her, but she couldn’t . . .

A hand began traveling down her belly, but she held it away. “Sam, wait . . .” She was still out of breath. She was still deliciously sore. “I know you want more,” she said, mustering up a little laugh but still holding him away. His hand and his cock.

“I need it,” he said.

“I know.” She kissed him. “You’ll get it.”

He went back in to grab her bottom lip with his. A little tug, and then, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

She smiled. “No. I asked for it, and I’m so glad I did.” She was. And she was glad she was sore. She wanted to be made sore again. She wanted to feel it all week. “I can’t believe it took us so long.”

“I like delayed gratification.”

“Well, then,” she reached down, held him, then began stroking. “Let’s delay all night long.”