“Got it. Sit up for a sec.”

My stomach flip-flops, an exciting chill running through my core as Teague folds the bandanna into a strip and ties it behind my head. After I promise him I can’t see anything, he says I can lie down again.

I feel the bed creak, the comforter shifting as he climbs back underneath. His breath on my thigh makes me shiver.

“Increasing anticipation?” I ask.

“Just enjoying the view,” he says, his voice sounding like it’s underground, barely audible. He flits his tongue across my skin and kisses his way up my leg. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Yeah?” My voice trembles. “What?”

“You’ll see.” He laughs again, that low, rolling tone of his I love, that I still can’t get enough of. “Well, you won’t see—that’s kind of the point. But just wait. If you’re patient, I might reward you.”

My brain spins at all the possible rewards he could give. I silently promise myself I’ll be the most patient woman he’s ever met.

Teague traps me with one arm against my stomach, the other hand spreading my lips apart. I feel his mouth there, hovering, and almost beg him to lick it. I remember his reward, though, and force myself to be quiet.

Finally, his tongue makes contact. I sigh his name, grateful, and he works faster. With the blindfold on, I feel every difference: the way his tongue alternates between flat and all-encompassing, to flexed and focused, like a laser.

When he plunges his tongue inside, I can’t help but arch my back. I have the urge to grab his head, but by now, I know enough to ask first.

“Of course,” he answers. I hear him smile. “It won’t do you any good, though.”

As always, his words startle and thrill me all at once. I put my hands on his head, pulling him against my sex, forcing his tongue even deeper.

Even so, it’s clear he’s still in control. I’m not making him do anything he doesn’t want to do, anything he wouldn’t already be doing. The realization that my control is just an illusion makes my blood surge, nerve endings opening like flowers. You think I’d be used to it, by now.

“Teague?” I open my eyes, greeted by darkness. “I’m...I’m getting really close....”

He goes back to my clit, lavishing it with attention until the darkness turns to color, swirling shapes and tricks of my brain. I release like a storm; my hips buck, my legs tremble. My hands grip the back of his head and hold him so close I must be hurting him. He doesn’t stop, though.

In fact, he doesn’t stop even after my orgasm’s subsided. My legs spasm. I’m too sensitive.

I try to push him away, but he’s right—it doesn’t do me any good.

With no visual cues of the room around me, no way to gauge how much time has passed or what he’s doing to me until it’s already happening, I find myself floating, wrapped up in the sensations. I imagine it’s how one of those sensory deprivation tanks feels, only I’m not hallucinating. This is clearly, incredibly real.

I hear the drawer beside the bed open again. My ears hone in, trying to decipher the mystery bumps and rattles, but I can’t even hear over my own breathing.

“Here we go,” he says, coming up with whatever it is. “Just what I was looking for.”

“What?” I gasp as he pulls his fingers out of me, all at once.

“My idea,” he reminds me. “It’s a sort of…game. Get on all fours.”

“Okay,” I say, eager. I always love his little games and surprises. And honestly, by now, he’s worked me into such a frenzy I’d probably agree to anything.

“I’m going to put something inside you.” He traces his hand down my spine until I shiver. His fingers are still wet, dripping with me. “I want you to tell me what you think it is. If you get it right, I’ll fuck you again.”

This sounds amazing as it is, but I can’t help my curiosity: “And...if I get it wrong?”

Teague laughs: gravelly, low. “Then I’ll put something else inside you until you do.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. My elbows feel weak as I wonder which outcome I want more.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod, shivering as one hand cups my hip, holding me in place. The other picks up the mystery object.

It’s slim and long, tapered. The material is cold, but warms up as he pushes it deeper inside.

I turn my head to look, then realize it doesn’t matter; the blindfold is all I see, and I can’t even really see it.

He waits, turning the object inside me.

“Um...a marker?” I guess.

Teague clucks his tongue. “What a shame.”

I pull the candle out of Breton and pass it to her, letting her feel her mistake for herself, while I grab the next object.

“Candle,” she sighs, when she feels the wick. “Damn it.”

“Try again,” I tell her, and poise the next object—a flashlight, small but thicker than the candle—at her entrance. The chill of the metal makes her jump.

I push it inside, keeping a good hold at the end. I wonder if she can feel the crosshatching on the handle grip, or the flared head where the bulb is—if she’ll get lucky and win, and the fun of this little game will be over already.

Still, I have to give her a fair shot. I push it in and wiggle it around.

She bucks back against it. “Um...a...screwdriver handle?”

“Shit, that’s actually a really good idea. But wrong.” I pull it out and pass it to her, laughing when she curses and clicks the button on and off.

Now I find the next challenge, thicker than the flashlight, and push it inside her.

“Are they...getting bigger?” she asks, panting so hard I wonder if she’ll hyperventilate. Maybe I should take it easy on her.

I almost laugh out loud at the thought.

“Ah, so you finally caught on.”

She misses this one, too: a hairbrush handle.

The travel-sized bottle of saline stumps her, as does the travel-sized lotion bottle. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” she says, giggling.

The final test is a little mean, even I have to admit, because she’ll never guess it in a million years. When I push it into her, watching her stretch and struggle to accept it, I feel myself getting hard again. She pants and whimpers as the object slips into place. It’s about three-fourths the size of her fist, I think. I’m glad she can’t see it, because I’m positive fear would get the best of her.

“Fuck,” she drawls. Her arms tremble; she lowers her upper body to the mattress and buries her face in my comforter. She bites at the fabric when I start to thrust the object, just a slow, easy push-pull, never letting it leave her.

I decide to tell her how big it is. She makes a fist and touches it with her other hand, struggling to understand.

“Can I get three guesses?” she whimpers.

“Sure. But each wrong one makes me move it faster. Deal?”

She agrees instantly. “A ball,” she says.

“Be specific.”

“A sports ball,” she says, “like—like a baseball or something.”

“Not that big,” I remind her, chuckling. I grip the base and move it faster, a little deeper. Breton bunches up the blanket in her fists, letting out a yelp.

“Okay, okay, um—a soda bottle, one of the old-fashioned kinds.”

Damn. Another great idea I never thought of. “Wrong,” I announce, and pick up my pace and force again.

Her body shakes. Her wetness sprays onto my bed, the arousal and fullness too much. I watch in a stupor as she begins screaming my name, her voice dissolving into a sob of joy.

“One more guess,” I remind her. My words are hushed; my erection throbs, growing painful with the wait.

Breton doesn’t answer. All she can do is moan and twist the blanket up in her fists. She bucks her hips back against me, driving the object deeper.

I can’t take it anymore.

Right when I ease the object out and guide myself inside, she starts to come, completely silent. She just starts shaking, her sex pulsing around me while her thighs quiver and her face turns to stone. I’m not sure she’s even breathing, when it happens.

I can’t stop staring at her as I finish, too, albeit far more loudly: I shout, “Oh, shit,” as it happens, because I can’t believe what I’m seeing, that I’ve made a woman orgasm so hard she can’t speak or move or…anything.

Finally, it’s over. I pull out of her gently. Poor thing: she’ll be sore as hell tomorrow.

“Teague,” she whimpers, as I remove her blindfold, at last. The light makes her turn away, but not before I see the tears on her face.

“Are you all right?” I run my hand over her hair, panic forming in my chest. You idiot, I think. You took it too far. “Why are you crying?”

She sucks in a breath. “That was amazing,” she sobs, laughing at the same time. “I..I can’t....”

“Shh.” I smile, relieved and thrilled, and kiss her forehead. “Rest for a minute.”

Breton shuts her eyes and nods. Her breathing gradually grows softer, more measured.

“Better?” I ask, when she opens her eyes. She kisses me.

“That was so intense, and—and incredible, and...God, when you put the bedpost topper inside me....”

I catch something as she keeps talking, part of her words coming back to me. “Wait, wait,” I say, shushing her. “How did you know it was a bedpost topper?” I’d tossed the object onto the floor when I took it out of her, letting it roll under the bed. Did she see it?

“I didn’t peek,” she swears, reading my thoughts. She shrinks back, embarrassed. “I had one on my bed just like it at home. The four-poster beds? It unscrewed and it had this, like, wooden handle and a big wooden ball.”

“So you’ve used it before?”

“Well, it wasn’t nearly as big as yours, but yeah.” She pauses, blushing in that way I will always associate with only her. “I thought it was kind of weird you had one missing.”

Together, we look at the left post of my bed, where the decoration used to be before I unscrewed it, just as she arrived.

“You knew the whole time,” I realize.

She nods, smiling impishly as I laugh. God, I love this woman.

God, I love him.

I touch the back of his head and pull him closer, guiding him to my chest so he can hear the way my heart is still a jackhammer, that wild-animal pulse he brings out in me without fail. He brings my fingers to his neck so I can feel his. “That’s what you do to me,” he says.

An aftershock rolls through and reminds me just how intense this session was. I reach up to cover my face, embarrassed that I might cry, but remember I already was. “God. That’s the hardest I’ve ever come in my life.”

“So far. I bet I can top that, one of these days. Maybe…the next time you visit?”

“Why not when you visit me, next week?”

“Did you not hear the way you were screaming? We’d wake up Colby in a heartbeat. Not to mention the rest of your apartment complex.”

I laugh. He’s got a point.

We shower together and order takeout for dinner. I wear one of his shirts and he just wears his boxers, both of us under the same blanket while we watch a movie and tease each other. I guess it’s kind of pointless, because neither of us is ready for another round—not even close.

But hey, we’ve got all night.

His apartment, just outside the campus where he teaches now, is a lot like the apartment Colby and I got this year instead of a dorm: pure white walls that always smell like paint, small windows, cheap linoleum floors. I love it, though. It’s the setting of his new life—our new life.

We don’t have to sneak around, now. I thought I’d miss it; it was kind of exciting, after all. But once it became unnecessary, I realized I was relieved. Maybe the thrill of keeping such a big secret had grown dull, and I just didn’t know any differently yet.

“I wish you weren’t so far away,” I pout, tracing my fingers up and down his arm. “I miss seeing you on weekdays, too.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, “but this is better. You need to focus on school during the week. Speaking of which—when do you think you’ll declare?”

“Subtle,” I laugh. My major is still undecided, putting me one semester behind the rest of the junior class. It seems to baffle and bother everyone but me.

Art history is tempting. I am good at it, as much as I brush off Teague’s compliments. And with my parents still bugging me over psychiatry or business, it’d be easy to just pick one to shut them up.

But none of those really feel right for me, even if everyone can see me in those fields. It’s not that I can’t see it too—just that, maybe, there’s somewhere I’d fit in even better. I just haven’t figured out what it is, yet.

“I think Dr. Williamson would be your advisor, if you do pick art history. He’s pretty cool.” Teague pauses, and I feel the arm he’s got around my shoulders tense up, just a little. “Does anyone ever...I don’t know. Talk about me?”

“In the department, you mean?”

“Anywhere, really. Teachers, students. Whoever.”

“Not much, now. The rumors have died out, I think.” I don’t tell him that, now and then, I get some snide comment or rude question about it, or that Carly Billings coughed “slut” at me under her breath on the first day of Art History 201. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

“How do you like Berkeley?”

“God, he’s the worst. I can smell his coffee from, like, five rows up.”

Teague laughs. “Yeah, he’s kind of obnoxious. But he’s a good professor. You’ll learn a lot from him.”

“Not as much as I have from you,” I say, half-joking, poking him in the side until he squirms.

We’re quiet for a while, watching the movie without really watching. Outside, I notice the rain letting up. This fall has been cold and damp, so far. “I can’t wait for summer,” I sigh. “I’ll just come stay with you for weeks at a time.”

“You don’t think your parents would want you home?”

“Nah. Mattie keeps them plenty busy.”

“Have you, uh....” He shifts his jaw. “Have you told them?”

“Not yet.” I feel his arm tense up again. “But I will, when I go back for Thanksgiving. I promise.” My parents know I’m seeing someone older, a fact they took fairly well thanks to their own age difference, but have no idea Teague was once my teacher. I should have told them the truth—all of it—as soon as possible. After all, I know how much trouble half-truths can cause.

“It’s okay,” he assures me. “I mean, they don’t have to know everything. It’s not like I’m your professor anymore.”

“I wouldn’t want them finding out some other way.”

“True.” He smiles, a little self-deprecatingly. “Directness is best.” He pauses. “Have you told them I used to be married?” He touches the spot between his collarbones, where the braided leather cord and his wedding ring used to be, out of habit. I told him I’m fine with him wearing it, but he stopped around last Christmas, anyway. I don’t know where it is, if he kept it or not. It feels wrong to ask.

“Yeah.” My voice quiets as I smooth out the wrinkles in the blanket across us. “When you were in Tennessee for the funeral.” Jennifer passed last spring, when I was home for break. Teague texted me the news. I sat on the stairs, watching Mom vacuum, waiting to feel relief. Instead, I’d cried.

“Breton, what’s wrong?” she’d asked, shutting it off and rushing to comfort me, like I was a little girl again. I told her everything about Jennifer that I knew: her long illness, her death, how she and Teague were still married, technically, when he and I started dating.

When I finished, wiping my face with my sleeves, I’d expected her to scold me. Maybe with something like, “This is why you should only date men your own age. Single men.”

But, just like my tears—my grief for Jennifer’s family, and for Teague, even if he insisted he’d already mourned the loss—Mom’s answer surprised me.

“That’s incredibly sad. You have every reason to cry.”

“Really?” I sniffed, looking at her.

She gave me a half-hearted smile and put her arm around my shoulders. “You must really love this man,” she said, “to feel his pain like you are. Most people in your shoes would be celebrating, I imagine.”

“I’m not heartless,” I said, managing a laugh.

Mom kissed my head and held it there. I felt her breath, warming my hair. “You’re very mature,” she said, after a moment. “Maybe…the age really isn’t so bad.”

It wasn’t total acceptance, but it was pretty close. I thanked her for talking to me, realizing it had been years since I’d sought any kind of comfort from her. I’d always thought she’d stopped giving it because I was too old. Maybe, in reality, I’d just stopped showing her I still wanted it.

“Think they’re ready to meet me?” he asks. My eyes are closed now, as I snuggle against him, but I hear his smile.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, come on. I could be their future son-in-law.”

“Stop,” I giggle, hitting him. I look up at him. “Do you really think about that stuff? Marrying me, I mean?”

He blushes. Since it’s usually me who’s embarrassed, I make sure to savor this rare sight. “Yeah. Sometimes.” He wraps his arms around me tighter. “Okay, a lot.”

“What do you think about?”

“Moving in together, after you graduate.” He lets his gaze drift up to the ceiling. “Buying a house of our own. Getting married…having kids.” He looks at me again. “But not for a while. Right now…I’m just enjoying this.”

“Me too.” I rest my head back on his chest and listen to his heartbeat, calm again, and drift off to sleep.

* * *

I wake at midnight to the DVD menu on repeat, my arm pinned under me against his chest, numb.

I lift my head and look at him, studying his face in the television’s glow. His square jaw, the sun-kissed highlights of his hair, fading with fall.

He smiles sleepily when I start to touch him through his boxers.

“Care for another round?” I whisper. My mouth leaves a trail of small, pink hickeys down his chest and stomach.

He clears his throat, still blinking himself awake, as he puts his hands on the back of my head, guiding me down. “I don’t know—you looked pretty overwhelmed earlier.”

“You love overwhelming me. Isn’t that the point?”

He smiles, sighing as I pull his boxers down and get to work. “Yeah, I guess it is.” I hear him breathing harder, his throat clearing. “How do you always manage to get your way, even when I’m the one in charge?”

I tease him, flitting my tongue across his skin again, the lightest touch.

“Don’t worry,” I assure him. I glance at him. Half his face is in shadow, the other half in the light. Intense, but gentle. “I’ll teach you.”