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She looks back.

What passes between us isn’t banter or anger or performance. Something stripped clean of everything except what we’re about to do and what it means.

I push into her.

One slow stroke that buries me completely.

Every thought leaves.

She's tight around me and hot and so wet I can feel it even through the condom. Her mouth falls open. Her nails dig into my shoulders. Her hips tilt up to take me deeper and I have to hold perfectly still for a moment because if I move too soon this will be over embarrassingly fast.

I breathe.

She breathes.

Then she shifts beneath me—a small, deliberate roll of her hips—and I'm done waiting.

I pull back and thrust into her again. Harder.

She cries out. Not quietly. Not the controlled sounds from the pool. A full, unfiltered sound that fills the room and goes straight to the base of my spine.

After that, nothing stays careful.

I fuck her like I've been starving for it—because I have. Every stroke drives deeper, harder, my hand gripping her thigh, hitching it higher around my hip so I can feel the full length of myself disappearing into her. The sound of it fills the room. Wet skin. The creak of the bed frame. Her breath breaking every time I bottom out.

Her hands move from my shoulders to my back to the sheets, fisting the fabric, pulling it off the corner of the mattress. Her back arches. Her head tips back against the pillow and I drag my mouth down the exposed line of her throat, feeling her pulse hammer against my lips.

This is not the controlled, precise man I've spent thirty-four years building.

This is something underneath that. Something that has wanted her since before I had a name for it.

I reach between us and press my thumb against her clit. She jerks so hard beneath me that I nearly lose my rhythm. But I keep the pressure steady—firm circles in time with my thrusts—and watch her unravel.

It doesn't take long.

She goes rigid. Back arched completely off the bed. Walls clenching around me so tight the sensation whites out my vision for a full second. My name comes out of her fractured—syllables that don't fit back together—and her whole body shakes with the force of it.

I last maybe five more strokes.

Then I'm gone too.

It hits like a load-bearing wall giving out. My hips press flush against hers and everything locks—my arms, my jaw, my spine—the orgasm rolling through me in waves so sharp they almost hurt. I bury my face in her neck and let it take me apart completely.

For a long time after, I can't do anything but breathe.

The weight of me must be crushing her but she doesn't push me away. Her fingers drift slowly up my spine, through the wet hair at the back of my neck. Gentle in a way that makes my chest ache worse than the fight did.

Eventually I roll to my back and she comes with me, half sprawled over my chest, one leg tangled with mine, both of us still damp at the edges from the pool and the run upstairs.

I look across the room at the canvas propped near the dresser.

The one she brought home days ago. The same one now hanging in Amaury's gallery where strangers stop to stare at the loneliness in it.

"It's good," I say.

She lifts her head. "The painting?"

"Yes."