I blink, trying to unscramble this code. He licks his lips, waiting for me to say something.

“I understand.”

A tiny, playful smile teases at the corner of his mouth. “Do you?”

Closing my eyes, I admit, “No.”

I feel his fingertip run up the inside of my leg, from my knee to the middle of my thigh. Every sensation is as sharp as a knife.

“Then let me help you understand,” he whispers. “I like that you fixed your mistake. I like that you served me dinner. I like that you wore your uniform.”

I like that you wanted to play, he means, and he says it with his tongue wetting his lips and his eyes raking over my body. I’ll understand next time, he’s saying.

“Oh.” I exhale, opening my eyes. “I may not forget the window every night. Maybe some nights I’ll forget other things.”

His smile appears and is gone as soon as he can control it. “That’s okay. But uniforms, in general, are appreciated.”

Something inside my chest unknots, as if seeing this confirmation that he understands this about me. Ansel is comfortable in his skin, a portrait of ease. Unless dancing, I’ve never been that girl. But he makes me feel safe exploring all the ways I can wrestle my way out of my own head.

“Did serving me dinner make you wet?”

With this blunt question, my eyes fly to his and my heart takes off in a frantic sprint. “What?”

“Did serving. Me dinner. Make you wet.”

“I . . . think so.”

“I don’t believe you.” He smiles, but it has a deliciously sinister curve to it. “Show me.”

I reach down, pushing my shaking hand into my underwear. I am wet. Embarrassingly, wantonly so. Without thinking, I stroke myself while he watches, eyes growing darker.

“Feed it to me.”

The words burst something open inside me and I moan, pulling my hand free. He watches its path from between my legs to just in front of his mouth, the slickness visible in the dim light.

I paint his lips until he parts them and I press two fingers inside. His tongue is warm and curls around my fingers; it’s torture—I want to feel his mouth between my legs now—and he knows it. He holds me by the wrist so I can’t pull away as he sucks my fingertip, licking it like he would my clit, teasing me until my entire body aches. It’s the kind of ache that comes with pleasure on its heels, promising more.

“Again.”

I whimper a little, not wanting to feel the pressure of my hand there again without relief. I don’t remember the last time I’ve wanted sex so intensely. If possible, I’m even more soaked. He lets me glide my fingers back and forth longer this time, long enough that I can feel my orgasm in the distance, know how much my body wants to let go.

“Stop,” he says sharply, this time reaching for my arm and pulling my hand out. He sucks each finger in turn, eyes fixed to mine. “Climb on the table.”

I move around him, pushing his plate far out of the way and lifting my butt onto the dining table so I’m sitting in front of him, his thighs bracketing mine.

“Lie back,” he tells me.

I do as he says, exhaling a shaky breath when his hands run up my legs and back down again, before taking off my sleek, black, sky-high heels. He rests my feet on his thighs and leans forward, kissing the inside of my knee.

The fabric of his dress pants is soft against the soles of my feet, and his breath slides up my leg, over my knee, and along my thigh. His soft hair brushes against my skin, his hands curl around my calves, steadying my legs.

I feel everything and it’s as if I’m made of pure hunger. It’s hot and liquid, filling my limbs and tamping down my patience. Touch me, my body screams. I squirm on the table and Ansel stills me with a firm hand on my abdomen.

“Be still.” He exhales once, a long stream of air blown directly between my legs.

“Please . . .” I gasp. I love this side of him, I want more, want to provoke the sharp edge to his tone, but I want his satisfaction in me, too. I’m torn between trying on petulance and delving further and further into this easy, obedient place.

“‘Please’ what?” He kisses the delicate skin just beside the fabric of my frilly underwear. “Please reward you for being such a good maid?”

I open my mouth but only a low, pleading sound comes out as he noses at my pu**y beneath the fabric, pressing, kissing, teeth bared and gliding over my lips, my pubic bone, over to my hip.

“Or ‘please’ punish you for being so very wicked, putting your hands on my windows?”

Both. Yes. Please.

I’m unbelievably wet, h*ps pushing up, tiny noises escaping from my throat every time I feel the hot press of his breath into my skin.

“Touch me,” I beg. “I want your mouth on me.”

Hooking a finger beneath the fabric, he pulls my soaked underwear aside, licking me directly in a long, firm drag of his tongue. I gasp, arching up beneath him.

He opens his mouth, sucking, urgent, and

good,

God

so good

licking me with a flattened tongue, fingers pressing into me and curling. He pulls back with a quiet grunt and tells me, “Watch me.” The next four words are spoken into the delicate skin of my clit: “Watch me kiss you.”

His demand is more a preemptive threat than an order because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his ownership of my body even if I wanted to.

“You taste like the ocean,” he groans, sucking, pulling at me with his lips and tongue. The feeling is too intense to be called pleasure. It’s something bigger, pushing all of my inhibitions away, making me feel strong and bold enough to push onto my elbow, run my other hand into his hair to gently guide him as I roll my hips.

It seems impossible that I can feel more, but when he realizes I’m close, he begins to moan against me, encouraging with the vibration of his voice, the solid thrusting of two fingers and the wet slide of his tongue around and around and around . . .

I grow dizzy for a beat before I tumble, floating, shaking through the blissful spasms that feel so good it’s the razor-sharp line of pleasure edging pain. It’s an orgasm so intense my legs want to pull closed, my h*ps arch off the table.

But he holds me open, fingers pumping between my legs until I’m gasping, boneless, struggling to sit and pull him up to me.

He staggers to his feet, pulling his arm across his mouth. “That is what you sound like when you come.”

His hair is a mess from my hands, his lips swollen from sucking me so thoroughly. “I’m taking you to my bed,” he says, pushing his chair back and out of the way. He holds out a hand to me, helps me down from the table on shaky legs. As he walks, he loosens his tie, unbuttons his shirt, steps out of his shoes. By the time we’ve made it to his room, he’s pushing his pants down his legs and gesturing for me to sit at the edge of the bed.

In two steps, he’s in front of me, hand curled around the base of his c**k as he holds it to me, saying only, “Suck.”

As he leans in, my teeth clench with how much I want to taste him. The pillow I sleep on every night has nothing on the reality of his scent. It’s clean sweat and grass and saltwater. The smell of him is edible, and hard doesn’t describe how he feels when I wrap my hand around his shaft. He’s like steel in my palm, his body wound so tight I don’t know how much longer he can wait.

I lick him, and then again, over and up and down his length until he’s slick and wet and slides easily into my mouth. I’m shaking; wild from the earth taste of him and the way he looms over me. Never before has he looked so strong, almost savage the way his hand slides into my hair, guiding me carefully at first and then holding so he can push deeply, once with a jagged, relieved groan. Otherwise he’s silent, fingertips pressed to my scalp as he lets me take over again, only occasionally pushing deep. In my mouth he feels as swollen as my abused lips do, fat and needing to be devoured. And I do devour him. I’ve never loved doing this as much as I do with him, his thick shaft and smooth skin stretched tight over the engorged tip. I curl my tongue around the ridge, sucking, wanting more.

He releases a husky feral sound before pulling back, wrapping a fist around his cock. “Undress.”

I stand on shaky legs, peeling the stockings off, removing the skirt, the bustier, and finally, the frilly underwear. He watches me, eyes dark and impatient, and growls, “Allonge-toi.” He lifts his chin, repeating quietly in English, “Lie back.”

I scoot farther up on the bed, eyes wide and pinned to him as I lie down and spread my legs. I want to feel him. Just him. Right now—I can see it in his eyes—he knows I’ll give him anything, give him everything. He lurches forward, bracing a hand on my spread inner thigh and entering me in a single, long push.

All the air leaves me and for a few overwhelmed seconds, I can’t get it back. I try to remember how to inhale then exhale, try to remind myself that his c**k isn’t actually pushing all of the air out of me, it only feels that way. I’d forgotten what it feels like to have him inside me like this: confident, commanding. But the feel of his warmth, nothing between us . . . it steals my air, my thoughts, my clarity.

He doesn’t move for an eternity, just stares down, eyes moving over every inch of me he can see from his vantage. He’s so hard it has to be edging discomfort for him, and I can feel the shake of his hand gripping the sheet near my head.

“You need to be reminded?” he whispers.

I nod frantically, hands grasping his sides as my h*ps move off the bed, hungry. He pulls back so slowly I feel my nails digging into the skin of his sides before I even realize what I’m doing. He hisses, stabbing back into me with a low groan.

And then he snaps back again, and then forward, hard and tormenting, his pace nearly punishing. Punishing me for the handprint, punishing us both for the distance that got between us. Punishing me for forgetting sex with us is like this, and nothing is better. He leans over me, his skin rubbing mine where I need him, sweat dampening his brow and the smooth expanse of his chest. I curl into him, licking his collarbone, his neck, pulling his head to mine to feel the deep rumble of his pleasure against my teeth, my lips, my tongue.

My thighs shake at his sides, pleasure climbing, and I need harder and more of him, my fingers are desperately pulling at his hips, my words begging and unintelligible. I feel my release twisting in me, tighter and tighter until it snaps, bursting wide open in a jerking, clutching lash of sensation and I’m arching from the bed, crying his name over and over.

He pushes up on his hands, watching me come apart under him, and through the fog of my orgasm, I watch him climb. His strokes are long and hard, our skin slapping together in a crude sound that makes me wilder, makes me wonder if I really am on the verge of coming again so soon.

“Aah,” I cry out. “I’m . . .”

“Show me,” he growls, dropping a hand between us, petting my cl*t in tiny, perfect circles.

I bow off the bed, my entire body clenching in a second orgasm so sharp my vision blurs.

Ansel’s neck becomes corded and tense, teeth clench and eyes narrow and he hisses, “Fuck,” before his h*ps become brutal, loudly pounding against my thighs. He collapses on top of me and I can feel the way he twitches inside, the way he shudders under my hands.

I let out a shaky gasp, winding my legs around his h*ps when he begins to pull back. “No,” I say into the skin of his neck. “Stay.”

He bends, his mouth latching on to my breast, sucking, tongue roaming up my neck to my jaw as his h*ps rock slowly back and forth. He seems insatiable, and even though I know he’s already come, I don’t sense that we’re done. Once his mouth finds mine, I’m lost again, lost in the wet slide of his tongue, the slow press of him in and out of me. It feels like only a second that his body relaxes inside before I feel him stirring again, lengthening until he’s moving in earnest, long curling thrusts with his body pressed all along mine.

This time it’s slow, and he kisses me every second of it, deep and searching, letting me hear the agony and pleasure of our bodies so thoroughly that it makes me delirious.

HE ROLLS OFF me, groaning in relief. I curl to him in the dark, my heart racing still, skin damp with sweat.

“Ah,” he whispers, kissing the top of my head. “There she is.”

I kiss his throat, tongue sliding over the hollow where I taste the faint salt of his sweat and mine.

“Thank you for this,” he says. “I love that you did this tonight.”

My hand drifts up his stomach, across his chest, and I close my eyes as I ask, “Tell me about the window.”

Beside me he freezes for a beat, before exhaling a long, slow breath. “It is complicated, maybe.”

“I don’t have anywhere I need to be,” I say, smiling into the darkness.

His lips press to my temple before he says, “My mother, as I mentioned, is American.” I look up at his face from where I rest on his chest, but it’s hard to make out his features in the dark. “She moved to France when she was just out of high school, and worked as a maid.”