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As it was, he did his best not to just dump her on the marble floor like one of her overfilled bushel baskets.

“Oh—this floor feels good on my feet. Like ice.”

Her dress was crooked and wrinkled, and one of the straps had slipped down, showing her bra. She was sweaty, and the hair around her face was wet and curling. He noticed, for the first time, that her sleeveless dressed showed off her farmer’s tan, and that her knees and shins were slashed with fine, white scars where she’d probably skinned and cut herself, over the years, doing physical work.

Her feet really did look like stumps, her ankles a little thick with edema from reacting to the trauma of trying to dance with open sores all over her feet.

He really hoped she would ask him up, let him spend the night.

“Come up,” she said, and his heart jammed right in his throat. “I have iced tea and we can just sit and talk awhile.”

“Okay” was what he said, and she must have heard the naked hope in his voice because she stepped close.

“I don’t know. Just come up, and we’ll see.”

“Could I give you an end-of-date kiss?” He hooked the strap of her dress back onto her shoulder. He could see down her dress, and how the tops of the lace cups of her bra magically curved around her breasts.

He loved that, because it did seem magical, how that lace could round everything out, and then the bra unhooks and there are breasts everywhere, soft and hanging heavily, or close to the lines of the woman’s chest, or wide-spaced and rounded. Whatever. It felt like the best part of intimacy to be the one to
see
, to watch that transformation from rounded, lace-covered mystery to the woman’s actual
body
, different from any other body and real.

He
loved
getting a woman’s bra off.

“You’re staring at my boobs.”

“I know.”

She moved her head to under his chin, blocking his view. She still smelled mostly good, but they were both a little ripe. Then she kissed his neck, and he closed his eyes and thought about how much he liked how she smelled, even sweaty and too warm.

“What were you thinking about?” She kissed behind his ears, and he broke out in prickles that felt so fucking good his dick got nice and heavy.

“Boobs.” He ran his fingertips over her clavicle and then palmed both of her breasts, felt the slide of cotton over her bra. Squeezed, because she arched a little.

Then she had him by the ears, and he let her tug him down to her mouth.

Nina had full lips and they made him fucking ache. Just feeling them, parted, resting against his was so blissful and horny that he could almost resist moving, tasting her, sliding his tongue against hers, but then, he’d just
have
to move, have to suck in her bottom lip just to feel it inside of him, and then just as that was enough, he had to bite it, and make the kiss deeper, over and over.

Whenever he pulled back to breathe, she made a noise that sounded greedy and he wanted to give her whatever she wanted, spoil the hell out of her.

So he pushed the kiss deeper, made it slower.

Maybe his lips were extra-sensitive from the spicy food, maybe his brain was a little soft from the drinks at dinner, and that’s why kissing Nina hurt so good he could hardly breathe, but he didn’t think so.

It was Nina, soft and responsive and smart, her ass wiggling under his hand to get closer, her body real and solid, her eyes wise. He ached and he ached kissing her, like there wasn’t anything else he could possibly be doing, like he belonged to someone, someone who made him feel hot and capable and big, and the more he
gripped her to him, their kisses openly tasting and without any finesse whatsoever, the more he wanted her even closer.

He wanted his body over hers, under hers, their skin sticking, their hands everywhere. The idea of her hands on his body, on his naked body, made it hard to breathe, made him shiver.

She pushed her hips into his, and he grabbed at her hips, sinking his fingers into them just to feel the warm truth of her give under his hands.

She pulled back, sucking at his lip.

“Sam,” she said.

“Can I come up?”

“Come up. I want to shower.”

“I want to shower with you.”

“I figured. I’m a little worried you’re going to pass out wearing those pants now that all your blood is below your waist.”

“You’re going to have to cut me out of them.”

She laughed and then took his hand and limped with him to the elevator.

“Hey, where did your shoes go?”

She pushed the button to go up. “I threw them away outside the dance studio.”

She had held up through the lesson without ever giving away how much she was suffering, and then, thirty seconds into the first official dance, she had dropped his hands and limped to the side to sit down,
laughing.

He’d been horrified to find her shoes ringed with blood, but seeing them seemed to make her laugh harder, which tore her dress a little more, and then she pointed at his shirt, which was such a mess he was surprised the dancing instructors hadn’t turned them out on the street.

Then he was laughing, too.

She unlocked the door to her condo and as soon as it was open, he couldn’t help another kiss. She kissed him back, but quick, and then twisted and unzipped her dress at the side and wiggled out of it.

“Holy fuck.”

“Yeah?” She grinned at him in her lace panties and bra, which were some kind of off-white color he didn’t have the name for. He could see her legs, all the way up to the top, and her nipples through the lace, and just—skin. Lots of it.

“Fuck, yeah.”

“Show me what you got, Opie.” She pointed at him.

He yanked off the shirt, and he was worried he tore it, which he hoped not, because he was going to give
it to PJ, who’d be able to wear it without wrinkling. He tried to toe his shoes off, but they were too tight.

“Hold up.”

He sat on her couch and messed with the buckles and zippers, and when he finally got the shoes off, his feet looked almost as bad as Nina’s.

She hissed through her teeth.
“Sam.”

“I think doing it standing up is off the table.”

“We’re a mess.”

He grinned at her, her dark wavy hair draped all over her almost naked body. “You’re doing okay.”

He stood up and could barely get the button of the jeans undone, and the fly was so short, it gave him barely any ease when he unzipped it. When he peeled off the jeans, his boxers came with them, and the whole operation was like teasing off a damp surgical dressing.

“Ay Dios mio.”

“I know, not too fuckin’ bad, huh?”

But Nina was covering her mouth, her eyes dancing, which wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for. Then he looked down.

His legs were blue.

He had a blue ring around his hips. Where his shorts had protected them, his jumblies were lily white and baby pink. From the thighs down, he was cyanosis blue.

He looked at Nina, who was now holding her stomach in silent laughter.

“Sexy, huh?” He swiveled his hips. “You want some of this, baby?” He did a little flexing and posturing, since he was pretty much in for it.

“I don’t know where to look.”

“Don’t worry about where to look, just think about what you’re going to lick first.”

“I could get dye poisoning.”

He grabbed his dick and gave it a couple of long strokes, looking at her. “This right here is dye free.”

“Do you have no shame, Sam Burnside?”

He closed his eyes and focused on how it felt to touch himself with her. “Not about this. I have plenty of shame, though, about other stuff.”

He felt her step close, then felt her body along his. Warm, soft, but not enough warm softness. He opened his eyes, and she was looking at him, her hands on his chest. He reached around and unhooked her bra, loving how he could feel the slack loosen.

Her breasts were warm and heavy, and touching her tight nipples made him feel almost instantly hard. He loved how her body answered his, made him feel like he was right, like everything he was doing was just
right.

He held her breasts in his hands, stroking over her, and he felt her palm him.

“Can I?” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah, touch me, Nina. Slow, just a little.”

She jerked him with a light touch, kissing his shoulder with an open mouth and he let his head fall back and the pleasure wave through him. She played with him, soft, stroked over him without purpose but without stopping. It made his whole lower back buzz, his ass get tight; even worse were the slow kisses that were roaming to his throat, behind his ear.

He shaped her breasts as softly as she was touching him, and for what seemed like a long time, they were gentle with each other.

It was good.

It felt like how they talked to each other, how she listened to him.

“Let’s get in the shower.” She took his hand and pulled him through the condo and he took a minute to look around. It was tidy, and he liked her big corduroy sofa, the heavy wood of her kitchen table, but there wasn’t the art on the walls he would have expected. Something more was missing. That thing that made a place home. His apartment didn’t look like a home either, but it wasn’t tidy like this.

He wondered why two people who seemed to want nothing more than to make a home hadn’t.

Her shower was small, en suite in her dark bedroom.

He got in first, because she wanted to put her hair up. There was a huge bar of creamy-looking soap, and he filled his hands with suds that smelled lemony, scrubbed them over his legs, relieved when the blue dye rinsed away. He had little scrapes and bruises on his shins and knees from volunteering for Paz Farms. He wondered if he would be able to keep helping her, forever, and if he’d get the same little scars she had.

When she stepped in, he slipped his hands all over her, using the slick foam of the soap to dig into the muscles of her shoulders and back, to slide between the cheeks of her ass. He watched her back muscles stiffen and then relax when he stroked her there softly.

She watched him soap her breasts. The warm water kept her nipples soft until he focused the tips of his fingers on them, and she braced a hand against the shower wall and one behind her neck.

“Feel good?”

“Yeah,” she said.

Her belly was amazing, the skin paler than her arms and legs, and right under her belly button there was the thinnest sweet line of dusky, silky hair that curved into her hair below. Her body was lush and strong.

He pushed his dick against her belly, letting it slip around in the soap. It wasn’t enough friction to push him in any direction but the same low frequency of constant arousal he’d been in since they started kissing in
the lobby.

He rubbed and slipped and bucked against her just to feel her skin, let his fingers rake over her, separating the lips and learning her, how her clit was deep, tucked into her mons, hard, and a little too sensitive when he brushed over it.

“Better?” he asked, pressing it like he had in his office in the hospital. She nodded into his neck.

Her hips, and how they moved—it was going to kill him.

“Let’s go to bed,” she said.

They stepped out, dried the other off. He made her sit on the toilet to dry her feet and look at the broken blisters.

His chest was started to feel tight. She looked so good. He reached up and found the clip in her hair and carefully undid it, tried to untangle the ropes of her hair, but it was too thick, with curling places in every section.

She watched him try. Smiled at him. She put her hands through his hair as he bent over her feet.

He kissed her.

Under the quilt on her bed, he put his arms and legs around her, rocking against her and kissing her neck, her hair everywhere, tangling.

She pushed back a little. “You’re such a pretty man, Sam.”

“I know.”

Her eyes looked bigger in the dark room, and she grinned, her lashes winging into her smile lines. “You’re other things, too, you know. You work hard. You want to do good.”

He wanted to tell her not to say things like that, because no one else did, and he so wanted them to be true that her words made him want her, want to keep her.

“You’re amazing” was what he said. “I can’t believe what you’ve accomplished. Every time I filled up one of those CSA boxes I kept thinking that you made this huge thing, starting with nothing.”

“With people,” she said.

In the low light of the room, she was all curves and eyes. He shaped his hand over her waist, over her hip, over her ass. Over and over.

He reached down and grabbed her knee, used it to open her legs.

She was wet, slippery, exciting. He curved his other arm around the top of her head to hold her where he wanted her, and watched his hand work her, not entering her, just sliding through her pinkness, and when he did slide in just the end of his middle finger, she chased him, tried for deeper penetration, but he moved his hand away, looked at her, sucked the taste of her off his finger, felt himself get heavy and wet at the tip. “Sit on my face, Nina,” he whispered. He gripped her hip and moved to his back. “Hold on to your headboard, and fuck me
that way.”

“Oh,
God
, Sam.” Her voice was rough.

He touched her again. He wanted her all over him.

She slowly rose from her side, and he slid down, hiked his hand around the back of her thigh to get her to straddle. It was the first time she’d ever been tentative with him, so he stopped.

“This okay?”

“Yeah, I just …” She reached back behind her neck and sent her hair down her back and it made his dick jump. “It’s been a long time?”

“I want to. I’m dying to.” He tugged her thighs wider.

She rose to her knees, and he slid down a little more, reached up and drew her arms to the headboard, and when she hung on, he felt down over her body from her upper arms, down over her breasts, over her stomach, over her ass, then hitched her up high, until it was just Nina, her smell, her heat, her sharp breathing, over him.

He reached up to her hips, set her down, kissed her.