“I hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am,” D was saying. S moaned her agreement — it was about as much as she could do. His voice, soft in her ear, sped along a direct path to her pelvis, to the delicate folds and knots of nerves centered there. He knew how to touch her, how to coax more deep pleasure from her body, than she had imagined possible. “Who knows my body better than I do?” she asked herself. The astonishing answer was D.

At that moment she almost screamed out with pleasure. D’s tongue slid gently across her clitoris while his lips pulled and sucked at her hood and labia. His broad palms and long fingers seemed to be everywhere at once: on her breast, on her calf, her neck, her inner thigh, her throat. He slowly pushed two fingers inside her, pulling his head back and cocking it so he could watch her face while he did. He marveled at her beauty, at her poise even in this objectively undignified circumstance. He admired the passions he saw just beneath the surface, a pent-up lifetime of passions waiting to be uncorked and unleashed. D was determined to unlock them all, one by one; he wanted more than anything to be their keeper, to hold the only key, to enjoy her in every possible way and to bring her joy, to be her joy. And when each encounter ended, their passions would be locked away again and the two of them would return to being the people everyone else knew. D stood and put his mouth close to S’s ear again. He whispered to her, another of the private jokes the two of them had shared so easily since their first online meeting, and watched the smile spread across her face.

S wanted to shift her hips, sway them, thrust them back and forth. She wanted to move herself against D’s fingers. She wanted to turn and kiss him; she wanted to communicate with him, directly, how much more she had to give. But the rules of their game precluded her. She smiled inwardly: next time, she thought. Or the time after. There were so many more games they could play, she realized each time they met that they had really barely begun.

D’s fingers moving inside her, and his teeth now biting gently on her stiff nipple, forced S to refocus her attention. She knew she was close, that she would lose this round. It didn’t matter: “Win” and “lose” were not relevant to their play — they always went home feeling both satisfied and hungry for more. She could not remember ever feeling hungrier afterwards than before, but that was typically how it was now.

S threw her head back while D’s fingers quickened their pace. He bent his head to S’s upturned face to kiss her. Their kiss, as always, transcended simple osculation: it was something primal that engaged more than mouths and tongues, more than arms and hands and shoulders and backs. It was far more than a pedestrian lovers’ embrace. It was a form of elevated and unspoken communication — communion. Each of them knew, in that moment, what the other most wanted and needed. Their bodies came together, two forms merging into a single efficient machine, a perfect engine for the giving and taking of pleasure: for the manufacture of shared joy.

When at last they separated they lay on the bed side by side, hands and hips touching lightly. Neither spoke; no words were needed. D began to doze and S moved her head to his chest. The slow rise and fall lulled her to sleep. She dreamed about their next encounter.