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They headed out of the city, exiting the ring road where the highway started west, driving into the night with the metropolitan luminescence behind them. Ninety minutes later, up in the hills — there were no mountains here — they pulled over to properly regard the night sky.

They left the car doors open and stood at the rear, facing back the way they’d come. His hand reached out, brushed hers, and their fingers interlaced while they tilted their heads back to enjoy the stars. She felt the same thrill at the brush of his fingertips that she always had, from the first time they met over a year ago.

“Magnificent,” he said, and let go her hand while he turned back to the driver’s door.

“Mmmmmm,” was all she could utter, her head filling with the memory of that night. She sat in the car and he drove, continuing westward and a bit south. She closed her eyes, hoping he would think she was asleep; she was falling into the memory now, drifting back in time, and she didn’t want anything to interrupt her.

He reached across the car and took her hand again, squeezing it the way he always did. In her memory he took her hand, and holding it between his two looked her in the eye, scanning her whole face in an instant as if he could read there her hopes, fears, and darkest desires. She smiled and lowered her eyes, a becoming shyness that would not fade much even with time and familiarity. He led her into the room to the sitting area, poured them both a glass of wine, and sat in the other chair facing her.

The chairs were close together, their knees touching awkwardly in the dim light. Without warning he leaned forward to kiss her; she responded as he had hoped — known — she would, finding at last an outlet for the passions that had been building inside her for so long. He rose slightly, head tilted so as not to break the kiss or the spell, and touched her shoulders: a silent instruction that she should follow him. They moved to the bed, slowly undressing each other, the newness of their touching quickly replaced by urgent familiarity. She was glad, then, that he had doused the lights before she arrived so that the room was lit only by the light spilling from the bathroom, its door slightly ajar.

Their initial, tentative survey gave way to more impassioned, firmer, and more definite strokes. He thrust and probed with his fingers, by now slick with her. At one point she took his hand and licked it clean, then kissed him deeply. Tasting her musk on her lips, he pulled her tighter to him then repeatedly sank his teeth gently into her during his long, deliberate journey to her center. She turned, not wanting to feel selfish, and took him in her mouth, driving him to the edge until he withdrew and turned to kiss her again. She moaned when she tasted his lips and pulled him into her impatiently.

They fell asleep still coupled, exhausted; when they woke they picked up where they had left off, continuing their mutual explorations and committing the new geography to sense-memory, marking the places of particular interest. And again they slept, spooned tightly and cocooned in the bedsheets.

She heard the phone ring, saw him pick it up through the sultry haze of her post-coital glow. She knew it must be the front desk, advising them of check-out time.

And then the ringing changed and he was shaking her shoulder gently. The ding-ding-ding alert of the open car door, motor off, key in the ignition.

“We’re here,” he said.

She smiled, the shy smile of a woman whose partner knows exactly what she wants and will never ask for.