He was speaking to her, she knew that.  She could hear the words but couldn’t make sense of them.  It was more of a rushing in her ears, part of her hypersensitivity to all that was happening and all that surrounded her: this man, this hotel room, the strangeness of it and the irresistible pull of it, the black hole of her desire.  She was self-conscious: about her nakedness, of course, and her exposure; but more about the obviousness of her arousal: the stiffening of her nipples, the raising of gooseflesh all over, the inevitable wetness of anticipation.  She wondered if he was as aware of these things as she and shook it off: he was, she knew, even more aware, even more attuned to the betrayals of her body than she was.  He had brought her here: beckoned her, lured her, enticed her.  How?  She wasn’t sure.  She didn’t care.  There was only the room, and the man, and her want; and the room itself was falling away.

She felt his hand on her breast, for the first time.  Please, she thought: let it not be, by any means, the last.  Bring me here again and again and again.  His fingers closed, she felt the sharpness, the discomfort and the pleasure, prayed that he would not yet test between her legs: there was no turning back, surely; and he would meet no resistance of any kind; but she felt — she knew — that somehow this was only the start, where as in all her experience these feelings, or anything resembling them, had been nearer the end.  She reminded herself to breathe: in, out; in, out.  Slowly, if she could.

His mouth was by her ear now.  More words she could not understand.  She didn’t care.  There was only the moment: she wanted to prolong it.  If she had to ask, What did you just say?  If she had to face punishment for her effrontery.  If he slapped her face, or bent her over the chair, or any of the hundred other insults to her personal dignity: she welcomed it all.   Simply keep me in this moment. 

She prayed, too, that her knees would stay strong; that her body would not fail her (betrayal was already beyond question); that she would not faint.  And that, at the end of it all, he would be pleased.