“Don’t apologise. It’s, um, interesting.”

He blushed even harder. “I’ve actually wanted to do this for rather a long time.”

“Just throwing this out there”—I scowled at him—“you absolutely could have, at any point.”

“I suppose I thought you were worth waiting for.”

Shit. I hoped he was right. “I’m not the last After Eight mint.”

“Well no.” He joined me on the bed, crawling across the covers like a tiger who’d been to Abercrombie and Fitch. “If you were, we’d all be too polite to take you.”

“I’d have a witty comeback, but I’m kinda distracted right now.”

“You do seem,” he said dryly, “to be markedly less intransigent when you have an erection.”

“Yes, it’s my Achilles’ penis.”

Laughing, Oliver started unbuttoning my shirt. Which was, on the one hand, good because it got me closer to naked and, therefore, closer to laid. On the other hand, I was about to be topless. And it wasn’t like Oliver hadn’t seen me topless before, but this was one of those context-is-everything situations. Being naked and being made naked felt distinctly and scarily different. Normally, I didn’t especially worry what my sexual partners thought about my body, but then normally my sexual partners were strangers.

In an effort to balance the scales, I returned the favour and realised I’d made a tremendous strategic error. Because while I got by on genetics, height, and walking to work, Oliver bothered to take care of himself. It was the sexual equivalent of someone getting you a really thoughtful secret Santa gift when you knew you’d bought them a bath bomb.

“Should I go to the gym?” I asked. “Like, ever? Because otherwise you’re going to have to get used to me being monumentally average.”

“You are many things, Lucien. But you could never be average.”

“No, this is a physical thing and believe me—”

“Stop it.” He kissed me, hard enough to smother my protests, his palm gliding over the exposed skin of my torso and leaving a pattern of fresh warmth. “You’re beautiful. So beautiful I can’t believe I’m finally getting to touch you.”

I wanted to say something suave and witty to show I was…suave and witty, and not a pile of melt. But all I managed was, “F-fuck, Oliver.”

“God.” His voice roughened. “I love how responsive you are. Look…”

His fingertips spiralled up my arm and across my shoulder, goose bumps springing up in his wake like they were doing a stadium wave. I tried to make a noise that, somehow, signalled Yep, this is how I am with everybody, certainly not just you, but then his mouth got involved, laying pleasure over pleasure over pleasure, and I… Shit. I think I whimpered.

“The things,” he murmured, “I’ve dreamed of doing to you.”

I blinked. Maybe I could salvage this before I fell apart. “Why? Are they filthy?”

“Nothing like that.” He pushed me onto my back, his hands unbuckling my belt, and pulling off my jeans, boxers and socks in a flurry of very Oliver efficiency. “I just want to be with you. Like this. I want to make you feel things. Good things. For me.”

He was gazing at me, with this terrible earnestness, meaning every word. And, y’know, it was fine, I could cope with this, I could have feelings, it was fine. Never mind that there was this sense of nakedness settling over me, strangely independent of the fact that I was actually naked. And never mind that every time he touched me it was like he was unmaking me with tenderness. And definitely never mind that I needed this so badly I wasn’t sure how to have it.

Now Oliver was shedding the rest of his clothes, shirt and trousers and everything else, landing messily by the side of the bed. I’d almost forgotten what it was like for a moment like this to mean something—the first time you saw a partner undressed, how they both gained and lost mystery, the truth of them, all their secrets and imperfections, surpassing any fantasy you could have conjured. The strangest thing was that Oliver had seemed so unreal to me at first. I’d wanted him from the beginning—from that horrible encounter at that horrible party—but the way you’d want a watch in a jeweller’s shop window. A kind of frustrated admiration for something distant and perfect and just a little bit artificial.

But actually I hadn’t seen him at all. Only a reflected bundle of badly thought-out desires. And Oliver was so much more than that: he was kind and complicated, and more anxious than he let on, if his texting style was anything to go by. I knew how to make him angry and how to make him laugh, and I hoped I could make him happy.

Or maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I was too fucked up. But Oliver had stuck with me through my dad’s bullshit and my mum’s curry, he’d held my hand in front of reporters, and let me dump and undump him through a toilet door. He’d become one of the best parts of my life. And so I was fucking well going to try.

“Um,” I heard myself say, “I want to be good for you too. I’m just not sure—”

He lowered himself over me, all heat and strength, and the perfect glide of skin. “You are. This is.”

“But I—”

“Shhh. You don’t have to do anything. You’re enough. You’re…”

I gazed at him, not sure what was coming next. From the look on his face, he probably wasn’t either.

“Everything,” he finished.

Well, this was…new. Having to deal with sex-feelings and feeling-feelings at the same time, teaming up to leave you all achy and open and hopeful.

His mouth covered mine, half kiss, half groan, and I flung my legs around him to draw him in closer. He seemed to find this encouraging, which was good because he was meant to. And soon he was driving our bodies together in this samba of promise and sensuality, his mouth painting me with shivery little kisses, and this was amazing—like “oh God stop, oh God never stop, oh God” level amazing—except, for whatever reason, I couldn’t work out what to do with my hands. And suddenly I had these enormous alien mitts floating around at the end of my arms with no clear instructions. I mean, should I have been trying to get at his cock? Or was it too early? Did he mind having his hair stroked—or was that just weird? Was pulling it a bit much? Wow, his shoulders were really defined.

I’d finally settled on spreading my palms fretfully over Oliver’s back when he reared up, caught my wrists, and bore them gently to the pillow on either side of my head. Which, admittedly, wasn’t totally unhot.

“Um,” I said.

“Sorry.” A flush crept down his neck and across his chest. “I…can’t seem to help myself.”