thought. We’re going to die and I don’t care, because I’ll be in a beautiful Ferrari with good food and wine inside of me, and I’ll be with Theroen. I’ll die with him, and then it won’t matter. No one will know. Who I am. What I am. I’ll just be the girl who died in the Ferrari.

But they didn’t die, and finally Two felt the car losing speed. Theroen was letting down on the gas, bringing the car down to a normal level. No more danger, but the joy remained. Two wanted to kiss him. She felt warm in her belly, between her thighs, places she’d sometimes thought dead since coming to work for Darren. Theroen looked over at her, as if hearing these thoughts, and Two gave him a radiant grin.

Was he ready? She asked him with her eyes. Told him with her eyes: It didn’t matter that he had paid for her. She wanted it, badly. Her clothes seemed hot, scratchy, cumbersome. She wanted to be naked somewhere with this man.

Theroen stopped the car at the side of the road, nothing visible for miles but trees and sky, and Two’s first, confused thought was: But... there’s no back seat? Then she laughed at herself. Theroen was already getting out of the car. Whatever this was, the Ferrari was not a part of it.

* * *

The woods were pitch black. Two felt smooth ground under her feet, a path. She held Theroen’s hand, and he led slightly, apparently unfazed by the total darkness. She could feel wind on her face, and now it seemed as though there was a faint glow up ahead, the trees ending. Another minute, maybe two, and the silhouette of the surrounding forest was visible, backlit by something up ahead.

Theroen stepped out and to one side, turned, beckoned to her.

“Oh my God,” Two said under her breath, stunned. Before her, in sharp contrast to the urban cityscapes she’d looked at all of her life, was a massive valley, filled with trees, a small town marked only by a few illuminated windows at its center. They were standing hundreds of feet above this, fifteen feet from the edge of a steep cliff, carved out of the Appalachian foothills by the force of passing glaciers tens of thousands of years ago. It was a sight unlike anything she had ever seen, and Two took it all in with eyes wide like a child. She could see forever, a universe of trees, stars clearer than she could possibly have believed.

“Theroen, this is beautiful,” Two whispered, looking around. She felt him shift behind her, closer, a hand on her shoulder, turning her. His eyes looked down at her, luminescent, catching the light from the moon and holding it.

“Did you enjoy the evening?”

Two nodded. “Oh, yes.”

Theroen studied her a moment. “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Two pressed herself against him. “Why don’t you go ahead and start, and I’ll let you know if we get to that point.”

Theroen smiled and kissed her. Two wrapped her arms around him, her breath and his breath twining together as one. It was an eternity, an instant, and seemingly over before it began. She took a deep breath, let out a shuddery sigh, head against his chest. They stood like that for a moment, and Two reflected that of all the possible directions this night could have taken, this might well have been the least expected, the most unlikely.

And then his fingers, gently under her chin, raising her lips to his again.

They lay together in the soft grass, clothes in a jumble to their sides, forgotten, his lips at her mouth, her throat, her breasts. Two felt on fire, out of breath, flashes of heat and cold, goose bumps running in rippling waves down her arms, legs, back. Theroen caressed, teased, her body registering the contact of his fingers, the touch too gentle to satisfy. She twisted her fingers into his hair, bringing his head forward, wanting once again to share breath with him, to be connected.

Hard, against her, and Two soft, ready, wanting. Open thighs, arched back. Theroen entered her and in that moment her past ceased to exist. She was brand new, every nerve ending electrified, feeling everything for the first time. Two couldn’t have explained what had brought her to this state, nor did she care. She was content to live in the moment.

They found rhythm, moved against each other, soft on hard, delicious friction.