the point where the two sides crossed at the hollow between the tops of her breasts. Nicola groaned and arched her back, pulling his face into her. She laced her fingers through his curly hair and pressed closer, as if trying to absorb him through her pores.
Andrew Stratton could barely credit what was happening, and it was a struggle to keep his head clear. This in itself took him by surprise. When he had made love with Katerina, a part of him had always stood to one side, watching, monitoring. It wasn't that he had some bizarre need to be in control; it was that he was intent on pleasing her, on bringing her to orgasm, which was no easy task. He never permitted himself to dissolve into sex. And besides, who knew what void he might spin off into if he did? But with Nicola, he was poised at the very edge of that chasm, not so much afraid to fall as eager to leap.
The situation was almost incomprehensible: a wonderful, talented, and undeniably lovely woman was kissing him, clutching him, her breath ragged, her desire undisguised. He wasn't at all sure how it had come about. The two of them had been so busy trading snappy remarks to keep the distance, he hadn't noticed the distance had been an illusion, that he'd been falling in love for days. And Andrew suddenly also understood—the way someone struck by lightning comprehends the fragility of life in a way no one else can—that he'd never loved this way before. After Katerina left him, his heart had shriveled like a hard, infolded black raisin. But now it was plumping up again, growing fuller than it had ever been before, growing larger, it seemed, than could be accommodated within his chest.
Nicola kissed him again, urgently, and struggled to unbutton his shirt, eventually yanking it over his head. She had not said a word and her eyes were squeezed tight, as if she was in pain. He took her by the shoulders and laid her down upon the long chaise, stroking her face, then her neck, moving his hands gently. Slowly her dress fell open and he ran his palm along the perfect, G-clef outer curve of her left breast, then along its mirror image on the right. He cupped each and marveled at their weight. Her skin was silky and darkly tanned, except for two small, creamy bikini triangles from sunbathing. Her areolas were large, a dusky rose color with a coffee-tinged circumference, her nipples tall and stiff. He placed his hands atop them, lightly, barely connecting with the skin, and felt the heat radiating in both directions. Nicola made a sound somewhere in between a sigh and a moan and seemed to sink into the cushion beneath her, like someone falling through a cloud. Her muscles, so taut only moments before, softened.
Andrew lay beside her on the edge of the chaise and, with great care, as if Nicola were made of thin lead crystal, explored the supple landscape of her body using only the tips of his fingers. He was suffused with a tidal gentleness; he felt like a worshipper, a pilgrim. He wanted to tell her how full of her spirit he had become, how overwhelmed he felt by her acceptance, by her desire.
And it dawned on him at last that it wasn't that he lacked passion, it was that he had so little experience in expressing it; he did not know the vocabulary of love. For years, he'd just assumed that Katerina knew from his actions, from his constancy, from his eagerness to attend responsibly to all the details of their life together—from his serving—that he loved her. And he'd been very, very wrong. She did not understand that language. Or perhaps she did but did not value it. Or perhaps they had never really been in love. Certainly, he'd never felt the way he did now: amazed, entranced, transported. And, suddenly, the words were coming to him, in a flood: wonder, enamor, ardor, cherish, head over heels—nouns, verbs, adverbs. Out of nowhere. He felt like a thesaurus of endearments.
Yet with all these words, all these emotions, he still felt tongue-tied, so he tried to speak through his fingers, adoring this miracle beside him with touch. His fingertips glanced across her eyebrows, slipped down to the rise of her cheekbones, then followed the curve of her chin lower, to her collarbone and out to her shoulder, and then slid down