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“Sure.” Her caring is one reason we’ve made it to my bedroom in the first place. Against my better judgment, I trusted Mimi, and sensed somehow she would be like this. That she would give me the time I need and respect the boundaries I’ve never even thought of having.

“I’m going to take some of my clothes off because they’re not very comfortable to lie down in,” Mimi says. “That doesn’t mean you have to do the same.”

“Can I?” I reach for her neck, slide my hand along the back of it. I wait for her consent. When she nods, I use my other hand to unbutton her blouse. To slowly tug it out of her pants. I’m overcome with the overwhelming urge to feel her skin, to put my hand on her warm belly. So I do. She shoulders off her blouse and stands before me naked from the waist up —except for her bra. She does it so confidently, without any qualms about her body, she might as well have abs for days and biceps like mine. To not care how skin stretches over your muscles is a foreign notion to me. I spend too much time caring about it and for what? Granted, Mimi does respond to it exactly the way I had hoped her to. At times, when her gaze rakes over my body, she looks more baffled than impressed.

I can’t take my hand off her belly. It’s as though now it has made contact, that contact can never be broken again. My gaze is pulled to her bra, to her porcelain skin curving out of the cups. She wiggles against me as she slips out of her pants.

“Sorry. I’m just going to hang these up—they wrinkle easily.”

I take a step back and miss the touch of her skin instantly. I watch her fold her clothes and drape them over the nearest chair. Before I take her hand and let her pull me onto the bed, I quickly step out of my jeans.

We lie on the covers, facing each other.

“Hi,” she says, her voice low and soft.

“Do you like what you see?” I ask, referring to my bedroom, but quickly realizing how that actually sounds.

“Very much.” Her lips pull into a grin.

“I mean my bedroom.” My cheeks flush.

“I’m sure it’s a lovely room, but I only have eyes for you, Nora.” She shuffles a little closer, closing the small distance between us. She slides her hand under the tank top I’m still wearing.

Her lips find mine again, and we fall into a long, lingering kiss. Her hand rides up but keeps a respectful distance from my bra. She’s probably waiting for more permission. Is it okay to give her permission for everything right now, just to get it out of the way?

She pulls away from our kiss again.

“I can feel it, you know?” Her voice is all gentleness and understanding.

“Feel what?”

“When you start to get lost in your head. Your touch loses intensity.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, but I want you here with me, Nora. We have time. We can take all the time we need.” Somewhere in the back of my head, the thought of my alarm clock going off at five tomorrow morning pops up. But this is exactly what she means—it’s also the hardest proposition for me. It’s probably the main reason why I’m so bad at being in a relationship.

“I was just wondering how to, um, make you aware that I enthusiastically consent to everything.”

Mimi laughs and the sound of it is almost freeing—and makes me realize exactly how tense I’ve been.

“Noted.” She removes her hand from underneath my tank top and cups my jaw. “And likewise.”

“Let me take this off.” I start pulling up my tank top. She moves away to give me the space I need.

“Let’s use the words ‘tank top’,” Mimi says. “In case ‘stop’ is too hard to say.”

“What?”

“If either one of us wants to stop what the other’s doing, or what we ourselves are doing, at any point, we say ‘tank top’ instead of ‘stop’.”

“Sure.” I look into her sparkling eyes and it’s as though I’m injected with a fresh dose of confidence, or maybe just the absence of second-guessing my every move, even for an instant. I slide on top of her, slipping my knee between her legs. “But Mimi, I’m not going to want you to stop.” I wonder if I should say more. If I should assure her that even though it seems I’m pulled out of the moment, and she may notice, I always come back to it. She has that effect on me.

But I don’t say anything else. I’d much rather kiss her again than do more talking. So I do. I kiss her over and over again. Her hands roam across my back and, as though finally unleashed, slide to my buttocks. She cups my behind in her palms, softly at first, but then much more insistently. I gasp for breath, because this is what I want. The reason why I’ve been so drawn to Mimi from the beginning is that she displays so many of the characteristics I look for—if I allowed myself to look—in another person. She has unlocked something in me, found a secret key, and it’s only just beginning.

Next thing I know, she unhooks my bra and topples me onto my back. She doesn’t ask if she can do things anymore. She just does them—to my great delight. She runs her fingertips from my throat to the swell of my breasts, then hooks them under my bra cup. She pulls it down and slowly reveals my breast. Unlike other parts of my body, my breasts are one hundred percent natural. My nipple aches for Mimi to wrap her lips around it, but she looks stunned. She swallows slowly, briefly looks up at me to catch my glance. If she called my shoulders a work of art earlier, I wonder how she feels about my breasts. But I don’t have to ask. Her admiration for my body is written all over her face and while it turns me on, I’m pretty certain Mimi’s not in my bed because of the promise of my body, or because I’m Nora Levine. I’m pretty convinced she’s here with medespiteme being Nora Levine—because the Nora Levine shield is always up, and it’s hard to get past that. Many have tried and failed. But here is Mimi St James.

I didn’t know what to make of her in the beginning, and look at us now. She’s about to take my nipple into her mouth. When she does, the sensation reverberates throughout all my cells. Decades of being single have left me adept at taking care of my own sexual needs, but feeling another person’s lips around your nipple is not something you can simulate. Feeling her tongue against my rock-hard nipple, the soft warmth of it, is exquisite and ratchets up my level of excitement. The years have only strengthened my belief that being single is highly underrated in our society, but there’s a lot to be said for the soft touch of a woman’s tongue against your nipple. And what a woman Mimi is.