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“Ask.”

“Sit up on the counter.”

Her eyes lifted and her mouth opened and didn’t produce a word. She looked at the counter and back at my face. Her throat moved.

“Okay,” she said.

“That isn’t a word.”

“Yes.” It came out steadier. She didn’t look away. “Yes. That’s my word.”

I put both hands under her arms and lifted her onto the counter. Her hands landed open on my forearms on the way up and clamped there, and on the granite she was nearly level with me. She got both heels up on the cupboard door under her.

“It’s cold,” she said.

“You’ll warm it.”

I put my hands on her knees. The denim was warm from her, worn soft and thin over the bone, and the seam ran up under my thumb. Her knees came apart a few inches under my palms with no instruction from me at all, and I put my eyes on the gap and let her watch me do it.

“You tell me to stop and I stop,” I said. “Not afterward. The second it’s out of your mouth.”

“I know.”

“Say you know.”

“I know, Eli.” Her voice split open in the middle of it. “I have known that since the pantry.”

“Good.” I set my hand on the button of her jeans. “I’m taking these off you.”

Her throat moved. Her hands went flat on the stone on either side of her hips.

“That wasn’t a question,” I said. “Tell me if it needs to be one.”

“It doesn’t need to be one.”

The button was stiff and the denim was tight and there was no graceful way through any of it. I got the zipper down and she lifted for me, both palms braced behind her and her weight up off the stone, and I worked the jeans over her hips and down, and they stuck at her thighs, and she laughed once with her teeth in her lip and kicked to help me. They came off her heels inside out, and I dropped them on the tile.

Then I straightened up and took her in.

The stove light came at her from the side and fell down her stomach and her thighs and left her face half in the dark. She still had her shirt on, rucked up at the waist. Her legs hung open the width my palms had put them. She was wet, and I could see it on her from where I stood, and I didn’t move, and I didn’t say one word, and the kitchen got very quiet around the pair of us.

She lasted almost no time at all.

“Eli.”

“Mm.”

“You’re not doing anything.”

“I’m looking at you.”

“Yes. I’m asking when you plan to stop.”

“When I’m done.”

Her knees started to come together. I put a hand on the inside of each one and opened her again and held her there.

“No,” I said. “Leave them.”