Lorne and Catherine lay in the bed of the master cabin for a long while, cuddling and gently touching, relaxing, looking into each other's eyes and thinking. This is so strange... I've always dreamed of this. Dreamed of lying with her, touching her, enjoying her body. God! She's even more gorgeous than I've imagined all these years...

"What are you thinking, Lorne? You're far away, somewhere in your dreams. The look in your eyes. The throbbing." She shifted her hips and stroked his cheek.

"Sorry, I was just —"

"No need to be sorry. No need at all. It's perfectly natural."

"I was just thinking about how gorgeous you are. Absolutely gorgeous. Far more beautiful than I ever imagined."

"I love the way your eyes see me. I love the way your body signals its agreement." She shifted her hips again, lightly pressing, and he throbbed in response.

"Sorry... I don't mean —"

"Don't be ashamed of it. It's perfectly natural, normal, healthy. It's part of the design. A vital part of it." She felt him lightly push toward her. "That's better. Enjoy it."

"You've always been so easy to talk with, Catherine. So warm, so accepting and understanding. I've always been comfortable around you. I'm amazed at how comfortable I am now. A short while ago I was dreading this. Being nude with you. Now I'm —"

"Dreading? Why dreading? Am I that scary?"

"An interesting choice of word, scary." He shifted his eyes from his blank stare to gaze into hers. "I'm trying to think why I was so scared. There's nothing scary at all about this. It's my mind that's scary. Twisted from... I don't want to go there. Not now. Let's just cuddle. I'm wonderfully comfortable doing this."

"That's what we need. We need to feel comfortable, comforted, loved." She kissed his neck and nibbled on his earlobe. "We need to relax and begin getting to know each other on another level. We already share a marvellous friendship, a warm, trusting relationship mentally and spiritually. There's nothing scary there."

"No, and there shouldn't be anything scary — absolutely nothing scary about our physical relationship either. It's my mind saying there is. But I don't know what would be scary or why. I honestly don't. It's just there."

He gazed into her eyes. "May I look at you?"

"You already are. You needn't ask."

"No, I mean look at your body."

"You don't need to ask that either. I love your eyes on me." She flipped off the duvet and rolled onto her back.

He sat up and slowly ran his eyes from her face, down her neck, examining the little hollow at the bottom of her throat and the delicate bulges of her collarbones. He continued down and around each breast, pausing to watch as her nipples puckered tighter. Across her ribs and downward, the flat expanse of her torso captivated him, and he paused to marvel at her navel. A tiny outie. He examined how her pelvis bones framed the flat belly. The short red bush caused his eyes to linger, and he was about to move on when she bent her knees up and dropped them to the sides, exposing further. He looked up to her eyes to see a wide smile and a wink. His eyes went back down. "May I? May I touch you here?"

"Silly, of course, you may. I'd be disappointed if you didn't."

"This is surreal. From the beginning, I was enchanted with you. When was that? Third-year UBC. The drop-dead gorgeous redhead in Creative Writing. You asked me to be your beta reader. I still remember your words: You do mine, I'll do yours. You were so adorably endearing. That's when you started calling me silly."

"I was completely smitten by you. I kept trying to tell you, but all you did was edit my steamier and steamier love letters." Catherine did a Quebecois forehead slap. "You were so thick. You kept finding mixed point-of-view and punctuation errors. I couldn't believe it."

"Why have we never talked of this? A dozen years of conversations. A dozen years of mutually reciprocal horniness."

"Lorne, Lorne, Lorne. Dear sweet Lorne. Don't you realise you're so channelled, so focused." She smiled up at him as he stared at her delicate folds. "So tell me, what gave you the fear of drop-dead gorgeous women?"

"Father Connolly. The Church protected him. It took five years to bring him to trial." He paused to slow his rapid breathing, then he continued. "The trial dragged on, and through it, I had to relive all the torture, the pain, the horror, the —"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop there. Forget the priest. He sounds completely twisted."

"He's dead now; died in the asylum last month. I found out only this week. It's all flooding back now. I had been dreading his release. Often seemed I was the one in prison. Maybe I still am."

She reached up and took his hand, pulling him down onto her and wrapping her arms around him. "I had no idea."

"I'm sorry, I —"

"Sorry? Lorne, why are you sorry?"

"Father Connolly insisted. I always had to be sorry for —"

"Whoa, Lorne. There's no need to be sorry any longer. He's dead."

"Yeah, you're right, he is." He blew out a deep breath "Let's just continue cuddling. I'm comfortable doing this."

They fell asleep entwined in each other. Lorne was awakened by her gentle attempt to untangle. "I didn't mean to wake you, but I need to pee. Any special instructions on the heads?"

"It's a simple electrical flush. The button is obvious."

He felt the urge himself, and after she had hopped back into bed, he trotted off. She was lying on her back with her knees splayed out when he returned. She smiled and softly said, "I've placed a bookmark, thinking you might want to continue from where we left off."

His gaze alternated between her eyes and the display between her legs. "I know all the theory here. God knows I've researched, studied and imagined it enough, but this is..." He paused as he lightly shuddered. "This is so far beyond my dreams." He gently placed two fingers in the patch of short red hair at the top of her cleft and moved them in a slow circle, watching the interaction of lips and hood, watching the ripples flow across her belly and listening to her quiet moans.

He tried things he had read about and had seen in videos, converting theory to practice and watching her response. All the while, he continued the slow circling of her mound, now gently, then with a bit more pressure, then gently again. Faster, then slower.

His alternating intensities continued until he saw her legs twitch and her toes curl. He fell in tune with her body, and a short while later, her belly started heaving and her hips thrusting. She scrunched the bedsheets in tight fists as she writhed in orgasmic ecstasy, then stared wide-eyed at him, mouth open wide with pulsating moans from deep in her throat.

He trembled with her, enraptured by her response. As she began regaining her composure, he asked, "So, does this mean I'm no longer a virgin?"

The image above is of a hand stroking a man's bearded cheek.
Some may interpret it differently.