She strained back, arching her body so that her silky black hair almost brushed his legs. He felt her shudder deep inside, losing control one more time. Then she came slowly forward, until her flushed face was close to his and he could feel her deep drawn breaths and gentle moans. She smiled and licked her lips. His smiling eyes on hers, he cupped the full smoothness of her buttocks and felt her lift, rising away from his stomach, drawing herself to the end of him. For a moment he had to catch his breadth. She giggled. He laughed.

She eyed him mischievously and moved slowly down on him until he felt the pressure of her muscular loins against his. Hey eyes were half closed, the lids trembling as she concentrated on his pleasure. He felt her move inside again as she arched away from him, pushing away from his chest with her hands. Slowly and then faster she rode him, her head thrown back. He watched, excited as he always was by her voluptuous intensity. Then her nails dug into his skin and she was moaning again, over and over.

They lay in his bed for a long time, half-covered by the damp duvet. He turned and looked at her thick, silky black hair spread over his arm and across the blue pillow. They kissed, and exchanged a gentle smile.

Since She had come over to talk yesterday they had been together almost every minute. It was unlike anything she had expected. They had talked about It, about work, about saving his cleaner from a domestic abuse case and the black hole that is Zimbabwe’s legal system. Instead of being “taken out” to grand restaurants by someone who was obviously going to great pains to impress her and make up for some Great Mistake, she had found herself walking alongside him in a shopping mall with no particular sense of urgency or purpose. Found herself eating simple food at odd hours; found herself curled up on the couch in his house with John Legend on the iPod and her feet in his lap, and found in all these simple things that she was deeply affected by him, by them, the way they were together. The spontaneity, the laughter of the whole thing was all the more striking in the context of what her daily routine had become since they had broken up and she had gone back to work.

It wasn’t just a question of the increased pressure which came with discussion, accusation, apology. There was something vaguely scary about being in such close quarters with someone who had caused her so much hurt and pain. In the midst of what seemed sometimes like the ocean of ulterior motive and hidden intention in which she now had to swim, the old He had bobbed up like a life belt. Funny, spontaneous and entirely engrossed with her. Strangely enough she got the feeling that the end of their relationship, and with it the lack of pressure, seemed to afford him the same kind of relief. He seemed to welcome her as if his house were a sanctuary. He only had to touch her and She would relax immediately. And when she touched him it seemed a natural extension of their discourse, their communication. True, he obviously wanted the relationship to go back further than she was ready for, but she believed that in time even that would no longer be an issue.

He breathed her scent and touched her fine skin with his lips. Being close, he felt a heaviness in his throat. How could he ever hurt something so precious? He wanted her back so much, it was difficult to keep control, to keep the thickness out of his voice. She held him too. She had pressed herself against his thigh, straining against him as though he were in fact trying to push her away. He tried to look at her face, but she kept her head buried in his neck. She stayed like that for a long time, breathing through her mouth. He finally looked into her eyes, sure that he would see the fear there which was becoming familiar to him. She looked at him, brows compressed in a line over her soft dark eyes.

“Bitch.”

And her expression, the way she spoke, her beautiful disarming frankness, filled him with love. He kissed her forehead, her fragrant hair. She fell asleep in his arms.