I just finish re-combing my parting in the steam-fogged mirror, towel around my hips, when it happens.

One arm steals around my waist from behind, the other sliding across my chest, coming to rest with the palm spread over my right breast, the heel above my heart. I feel the soft press of his bare chest against my naked back, the warmth of one freshly-shaven cheek gently brushing the top of my spine.

I become quite still, controlling my breathing. This...this tenderness...doesn't happen very often and I wish it would happen more.

Of all the surprises he's given me, his completely uninhibited sexual abandon, once we'd crossed the rubicon, was one of the more astonishing. In our private domain of each other, he became the predator. All my vaunted experience was a mere prelude, his invention, athleticism and voracious sensuality pushing me to heights agonisingly sweet and humbling.

Yet he almost never touches me like this. This is a loving touch. If he ever forgets himself this far, he reverts almost immediately to wary suspicion, as though expecting to be mocked for such overt sentimentality. As if a touch like this reveals something more intimate, more vulnerable than anything we've yet shared.

Carefully, with slow, casual movements, I lay down my comb and move my arms lightly over his, brushing my fingers over his golden-haired forearms, covering the backs of his hands with mine, caressing his knuckles and sliding my fingers between his long, tapering ones. I let the weight of my arms rest softly on his, tightening the embrace. Trapped, but oh so gently. He can shrug free with the minimum of fuss.

I know him. He's regretting it already, plotting how to get out of this without too much embarrassment. I can let him off lightly, turn suddenly and drag him into a passionate kiss, pretend I thought his gesture an erotic overture. But I don't want us both to lie to each other. So I let another couple of seconds tick by, quiet and still, savouring the moment, and his dilemma.

He's moving. I allow him, very reluctantly, to slide out of it. I know that he will keep his head turned away as he parts from me, so I can't see his face in the mirror, and that he will avoid eye contact with me for the rest of the morning.

But before he lets me go, I feel just the briefest touch of his lips at the nape of my neck.

I grin back at the absurdly love-struck face in the mirror.

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