"Do you want me to go home?" he asked. "I'd rather stay." He was naked still, and so was I, our warm bodies under the covers, the lights all out in the house. He was spooning at my back, his chin on my shoulder and his hands toying with my hair while I looked out at the room.

I stiffened. No overnights. That was a rule.

But I wanted him to stay.

"What's wrong?" he asked in a voice rough from sex.

"Nothing."

"Bullshit."

He was right. I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I turned to him, searching for his gorgeous eyes in the darkness, then ducked into him, tangling my legs with his, snuggling into his warm, broad chest, and nuzzling his pectoral muscles. I knew the name of those for sure. I started kissing his torso, his nipples, his soft skin covering strong muscles. I rested my chin on his chest and looked up as he settled himself on his back.

"The truth? It scares me to be with you. It breaks all of my rules," I admitted.

"What rules?" he asked, curious.

"I have rules. About what I will or will not do in bed."

I could almost feel his eyebrows raising and his lips twitching. Bastard. He was going to laugh at me.

"Is this set of rules written down?" he asked in a mock serious tone.

"No."

"Can you tell me what they are?"

Yeah, I could do that. Not.

"No."

"Can you text them to me?"

Okay, now he was just messing with me.

"Why don't I just text you the ones you've already broken."

"Nope. I want to know all of them, Amelia."

Fine. I would tell him.

"I just don't do anything other than missionary."

He looked at me, shocked, shaking his head once, quickly, back and forth.

"Um, what?"

"That's my rule. I don't ever spend the night or have others spend the night. I don't go down on men and they don't go down on me. I don't do anything kinky."

This distracted him.

"What's kinky? I'm interested. Very."

"Everything but missionary."

He laughed, a low surfer chuckle. "Okay, Movie Star. Nothing but missionary. I already broke that at Southwinds. Can I test your resolve on these rules? Am I allowed to encourage you to break them?"

Yes, I thought. You already are. I was already trusting you like my therapist said to do. I was starting to feel things, and not just orgasms. I was starting to really recover from depression.

I didn't tell him that. Instead, I said, "Fair enough," and smiled.

He wasn't letting go of the topic, though.

"Why do you have these rules?"

"Because." Because everything else opens you up to trusting someone. Everything else makes you vulnerable. Everything else makes it so you cannot hide from someone. There was too much intimacy and that scared me.

"I'd never do anything you didn't want me to do. And I'd never do anything to hurt you."

Not on purpose, I thought. I didn't say anything in response.

"Is that really how you want to be? Just missionary sex where you gamble whether you get an orgasm unless the guy really knows what he's doing?"

How did he know that? For the first time, I wondered about his experience. He seemed to know what he was doing, for sure.

But he was being sincere and I returned the favor. "Truthfully, I don't know what I want anymore. I just know that I like how you make me feel. I like how you make me feel things that I haven't felt in a long time. Like an orgasm," I said in a little voice. He squeezed me with his arms. "It was hard to have an orgasm while I took so many antidepressants. I'm still recovering. And I know that I am all confused."

"Let me straighten you out. If we come across a rule you don't want to break, you tell me and we won't break it. I'll listen to anything you want to tell me. Otherwise, let's just see where this goes. I'm never going to force you to do anything, but you have a shell, Movie Star, and I want to get in there and crack it wide open and see how magnificent you already are and how magnificent you will be."

That statement would require some serious analysis when I was out of the orbit of the Sun God. So I moved on. "Not spending the night is one of my rules. I don't do the walk of shame." Then I continued in a lower voice. "It's been a while since anyone has wanted to spend the night here. I haven't been much company over the past year dealing with stuff."

"Does it bother you if I stay?"

"No. I want you to stay here. It feels really good to have you here."

"Are you tired?" he asked.

"Not really," I said.

"Good, because I really want to fuck you again," he whispered in my ear. "I waited more than a decade to do it the first time." He traced my arm with his fingertips, making me have goose pimples up and down my body. I can feel behind me that he was getting aroused again. So was I. Still. I stiffened. I don't fuck.

"I don't fuck," I said.

He looked at me in amazement and curiosity, his green eyes widening and then narrowing in the dark. "Yes you do."

"No I don't." I was churlish and I didn't care.

He hauled me over him, having me straddle him and then pulled me down and gathered me in his arms and asked, patiently and slowly, like he asked my order in the coffee shop, "Then what do you do?"

I immediately responded. "Have sex. Sometimes 'make love.' It's against my rules to fuck."

"Newsflash, Movie Star, but I fucked you twice."

This may be true, if I admitted it. A part of me thought I may be crossing another something off of my rules. Still, I dug in and needed to fight for it. Lawyer instincts.

"I don't like that word," I groused.

"Okay," he said gently, "you don't like that word. But you sure seemed to like experiencing it. What other words don't you like?"

"What are you after now, a list?"

"Yeah, pretty much." I could see that his eyes were dancing with amusement and I decided to bury my face in his neck. Finally, I muttered, "The c-word."

He laughed out loud. "Cunt?"

I cringed. Then I took a deep breath and started listing. "Pussy. Cock. Dick. Vagina. Penis. Anus. Bitch. Semen." He was grinning. "Lubricant. I could keep going, if you like."

"Question. Is it that you think that you don't like a word or that you're scared of how the word makes you feel?"

I looked at him. "What are you, my therapist?"

"Not even close. But a word is just a word. You can make it mean whatever it is you want it to mean. You can award it whatever connotations you want to give it. But if you don't give it power, it doesn't have it."

I gazed at him in silence. So he was an enlightened sage, was he?

But he continued. "A priest told me that 'fuck' means to plow. So in the olden days you used to fuck a field. There's no reason to cringe about fucking. It's a normal word."

"A priest?" I asked.

"Parochial school," he muttered in explanation. "That's a story for another day."

"I like the word 'plow,'" I said.

"I like to plow you," he said with a gravity-defying grin.

I gave him a shove.

"I really want to plow you again," he whispered in my ear. "Right now."

I took a deep breath, crossed another rule off my list, got right up and personal with his gorgeous face, and said with resignation but a giggle, "Nah, just fuck me."

And so he did, again.