I nodded at Jacob and turned toward the entrance to Cluckingham Palace, the chicken curry establishment where my new knitting acquaintances were gathered. “I have to go now, Steven.”

“Fine. That’s fine. I’ll find you tomorrow, though, and we’ll scope out how long it will take us to sprint across Trafalgar Square.”

I rolled my eyes even as I grinned. “Goodbye, Steven.”

“Goodbye, Toots.” He ended the call with a kissy sound.

Jacob had released my arm but he stilled hovered. The footsteps were closer now, and for some inexplicable reason, I shivered.

Then, I saw him.

I couldn’t be certain as he was still approximately forty yards away, but his blue eyes seemed to glitter and flash when our gazes met; at least my toes, ears, heart, and internal organs thought so. His steps, as usual, weren’t hurried; but his movements were swift, adroit, and marked by a careless confidence and grace that straddled the line between self-possession and arrogance.

Twisting pleasure pain followed by shortness of breath held me in place—my expected companions every time Quinn initially came into view. I watched him as he crossed to me.

Even after our five months of dating, I always felt a little helpless and flustered by his presence—especially at first—as though I’d been blindfolded and spun in a circle then subsequently told I needed to write a eulogy for Dr. Seuss in iambic pentameter.

I noted that his pace slowed as he neared and that his eyes were snagged on my shoes. I was quite proud of them to be honest. They were red satin with an oversized matching bow at the toe. The heel was severely spiked. But since they were slightly platform, the four-inch heel was really only three inches, max. I’d just acquired them earlier in the afternoon from a remarkable shoe store in the fashionable alleyway behind Liberty of London.

The purchase had cheered and warmed me at the time. Now, under the level and pointed heat of his gaze, I was nearly burning up.

He stopped some two yards from where I stood and slowly tucked his hands into his pockets. His eyes were still pointed at my feet when he said, “Nice shoes.”

I let that statement and the delicious timbre of his voice dance between my head and heart; then predictably, it settled between my hipbones in the vicinity of my ovaries. If my body were a map, the area currently suffering prolonged side effects was just south of my uterus and north of my thighs.

So, my vagina.

Hence, my helplessness.

Before Quinn, my vagina and I were acquainted but not really friends. It seemed like a bother mostly, a mystery, always underperforming or causing me pain. I reflected that my troubles were likely user error; but I wasn’t certain how to operate it. Admittedly, I’d never successfully navigated the labyrinth known as the labia, never mind the confounding clitoris.

However, since Quinn, I’d become willingly powerless against all of its parts (not to mention his parts).

“Thank you.” I watched as his languid perusal began at my ankles and climbed to my legs, thighs, and upward. Aside from my shoes, I was wearing the outfit he’d picked out for me earlier that morning. He’d left it on the edge of the bed along with black lingerie accompanied by a note that simply stated Wear me.

The little black dress with white polka dots was much tighter and shorter than I was accustomed to wearing. But he’d never explicitly requested that I wear anything before. In fact, all of my clothes seemed to irritate him, my underwear especially. Therefore, as it was no bother to me, I dressed as requested.

Finally, his eyes met mine. Judging by the ferocity of his gaze, I’d made the right decision to wear the outfit he’d prescribed. My chest dually tightened and expanded. The sensation was discombobulating, and his eyes, so blue, had arrested my breath and brains.

“Your eyes are blue.” I said.

He blinked once, his mouth hooked subtly to one side, and he leisurely strolled three steps closer to me. “Yes. That is true.”

“I have brown eyes.” I said; the words fell from my mouth like chunks of unmasticated food—clumsily and with the inattention that accompanies being mesmerized and brainless.

Quinn bit his top lip and glanced over my shoulder at Jacob. I knew he was fighting a smile. This was how he frequently reacted to my strange blurts of nonsense.

“We’re going out.” Quinn was now addressing Jacob. “Bring the car.”

“Yes, Mr. Sullivan.” The guard’s curt reply was soon followed by the sound of his retreating footsteps. I noted that only Jacob was departing; this left us with my other two guards, not counting any that might be trailing Quinn.

Not for the first time since we’d arrived in London, my confusion at the need for such a breadth of security snagged my attention. However, my disgruntlement at being saddled with a nuisance of men (where nuisance is the collective noun) dressed in nicely tailored suits dispersed the longer I gazed at Quinn.

I watched as he scanned the cavernous space, his gaze lingering for a brief moment on two distinct spots over my left shoulder. His eyes seemed to be a source of light and were more than visible in the dimly lit expanse. They were the exact color of glacial ice—as filmed by National Geographic in their very informative IMAX film on the retreating solid formations of the Antarctic.

“Why is Dan here? Where’s Pete?” he asked me, his attention still over my shoulder.

I blinked twice, pulled from my recollections of the Antarctic as related to Quinn’s eyes, and glanced behind me. I attempted and failed to find Dan (or Pete) in the shadows.

“Is Dan here? Where is he? I don’t see him.” I squinted and asked the echoing vastness. “Are you here, Dan the security man?”

Quinn’s hands were suddenly at my waist, and I started, jumped at the unexpected contact, and turned back to him. He was in my space. I didn’t hate that he moved silently or that he had a habit of suddenly appearing where before I was alone. But I hadn’t yet been able to acclimate to it.

He gazed down at me. I gazed up at him. A soft sigh—at his nearness, his warmth, the smell of his lovely cologne, the small whisper of a smile hovering in his eyes—passed between my lips.

Then, in his quiet way that always disarmed me, he said, “I missed you today.”

I sighed again, this time because his sweet words chased the breath out of me. I grinned like a content cat—which didn’t make any sense, because no other animals but humans smile in order to demonstrate pleasure.

I pressed my lips together to keep from relating this as a fact.

Quinn’s gaze narrowed on mine. He must’ve perceived that I was suppressing a tangent, because he said, “Say it.”

“What?”

He lifted his eyebrows, dipped his chin, and issued me a very effective glare that said, You know what.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s completely unnecessary information.”

“I want to know.” He dropped his voice nearly an octave and held me against him as though to emphasize his point.

This only served to make me more deliciously agitated. “Quinn...” I whispered. I didn’t know why I whispered.

“Janie, everything you say is fascinating.” He whispered too.

“No, it’s not. And the fact that you think I’ll believe that you believe that I’ll believe a statement so patently false is somewhat concerning to me.”

He took a moment to sort through the tangled web of my words before he responded. “I’m not really sure what that means. However, the fact that you think I’d say something patently false to you is very concerning to me.”

We held each other’s eyes, a showdown of manufactured guilt. He won.

“Fine. You want to know? I was just thinking that I was smiling like a contented cat, which troubled me as an analogy because no animals other than humans smile as a demonstration of pleasure. Some people think animals do, especially cats and dogs, but those people are mistaken. The mouth curve is incidental. Cats purr to demonstrate pleasure, and dogs wag their tails.”

“How do we know for sure that purring is the only way cats demonstrate pleasure?”

“The two studies I reviewed on animal behavior didn’t definitively rule out other outward signs of pleasure. Rather, they noted that the only reliable demonstration—specifically, for a cat—was purring.”

“People do more than smile to show happiness and contentment. It seems to me that cats, dogs, and other animals likely display other outward manifestations as well.” He shrugged. As usual when we conversed about such things—some tangent of my trivial knowledge—he appeared to be genuinely interested and engaged.

I loved this about him. No one had ever done this with me before, engagement on the random topics. He always asked questions, tried to relate it back to a different concept, make the small fact seem large and important.

I nodded at his excellent point, because it was an excellent point. “You are absolutely correct. I admit that one major flaw of both the studies was that they only sought to discover whether animals smile to denote happiness or pleasure. Once they ruled smiling out, they provided very little in the way of additional information. Maybe I should contact one of the authors and ask if there were any outward displays shared between species in the entire animal kingdom.”