He waits for an impact that never comes.

He waits for the rush of breath, the catastrophic collapse of personal space and the deletion of his sense of self and awareness. He waits for her to occupy his entire field of vision, face swinging to eclipse the universe and for the crush of lips between teeth. He waits for the surge of breasts against his ribs and the hands that seize at his head behind his ears with impatient belonging.

But it never comes.

The declined anticipation of her lust stutters through his mind.

Impossible, she's wearing that smile, and the eyes are present too, feline and liquid and immovably fixed upon him. Her legs are equally fluid, sliding past each other with the ease of oiled snakes, taunting and tempting as he can't help but imagine the silk of her skin draped against his thigh.

Fingertips barely graze his face, and even though part of him sets a universal record for launch velocity he is too puzzled by her care and the trembling, calculated enticement of her every movement.

The shock has more or less guaranteed that his head barely twitches when she closes her eyes and slips her chin up over his shoulder, and again, he waits for the slick inner edge of her lips to touch.

But they never do. Instead her hands draw his fingers together, coiling them into a rough approximation of a familiar shape.

She whispers, tremulous in the dark.

He frowns for a moment, even if he understood before she finished speaking. His chin inclines a fraction of a degree if for no other reason than she cannot be denied. She pulls back, eyes still closed, and he can see her shiver because he knows she is fighting the rush he has been waiting for.

Moonlight limns her body, a spindle of glistening flesh lathed by a god's hand, his personal caryatid centered in his foyer. He does what she asks, slowly, letting her listen to his hands with rough-edged fingers.

There is no delay, no wait, because he is already standing in her shadow. Or perhaps the other way around, it's hard to tell at this range. Out of curiosity, he tilts his head. She mirrors him fluidly, smoothly, as if she were a part of him.

He watches a while, and he notices she is not shivering, not struggling against his inexorable grip. Her hands are still folded around his, but he notices only the arrowhead of her tongue traveling along her lower lip as he reaches up to lick a tooth in his own mouth. He wonders if Archimedes ever had a moment quite like this.

He licks his lips, experimentally. She follows suit.

Strange, he thinks, almost, how little effort this is taking. No one has ever surrendered so completely before. His eyes wander to her eyes, and she is staring directly back at him, with quickened breath in perfect rhythm with his own. And then down, to where the shoulder of her garment is already slipping down her arm and the collar dipping dangerously low.

Inspired, he starts this the way this originally started, and he lifts both of their right hands into the air and gives her the look of a man learning something for the first time. She just shudders with a sweeter kind of dread.