It was six months since I’d laid eyes on him, and I had thought I’d moved on, until he showed up.

Perversely, or maybe because I was a lot angrier than I cared to admit, I found myself in a particularly caustic mood. It didn’t help that he was sending all those same old mixed signals I was used to, flirting and talking loosely about sex, then turning coolly detached and judgmental if I warmed to the subject. He was infuriating, and I hated myself for liking him.

At what I suppose was the nadir of the evening’s entertainment, he started talking about how much he would like to go to bed with two women, his ultimate fantasy. A little drunk, I accused him of only wanting a threesome of the mind; he said he’d be fine with one of the physical variety, but got awkward and then aggressive when I joked that I might be one of the three.

Finally, one of the other women discovered a book, a kind of self-help bible for men who want to learn how to manipulate women to get them into bed, and the group of us split solidly down gender lines for an increasingly uncivil discussion of sexual politics. I kept insisting to whoever would listen that I far preferred a man to be himself than to pretend to be some kind of alpha male super-stud, and was shouted down by both the men and women present: “Bullshit! Bullshit!”

It took a good deal more booze and some calm music to mellow us all out. I was tipsy and uncomfortable, and spent a little too long in the bathroom, trying to decide if I should stay or go. I was so attracted to him, and so frustrated that despite our chemistry, things had never progressed to the physical. When you constantly hear that a man never turns down sex, you can’t help but be hurt when you seem to be the exception to the rule.

When I returned to the living room, everyone else had left, and it was just him and me. There seemed to be no easy way to leave abruptly, because he was melancholy and had already poured me another drink.

But when I broached the subject of whether or not he wanted me to stay a while longer, he said, “Whatever. I’m going to bed,” and vanished into his room without another word.

Feeling angry, useless, far too turned on, and knowing I was absolutely incapable of driving, I stood by the window for the better part of an hour, finishing the last of the wine and brooding. I felt like I’d been put in an utterly impossible position, because he didn’t care whether I stayed or left, and either way he’d grabbed control. I didn’t want this night to be about him winning, or me losing. I wanted to connect. He claimed all night that he wasn’t about “scoring,” but it seemed obvious he was out to win.

I wondered where the man I encountered every now and then hid in him for the rest of the time. Sometimes he was so authentic, so genuine. And then, like he’d flipped a switch, he shifted back to some kind of shadow of himself. I could tell he enjoyed playing that game, untouchably suave and self-assured, but I liked him so much better as himself. Like I’d insisted earlier in the evening. I was conscious that he’d stayed out of the name-calling – in fact, he had met my eyes during the hottest part of the discussion and smiled, gave me a little nod even, as if telling me he agreed although he was enjoying the fireworks too much from the sidelines to come to my rescue.

I was just starting to feel like I was sobering up when I heard his door open.

He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher still on the table, drank, then said, “You’re still here?”

I stiffened. “You want me gone?” For a moment, I’d entertained the fantasy that I’d get my moment of connection after all.

“No—” he said, and there was a softness, a kindness in his voice that hadn’t been there earlier. “No, not at all.”

He joined me at the window, and took my arm.

I wanted him so much, like I had almost since the day we met. But too much of him seemed to be about wanting to control every situation. Unless he was off-guard, an unusual state, I felt like I was his audience and not really interacting.

Now, he seemed less focused on control. I told myself, go for it. You may not get a better chance, ever.

I took his hand off my arm and led him to the centre of the room. There was moonlight in his backyard through the window, but everything inside was dark and still. We were utterly alone in the quiet night.

“Then stand here,” I said, and moved away from him.

“And close your eyes. Can I trust you to keep them closed?”

“Okay,” he said, and did.

I came close again, touched the back of his neck. He pulled away from my touch, and for a moment, I almost convinced myself to go after all.

I knew there was anger, frustration at least in my voice as I told him, “Can you just. . .”

I didn’t really know what I wanted to say. Just let this happen? Don’t try to control it? Pretend that you like me, just for tonight?

“What?” he said.

And I decided that whatever happened, I would go with it. Maybe I’d been as guilty of trying to control our interaction as he was. Maybe I was projecting even. I realized he might have been as nervous all along as I was. Does she like me? What if she’s really just waiting for something better to come along?

“Never mind,” I said. “Forget that. Can I just – Keep your eyes closed. Okay?”

He started to speak, then just nodded. I took it as a good sign, too scared to do otherwise. I’d already decided what I wanted to do, and could only hope he’d allow me to. More, that he’d come into this little game and enjoy it.

My heart was racing. “Why,” I said, “will a guy sleep with any woman, any time, until she wants him?”

“That’s not true,” he said.

He was keeping his word, keeping his eyes shut. His mouth had twisted into a frown. I was screwing this up, wrecking the chance to see if we could take this frustrating thing of ours further.

“Do you want me?” I blurted. “No – don’t answer. Just. . . keep your eyes closed.”

But he answered anyway, quietly. “Yes, I want you.”

There was so much honesty in his tone, so much simplicity, that my heart slowed. Instead of a frantic beat of blood in my forehead and throat, I felt the coolness of the moonlight outside the window in me.

Reaching out, I drew a finger across his shoulder blades, and felt him shiver.

I circled him, every now and then reaching out a finger, to slide it along some part of him.

He said my name, in a whisper.

“Don’t say anything, especially not that,” I said. “Eyes closed, just feel, okay? Just feel.”

I began to undress him, slowly, all the way to nothing, loving the feel of his skin, the colour of it as I unpeeled him in the moonlight. I kissed him on his arms, his back, on his chest, brief touches of lips to skin and then gone, light, passing contact.

“Don’t worry about anything,” I whispered. “Don’t think. . . Don’t mind this.”

I took off my scarf, and tied it around his eyes.

I could see his flesh goose-pimpling in the dim room as I circled him, looking him over. I loved his body, every part of it. It was an extension of him, the honest him I saw when I liked him best, the him I saw now.

“Cold?” I asked, then reminded him, “Don’t speak.”

He shook his head, and shivered. I felt my own arms, felt the hairs raised there. I wasn’t cold either, not particularly, but the goose-flesh had risen all over me. All that would warm me was the touch of his body.

I lifted his hands, spread the fingers, and brought them to me. I guided them to my face, to my lips, inside my bra. His lips parted – I put a finger to them, and he kissed it. The feeling of that touch slid all the way through me to my toes.

Still holding his hands, I led him through into his bedroom, the first time I’d passed through its door, and to the edge of the bed. Standing beside him, I stroked his thigh, and slid my hand up to brush his cock for the first time. From half-hard, he stiffened, the head bobbing up and down to finally lay flat against his belly.

I moved myself between him and the bed, and helped him take off my dress, my bra, my panties. I used his hands to cover my bare breasts, before moving them down to circle my elbows. Then I pulled him toward me until the back of my legs touched the edge of the bed – then a little farther so he had my balance in his hands.

“Now,” I said, “you take over.

And he breathed in, as if only now waking up to where he was and what he was doing, his grip on my arms all that kept me from falling backwards onto his bed. Then, he overbalanced me so I fell back, him on top, his bare knee immediately pushing between and spreading my legs.

He attacked my lips with his, pushing them apart with his tongue the way his knee had split my legs wide. He made no attempt to remove the blindfold, but drank me instead with his strong, rough hands. One slid around my back, the other staying to cup my breast, the thumb stroking a nipple, the curve where it met my torso.

When his lips moved down my neck, I couldn’t stop myself. I threw my head back, gasped with the sheer pleasure of it, and breathed out his name.

“Do you want to say that?” he whispered, moving up to tickle my ear with his lips. The soft scarf around his eyes brushed the side of my face.

“No names?” I said.

“No,” he said. “Say it. Say my name.”

And I did. I called it out. I whispered it, whimpered it, as he moved hands and lips blindly over my body, discovering without his vision what we’d seemed unable to before.

When I thought I would go mad from sensation, he groaned and pulled the blindfold off. He raised himself on both arms and looked at me intently.

“Do you want this?”

The honesty, the nakedness of the moment was too much for me. “I’ve wanted it since I met you,” I said.

I felt hollowness in my stomach, felt tears rising in the corners of my eyes. I’ve just fucked up, I thought. A man doesn’t want what he can have. That damned book in his library, the stupid manipulative games it preached. Caught in the moment, had I been played, in a game I only thought was mine?

He nodded, and I froze, like my blood had ceased suddenly to flow.

“Why?” he said.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Anything I say is beside the point now,” I said, probably about the stupidest thing I could have thought of.

There we were, naked and touching, his cock resting against my belly, and I had never felt more awkward in my life. I could tell he felt it too.

I did the only thing I could think of. I reached down into the deepest part of me, the part that loved truth and connection and loved love and loving. I looked directly into his eyes and tried to find that part of him.

“Make it all right again,” I said.

And his eyes went soft all of a sudden, green and deep like the Caribbean sea. He took my face in his hands, and pressed his lips to mine. Eyes closed, both blind now, we kissed.

We made love like that, in the double darkness of his dark room and behind closed eyes.

When he fell asleep, I lay for a few minutes until the surge of pleasure and affection was too much to bear. Afraid of what would happen if we woke together – equally afraid of rejection or a return of my feelings – I dressed and slipped away home.