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usually are, when Mickey Rourke decides to pour the contents of a fridge all over them.
    But then, he probably wasn’t Mickey Rourke . Or maybe he was, but modern-day Mickey Rourke . Kind of falling apart, too-much-plastic-surgery Mickey Rourke . Mickey Rourke with a bald spot and a potbelly and a whole host of other things she found she didn’t care about at all. She didn’t care.
    She didn’t care as long as he walked into her apartment like her husband coming home, said, “ hi honey, did you miss me?” Then did the kinds of things that didn’t belong in that cookie cutter conventional world at all. As long as that happened, what did it matter?
    As long as she could feel this anticipation, for someone who might well be a third rate Mickey Rourke . As long as she could carry on bristling the moment she heard the door go, and hear her own breathing become so grating and loud, as though the darkness of the blindfold made everything else bigger and so much more.
    She could make out every squeak and click of his shoes, on her hardwood floors. And she knew when his breathing joined hers, largely even, but with just that hint of roughness, as if he’d jogged up the stairs to her apartment. The apartment he couldn’t possibly know the number for unless he had access to that information.
    He probably had access to a lot of her information—just little details, though. Where she lived, her contact number. That sort of thing. Nothing he’d used until she’d invited him to, of course.
    Nothing he’d used until she kind of knew who he was. She kind of knew because he didn’t speak, and speaking would have marked him out, immediately. He had a very distinctive voice, after all.
    And cold hands.
    She flinched away almost directly, but mainly because of the giddiness that suddenly flooded her, rather than the chilly feel of his touch. He wasn’t what she’d expected, not at all, not in a million years, but something about that was utterly thrilling and strange and new, and it made her want to rip off the blindfold immediately.
    She didn’t, however. Anticipation, after all, was half the fun. And besides, it was his game. She wanted him to do the revealing. She wanted him to do it, slow and careful, and she wanted him to run his hand down her naked back again, before he spoke.
    He did so. Just the back of his hand, she imagined, and barely doing anything beyond trailing, soft and feather light. It felt like being pulled apart, one tiny piece at a time. She sobbed, but hardly cared that the noise sounded so undone and ridiculous.
    He deserved it.
    Then he pressed his hands over her shoulders, and dug deep into the muscle there like a touch-message telling her to relax, and he deserved it so much she wanted to turn around and throw her arms around him.
    But oh no, no. Anticipation. Waiting. Slow. Those were his watchwords, and she obeyed them even when he didn’t say them. Just the feel of his hands spreading down over her arms, in no hurry at all—it made her obey.
    His palms felt as soft as anything. And his touch was as assured as his typed words, so deliberate that she felt mapped out and newly discovered. When his hands found hers and linked with them, briefly, all the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
    She sighed, but sighed more deeply as his touch moved on, to find its way around her body.
    It seemed like a hundred years since he’d started, but really she suspected he had only a little more patience than her. His hands slid around and up, cupping her breasts before a minute or so had gone by, and when he did she heard him sigh.
    She felt it on the nape of her neck. Something made the bed dip, and she imagined him giving in to one knee on her bed. Just to get closer, just to get more, palms pressing into her ridiculously tight nipples but not yet going for anything like a grope.
    She doubted grope was even in his vocabulary. His thumbs pressed inwards, his fingers stroked and stirred over her flesh, but