Sleep drifts, but for once I don’t wake startled, thinking I’ve overslept or missed something important. My heart doesn’t race for no apparent reason. I draw a breath and feel something as foreign as peace. Instinctively, I know you’re there before I open my eyes, before I sense the warmth radiating off you, and without registering your soft breathing. I turn slowly while my eyes are still adjusting to the light—still try...

I worshipped the ground she walked upon long before the flight from London touched the tarmac. Long before she let her flight-tired legs touch any ground that had ever been familiar to me. Three flights, four airports, through two continents and an entire ocean. A journey from the sunbaked desert to the frozen landscape I call home. I’m old enough to be her father. She’s young enough to be my daughter. A twenty-two-year-o...

“I’ve…” she started hesitantly. “I’ve never taken a cock up my ass.” “It’s not an obsession,” I told her. “Honestly.” There was a pause. Then a whisper. “Maybe not to you, darling.” --- I’ve never been much for Valentine’s Day. Not until I met her. I woke to the ease of her against my chest, and it took me a while to settle into the reality of everything. I might have blinked twice before my eyes settled on her smile. “Go...