This was all far more convoluted than Damen's usual bedroom philosophy, which he had always assumed to be a mutually agreeable exchange of pleasure, hardly even worth calling a philosophy, it came so simple and natural to him. Laurent's baffled him. He couldn't fathom why lovemaking needed to be negotiated, planned out, each touch carefully plotted like it was some court dance. It seemed a cold way to treat a lover.

He stared at his now-empty hand. "I don't - assume that we're going to make love, just because you touch me. I don't even know what to ask for." Damen felt restless just sitting there in the bed afraid to make a move around Laurent. He longed to get up and pace, his usual strategy for thinking problems through. "I wasn't planning, hard as it may be for you to believe. You touched me. I touched you back. This is how I've always done things, Laurent. I'm not...not like you."

His hands curled into the bedcovers, tugging them smooth over his lap, over the space between them. "I am willing to try, for your sake." How much worse could it get, after all? Damen exhaled on a long breath. "What I want is to hold you without fear. To kiss you when you come close to me, as you did this morning. To touch you when you touch me. I don't know what will tempt you. If I did, I would do it."

He'd tried. He had kept their conversation chaste, not even attempting to touch Laurent, merely listening to him. Asking before disrobing him. Laurent was right at least that he had misinterpreted the physical gestures as more than they were intended. Damen cast a look at him that was frustrated without any of the anger from earlier behind it. The more he learned of the man he'd married, the less he felt that he really knew Laurent.