On quiet winter afternoons, Will used to find himself lying in front of the TV, watching a hockey game, or drinking a beer, ignoring the rest of the world to relax in his own little bubble. High school is tough; not only for students, but for teachers, too. Without the rest he needed, Will never felt recharged on Mondays when he had to jump back into the fray. Never felt that way, that is, until he met Emma Pillsbury.

Emma is not a woman who sits still. She doesn't believe in resting all day; she believes in improving the most of every shining moment. And while Will occasionally finds that exhausting, he does agree that scheduling your day gives you more energy through the week. And he also believes that eating baked goods every Saturday, sitting in her floral-themed kitchen and watching her scrubbing the stove in her orchid-and-rose-printed apron, really recharges him like nothing else.

Emma's cooking is perfect. She doesn't use dairy, but you don't even miss it; her baked goods are light, fluffy, sweet and wonderful. He eats them at the table by the window and watches the expressions on her face when she notices a bit of icing on his chin or a crumb sticking to the corners of his mouth. To the untrained eye, Emma's just as mysophobic as she's ever been. To Will, though, he's seeing the improvements.

She no longer flinches when he touches her bare arm. She doesn't mind when he kisses a bit of icing from her cheek, or runs his hands over her bare back, under her shirt. She will hold his bare hand and not have to sanitize afterwards. She is improving.

Today, they're making chocolate brownies. Emma loves chocolate – Will realized this on their second date, when she kept stealing tiny bites from his chocolate bar at the movies. He thought it uncharacteristic of her; it was, but she can't resist chocolate, and he fast discovered the best way to make her smile was to leave a Hershey's Kiss in the centre of her desk in the mornings, and make sure that he put a fresh packet of hot chocolate by her cup at lunch time.

She takes the hot pan out of the oven; he smiles as she blows on her gloved fingers, gently taking the silver spatula, loosening the cut brownies from the cake pan, running her pink tongue along her lips in concentration. And he gets up, twining his arms around her shoulders, fully expecting her to pull away, chastising him for interrupting her when she's busy, but instead, she turns to him, spatula in hand, and slips a tiny piece of hot brownie in his mouth, her gloved hands just touching his lips, grazing them gently.

His kisses are gentle; she shies so easily. The first time he kissed her, she pulled away almost immediately, the blush on her cheeks matching the red sweater she had on for their date. It was clear she'd never been kissed quite that way; it was clear that she may not ever have been kissed at all.

They haven't discussed sex lives yet. He has a pretty good idea that she's very inexperienced in this regard. She hasn't told him she's still a virgin; she was brought up to never discuss those things. Her proper upbringing makes him love her more; while Terri was an openly sexual woman; Emma is repressed, prudish even. But the difference between that being a turn-off and that being something intriguing is that Will can tell she would love to let go.

One of his goals with Emma is to find the key that unlocks that desire; to let her know that it's okay to want it. He longs to calm her nervousness down, to show her how wonderful being loved can be. It doesn't have to be painful. She doesn't have to be scared.

So far, he's put the brakes on anything that would happen in the bedroom between the two of them. The first time, he'd cradled her in her bed and traced pictures on her back; she slept chastely in his arms, her white nightgown edged with lace, her red hair spilling over her shoulders and across the pristine pillow. She allows him to stay the night sometimes; he's never tried anything else.

With Emma, it's baby steps.

Today, however, he senses a change in her.

Her eyes are warmer than they normally appear; he watches the snowfall reflected in them as she experimentally unbuttons his shirt. He doesn't move; he waits to see what she will do. Her white hands with the long, sensitive fingers trace over the plain soft fabric of his undershirt; he tries a hand under her shirt, to see how she'll react. She warms to him, like a cat; her back arches against his touch, and she reaches to lift her shirt, exposing his hands to the pure winter light, the prisms of the sun catcher in the window tracing over the bones of her back, her visible ribs; the knobs of her shoulder blades.

Her hands hover at his pants button; he can tell she isn't ready to go any further. So he takes her fingers, touches them gently to the button, and of their own accord, she unbuttons his pants, and he lifts her shirt off entirely.

In the bedroom, the bed is made with her traditional white linen; she moves the covers back, spreads the towel from the back of the door over the fitted mattress sheet. He catches her from behind, enjoying her intake of startled breath; he rests his hands on her stomach for a moment, feeling her quickened breaths in and out, measuring the rise and fall. He pushes at her jeans; they fall to the ground to join his, a heap of blue denim in the brightening light through the lace curtains.

She stands before him in her underclothing; he can see that like most women, she takes pleasure in matching sets of bras and panties. These ones are surprisingly bright, but the lime green against her white skin is a splash of colour in the pristine room. Her panties are full-cut, much more Emma than the surprising colour. He runs his fingers on the waistband; waits for her signal. She responds by lifting his undershirt completely off, exposing his chest, running an inquisitive finger over the curly dark-blonde hairs.

There's a moment then, when he undoes the three snaps of her bra, that she freezes; he moves his mouth close to her ear.

"We can stop."

And he can tell that she's almost ready to agree. Her mouth opens and a small puff of breath escapes. But then she shakes her head, and whispers back:

"Don't stop."

Her nipples are pale-pink against the lightly-freckled roundness of her breasts. He runs his finger over the swell of her right breast and watches the goose bumps rise, her nipple pucker and turn ruby-red under his finger. She gasps, arching her back, exposing her neck. He buries his face there, smelling her sweet scent, admiring the spray of freckles across her shoulders and clavicle, nipping her gently on the point of her collarbone.

They slide into bed; he makes sure he lies her down squarely on the towel. She cups her hands around his neck, around his cheeks, running her fingers over the stubble on his cheeks, smiling as he closes his eyes at her feather-light touch. He hooks his thumbs around her panties, drawing them down over her hips, feeling the point of her bones under her soft skin. She sighs, moving restlessly, bucking her hips a little under his touch, and he presses against her, letting her feel his desire for her.

That's when she freezes.

He freezes, too, not really sure what to do now that they're both naked and in her bed. So instead of panicking, he continues his touching; he runs his fingers back over her nipples, touching his lips to hers, nibbling a tiny bit on one of her prominent ears. And then she reaches to the side of the bed, fumbles in her top beside drawer, and he hears a rustling sound.

Of course, he never expected they'd do this without a condom. He watches her as she struggles to open it; her hands are shaking. So he does it himself; after years of practice, he's able to take care of it in a moment. He guides her hand down, letting her see that it's on properly, but her eyes screw up then and her lips pucker into a pout, and he realizes that she may want this; she may want this to the extreme (and what thirty-year-old virgin wouldn't?), but she's got a lot of hang-ups and this is not going to be an easy road.

So he asks her, for the second time:

"Do you want me to stop?"

And through her tears that turn her eyes a glowing chestnut reddish-brown, she shakes her head.

"No," she whispers, but she sounds less sure.

He moves slowly; he gently parts her thighs, running a finger over the warm inside; her skin is so soft, smooth. She shudders under his touch, gasping a little as his fingers brush over the soft hair at the base of her pelvic bone. He strokes her gently, moving into the silky folds of her nether regions, teasing her gently; she gasps then, thrusting her hips upward, and he enters her then, the folds of the towel underneath them twisting and bunching as she digs her nails into his back and arches into him.

It's then that she begins to cry.

His face is creased with concern; he breathes into her ear, feeling the softness of her hair against the stubble of his cheek. "We don't have to do this. It's okay if you're not ready."

The problem is, she'll never be ready. And Emma is tired of waiting, of being scared, of being abnormal and shaky and so scared of the mess. So she shakes her head, for the third time, and sniffles, trying to smile.

"It hurts," she whispers, and then he realizes that his assumption was right; she is a virgin.

When he begins to move inside her, it's soft; it's gentle, it's barely anything at all. But she's keyed up to the highest degree, and any movement is like a thousand degrees more acute than anything else she's ever experienced. She begins to move with him, getting it slowly as he kisses her face, then her lips, then her neck, and nipples.

He doesn't come inside her; even with a condom, that's too much. He pulls out before his climax, holding himself off; her red hair tumbles across her forehead, her eyes closed, and he teases her a little more with his fingers, hears her sharp intake of breath, that tiny sound exiting her lips, and watches her eyes pop open in surprise, the rush of warmth against the towel, her sudden panicked look that he smoothes away with a kiss on her eyes, her cheeks.

"Shh. It's okay, there's no mess."

Her eyes close in relief, in fatigue; he holds her closely against his warm chest, smelling her light sweat mingled with her sweet perfume. He would have cuddled her to sleep, but she won't let them nap in dirty sheets.

She makes him take a shower first as in her bathrobe; she strips the bed, wrapping the dirty towel in the sheets, dropping it into another laundry bag before she lets it touch the rest of her laundry. She's busily wiping down the doorknobs and the bedstead when he comes out, dressed in a towel, smelling of soap and shampoo and fresh water, and kisses her from behind, nuzzling his nose in the nape of her neck.

She pulls him around and grimaces. "I'm messy."

"So come and get clean."

He fast learns she does better in the shower than in the bed. Emma's obsession with all things clean allows her to touch and feel better behind the shield of soap than between the sheets of her virginal white bed. He comes twice in the shower, cupping her head as she orgasms again, the second time in her entire life.

When they're both clean, they sit at the table and she blushes in the afternoon light, licking her fingers where they get covered in chocolate brownie, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, her hair curling gently on her shoulders. He thinks she's never been more beautiful, especially when she looks him in the eye and remembers what just took place, blushing sweetly, averting her eyes shyly from his.

He decides he likes her way of spending the weekend better; it certainly beats watching hockey on the couch while it snows.