The Seventy-Three, or From Genius to Sex Genius: A Master Class, by Dr Sheldon Cooper (BS, MS, MA, PhD, ScD)

Summary: 'Their second time wasn't really a second time. It wasn't even their first time.'

A quarter sexy (I hope), a quarter sweet and loving (I wish), a quarter humorous (I think) and a quarter crack-ish (oh my). In summary, this is merely an excuse to document the Shamy's amorous life.

Disclaimer: I own nothing at all. I'm just playing with these characters.

A/N: When I plan to be really serious about a story, I tend to fall into humor and crack-ish situations ten seconds later. It's a real problem. Please don't let me write too many M-rated fics. Thanks for reading and letting me know what you think, if you wish to do so. Feedback is always appreciated. :-)

Their first time wasn't really a first time. It involved lots of rolling - rolling dice, rolling words on his tongue, and later that night, rolling on his back to stare at the ceiling with the hopes to find relief from his exacerbated desire as he rolled down his pajama pants.

Their second time wasn't really a second time. It wasn't even their first time. He sat on the corner of his bed, anxiously staring at his girlfriend as she pulled her tee-shirt over her head. Amy was his about-to-be first lover, and with all the effort he'd invested to arrive to this night relatively unscathed, he sincerely hoped she'd be his last.

'Amy.' So much texture, so many contrasts. Curves and straight lines, arranged into a dizzying assemblage that parched his throat. An abrasion on her elbow reminding him that he had an ointment somewhere to soothe it.

Her skirt fell to the floor in a whisper of fabric.

'Amy.' The vulnerable skin of her belly. A cluster of beauty marks forming the Apus constellation above her navel. The prickle of goose bumps on her arms.

'Amy.' Her hair spilling over her shoulder as she leaned forward. Her face hidden as she reached back to unhook her bra. Her shy look at him when she straightened up. The swell of her breasts.

'I changed my mind. I… can't, Amy. I can't. Not tonight.'

She let out a strangled cry. 'Why?' Her hands went up to her bare bosom, and he attempted to ignore the now familiar twinge of mixed unease and want in his lower body. 'Hand me my glasses, please.'

Sheldon leaned back on the bed and reached out to the night table. Her fingers felt searing hot against his as she grabbed her glasses from him. Her eyes searched him, seeking answers, and it pained him to witness how frightened she looked. 'Don't you like how I look?' she blurted out with a shaky, raspy voice. 'I put on some sensible undergarments, as you requested. You told me you were ready, Sheldon. You told me you wanted this. Tonight. Is there something wrong with me?'

'Amy, you're so...' She was standing before him in her pink panties, her arms crossed self-consciously under her breasts, her hands hiding them. He waved in their direction, trying not to stare at the erected nipples peeking through her fingers. 'I do want it, Amy, I swear. But I'm… I -' He looked down to her feet. She had painted her toenails pink. 'You overwhelm me.'

The third time that was truly-the-first happened at dawn, following that night.

He thought it was odd the process started again by rolling. She rolled against his side, and she hung herself to him as if she was about to drown. He touched her with curiosity. She murmured his name in his ear. He rolled over her when she reassured him he wouldn't crush her or kill her by asphyxiation. Now familiar with the feel of her skin, her scent and her heat, Sheldon carefully followed the protocol he'd had fretted over for weeks.

He tried not to be completely distracted by her hands roaming on his back and how his body screamed for release. He tried to decipher the emotions flowing on her face. He tried to ignore the complex and exhilarating feeling of being within her, at her mercy, when he moved with as much gentleness he could muster.

Amy was liquid and solid, a truly intriguing phenomenon. Lovemaking, he thought, was bound to be intellectually frustrating.

The sheer wonder of her body answering to his touch confounded him. He was quite fascinated by her nipples and how they reacted to the caress of his hands, tongue, and lips as they awkwardly moved in search of unison.

Sheldon thought he barely deserved the passing grade after he let himself fall to her side but Amy clung to him. She lovingly stroked his face and shoulders. She murmured how 'hot' his body felt again hers. She told him he had beautiful eyes. She touched his lips with her fingers and without planning, he grabbed her hand and led it to his cheek. They stared at each other for a long time in the early light.

He felt humiliated he couldn't offer her words expressing his gratitude for her patient tenderness or telling her how much this new knowledge of her befuddled him. The only words he managed to utter were, 'You'll be the death of me, Amy Farrah Fowler.'

Her smile almost blinded him, and he suddenly felt quite pleased with himself.

'Einstein was right,' he softly said. 'Feynman was right. Who knew?'

He expected his head to clear from the fog of throbbing hunger it had been wrapped in for the last few months. He was proven wrong, like so many brilliant minds before him. As he secretly feared, it was about to take over his life. However, after mentally correcting three equations he'd been working on for weeks as Amy's legs lazily brushed against his, he thought that maybe it wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Sheldon suggested Amy hopped in the shower so he could change the sheets. He figured they could rest a bit afterwards. Instead he let her coax him into staying just a little longer in bed, until he couldn't help closing his eyes and drifting into sleep with his hand safely resting between the warm flesh of her thighs. As he tried to extirpate himself from her arms a few hours later, he thought that intimacy was even stickier than he thought it would be.

The fourth to thirteenth times were carefully orchestrated as well. Leonard had to be out of the apartment. All sexual encounters had to happen in his room, in his bed.

Sheldon neatly peeled the clothes from their bodies. He kissed Amy, first with sweetness then with soul-stirring eagerness. They clumsily tumbled into bed. One breathed in what the other exhaled. Amy discovered a sensitive spot in his back right behind his heart, which when lightly scratched triggered a full body shiver.

Many poorly worded questions were murmured. Arousal impedes with the brain's ability to express coherently, he hazily thought as Amy's soft fingers followed the line of hair under his navel to dizzying lows (or highs, as he noted with smug satisfaction).

He was pleased that in all of this debauchery of heart pounding activity, may it be fondling, caressing, stroking, licking, sucking or nipping, Amy behaved herself admirably without indulging into animalistic grunts or lewd talking. His conditions were met to uttermost perfection, and he thanked her after their ninth time. Sheldon gifted her with a special batch of intimate Cooper coupons he'd designed for her. Amy immediately redeemed the fifteen-minute leg massage, and he was mystified he could get her to purr like a pussycat when his thumbs dug into her inner thighs.

The fourteenth time felt fluid and harmonious. Sheldon decided he enjoyed Amy's mouth close to his ear so he could feel her breath against his neck, and hear her every throaty moan and gasp. He thought holding her hand made much more sense when her other hand firmly grabbed his backside. He sensed her enjoyment when he initiated a rhythm closer to a rumba than a cha cha. Waltz was out of the question. Amy seemed to enjoy the hip shaking.

Their fifteenth and sixteenth times happened during the course of a weekend, which he agreed to spend at her apartment. He pointed out how out of control all this physical lovin' was coming to. Amy was, after all, making him forgo laundry night. She jokingly suggested he did hers. He thought it was a sensible idea: he sorted through her clothes, placed her flowery bras and panties into a lingerie bag and set it to the delicates cycle.

As they were sitting on the couch, he reached for her fingers, slinking the palm of his hand against hers. Patrick Stewart froze with a stern expression on his face when Amy pressed the pause button. 'I have a question for you. I'd like for you to be truthful with me. I can take it.' She adjusted her glasses on her nose. Her resolve faltered for a second, but she straightened up. 'Do you like it?'

Sheldon frowned. 'It's not the first time I've seen this movie, Amy, but as I said before, Patrick Stewart brings to life any character he inhabits and I -'

'That's not what I meant.' Amy's thumb was drawing tiny circles on his hand. 'I was referring to what we do in bed.'

He licked his lips and shifted on the couch. 'You're not talking about sleeping, are you?'

She cocked an eyebrow. 'Just checking,' he huffed.

He pulled his hand out of hers and stared at it as if it held a cheat sheet. 'There's a lot to take in, Amy. I wasn't expecting all that… feeling. All that moisture.' He swallowed audibly. 'Or sweating so much, for that matter.'

'But do you enjoy it?' Amy wasn't mocking him. She looked concerned. 'You can tell me, Sheldon. I'd feel guilty if we did something that… you know, made you feel uncomfortable.'

'Can't you tell?' he asked, dumbfounded. 'Of course I'm uncomfortable. We've had intercourse less than fifteen times. I'm very much under the ten thousand hours of practice recommended for achieving mastery of an activity. I still have lots to work on.'

'Oh Sheldon…Yes. We both need to practice and make it really good. That's an insightful observation. I admire your dedication.' Amy seemed agitated, all of a sudden. Her wands wrung the hem of her skirt. 'Let me ask you another question, then. What do you like the most, when we make…when we have…?'

'When we please each other in a carnal fashion?' Sheldon gave her question a few seconds thought, before looking her in the eye. 'You. You are what I like the most.'

According to what she suggested a few seconds later, it seemed to him that his answer had won him the first prize in some sort of sexual lottery. When he stopped worrying about drowning into her waterbed, he was elated Amy awarded him the second prize, too.

The seventeenth time was, to his surprise, profoundly comforting. He was going through his email one night and lamenting about how stupid people could be, specifically how Kripke was going to run the project to the ground. Amy, bless her, sneaked behind him to work her fingers on the knots in his neck. 'Your hands are amazing. You're squeezing the stress out of me,' he moaned as she worked her way to his shoulder blades.

Somehow, they found their way to his bed, and Amy – oh, he thought, oh my marvelous Amy - squeezed whatever stress was left in him, and he felt appropriately groggy when he watched her sleep beside him. Shuffling with care so he wouldn't wake her, he reached for his green leather-bound book on his night table. He clipped his reading light to the cover, thumbed back a few pages, and read for a while. When he came to a blank page, his pen first ran on the paper with hesitation, and then Sheldon lost track of time.

He jolted when Amy stirred beside him. 'What are you writing?' she sleepily said as her hand grazed his thigh.

He addressed her a small smile. She was quite a sight with her hair messed up on the pillow, a study of light and shadow. 'I'm writing an entry in my log of sexual activities with you.'

That seemed to awake her completely. 'Really?'

'Yes.'

She slowly sat up in the bed and pulled up the sheet to cover her breasts. 'I had no idea you did that.'

He shrugged. 'I do. I find it educative to ponder on certain events. Your glasses are on my side,' he added, as she reached for the night table. 'Here you go.'

'Thank you.'

The corner of his lips turned up again when she yawned behind her hand. 'You look lovely. No other woman could make dishevelment as appealing as you do.'

'That's very sweet of you.' She chuckled, and her cheeks took a pink tinge. 'You look quite disheveled yourself.' Her fingers lightly caressed his hair. 'As if you had an encounter with an extreme wind event.'

'I did.' He closed his eyes for a second, relishing her soft, careful touch. 'Hurricane Amy,' he whispered – did he just say that aloud? - and promptly opened his eyes.

He noted her eyes sparkled in the feeble light, and her skin had a dewy glow, and he felt something fragile and delicate bubbling between them that made him very thirsty.

'Would you mind me reading what you wrote?' She dreamily rubbed her lips with her fingers before her features became serious again. 'I don't want to pry, Sheldon. I'm merely interested in your point of view in a phenomenological perspective.'

He nodded. 'You don't need to invoke post-modernist philosophy to read it. I don't see why you couldn't take a look. You were there.'

She scooted closer to him, and her chin grazed his shoulder as she read in silence. He closed his eyes again. Her hair had this musky smell he'd come to associate with their amorous activities. He breathed in contentedly until she moved back and stared at him with puzzled eyes. 'You keep referring to 'The Sheldon'. I'm confused.'

''The Sheldon' refers to, er, the position in which our bodies meet during coitus.' How could she have not understood that?

Amy shook her head. 'But you must know it has a name. Hindus have called it the classic position while we, in the Western world, have dubbed it the missionary position.'

The book closed soundly as he jumped from the bed. 'You can't call it that with your breasts uncovered and… jiggling,' he accused with a finger pointing at her. He brought his hands to his hips and yelped, 'I certainly can't call it that!'

'Sheldon!'

Her breasts swayed again, and he shut his eyes. 'Missionary evokes religion, and religion evokes my mother, and I do not want – I cannot stress this enough - to have her in bed with us.' He crossed his arms and took in the ridicule of his posture, as he stood naked by the bed, his naughty bits bobbing up and down as well.

'Sheldon,' Amy repeated. 'Look at me, please. I'm sorry I was so slow to understand your reluctance about it.' She hesitated for a second. 'I guess I'm surprised you gave it your name.'

He studied her features before he lowered himself to the bed. He slipped his legs under the sheets. 'I had to call it something.' Her body was warm and inviting, and he instinctively pressed against her. 'Besides…I like it,' he murmured, as he felt completely inadequate to describe his thoughts. 'I like watching you so closely.'

'I like it too, ' she whispered against his mouth. 'I like being under you like…yes, like this.'

So eighteen it was. They both agreed The Sheldon was immensely enjoyable. When Amy knocked on his door after her girls' night out two days later, he thought they'd give it another go.

The twentieth time was their first truly noisy affair. Sheldon thought he had a nice stride, and Amy had tied her legs around him. She tilted her pelvis to make a very neat hip trick that made him short of breath. 'Sheldon?' she murmured after his mouth separated from hers.

'Yes, sweetheart,' he whispered before brushing the delicate skin of her temple with his lips.

'I think it's time we bring The Amy in our rotation.'

Before he could ask details about the parameters of The Amy, he was pinned down on the mattress and being ridden on like he was a stallion. While he struggled to keep his cool and to follow her increasingly dizzying rhythm, he believed The Amy unfurled something raw and primitive in his girlfriend. Amy writhed, arched, moaned, ran her nails on his chest, and cried out unintelligible words when he grabbed her hips and bucked harder against her.

It was quite a spectacle. Her hair whipping his chest as she seemed to collapse on herself, the sight of her breasts heaving as she threw herself back, the sweat glistening on her skin… And the noise, good grief, the noise.

He surprised himself by not giving a damn about it. Eliciting this kind of frenzy in his otherwise poised and highly sensible girlfriend? He had to take it for what it was.

He was a stud. And he needed to buy another log.

Twenty-first. Twenty-second. Twenty-third. A steamy string of affairs in the course of a week, where she whispered her love for him with so much feeling his heart ached. He buried his hands in her hair and found the courage to confess his uttermost devotion to her with hushed urgency.

'I love you,' he finally said, with his forehead against hers. He fought against the lump in his throat as she embraced him closer. 'I love you, Amy Farrah Fowler.'

Twenty-fourth time. He kneeled between her legs as he tried to relax a sudden tension in his right shoulder, and he – as he explained later in lavish details to a spellbound Kripke– stumbled into something. An electric current shot through his body. For a second he felt completely fused with her.

'Hoo.' Amy seemed as exhilarated as he was when she prompted herself up on her elbows. She experimentally shook her hips again, triggering another shattering wave of pleasure that had him exhaling soundly while she emitted a soul-stirring C sharp.

He grabbed her waist to bring her closer. She laughed before shaking her head back to move her hair from her face. 'Dr Cooper, I know your area of expertise is theoretical physics, but I would like to congratulate you on a remarkable neurobiological discovery.'

'Thank you, Dr Fowler.' Sheldon gave out a chuckle, now possessed by the urgency to elicit another cry from her. He moved slowly, attempting to reproduce the sensation, as he mentally calculated optimal penetrating angles and distance. He hastily grabbed another pillow and helped her slip it under her buttocks.

When he dug his fingers deep in the flesh of her hips and smugly stared at her, he was glad Amy was watching him with attention. 'Now, I know you've argued numerous times in favor of neurobiology encompassing, well, everything, which is poppycock. But I do have new evidence I'd like you to consider.'

'Please do tell.' Her eyes sparkled. 'I'm all ears.'

Sheldon moved slightly forward and whispered, 'I believe I'm about to demonstrate how very wrong you are. Physics is all the science you need.'

With the undeniable success he obtained ('All… right…ok... SHELDON… you…oooh God…you oh…oooh…you WIN-OH-MY-GOD!'), the twenty-fifth time followed the next morning. Amy tried to make a point, but he thought she was just jabbering ('I had time to…ooh…think it over, and…and…aaah…without a brain we wouldn't be…YES…engaging in any of this… so…I'm so close…sooo close…please, please… I still WIN-OH-MY-GOD!').

'This,' he decided as they tried to catch their breath, 'this I propose we call The Shamy.'

Her answer came quickly. 'Seconded.'

Their exploration of The Shamy led to an awkward breakfast with Leonard and Penny.

'Good morning,' Sheldon said with unabashed glee as he reached for the orange juice. 'It's indeed a fine day when it's so lovely outside and my girlfriend has been thoroughly satisfied and sexually pleased.' He brightly smiled at Amy, who hid her face in her hands before breaking into nervous laughter. 'What are you staring at, Penny?'

'You're screamers, both of you,' Penny uttered between her teeth. 'Can't say I was expecting that.'

'Can we change the subject, please? I think we've, er, heard enough.' Leonard turned to Penny. 'What would you like for breakfast?'

'Whatever Amy was having earlier, baby.'

Twenty-ninth, thirty-first, forty-fourth. Amazing discoveries. Thirty-eight. A surprising failure they agreed to forget altogether and never speak about again, which was hard since the Jell-O stained their skin green for a week, and their friends snickered every time they entered a room together.

Forty-eighth. Sheldon entered her apartment after a triple knock on her door. 'Hello, Amy. I hope you had a pleasant day. Please do undress. I would like to take your measurements.'

Amy looked up from the salad she was tossing. 'I'm sorry?'

He pointed at her and waved his hand as if he expected her clothes to disappear on the spot. 'Come here and take everything off. Chop chop.'

'Now?'

He looked around her apartment. 'I do think we are alone, so yes, now.'

'Is this some kind of game?' Amy abandoned the meal on the kitchen island and walked to him. 'Some kind of sexual domination game? Sheldon, please don't tell me Penny finally got you to read Fifty Shades of Grey. This is perhaps the most revolting book I've ever read. That woman character needs a brain transplant, stat.'

'Fifty shades of what? What are you talking about?' He frowned. 'It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. I want to give you something personal.'

'You want to buy me lingerie.' She stared at him with her mouth agape, and he inwardly smiled.

'Lord, no.' He snorted as he pulled a measuring tape from his pocket. 'I was hoping to offer you something truly sensual and erotic, like a cashmere cardigan.'

Amy sweetly smiled, and he lowered his head to give her a quick kiss. 'Or,' she purred as she threw her arms around his neck, 'I could just tell you my size.'

He shook his head. 'Cashmere is a delicate and fickle fabric. I need to assess everything, you see. Hands-on.'

She cocked her head. 'Why don't you tell me right away you want me standing naked in my living room while we engage in some sort of dominant role-playing fantasy of yours?'

'Fine.' Sheldon clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes at her. 'Amy, I want you standing naked in your living room. I want to keep my clothes on, not only because I have a chill, but also because I believe it will create the illusion of spontaneity when I'll push you back on the couch to seduce you. I plan to engage in oral and manual stimulation of your genitalia and get you so horny you'll grind on my fully clothed body. Since I'm not planning to take anything off by the way, I'm wearing that shirt you tell me you love because you say it's soft. I'm also hoping you'll let me take you right here later on so I won't have to carry you to bed. Are you happy now?'

'My goodness, yes.' Her bra flew over his head. 'Come here, lover boy, and measure this.'

The forty-ninth time had Amy slipping into her bedroom in a light green cashmere cardigan and a pair of yellow high heels shoes. 'So, what do you think?'

'How much time do I have before you have your way with me?'

'Mmm.' She winked. 'You have three words.'

'All right.' He reclined back on the pillows with his hands crossed on his chest as she strutted towards the bed. 'Wanton. Titillating. Indecent.'

'Good.' The waterbed almost threw him off as she pounced on it. He watched her make her way to him as she slithered against his legs and toyed with the buttons of his pants.

When her tongue found him, he thought he'd better talk before all rational thoughts vanish from his mind. 'Amy? Keep the cardigan on, all right?'

She paused for a second, and he exhaled his frustration. 'Aren't you worried we'll ruin it?' she said. 'You told me it was a delicate and fickle fabric. I'm not one to pour money down the drain.'

'Don't worry about that.' Her fingers grasped him, and he arched back in a grunt when she initiated a thrilling caress that electrified his body. 'I've… bought …two. This one is your…oh boy…bedroom cardigan.'

Fifty-second. An unusually cold Sunday afternoon at the beach, with a high wind making a mess of their hair. Them, walking along the shore. Amy had wrapped them both in an afghan. Her warm hand in his, hidden to the world. A sunny day. A beautiful day. He couldn't stop bitching about it. 'But why?'

'I thought it would do us some good: breathe in some fresh air, spend a few hours in the sun...We spend so much time indoors.'

'Well, look around you. What do you see?'

Amy didn't even make an effort to check around. 'No one.'

'What does that tell you?' He crinkled his eyes to take a good look at her.

'It tells me,' she answered with seriousness, 'that this would make a lovely setting for a story I could tell on girls' night.'

Sheldon stopped dead in his tracks. 'You cannot be serious, Amy. Here? Exposing ourselves?'

Since she wasn't answering, he pulled her against him. 'Why do you even need to brag? Aren't you satisfied with, well, everything?'

Her head shot up. 'Of course, Sheldon. It's just-' She looked to the horizon, and he became very worried.

'Amy,' he hushed, 'do you share minutia of our lovemaking with your girlfriends, one of them being my immediate neighbor?'

'I've told you before. No.' Her eyes had that darker tinge of green he'd come to associate with emotional turmoil. 'What we do is our business. It's ours.'

'Why the need to brag, then?'

'I don't know.' She wrapped her arms around his waist. 'I can't help feeling left out, sometimes. I'd like to contribute with a story to deepen my bonds with the girls, and I've come to understand that it's not the blow-by-blow, so to speak, that would make a story entertaining, but the settings.'

He wanted to say, who cares? You're better than them.

But a part of him spoke louder and squashed his first thought. That voice clamored, they'd fall on their asses if they saw how gorgeous you are when you take control.

Something in her voice was almost painful to hear, and he reigned in his impulse to blurt it out. He needed to think about it first. 'Oh.'

They let themselves be battered by the wind for a few minutes. He pulled up the afghan on her shoulders. 'There is no way we're doing this, Amy. We'll freeze to death.'

'I think I have sand in my bra.' She hastily scratched her chest. 'This was a stupid idea. Forget it. Let's walk to the car. May I treat you to a pastry before I drive you home?'

'Ok.'

They walked to the car in silence. Her vehicle was the only one in the parking lot, and a complicated feeling rose in his chest, up to his throat. He energetically shook the afghan before folding it and handing it to Amy. While she unlocked the car doors, he looked around for any bystanders or solitary walkers.

They were completely alone.

'Amy.' When he had her attention on him, he hesitated for a second. 'Would me ravishing you in the backseat of your car make a suitable story for your next girls' night?'

'I guess.' She eyed him over the hood with suspicion. 'I believe it would be.'

'All right, then.' He opened the door and gestured her in. 'Get in here, little lady.'

Whenever work held Amy late and he found himself missing her, he couldn't help to come back to the fifty-second entry. It had been - was still - a mystery, and he figured it had some special key to a previously unnoticed door to her personality.

Fifty-second had been uncomfortable, to say the least. He didn't have a lot of space for his legs. She fought with her tights. They couldn't lie properly so he sat on the backseat and had her straddling him. He couldn't move as freely as he wished to, and poor Amy had to do all the work.

So long for ravishing her.

Yet, of all the entries he'd written so far, this one puzzled him the most. He expected intensity from her, frenzy maybe, but she moved so slowly on him, so purposefully he thought he would die from a heart attack. She would kill him with her groove.

He avidly watched her features when her climax seemed to overcome her by surprise. He held to her hips as her body shivered on him and she let out a trembling moan. He saw this as a permission to let go and join her in pleasure. As he rested his head back on the headrest, he saw two fat tears slip on her cheeks, before she quickly wiped them with the back of her hand.

'Amy?'

'I'm fine, Sheldon.' She sniffed and gave him a tight-lipped smile as more tears welled from her eyes. 'I'm fine.'

He didn't know what to say. He pulled her against him, and they stayed silent for a long time, his arms around her, her head resting on his shoulder, her tears soaking the collar of his windbreaker. She sobbed for a few minutes, and then her mouth vibrated against his neck.

'I love you.'

It had been messy (he was up late that night spot treating their clothes). It had been a mystery. He couldn't make sense of it. A deep feeling filled her, and he couldn't figure it out for the time being.

Sixty-fifth. Sheldon looked up from his laptop screen and observed her across the kitchen island as she was reading something on her own screen, the palm of her hand cradling her chin.

'Amy.' Her head shot up, but her eyes were still riveted to the article she was reading.

'Amy.' He loved this particular moment, when he was about to tear her away from her work, when all her body tensed towards him, but her mind was still trying to resist him.

He loved the challenge. 'Amy.'

She finally looked at him after brushing a strand of hair back. 'What is it, Sheldon?'

He closed his laptop with one hand before sliding himself forward over the island. His other hand reached for hers. Her lips slightly curved up when his fingers interlaced hers.

He had reviewed his logs last night, and it just jumped out of the page. He had told her numerous times he loved her – and he had been careful to say it before, during, and after sex, just to be sure she heard him – but there was one thing he never worded. He was now ready to let the words roll and float to her. Heck. It was about damn time he told her.

'I desire you,' he whispers, unable to hide his smile when her eyes open wide in surprise. 'I want you.'

'Now?'

'Not particularly.' He shrugged. 'In general. All the time.'

According to all the naughty things she said and did to him later on, he trusted he had pretty much reinvented foreplay.

The seventy-third time is about to happen. Thoughts about their intense seventy-second time have swirled in his mind. Seventy-three is the perfect number. He has to, as Howard would say, 'up his game'.

Amy comes into the apartment, and he welcomes her with a warm smile. 'Hello Amy. There's something I'd like to show you.'

She smiles back and walks to his desk before divesting herself from her purse. 'Hello Sheldon. I got your text earlier. What got you so excited?'

She leans over him to watch his screen, and he opens a file. He watches her tap her lower lip with her index finger, and he silently pleads for her to speak quickly and soon. 'Well,' she says, 'with my tilted uterus and the angle of your erected penis, this might be painful for me.'

'I agree. That's why I've spent my afternoon designing an alternate version of this, and I think I have it figured out.' Another click, and Amy blushes profusely.

Yes siree.

'Hoo boy.' She breathes out, and she addresses him a half-smile. 'And when were you planning to go forward with this?'

'Right now, if that's good with you.'

She lets out a throaty chuckle. 'Let's go. Oh, hi Penny, hi Bernadette. Hi boys.'

Sheldon watches her walk down the corridor to his room and swivels his chair to face their friends. They are all staring at him with bulging eyes, and noodles, dumplings and vegetables are falling down chopsticks and missing mouths all over the place.

'Well,' he says brightly, 'I think you heard that. We will not be joining you for dinner. But have a nice one.'

Penny is the first one to move. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'

As they stampede to the door with the food, it dawns on him that it is curious that they couldn't help being nosy about when, where, what they were doing before he became intimate with Amy. And now that they were doing it, they didn't want to hear any of it.

The apartment door reopens. Bernadette barges in and almost rams him before pushing into his chest a bottle of chocolate syrup and a can of whipped cream.

'Trust me.' She clears her throat and giggles. Her hand reaches up to his cheek, and she pats it as if he were a pussycat. 'It will be a hit.'

The door closes. He stands alone in the living room. His friends are out of their way. Amy is waiting for him in his room. He has chocolate syrup and whipped cream. He smiles to himself.

He is Sheldon Cooper. He is about to blow his brilliant girlfriend's mind with The Seventy-Three.

And after he gives it to her well, maybe she'll be up for dessert.