Lucas stops abruptly, pulling away from her, his face startled.
"Jo," he says heavily, "I'm sorry - I shouldn't have started that. Do you want me to go?"
She shakes her head silently, her eyes on the floor as she hastily refastens the buttons on her blouse - at a loss for words to explain to him what had happened.
Lucas sits down next to her on the couch, not knowing what to do.
His can't shut off his unsatisfied desires so quickly but he knows too that he can't go back to where they had been in the face of her obvious distress. He curses himself for ignoring the earlier warnings in his head, for letting the longings of the past eight years overrule his judgement.
Eventually he puts his arm around her shoulder, and draws her towards him so that her head rests against his chest.
"So, where do we go from here?" he says reflectively.
"I don't know," she replies quietly.
She wonders whether Lucas would have been the medicine that would finally fix her, wiping away her earlier painful memories and rewiring her brain along a different path and what would become of her now that she had rejected him.
"Maybe -," she says tentatively, "Maybe we could try again".
"Is that what you want?" he asks gently.
"I can't go on like this forever and – and it's better if its with someone I know, a friend," she finishes - her voice unsteady.
"Will you kiss me then?"
She says it quietly, sounding uncertain.
He does. It is sweet and careful and nothing like her nightmares.
When they go back to the beginning everything is slower, softer, gentler.
Eventually they reach the point where she feels his knees press against either side of her hips. The bed shifts and they both know what will happen next. He takes her hand, winding his fingers through hers as he watches her face.
With Lucas it is different - as he moves over her, she wants him closer and she wraps her legs around him, pulling him deep inside her.
At first everything is quiet except for the sound of their breathing. She closes her eyes for a second and when she looks up all she can see and feel is Lucas. She clings to him as his body moves harder, faster and then the bed starts to batter the wall with a metallic clang and she is gasping for breath and Lucas says her name, finally, with an intensity that startles her.
He collapses on top of her, his lips brushing her neck as he murmers Russian endearments softly into her ear. As his hand moves upwards to gently stroke her face her breathing begins to slow and she looks into his eyes, a strange feeling comes over her – a kind of dazed contentedness. She wonders if it might be happiness.