She knew before he locked the door. She had learned, albeit in a brief time, what the small movements meant. When Etta flinched back it had meant intimidation, or disapproval, or admiration. When Steve looked at her like this, eyes lowered and breathing rapid, it meant lust.

So she kissed him back, and when he lifted a hand to touch her, she did what any Amazon would, kicking out and tackling him to the ground.

"Diana - " Steve broke off, staring up at her. She knew she was smiling; she couldn't help it. For a very brief moment she felt herself again.

Steve lifted a hand to touch her cheek. It trembled terribly. She jerked away, thrown into another moment of wondering, not quite trusting her own instincts, not quite knowing what to do. "You're frightened. That isn't the way." She stood, backing away. "My apologies."

"Diana, no." Steve propped himself up on his elbows. He was looking at her with another one of those expressions she didn't fully understand. So much to learn, still. "I want this, I was just surprised. And - it's bad out there, I'm still coming down from it. You know?"

She didn't. The energy of the battle and the satisfaction of seeing smiling faces afterwards both warmed and energized her. She nodded anyway, so that he would know that she was trying to understand.

He shook his head, laughing a little. "You don't. It's obvious."

"We could sleep. Like we did on the boat." When she'd hoped for something different. It had been so recently, yet that Diana was someone she hardly recognized now.

"I really, really want to do this. Not sleeping. I mean - yes sleeping, but also the other - the other things."

"Fucking," Diana supplied.

"Where did - nevermind." He stood. At first she thought he meant to leave, but he only walked over to her bedside and retrieved the lasso, tossing her one end and again wrapping it around his wrist.

It glowed so surely against him. He wasn't resisting it. He was...enthusiastic, holding onto his own wrist as he said, "I want to make love to you. I'd do it every day until I die, I think, if I could. But I might die tomorrow, and Diana, that scares the hell out of me. Almost as much as the thought of never seeing you again."

He was shaking again. She didn't understand; she was starting to think she couldn't. But he could not lie with the lasso around him, touching him, illuminating him.

She placed her hand over his, and she kissed him again.

He melted in her arms. She supposed that wasn't the way of it, in the world of man, but he didn't seem to care. She touched his hair, tugged a little, and then did it again when he gasped against her mouth.

"You're very beautiful," she told him.

He laughed a little at that. "You're the most beautiful person I've ever seen. It makes my heart hurt."

She realized he still held the lasso loosely in his hand. "You can let go now."

"So could you."

It was not bondage. She held the rope loosely between two fingers, after all. But she thought of him saying, "I'm a spy," thought of his shame and avoidance of some of her questions. He'd said he had tried doing nothing. If she asked him what he meant by that, he'd have to answer truly.

She didn't know if she wanted that. She dropped her end of the lasso, ran her hand down his arm and over the rope. It still glowed, still held him. The rope bit into his wrist a little. She touched the divide, smooth rope and imperfect human skin, watching as her thumb against his pulse made him shiver.

This time, he kissed her, and he did so with desperation. He clutched her, his knees bending against her, and she held him up as his body asked her to. This yielding must mean the same thing in the world of men: awareness, readiness, want. She laid them down on the bed, sweeping his legs from under him and kissing him back, harder, pushing his coat off and unbuttoning his shirt -

And ripping the fabric, for it was flimsy stuff. She blinked down at his exposed chest, and he laughed breathlessly.

"What do men like?" she asked, running a finger up and down his skin. She'd wanted to do this when she found him in the bath. His skin was dry now, a little cool from the winter air still. It felt like normal skin might.

"Anything," he said. "God, Diana, you could do anything to me right now, I would go along with it one hundred percent."

She was uncertain he understood the breadth of creativity present in the world. Surely there were some activities he wouldn't enjoy, as was true for everyone. But this was simple enough: tearing his shirt off the rest of the way, pulling him up to kiss him again, pressing against him. There was such satisfaction in all of that, and yet -

"Touch me," she said. "Surely that's allowed, here?"

He opened his mouth, then shut it, shaking his head. The lasso fell from his wrist as he reached up, touching her hair, her jaw, pushing her outer layers the rest of the way off so that he could touch her shoulders and her back.

"How does this come off?" he asked, tapping her armor.

She sprung out of bed and demonstrated: straps falling, laces loosening. She even took her gauntlets off, placing them on the bedside table before telling Steve, "This is a great honor. It means I trust you."

"I trust you too," he told her. His chest heaved with his ragged breathing; his blue eyes looked somehow even brighter than they had in Themyscira's sunshine. "And I'd like for you to come back, please."

Then he looked her up and down, and she saw his hardness, and realized that he'd never seen her nude: he looked overwhelmed, and aroused.

She returned to the bed.

He had regained some sense of himself, it seemed. He looked at her and touched her with both awe and knowledge. She held herself over him and kissed him again, bit his shoulder, and he arched his back, brushing his thumbs over her nipples, urging her up until he could kiss her breasts.

It sent sensation flying through her, electrifying and addictive. The world of man was the same in this, then. He urged her up still farther, until he could put his mouth on her, licking her folds and making small, hungry noises, as though he couldn't possibly want more than this.

But Diana's books had contained diagrams. She bent backwards, crying out when he licked her clitoris, even as she wrapped a hand around his cock.

The symphony of bodies filled her with joy and need. They moved together so easily, right until the moment when he broke away from her to say, "Oh God, Diana, I can't, I need - wait, wait wait wait," pushing her back and down, wrapping a hand around his cock and staying very, very still.

Diana couldn't help but think that her books had been right about one thing: there were inconveniences to the male apparatus. But she felt drawn all the same, aching and wet, wanting and needing to touch.

She touched his face. He had signs of trouble there: exhausted eyes, tiny scars. She kissed them, and when he shook with pleasure, she kept going down his body.

It pleased her to watch him move. He had an appealing vulnerability to his musculature, and when she pressed down on his hips, holding him absolutely still and open to her pleasure, he reacted with pleasure, his cock twitching as she licked it, whispering pleas mixed with her name as she took him in her mouth.

He touched her, too, stroked her hair, thrust his hips. Some physical tasks brought joy: leaping off the bluffs on Themyscira or curling her fingers inside a woman and letting her ride herself to bliss. This, too, was wonderful. He smelled musky and moved messily; from this position she could detect a weakness in his left side. But he spoke so sweetly, he moved so dearly, and when he pulled her off, when he urged her back up on top of him, she was more than happy to comply.

They kissed, and the spark within her ebbed and flowed, growing and cresting but never quite peaking. They moved against one another, each with slowly building urgency, exploration made cautious by how little time they had together. Finally, though, Diana couldn't take it anymore: impatience had built in her for what felt like forever, and she wanted release. She moved to take him inside, but he stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

For a moment she thought he meant to hold her, and readied herself to tell him he had no hope of besting her. But he only turned his hand, his palms facing the ceiling, fingers lightly curled. Slowly, keeping his eyes on hers, he raised his arms above his head, pressing his fingers together, waiting for her.

She had learned him well enough. She understood. She braced her thighs and ran her hands up and down his arms, then grabbed the lasso from where it lay, sending it snaking around his wrists - gently, so gently, pulling them together, locking him in the Amazons' most terrifying weapon, which reacted to him as a snake would the warm dry sunshine.

He closed his eyes, and his mouth fell open. She felt him, his racing heart, his cock hard and leaking. When she lowered herself on him, their gasps overlapped. His became a moan; he moved his arms as though to touch her again, and the lasso tightened, its light briefly flashing.

He didn't have to speak. He said, "Please, however much more you can give me without -"

"Breaking you?" Diana supplied.

He nodded. Sweat dripped down his temple. He was beautiful and dear and familiar and strange. "Please," he said again.

He liked that, she thought. She bore her hips down and flexed around him, locked onto him with her thighs and rode him as though she meant to break him.

Then she had an idea. "Tell me what you want," she said.

He gasped. "Oh, my - I want - more of this. I'm - I can't think right now, Diana. I want you to bend me over. I want to fight with you, really try and get a punch in, and then I want you to flatten me on the mat and keep me there until you're satisfied, I want - a future. You'd never have that, but I do want it, every single question you ask me about life on Earth, I want it and I'm starting to think I want it with you."

She moved to pull the lasso away, fearing she'd forced him to reveal too much. But he went very still, pulling his wrists away from her grasp, stretched so stiffly that he lifted them both off the mattress. "I want this," he said, and though she thought he must have been holding back some note of fear or caveat, none showed in his eyes. The lasso compelled nothing else out of him.

So she kissed him and began to move again, pinched him when it seemed he might end this too soon, laughed when he made a ridiculous noise as he came inside her. For a moment she thought she might have to finish herself off, but he wiggled his fingers and said, "I'd like to be free now," looking at her with solemn intent.

"Lie back on the bed?" he said once she'd freed his wrists.

He surrounded her with pillows, arranged her as the humans might a queen. She wasn't sure she liked it, wasn't sure he wasn't executing some odd practical joke, until he knelt on the bed and kissed her knee.

Tenderness. He used it inexorably, kissing her skin everywhere his lips could reach, coaxing her nipples into peaks. She'd read that men fell asleep after, but he looked as alert as she'd ever seen him, moving between her legs with easy grace.

He groaned when he pressed a finger against her opening. "God, Diana, is that -"

"It's both of us," she told him, dizzyingly happy. "Now, please." She tilted her hips, making her bodily demand as clear as possible.

He whispered something she didn't quite hear, then slid inside. All she felt was stretching, then sweet, aching pleasure as he moved. He'd found her clitoris again and he applied his tongue to it with efficiency, discarding their earlier slow teasing for a pace that had her breathless with the need to come. "Keep going," she said, "Steve, I want more," and so he added a finger and nipped at her thigh, used his other hand to press hard against her clit, going harder and faster as she had demanded. And then, finally, he said, "Diana, Diana, sweetheart, I need you to come, please," and something about his voice, or his hands, or his skin, sent her flying into release.

She realized afterwards that he'd been repressing his exhaustion in that odd human way of his. He collapsed almost right away, half on top of her. She didn't quite smile as she moved him and pulled the blankets over them both, but he still mumbled, "Laughing at me."

"No," she said. She didn't know how to explain it. She'd seen so little of beauty since leaving home, and yet here she again felt as though she ran free under the protection of paradise. "Sleep now, Steve."

"Ayup. Uh-huh. Doing it now. Doing it." He nudged her shoulder a little, halfway between a comradely slap and a caress.

She hoped, as she drifted off, that she'd have another chance to learn him as he slept.