Ray felt oddly flat about it even as he let himself relax into it. He'd been with more beautiful women, better-built women, than he could count, and the only reason he'd bothered with this whole roundabout approach before getting her into bed was to manufacture exactly this sense of novelty, of anticipation.

But that anticipation, that novelty, always peaked in the instant he actually got what he wanted, and then vanished completely just as fast.

After all, Noelle was still only an 82. She was