He didn't want to fuck her when he met her. That would have been too easy.

She had this way of pausing at the end of her sentences and looking up at him, teeth together, but lips apart. Her lips were plump, but small. Her eyes were hooded. Her hair was falling down from the top of her head.

She wanted him to fuck her. But he didn't really want to. It seemed to be something that she expected from him, and he wasn't one to do what was expected of him.

That fact that she didn't know he didn't want to fuck her made her seem fragile. He almost wished that he wanted to fuck her so he didn't have to feel sorry. It seemed that this was the one presumption she made, the rubric she held to, her own personal paradigm: no matter where you go, people will want to fuck you.

How could he take that away from her?

He fucked her, he told me, to protect her from the truth.