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“Any what?”

Aiden laughs. “It was one of the earliest digital computers. It took up eighteen hundred square feet. Which is bigger than my whole apartment.”

“The picture is mind-blowing. Multiple people standing there, being dwarfed by all the walls, wires, connectors of this machine.” She looks amazed.

I can’t help but smile. “They were. ENIAC used eighteen thousand vacuum tubes and weighed almost fifty tons. It was very state-of-the-art for 1946.”

“I had no idea computers started so early.”

“Absolutely. And look how far they’ve come.” I pull my phone from my pocket. “Even simple things you do with this little device would have taken up a whole room seventy-five years ago.”

“For sure,” Aiden agrees. “Next, we have the first stored-program computer, another British creation called EDSAC. In 1949, it performed the first graphical computer game. Despite the fact it, too, took up a whole room, it was nicknamed Baby.”

That makes Nia laugh.

Over the next couple of hours, Aiden walks her though the first computer with RAM from the 1950s, the first desktop computer from the 1960s, along with teletype units, dumb terminals, and giant Unix machines, which could be used by more than one person at a time. As we continue moving through the advancements in the decades that followed, she gets a huge giggle out of the first laptop computer, the IBM5100.

“This would crush me,” she protests. “It’s huge!”

“By today’s standards, it’s ridiculous. But this was 1975,” I argue. “So fifty-five pounds with a five-inch display was the latest. And by 1981, a laptop’s weight had been cut to less than half, so progress was happening pretty fast. Sometimes, I think it would have been cool to be alive during the groundbreaking phases of computer development. And yet the limitations in technology would have been so frustrating.”

“You wouldn’t have known any better.”

“I would have seen the possibilities.”

Nia nods. “You always have to look at those…”

I’m hoping she means more than the computers. That maybe she means us, too.

When we work our way through the rest of the museum and I thank Aiden for his excellent tour, I can’t resist putting my hand on the small of Nia’s back as I lead her to my car. “You didn’t hate that place?”

“No. I actually enjoyed it. I had no idea computers were so old and varied and had gone through so many types and versions. I tried to take it all in, but I’m on information overload. I’m sure I missed some details.”

“I visit once a quarter or so and I almost always find some nugget of information I previously overlooked.” I help her into the car.

As we head out of the parking lot, I look her way. I know it’s late. I know we both have to work tomorrow.

But I don’t want to let her go.

The streets are deserted, so we reach her house in the short time it takes for Keeley’s next song to fill the space. Sixpence None the Richer pleads in lilting, feminine tones to “Kiss Me.” I only know this song because Diana loved it and played it whenever she was feeling optimistic about some new girlfriend or another she hoped might fall in love with her. The lyrics are chanting through my brain as Nia sings along just under her breath.

Yes, I want to kiss her beneath the milky twilight. Hell, I’m aching to kiss her anywhere. I’d love to kiss her now.

The night we had sex is emblazoned in my memory…but it’s a blur. Everything happened so fast it was almost an out-of-body experience. My inexplicable anger at seeing her naked for a room full of strangers with Kyle’s hands all over her, followed by the raging lust that overtook everything, especially my inhibitions and common sense. When it was over, I was breathing hard, stunned, reeling with guilt, yet flush with a bone-deep satisfaction I’d never felt. But the details—the way she smelled, tasted, kissed—aren’t clear. And I need them to be.

When I take Nia’s hand and stare at her through most of a stoplight, she glances my way, assessing me from beneath her long, dark lashes. The sheer rosy tint of her lip gloss snags my gaze as her lips curl up in a knowing smile. She remembers that night, too. My heart thuds. Beneath my zipper, my cock does handstands. God, the chemistry between us keeps brewing, bubbling under my skin, boiling me with anticipation. This need is something new, unsettling, and addicting.

I exit my Bimmer and help her out. I keep her hand clasped in mine and hope my palm isn’t sweating as I lead her to her door.

Under the bubbled glass of her porch light, I give in to my need to touch her, curling my hands around her shoulders. “I want you.”

She meets my stare. “I want you, too.”

“Thank god.” If I had to leave tonight without feeling her under me, I don’t know if my sanity would survive.

I tug her close and lean in. Her grip on my arms tightens as she closes her eyes and offers up her mouth. I don’t hesitate.

As I crush her lips under mine, I glide into heaven. She’s warm and velvety and lush, like I remember. But so different. The night I barged into her dressing room and into her body, she looked like a siren luring me with her red lips and a barely there robe. She felt like a woman, like temptation and sin. Tonight, Nia is more natural, almost vulnerable. I want to surround her, comfort her. Pleasure her. But it’s more. I want to make her forget every man who came before me.