Standing above her, he'd already begun fumbling with his breeches, which she deemed premature – so bringing a knee up smartly between his thighs and pulling down on a grabbed handful of his hair, she obliged him to get on top of her. They lay there for a while with thighs interlocked, like fingers of two hands clutching each other, and Eliza felt him get ready as she was getting ready. But long after that they ground away at each other, as if Bob could somehow force his way through all those layers of masculine and feminine clothing. They did this because it felt good, and they were together in a cold echoing house in the Hague and had no other demands on their time. Eliza learned that Bob was not a man who felt good very often and that it took him a long time to relax. His whole body was stiff at first, and it took a long time for that stiffness to drain out of his limbs and his neck, and concentrate in one particular Member, and for him to agree that this did not all have to happen in an instant. At the beginning his face was planted between her breasts, and his feet were square on the floor, but inch by inch she coaxed him upwards. At first he showed a fighting man's reluctance to sever his connection with the ground, but in time she made it understood that additional delights were to be found toward the head of the table, and so he kicked his boots off and got his knees, and eventually his toes, up on the tabletop.