She'd started before he came home: cotton pads, the little glass bottles lined up like soldiers, the lamp pulled close so she could watch the brush make one clean pass from cuticle to tip. It was the only quarter hour of her day that belonged to no one but her.
He found her like that, one hand splayed flat on the vanity's glass top, and stopped in the doorway instead of coming in. He had learned, the hard way, what a hand on her shoulder at the wrong moment cost him in smudged polish and a re-do.
"Almost done," she said, not looking up, the brush moving in that small, exact rhythm. "Third coat."
"Take your time." He came in anyway and sat on the edge of the bed behind her, close enough that the doorway had clearly been a formality.
She finished the last nail and lifted both hands off the glass, fingers spread wide, wrists loose — the posture you hold when a thing is wet and yours alone to ruin. "Ten minutes," she said. "Minimum. I mean it."
"I heard you." His mouth found the back of her neck instead, unhurried, and her hands stayed exactly where they were, hovering above her own lap like she had been caught mid-surrender.
She could have set them down. Could have decided the polish mattered less than pulling him closer. She did not. That was the trick of it — not the waiting itself but choosing to keep waiting, second after second, while his hand slid along her collarbone and hers stayed raised, open, entirely his to leave untouched.
"You're shaking," he said against her ear, and she was, ten wet, glossy proofs of it catching the lamplight.
"Don't you dare make me ruin these." But she did not move her hands. She held them exactly where they were — up, open, undefended — and let him take his time deciding what her stillness was worth.