Just the Thought of You Ch. 03

The only weight in a weightless universe was her slight frame next to his, and if he didn't hold tight to her he would just drift away.

"Jarod-"

He opened his eyes.

She was giving him that look again.

He breathed deep, letting his thumb settle against the pulse just under her jaw. That small throb helped him maintain some semblance of reality.

The little crease between her eyebrows intensified.

"I meant what I said. I need you to believe me-"

His head moved back, his eyes searching hers. What? "Of course I believe you-"

She blink rapidly and took a breath. "You haven't...said anything," she said, muttering the last bit.

No, he hadn't.

"I'm not playing a game, Jarod, I'm serious."

He didn't stop to think about. Just scooped her up and rolled onto his back, with her on top of him, all tangled in the blanket.

He framed her face with his hands, fingers in her hair, thumb tracing the swollen curve of her bottom lip.

Her eyes closed, and when she opened them again she stared resolutely at his chin.

"Steph, look at me-"

She still didn't, even when he tilted her face down to his.

"Babe-... dammit, please!"

With that last word, her eyes locked onto his.

"Stephanie," he exhaled slowly. "I take everything to do with you incredibly seriously."

She regarded him silently.

"What is it you need to hear me say?"

He ran his thumb along one of those silky dark eyebrows and then back up to smooth her frown.

He hoped she couldn't feel the tremble in his arms. The shaking he felt extend from deep inside and start to take over his whole body. As he grasped tight to the one small sliver of courage he possessed.

Her small hands clasped at his, her cheek turning slowly against his palm, a small sound catching in her throat.

His thumb rubbed against her lips, words just bubbling up.

"You need to hear me say how much I love your mouth?" He lifted his head until their lips brushed. Traced that soft lower lip with the tip of his tongue. "And kissing you. I love kissing you."

She pressed her mouth to his. Her cheeks felt damp.

He pulled back, but only to smooth her hair. To look at her and make sure she was hearing him.

Her eyes were wide. Shiny with tears.

Something clenched tight in his chest, close to bursting. But he went on.

"I love your skin." His hand skimmed her shoulder, burrowing under the blanket until he found the heated smoothness of her lower back. He buried his face against her neck, breathing her in. "So damned soft."

He could feel her hands gripping into his shirt-front. Her jagged, short breaths.

He dug under the blanket with his other hand until he found her waist. Spanned as much of it as he could, his thumb tracing along the delicate curve of her ribcage.

Her hands were no longer still. Those little fingers were working away at the buttons on his shirt.

The heat rolled up his body, a heavy wave that left him gasping.

He let both his hands slide down to the soft curve of her rump. He grabbed tight and rocked her against his body. Got his fingers underneath the lacy fabric of her panties and ripped them down, pushing them down her legs as far as he could reach. Suddenly, he could hardly breathe.

Then their hands were just tangling. Wrestling and bumping into each other over her coat and cardigan and shoving up her t-shirt and hauling on the last few buttons of his shirt and the t-shirt underneath. She won the contest and celebrated by pressing her mouth to one of his bared nipples. Flicking with a slow tongue.

He hissed.

Then paid her back with a firm, rolling grab of her ass. And whispered in her ear how much he loved that particular part of her too.

She relinquished her punishment long enough to press her face to his neck with a shaky, whispered, "God, Jarod-"

Raising herself slightly on her elbows, her hands came up to frame his face. Met his eyes and stared long and hard. She blinked, and let out a long breath. "You really mean it, don't you."

He leaned in and nipped at her lower lip. "Mm-hmm."

She shifted, pushing a hand down between them. It was headed for his belt buckle. Under his belt buckle, worming its way down his trousers and-

"Steph-...don't-"

"I want to hear you say it." Her eyes were dark, soft, wild.

He couldn't help the twitch of his hips as she rubbed the flat of her hand against him through his boxers. Or the groan the rumbled up through his chest. Fuck, but he loved it when she touched him. Loved her.

His eyes opened, held hers.

"I love you, Steph."

Time passed in a strange expanded way. Body humming with needing her, but somehow just happy in that still moment to be present with her. Right there, with the cool wetness of the moor seeping up through the air. With the leaning heaviness of rock over them and the rough tawny grass underneath them. Her face, hovering over his, framed against an ever-changing sky.

His hand traced up along her shoulder. Brushed his fingers against her neck. Slid up into her hair and gripped it, hard. Pulled her down until their lips just brushed.

"I really want to fuck you. Right here."

Her eyelids fluttered briefly, her eyes meeting his, pupils dark and wide and completely gone from the world of rational thought. She nodded.

* * * * *

STEPHANIE

Somehow my mind had taken his words and recorded them, each syllable, exactly. And was playing the words on a loop, over and over. The words where he said he loved me.

Loved me.

Loved me.

Every time the loop went by, I searched each tone. Each inflection. Checked an re-checked. Searching for the half-truth. The mocking. The insincerity. The duress. Nothing.

No, not nothing. What his voice had been filled with was...everything. All of himself, pressed into several very small words.

The fingers tightening in my hair brought me back to the other thing he'd just said. The 'fuck' part of that was working its way into my little loop, and it was sending my stomach down to my feet somewhere.

I didn't care that I was bare-assed under a sorry excuse for a picnic blanket. If anything. I wanted to be completely naked, out of the constricting heat of these clothes and free of anything that had to do with the real world. Why couldn't we just be rolling about, naked in the grass like Adam and Eve and not care about anything at all?

Thankfully, he was already making progress on getting me out of my coat, undoing the last of the buttons, pushing the sleeves down my arms. I let my eyes drift closed when he just held my arms there, pushed back behind me. Opened my eyes again when he rolled his hips. Gasped out loud at the urgency of his erection against my bare skin through the fabric of his jeans. I tried to get closer. My body begged to get closer, but my feet were tangled.

I scrabbled with my barely-free hand, trying to reach my ankle, desperate to free myself from the tether of my still-clinging underwear. Dammit.

"Jarod, I can't-"

My arms were released immediately. I looked down into his face. Watched him battle with himself. Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, suppressing the growl of frustrating I could feel rumbling in his chest.

"I'm sorry, babe. You just drive me so crazy. I shouldn't have-"

"What are you talking about?" I shoved at his chest gently with my hand.

He squinted up at me. "You wanted to stop."

I pushed at him harder, wriggling so I could finally reach my feet. Straightening, task accomplished, I dangled my panties in front of him.

"No. My feet were caught and I couldn't reach them."

I watched the cogs turn. Felt his hands slide around my waist. Gripping tight, kneading with his thumbs. Dear sweet god.

He didn't protest this time when I went for his belt buckle.

I barely got down to his boxers when he was dragging me up to straddle him.

"Fuck, Steph...please...I need you so much-"

So hard. So blazing hot and hard and he pressed up into me and slid in so tight and smooth and slick, taking my breath. My arms kept shaking. I was holding onto his shoulders for dear life. Through the shock of it, I could feel him pulling on the blanket. Drawing it around me. I may have uttered some gibberish in gratitude. Or in an attempt to assure him that all I cared about right now was the feel of him inside me so deep. So deep.

Cool moorland breeze against heated skin. Wet grass pressed, chilled, against my shins. It felt so strange. So foreign. But all it did was drive the excitement higher. My head was becoming fuzzy from the pure, clean air. That and the slow, rolling grasp of his hands on my bottom, pulling me towards him, drawing him even deeper. Gasping, whimperingly deeper.

"Kiss me."

My eyes slid up to meet his.

"Kiss me," he repeated.

He hadn't said where. So I started where the sharp corner of his jaw met his ear. Rubbed my tongue over the sharp sting of stubble. He pressed upwards with his hips as if to punish me. Such mad glorious punishment. Punish me more, was all I could think. Punish me some more my mad, wild man.

* * * * *

JAROD

Heat seeped through into his shoulder from the white, smooth stucco of the doorway. Heat left over from the sun that was now sinking in deep reds and oranges into a calm, dark sea.

He couldn't not take a deep, slow in-breath. Ocean. And the heavy trailing perfume from the cascade of flowering vines crowding the walls of the little covered walkway area just outside their room. He was pleased they'd gotten a room that was so secluded, with the door opening right out onto the sea view. It was how he'd remembered it. But different. Better, this time.

It hadn't really hit him until they stepped off the ferry. He'd watched her wander, fascinated, through the stalls on the waterfront. With her dark hair and that wide, exotic mouth, it was a wonder she didn't get mistaken for a local. All he cared about was the way her eyes sparkled when she turned and smiled at him.

He'd nearly forgotten how everything blended together in Greece. White and blue. Night and day. They'd stayed up late the previous evening with the dinner crowd and then spent the day exploring remote, tumble-down villages. He hadn't anticipated the thrill of her slim arms gripping him tight. Her body pressed to his back as he manoeuvred the scooter through the rough roads and sun-bitten tracks. He could have driven forever with her there, holding tight to him, her chin digging into his shoulder.

He re-tucked the towel around his waist and shifted his hips so he could look back into the room. She was curled up on the bed, swathed in the light covers, her face turned to him. Watching him, no doubt, through those covertly lowered eyelids. He half-chuckled to himself. He was gradually getting used to her scrutiny. She missed nothing. Read him like a fucking book. And it was wonderful.

The last curl of breeze drew his head back around. Pulled him into the deepening twilight. He stepped out onto the balcony, the smooth tile cool under his feet. There was something out there. Something drawing him out along the walkway. It tickled at his brain but just wouldn't show itself.

He pushed aside a tangle of green vines blocking the view of the last streaks of sunset, and then it was all around him. He tilted his head back, breathing deep. But how could that be?

It was as if she was outside with him. All around him. Surrounding him. Her scent. He tugged one of the vines closer, breathing in the perfume of the white, star-like flowers.

Jasmine.

And all this time, she'd smelled of jasmine.

* * * * *

STEPHANIE

I tried to move, but there was some unyielding iron bar of an arm wrapped firmly around my body. At the end of that iron bar was a man's rather large, rather warm hand. Cupping my breast.

Just that realisation caused it's own tidal wave of heat to roll up my body and leave me tingling and aching in places I should only be sore and very very tired.

I breathed as deep as I could within the confines of my arm-cage. His deep breathing in my ear told me he was still asleep. Something pressing against my ass told me not everything about the man was slumbering. Seriously?

But then I was so close to arching back and wanting more. Again. And more. And again.

I bit my lip and screwed my eyes shut. Just go back to sleep, Steph. Or at least just enjoy lying here, with a sleeping mountain of man pressed to your back and the sound of the ocean drifting through the open window.

But I'd already wiggled around too much, and the molten-mountain behind me shifted. Flexed. Oh god, that should not feel so good against my-

Oh god. His teeth, scraping ever so lightly on my shoulder, and I'm just pushing back against him like some crazed thing.

And his hand, sliding down the back of my leg, pushing my knee up so he can-

Oh fuck FUCK-

And he was saying things in my ear as he pushed himself inside me like how I was beautiful and how good I smelled and how much he wanted me. How much he wanted to fuck me.

Maybe I'd have lasted a little longer if he hadn't moved that iron-bar arm and the hand attached to it, down from my breast where he'd been rasping a thumb over my poor, sensitive nipple, down, down and found my clit with his fingers and just stroked.

Maybe then I wouldn't have come so hard my whole body curled up and clenched down on him so he came too with quick, sharp thrusts and a bone-melting groan, with his face pressed into the back of my neck.

And then he did it all again, but slow. Gentle.

* * * * *

Drifting. Consciousness doesn't describe that state of being. When you're not entirely yourself any more, but part of someone else, and they're part of you. And you breathe for each other and feel for each other and nothing exists but the very clear not-being-alone any more. So not-alone that alone ceases to exist and it always was that way.

(the end...)

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Thank you so much for sticking with this story and these characters and falling for them as much as I have. I've loved writing them as much as you've loved reading them. Many thanks for all the votes and comments and encouragement (and patience)!

xBrunne