Calleigh had just finished brushing her teeth when the doorbell rang. She was halfway to the door when the knocking started. What the hell? Who could possibly need to see her so badly at 11 o'clock at night? And what were the chances it was someone she wanted to see while she was in nothing but a pair of boxers Jake had left at her place and an old Tulane t-shirt? A quick peek out her front window revealed who her late-night visitor was, and Calleigh wasn't sure if she was relieved or terrified.

Still, he was harmless, so she cracked the door open. "I'm right here, Eric. You don't need to knock like you're trying to wake the dead."

He just shrugged, scratched the back of his head in that way that he did when he was nervous or agitated. It seemed to be more agitation than nerves tonight. Edginess was coming off him in waves. Maybe she was wrong about him being harmless.

"You took forever."

"I took about three minutes," she corrected, still tucked into the slim space of open door. "What are you doing here?"

"You gonna invite me in?"

"If you tell me why you're here at 11 o'clock." Yeah, he was agitated alright. She might even go so far as to say pissed. And she was defensive, which didn't seem to be improving his mood.

"You want to know what I want. You want to hear it from me."

Oh. Shit. She shifted uncomfortably, avoided his gaze for just a second before looking him in the eye again. "Yes, I do."

"Well, that's why I'm here. So let me in."

She wondered if there was a double meaning in that statement, and had no doubt there was one in her reply. "All you've ever had to do is ask."

She stepped back and he followed, closing the door behind them and leaving them in the low light of her entryway. He stayed close, in her personal space, and this new no-personal-bubble Eric threw her off kilter, but he had her cornered now. There was nowhere to go to gain the upper hand.

"So," she started, crossing her arms over her chest and locking her gaze with his. His eyes always got so dark when he was churning with emotion, she noticed. You could always read Eric Delko by the eyes. "What do you want?"

"You."

She frowned, looked away. That wasn't enough. "What about me?"

"Oh come off it, Calleigh," he scoffed, stepping even closer. She took a step back to counter his movement, and ended up with her back pressed against the door. Eric planted his palms on either side of her shoulders and leaned in close. She'd really managed to get under his skin, hadn't she? She wasn't sure whether that pleased her or troubled her. She figured she'd have a few more days -- hell, maybe even weeks -- before he got his act together. "You know exactly what I want. You read the file. I gave you the stack that had my file to be sure you'd read it."

"And then you told me it didn't matter."

"I was hoping you'd give me a little more to go on. A guy doesn't always want to put his heart out there and get it trampled on. Especially not by one of his best friends – and where do you get off acting like you didn't know your friendship was important to me?" He shook his head at her, leaned back for a second before planting his hands again. She was quickly losing patience with his little bout of temper.

"I guess I was just hoping you'd finally man up and tell me how you feel. You, Eric. Not a file, not a hint, not a backhanded, leading conversation. If you want me, I'm here. But I don't want to have to drag it out of you like a goddamned confession." Her temper was up now, too, and she pushed at his chest, shoving him just enough for her to escape.

She'd barely taken two steps, though, before his hand clamped around her arm and tugged her back to the door. "I want you," he told her, both hands on her arms now, sliding up to pin her by the biceps. "I've wanted you for years. I wanted you the whole time you were fucking around with Jake-"

"Oh, that's it!" She tried to shove at him again, but his grip on her was too strong, and he was damned lucky she liked him so much or she'd have brought her knee up into his groin. "You don't get to barge in here in the middle of the night and throw my love life back in my face."

"You could have been with me that whole time, you know. I've wanted you for years; I've loved you for years. Ever since I woke up in that hospital bed and you were there, I've loved you." His grip on her tightened and she wondered if it would leave bruises in the morning. She wasn't scared, though. She was too irked to be scared. "But no, you have to go date the bad boy and get your heart broken again."

"Well, maybe if you'd grown a pair and told me how you felt before Jake came into the picture, I'd have spent the last two years with you, but you didn't, Eric. So I didn't know. I had no idea how you felt until I was with Jake and you were all green-eyed and pouty all the time." Calleigh hadn't expected this. When she'd told him to tell her what he wanted, she hadn't expected it to march them straight into an argument more in-your-face and personal than any of the tiffs they'd had in the past. Still, she wasn't afraid of him. Afraid of herself maybe, afraid of how this would end, but not of him.

"Well, you try watching the woman you love dating someone who doesn't deserve her. It'd make anyone a little cranky."

"Oh, like the Eric Delko Parade of Bedmates? Or the toothing?" Low blows, she knew. Those were the past, the latter had been about coping with the loss of Speedle, but she had her ire up now, and people always cut deeper when they were angry.

"You weren't in love with me then." He said it with such conviction that she believed it, though a part of her had been searching herself for months – ever since she read his file – trying to figure out when this had all started. She'd never been able to figure it out, always tracing further and further back, remembering moments where she looked at him just a little differently, remembering the occasional embarrassingly graphic dreams she'd always had about him.

"What makes you think I am now?"

Eric just looked at her – scowled at her really – and then shook his head with something she would have feared was disgust if she didn't know him better. Even as well as she knew him, she couldn't place the emotion there, but a moment later it didn't matter. Because a moment later he apparently decided talking wasn't getting the job done, and so he crushed his mouth to hers, kissing her hard and hot. His mouth was insistent against hers, his teeth nipping at her lower lip a little too hard to be playful. When she gasped, he took the opportunity to swipe his tongue into her mouth, forcing her into a deep, wet kiss.

Not that she was complaining. No, she wasn't complaining a damned bit. She was edgy now, too, and she realized with a start what had gotten them both so keyed up. All that tension that had been building between them for years had finally reached its boiling point, bubbling up and up and up until they ended up here, pawing at each other in a nearly-dark foyer in the middle of the night.

She grunted and angled her head deeper into the kiss, teeth catching his lower lip and holding it for a second, retaliation for the way hers still ached just slightly. When she shifted her grip to tug at his belt, he let her arms go, though she doubted it was because he felt like relinquishing control. He proved her right seconds later when she felt one hand palm her breast and seek out her already hardening nipple through the thin cotton of her shirt; the other hand careened down her side and then yanked up the hem of her shirt to shove at the waistband of her boxers.

This was crazy. She shouldn't be doing this, but damn it, she wanted it. And he wanted it. And she couldn't pretend any more that she didn't really know what he wanted. There was no playing dumb when her hand was delving through fabric to find his erection – his very generous erection, she noticed with a rush of heat – and begin to pump, no pretending they didn't know a lot more than either had let on when she was shimmying out of the boxers he'd managed to shove halfway down, kicking them across the room as his fingers plunged beneath the waistband of her underwear to find her wet and ready.

He pressed over her clit and she moaned, finally tearing her mouth from his to curse into the dark and spread her legs just a little wider. He took the opportunity to reach further and thrust a finger into her, then a second, and she gasped, her head falling back with a thud against the door as she ground her hips against his hand. He still had the other on her breast, tugging and teasing at her through her shirt, hard enough for the cotton create delicious friction against her. "God, Eric, yes," she groaned, realizing suddenly that her own hand had gone limp around him. She gave him another quick pull, listened to his moan, and then pulled her hand back out to push his pants and underwear down over his hips in one quick move.

When his thumb found her clit again, she was making the kind of throaty, uninhibited cries she usually tried to save until a little later in the relationships. She couldn't help it, though, not when his fingers had found just the right angle, just the right spot. Bliss was rolling through her in little waves, and as she wrapped her hand around him again, he shifted just a little and she cried out. To him, to God, to anything she could think of as she felt the slow tightening low in her belly, like the sea receding before a tsunami rolled in. She was about to come, and come hard. "Yes, yes, Eric, don't stop!"

But he did. That bastard, he did stop, pulling his fingers out of her and shoving at her panties. "If you're gonna come, I want to be in you," he growled, waiting for her to shimmy and kick again before he scooped her up by the thighs and pinned her to the door. Calleigh wound her legs around his waist for leverage, then reached between them to guide him to her.

The first thrust was almost enough to make her come – almost, but not quite. It took two more before she felt first spasm of orgasm slap through her, vicious and brilliant, and she couldn't help the way she cried out for him, had no control over her mouth as she squeezed her eyes shut and let him rail into her with abandon, each deep thrust igniting another tremor of ecstasy. "God! Yes! Eric! Shit! Oh f-! Mm! Ah! Yes! I-! FUCK! I-! Oh God! Eric! Eric!! ERIC!!"

He came inside her with a vicious grunt and a fierce, "Fuck!" and then they were left there, trembling and sweaty, his weight keeping her pinned against the door.

Well. That had been insane. But, God, so good. Her legs felt like liquid, her head was buzzing, and her lungs were burning as she dragged in gasp after gasp of air. Eric was panting hot puffs of breath into the space between her shoulder and the door. Wow. Just… wow. She was almost glad they'd danced around this so long now, if the end result was a quickie that good.

And then, much too soon for her taste, he was shifting, pulling out of her and easing her back down to the floor, mumbling an apology.

"No, don't be sorry," she insisted, lifting a hand to cup his cheek, her other braced against the door next to her in an attempt to keep her solid on legs that were still shaky and weak-kneed. "I'm not."

He looked at her then, hesitant again. A little shy. Much more like the Eric Delko she'd come to know lately. Apparently he'd fucked his temper out. "You're sure?"

"Oh yeah," she assured, grinning at him. "That was… incredible."

Eric chuckled then, too, leaning his body against hers again and ducking his head for a quick but tender kiss. "Yeah. It really was."

Arms winding up around his neck, she deepened the kiss this time, teasing against his lip with her tongue until he opened eagerly for her. She kept it slow and easy – she was still getting her breath back – and when she pulled away it was only so she could skim her hands down his arms to link their fingers and offer him an invitation. "I have this bed in the other room… It's a lot more comfortable than your hotel. Why don't you… spend the night?"

"Really?" His fingers pulsed against hers, and even in the low light she could see the relief and hope in his eyes. Her heart clenched in that way it did when she was starting to fall and fall hard. This had better work out, or she'd be devastated.

"Yeah. If we set the alarm a few minutes early in the morning, we can have sex that doesn't leave bruises," she reasoned, smiling when he ducked his head, embarrassed. "Hey," she coaxed, swinging their hands lightly and nudging him with her toe. "It was good. I liked it."

It earned her a smile, and a nod, and another kiss before he told her, "We might need more than a few minutes."

Calleigh laughed softly at him, leaning in to press a kiss to his chest over the cotton of his shirt before untangling their fingers and easing out from between him and the door. "Well, then we'd better get to sleep. Wouldn't want to be tired in the morning."

"Oh heavens no, you wouldn't want to be ravished all night and have to have a few extra cups of coffee in the morning," he teased as he tucked himself back into his pants. Calleigh reached down to scoop up her underwear and her boxers, not bothering to put them back on. Her t-shirt was long enough to make her semi-decent.

"Ravished all night, huh?" she asked, smirking and holding one hand out for him, leading him toward the bedroom. "Maybe I could stay up for that. Can you?"

"Give me a few minutes, and you'll see just how 'up' I can be," he promised, wrapping an arm around her waist and tripping them up just slightly as they walked.

"I think you were pretty up a few minutes ago," she reminded playfully, marveling at how easy they seemed to have slipped from friends to lovers, how quickly they went from spitting angry words to teasing each other.

"You mean when I made you scream?" He nuzzled into her hair when he said it, let his voice go low and velvety.

"I did not scream," she denied, though she had a vague recollection of shrieking his name as the final crest washed over her. Still, knowing it and admitting it were two different things.

"You definitely screamed," Eric insisted as they reached the bedroom.

"I don't think so…." Calleigh tossed her bottoms into the clothes hamper, then turned to face Eric and drew her tshirt up over her head, tossing it at him. "But if you want to try again…"

Biting his lip and grinning at her, he stalked her until her legs hit the mattress, and she scooted back onto it without breaking his gaze. "What happened to 'we'd better get to sleep?'" he asked as he began to quickly flip open the buttons of his shirt.

"Well, then you said something about ravishing me all night, and… I've been waiting for you to finally just tell me how you felt for months now. I suppose finally making love to you all night is worth the lost sleep."

"You suppose, huh?" He'd rid himself of the shirt, and was toeing off his shoes as he undid his button and fly again.

"I suppose," she confirmed, grinning at him as he shoved his pants down and crawled over her, ducking his head to kiss her again.

"You know… I haven't even come close to telling you how I feel about you." Her heart flopped helplessly, and she wound her arms up around his neck as he pressed kisses along her jaw. "How crazy I am about you."

With a sigh, she urged his head back up until she could look him in the eye. "Show me. All night."

The smile he gave her was one of the most honest and happy she'd seen on him in months, and he nodded before settling his weight more fully on top of her.

"Okay. I think I can manage that."