"Jed, I'm going up to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open"
"Are you alright? Zoe has only just gone to bed"
"I'm fine, just tired. I think the three nights on call and the unending back to back surgeries this week have just gotten to me."
Abbey Bartlett bent down to kiss her husband, put a hand against his cheek and rested her forehead against his. His sparkling blue eyes glimmered in concern for his wife as he pulled her down onto his lap, without separating their heads. Without so much as a second to question it, he was giving her a gentle but probing kiss that made her tired body lean in just a little bit closer.
"You sure that you don't want to wait up with me down here. I can think of a few things that might wake you up a little" Jed teased, kissing her nose.
She couldn't help it. Abbey found herself giving a contented moan and snuggling in, resting her head right under his chin.
"You could always keep me company upstairs, that bed can always feel so huge when I'm in it alone. How often are we home together for the whole night these days anyway? It would be a shame to let it go to waste."
"I was just going to stay down here and finish watching this movie on TV."
"Really Jed? What can be more interesting than coming upstairs with me?"
"You know how I hate to leave things unfinished."
"Here I was thinking you and I just started something and you want to leave that unfinished?"
"Well, when you put it that way sweet knees" he breathed out loud with a smile on his face as he leaned into his wife. He took her mouth in his own again, this time less gently. His tongue met hers as his hands went to her breasts. Her nipples hardened as he started moving his mouth down her neck and his hand started dusting a trail down to her navel.
Abbey pulled away and said "Seriously Jed, not down here. Lizzie might get home at any time and I might or might not have a special new garment to show you upstairs."
"You can go up, get changed and I will be up there soon." He said, his eyes turning to look out the window of the front room of the Manchester Farmhouse.
"Jed, she is an eighteen year old young woman who has gone out with her friends. They've just finished their senior year and have hardly started getting summer jobs yet. You have to start trusting her, you're not going to wait up for her when she is off at college, are you?"
"It's not her that I don't trust, it's him."
"Oh that is such a cliché and you know it" She replied with a light little laugh and a smile.
"Don't give me that nonsense Abagail, you don't like him any more than I do."
"Of course I don't, but that doesn't mean that I don't trust Lizzie. The more we try and fight her about him though, the more they are going to want to be together. If we do nothing, then she will get over him in her own time. I know I did. Anyone else remember Ron Earlich?"
"Do I remember Ron Earlich" he starts muttering to himself.
Abbey laughs loudly this time, places her hand back on her husband's cheek and kisses him squarely on the lips. "But I did get over him and boy am I glad that I did." Abbey patted his cheek, stood up and stretched her back a little. "Or maybe I should call him back up and see what I'm missing out on" she said with a wink as she quickly flitted her way over to the bottom of the stairs.
"What was that Abagail?" he replied as he lunged after his fast moving wife, caught her around the waist and kissed her so passionately that she melted into his strong frame.
"I love you Jethro" she replied as she threw her arms around his neck.
"Don't call me that" he muttered into her ear as he swept her up into his arms and carried her swiftly up the stairs as Abbey laughed.
"Can't you guys keep it down? Some of us are tyring to read over here," a small female voice chimed in as Ellie stuck her head out of her bedroom door.
"Not for much longer you're not – it's time for lights out young lady. It is already past your bedtime and you know it" Abbie said as Jed put her back down on the ground, a guilty look plastered all over her face.
"You never came to turn off my light like you do every other night and I'm allowed to stay up and read in my bed after Zoe has gone to sleep" Ellie argued.
"Sorry sweety, I forgot. It isn't often that Daddy and I are home on a weeknight anymore and we got distracted. But you still know the rules," Abbey chastised her middle daughter. "Hop into bed and I will be there to tuck you in shortly."
"No, I'll come and do it now" Jed replied to both women on the landing while he leaned in to whisper in his wife's ear "Special garment."
Abbey laughed and kissed her daughter's head "Good night sweet pea, I love you" and walked into the master bedroom.
Jed followed Ellie into her bedroom, pulled back the covers and helped his daughter get into bed. "You just really got caught up in the book, didn't you?" he said to his daughter with a wink.
"Yep, it's one of my favourites!" She said as she snuggled down on her pillow with her teddy bear against her small, strawberry blonde head.
"What are you reading at the moment?"
"Anne of Green Gables. It's one of my favourites! Anne just tried to dye her hair brown but made it green by mistake" Ellie replied with a giggle.
"I do believe that that's one of your mothers favourite books too. Now, have you go everything?" he said as he looked around the room.
"Yep. Night night daddy, I love you." She said as her eyes started to flutter closed.
"Sweet dreams my angel" he said, kissing her on the head before turning off the light and closing the door behind him.
It was the small things that Jed missed working away in the nation's capital as a Senator. Seeing his daughters at school assemblies, having breakfast with them, being woken up by a 5 year old jumping in his bed or tucking them in at night. Having the chance to do the little things when he was home was something that Jed would never take for granted. He was able to spend the time with Lizzie when she was little but had missed so much of Ellie and Zoe's childhoods that it broke something inside him whenever they shared stories of the things that he missed. He tried to make up for it, but he couldn't shake the feeling that Ellie resented him for it. Zoe was such a little spitfire that she just made the best of the time that he could spend with her father, then again, she had never known life to be any other way than for Jed to live away so much.
Jed sighed as he opened the door to Zoe's room. The small child was tangled up in her blankets, with an arm hanging over her face and her leg hanging over the side of the bed. She had the family cat nestled up next to her stomach and her stuffed giraffe was underneath her. He chuckled lightly to himself at the sight of her. He straightened up her bed a little and kissed her on the head before walking out of the room.
He crossed the landing and walked to the back of the house where the master bedroom was located. Upon opening the bedroom door, he discovered that his wife indeed had found herself a 'special garment' while he had been putting the remaining occupants of the house in order.
Abbie had turned off the lights in the room and lit a couple of candles, while she lay suggestively across the bed. The garment in question was a red negligée that looked like nothing more than cobwebs. Lace inset satin that sparkled in the candlelight accentuated all of her curves in just the right places. Abbey had her head propped up on her hand and a knowing smile hinted on her lips.
"Wow" he whispered, as the breath suddenly left his body.
Abbey's smile spread to her eyes as the air in the bedroom became electrified. She slowly swung her legs off the bed and sauntered her way over to her husband. Her hands silently slipped under his shirt as she helped him take it off, tracing patterns and deliberately getting tangled in his chest hair. When the shirt was off, she slowly inserted her hands inside the back of his jeans and grasped his buttocks in her hands while he lowered his head to take her mouth in his own. She squeezed and kneaded as he stole all the breath from her lungs with a deep and passionate kiss.
Slowly, she moved her hands around to the front of his jeans, raising them up to the waist band as she did. She undid the top button with deliberate motions, teasing the zipper of the fly down, inch by inch. Suddenly, Jed couldn't take the suspense any more and he pulled down his underwear and the jeans with one swift movement while grabbing Abbie towards him. A surge of adrenaline shot through Abbie and suddenly all thoughts of a careful seduction ran out of her head.
He grabbed her hips as she jumped up onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist. Her head bent backwards as he nestled his head in her bosom. One of the shoulder straps of her negligee slipped off as Jed started teasing her nipple with his teeth, his tongue caressing and smoothing the trail behind them. With three deliberate strides his knees hit the edge of the king-sized bed. He lowered her back down onto the bed and followed over the top of her, aching to touch as much of her flesh as possible. Abbey started to shuffle her way up the bed, Jed following her movements without separating his mouth from hers.
Suddenly, when they had reached the head of the bed, Abbey pushed against him and flipped them so that it was Jed who was on his back. She started tracing her fingers along the throbbing outline of his penis, ever so gently – almost like a whisper – as her head started tracing a path down across his pectoral muscles, to his navel. She swirled her fingers around the tip of the glans in circular motions as she started kissing and licking the way up his shaft. Jed's legs were rigid, his hands curled up in the covers, struggling to remember to breathe as she started replacing her fingers with her tongue on the tip of his penis. He sucked in a breath as she kissed the head of his member and took the whole throbbing member into her mouth. Up and down she moved her mouth, almost freeing the tip at the height of her path before almost covering him entirely again – almost. There was only so much you could do with such a remarkably sized appendage.
She looked up and saw her husband struggling to keep things together. She quickly moved up to kiss him once again on the mouth, in a passionate clash of lips, tongue and teeth. Jed flipped them both over without breaking the kiss. He pulled off her underwear as she sat up to remove her top, still joined at the lips, bringing his hand back up to hover at her entrance. His hands didn't need to slip between her velvet folds to know that she was aching for him as much as he was. She arched her hips up onto his hand and in one fluid movement he removed his hand pushed himself deep inside her.
It was her turn to gasp for breath as he slowly slid in and out of her, one of her hands clenched in his hair and the other digging into the skin between his shoulder blades. His slow thrusts began to speed up, grazing that spot deep inside of her each and every time. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper the thrusts delved until she was whimpering for release. When climax finally came for both of them, it was with an almighty shudder. Jed collapsed on top of his wife, both of them trying to catch their breath. Her hand still tracing gentle patterns in his hair.
They both lay there, content and connected. The complete intimacy they shared with a smile to each other as they unknowingly fell asleep in that position. Their body heat kept them warm for a while, until Jed went to roll over in his sleep and woke them both up.
"Hey," he whispered with a self-satisfied smile.
"Mmm" she murmured as she smiled back at him.
"Come here" he said as they both found their way under the covers, intertwining their limbs with Abbey's head resting on his shoulder.
"Have I mentioned how much I miss you when you're away?" Abbie asked with a hint of sadness poorly masked in her voice.
"Well, I was pretty great just then"
"Not just about that, jackass" she replied, playfully hitting him on the chest. "I miss this, feeling you vibrate as you laugh, seeing the way you smile when you think you're being funny or watching you with our girls."
"I miss you all too. Did you know that Ellie is reading Anne of Green Gables? She reminded me so much of you tonight when I was tucking her in it almost broke my heart. Or seeing Zoe sleeping with Chicken, she was all twisted up but nothing disturbed the cat enough for him to leave her bed. Remind me again why it is that I do it?"
"So that all little girls can grow up as safely as yours are? The horrible side effect being that you can't watch them do it as you change the world for others. But I am so very proud of you, every day. I don't think I tell you that enough. Or how much I love you." She said, turning his head to kiss her.
"You do tell me enough, but you can never hear it too many times. I don't know what I would do without you Abbey, you are my world. You and our girls." Jed leaned in to kiss his wife again. As passionately as they had had sex earlier in the night was as tenderly as they made love this time, slowly and making sure that each moment lasted, treasuring their time with each other.