"Ok, so, what's it like?" A few of the newest glee club members crowded around Santana as one of them spoke quietly, almost desperately. "I mean, what should we, you know, expect?"

Half the club was spread haphazardly throughout the seats of the auditorium as the other half worked with Mike on stage. One of their numbers for sectionals was a mash-up that was split among the group, and Santana had ended up on what she referred to as the A-team. Seriously, she and Rachel on the same side? Talent overload. It almost wasn't fair to their classmates. Especially since the other group had ended up with Finn and Lauren. The A-team had been on stage for a total of five minutes, long enough for Brittany and Mike to teach them the new steps they had just added into the routine then run through it once, almost perfectly. The other group (she hadn't even bothered to give them a name) had been up there for an hour, and they weren't even past the first eight-count. Santana got bored quickly, so she was happy for the welcome distraction that the freshmen provided. Especially since that distraction came in the form of them basically worshipping her.

Santana turned her head slightly to the left when she heard a quiet scoff and saw Rachel's nose wrinkled in what appeared to be disgust. "Back off Broadway. This certainly isn't a conversation for a virgin." The younger girls all gasped and backed away from where they knelt in the aisle next to Santana's seat. They were plenty familiar with Santana's reputation, as well as with Rachel's temper. The last thing they wanted was to be caught in the middle of that war, even if it had seemed up to that point that the two girls were something almost resembling friends.

"Ok, first of all," Rachel rolled her eyes as she turned toward Santana in her seat only one over from the other girl, "must you say 'virgin' like it's a dirty word? Because if that's the game we're playing, I can certainly come up with a few names for you." Santana smirked appreciatively. Rachel was a lot more fun when she was feisty.

"Secondly," Rachel continued, "I think maybe you should consult a dictionary, because while that is in fact what I am, you seem a bit confused as to what exactly that word entails." Rachel turned back toward the stage, where her classmates were still fumbling, as if the matter was settled.

Almost choking on the gum she had been chewing distractedly, Santana turned to the three younger girls on her other side. The girls stared up at her wide-eyed, not sure exactly what was going on between the two older members of the club, but aware that the tension level had just risen considerably. "Fresh meat," Santana snapped, "out. Me and Berry gots business to discuss." The girls looked at each other quickly before nodding and darting to the other side of the auditorium.

Santana crossed her arms over her chest and turned back toward Rachel, who still lounged in her seat and watched the stage half-heartedly as if she had not just said something that could practically make the world spin backward. "Ok, what?" Santana knew there was no way that she had understood correctly. Seriously, Rachel could not be implying what it seemed that she was implying.

Rachel's response was a simple one-shouldered shrug as she closed her eyes and shook her head at the basic move Lauren had just butchered.

"Seriously Berry, are you telling me that you are down," Santana lifted a hand, palm flat toward Rachel, as she both mentally and physically stopped herself, and shook her head, "or rather, that Finnocence has been DOWN?" She stressed the word and lowered her hand to wave over her private areas, as if Rachel wasn't already completely sure of what she was referring to.

Still keeping her eyes on the stage, Rachel shook her head. "Not Finn."

Santana dropped her feet, which had been propped on the back of the seat in front of her, to the floor, and slapped her knees dramatically with her hands. "Excuse me!" The Latina seemed to have perfected Rachel's over-the-top stage whisper. "I thought you and St. JackAss didn't do the dirty. I mean really, if that's the case, what's with the shit flyin' all over the place when you found out I had a go with Finn?" Santana paused and a look of something like admiration grew over her features. "Seriously Berry, didn't know you had it in you. Literally."

Rachel finally gave Santana her full attention. "Again," she huffed, "while you're looking up the definition of 'virgin,' go ahead and look up 'sexual intercourse.'"

Santana covered her mouth so that the auditorium wouldn't echo with her laugh. "Ok, so you and Curly-Q didn't do the deed … didn't go all the way, right?" She watched with a smirk as Rachel shook her head. "But he did get a taste of Berry juice?"

"Oh Santana," Rachel groaned and buried her face in her hand. "Must you be so vulgar?"

"Is that a yes?"

"Fine. If we must have this conversation, yes. It's a yes."

Drawing one leg up into the seat under her, Santana turned just a little more so that she and Rachel were squarely face-to-face. Wide-eyed and honestly curious, she leaned forward to close the gap across the empty seat between them as she continued. "So, if you're no stranger to the art of dining in, what's with the snotty, 'I think I might throw up' face when the newbies asked me about it?"

Shrugging and picking at her nails, Rachel avoided eye contact with Santana as she spoke. "I just don't see the big deal." When she finally lifted her eyes from her hands to the other girl's face, she saw Santana's mouth open and an incredulous look in her eyes. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to just leave it at that, not as long as Santana was around, Rachel continued. "I mean, it's sloppy and awkward and to be honest, kind of uncomfortable. I really didn't like it very much. At all."

If Rachel had sent the world spinning backward with her confession that she had in fact received oral (from Jesse St. James, no less), the admission that she didn't enjoy it had brought it to a screeching halt. Seriously? How was that even possible? "You … you didn't like it?"

Rachel would have laughed at the look on Santana's face if it hadn't made her feel so completely self-conscious and almost ashamed. She lowered her eyes and began picking at her nails again. "No. Why? Is it just me?" Santana didn't respond, so after a while Rachel snuck a peek at her face. The look there told her that she was definitely the only one Santana had ever heard complain. "Umm, do you think, maybe, he was doing it wrong?"

"Fuck yeah he was doing it wrong!"

"Santana! Lower your voice!" Rachel hissed at her, but it was too late. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, Puck grabbed the back of the seat between the two girls and used the leverage to launch himself over the chair and into it. (Yeah, Puck was on the A-team. That shit was so stacked.)

Dropping one arm over the back of each girl's seat, Puck turned to smirk at Rachel. "So, wha'd Finnessa do this time, and how does the Puckerone make it right?" It was kind of generally accepted that when something went wrong, especially when Rachel was involved, it got blamed on Finn. Even he stopped fighting it after that whole breaking her nose thing. As often as not Finn turned out to be innocent of whatever the charge was, but it had become a bit of a running joke within the club. And since Finn was, at that time, on the stage attempting to dance, Puck was only half joking.

Huffing and shooting an angry glance toward Santana, Rachel addressed Puck. "Noah, Finn didn't do anything." She rolled her eyes at his smirk. "And this is certainly not something I need your help with."

"Well, actually …" Santana began, only to be quickly cut off when Rachel jumped out of her seat and crossed over Puck's legs to stand directly in front of her.

"Santana! A word?" Rachel wrapped her fingers around one of the shoulder straps of Santana's Cheerio uniform and tugged, hard. Puck stared with wide eyes as the Latina almost flew out of her seat and Rachel stomped up the aisle toward the back of the auditorium, dragging Santana behind her. "Do you mind if I ask," Rachel hissed, once they were in the hall and away from the prying eyes and ears of the glee club, "just what the hell you think you are doing?"

"What, dwarf?" Santana studied her nails uninterestedly as she answered what she found to be a stupid question. "You have a problem. Puckerman offered to fix that problem. And I gotta say, he wouldn't be the worst guy for the job."

"Ok, first of all," Rachel lowered her voice even more and looked around her as if she expected someone to pop up at any second to listen to their conversation, "I never said I had a problem."

"Oh, you got a problem." Santana chuckled almost humorlessly and crossed her arms over her chest.

Rachel mimicked Santana's stance and leaned in closer to the other girl so that their noses were nearly touching, "Well Santana, unlike some people I know, I don't make those activities a part of my daily routine even though I don't have a significant other or even a serious crush at the moment." Rachel took a half step back, restoring a portion of Santana's personal space. "And secondly, even if I did see this as a 'problem,' as you are so fond of calling it, Noah is hardly the person to help me with it."

Santana shifted her weight back and onto one foot, jutting out a hip and resting a hand on it as her other hand rose in the air and she peered over Rachel's shoulder as if she were speaking to someone behind her. "Objection!" Rachel only rolled her eyes at the other girl's dramatics. "Rebuttal A: I call bullshit. No boyfriend, ok. No serious crush? What the fuck ever. You think I don't see your 'I wanna have your mohawked Jewish babies' looks every time Puckerman picks up that guitar and croons out some classic rock," Santana curled her lip and wrinkled her nose in apparent disgust before speaking the next words, "or even country number? Yeah, good try." Rachel's face glowed, but she didn't try to argue. "And rebuttal B: as for Puck not being the right man for the job? Well, see rebuttal A." Rachel huffed and began to spin on her heel, stopped by Santana's hand clutched tightly around her bicep. "And," Santana continued, regaining Rachel's attention in spite of the girl's best attempts to storm off, "you really couldn't ask for a better guide on the road to true oral happiness." Santana dropped her hand from Rachel's arm and shrugged indifferently. "You know, if you're into that sorta thing."

"Men?"

"Yeah." So yeah, Santana wasn't exactly out, but there had come a time over the summer when the secret became too much for her to carry alone and she just had to share it with someone other than Brittany. And while she and Rachel were nothing close to best friends, Berry had been the obvious choice for a few reasons, the whole 'two dads' thing not actually being the biggest. That honor went to the fact that Rachel was super loyal and kind of scary. She was the only person Santana knew who could intimidate someone twice her size without any physical force or even the use of a single curse word. Anyone who could reduce Santana to tears with one serious tongue-lashing was definitely someone she wanted fighting with her and not against her. So far, Rachel hadn't disappointed. Any time Rachel was around, Santana felt more than comfortable in the knowledge that she didn't have to worry about being the center of attention in any way that she didn't want. And surprisingly enough, that had very little to do with Rachel's own desire to be in the spotlight and much more to do with her desire to protect someone who trusted her.

Santana's voice took on a low, serious tone as she released her grip on Rachel's arm. "Look Berry, all I'm saying is, if you want to take care of St. Douchebag's obvious misinterpretation of something completely awesome, you really don't need to look any farther than glee club's own resident badass. For more reasons than one."

Over the conversation and starting to get bored again, Santana turned and sashayed back into the auditorium, leaving a dumbfounded Rachel behind.

~.~

For the remainder of the week after her somewhat disturbing conversation with Santana during rehearsal, Rachel spent what felt like every free moment trying to keep her mind off that conversation. She couldn't even pretend that she had been successful when she looked back over her notes from the previous few days, finding very little information to help her with her upcoming chemistry test or English paper and quite a few song lyrics instead. And she didn't think it was completely insignificant that most of those lyrics, while Broadway hits, were quite intimate and far removed from her usual repertoire ('Touch Me,' really? Get it together, Rachel. Yeah, 'Spring Awakening' was a great show, but a bit racy to be thinking about this much, especially in school.).

The good news was, it was Friday and she was headed to English, her last class of the day and one she could pretty much skate through even with the distraction. The bad news was, going to English meant actually having to see that distraction in person. And her English teacher was a second-year teacher in her mid-twenties who, in an apparent attempt to both get on her students' good sides and actually do the whole 'I'll treat you like an adult as long as you act like an adult' thing, allowed them to choose their own seats in the class. She had given them this spiel in the beginning of the year about how she trusted them to act like the mature adults that they were about to be and that meant they didn't need her to choose their seats any more than they needed their moms to pick out their clothes in the morning. It was a total guilt trip move on her part, but for the most part it worked. The students appreciated the vote of confidence and didn't want to let her down. Normally Rachel was as grateful for that confidence as anyone else, but today it meant Puck sauntered into class with a smirk and dropped into the chair next to her, even though there was an empty one on the other side of the room next to the Cheerio she had seen flirting with him the day before.

"Ready to let me in on your dirty little secret yet?" Puck rested his elbows and forearms on the top of the two-person table and leaned so that he was only a few inches from Rachel's ear and spoke lowly.

Rachel's face glowed at his words. Had he heard more than he let on that day? Worse, had Santana told him everything, mocking her? And what, had he just been carrying around this information about her for the past three days, waiting to use it against her? There were an endless number of possibilities as to what might happen if this were the case. None of those possibilities were anything Rachel wanted to consider.

"Relax Berry," Puck sat back in his chair and chuckled, not missing the blush spreading across Rachel's cheeks and even down her neck and to the hint of cleavage at the top of her blouse. "I'm just guessin'. I mean, Santana was involved, after all. And that girl's nothin' if not dirty." He smiled when he saw her color starting to fade back to a normal shade, but leaned even a little closer than before and lowered his voice to a husky near-growl. He wasn't done having fun just yet. "But ya know, if ya wanna share, I'm great with dirty secrets. Mine tend not to be so little though." He quirked an eyebrow at her mischievously and watched not only as her blush grew deeper than before, but as she gasped quietly and moved her chair a little farther away from him as well.

Rachel spent the next 90 minutes trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, not only to forget about what Santana had said to her days before, but also to ignore that Puck was sitting right next to her and shooting occasional glances her way or tugging randomly at errant curls falling over her shoulder. Since that obviously wasn't working, she threw herself into her coursework with a rigor absolutely unnecessary for a subject she had basically mastered long ago. She more than made up for her lack of note-taking over the previous three days by filling up her notebook with even the most menial details of the story. (Really, it was 'The Crucible.' People being singled out and persecuted for not fitting in with their society? Yeah, she didn't need a teacher to explain that.)

Yet somehow, in the midst of all that academia, Rachel's mind still had time to consider Santana's arguments. Of course, having Puck less than a foot away from her during that time probably made it easier to think about that particular conversation. The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if maybe Santana was right. Since Santana had pointed it out, Rachel had finally allowed herself to admit that maybe she did look at Puck a little differently than she looked at, well, anyone. And ok, maybe that was because of more than just his musical talent. Then as she thought a bit more, it occurred to her that since she'd already done … that … once, with someone who ended up being nothing more than a horrible ruse, what would it really hurt if she did it again? Especially if this time it was with someone who she could at least trust to still be her friend, or whatever exactly he was at the moment, afterward.

Rachel tried to stop those thoughts, tried to keep her mind and her hormones from running away with the rest of her. It didn't work. By the end of class, though she had miraculously managed to take enough notes to help even Brittany pass a test on 'The Crucible,' she had also managed to make a decision. She was going to take Santana's advice. It really didn't seem right that her only sexual experience to date had been disappointing. And if that whole thing really was as pleasurable as Santana had tried to convince her it was, it was only fair that Rachel get to experience it the right way. So when the bell rang and Puck lazily started to gather his belongings into his backpack, Rachel hung back instead of rushing out the door to try to get to her car and out of the parking lot before the traffic became horrendous, as she usually did.

"What's up Berry?" Puck was surprised to see Rachel still standing behind her chair when he finally stood to make his way toward the locker room. So he wasn't in a hurry to go spend two hours running around with a bunch of sweaty guys. Sue him. He much preferred game weeks to this bye-week bullshit. You might think that having a bye in the middle of the season would be a break, but not with a coach like Beiste. At least in a game, there was a point behind it all. Two straight weeks of just practice without getting to really run over some guy on the way to the endzone sucked. (Coach asked them not to hit quite as hard during practice as they would during a game. She wasn't too happy when Azimio accidentally ended up with a dislocated shoulder on the same day that Rachel had to use her emergency slushie clothes for the first time senior year. So what if the quarterback and the halfback don't normally do much hitting, it's not illegal, right?)

Suddenly, when faced with the golden opportunity to ask Puck for his help, Rachel felt that she was going to lose her nerve. "You were wrong, you know." She silently berated herself. That was not at all what she had wanted to say.

"Scuse me?" Puck looked down at the tiny girl at his side in mock annoyance, finally smiling at her when she began to look distressed. "I mean, I don't doubt it, but what are we talking about here? Specifically, I mean."

"Tuesday, in the auditorium. You asked what Finn messed up. You were wrong. We weren't talking about Finn." Rachel walked quickly to keep up with Puck's much longer strides as they headed toward the locker room. Either she didn't realize, or she didn't care, that she was walking in the opposite direction of her car.

Puck rolled his eyes and growled a little. "Geez Berry. It's a joke. Finn doesn't even care as much as you apparently do. He knows he's like, the resident whipping boy or some shit. Just like I'm the resident jd." He saw the anger flash through her eyes when he referred to himself as a juvenile delinquent and threw an arm over her shoulder to try to calm her. "But babe, I'm not, not anymore anyway. That's the thing. You guys in glee are the only people in the world who can get away with sayin' that shit. 'Cause you loooove me." He slipped his arm up over her shoulder and hooked it back toward himself so that he caught her neck in the crook of his elbow and pulled her toward him, much the way he did to his sister. "It's the same with Finn. We just give him a hard time, it doesn't mean anything and he knows that." He released his hold on her neck and dropped his arm so that his hand rested on her hip.

Rachel found herself becoming distracted by the feel of his fingers pressing gently into her side as she walked. She had almost forgotten everything she needed to say, content to just keep walking with him touching her like that, but his hand shifted as they turned a corner together and her shirt slipped up, allowing his fingers to brush across her bare hip. The jolt of electricity she felt when it happened reminded her of exactly what she needed to say and renewed her determination to say it. "Anyway," she stopped walking abruptly so that his arm tightened around her waist and she jerked forward slightly when he kept walking. She waited for him to turn and look at her before she continued. "While it is nice to know that you see glee as the close-knit family I always knew we could be if we just all set our differences aside, that's not really why I brought it up."

Puck couldn't keep his eyes from finding the ceiling when she started in with all that family noise. He wasn't sure he would go quite that far, but he knew it meant a lot to Rachel to see it that way, so he didn't want to ruin that for her. After giving himself a beat to make sure he had cleared any sign of amusement or annoyance from his face, he lowered his eyes to meet hers, waiting for her to continue.

Rachel twisted her fingers together in front of her, avoiding Puck's eyes. All the determination and courage she had built up during English had dissipated somewhere between the classroom and where they now stood 10 feet from the boys' locker room door. It wasn't that she no longer wanted his help; she absolutely wanted it. It was just that she had absolutely no idea how to go about making it happen. "Umm, that thing Santana and I were talking about," she began, tentatively, "like I said, Finn wasn't the one who messed it up. Jesse was."

Puck's eyes narrowed and he unconsciously took a step toward Rachel, bringing their bodies only inches from one another almost as if to shield her when she mentioned Jesse. He still wasn't happy that St. Asswipe (he loved coming up with new names for that guy) had basically gotten off scot free after that little stunt he pulled sophomore year. He wanted to kick the guy's ass then for messing with Rachel, and he wanted it even more now that he was somehow still messing with her.

Rachel continued, gathering courage with every word, "But I was kind of, umm, hoping that you," she finally lifted her eyes to meet his and saw him watching her curiously, his brows furrowed in a combination of confusion and frustration, "well, that you could, maybe, help me out. Maybe you could fix what he messed up."

"I don't know Berry, first you're gonna have to tell me what it was."

"Ok, see, so, as I'm sure you know, everyone seems to know, I am a virgin." Puck visibly flinched at Rachel's words, taking a step back and breaking all contact with her body. Any kind of problem that included Rachel, Jesse, and anything to do with sex could not be good. He gritted his teeth and nodded for her to continue. "But even though I'm a virgin, that doesn't mean I'm completely … untouched."

Puck took another step backward, feeling almost like the wind had been knocked out of him. Was she seriously saying what he thought she was? "Look Berry, this coy bullshit has gotta stop. You got something to say, just spit it out. You never been at a loss for words before. And I got places to be." He jerked his head toward the locker room behind him. Rachel didn't need to know that unless this conversation picked up like, asap, the locker room would be the last place he was headed. If the next words out of her mouth were not, 'He didn't make me do anything I didn't want to do,' she would be left staring at a puff of smoke and his disappearing back. He knew Jesse hadn't gone farther than Carmel after Rachel dumped his ass in New York the previous spring. In his current state of mind, he could make that drive in 30 minutes, max.

"Right, I'm sorry. I don't mean to waste your time." Rachel took a deep breath before the words started pouring out of her, tumbling out one on top of the other. "Sophomore year, back when I was dating Jesse, back when Finn and Santana, you know, I didn't have sex with Jesse. I said I did, but I didn't. I tried to, but once we got started, I just couldn't follow through. I wasn't ready. But then afterward, once I'd told him no, that I couldn't have sex with him, he just kept pouting, and he seemed so hurt, like he didn't believe I really cared about him. I wasn't ready to go all the way, but I did care about him! I had to prove it to him, so when he suggested we try something different, something not quite so … absolute, I went along with it. I-I let him perform oral sex on me." Rachel took a break, sucking in a mouthful of air to replace the one huge breath she had just let out with her monologue. She had never had a hard time talking, but she was sure even she had never spoken so quickly in her life. Ignoring the look on Puck's face that told her he was only seconds away from storming straight out of the school and hurting someone, preferably her ex-boyfriend, Rachel pushed aside the burning in her lungs and continued with the rest of her speech.

"The problem, other than my obvious lapse in judgment in letting such a hurtful, insincere person get near me in that way, is that the experience was not an enjoyable one." Rachel continued rambling, again ignoring the emotion visible on Puck's face, which had changed from anger to incredulity. "So in the auditorium the other day when the freshman girls were asking Santana what that particular act is like, I must have involuntarily displayed my distaste for it. Santana informed me that it is quite unusual for a female not to enjoy that sort of … attention … and that Jesse must have been doing something incorrectly. That's when you joined us. When I talked to her privately, Santana suggested that maybe you could help give me a new perspective."

Puck could say nothing. His jaw was slack and he felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Some twisted part of his brain was screaming at him that Rachel Berry had just asked him to go down on her. But he knew that was wrong. He knew that didn't happen, would never happen. Right?

Rachel had finally managed to slow both her heart rate and her breathing, hoping that her words would follow suit. "I know I may be out of line asking for such a thing," her hand lifted to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear shyly. "It is a huge favor, after all. I know that."

Puck's hand flew up, snatching Rachel's wrist as it lowered from her face and startling her. He used his grip on her arm to pull her closer to him, smirking the whole time. "Babe, this ain't no favor."

~.~

"So Puck, you in?" Mike pushed Artie out of the locker room, looking over his shoulder to where Puck and Finn followed closely behind. Although he ended up basically functioning as a glorified water boy, Beiste had kept Artie on the team. Their 'battering ram' plan had a few flaws in it, which meant that Artie usually only saw the gridiron in the fourth quarter when the Titans had a convincing lead (which had actually happened a few times, to everyone's surprise), but Beiste didn't have it in her to cut the boy.

"Huh?" Puck's head flew up and he furrowed his brows in confusion as his eyes met Mike's. To say that he had been distracted throughout practice was an understatement (the two tackles by that idiot Wallace and that ridiculous fumble were proof of that).

Things didn't get any easier for Puck once the rest of the team cleared out and only the glee guys were left in the locker room. Mike had started talking about his and Tina's homecoming plans, which led to Artie pointing out that he was going with Brittany, but not exactly as a date, since apparently Santana was tagging along. From there, Artie and Mike questioned Puck and Finn about their plans, and, since they had none, suggested that maybe they should group up and go with Rachel and Mercedes, and maybe even Kurt and Blaine. Puck was just about to shoot down the idea, pointing out that Finn and Rachel's semi-recent ex situation (when weren't they in a semi-recent ex situation?) could make for a very tense evening, when Finn had to open his big ass mouth. Apparently, Frankenteen thought it was a great idea, as long as they kept Quinn out of the mix. According to the quarterback, he could only handle one ex-girlfriend at a time, and since Rachel was the nicer one, and they were finally truly friends with no intentions of anything more happening, she was obviously his first pick. The thought of going to homecoming with Rachel, even as part of a group, in some fancy (preferably clingy) dress with her hair and make-up all done, combined with the memory of the 'favor' she had asked of him a couple hours before was too much for Puck's tired mind to handle. He hadn't heard a word any of his friends had said for the past several minutes.

Artie rolled his eyes and repeated the conversation he had just had with Mike and Finn. "Dude, sick ass Halo marathon, my house, tomorrow. You in? I got booze!" He raised a fist into the air and pumped it a few times.

"Sorry guys," Puck stopped a few feet outside the locker room, ready to turn and exit to the side parking lot where his truck was waiting, "I got plans tomorrow."

"Plans? On a Saturday?" Finn legit looked like he was about to pout. "But, it's Halo!" Puck rolled his eyes. "Are your plans better than Halo?"

Puck smirked up at his friend. "Yeah man, gotta say they are." He clapped Finn on the shoulder and fist bumped Artie and Mike before the other three boys headed toward the front exit and their own cars.

"So, these mystery plans," Puck heard the voice behind him and clenched his fists a little at his sides, "do they include eating out?"

Puck turned on his heel and watched as Santana pushed off the row of lockers she had been leaning against while the group of football players exited the locker room. "Geez Satan, you tryin' to give me a heart attack?"

"Oh, sorry," the girl said with half-sincerity, "thought you saw me here."

"I did. Those life preservers," his eyes shifted almost imperceptibly down to her chest for just a second before he continued, "are impossible to miss," Puck snorted. "S'not what I was talking about." He took a step closer to her as she stopped advancing toward him and tilted her head to the side. "I'm talkin' bout that little stunt with Berry. What the fuck were you thinkin'?"

"I was thinkin," she lifted her eyebrows and spat the words at him in a mocking tone, "that the midget got seriously screwed by St. Suckface, and not in the good way. That girl needs someone who knows what he's doing to show her what that shit's 'sposed to feel like. And, much as it pains me to say this, and I swear to God if you tell anyone I said it I'll make sure your tongue is the only appendage you have left to please a woman," Puck chuckled at her threat, "you definitely know what you're doing."

"K, so you just offer me up on a silver platter?" Puck crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look imposing. It was difficult since he could barely hide his anticipation at the prospect of what was waiting for him in less than 24 hours.

"Oh, come on!" Santana's hands flew off her hips and into the air above her head. "You should be kissing my feet right now or some shit." She saw Puck open his mouth to respond, so she cut him off quickly. "Do you two really think the rest of us are that blind and stupid?" Again, she saw his eyebrow quirk and his mouth move as he prepared to reply with a sarcastic remark. "Ok," she waved a hand in slight resignation, "so maybe most of the rest of them are. But I'm not. Don't think I don't see you drooling over her legs every time she dances in those tiny, hideous things she calls skirts."

Puck was finally able to get a word in before she could cut him off. "Girl's got a hell of a pair of legs, San. You'd have to be blind not to notice that." He smirked, thinking he had cut the legs out from under her argument. (Dammit, now he's got legs on the brain.)

"Maybe. But it's more than that. I know this whole Jew-singer thing you got goin' on started with her. And I'm pretty sure she's also the reason you didn't give it up a long ass time ago. C'mon, I know it's killing you not to be able to sing some Buckcherry. 'Crazy Bitch?' Right up your alley." She lowered both hands back to her hips and narrowed her eyes, smirking dangerously at him. "Although, I guess that one works for Berry too, huh?"

Puck started to respond, wanting to lay into her for essentially calling Rachel a 'crazy bitch' (so he didn't want Santana calling her names, friends defend each other, right?), but as his mind went past the title and on to the actual lyrics of the song, his mouth went dry. He was definitely wandering into dangerous territory.

"Told ya." Santana lifted a hand to point a finger accusingly at Puck's eyes, which were now slightly glazed. "Don't worry. I'll find some way for you to make it up to me."

~.~

Rachel buzzed around her living room, fluffing the couch's throw pillows for probably the twentieth time that day. A voice in the back of her mind kept telling her that Noah probably wouldn't even be seeing her living room (no way was she letting anything … impure … happen on her dads' couch), but nothing could stop her from being the perennial hostess. Besides, she couldn't spend another second in her bedroom.

After Puck had enthusiastically agreed to help Rachel with her issue, as she liked to call it, he had tried to come home with her right then. She refused, stating adamantly that she would not be a disruption to his everyday life. He was supposed to be at football practice, so he would go to football practice. She also had her own practical motives for wanting to put him off for a day. To start with, her dads left early Saturday morning to go visit friends in Columbus until Sunday evening. While she didn't expect Puck's little visit to take all that long (Jesse's certainly hadn't), she was much more comfortable knowing that she had the house completely to herself for a full day. Secondly, and probably more importantly, Rachel needed time to prepare. She wasn't even sure exactly what she should do to prepare for this type of visit, but she knew that letting Puck accompany her straight home from school was not an option.

Rachel had tried to spend the evening with her fathers as normally as possible. They ate dinner as a family then sat down to watch Fringe together as they always did on Fridays. She worked to keep up with their small talk, answering their questions as best she could with her mind somewhere else. When they finally kissed her head and retired to their room to finish getting ready for their weekend trip and read themselves to sleep as they did every night, Rachel disappeared behind the locked door of her bedroom and then slipped into her bathroom, locking it as well. Rachel had a standing appointment at a day spa/salon in town for a regular bikini wax because it was just much easier and more comfortable with her many dance outfits. But she was by no means a Brazilian girl. So, because she decided it was the courteous thing to do where Puck was concerned, she pulled out the personal trimmer and did a little grooming. In the shower later, as her soapy hands ran over her body and dipped into the newly trimmed area, she felt an unfamiliar jolt and goosebumps popped up over her arms. She decided that she was very glad she was such a thoughtful person and had wanted to make this as comfortable for her friend as possible.

Finally hearing her dads moving around at 6:30 Saturday morning, Rachel got out of bed. She had barely slept at all, forcing herself to go to bed when she got out of the shower. She had tossed and turned, drifting in and out of a fitful sleep, for several hours before eventually waking up for good a little before five. Not wanting to arouse suspicion by being up so early on a Saturday, she continued to lie in her bed until she heard them in the kitchen. Rachel finally made her way down the stairs and pretended to be up because she wanted to see her dads off. It was only a one-night trip, nothing really, but they seemed to accept her explanation.

Finally alone, Rachel ran up the stairs to start getting her room ready. She stripped the bed and changed the sheets to the nicest, most comfortable ones she had (all the while knowing without a doubt that she would just change them again the minute Puck was gone). She tidied up until the room was spotless, even going so far as to put away a few stuffed animals and some pictures that she feared made her seem immature. She didn't want to project the image that she was anything less than a mature, confident woman, even if that wasn't entirely true, especially the confident part.

After two hours she decided that the room was ready. Short of a home makeover, there was nothing more that could be done. She could no longer put off the part that she had been dreading: the closet. The first thing she put on was the black halter dress that Kurt had picked out for her sophomore year, but she shed it within seconds of seeing herself in her full-length mirror. Not only was it weird to be wearing a dress that she had originally worn to impress Finn, it just didn't feel right. That dress just wasn't her. It was too much. With that in mind, she pushed past that ridiculous Brittney Spears get-up as well. She pulled out one of her normal school outfits but decided that if the black dress was too much, her everyday clothes weren't enough. Finally she landed on a compromise. She would wear one of her regular skirts, a brown one that hugged her hips and fell just inches below her butt (she hadn't missed the way his eyes lingered on her legs when she wore those skirts), with a thin, fitted pink tank top. Those tank tops were usually reserved to be worn only for lounging around the house or under sweaters, but she decided that the way her breasts looked in that top, combined with her favorite lacy push-up bra, was just what she was going for.

So nearly six hours after getting out of bed, Rachel was in her living room, wiping non-existent dust off the coffee table for the umpteenth time, when her doorbell rang. The way she nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound, any observer would have thought that she lived on a desert island with no contact with the outside world. Instead she was in a quiet subdivision in Lima, OH, waiting for one of her friends. She made her way to the front door, her hands shaking as they smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her skirt. When she opened the door, her breath caught in her throat. Although she was expecting him, she somehow wasn't ready for the sight of Puck on her front porch, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans and an anxious smile on his face.

"Noah," she hoped he didn't hear the way her voice shook with just that one simple word, "please, come in." She turned to open the door wide enough to let him through, almost hugging the door in the process. Standing in her foyer, he turned to watch her with an expression she couldn't quite place. It wasn't his normal, cocky smirk. It looked like an actual, honest-to-God smile, and that thing in his eyes, whatever it was, wasn't mocking or mischievous, or anything like it. "Umm," she started as she turned her back to him to close the door, "I don't … I'm not sure …"

She had no idea how to say whatever it was she was supposed to say next, but it didn't matter, because as she turned back toward her guest, hands wringing nervously in front of her chest, Puck was only inches from her. Before she could open her mouth to say another word, it was covered, trapped by his lips pressing against her own. She tried to respond, to even think, but it was useless because one of his hands sunk into her hair and held her lips tight to his while the other landed on the small of her back and pulled her body against him.

"Don't needa talk, baby," Puck whispered hoarsely when he pulled back to take a deep breath. He thought he saw her open her mouth to respond, so he moved his own to her ear, tugging slightly with his teeth before continuing. "Upstairs?" This time she didn't even try to answer, nodding and turning her hands, which had been trapped between their bodies, to push him back toward the stairs. His grip on her didn't loosen, so as he moved toward the stairs he dragged her along with him. When he reached the bottom step, his hands slid down her body and he bent to hook them behind her knees, lifting her easily so that her thighs rested atop his hips.

Instinctively, Rachel wrapped her arms tightly around Puck's neck and her legs moved to wind around his waist, ankles crossed at the small of his back. He turned to walk up the stairs to her bedroom and as he climbed she attached her mouth to his jaw. She heard him moan and as her body slipped, sliding just a bit lower, she felt his already obvious arousal. Starting to truly understand what he had meant the previous day when he said he wasn't doing her a favor, Rachel hoped that she wasn't getting herself into more than she was ready for. She knew how selfish it was to ask for something like this and not give anything in return, but she still wasn't ready to have sex, especially since he wasn't even her boyfriend.

When he found himself standing in Rachel Berry's bedroom, with Rachel Berry herself literally wrapped around his body, Puck stopped at the foot of her bed and pulled his head back until he broke the connection between her mouth and the underside of his jaw. "Last chance to back out babe, sure ya wanna do this?" He knew what he wanted her answer to be. And he certainly knew what his own answer would be if she asked him the same question. But he wanted to hear her answer, to hear her tell him that he wasn't doing anything she didn't want.

"Positive."

Damn straight. That was the green light he needed, and he wouldn't wait to be told twice. Keeping one hand flat on her back, he leaned forward onto the bed and used his free hand to support their weight as he lowered them until her back hit the mattress. Puck felt Rachel's legs start to loosen around his waist, and he almost stood back up so that she would keep her body pressed against his. He knew he was there for her, but he loved the way she felt against him and he couldn't help the way his body reacted to her.

When Rachel was solidly on the bed and Puck's hands had moved next to her shoulders, boxing her down onto the mattress, she wiggled her way up until her head was on the pillows and he could fit his long legs onto the bed. She had to make a concentrated effort to control her breathing as she watched him above her, moving up the bed until his eyes looked straight down into hers and his hands rested on either side of her head. Then she actually had to hold her breath as he bent his arms, slowly lowering himself until his forearms were flat on the bed and his body rested atop hers, all the while never breaking the contact between their eyes. She could feel his weight on her, solid but not crushing. She must have been a little lost, because she didn't realize his hands were moving until his fingers were working their way into her hair.

Rachel felt sure she should say something, anything. After all, she was Rachel Berry, and she always had something to say. Until now. There were no words in her vast vocabulary that she could get to come out of her mouth when Puck's grip on her hair grew just a little tighter and his lips closed around her earlobe, his tongue flicking lightly at the small gold hoop that hung there. So instead, her body picked up where her mind had left off, her hands moving to his shoulders and gripping for dear life.

A thought crossed Puck's mind – it was a small, simple thought, but it was one that sent his mind and his body into overdrive. See, it occurred to him that while this was probably the least he had heard Rachel talk, well, ever, she was far from silent. All her $5 words had been replaced by these soft whimpers and moans that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her throat or her chest or … fuck. He just noticed her chest. And ok, so her boobs weren't the biggest he had ever seen, but they were freakin' gorgeous. And what the hell was she wearing, exactly? Rachel Berry didn't typically do tight, strappy tank tops, and was that … lace … sticking up just a little from the top? Dragging his teeth down her earlobe one last time, he began placing light kisses across the underside of her jaw then down the column of her throat, occasionally letting his tongue flit out and across her skin. And yes, he definitely noticed the way her head fell back and her throat vibrated just a little with a quiet moan when his mouth touched the soft skin just under her chin.

When he finally reached the base of her neck and let his tongue dip into the hollow there, Puck slid his hands out of her hair, over her shoulders, and down her sides. As his hands traveled southward, his thumbs reached out to brush over her breasts. He could feel the lace of her bra through her thin top as his thumbs moved upward from her ribcage, but the rough texture was instantly replaced by the small peaks he felt when he brushed over her nipples. Unable to help himself, he let his teeth graze across Rachel's collarbone before softly tracing the same spot with his lips and letting his hands continue their trek.

Puck thought he heard her whine a little when his hands slid off her breasts to move gently down her sides and over her hips. He smirked to himself as his mouth continued to make its way across her shoulder. If she thought that was good, just wait until she felt what he would do with his hands next. When those same hands worked their way past the hem of her skirt and hit her bare thighs, they stopped, his fingers digging into her flesh just enough to remind her he was there. He had managed to taste probably every square inch of skin between her neck and her right shoulder (and yeah, her skin tasted damn good) and was nudging the straps of both her bra and her tank top off her shoulder with his nose when he let his hands move again, this time back up her legs and under that tease of a skirt.

When the straps were drooping off Rachel's shoulder, Puck kissed his way down the path that they had previously occupied. He glanced up at her when he reached the top of her bra, but she was not looking back at him. Her head was twisted to the side, her eyes screwed shut tightly and her mouth slightly open to let out the shallow pants that had replaced her normal breathing. Quite satisfied that, so far, he was doing his job well, he took the deep purple lace of her bra, an even larger strip of which was now peeking out of her top, between his teeth and began to pull it down. At the same time, his hands had again reached her hips; but this time, something didn't seem quite right.

Shocked, Puck released the fabric from between his teeth and pressed his hands, still under her skirt, into the mattress for leverage as he lifted himself off her by just a few inches. "What the hell? Rach, where are … You're not …" he started, peering down into her eyes, which had come back to his face when he broke the contact between their bodies.

"I didn't see the point," Rachel shrugged her shoulders and spoke almost matter-of-factly. "It's not like I need panties for the kind of activities we are engaging in, and it would have just made for more laundry as I would have inevitably put on clean ones as soon as you leave." If she noticed the way his eyes narrowed or the way his chest tightened as he gulped heavily, she didn't let on. "Besides," her face grew pink with embarrassment, although it seemed odd that she could possibly say anything to be embarrassed about at that moment, "I don't exactly have any, alluring, undergarments. I hope … I mean, is it bad? I didn't ruin the moment did I?"

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He barely choked out the words, because, really, all he wanted to do was grab her again and have his way with her. But this was Rachel he was dealing with here, and he knew that wasn't what she needed. Not like that, anyway. "Shit's awesome. I mean really. Hot. As. Hell." He watched as her face grew a slightly deeper shade of pink, and he could tell by the way her lips twitched that she wanted to say something. It didn't make him awful if he would rather listen to those little noises she was making before than all her words, right? So he stopped her before she could even get started.

Rachel wanted to question him, she wanted to make sure that he wasn't just placating her. She didn't get it. It didn't make any sense that her lack of undergarments could really be that enticing. But before she had a chance to tell him that she would much prefer honesty to patronizing comments, his teeth were again tugging on her bra and his hands had slid to the front of her hips, twisting a little so that his thumbs ran almost lazily over the creases at the tops of her thighs. She drew in a sharp breath when he succeeded in revealing her right breast, instantly using his tongue to trace a path straight up from the underside of her breast to her nipple. And she tried, she really did, to control the sound that came out when, after spending a moment sliding his tongue over and around her nipple, Puck closed his mouth over it and sucked lightly. She thought she felt him smirk against her skin when the moan, or whimper, or whatever that was, slipped out.

And that smirk was why, only seconds later, she didn't even try to fight her sigh when his hands began to move under her skirt. Puck's left hand trailed down the top of her thigh, his fingertips tracing over her skin with a feather-light touch. His right hand moved off her leg altogether, moving over her center and forcing her legs open just a little wider. His thumb and pinky kept contact with the inside of each of her thighs and his middle finger slid gently down her slit, starting at the top and not stopping until he had reached her entrance. It was Rachel's turn to smirk when his mouth discontinued the attention it had been lavishing on her right breast and he let out a low, deep moan of his own.

Puck, who had never had any problems with being premature, began to get a little worried that he wouldn't be able to hang on long enough to give Rachel what she needed when he felt how wet she was. He wasn't 100% sure why that got to him so much, but he figured it had something to do with the fact that he had only just started touching her and yet he was already able to have that effect on her. It was beyond awesome that he could make her need him so much by doing so little. More than a little eager to see what else he could do to her, he pressed his tongue flat against her skin as he moved his mouth from her right breast and toward the left one, wanting to give it the same attention. At the same time, he dipped his left hand to the back of her right knee and tugged gently, spreading her legs wider and settling himself between them to hook her calf over his hip.

Rachel thought that she may just be losing her mind. Just when she thought she was getting acclimated to one of the many sensations that Puck was causing with his mouth or his hands, he changed things. When she began to get used to feeling the moist warmth of his mouth on her chest, he moved it to her ear. When the way his fingers ghosted over the sensitive skin at the back of her knee finally stopped tickling, he increased the pressure and slid his hand up the back of her thigh until it firmly cupped her butt. And when his other finger stopped teasing around her entrance and worked between her folds to slide up toward her stomach, she couldn't take it anymore; she allowed her body to melt into the mattress beneath her and her fingers to grab firmly onto his shirt.

"God baby, you really did need this didn't you?" He spoke quietly, almost reverently. "D'ya know how wet you are? Do you know how hot that is?"

Puck's voice worked to bring her out of her stupor and back to the matter at hand (the hand part being the problem). "Noah," she began, a bit breathless, "you're here for a purpose, remember, and … NOAH!"

The way she cried his name, all breathy and high-pitched and desperate, sent a charge down his spine and straight to his dick. Even if he hadn't felt it all swollen and almost pulsing under his finger, he would have known that he had hit her ultra-sensitive bundle of nerves based on that cry alone. "Jackpot," he smirked, still tugging her earlobe gently between his teeth. He felt her trying to wiggle away from him and pressed his body a little more firmly against hers, not allowing her to put any distance between them.

"Noah, come on," she turned to face him, forcing him to remove his mouth from her ear, "you're here to rectify the inaccurate first impression that Jesse left on me, and …" She broke off, startled, when she felt his forehead hit her shoulder and heard him groan. (And yes, even in this short time, she had discovered the difference between a Noah Puckerman moan and a Noah Puckerman groan. This was definitely the latter.)

"Ok, first of all babe, don't say his name again. At all. Serious buzzkill here." He lifted his head again to look her in the eyes. "And secondly, and more importantly, you wouldn't just like, stay silent for a whole week or some shit then go out on stage and belt out some big Barbra number without at least like, runnin' scales or something, would ya?"

Rachel's eyes grew in shock and she worked up enough strength to successfully push him off her just a little and back away, propping herself up against the headboard. "Of course not! That would be horrible for my vocal cords! You always, always warm up first."

Puck grabbed her hips with just a little more force than he had used up to that point and pulled her back down onto the bed, letting his hands return to their previous positions and burying his face in her neck. "Exactly."

Rachel opened her mouth to argue, to tell him that he hadn't really proven anything, but she stopped when she felt his teeth scrape over the sensitive skin of her neck, shocked that he actually bit her (and especially shocked that she had enjoyed it). And any further arguments flew right out of her head when the fingers of his left hand dug into her butt and his right thumb started tracing circles around her clit.

Puck knew she wanted to say more. She was Rachel Berry, after all. So that made it all the more satisfying when she just drew in a deep breath and arched her back, her hands flying to his shoulder blades to pull him closer. "S'good, right baby?" he growled against her skin. He was sure he almost lost it right then and there when she hummed lowly in response and slid her hands down his back to hook her fingers through his belt loops and pull his hips down onto hers, now hooking both of her legs around his own. Instead, he focused even more on the task at hand, increasing the pressure he was applying to her clit with his thumb and twisting his hand so that his middle finger could again tease at her entrance. He was milliseconds away from dipping his finger into her when her thighs tightened their grip on his hips and he felt every muscle in her ass clench under his fingers. Abruptly, he pushed both hands into the mattress beside her hips and pushed himself away from her.

Rachel's head flew off the mattress, her eyes frantically searching for his. He would have laughed at the desperate expression on her face if it didn't turn him on so much. "'M here for a purpose, remember?" he stared seriously down at her. "And that's not it." Without warning, he crashed his mouth down onto hers, kissing her deeply as he pushed her head back down onto the pillow. He kissed her, letting his tongue sweep confidently through her mouth, until he felt her body start to relax under him. Her legs stayed wrapped around him, but their grip loosened considerably. And her hands slid out of his belt loops and up his back, not so much gripping now as they were embracing.

Puck began to slide down her body, randomly placing kisses on her skin, and even the material of her top, along the way. When he reached her skirt, he slid his tongue, almost painfully slowly, across the skin of her stomach just above the waistband. He didn't continue downward until he felt the muscles in her stomach tighten and heard her whimper. He let his nose skim over her skirt, giving her just enough sensation to drive her wild, and worked his way down to her hemline. (Granted, it wasn't a long trip given the length of her skirt.) Puck took the fabric between his teeth and glanced up at her, relishing in the way her eyes were fixed on him, watching his every move.

Rachel knew she should be nervous. She had already crossed lines with Puck that she had only crossed once before (with admittedly different results), but what was about to happen, that was more like a chasm than a line. Yet somehow, what she was feeling was anything but nervous. She felt hot, though the goosebumps on her arms would lead you to believe otherwise. She felt tense, with all of that tension building into a ball somewhere just below her stomach. But more than anything, she felt wanted, and special, and, well, adored. She stared at Puck, transfixed as even while his eyes never left hers, he used his mouth to lift the hem of her skirt up to her hips. She continued to watch as he dropped kisses to the inside of her left thigh at the same time that he hooked his left arm under her other thigh to prop her knee on his shoulder. That same hand snaked up and onto her stomach to gather the material of her skirt and keep it in place where his mouth had just deposited it.

Feeling very much exposed, but still not really nervous (at least, certainly not in a bad way), she kept watching while his free hand rubbed small, soothing circles over one thigh and he kissed slowly back up the other to where she really needed him. "I'ma fix this baby. Gonna do it right this time." He didn't remove his mouth from the soft skin of her inner thigh as he spoke, his voice low and gravelly. "I mean it Rach, I'm gonna make you feel so good." Any other girl might be a bit put off by the way he chanted it like a mission statement, but Rachel Berry appreciated dedication. Her eyes slipped a bit farther back into her head as he let his tongue wander higher, not stopping until he hit that spot, the spot where if he moved a centimeter more he wouldn't be on her thigh anymore. "Promise." The word came out of his throat as a growl, and she wasn't sure if it was that sound, or the way he gently nipped at the skin that had never really been touched outside the shower before, that made her shiver.

She felt his breath, hot and smooth, on her core before she actually felt his mouth. But suddenly, before she had a chance to think about what was getting ready to happen, he was placing gentle, almost chaste (Was that possible? Did it matter?) kisses down her now soaked slit. Unable to hold it any longer, she dropped her head back onto the pillow when he reached the bottom and his tongue slid gently out of his mouth and between her folds. She didn't even know what she was doing when she cried out his name and her hands fisted the comforter at her sides.

Puck had jokingly wondered to himself on the way to Rachel's earlier that day if she would taste like berries. She didn't. She didn't taste like anything he had ever tasted before. She just tasted like Rachel, and it was fuckin' amazing. At that point, he knew without a shadow of doubt that he was not lying to her before when he told her that he wasn't doing her a favor. As his tongue swirled slowly around her clit, he decided that there was nowhere he would rather be. And when he flattened his tongue and ran it all the way from bottom to top a few times before flicking it rapidly over her now incredibly swollen bud, he decided he had never enjoyed anything more in his life. Then, when he closed his lips around it and began to suck lightly, sliding his hand off her thigh to slip a finger into her and pump it in and out of her, slowly at first, she finally began to come undone. He knew she was on her way when he again felt nearly every muscle in her lower body tighten. As he pumped his hand faster, hooking his finger inside her, he lifted his eyes to find her head thrashing violently on her pillow. And when he sucked her clit a little harder, drawing it into his mouth and again flicking his tongue over it quickly, he marveled at how absolutely fucking incredible it was to have her crashing down around him. He could actually feel her clenching around him as her voice reached heights he didn't know even Rachel was capable of and her upper body came up off the bed so she could reach his head and dig her fingers into his mohawk.

He stayed where he was as Rachel eased down from her high, kissing her gently as the trembling in her legs slowed. When she had become still and relaxed and her breath had returned to nearly normal, he placed one more kiss just above her sex and smoothed her skirt back down over her hips. Detangling his arms from her legs, he turned his head to swipe his mouth across the shoulder of his t-shirt before wrapping one arm around her waist and using the other hand to push himself up to hover over her. Pressing his lips to her forehead, he spoke softly against her skin. "I, uh … I gotta … I'll be back," he finally sighed before rolling off the bed and walking awkwardly to the bathroom just off her bedroom.

Even once Puck was shut away in her bathroom (And what was that about? Should she be worried?), Rachel couldn't make her body move. Every muscle felt like jell-o, and she was pretty sure her bones had dissolved altogether. That was nothing like what had taken place with Jesse. Like she had told Santana, with Jesse it had been awkward and sloppy, even uncomfortable. But this, with Puck, was none of those things. With Puck it was easy, and comfortable, and, well, incredible. And she had been unsure before about whether she had ever had an orgasm, but now she was perfectly sure – sure that she'd never had one before, and that she definitely had now. She managed to turn her head when she heard the bathroom door open and watched as Puck approached her, adjusting his jeans and toeing off his shoes.

"Thank you Noah. That was enlightening," she didn't even care that he smirked cockily and rolled his eyes at her. "And wonderful," she added. "You are a very generous lover. So attentive." It was clear to her now that had been the problem with Jesse. He was neither generous nor attentive. Those weren't qualities he possessed in his everyday life, so she shouldn't have expected him to possess them in the bedroom.

Puck crossed the room quickly and climbed over her, working down the covers as he went. "Hey, you ain't seen nothin' yet babe." He fluffed the pillow a couple times under his head and settled onto his side next to her.

"Yet?"

"Shh," he covered her mouth with his index finger and closed his eyes, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her closer, "still got time for a nap with my girl before I gotta pick up the brat from her sleepover."

Rachel turned her head quickly toward him and opened her mouth to speak, a million and one questions running through her mind. But without opening his eyes, Puck clamped a hand over her lips before any sound could escape. "Seriously," he was kind of growling at her again, and, heaven help her, she was starting to feel that thing just below her stomach again. "Sleep. It's exhausting bein' this good, and I plan on wearin' us both out again before I leave."

Telling herself that she would make him explain himself later (What? She would!), Rachel gave in, rolling onto her side and allowing him to pull her a bit tighter against him. Just as she was getting comfortable, adjusting to the feeling of his solid chest rising and falling against her back, a shiver flew down her spine when his breath washed across her ear. "And, ya know, any other time ya want."

As much as she wanted to, Rachel couldn't fall asleep. There were still all those questions she wanted to ask, and his last statement did nothing to quiet her mind. Any time? Really? That certainly warranted consideration. So when her phone began to vibrate on her nightstand 10 minutes after his breath deepened and evened out so that she knew at least one of them was getting some rest, she snatched it up quickly in order not to wake Puck. She wanted to roll her eyes, but a smile won out instead when she read Santana's text, bad grammar and all. 'your welcome' She would only have smiled wider if she knew that outside in his truck, Puck's phone was receiving the same text.

My first real venture into Puckleberry sexy times (never gone past PG-13 with them before …), so I'd love to know what you think (I'm a big girl, I can handle constructive criticism too). As usual lately, many thanks to Tashana Ambrosia for her amazing help. From this point on, unless I say otherwise, assume she helped. Unless it sucks. Then it's all me.