"NO!"
It all happened in slow motion.
Barbara's scream. The gunshot. Barbara's body jerking.
Barbara crumpling to the ground.
Barbara not waking up.
"Havers!"
"Barbara? Barbara?"
Thomas Lynley jerked awake with a start.
No. It hadn't happened like that. Barbara was fine. Healed.
Lying beside him in bed.
He let out a muffled sob as she murmured sleepily beside him.
"What is it, love?" Bleary and tousled, she sat up.
"Barbara." His hand fumbled for hers, to hold, to feel, to reassure. "You didn't wake up."
Understanding flashed in her eyes. "Oh, Tommy." She wrapped him in her arms, cradling his head against her breast to rock and soothe. "I'm here. I'm fine, yeah? I'm here. I woke up. I'll always wake up."
He tugged her into his lap, curled himself around her and clung, trembling like a leaf, her slight, warm body in his arms the only guard he had against the dreams that plagued him still.
With her cradled against him, he slept through the rest of the night; and if he dreamed at all, he never noticed.
"You know, you never did tell me how you got Hillier to agree to – this." Vaguely she waved her hand, indicating the fact that she was mostly naked in his kitchen eating cereal while perched on his lap.
"It was quite simple, really." His arms wrapped more securely about her, and she settled back against his shoulder with a sigh. "I told him that us considering each other the most important person in the world was hardly new, whether I'd come to my senses about you or not. Then I told him he could either keep together the most effective partnership the Met had seen in decades, or he could split us up and have two very surly detectives on his hands who would chase away anyone else he tried to partner them with while his division's solve rates plummeted. He saw sense fairly rapidly after that."
"Mmm. Well, I'm glad he did. I've put too much effort into training you, it would take me years to get a new partner to where they should be."
"You trained me!" Somehow, his indignation wasn't quite as believable when he was busily kissing her collarbone between every word.
"Yeah, I did, I – oh, hell." She arched under his hands with a startled gasp as his mouth found the tender pulse point behind her ear, then moaned low in her throat as one of his devilish hands made quick work of her knickers and began an enticing dance between her thighs. "You were – oh! – helpless before I got to you, sir, didn't know half of – yes, right there – what you needed to know about us everyday folk – AH!" Her legs parted instinctively, and right about then her brain shut down completely.
She had vague impressions of straddling him, of torn cloth and sweat-slick skin. She seemed to remember him kissing her hungrily as she took him into her, and then it was a blur of arching bodies and muffled moans before she quivered around him and let the orgasm take her.
The aftershocks were still quaking when he spilled into her with a reverent groan.
She came to with her arms looped about his neck and him still inside her.
One look into his blue eyes was all it took; they started to laugh.
"Did we just –" her voice was shaking, "have at each other in a kitchen chair?"
"It does appear that way, doesn't it?"
"Really, Tommy, we couldn't have moved this someplace horizontal?"
"Well now, it's not my fault you're far more delicious than breakfast."
"I'm hardly complaining, mind you, but I must say, I thought we'd christened every room in this place!"
"Oh, we did. We just forgot this particular chair, it seems."
"Oh, well that's all right, then," she purred. And mischievously she squeezed tight around him.
"Barbara, unless you want a repeat in this chair, I suggest you – oh God!" She smirked as she clenched around him again and felt him harden inside her – and then it was her turn to gasp as his hand came up to tease her nipple.
"Bedroom. Now."
She was still laughing when he tossed her on the bed – but only until his mouth covered hers, because laughter turned rapidly to moans, and then there was no thought left at all.
They were half an hour late for work.