A/N: I'm writing a series of seven oneshot stories depicting various survivors committing one of the Seven Deadly Sins. I got the idea when I was playing with my WordPerfect Thesaurus and I looked up "school" which defined the school of fish, then I put in "pride," as in a pride of lions. One other definition caught my eye, "unreasonable and inordinate self-esteem" which I clicked on and one of the sub-words was Superbia, which is Latin for pride. So I went and looked at all the other sins on my thesaurus, and they all had the Latin names, and I was thinking, "This is a great idea for a story title," and then I just decided to do a whole series of them, using all seven. They aren't all sinning in the grand sense of the word, just characters acting on impulse and indulging in a little bit of naughtiness. This is the first installment, Luxuria, which means Lust. This is told from the POV of both Jack and Kate, making it my only double-sinned chapter. Enjoy :) Oh, and btw, who else was thrilled about "Every Man for Himself?" My love for Jate has never been stronger!

"Jack!"

"Jack, hey!"

Jack was drawn from his much-needed mid-day nap by a pair of panicked voices, one female, one male, coming from just outside his tent. They sounded frantic, and he was up and alert by the time Locke burst into his tent, breathing erratically. That surprised him. Locke was rarely out of breath.

"Hey, John," he muttered sleepily. "What—"

He was interrupted by another figure, a dripping-wet Sayid, bursting in, carrying a limp body in his arms, followed by a third, Claire, clutching Aaron to her chest. The tent was suddenly very crowded.

"What—" He repeated, cut off by Locke's frantic head shake. Jack's gaze turned to the limp figure that Sayid had placed on the ground at his feet. He froze, and all of the color went out of his face. He would recognize that mass of dark curls anywhere, even with it covering her face.

"Alright, I need one of you to explain what happened."

The two men moved back to allow Claire to step forward as best she could. Locke took Aaron from her arms.

"I'll take him to Charlie," the older man said. "I'm on hatch duty in ten minutes, Jack. Is there anything you need from the hatch?"

"Not yet, not until I find out what's wrong. I've got basic stuff in here. I'll send someone if it's serious."

Sayid followed Locke from the tent with a nod to Jack, who had moved Kate's hair from her face and was now checking her for any injuries.

"Claire, what happened?"

"I was feeding Aaron," Claire said, speaking slowly and trembling a little. "Kate was with me, and then she told me she was going for a swim. I went to put Aaron in his cradle and I heard her screaming. She was so far out—then she just disappeared. Locke and Sayid were nearby, and Sayid swam out and got to her. She wasn't breathing when he brought her back. She's not dead, Jack, is she?"

"Claire, go back and look after Aaron. I need to—see if she's—if she's—"

Claire put a hand on Jack's shoulder to steady his nerves. "Should I stay and help?"

"No. I've got everything under control. Did anyone do CPR?"

"I don't know. I mean, no. They brought her straight here. Is she going to be alright?"

"Claire, go. I've got this."

She gave him a look full of worry and concern, then excused herself from the tent.

When he performed CPR, his lips lingered longer on her lips than necessary before he began breathing into her mouth, pumping the air into her lungs. She coughed up water, trembled, and lay still in his arms. Her pulse was faint, but at least he knew she was alive. He pulled her body into his lap, trembling and afraid. Her skin was icy to the touch.

Yet she was so close to him and her still intoxicating scene filled his nostrils. He himself suddenly felt very hot and cursed to himself. Kate stirred and shifted suddenly in his lap, making him wince, as a certain part of his male anatomy threatened to betray him.

"Damnit," he muttered, panicking. She turned suddenly in his hold and put her arms around his neck, brushing her lips against his throat. She mumbled incoherently at his chin, her breath strangely hot on his face. He failed to suppress the guttural moan that came from his throat.

She was going to kill him if she came to and saw their compromising position. The intense tightness in his jeans against his thigh was no longer ignorable. If she woke up…he couldn't even being to explain himself. When he tried to detach himself from her, she whimpered and only clung tighter.

Gradually, he managed to pry her fingers off of his shirt and extricate her body from his. He no longer trusted himself around her in his state, his breathing as erratic as hers had been earlier. He couldn't get the feeling of her body out of his mind. The way she had felt, warm and smooth, and his body still tingling in the places she had clung to him. He glanced at her sleeping form before emerging from the tent. The sun had set, but the others were still scattered along the beach, walking, talking. The water wouldn't have done him any good anyway—it was too warm. His fingers curled into fists that dug into his palms, his body needing a release.

He walked behind the tent, into the jungle, close enough to hear Kate, if she called him—and far enough so that none of the others would stumble on him. He dropped to his knees and unzipped his pants, breathing heavily, forgetting everything as he melted completely into himself and his vision of Kate.

She waited for five minutes, until she heard complete silence all around her. She wasn't sure what had incensed her to do what she'd done. She had spent enough time with her stepfather when he was staying on base to know about playing dead and manipulating people with fake injuries. She knew that if she told Claire she was going for a swim, then pretended to struggle in the ocean, inhaled a fair amount of seawater, and then went immobile, someone would rescue her and that someone would either be or take her to Jack. For a moment, the sudden rush of salt water assaulted her senses, but she cleared her mind, took a deep breath of air, and dove under, holding her breath as long as she could. She'd once learned to hold her breath for just over two minutes, but it only took about forty-five seconds for Sayid to reach her and drag her back to shore. It was the perfect plan, flawless, fail proof. She hadn't expected Jack to leave the tent, but this was better, and they were very sheltered from the rest of the camp's prying eyes.

She moved slowly through the trees, parting them to walk through the clearing, when she caught sigh of Jack, kneeling in the sandy grass with his head thrown back, eyes shut, his hand moving rapidly in front of him where she couldn't see. She crept up behind him and eased her fingers over his neck, down the back of his shirt, massaging the tender muscles. He started and almost fell over in shock, and she smiled to see how red his face was.

"I thought you were—"

"Unconscious?" She finished, smirking at him. "I wasn't, not really." He went even redder, clearing this throat and hurrying to compose himself, pulling his still hard penis back into his boxers and zipping up his jeans.

"Sorry, I—uh, sorry." He stood and made to move past her, but she blocked his way, their faces dangerously close.

"Kate," he said warningly. "You were passed out. I'm sorry that you had to—see that. I can't. We can't."

"I already told you, I wasn't. How else was I going to get alone with you? How else was I going to get you to this point? I can't watch you suffer every day. This is stupid. We have to stop this whole denying our feelings thing."

He stared at her for a moment, as if reading her eyes. She gave nothing up, and he shook his head. "Kate, I can think of a hundred safer ways that you could have gotten my attention."

"You're always so busy. I figured I needed to pull something really crazy to get you alone with me."

"What are we, in high school? You don't have to do stupid things to get my attention."

She draped her arm over one of his shoulders and leaned in, pressing her body closer to his. "How old are you?"

"I just turned thirty-four."

"I'm twenty-seven since June. It's only, what, six years? My stepdad is eight years older than my mom."

"Kate, what exactly are you saying?"

"I'm saying it's been too long. I'm saying I can't understand why I kept you in the dark for so long. I'm saying I don't know why it took me so long to say that I love you. I'm saying we should just stop this silly game and admit that we're just more than friends. I'm saying I just want to get away from it all."

She watched him processing all of this information and then slowly nod his head.

"Wait here," he told her sternly. He moved back toward the beach, and she watched him go, wondering what he was thinking now, after all that. She realized, almost to her horror, that she had admitted she loved him. Plopping down to the ground, she wondered again if he was truly what she wanted. She had wrestled with this decision for the longest time. In Sawyer, she saw the person she was used to being. In Jack, she saw the person she wanted to become. In the end, it hadn't really been a hard decision. It had been finding a way to tell Jack. It wasn't just the type of thing she could walk up and just say. And he was always so busy, taking care of the whole camp, it seemed like the two of them could never get any alone time…

He emerged through the trees a short time later, wearing his backpack and carrying an unlit torch, several of the blue Oceanic blankets, a couple pillows, and the quilt from her tent she'd found in the hatch. She stared at him, for a moment, dumbfounded.

"Where are we going?"

"To the caves," was all he said, and she stood and took the pillows and quilt from his arms, allowing him to stop and light the torch as he led the way through the jungle to the long-ago abandoned caves.

"Why are we going to the caves?"

"For one, privacy. And two, the caves are far enough away from both the camp and the hatch so that if you need to scream, no one could possible hear it."

She blushed for a moment, ducking her head to hide a careful smile. They walked in silence until they reached the caves. Kate built the small fire and Jack arranged a small bed in one of the abandoned caves. She wondered if they were going to talk first, and suddenly realized how awkward it seemed. She poked at the fire with a stick, then turned to see how Jack was coming along. He was standing at the entrance of the cave, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes dancing with the light of the fire, starting at her with more lust than her heart could stand. They met in a tangle of limbs and lips, and he drew her into the cave and onto the soft cot, neither of them saying a word, letting the fierce dance of luxuria take over, with the two of them moving like they already knew the steps, it had just taken a moment to remember them.

The encounter had left her with a breathless and pleasant tingly feeling all over her body. She had screamed. Her toes had curled. And he was as big as she'd imagined. She hadn't seen much when he was alone with himself in the jungle earlier, but she was impressed, and he made sure to further impress her. Every thrust brought her closer and closer to the edge, until the pressure became too much and the two of them collapsed against each other, panting, smiling, touching, kissing.

She lay at his side, panting, her hand thrown casually over his bare chest, absentmindedly playing with the short, curly hair that extended down his abdomen. This was love, she thought, pure, requited love. He was asleep on her arm, and she wiggled over a little. His eyes opened wide and he looked over at her and raised his head slightly to place little kisses along her jaw and neckbone, sending her into a fit of desire.

"Did I hurt you?" He asked between kisses, sounding serious.

She smiled to herself, and laughed at him. "I wasn't a virgin, Jack."

"I know," he winked. She shoved him playfully.

"The others are going to wake up and we'll be gone," she pointed out. "What if they come looking for us?"

"I always get up before anyone else does. Except you. Sometimes I catch you standing on the beach, looking out at the sunrise. Sinking." He burrowed down into the blankets, and she snuggled close next to him. "By the time they wake up, you'll be sleeping in my tent, and I'll tell them you're alright, just a little scare. They won't have any idea."

"We have hours. I'm not even tired."

"You should be. I'm not, either, though. God, Kate, I think I could make love to you for days."

"Lust," she said, moving so she was once again lying on top of him, cuddling against his chest, "is a powerful thing."