The House On The Beach

by seeyoustandingthere

Another take on how it all began.. sara gets a call that takes her back to a memorable night... GSR

House On The Beach, copyright iseeyoustandingthere

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or the show or any reference to material previously shown by CBS, who retain all rights.

Please review, it helps.

There was a wind, and it whipped around her as she tried to work methodically around the vehicle. It was cold, although not unbearably so, and the sky was closing in. Her bare shoulders, still sunbaked from the earlier heat, were now cool and moving comfortably. She could smell her own skin, tired and carrying the scents of the day as it was. She wanted a shower. The dark overhead made it feel later than it was. It couldn't be later than four or five, and she had worked a double shift. Before coming out here she had stood over a basin in the girls room, splashed cold water on her face and neck, a flimsy substitute for proper rest and refreshment between shifts. She had looked in the mirror only briefly, unconcerned with it all, and walked straight back into another full day. Tired, hungry, but who was she kidding. She loved it, and couldn't genuinely think of anywhere she'd rather be.

Work excited her, as much today as the day she started, as much in Vegas as it had in San Francisco, and she felt, perpetually, lucky.

The car she was working around was giving her a funny taste in her mouth. Something about it was familiar, although she couldn't say what. She had never seen it before, but somehow she couldn't stop looking at it. It was blue, a strange, mixed paint that didn't look like something you could buy in a store. She touched it's surface with her gloved finger and noted that it had a slight raised texture. It was on its side, and the blood from the smash was congealing slowly around it. She considered, sensibly, that it was this she could taste, the metallic afterthought that she could never get out of her nostrils. No matter how often she saw it, the sight of blood always had a profound affect on her. She always found herself thinking back to the person that had walked or driven or ran or lay, whole, before the fact, before the mess that she was now looking at. She tried never to think what her aftermath would look like. It was a criminalist's right and curse. Mental preparation and total obsession.

Finishing what she was doing, she gathered her bags of evidence and camera and walked slowly back to her car, careful not to disturb anything on the ground. Nick and Warrick were still working, taking footprints from the dust, with some difficulty. She sat in the hatch of the trunk and watched them a moment, unzipping her vest to stretch her arms and upper body. The sky seemed to darken further, and she feared rain.

Her phone rang, and disturbed the silence. Nick looked up, but, seeing her patting her pockets, returned to the dust.

"Sidle."

"It's Grissom. Where are you?"

"In the middle of nowhere, where are you?"

"At the lab. Can you get back here, now?"

"What is it?"

"I need you on another case."

She flipped the phone shut, and tossed her vest onto the back seat. She called out to her colleagues, telling them where she was going. They nodded, looking slightly disappointed not to be called away too. It definitely looked like rain.

Grissom wasn't in his office. She stood a while in the doorway, taking in the rows and rows of indescribable things in jars. Every time she came in here she became more and more certain of the roots of her vegetarianism.

"Hey." Grissom came in behind her, alight with interest in something. His eyes were blazing, which, she thought happily, could mean a long night. She preferred to spend her nights here. She preferred to spend her nights working. She preferred to spend her nights with him.

"What's going on?"

"Come and look at this."

She half heartedly expected him to take her hand, such was his boyish glee. Of course, he did not, but lead the way quickly to the back yard, the concrete square behind the lab where occasionally she and Greg played bad basketball when their bodies demanded they take a break. It was dismal, although the dark clouds that had threatened rain in the desert seemed to have retreated a little. The sky was clear here, although the same cold breeze whisked around them.

"What?"

"That." Grissom gestured triumphantly to something on the concrete in the middle of the yard. It was loosely wrapped in some kind of aluminium foil. Sara took a few steps closer, and recognised it for what it was. A pig.

"Haven't I seen him somewhere before?"

"Her, actually. And yes, you have."

"Kay Shelton."

"Indeed."

"You're doing the same experiment again?" As she looked closer, she noticed small, winged forms flitting to and fro about the pig's head and legs. Her stomach turned a little. Grissom and dead pig always had been a heady mix. She cast her mind briefly back to the long night they had spent out here last time, watching meat decay, watching flies hatch, watching evidence unfold in front of their eyes.

"Same experiment, different insect. Blow fly. And different variables, too. This body was kept inside something, something that conducted heat, something metal."

"This is a new case?"

"Yeah, came in while you were out playing dust bunnies. Female caucasian, body dump, highway patrol found her in the middle of a six lane highway."

"Body dump?"

"Yeah. That, or she fell off the back of a truck."

"Okay. I get the experiment, but what do you need me to do?"

"Well, seeing as how you and I are the only ones with first hand experience of this particular experiment, I thought you'd like to take it in turns to sit up with her."

"All night?"

"Half the night. We'll take it in turns."

Sara returned to the locker room unsure whether to smile or grimace. Dead pig. All night. After a double. Of course, she could have said no. He had cocked his head to the side a little, excitable and eager to get on with it, charming, and she knew she would be there til morning. This time she foresook the wash room sink for a shower, letting the water clear her head. A headache was spreading, something she wasn't familiar with. She wondered if it was due to the weather, a storm brewing, pressure points, something meteorological like that. Stepping out of the small cubicle, she towelled her weary limbs and quickly dressed in some clean clothes she kept in her locker. More of the same, jeans, sweater. She had no means of drying her hair, so brushed it out and resigned herself to the buoyant curl it would develop as it dried. She went back to the breakroom, searched the fridge for anything resembling sustenance, and, finding nothing, walked next door to the diner for take out.

She found Grissom already in position in the yard, hunched over the pig, much closer than she would be sitting when it was her turn. Feeling better for something to eat, she had rejuvenated slightly, and sat beside Grissom, handing him hot coffee.

"I'll take first shift. You can go home for a bit."

"As if I can sleep knowing I've got this awaiting me." She said, sitting down beside him.

He sipped the coffee, which was too hot but pleasingly so. Her wet hair hung about her shoulders and he wanted to look closer at her clean face, bur daren't. He allowed himself to think that this was intimate. Coffee, freshly washed hair, outdoors, impending darkness. Again he wondered how Sara was able to make romance out of anything. She needed just to be there, unapologetic, hating the way her hair curled (he could tell that she did, and loved it all the more), half reluctant, half speculative as to why Grissom had asked her (he knew that she was), and he felt enchanted, spellbound in a truly strange and beautiful way.

Sara wondered how it was that all their moments were imperfect in this way. Unspoken, assumed, irregular, always involving something she would never have imagined doing, often wearing something she would never normally have felt attractive in. Now, tired and wet, she felt that she was close, close to being sure that something inside of him was ticking over. Of course, she scolded herself, it could just be the pig. He did love his dead flesh experiments.

He was aware that what he was attracted to in her was her strength, and yet he had not allowed himself to really love her until he had uncovered her weakness. Until he knew what drove her and what beheld her, what lay in the past, anything but dormant.

Some of the night passed quickly. They didn't talk much. Grissom went inside the lab and stretched out in the breakroom for a couple of hours. Sara read a book, made notes on the activity of the flies as he had told her to, changed the tape in the video recorder when it ran out. She made coffee and wrapped herself in a blanket and sat back, a healthy distance away from the she-pig, and waited, watching and thinking. Occasional footsteps inside the building made her turn her head, but she saw nothing of the rest of the team. It was a busy Vegas night and they were elsewhere, driving down other streets to other homes with other agendas. For now, this was all she had, and as usual she contented herself with the obscurity of it and the knowledge that this was, essentially, something she was doing with and for Grissom.

Grissom set an alarm to wake him at 2am. He relieved Sara, and she slept then for an hour, waking naturally when something crashed to the floor down the hall. Once awake, she realised how light her sleep had been, and feeling alright, relieved Grissom once more. This time he slept for barely forty minutes, and he returned. Sara got up when he sat down, and wordlessly went inside. Instead of sleeping, however, she returned five minutes later with yet more coffee, and they both stayed, then, for the remainder of the night, side by side.

He noticed that her hair had dried about four in the morning. When she came back with the coffee, she had brushed it, and it hung like silk around her shoulders, catching the light from the lamp that illuminated the pig.

"You know, people will start to talk." She said, finally.

"About what?"

"This is the second time we've spent the night together." She let her lips curl upwards at the corners, a half smile at her own joke. He got there eventually, sifting the innuendo from the harmless humour.

"Well, we're not alone."

"Yes, there is a third party present. And some basic recording equipment." He was mildly shocked at her boldness, and slightly titillated, too. That she would even joke about it. Sudden flashes of a different Sara, a side he didn't know but wanted to. Images of her, brazen but dignified, simple but smouldering, carved out a place in his less innocent thoughts. He looked at her, seeing the criminalist, but the picture of the goddess refused to leave him.

Several minutes passed in the glow of those thoughts. Grissom was silent, slowly and reluctantly erasing the images he had unwittingly conjured, that he might look at her again and feel calm. Sara basked in his company, and their easy silence, and the small, calculated risks she had taken that had so far lead to no fall.

It was her who spoke eventually, when the first hint of dawn crept around the edges of their eyes, changing the quality of the light in which they saw each other.

"Do you remember the last time?"

"The last time?"

"The other pig."

"I remember the pig."

"Do you remember Kay Shelton?"

"I remember the effect she had on you."

Sara swallowed, not sure if she should feel shame for what that had been, wondering if now that he knew the root of that, she was more or less justified in letting it come through. She remembered that case more than any other, more than she ought. Not Kay, not the body. The husband, and his eyes. She had laid him bare the moment she met him. Scott Shelton. She had looked at him, and he had known she was onto him. He called her a handful. She remembered his jeering, cold nonchalance when she found Kay's blood on his apartment walls. She had been teetering somewhere near the edge throughout the investigation, but it was that look in his eyes that sent her over the edge. She remembered Grissom's strong hands on her arms, pulling her back, protecting her. She had been full of front, and even then she had willed him to crush her into his arms, holding her still and negating the quandary she faced - show utter professionalism or let loose her inner fury.

Their relationship was built on balance. Grissom reined her in, setting her straight and calming her down when she simmered over or lost her footing. Sara kept him alive, and he longed for her ability to put passion first. She could think with her heart and love with her head and he didn't know how to do anything like that. She was unafraid of her feelings, and he was terrified. That said, his fear paled with the night sky in moments like this. Close to her, he was capable, and he could imagine himself letting go, sinking in, rewarding himself for so many years spent alone. Later, alone in his house, he would return to being a coward, a logicistical nightmare, the sensible one. He would be glad he hadn't crossed the line, although he would never give up imagining what it would be like.

He did remember Kay Shelton, and her husband, the man with the eyes of iron who had looked at Sara with a disdain that had made Grissom want to rip him open. He had said Grissom had his hands full with her, and Grissom had taken such pleasure in turning that back on him, as he sat, cocky, trying to create a camaraderie with Grissom. Man to man, you know, she's a nightmare. You're talking to the wrong man, Grissom wanted to tell him. To me, he wanted to say, she is only strength and beauty. He watched Sara lose it, and wished that she hadn't, for the sake of her own dignity and track record, but loved the abandon in her eyes, loved her for being protective of Kay's memory and of justice, and loved her for acting upon what they all were thinking - that that guy needed a damn good kicking.

And now that he knew where that had come from, he could only be proud of Sara for functioning on those cases as well as she had. For never saying, for never demanding attention, or wanting sympathy, for making him drag it out of her. He was, he knew, fiercely protective of her, and had got her off the hook with higher powers more than once. But they didn't know anything, and when Sara had yelled at Catherine and been the only one brave enough and stupid enough to tell Ecklie just how low he had sunk in breaking up their team, he had fought for her, without even knowing the facts, without knowing the cause. He knew that Sara would have a reason, and he trusted her, and he was right.

"I'm sorry I put you through that." She said, feeling a flush of guilt for her past hot headedness. It was as though she had read his mind.

"It's my job." It was the easy answer. Not the whole truth.

And now they had a relationship that was built like a house on the sea. It got windblown and battered and sometimes a cold and unfriendly place to be. It didn't always make sense, like building a house so close it was prone to flood, salty water staining everything once or twice a year. But come hell or highwater it stood, and for the rare moments when the sun shone on it and it was like nowhere else on earth, when you could sit on the back porch and see the entire ocean shimmer before you, watch the sun go down on a paradise that wasn't anyone else's, it was worth the sand between your toes.

Sara shifted slightly, her limbs turning slowly numb, idly swatting at a rogue fly.

"It's almost light." She shivered involuntarily, colder from sitting for so long than from the weather. It was going to be a bright day. She wrapped her jacket tighter around her. Grissom stood and stretched.

" Need more videotape." He said, and took off his own jacket, draping it over her shoulders as he turned to go. She looked up as the warm fabric enveloped her, but he was gone. Warmer now, she began to slip into a daze, wanting sleep. She leaned her head against the wall, cosy in the big coat, sure she could detect a faint hint of him rising up from its folds. She scolded herself for being so attentive slash creepy, smiling at her own mild obsession as sleep washed over her like the waves on the shingle behind a house on the beach.

She awoke to the sound of metal scraping. Opening her eyes slowly, she saw Grissom in front of her, carefully tweezing flies from the pig and dropping them into containers. The image didn't fit with the deafening noise, and she sat up and looked around her. To her left was the CSI garage, doors flung wide. In the driveway was parked a tow truck, cranking a familiar looking car down into the garage. The strange blue from the day before. Or was it earlier that day? She had lost time. The sun was beating down now, and she wondered how long she had slept. She was too warm in Grissom's jacket, and laid it down beside her. He turned at the movement.

"Morning."

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"Sara, you haven't slept at all. You were exhausted. Besides, she's beginning to fry out here and I know you don't eat bacon."

She couldn't help but smile. His grin was wide, conspiratorial.

"Finally, you've learned that lesson."

"You can go home now."

"I will, I just want to see what's happening with my case."

Grissom gestured towards the car.

"That it?"

"Yep."

"Well it'll still be there tonight. Go home."

"Is that an order?"

"Yes."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"If I can't pull a double you can't either."

"You've just pulled a triple, don't think I don't know. No arguments, go home."

She looked at him, cross that he would let her stay to watch a pig rot but not to work, elated that he would ask her to stay for a night watch with him, knowing full well that she shouldn't. He had wanted her company. Not company. Hers.

Seeing her face, he mellowed.

"I'm going home too, just as soon as I've documented this." They exchanged a small, wry smile, and she turned on her heel and walked slowly back to her locker, secretly glad of the order, knowing that without his instruction she would be showering, breakfasting and settling in to another sleep deprived day of work. She'd be sharper and better for sleep in her own bed, away from the distraction of work and the bigger distraction of Grissom.

Grissom watched her walk away and smiled to himself, wondering when was the last time a bunch of flies in a pot looked so damn poetic.

That night, Sara worked the car again. Nick and Warrick had drawn a blank with the footprints, the dust making them unusable. There was literally nothing else around the car, just miles and miles of red dust. In the garage the car looked smaller, unlike the huge hunk of metal it had been out there. Sara had remembered it like a tank, images of it crushing someone to death beneath it to create those blood pools. Now, she was able to climb in, over and under it with ease, and she had changed into her overalls happily, always content when tinkering with something in the cool garage. It was off the lab's beaten track, and she could go undisturbed here for hours.

By three am, she was frustrated. There was just no evidence. The blood came back with no matches, there were no fingerprints, and no dna to speak of. She has spent a good hour in the back seat far more engrossed than she'd ever been doing just that in college, but to no avail. Finally, she stripped all the upholstery and carpet out, and sent it to trace. Then she got down on a trolley and wheeled herself underneath. A painstaking fingertip examination of the car's undercarriage well underway, she was still drawing a blank. Moving herself futher beneath it, she spotted something out of the corner of her eye. A blackblue sheen on something where all else was gritty and grey. She looked closer, pulled out her flashlight and a magnifying glass.

"No way..." She said aloud, as she pulled out her cell phone. Dialling where she lay, upside down and prone, she stared at the fly welded to the undercarriage of the car.

"Grissom? It's Sara. Can you come to the garage?"

Minuntes later she heard the door open.

"Sara?"

"Under here." Grissom bent down to talk to her.

"What is it?"

"Blow fly."

"Are you sure?"

"No, that's your department. But I'm thinking that if it is, it must have flown under here while you were playing with Miss Piggy."

"Is it alive?"

"No."

"That doesn't sound right."

"You want to see it?"

"Yeah."

She was about to ask him to pass her a container and some tweezers, when his head slid into view next to hers. On his back, he had shimmied under the car, too.

"I could have passed it out to you."

"Uh uh. I need to see it where you found it. Might be a clue as to how it got there."

Him and his damn bugs, she thought. He wasn't even on a trolley, and the floor was so not clean. She was dirty and greasy enough, in her overalls, he was going to regret this.

"This fly has been dead some time. It isn't from the pig, although you're right, it is the same."

"So, if there's a blow fly on this car, and there were blow flies on your body, what are the odds that the two were in contact?"

He turned slightly to look at her. In their cramped quarters, they were inches apart. There was grease on her face, and Grissom thought nothing of leaning over to wipe it away. It got onto his hands, and, buoyed by the sensuality of his touch and mesmerised by the look in his eyes, she offered up her sleeve for him to clean it off. He did, aware that his hand closed around her arm at the same time. The moment was loaded, and they bathed in it, protected by the assumed privacy of the car hanging over them.

"I'd say, pretty good."

Her throat was dry, and her voice cracked when she replied.

"What?" She had already forgotten about the fly. She was lost in his eyes, in the proximity they were in, in merely being horizontal next to him. It felt wrong but deliciously right all at once.

"I'd say it was likely that this fly came from the body found on the highway."

"Right." She came back to earth with a jolt.

"So I'm going to have to take him with me."

Grissom reached inside his jacket and pulled out a plastic bag and a pair of tweezers. Just like him, to have whatever he needed in his pocket. Sara would have had to roll all the way out to her kit. He carefully picked the fly off, prying it clear of the metal. The lack of elbow room proved difficult to manoeuvre, and the fly fell from his grasp, bouncing off of Sara and onto the ground beside her. She turned towards Grissom, to take the tweezers from him, to retrieve the insect. Before she could, he turned toward her, and leant across her to do it himself. Their combined movements left them leaning into one another and very, very close. Grissom's arm rested right across her stomach, which flipped. She hardly dared breathe as he (she thought) took his time. The fly safely encased, Grissom rolled deftly out from under the car, leaving Sara to breathe heavily and recover from the intoxication of literally lying beneath him.

There were nerve endings in odd places, Grissom thought, so many more than he'd known he had. As he reluctantly removed himself from their own private idaho, he mourned the loss of it, of the heat from her jump suit, of the smell of grease and perfume, of the distance between his mouth and hers that he had had to concentrate so hard on not closing. He was wound tightly, on the verge of something. Not to mention that Sara may have broken both their cases. In fact, the two cases looked increasingly like one. She had turned the night on it's head. And she had merely lain there, so beguiling in her blue overalls, making him hate himself for wondering what was underneath. She made him feel so intrinsically male sometimes. He had no time for supposing whether that was a bad thing, when Hodges affronted him.

"Upholstery from Sara's mean machine. Traces of blood."

"I thought there was no blood evidence."

"This was on the underside of the carpet. It was ingrained, man, she'd never have found it without stripping it out."

"Thanks Hodges."

"Sir."

Without bothering to remind Hodges that nothing pissed him off more than hearing him say that, he continued to his office, the little guy in his hand promising answers.

He was part way through his analysis when Sara appeared at his door. She was still wearing her overalls, and she was, he felt primitive admitting, hot. She had that look of triumph, when things started to fall into place and she could hit the ground running. She was in her stride, and he was just helping her.

"Is it a match?"

"I'm yet to ascertain that for sure."

"I'm betting it is." She pulled something out of her pocket. "Look what I found."

"What?" She brought it over to the table, and laid it under the light he was using. Something silver glittered up at him.

"What is it?"

"Aluminum. Not the heavy stuff. This is flexible."

"And?"

"Didn't you say the body was wrapped in something metal?" It took only a beat for it to connect in his mind, and he was with her.

"Sara..!" He exclaimed, beginning to get that feeling he got when he successfully closed a case.

"I know, " She said, her smile coming from the same place, "We love this part."

"Call Brass."

Four hours, a suspect in custody and an answer for a grieving family later, their shift began to wind down. Sara cleaned up, not bothering to take her overalls off for the drive home, but tied them at the waist, revealing, as Grissom followed her to the front door, that she had been wearing a white vest underneath. She carried her kit in one hand, unaware that he was behind her until she stopped to pick up her messages at the front desk. He passed her, and she called out to him.

"Good call, with the pig."

He turned, glad that she had stopped him and not the other way around.

"Good call, with the fly."

"And I thought bugs were your thing." They both chuckled inaudibly, and the moment, somehow, was not awkward. She collected together the momentum she had gained from his recent actions, from the night spent watching, from the brush of his arm against her stomach, from the look in his eyes and the undertone in his voice, and used it to carry her into what she said next.

"You want to get some breakfast?"

A second went by, then another, in which she wondered if she had indeed said that out loud.

His eyes slipped from one side to the other, in consideration.

"No, thank you." It was not a rebuff, as much as a simple statement. He thought they had come far enough that no would not mean no, but she looked deflated anyway. There were no strings attached to his reluctant stomach, but he was dismayed to see that she thought otherwise. And why wouldn't she, he chastised himself, when the last time she asked you something like that you threw it back in her face in much the same way.

"I mean.. " He began, but she interrupted him with a smile, and held up her hand.

"Don't even. Loud and clear." And then she left, walking out of the door as the warm fuzz of their comradeship disintegrated into the frost of their real feelings and his lack of articulation of them.

She was at her car when he caught up with her.

"Sara."

"Don't exhaust yourself Grissom. I get it. I really do."

"Sara."

She looked up at him as she shut the car door, and he wished he could do better, but wished too that they were somewhere else, and that she wouldn't keep expecting him to have an epiphany at the office. As if the chasm that had to be traversed in order for his walls to come down was not vast, as if the sequence of events that would have to happen in order for him to let everything slide was not complex. As if it was going to happen here.

"I'll see you tonight." She said, and she was gone. As she went he realised how very simple it all could have been, and wondered briefly, sadly, if that sequence of events might already be in motion. He wished he knew. As he walked to his car he felt cold, and imagined that somewhere a sharp winter wind battered the house on the beach from within and without, threatening to tear roof from rafters.

Sara dropped her keys on the counter in her apartment and shut the door behind her. It was heavy and of some comfort as she tried to shut the day and the night and the day before and the night out... she couldn't even remember how far back it went. So many hours melded into one long disappointment. The sweet build up to the crashing fall. She should have known. She was a sucker for setting herself up.

She made some tea. She would normally have had a beer but somehow she just didn't want it. She wanted comfort and numbness and sleep and for her memory to stop functioning on overdrive and let her escape the events that now plagued her. Idiot. Of course it didn't mean all that she wanted it to. With Grissom, it never did. Or, rather, it could mean the world and he'd never let her know. In frustration she flung open the back door and sat on the step, drawing strength and tranquility from the first few rays of the day. She wanted darkness, and knew that she wouldn't sleep well today. She still had grease on her face, and thought about getting up to run a bath, but nothing willed her to move, so she stayed where she was, wallowing in the farce that had been her life for so long. She should have just... oh, where was the use? He was the man he was and she couldn't, nor would she wish to, change him.

The knock on the door did not fill her with joy. She was annoyed, and didn't want to be disturbed. This wasn't a frustration she cared to share.

Grissom stood in the hallway like a fugitive, looking from left to right as though the rest of the team were lurking in her building waiting for just such an opportunity. He had steeled himself and decided that an apology was the right thing to do. He had been unkind, and she had looked upset, and he didn't like the feeling that he had done that.

Sara opened the door. She couldn't think of a single thing to say. She said nothing, and stood back to let him in. He accepted her silent invitation and noted the steely look on her face. It bothered him, but somehow the idea that she was so intrinsically bothered about anything he said impressed something greater than that upon him. He wasn't sure what, but he felt the urge to step towards her. She didn't move away. She leant back against the counter, crossing one leg over the other, watching him.

Sara's eyes widened. What was he doing here? Stepping towards her? This was getting interesting.

With each step he took towards her he waited for a suitable sentence to fall out of the sky and arrange itself in his mouth in a coherent manner. When none came, he stopped walking, less than a foot from where she stood. He watched her chest rise and fall. She was looking right at him, and the longer he stood there, the less it unnerved him. She was beautiful, and he loved the sight of her.

"If you've nothing to say, I... " She turned to walk away, and he caught her arm. They were both surprised, and both looked down at the sight of his hand on her, holding her there in front of him. Suddenly, it became clear. He took that last step, and, without hesitation, kissed her, gently. He pulled back from her and fixed her with his very own steely look, telling her all she needed to know. She moved into him, unable to believe what he had done and unable to stop the riot he had started. He took her face in his hands and kissed her again, no longer a slave to anything, free at last to do everything to her he had barely allowed himself to wonder about. They kissed for a long while, breath coming in deep, short bursts. The charge was phenomenal.

He did not tremble as he let his hands slide upwards into her hair, kissing her now with more passion and less caution. Her hands found each other on the back of his neck, and he felt her nails lightly pressing into his skin. She set him on fire, and he knew he was not leaving anytime soon.

Sara knew what she was doing. She had played this moment out a thousand times. It was one and a million things more than she had imagined. The thick heat that spread through her was new, something that only the man himself could ellicit. No daydream would now suffice, having tasted and touched him thus. She had fallen, and she was not alone.

He tentatively slid a hand down to her waist, feeling the overalls tied there. The feel of the vest against her skin was amazing, and as his hands wrapped around her he felt muscle and smooth skin as the vest rose. He didn't know which sent him most crazy, and it ceased to matter as she reached down and untied the suit from around her waist. It fell easily to the floor and she stepped out of it. He didn't look, but following her lead let his own jacket fall to the floor behind them, all the while unable to stop kissing her, each second better than the last, each flicker of her tongue over his like a lightening bolt. They were a storm, of the greatest, most wanton passion but with the lightest touch.

She took his hands and slid them slowly just an inch further down her waist. He was expecting jeans, but instead felt the smallest, snuggest pair of shorts, barely grazing her thigh. The line of them was smooth against her skin and even with his eyes firmly shut he could tell they were close fitting. The thought drove him wild, and he knew he couldn't trace their outline and remain in control. He lifted his hands back to her waist and with the movement she grabbed his shirt and kissed him with renewed fervour. She wrapped her arms around his neck and, half wondering who the hell he thought he was, he lifted her onto the counter.

She was above him now, and his head was level with her chest. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him into her, and began, slowly, to unbutton his shirt. He kissed her neck, and let his lips wander down to the line of her vest. She arched her back and stroked the back of his head, holding it to her. As she did, he caught the sound of something, strong and rhythmic. He paused, and leaned in closer, confirming his thought that what he had heard was coming from her. He could hear her heart beating, and the sound was too much. Afraid that he would cry, he wrapped both arms around her neck and brought her head down to his. Her lips rested on his ear as they lay still, chests rising and falling with the beat in his ear. He could smell her hair, and feel her hot skin all around him. They stayed like that, each one sure that nothing again would ever come close to the way they felt in that moment.

Until the next moment. He untangled himself eventually, stood so that he was facing her again. Once more taking her face in his hands, he kissed her with the utmost care, emotion welling up inside of him. It was Sara who cracked first, however, a tear escaping unchecked. She couldn't care. She let it fall, and as he watched it, a tiny replica appeared on his tanned cheek. She touched it, in simple disbelief that any of this was really happening. She traced it's track and thought to herself that if the world ended here and now, she would only feel blessed. Somewhere, a lazy wave lapped at a brilliant sandy shore, and a beach house stood steeped in sunlight, still seas reflecting a perfect, unrepeatable day.

"Is that what you came to say?" She said, as all walls crumbled. There was nothing left to fear or hide. Just an open door.

He kissed her one more time, unable to get enough, before he answered her.

"Yes dear."