A/N: Takes place right after Hyde Has A Heart. (I told you they were running around my head with little plot nuggets. ^_^) Rated M for language, violence, sexual content...all the good stuff. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. Although to be fair, Richard and Kathleen really wrote themselves again. (If only all of my characters were so helpful, haha)
Chapter 1
She snored. It was really quite loud, but he couldn't help but smile anyway.
Richard leaned up on his elbow and gently ran his fingers just under Kathleen's jaw. It made her shiver and roll over on to her side, which put an end to the snoring. Her hair fell across her face. Richard brushed it back, tracing the shape of her ear, her cheek, her eyebrow...memorizing every aspect of her that he possibly could.
Her eyelids slowly fluttered open and a smile spread across her face. "I'm a hideous mess in the morning, I know," she said in a voice made husky with sleep.
"Mm, no." Richard replied quietly. He continued to trace the lines of her face with with fingers. "I think you're, mm. Quite amazing." She blushed and looked away for a moment before looking back at him. "Mm, did I leave you mm. Speechless?"
"It doesn't happen often," she admitted. "Anyone in my family will tell you that."
"Do you have, mm. A large family?"
"I'm the youngest of eleven. But only by eight minutes. My sister Jean and I are twins."
"Eleven?" Richard asked, eye wide.
She shrugged. "We're Catholic. What about you? Do you have a large family?"
Richard shook his head. "Parents are both. Mm. Dead. I have a sister, mm. But I haven't seen, mm. Her since I came back. Mm."
"Why not?"
"I don't feel the. Sense of ,mm. Connection that should be there. While I was, mm. At war, she was becoming. A wife and mother. Mm. She. Will ask questions that, mm. I don't want to answer. It's hard to relate, mm. To someone who wasn't there."
"Did you write to her while you were in Europe?"
"For a while. But I stopped, mm. After I. Got my first kill."
"Did you ever think that, maybe if you wrote to her, you...well, I mean...for me, I had to write to Jean. It was the only way I could keep part of myself outside of everything I saw. I didn't tell her the horrors, no. Just little, ordinary things, like the weather. Or stupid things that happened to me." Her hand went to her forehead, she rubbed the small scar above her left eyebrow.
"How. Did you get that?" Richard asked. He'd been curious about it since he first spotted it.
"You'll laugh if I tell you," she said.
"I won't," Richard replied solemnly.
"Well, I had a few days leave, and went with a couple of other nurses to Paris. We went out to a bar one night, and apparently I made a...intimate suggestion...to a gentleman. I was actually asking for the time, but my French is horrible. Anyway, his wife didn't take to kindly to it, so she smashed a glass into my head."
"And, mm. What did you do?"
"Passed out, bled for a while...you're laughing!"
"I'm...not," Richard said. But he was. Kathleen grabbed a pillow and hit him in the shoulder with it. "Okay...I am." She tried to glare at him, but it was too hard to fight the smile. She hit him with the pillow again for good measure.
He ducked as best he could, which brought his face near hers. He leaned in and kissed her softly, trailing his fingers down the side of her neck, across the swell of her breast, teasing her nipple to tautness. She moaned into his mouth and wrapped her arms around him, pulling his body closer to hers. His fingers danced over her body, and after a moment, his mouth followed. Kathleen's soft moans soon became breathless gasps as he teased her most sensitive parts. It didn't take long for Richard to play her body to a back-arching, toe curling climax that left her dazed and panting. He kissed his way back up her body, making goose pimples rise on her skin. He slid into her easily, watching her eyes flutter in ecstasy. He became aware at that moment that he held...it was almost like a power over her. It was the absolute opposite of what he experienced when he was about to kill someone. There, it was a cold enveloping blackness, but here, with Kathleen, it was an encompassing light, filled with sparks of color and warmth.
Gasping, every nerve in her body tingling with delight, Kathleen studied Richard's face above her as he slowly moved in an out of her. She could tell from the look in his eye that he was thinking about something, although she would never be able to guess what.
"Roll over," she said, pushing against his shoulders. He looked at her with puzzlement, but complied, rolling off of her and laying on his back. Kathleen took her time exploring his body, touching and tasting, feeling his reactions in the quiver of his muscles. After a time, she straddled him, slowly moving atop of him. His hands moved to her hips, he matched her thrust for thrust, his breath growing ragged as every nerve in his body began to tingle. She leaned forward to kiss him, her hair falling around their faces, the first rays of morning sunshine played along the strands, mimicking the slow burning fire of their passion. Richard thrust into her deeply. She moaned and buried her face into his neck, small cries of ecstasy escaping each time he pressed into her.
"Oh god, Richard." It was a moan, a whisper, a cry. It was the most beautiful sentence he'd heard uttered and he continued to move in that particular way. He felt her muscles being to tremble and tighten, her fingers curling into his hair, her breath coming in great, ragged gasps.
The orgasm slammed into her, more intense than any she had ever experience. It was a shudder, a shiver, an explosion. It left her strangely numb, yet alive with feeling. One last small 'ooh' passed her lips before Richard felt his own climax erupt. He buried himself to the fullest. Her walls, still pulsing with her own pleasure, enveloped him completely.
He murmured her name. She moved enough so she could look down at him. Her hair hid them from the world again. She gently ran her fingers over the scars on the left side of his face, the first time she had truly drawn attention to them. She looked deep into his remaining eye, so many things she wanted to say, but without any words to say them.
"You. Make me forget. What I am."
"What you are, is the man that I love," she said with fierce passion. "I will never let you forget that."
Richard laid his hand over hers. "You'll. Mm, remind me often?"
"As often as I think you need it."
