AN: Timeline-wise, this comes before Chapter 4 of Where Women Roll and Men Thunder.

Darling Downs, South East QLD, Australia: late March

Tom has always liked this time of day, the dusk shading into evening. When he was a boy it meant home and light and safety, being read to in Ma's big bed or drowsing under the covers waiting for her to be finished putting Declan to sleep. Later it was anticipation, the night ahead beckoning, full of possibility. For a while after he first came here he found the fallow hours between work and sleep lonely; but in his line of work it isn't safe to keep going until you drop. So he had to learn to appreciate the quiet.

Since Sybil came to stay, though, the evenings have belonged to her.

They've fallen into a kind of routine, if two weeks of anything can be considered a routine. Tom knocks off work for the day a little before sunset. He still lifts weights, but not every day and he hurries through his workout. Between garage and house he makes a detour to the outdoor shower, where she's left him a clean towel hung neatly over the water pipe, and washes as quickly as he can. He knows she watches; every time he's caught her at the kitchen window it's the same quick look down and sheepish smile, but sometimes she'll come out and join him. Other times she won't, and the towel ends up wadded underneath them while they fuck on the kitchen floor.

On this particular evening, he finishes his shower alone. He wraps the towel round his waist, stuffing his toes into his shoes to shuffle through the weeds to the kitchen door. Sybil's at the cooker, humming a tune and totally absorbed in stirring a pot of something, just as if she wasn't staring lustfully at his arse five minutes ago. She glances up when the door bangs shut—"Oh, hullo"—just a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth—and back to her pot, hips swaying in time with the lazy circles she makes with the wooden spoon.

She's in the mood to play coy, then. Good.

He puts down his armful of dirty clothes and drapes the towel over the back of a chair. Barefoot and naked, he pads up behind her and puts his hands on her waist beneath her shirt, presses his mouth to the side of her neck and breathes her in.

Still she doesn't turn, though her body moves into his. "Watch out you don't get splashed. Though it'd serve you right if you did."

"So don't splash me." His hand slips across her stomach. He's getting hard already.

"It'd be a lot easier not to if—" her lips part involuntarily as his hand drifts higher, to her unencumbered breast, his fingers just barely brushing over the nipple. She finishes her sentence with a voice half an octave higher than it was when she started it. "If you weren't a foot from the stove, and naked."

"I never said I was here to make your life easy, did I?" He lets his mouth travel further down, to the place where her neck swoops gracefully into her shoulder. He can't resist tasting the soft flesh, sucking on it; she gasps, her backside burrowing into his now rock-hard cock, and then it's his turn to gasp, it's his voice that wavers as he nods toward the burner and says, "Turn that off for a little while, yeah?" She clicks it off and turns to face him, her arms going round his neck.

He puts a finger under her chin, tipping it upward, and their mouths come together: soft, then hard, same as their breathing. After a few minutes of this she murmurs against his lips, "You know, I've still got clothes on."

"Ah, you've noticed."

"Hardly seems fair, does it?"

"Not fair at all."

She raises her arms so that he can pull her top over her head and throw it into a corner. He bends his head to nuzzle her breasts, to flick at her nipples with his tongue until she moans. "I like it when you don't wear a bra," he murmurs, muffled against her skin.

"I like it when you don't wear anything." It's such a rush when she says things like this, in that posh voice of hers with her eyes lowered. He knows it plays on every cheap fantasy of the deflowered princess,

demure by day and shameless by night. But he can't deny the effect it has on him. And he does love it when she takes the lead, like she does now; her hand sliding down between his legs, her mouth hot and sloppy on his as she milks his cock until he's dizzy and panting. He can feel her lips curve against his, at the proof of her power. Soon he won't be able to stop her, won't even want to.

His hands tighten on her shoulders. "Sybil…" She gives his lower lip an affectionate little nip and moves her hands around to his arse. They press closer, skin dragging in the humidity. Her breasts against his chest, her mouth on his neck, scent of his soap rising into the air; he fumbles at her shorts and she shivers from her head to her toes, her breath escaping in a drawn-out moan.

"Take them off," she hisses into his ear. "I want you to tear them off and fuck me."

Holy hell, if he had pants on he might come in them. "Fuck," he breathes, "Oh fuck yes."

He undoes her shorts and pushes them down with her knickers and she stumbles out of them and almost falls against the still-hot stove. Tom hooks her away, chuckling. He likes to see the proof of his power, too.

"Careful, love." He looks into her eyes and quirks an eyebrow, a mock challenge. "So. Table?"

She laughs. "Why not?"

He slides his hands down her back to her arse, her flesh smooth and firm under his fingers, and lifts her. She wraps her legs around him and he thinks about that time in the garage, their first time, when he did the same thing. It's a jumble in his mind—he was delirious for most of that day, it feels like—but it's taken up a formative place there.

He carries her the few steps to the table and, though he sets her down with care, it rocks noticeably as it takes her weight. They both hold their breath.

Inches away from his, her eyes dance. "You'll catch me if I fall, right?"

One side of his mouth curves up. "Count on it."

They kiss, breath hot and heavy between the smack and slurp of lips and tongues. Her knees open to let him nestle between them and her nails rake his back gently, then not so gently. She takes care to avoid the scar, which a remote part of his brain comments on but doesn't belabor. He's got other things to concentrate on.

One hand rests on her thigh while the other moves inward, unhurriedly but with purpose. He rather likes it when she teases, but he doesn't have the patience to do it to her. Anyway, she doesn't seem to want him to. He runs his fingers lightly up her wet slit, circles her clit with a fingertip. She whimpers, her hips jerking toward him. The table creaks. He drives his fingers into her wet warmth, curls them up and draws them out slowly: once, twice, and Sybil shudders and grinds against his hand, her eyes shut, panting.

"You like that, do ye?" He murmurs, and does it again.

She answers with another shuddery breath and an indistinct, vaguely affirmative moan. Her nails dig into his shoulders as he moves his hand faster, rubbing her clit with his thumb. Holy Christ, she's wet. She groans and he leans in and wraps his free arm around her, supporting her. Pressed together, he can feel her heart beat faster and faster, his racing to catch up.

"Oh, Christ, love, you're so sexy..." The words spill out with an ease that's almost embarrassing, but he can't help it. On the edge of orgasm, writhing against him with her face flushed and her eyes half closed, she's the most erotic thing he's ever seen.

As she comes she bites her lip, trying to stifle her moans. "Come on," he whispers in her ear, thrusting his fingers even more deeply inside her. "Come on, I want to hear you." He rubs her g-spot hard and and she breaks wide open, gives him her voice and her quivering legs and her arching back and her hands clinging to him. And the table creaks.

He opens his eyes to watch her, caressing her through it. Soon there's the gleam of blue between her lashes, the glint of her teeth as she smiles the smile of the almost-satisfied. Almost but not quite. His cock brushes against her and he groans aloud, a hairsbreadth from just fucking her bareback, but that's not who they are to each other. Not yet, that part of him whispers that still hasn't cottoned on to the fact that isolation is his life now.

He makes himself let go of her long enough to go to the drawer where they keep the condoms. A minute later the table is creaking again, far more ominously, as it takes his weight along with hers.

He pushes in slowly, keeping his feet on the floor. He huffs a laugh as the tabletop shifts several inches off kilter. "Bloody hell, I feel like I have to hold my breath."

"Just don't lift your feet," Sybil says, smiling. "I'm not sure the table could take it."

He pulls nearly all the way out and moves back in slowly, the sensation making him shudder all over. "I think it should be all right…mmm…if we don't go too fast…ohhhh…" he has to pause to breathe, eyes closed. "God, Sybil, you feel too fucking good."

But she won't stop. Want pours off her in waves; her arms and legs wrap even tighter around him, drawing him further in, and she pumps her hips hard against his, making the table crack and pop and sing like every nerve in his body is singing. His hips swivel and Sybil's eyes fly open, then squeeze shut again. "Oh," she moans, "Oh God, Tom, don't stop—"

As if he could. His hips move faster and faster, almost of their own accord, the itch heightening until it's unbearable and then the tipping point, the inevitable release, rapture spreading through his body like sunlight. His knees buckle. There's a deep crack like bones breaking as he collapses onto the table, a swoop in his stomach. Without thought he makes a cradle of his hands at the base of Sybil's skull, but the old wood holds.

"Fuck me," he breathes. "For a second there I wasn't sure if I was coming or we were falling."

Falling. The thought comes unbidden. Definitely falling.

-o-

Later, after they've eaten and talked and sat reading a while in the front room and gone one more round in the bed Tom thinks of more and more as theirs and not his, she sleeps.

He doesn't. Insomnia has been his more or less constant companion during his exile from Ireland, but he almost thought Sybil had driven it away; he hasn't had trouble sleeping since her first night here.

Until tonight.

The bedside light is on, a soft glow that Sybil can sleep through easily. He's sitting up in bed, running his eyes over and over the same page in his book. Brooding.

He's overthinking it, that's his problem, always has been. Not just looking the gift horse in the mouth but probing its gums and trying to wiggle its teeth. He'd be a lot better off if he could just accept things for what they are.

What this situation is not, though he makes every effort to treat it that way, is two people having a laugh. They've both got plenty of issues to work out, and fucking a virtual stranger is one of the more common ways of taking your mind off your troubles. But somehow it doesn't feel like that's what's happening. This feels less like a distraction than the beginning of healing. And it seems as though Sybil feels it too; the relief on her face after she told him about what happened with her job, the woman dying on the operating table, almost made him tell her about Declan right then. Almost.

But then reality crashed in, and he's very glad it did. He's known Sybil less than a month. She's on holiday to escape her own problems, not hear about someone else's. Bring her too far down, and she might kick off the weight and swim away.

He can't help but watch for signs that she's growing tired of this place, of him. The drift of her gaze while they speak over dinner; a sudden enthusiasm for doing her washing. But her suitcase stays unpacked, her toiletries scattered over the chipped vanity in the bathroom. At first it seemed inevitable to him that she would leave, and he told himself it wouldn't be so bad: certainly no worse than before she came. They've had a laugh, and when she's ready to move on they'll part with no regrets. But the days have slid into weeks almost without them noticing. Though her departure is no less certain, the thought of it has become unbearable. He still makes himself joke with her about it: face your fears with a cheeky grin and when the worst happens, laugh at it. You might be dying inside, but you'll be damned if anyone else can tell.

He sighs, closes his book, and sets it aside. He runs a hand up Sybil's bare arm to her shoulder and down her back. She smiles and groans gently in her sleep, arching into his touch, and his throat goes tight.

He turns off the light and settles himself next to her, fitting his body into the curves of hers, his arm draped over her. She murmurs something unintelligible; her hand slips into his and he has to bite the inside of his cheek hard to keep back the tears. He wants to wake her up, but he's too afraid: in his state he's liable to say anything. "Go back to sleep, love," he whispers, and kisses her cheek, presses the side of his face into her neck and breathes her in.