The first time he sees her naked it is clinical, sterile, his eyes on her through one way glass as the resident doctors ready her for imaging. His name displayed so prominently on her back, he took no time to notice the smooth slope of her skin or the soft curves of her. Later he might remember her with a slight stirring, but he can't truly remember and the day is so full of distractions that the memory is stashed away. Tasha's memory is better, it seems, and she teases him one night in the bar at the way his eyes lingered on Jane the first time he saw her. The way he let her fingertips linger on his skin in the interrogation room, the way, she claims, that he eyed her hungrily.
She had my name on her back, you don't think I might have been looking at that?
The next time he is removed from her; looking through a computer screen at every inch of skin in isolation. Until the ink blurs before him and nothing makes sense anymore. Always with Patterson, with Zapata or with Reade, never alone with her in the way he doesn't want to admit he would like. It's awkward, he knows, for her to be analysed so blatantly and so publicly by people that she has come to know as friends. She confides, later, that she found it strange to watch him become so acquainted with her body and he thinks that he will never be as familiar with another person's bare skin as he is with hers, even though it is not intimate at that point. He's wrong, of course, realises later that looking at her that way wasn't familiarity at all.
I wanted you to see me. Just not like that. Not with everything out of my control.
Which is why he treats her tenderly when she is first in his arms. More tenderly than he has ever treated a woman, although he is not in any way a brutal man. Zapata joked once that when he finally got his hands on Jane he'd be an animal; all that pent up tension and months of build-up. She's wrong.
You don't think you're gonna rip her clothes off the second you get her in to bed?
No, when the time comes she unwraps herself for him and as she does the sterile skin he has memorised comes alive. The tattoos move as she does, invite him to meet them anew. Invite him to feel as well as look, to combine senses to experience her in ways he has only been able to imagine.
And he's never had the greatest of imaginations.
His traces the lines on her body with his eyes and then with his hands; feeling the imperfections in her skin, the warmth of her under his palms. She shudders at his touch and he moves quickly to kiss her, to reassure her. He knows she is scared, she's told him as much. Not of him but of losing him before they ever get the chance to know one another properly. When he looks in her eyes he sees the fear of a day in the field; of watching as a gun is held to his head when hers is just out of reach. A day where it was Reade's quick thinking that saved him, and her inexperience that nearly stalled the whole operation.
He kisses her slowly, placing a hand on her stomach to steady himself as her hands grip his shirt and pull him closer.
I don't know what I'm ready for… I don't want to let you down.
I'm not expecting anything, Jane. I'm not expecting anything at all from you.
They've come this far; from the bureau to the bar, from the taxi to his bed. Her naked in his arms, him still in his shirt and underwear. He kept them on to keep the pressure off, to show her that his expectations went no further than the opportunity to touch her, feel her, see her in a way he hasn't been able to before.
When he feels her relax under him he breaks the kiss, pulls back to look at her face. She is calmer, now, smiling gently as he strokes her cheek. Soon he lets his hands wander; touching the bird on her neck and fluttering kisses across her chest. He looks up in time to see her swallow, to see the bird move gracefully above the tendons on her neck and laughs softly against her skin.
He maps her carefully, intimately, in a way Patterson's database can't. He tastes the hint of salt on her skin, traces every inch of her with his hands and his lips. At times her hips buckle under his touch and when he reaches the tender skin between her thighs her breathing becomes laboured, frantic. He goes no further, refuses to without having discussed it with her first, but he enjoys the feel of her hands in his hair, balling the fabric of his shirt. She is softer than she looks, more conservative than her forced appearance implies; yet she allows him to satisfy his curiosity patiently, lets him revel in discovering all the minute ways that she is more beautiful in movement than captured in a still. She meets his eye as he runs his hands down the length of her legs before he touches his lips to the souls of his feet; returns his kisses when he comes back up to lie next to her, his hand still fluttering across her ribs.
'Do you… do you want more? More from me?' she asks softly, her nerves betraying her. He shakes his head and looks, momentarily, at the bird in flight on her neck.
'I want whatever you're ready for,' he kisses the wings, 'Nothing that you're not ready for, Jane.'
She breathes out, gently, and her breath tickles his ear as he brings his head back up to kiss her. Tomorrow he will go back to being one of many in a room that analyses the marks on her skin, but for tonight he is happy to have broken through the screen to feel the warmth of her on the other side.