Disclaimer: I do not own Foyle's War; I just like to spend time playing with some of its characters.
Author's Notes: Generally, apart from the wedding chapter, I've kept my writing to a "T" rating. I've always envisioned Sam and Paul as having a quite satisfying sex life, but I've only hinted at it in my epic, "One Little Dance." Writing numerous sex scenes is not a challenge I really cared to take up. But this particular scenario popped into my head and insisted on being written.
As ever and as always, I owe sincere thanks to my Beta, GiulliettaC for editing my prose, correcting my inadvertent tendency to use American slang, and generally making everything I write more accurate and more authentic.
This story stands alone, but anyone who wants to refresh their memories and give this story a greater sense of context would do well to re-read Chapter 12 of "One Little Dance."
May, 1943
According to the calendar, it was the first Sunday in May. The weather outside, however, was much more reminiscent of November, with a raw, pervasive, clammy chilliness. A fog had rolled in off the sea. Despite the fact that it was only half-past two in the afternoon, Sam and Paul had taken the precaution of closing the blackout curtains before settling themselves in the sitting room.
With the table lamps lit, a small fire burning in the grate, and a couple of blankets, the sitting room was warm and cosy, despite the inclement weather outside. They sat together on the sofa, Paul looking over the paper while Sam read a book, her head nestled against his shoulder. The scene was the very embodiment of peace and tranquility, the only sounds being the crackle of the fire and the occasional rustle of a turning page.
After a while, Sam's interest in her book faded and she let her mind wander. Watching the flames dance, she thought back to what Sunday afternoons had been like, not six months ago, before Paul had been free of his first marriage. They had used to sit in this very room, but the experience had been torturous for both of them, each longing for a far greater intimacy than they had dared to show each other. There had been a constant undercurrent of tension between them, whether or not they were actually touching. And always, at the back of everything, had been the necessity of holding their desires in check and contenting themselves with nothing racier than a few kisses and some light caresses.
Sam smiled gleefully and pressed her cheek more firmly against Paul's shoulder. What a difference being married made! What an absolutely delicious experience the complete intimacy of marriage had proved to be…
"Penny for your thoughts," Paul murmured in Sam's ear, jolting her back to the present. She turned her head and kissed him soundly.
"I was just thinking of how our Sundays used to be," she said with a pensive smile. "Sitting here together and longing to be close to you, but always having to be so careful not to get carried away. When all I wanted to do was lose myself in you."
Paul leaned in and kissed Sam with slow, gentle deliberation, their lips parting and their tongues dancing briefly. "This is much nicer," he agreed with a smile of his own. They held each other's gaze for several moments, and Paul saw the expression in Sam's eyes go from dreamy to impish.
"Did you ever…imagine what it would have been like – if we had decided to throw caution to the winds?" she asked coyly.
Paul looked away for a moment, his own memories of that difficult time making him feel briefly ill at ease, despite the complete transformation in their circumstances. He was a man who had always taken his responsibilities seriously, and in that case the stakes had been so high for both of them. His desires had been perpetually tempered by an underlying terror of what might happen to Sam if he had gotten her in the family way before he was free to marry anyone. He had had nightmares about it.
But there had been other dreams as well, dark and sensual, in which he had tasted Sam's skin, run his fingers through her hair and breathed in her scent. Those dreams had been tantalizingly real, and waking to find himself alone had been crushing. Paul had tried not to dwell on them afterwards, although this had been considerably easier said than done.
"Sometimes," he replied at last, somewhat guardedly. The next moment he gave himself a mental shake and smiled in relief. Those awful days were long gone now. Sam was his lawful wife, a blessing he occasionally found hard to quite fathom, even after a month of marriage.
Sam shifted her position on the sofa so that she faced Paul more head on. "Suppose," she murmured breathily, twining one arm around Paul's neck and tracing the edge of his ear with the index finger of her other hand, "Suppose I had said to you one of those Sunday afternoons: Paul, Darling… I'm so absolutely sick of being good and proper all the time. I'm just aching for you to make me yours. Please, Paul… Kiss me, and don't stop."
There was something ridiculously staid – in theory at any rate – in the idea of seducing one's own husband, but Sam had never felt so delightfully wicked in her life, finally putting words to her naughtiest fantasies, and triumphing at the sight of Paul's ears turning bright red.
"What do you think would have happened then?" she concluded, running her tongue along the rim of Paul's ear.
In answer, Sam found herself suddenly engulfed in her husband's arms, the recipient of a kiss whose intensity, passion, and possessiveness outstripped any that had passed between them thus far. Paul seemed to be channelling all of the remembered frustrations and longings of their self-imposed period of abstinence into a fervent, blazing demonstration of his love for her. After a moment of half-stupefied surprise that her spur-of-the-moment gambit had yielded such marvellous results, Sam responded in kind with her own ardent caresses, arching her body against Paul's. A few moments later, she felt herself tipping backwards, Paul's weight pressing her into the sofa cushions.
"I don't think we would have made it upstairs," Paul commented when he finally broke the kiss, his voice roughened with the passion of the moment. He gazed intently down at Sam; her face was flushed, her eyes bright, and her hair coming loose from its pins. She was a goddess. She was his wife. She was his for the taking. He grinned exultantly. Sam had wanted to play a game of 'what if' with the past, hadn't she? He decided to raise the stakes.
With practised ease, Paul plucked the pins from Sam's hair, discarding them on a nearby end table. His fingers threaded through her hair, cradling her head, and once again he kissed Sam with an abandon he had never dared to show during those previous Sunday afternoons.
Sam felt one of Paul's hands leave her hair, trail down her face and shoulder, then begin to unfasten her blouse. His fingers moved deftly down the row of mother of pearl buttons; they felt wonderfully warm against her skin, though Sam shivered at his touch. Her hand snaked underneath Paul's sleeveless pullover and began fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, though without the same dexterity that Paul had just demonstrated. The results were the same though; within a few, breathless minutes they were both thoroughly dishevelled.
"We should continue this upstairs, shouldn't we?" Sam panted, finally managing to peel off her husband's sleeveless pullover and running her fingers through Paul's hair as he shifted his attention from her lips to her collarbone.
"Why?" was his terse, rather distracted reply.
"Well…," Sam squirmed with pleasure as Paul's lips traveled lovingly along the edge of her brassiere, "this sofa isn't really big enough to be comfortable for that, is it?"
"Of course not…," Paul agreed, concentrating on tugging at one of Sam's sleeves, allowing his lips access to her shoulder, "But I think the carpet should do nicely."
Sam was sure she had misunderstood. "You can't be serious," she protested weakly, pushing back against Paul until they had both regained upright sitting positions, "Here in the sitting room?" Insofar as she had thought matters through when she began her impromptu seduction (which was, in all honesty, not terribly far), she had envisioned herself and Paul racing each other up to the comfort of their own bed rather than surrendering to their passion in situ.
"We've got blankets and sofa cushions; we wouldn't be on the bare floor." Suiting his actions to his words, Paul stood up, grabbed one of the blankets currently draped over the back of the sofa, and spread it before the hearth with a flourish. Then he plucked a couple of pillows off of the sofa and tossed them down onto the blanket, surveying his handiwork with a grin of satisfaction.
"But someone will see us," Sam objected, feeling herself blushing hotly, somewhat shocked by this cavalier dismissal of convention from her usually shy and reserved husband.
"We've got the blackouts drawn," Paul pointed out, as he reached over and turned off the table lamps, leaving the room to the light and shadows of their hearth fire. Carefully, he knelt down in front of Sam, leaned forward, and began kissing the hollow at the base of her throat.
"Suppose someone were to walk in?"
"Were you expecting company and forgot to tell me?" Paul queried mischievously, pulling back and displaying eyebrows raised in amusement.
"Well, no, but…." Sam stammered. Frankly, it was becoming somewhat difficult to think with perfect clarity. All she wanted to do was launch herself into her husband's arms. And after all, why not? She and Paul were married now. They could do anything. Even something… enticingly unorthodox…
"Come on, Sam," Paul tugged coaxingly at his wife's elbow. He could see from the expression on her face when Sam decided to truly abandon herself to the moment; she leaned forward with deliberation and pushed Paul's braces off of his shoulders, then slid down from the sofa and into his waiting arms.
Making quick work of discarding their already unbuttoned shirt and blouse, they stretched out on the blanket and Sam slipped her hands under Paul's vest, first running them up his stomach and chest, then around and down his back. His body was so warm and firm… One of Paul's hands skated down Sam's skirt, then followed her stockings upward until he encountered suspenders and warm flesh. Sam squealed happily at his touch and hooked her own hands in the waistband of his trousers.
They shed the rest of their clothes in equal parts of start-stop mayhem, the frenzied passion in trying to remove the other's clothing and getting in each other's way, followed by a business-like efficiency in simply doffing their own. When Paul unstrapped his leg and tossed it on the growing pile of their discarded clothes, Sam realized with a slight jolt that they had passed a point of no return; any decision now to leave the sitting room would mean for Paul the tedious job of strapping his prosthesis back on first.
Once all their clothes had finally been cast aside, there came the bliss of skin on skin and Sam stopped thinking about anything else. Paul's hands immediately sought her breasts, rubbing his thumb back and forth across her nipple, eliciting a half-strangled squeal. Sam's own hands slipped lower, along the curve of Paul's backside and across the powerful muscles of his thighs. She could feel his hardness pressing against her hip and gave it an experimental stroke. Paul, now in the midst of kissing Sam's shoulder, growled low at the back of his throat. They half rolled in one direction, then the other, until Paul came to rest on top of Sam, running his hands along her ribcage and kissing her deeply, tongues seeking each other. Sam instinctively raised her knees to capture his hips…and realised with sinking disappointment that their would-be sitting room tryst simply wasn't going to work.
Paul was rail thin, as Sam had discovered on their wedding night, but nevertheless, he easily outweighed Sam by at least three stone. With the padding of a mattress and bedding at her back (or, as she had had a mere ten minutes ago, the cushions of the sofa), Sam had always enjoyed lying beneath her husband's weight and feeling the solidity of his body on hers. Now, only an ordinary, thin carpet, and an equally ordinary, thin blanket separated her from the unyielding planks of wood that made up their floor. She could feel each knob of her spine trying to take their combined weight and complaining vociferously, while her ribcage attempted – and failed – to expand enough to draw adequate breath.
"Paul," Sam gasped, breaking their kiss and pushing at his shoulders, "Stop, wait… I can't breathe." Her words immediately sent Paul up onto his elbows to support his weight. Tears pricking the back of her eyes, Sam breathed in great gulps of air, sure that she had spoiled what had promised to be such a lovely new interlude in their marital adventures. "I'm just not comfortable this way," she pleaded miserably.
Paul considered their quandary for a moment. "Let's switch places, then," he suggested, tenderly brushing a stray lock of hair away from Sam's face. There was the briefest of pauses, then Sam's face lit up as she grasped his meaning.
"Brilliant!" she exclaimed with enthusiastic relief, pulling her husband's face briefly down to hers and bestowing a grateful kiss. She had had several opportunities, over the past few weeks, to be the one "on top," but there was still a pleasing novelty about it in Sam's eyes – particularly in this set of circumstances. Without further ado, Paul shifted his weight and rolled onto his side and then onto his back, with Sam following close behind him.
"Am I too heavy for you?" she enquired solicitously, once she lay stretched out comfortably on top of her husband's body.
"Hardly," Paul said with a snort of amusement, wrapping his arms around Sam's sparse form and giving her a tight squeeze. She batted Paul's shoulder playfully.
"We moved so that I could breathe properly. Don't you go and spoil that now." Paul raised his head and pecked the tip of Sam's nose. For a long moment they simply beamed at each other, oblivious to either their surroundings or to their complete absence of clothing. Then Paul reached up with one hand and threaded his fingers through the loose, golden waves of Sam's hair.
"You are so unbelievably beautiful," he murmured, "I never imagined anything half as marvellous as all of this." Sam turned her head and pressed her lips into the palm of her husband's hand. Their golden, giddy mood quickly gave way to the sensuous passion of a few minutes before. Sam kissed her way from Paul's jaw, to his throat, and down his chest, which seemed to rise and fall in time with his quickening pulse. She felt once more…that intimate part of him, turgid against her stomach, and smiled.
Moving confidently, Sam raised herself a little, captured Paul's manhood, and guided him inside her body. He slid in easily; Sam still marvelled over how well they fit together. It seemed so contrary to the laws of common sense that her body had room to admit anything that size, yet it felt so completely natural. Sam leaned forwards on outstretched arms and began gently rocking herself back and forth, searching for the right rhythm.
Paul ran his hands up Sam's arms, in awe of the beautiful picture she made. He thought that Sam looked more like a goddess than ever: Venus bathed in firelight. Raising himself slightly on his elbows, he captured one soft, pendulous breast with his lips, running his tongue across her nipple. He felt it respond to his touch, and heard Sam's voice echo her body's pleasure.
"Oh, Paul," Sam moaned, arching her body into his caress and her breath hitching, "That feels so…wonderful. You're so…wonderful."
As their bodies moved together, Sam felt that lovely, heady bubble of tension begin building inside her. It grew in time with the rhythm and roll of her hips. She felt Paul's hands traveling over her body, her waist, her thighs, her back. Sam leaned forward, her nipples brushing Paul's chest, and their lips met, desperately hungry to taste each other.
It was then that Paul bucked his hips, lifting Sam clear off the floor. She barely had time to register amazement at this physical feat when he did it a second, then a third time, giving her a sensation akin to riding a horse. She grabbed his shoulders to steady herself and squeezed the muscles in her thighs…and felt her climax ripple through her in a paroxysm of pleasure that seemed to momentarily push all of the air out of her lungs. At the same time, Sam registered the gentle pulsations of Paul's seed spilling into her body as his own passion toppled him into completion. Sam let her body go limp and rested her head on Paul's still-heaving chest. Slowly, the rest of the world – which had briefly contracted to include just herself and Paul – came back into focus.
"I can't believe we just did that," Sam gasped incredulously, still catching her breath. Her eyes flitted briefly around the room; from her current position, the room gave the impression of a shadowed forest of chair legs. "In the sitting room. It's like something out of a French novel."
"I didn't know you could read French," Paul frowned in puzzlement.
"I can't, not more than a word or two anyway," replied Sam, folding her hands over Paul's chest and settling her chin on top. "But one of the girls at school had a father who was a French tutor somewhere or other. She could read it beautifully and used to pinch books from his library and read us all the naughty bits. They weren't particularly enlightening in the technical sense, but they were quite eye-opening nonetheless."
"And…have we sufficiently laid to rest the ghosts of those old Sundays?" Paul enquired.
Sam gazed down at her husband, caught somewhere between embarrassment and exultation. "Is that what we've been doing?"
"Well, what would you call it, Darling?" Paul replied with a teasing grin.
Sam buried her head in the crook of his neck, blushing and giggling as she fought to regain her self-control. "I know that I will certainly never think of Sunday afternoons the same way again!" she beamed.
Paul's thumb traced a slow, sensuous trail down Sam's spine. "I think we may have found ourselves a new Sunday tradition."
"Hear, hear!" Sam sealed their new agreement with a kiss. "But, Paul," she added in all seriousness, "Next time let's manage to get upstairs first!"