"Trust me," he breathes as he captures her lips with his.
She moans slightly, surprised, but otherwise does not protest. He waits a beat before gently blotting her still-bleeding chest with the towel though her distraction, trying to clean up what he can.
Her breath hitches in his mouth as he works, but his one hand calms her down with soft strokes to her shoulder as the other moves inch by inch.
Elizabeth doesn't know what he's doing but decides not to question it, thinking rather that she should appreciate serendipity as it happens and not question the power that this room seems to hold over them, or its ability to make 200 years of history evaporate into thin air.
Or rather thick air, she decides as Alfred's tongue comes out to play with hers.
He tries his hardest to breathe as the atmosphere gets even more intense, threatening to pull him under while he's trying to work. Heroes don't get distracted, damnit! Heroes get their jobs done. And possibly rewards later for doing good work…
Things start getting crazy when her arms move to wrap around his shoulders, and he has to break off the kiss or risk falling off of a steep cliff into no return.
"Okay," he pants, moving his hands to take hers off his shoulders. "Okay."
"Mm?" she answers uninterestedly, following his mouth when he pulls away, barely lucid in the heat. "What? Moving too fast for you?" she grins cheekily, lazily, tossing out the barest cockney accent with her tongue tip peeking out seductively.
Alfred groans and all previous thought and reason vanish. Elizabeth knows her eyes are shamefully eclipsed with raw desire, but she's past caring. His are too, and she can't deny that it turns her on a little bit more than it should.
Her eyes follow his mouth as he grins and leaves her hands resting on his biceps to rub salve over her chest.
"Damn you and your sexy accent!" he whines, frustrated, shaking his head slightly at his own weakness.
She raises an eyebrow, the expression she's giving him instantly telling him that he's completely at her mercy.
"You think my accent's sexy?" she delivers smoothly into the heat, graceful yet relaxed like a cat, and for a second, she has all the power in the world.
He swallows and ducks his head down to focus on her mismatched chest (which he's beginning to think is more and more beautiful by the second) and hides his grin in the semi-dark as he wipes off his hands and reaches for the new roll of bandages.
"Damn, Lizzie, let a man have his secrets," he rumbles playfully, and she can feel the vibrations deep in his chest as his rough velvet voice reaches her ears. She gives the barest of smirks and tries not to focus on what his hands are doing, concentrating on the tight corded muscles and flat plains of his chest instead of the ribbons of pain streaming along her nerves.
His voice has gotten deeper, she realizes, but just a little. The heat has wiped away the pain she usually feels when she remembers the bubbly blonde angel of her memory, leaving in its place a sort of dulled awareness, an ability to catalog detail about him and store it at face value without attaching it to something else. He has to be at least 18 now, she thinks slowly as he kisses her again, her mouth opening easily and their tongues tangling delicately until Alfred pulls away. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she feels the familiar pride stabbing at her, saying something along the lines of, the nerve of him, thinking he can kiss me at any time! affrontedly. But the heat swirls it away, and she's left to contemplate. This isn't the first time they've shared kisses, but never before have they kissed with this much passion, this much heat between them. The only really similar time she could think of was…
"In London," she breathes before he kisses her a third time, "when we declared victory in Europe…" she continues as he pulls away again and resumes bandaging up her chest.
Barely a week ago, he thinks readily as he says, "Yeah, what about it?" and looks down at his work.
She blinks at him softly and raises a hand to caress his face, feeling the soft peach fuzz on his cheek, coaxing him to meet her eyes.
"Why did you kiss me?" she asks once he does, and his eyes widen as he swallows. There is no accusation in her gaze, only a question, and he finds he does not know how to answer.
It's so much easier to lie, he thinks as his hands still. But what would she say to the truth?
"You could say…I just got caught up in the moment, when I did it," he intones cautiously, imagining all the happy couples swarming Trafalgar Square, all the military men sweeping women off their feet. Elizabeth inhales and exhales heavily, Alfred's hands on her chest moving up and down at the motion. She isn't sure how she feels about that. Getting caught up in the moment…would be so typical of him, she thinks as their cheeks brush together. But that moment's all I've thought about for days…
"…but it'd be a lie to say, it wasn't what I wanted," he breathes finally, letting the weight of his true desire tumble heavily down around them. She thinks of how fluid it'd been, how quick, how hot-tempered and passionate it was. How, if they'd been inclined to continue, how easy it would have been to go farther…
"I would have taken you to bed, if you'd have let me," he whispers softly into her ear, his train of thought matching hers, his honesty so open and velveteen in the heat, and she knows the only thing stopping her had been her indecision about her chest, but now that that's gone…
"I would have taken you to bed, if you'd have let me."
Would you have? she wonders into the dark, and the ache in her chest starts throbbing again as she stares hopelessly at her kitchen table and strokes her own shoulder softly.
Because he'd patched her up and kissed her again, so many kisses they'd shared in that room, until the tape had pulled taut against the bandages and they both realized that they had to leave, leave the heat and trust and complacency, go back to cold and hard and broken. And she'd dreaded going back to her country, dreaded dealing with the pain and destruction; but most of all, she sniffs, she'd dreaded having to leave him behind, the warm, perfect, trusting soul in that room, neither a boy nor a man, just a touch, just a whisper. Just a touch, just a whisper against her breast, as if he could fix her up and take away the pain with his words, or his mere presence. Just a wish, just an idea, just a thought…
And that's when she stops thinking.
She startles herself out of her memory, finishes her tea quickly, and puts the dishes in the sink, for something to keep her occupied tomorrow. She has meetings to plan for, rebuilding to oversee, and going over that plan on what to do with Berlin…
She doesn't know if it's a comfort to realize that Alfred—no, America—wasn't preparing for any of that across the pond. And yet she couldn't bring herself to hate him. It was her one secret, she never could. The ties between England and America were stronger than ever now, she supposes, but the only thing she really wants between Elizabeth and Alfred is that oh-so-seductive heat.
The heat, she realizes; was it really heat? Was it really that total compliance for him to have his way with her, or was it that she trusted him in whatever he would have done to her, regardless?
Ah well. Things to be contemplated tomorrow night, and the night after that, and the night after that…
She sighs.
Do I trust him, really?!
She scoffs and heads back to bed.