Author's note: Thank you so much for the reviews and reading the story. I hope you like the tension in it, I tried really hard to focus on this. Please review if you can but if not simply enjoy it. I do enjoy criticism (glutton for punishment) so if there's anything that doesn't work let me know.

She ran her fingers over her hips, smoothed out the silk which sat there, tight over the corset in which she'd bound herself.

"You look pretty," her sister said and flittered in to raid her jewellery box. Morticia had stopped fighting these tiny violations a long time ago, because they were exhausting.

"Thank you."

"I wonder if Mr. Addams will think the same about me," Ophelia said casually.

"Would you want him to?"

She did not look her sister in the eye.

"Ohhh," Ophelia nudged her out of the way to choose between the ruby pendant and the silver pearls, "Ohhh who knows? We have to make it congenial. That much we did agree to."

"Really?"

She heard her voice quaver a fraction but it was hidden in the gentle question.

"Oh Morticia," Ophelia let the pearls rattle carelessly onto the dresser and flopped down on to the bed, "We had a talk. For the first time he seemed…decent."

Morticia felt her lip tremble against petulant emotions. She clasped her hands together and turned and faced her sister. It was starting to turn now, she could tell. Ophelia's loathing was turning to determination to prove him weak against her charms.

"That was what you wanted, was it not?"

Ophelia nodded, "Oh I don't know...well yes. I suppose a less acrimonious environment might be better for us both. I'm going to have to make it work somehow."

"You're coming around."

Ophelia smiled stiffly and Morticia realised her miscalculation as quickly as the words were out of her mouth. They had been accusing, if only slightly, but her sister knew her enough to sense the intonation.

"I meant, simply, that you seem happier with the arrangement," Morticia smiled in an attempt to cover her misstep, "And that is a good thing."

"Of course it is," Ophelia stood lightly on her tip toes and twirled to the door, "Who wants a miserable marriage?"

"Not me," she whispered as she watched her sister disappear through the door.

She went to the dresser and sat down in front of the cloudy, spotted mirror. Her own hand flittered across her sharp cheekbones, her full and red lips, and the prominent dip between the spikes of her collarbones. Her hands became his, soft and questing across her neck and face and lips and hair.

Then as quickly as the fantasy came it went in a blur of embarrassment. She pulled her hands away as if they burned and settled them tightly in her lap. She sat there until she heard them pouring in to the hall and she had to still her hands from shaking.

-0-

Gomez was already pouring his third cocktail by the time he was able to look at her. He knew, instantly, the moment she'd come into the room but that had been two drinks ago and over an hour before. He daren't look at her. It had been Williamson's groan of approval that had alerted him to her presence as he took his second sip on his first martini.

"Christ," Williamson had muttered under his breath and Gomez had pretended not to know what he meant as he sucked on an olive, breathless and blinded by the way she entered the room.

" What?"

"Is that her sister?"

"Don't be so loud," he'd turned deliberately to the window and away from the body of the room, "It's her sister, yes."

"Oh, I'd let her-"

"Don't," he'd interrupted, though she was well outwith earshot, "She's just there."

Williamson had laughed, "That's never worried you before."

"Nonetheless," he had downed the drink, feeling it burn his throat and cleanse all the filthy pledges from his vocal chords, "She's going to be my sister-in-law."

"That doesn't mean she is out of bounds, old man," his friend patted his shoulder consolingly, "Well, not for me anyway."

He'd had no answer for that and actually he had, for the first time, been grateful for Ophelia's interruption to proudly kiss him and make a show of her new acquisition. He was sure it was some sort of malfunction of social norms that he was the trophy tonight, but he was and he had to put up with it.

"My darling," she cooed in the present, bringing him from his recollection, "The dinner gong."

In his haziness he'd forgotten to check the seating arrangements and it was too late, and all the guests were seated, when he realised he was sitting directly across from Morticia at this, his engagement dinner.

Oh her name. Her name alone, coursing through his conscience when he read it on the setting just across from him, scarring his cerebrum and changing neural pathways and spiking the chemicals that stirred his lungs to a breathless desperation.

During the first course she barely looked at him, her eyes trained on the plate before her and her food staying exactly where it was on the china. Her untouched plate was taken away, replaced by the main course, as the chatter seethed and undulated around her and he was pulled in and out with place settings and honeymoons and wedding gowns but all the time she was there, head dipped, eyes trained low, not a word or a smile for him.

And he was filled with black misery at her very lack of attention.

He couldn't get the courage to speak to her, and he slid his dessert away as his previous courses surged in an undigested spew into his throat and he ran, brogues thumping, to the nearest rest room.

At least he had a reason to excuse himself.

"Get yourself together, old man," he grumbled in to the mirror, "For God's sake she's just a girl."

But no, his conscience answered, she's not just a girl.

She's a woman, a woman who makes your heart sing and your loins ache with desperation.

And that, that my friend, is love.

And he found his head in the toilet bowl again, the desire he suppressed manifesting as a burning bile.

"Are you alright Gomez?"

Ophelia's voice was distant on the other side of the heavy door. He cupped his hand and splashed water into his mouth, then loosened his bow-tie.

"Get. Yourself. Together."

"What?" She asked from the other side, "What?"

"Oh, Nothing," he pulled the door open and then smoothed his tails out, "Oh just something I ate."

She smiled, "Want me to make you feel better?"

"Sorry?"

He was startled by her sudden turn in coyness.

"Listen, if we're going to have to be married…" she shook her head as if his confusion was stupidity, "It might as well be fun sweetie."

Her hands wandered down to his belt line and he leaned back as they slid sharply into the gap between his abdomen and the rich wool.

"You really aren't shy."

She grinned like a cat, "Well I can hardly be shy with a husband who has a reputation as…illustrious as yours."

"Illustrious?"

"I mean promiscuous."

He groaned under her hand, wise and coaxing, but then he thought of Morticia again and all the desire for physical relief fled him as if he were already inconstant to her. Panic set in that he'd never be the same again, that he'd never be carefree or happy if he did not possess the creature who haunted him.

"Don't believe everything you hear," he pulled back and her hand slid from his waistband, "Sorry, but I have to have a little more respect for you than this."

She laughed and examined her palm, "No you don't. You just can't…" she grinned in delight, "Rise to the occasion."

He gritted his teeth against embarrassment, "The girl holding it has to know what she's doing."

"Oh you aren't going to rattle me," she said lightly, perching on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, "One day I'll be the mother of your children. You'll have to want me at some point, to keep the family happy."

"And God knows before I do it I'll need to be very drunk," he smiled grimly, "I think we best go back to the parlour."

When they got back he sought solace in Williamson's company, while Ophelia was happy to stand apart with her mother. The exchange had left him rattled with the very truth of it; one day, he'd have to take her to his bed. His indiscretions would need to be fewer and discreet and all the while he'd be desperately, darkly, irredeemably in love with her sister. The one woman he just knew, without question or thought, who he would never stray from.

"Not feeling well my friend?"

"Something like that," he murmured, pouring himself a sizeable brandy and pulling a cigar from his pocket with a shaking hand.

"Gomez, I am actually starting to worry," Williamson muttered, "I really am. Something is strange about you these days. You aren't you."

"My friend," he felt the booze nursing the worst of his panic, "I am fine."

"Are you sure?" Williamson motioned with his hand towards the window seat, where Morticia sat, a drink cradled in her fingers, "You seemed to be…preoccupied at dinner."

Gomez swallowed, "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"I don't blame you," his friend continued, "You've ended up with the least aesthetically pleasing of the sisters."

"Oh that's hardly fair," he protested, agreeing full well.

"Look at those legs," Williamson drew his attention to the window seat again, where a pale and shapely leg which ended in a sharp high-heel was exposed through a slit in the inky satin of her dress, "Imagine them wrapped around your neck."

"Don't be crude," he said half-heartedly, while he fully invested in the fantasy.

"God," Williamson took a draw on his own cigar, "Being engaged has made you far too serious and honourable."

"Miserable," he countered, draining the glass as he watched Ophelia approach Morticia.

Then suddenly they were coming towards them both. Williamson sucked in a breath - and the flabby little gut too much champagne and not enough exercise had given him – and gave his most winning grin. On the other hand, Gomez felt a scowl of determination come on to his face of its own volition and settle in a grim line across his mouth.

"I'm trying to get Tish to socialise more," Ophelia chirped as she came to a stall in front of them, "But she hates it, don't you Tish?"

He looked at her again, trying hard not to grin at the very beauty of her and the way the nickname seemed deliciously inappropriate. He imagined his own voice caressing the syllable, crying it, weeping it. Her eyes were wide with something unreadable, something akin to disgust almost. He felt suddenly chastened.

"I do, yes," she answered quietly, "I do not enjoy it."

"Forgive me," he suddenly barked as Williamson gave a cough, "My friend, William Williamson the Third. Williamson - my intended Ophelia, and her sister…your name again, miss?"

The feigned forgetfulness did not have the impact he had hoped. He wanted her to feel affronted but instead her eyes narrowed with distaste at his poor manners and he realised he'd simply seemed stupid in his ignorance rather than aloof.

"Sorry, Morticia of course," he corrected quickly, ignoring the questioning gaze his friend leveled at him.

"Your forgetfulness was almost bad manners Mr. Addams," she said softly, her eyes all the time on Williamson, "But, since we are to be family, I imagine I'll have to get used to that."

"Forgive Tish," Ophelia laughed lightly, "She thinks it's simply quite acceptable to speak her mind at all times."

"You're an acquaintance of Mr. Addams, Mr. Williamson?"

Morticia asked, not missing a beat.

"Indeed," his friend smiled, bowing low over her offered hand.

Williamson's lips lingered longer than they should and Gomez felt a surge of envy as his friend tasted bitter almonds and the soft, pale skin on the back of her hand. When he withdrew, he heard the shallow breathing which indicated a spike in the hear-rate of his companion. It was how he felt all the time these days, simply when he thought of her.

"And the pleasure," Williamson smiled, "Is all mine."

"Oh is it now?" Ophelia laughed, "This is why my little sister doesn't leave the house. Everywhere she goes, she leaves a trail of dead men behind her."

The gracious smile on those ruby lips was enough to putrefy his insides and her eyes flittered to his own. They locked him in then, sucked him in as if a vortex, and they were black and deep and dark. Then she turned around and went, floating away without even a word of goodbye. Williamson followed for a moment, then shook his head as if regaining his senses and skulked off to the drinks table, where Gomez watched him pour the biggest brandy of his life.

"And she accused you of being rude," Ophelia tucked her arm into his and sipped her drink.

Her pale pink lips curled licentiously around the rim but there was something dangerous about them too, as if they would consume him whole.

He tore his eyes away in terror, "She doesn't like me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Ophelia answered, "Morticia is simply…a certain type of confident. She's like a black widow…she'll throw silk at you for hours but she'll bite if she's cornered. Then she's deadly. Until then, you needn't worry about her."

He wanted to ask if she mated with men and then ate them too but the stirring below his belt line at the very thought was enough to make him faint with prurience.

"You look all flushed my love," she whispered, holding a hand against his brow, "Don't worry; my little sister will soon come round to you. She just takes a while."

He swooned and had to stumble to the window seat to catch a breath.

So what did you think? Slow burner in the extreme? Please leave a review if you can.