At three in the morning, the room was heavily shadowed; the dull yellow light of the bedside lamp casting just enough light across the bed for Jack to study Phryne's face.

It was strange – seeing her so still. She is normally a whirling dervish of energy that sweeps up everyone in her path. But now she was sleeping, one leg tucked between his thighs, her left arm over his waist mirroring the arm he's used to keep her pulled close against his body as they slept.

An unremembered fragment of nightmare had woken him several minutes ago. Normally, he'd now be lying in his lonely bed, staring at the ceiling as the empty house creaked and settled around him; seeing faces long dead and places long ago left behind.

But tonight, it's as if he's been granted a reprieve from the sorrows and hard slog of life. He was finally able - expected, even – to reach down and touch Phryne's soft skin, to rest his head against the firm flesh of her breasts, to mouth at her neck and chase away the German guards' sharp shouts of appel! appel! that echoed around his memories.

Phryne shifted a little in her sleep and the movement caused her thigh to brush higher against his groin. Having thought himself past the hormonal rushes of youth, he was surprised by how rapidly (and often, he amended with a blush) his body has responded in the hours since they fell into bed together. He feels like a young man again – hopeful, keen, full of vim and vigour and ready to take on the evils of the world.

But before he took on the world, there was a rather more immediate task he wished to conquer.

Jack peeled away the thick cotton sheet and quietly moved further down the bed, trusting in instinct to help where technique may fail from long disuse. When he was in place, he laid one hand low on Phryne's stomach and bent his head.

Phryne was the fourth woman he's slept with in his life. A paltry number compared to Phryne's own breadth of experience, but Jack has never had the opportunity or the need to add more lovers to the list. Apart from Alice who lived next door when he was growing up and to whom he enthusiastically lost his virginity (despite his mother's warnings that Alice was a 'bad sort'), there had been a world-weary prostitute when he was a silly young Constable, high on hormones and egged on by his colleagues; and Rosie, who had pushed him away the one time he'd tried to pleasure her with his mouth.

Confident of a different response in this situation, Jack began to apply never-quite-forgotten knowledge to the most intimate part of Phryne's relaxed body. Her taste was sharp, a little bitter, and Jack wanted to keep tasting her to see if the flavour changed as he brought her body to the heights of arousal. It crossed his mind that part of what he was tasting was his own contributions, and it must say something about him that the realisation made him keener.

A gasping, pleased moan informed Jack that Phryne had woken. As he closed his lips around her clit and sucked, she arched on the bed, her thighs trembling minutely. Phryne's moans became more frequent; her tumbled words of praise more nonsensical. In some untamed corner of his brain, Jack gave himself a smug cheer.

Phryne tried to tug him up, ready for him to enter her, but he resisted. He has imagined this in quiet moments alone with his thoughts when he was too worn down by a disturbing case or exhaustion to avert his guilty mind away from explicit daydreams. Now that he was here, in her bed, and she was here, spread naked beneath him, he would not be rushed. No. He wanted to thoroughly explore her with his mouth; commit her to memory and make her moan the way he'd promised.

When his fingers and mouth conspired to bring her to orgasm a few minutes later, Phryne's muscles contorted into a rigour of pleasure. Jack let Phryne pull him up for a long kiss, secretly thrilled at the way she chased her own taste from his mouth.

)(

They lay in the pre-dawn coolness, sheet discarded to the rumpled foot of the bed.

"Thank you." His voice was lazy, deep.

"For what?"

"For letting me…do that..with you."

Her smile was amused but not cruel. "Jack, if you can't say the word cunnilingus after having had your tongue inside me, when can you say it?"

"Yes…cunnilingus…"

"And…you're thanking me? Darling, anytime you wish to put that particular skill to use, I will be thanking you…most profusely."

Jack hooked a hand over Phryne's hip and hauled her close. His hand smoothed over her stomach and down her thighs in a parody of a weapons search as they sank into sleep.

)(

It was the sudden stream of daylight as the curtains were opened rather than Dot's muffled squeak of surprise that woke Jack later that morning. He caught sight of a brief flash of blonde hair and pink fabric before Dot pulled the door shut behind her rapid exit.

Phryne giggled.

"I fear I may have damaged Miss Williams for life," he remarked dryly.

"Never mind. She's turning into quite the modern woman, you know. Give her a moment to get over the shock of seeing such a magnificent specimen of…health…and she'll be absolutely fine."

True enough, Dot reappeared ten minutes later with nothing but a knowing smile to show that the morning was anything different to usual. The tea tray delivered, Dot left the new couple in peace.

Jack drank his tea in contemplative silence. A quick glance at his face told Phryne all she needed to know.

"If you feel you need to sneak out the tradesman's entrance, I won't stop you," she said. "But the people in this house are both the most discrete of employees and my friends. I can assure you that they will seek to cause you no discomfort if you were to decide to join me for breakfast."

Put like that, Jack felt ashamed for intimating that Dot and Mr Butler would be anything but kind. So it was with his customary bemusement that he agreed. "I would be delighted to join you for breakfast, Miss Fisher."

...

News of the second murder reached them just as Mr Butler was clearing the plates from the table.

)(

Author's notes: I've taken my time with this chapter as I've been moving camp over the last week. New chapters should now come at the rate of about one to two a week.

I beg again your forgiveness for errors in tense. I missed half a year of schooling as a girl and I think the uses of tense was one of the things I missed! When I was growing up, my maternal grandparents spoke (and still speak) an English dialect that is very similar to the English of the 15th and 16th Centuries. I am fluent in said dialect, which does NOT help when I'm trying to write with modern English grammar (aal laern ye muckle!).

Thank you to all those who've reviewed: Ermingard (glad you like the writing); myn (thank you for the praise!); PinkFairy23 (for pushing for more chapters); Love to read a book (for your kind words); wildlemur (for such desperate thanks); Firebird9 (you know why!); DeeJay-Dubu (for agreeing about the teasing); BelleLitteraire (for early support); Silverancy (also an early reader); and to all of the guests such as 'peanuts' who have taken the time to review. In the words of my (other) grandfather: you're all ripper, skipper!