Present Day

John could not get enough of the feel of Anna's lips on his again. Softer than his memories and more focused than their last lazy foray. Her hands on him gripped as if she refused to ever let him go and he had no intention of refusing that kind of desire.

He only planned to return it.

There were numerous ways he dreamed of being with Anna again. Long nights in his prison cell remembering her down to the minutest detail. Even longer nights tearing his soul apart with questions about how she could have left and forgotten him. But never, in all those imaginings, did he see her with him now. Never had he dreamed it possible that after all this time she would still be as much his as he was hers.

It shamed him to say that he doubted her promise of forever. Doubted she could remain true to him. Reveled in her weakness as a weapon against the pain in his heart that she might have moved on from him, or gone off him… or fallen in love with someone else. He had taken pleasure in the sick pain it brought him as a way to say "this is what you get for falling for it again".

But it was not true. It had never been true. It would never be true.

If they had shared these last fifteen years together he would have taken this moment of passion to sweep her off her feet and take her upstairs. He would lavish her in affection and attention until she sighed or cried out his name. they would utilized every inch of his too large bed to their advantage while chasing their mutual highs together.

Then again, if they had been together these last fifteen years they would not be here now. She would not be devolving into sudden gasps and whimpers at the feel of his fingers finally on her skin. He would not be struggling to control himself like a teenager hiding a raging hard on. They would not exchange a look before John hauled Anna onto the desk.

The motion broke their kiss and John tried to breath normally as Anna situated herself. Her dress hiked up slightly and she shifted to tuck it all back while the fabric bunched at her waist. John froze, stunned to once again be faced with the beauty of her legs. His hands shook as he smoothed them up her legs. She shivered and John paused at the tremor echoing in his own body.

"Don't make me wait John. Please." She put a hand forward, stopping herself from touching him.

John leaned toward her hand, closing his eyes to focus on the feel of her caress over his cheek. His own hands found the line of her knickers but stopped. He opened his eyes, met hers, and took enough strength from her determination to slide the offending article down her legs.

The first brush of his fingers over her had both of them moaning. Anna used her hand at his cheek to adjust, gripping his neck in a secure hold, and brought his lips to hers. Her unrelenting attack on his mouth, sucking determinedly at his tongue, had John furiously working his fingers over her weeping folds.

Perhaps it had been the frankness of their conversation. Or that they had both been too long starved of sex. Or that they were riding a high of emotions that led them to live on the edge already. Whatever the reason John could not care less when his fingers slipped inside her.

The sounds he only remembered as vague memories filled his ears. Her muffled cries echoed over the room to drive his attentions. Her unoccupied hand found his wrist and guided him to match the rise and thrust of her hips, leading her to take her pleasure from his hand like he only lived to serve her.

There was a time John might have denied that. This moment only reminded him of the lie he told himself when he said that. This moment reminded him that he would walk into hell for this woman.

Anna dug her nails into the back of John's neck and he changed his tactic. Breaking from her lips he licked at her neck, running a trail to suck at her pulse as if to take blood from her body as he brought pleasure to it. Her speed changed, her hips shifted, and John sunk his three fingers deeper inside her.

Curling them, while taking his thumb to attend the bundle of nerves that held the key to her release, John bit down. Not hard enough to mark her forever or break skin but enough to send her over the edge. Anna's neck went back, her sob sounding oddly like his name.

They rested only long enough for Anna to gain the strength to pull him between her legs. Their lips crashed together, attacking and stealing what they wanted while her hands fumbled over his to find his belt. Once released John counted the mere seconds as eternities before her fingers stroked his aching erection.

A moment of pause, as both realized the significance of this decision, led Anna to jerk him forward. John grinned at her, teasing over her wet and ready entrance. "Eager for something?"

"I'm having my way with you." Anna nocked her leg over his hip, pulling him toward her enough to breach her folds. "I intend to have all of you."

"Then, by all means." John slipped back before ramming himself forward.

Anna's head went back, her lungs expelling whatever air she stockpiled, before she ground her hips forward to meet his thrusts. The desk groaned, possibly gouging into the wood at the force of John's drives but he had no time to mind. His blood ran hot enough to burn the clothes from his body while his energy sapped away in how he brazenly rutted into her.

But Anna did not seem to mind. She met his drives with clinging inner muscles and the straining of her own arms to grip the lapels of his tailcoat. Her keening cries spurred John on until the alteration in the pitch of her voice signaled the edge of her pleasure.

John lifted at her ass, changing the angle of his thrusts, and heard Anna scream his name. Unlike before he heard this clearly and used it to fuel his end. After two more drives he released, stuttering the last lagging efforts before dropping his hands to the desk on either side of her.

His whole body quaked with the effort of holding himself above her. When he looked at her arm he saw how the muscles rippled, echoing the heaving of her chest to refill her emptied lungs. They took a moment in the silence together before John pulled back.

Their eyes met and John wondered what she saw in his. In hers he saw a woman physically satisfied but emotionally unsure. Someone unashamed that she just used the desk of a man she barely knew for sex but worried over her feelings now. Even with her dress still around her waist and her knickers on the floor it was her emotions that frightened her, not her appearance.

John bent, retrieving her knickers, and held them out toward her. She raised an eyebrow before sliding off the desk, her dress wisping to the floor to cover her as if nothing untoward just took place. "Will these serve as my walking papers?"

"What?"

"Handing me my knickers like I'm a prostitute you paid to let off steam?"

"No," John shook his head, "I just thought, if you wanted to wear them, you'd… Never mind."

"John," She grabbed his arm, "I'm sorry. I've just spent so many years being treated… It's not that I think you… I-"

John opened his mouth to speak but found it took him a moment to locate the words. "He treats you like a whore?"

"Better than most of them, if he treats me at all." Anna took her knickers from John. "That's the first time I've had sex in at least three years."

"Fifteen for me."

"What?"

"I never-" John cleared his throat, pulling his pants and trousers back into place. "I never looked for anyone else because I'd always hold them up to you for comparison and that wasn't fair to them or you so I didn't."

Anna nodded, hanging her head. "I can't imagine what you must think of me now. A married woman shagging a man on his desk."

John stepped forward, putting a hand on her cheek, "If I did I'd be a poor aim since I lived in my own glass house."

"What?"

"If you recall, when we first had sex I was still married."

"You were getting a divorce."

"Getting a divorce is not divorced, Anna." John took a breath, "I could never think less of you than I think of myself for allowing any negative thoughts about you to permeate my brain."

"I think we've both spent more than our fair share of time worrying over things that haunted us in the night." Anna rubbed a hand over her arm. "I'm willing to move forward if you are."

"Together, you mean?"

"I wouldn't have a reason to move forward alone." Anna stopped, "Unless you-"

"No," John shook his head, "I don't want to go it alone anymore."

"So you'd just abandon all your plans and-"

"I didn't say that."

Anna frowned, "Then what?"

"I've got to get things set right for Matthew's murder. He deserves justice for what happened to him and I mean to make that happen."

"And the fact that it's justice for you as well is happy coincidence?"

"Just as I don't believe in throwing stones at glass houses I believe those stones can kill two birds if thrown correctly." John paused, "I do have to ask you something."

"What?"

"Does Jack know?"

Anna shook her head, "I planned on telling him when he came into his trust and graduated but that's because it was the moment I planned to serve Alex with divorce papers."

"What?"

"He's been cheating on me for years and I've got proof." Anna smiled to herself, "My dear friend Mary helped me with that."

"She's good."

"How'd you know?"

"I used her to track you and Alex down. To get information on you two so I could use it against you… somehow."

Anna nodded, "And you've been this thorough about all those who wronged you?" John nodded his response and Anna took a deep breath, "I'm a little afraid of what she must know about me now. What you know about me now."

John bit back a grin, "I know you still make the best noises when you come."

Anna reddened, "That's not funny."

"No, it was very stimulating."

She swatted at him with her hand, "Say anything else and there won't be an encore for you."

"You planned an encore?"

"I saw this part of the evening going one of two ways." Anna held up her fingers, "First, we argue it out when I find out I was wrong about who you are and then I go home humiliated. Second, we hash it out and then I demand you take me to bed."

"Only those two options?"

"I didn't want to entertain others." Anna sidled closer to him, "So, Mr. Bates, are you interested in an encore or not?"

"Very much so." John took her lips with his again, breaking only to suck air to his starving lungs, "I'm very interested."

Fifteen Years Ago

Anna breathed out, trying to organize her thoughts as she opened the door to their flat. She paused, frowning when she did not hear John shuffling around inside, and closed the door behind her before waiting a moment to listen for him. Shrugging it off, she removed her bag and set to work.

Given the cramped space it took almost no time at all to straighten everything. The cleanliness of the flat would catch his eyes first and Anna closed her eyes, trying to envision what he would see first to track his movements. She walked to the kitchen, pulled out the bottle of his favorite wine and a glass for the table. Then she found his favorite song, setting it up on her iPod before queuing the player to be ready when she hit the button. Finally she pulled the test from where she stashed it with her tampons in the bathroom.

It moved from the table, to the top of the bureau, to the countertop, and then back to the table before Anna took her seat across from where she wanted him. Her fingers drummed the surface, keeping beat with the drip of a tap somewhere in their place. In the silence her mind had time to wander… and that was not healthy.

They had not discussed children. They had not even discussed his stalled divorce proceedings. They had no plan for this. Anna wondered if she should be excited or frightened about this.

But she realized, this was John. He loved the very bones of her like she loved him. If they were having a baby he would be nothing short of ecstatic. The consequences could be damned for all they cared. They would be happy despite all that.

A knock at the door had Anna jumping to her feet, excited. But it wasn't John at the door. It was Alex and he looked a mess.

"Alex?" She peeked into the hall, "What's wrong? Where's John?"

"He's… Anna, I'm so sorry."

"Sorry about what? What's going on?"

"He's been arrested Anna. They're saying he killed someone."

In that moment her world stopped. Where Anna had been consumed with worries over how they would take care of their son, she now had to worry about how she would do it. How she could carry on.

She could not do it.

Present Day

John opened the door to his room and stepped back, holding his hands awkwardly. "This is it."

"It's lovely John." Anna entered, leaving her shoes near the door and making sure John watched as she dropped her knickers on top of them. "So I don't lose them in this veritable country you call a bedroom."

"If I remember the penthouse Alex had then this room is nothing."

"The penthouse is gone. We're in one of the smaller apartments now." John wanted to kick himself but Anna only shrugged. "I always knew how to live simply. It's Alex that's had a time of it in the adjustment process."

"How bad is it?"

"Bad enough that he'll have to start thinking about selling shares." Anna sat on the edge of the bed, crossing her legs to leave John swallowing just to stop the dryness of his mouth. "But, if what Jack told me is true, you already own the majority share of Green Incorporated."

"I do." John focused his mind on the business, leaving his shoes and socks by a chair before removing his tie like it was the end of any normal day. "I thought, what better way to ruin someone who only values money than to take it all from them."

"Leave him groveling at your feet?" Anna moved onto the bed, testing a pillow before laying back. "This is heavenly."

"Henry picked them out, Insisted that if I was going to had ludicrous amounts of money I needed to spend some of it on worthless things like a good mattress and some nice pillows."

"Then he's wrong in one account." Anna adjusted, sighing back into a pillow, "Because a good mattress and nice pillows are necessities, not frivolous."

"Henry doesn't spend enough time in his own bed to know." John joked, leaving his collar and coat on the chair with his tie before padding over to Anna on the bed. "But the fact that you like the bed is all I need to hear."

"Did you buy this bed with me in mind?"

"No," John shook his head, positioning himself such that lowering his body would cover hers. "But I'm glad you'll share it with me."

"At least for tonight?"

"At least for tonight." John agreed, stopping just before his lips met hers again. "Would you want to share it with me Anna?"

"Yes." She pulled his head to her and sucked on his lips.

When she went to go deeper John pulled back, "We've already done hard and fast. You deserve more than that."

"I seem to remember you taking this tone with me the first time we had sex too." Anna leaned up, ghosting her lips over his cheek to whisper in his ear. "I enjoyed that time too."

John turned his head to her neck, leaving little, burning kisses down the column of her neck to the shoulder of her dress. His hand skimmed over the silky material before he traced the collar to the back of the dress. There he stuttered, unsure of how to handle a dress with no zipper, and she laughed.

"I think the proper approach now, Mr. Bates, is to ask for help."

"Help?" He pouted and she pushed him back enough to kneel on the bed.

John watched, utterly captivated, as she slipped the straps off her shoulders and let the dress fall to her waist. The nude-toned demi bra unclasped and she flung it toward the door before laying back. When John did not move she laughed.

"You remove it now John."

He worked the fabric through his hands gently, enjoying her reaction as it slid slowly over her skin, and eventually exposed the whole of her to his view. Once it left her body he allowed it to float to the floor, of no more concern now than it had been before he saw her in it. His attention was now entirely focused on the goddess lying in wait before him.

John started at her ankles, caressing upward to her knees and back, tracing invisible patterns over her skin. She sighed, closing her eyes to bask in the attention. He lowered his lips to kiss over the skin of her right leg and filled his nostrils with the smell of her.

An idea, formed in the long hours of a dark night in a dark place a long time ago, sprang to the forefront of his mind and John set himself to fulfilling it now. He moved his lips up her right leg, leaving very little of her untouched or unlicked in his stride up her body. Her skin warmed him as her temperature rose at the extent of his affections but John was not distracted.

He took care at her knee, aware of how ticklish she was there and not in the mind to suffer a jerk reaction that could leave him with a concussion. Her hip shifted under his attentions but he moved with her to leave a wet trail over the bone jutting there as if to guide him where he wanted to be most. But he refrained, dedicated to a single purpose, and worked upward.

Anna tried to guide his mouth to her breasts but John kissed around the one on the right, moving to her arm as he extended it over her head. Her elbow, wrist, and palm bore the reddish marks of his nipping teeth when he set her in place. And he repeated the path in reverse back down her left side to finish with a ring of kisses over her left ankle.

By now she had relaxed to a state of dazed contentment. Her eyes lidded as if her body craved sleep but John knew different. Knew from the thump of her heart in her chest, felt under his hands when he sculpted up to flick a moment over her breasts, to the scent of her wafting toward him where she wept anew for his unrelenting scrutiny that she was more than ready for him.

John unbuttoned his shirt, dropping it over the side of the bed as he kissed Anna's neck. She turned her head and met his lips in his unhurried kiss while he unbuckled his trousers for the second time that evening. Her whine, as he moved to rid himself of the last vestiges of clothing, changed midway to a pleased exclamation at the sight of him.

He kissed her again, hands already at work molding over her breasts. She took his tongue into her mouth, humming around his efforts at her body, until she broke the kiss to gasp when he pinched her nipples. John only grinned and lowered his mouth where his fingers had been.

She arched her back, forcing his head to her with her hands interlaced together at the back of his head, and cried out when he teethed over her skin. Suckled there, alternating from one to the next until the sounds coming from Anna were either incoherent words or inexpressible delight. But he did not stay long.

Leaving two final kisses, one for each breast, John worked his way down. Once again his fingers led the way, slipping and sliding over her wet folds to hear Anna's voice cry toward the ceiling. As john left his kisses, licks, and tiny bites over the skin nearer and nearer where she flushed reddest for him, he heard Anna's breath pant out of her chest.

His fingers ventured back where he had been less than an hours before, reveling again in the foreign-yet-familiar clench of muscles still remembering how he felt inside her. His own arousal thickened, driving him almost to madness with its insistence at attention, but John focused on Anna. He focused on running his lips along her seam as he stroked over and into her. Then he focused on drinking her dry.

Anna flailed and writhed, shouting to whatever gods were listening, and calling for John. His name was the prayer on her lips and the signal of her peaking cry. And, as John massaged her muscles from the inside and skin from without, he knew the glow on her skin was all his doing.

Without a word he positioned himself at her entrance. He rubbed her soaked lips with his length to remind her, and himself, what it felt like. Anna forced her eyes open as her legs moved farther apart. They waited for only a moment, losing themselves in the soul of the other reflected back at them, before John plunged forward.

They cried out in unison, her voice sweeter to his ears than his own, and settled. Her body, still remembering their actions in the library, responded with her hips rising to meet him. John held himself over Anna to wait for her.

"Please John. Finish it for us."

John kissed Anna, rutting into her with only a vague realization of their surroundings. There was only the heat of her channel, the dig of her nails in his side or scratching down his back, and the sink of her teeth into the skin of his shoulder. To him the moment wrapped with all the times they ever shared like this, bringing his climax that much closer.

But it was her hand on his ass, her leg pulling him closer, and the widening of her legs to send him deeper that finished him. He risked a hand between them but she beat him to it, shameless in how she took herself to the edge with a tilt of her hips to trap her hand between them before rubbing herself against it. And, when he finished again, she pulled him close.

After a minute he shifted to the side, relieving her body of his weight so she could fill her lungs to the fullest and he could match suit. They lay for a moment before John found his voice. He coughed past the dryness to finally speak.

"When did you plan to tell me?"

"What?" She turned to head to look at him and John rolled to his side.

"When were you going to tell me we were having a baby?"

Anna stared at the ceiling and John recognized the look in her eye. The look he bore in his eye so often. The surfacing of bad memories.

"On our anniversary. It was my surprise to you."

"Really?"

She nodded, "I had it all planned and I was surprised you weren't home when I got there. I waited, thinking over how you'd react, and then Alex showed up and said you were arrested." Her shuddering breath broke his heart anew, "It all went to veritable shit after that."

She laughed, but John heard the bitterness in it, "Before Alex came to the door I was worried that you might be mad about the baby, about how it might wreck our plans… but I didn't think life could get much worse than your wife at the time."

John pulled Anna close to him and she settled her head on his chest. "I'm sorry you never got to tell me."

"Really?"

"Really." John nodded, kissing Anna's forehead. "I would've been ecstatic. Ex-wife or no."

"Me too." John could feel Anna's smile against his chest. "I think what I regret the most is that Jack grew up with Alex as his father."

"Was it so terrible?" John craned his neck to see her as Anna leaned over John's chest, tracing some of the scars there. "Was he horrible to him?"

"No but he never loved him." Anna shrugged, "He saw too much of you in Jack."

"Does he know?"

"No, he'd have to pay attention to realize that." She shook her head, "Alex's father figured it out though."

"What?"

"Jack's grandfather... well, not his real grandfather, I guess, since Alex isn't Jack's father, but the man who Jack thinks was his grandfather."

"Was?"

"He died. Heart attack when Jack was twelve. Devastated the poor boy."

John lay back, "I wish I'd known. I wouldn't gone to the funeral. He was always so kind to me."

"That's why he loved Jack so much." Anna kissed John's cheek, "He told me, when Jack was five, that he knew the truth."

"What'd he do?"

"Left Jack everything that was still his before Alex could take it. Jack's entire inheritance was his grandfather's gift to him and the memory of you."

"Why?"

"He approved. He always told me that I didn't have to stay with Alex, that he would look after us, and when I thought about leaving that gave me strength."

John sat up, "But then he died?"

Anna nodded, "Alex renewed his affections for me and I realized I might've been wrong but, like always, it never lasted long. He bored too quickly to ever really invest in us."

"Does Alex know then? That Jack's not his?"

Anna shrugged, "I don't know. I never asked and I think he'd tell me. Use it against me somehow."

John waited a moment, "Did Alex's father know what he did to me? To save the company?"

"I've no idea. I still don't know what Alex did to you." Anna laughed, "I'd have thought it a little extreme in any case but the only thing I could think would be jealousy."

"Jealousy?"

"You accused me earlier of going after Alex behind your back but did you ever think maybe he went after me behind yours?"

"I guess I thought that getting me nailed for murder was enough for him."

"Nothing was ever enough for him." Anna sat back, leaning her head on John's shoulder. "He was never happy if you were happy because it meant you found it without money while he couldn't find it with money."

"Still looking then?"

"He'll spend, literally, the rest of his life trying to find it and fail. Like he failed to love me despite wanting me so badly."

John stroked over Anna's arm, "I wish I could've spared you all this pain."

She fingered one of his scars, "I wish I could've spared you yours."

"Since we can't," John took her hand, kissing it. "Let's live in the glory of this moment shall we?"

Anna kissed him before settling back with him under the covers on the large bed. "We shall, Mr. Bates. We shall."