A/N: Thank you everyone. I'm posting this ahead of schedule as I'll be out of the house all of tomorrow and Downton (Sun)Days should not go unremarked. We're definitely moving forward now.

Drabble ten: the first touch (of his collarbone)

_teenage dream_

The nerves return as his passion slows. She feels like an offering, laid out across the sheets. She remembers something her mother once said, deep in drink and pain, unable to really see her daughter beside her. 'Just lay back and think of Scotland, lass.'

Elsie had been fourteen and scared of losing her mother. Pleased with the attention from the farmhands but not really sure yet, where it could lead.

She had always known that her parents married for practical reasons, no great love affair. But to hear it in that moment. To know that in her last days her mother could still not raise enough love for her husband to think of the act as more than a duty, Elsie had closed herself off to it too.

It had been an easy choice then, to go into service. To leave the farm to her sister and father, the farmhands to other young lasses.

She watches Charles now, lavishing such attention on her feet, fascinated by the turn of her ankle and she is not thinking of Scotland or duty. Is thinking of his strong hands that have balanced dishes, held guns and surely brought death, that touch her as though she is made of spun glass and he cannot bear to see her shatter. Hands that wrote to her when they could and held her tight when he returned.

Hands that she longs to feel on her skin, to follow her calf, past her knee and touch the soft skin of her thigh. To reach between to that place that only he awakes.

She thinks of what her mother missed, what she almost lost herself and pulls her foot from his hand. Sits up among the pillows.

Meets his eyes as he looks down at her, crooks a finger and beckons him up the bed.

Presses her lips to his, says his name into the hollow of his mouth. Reaches for his collar and slips her fingers beneath it, feels the heat of his flush, the strong line of his collarbone.

His hands lay against her back, covering so much of it and she feels so hot now, in this dress.

With careful fingers she undoes buttons, slides his collar off to see the places she has touched.

His pulse jumps beneath her hand and he rests his head against her hair. Framing her, sheltering her. She is surrounded by him, overwhelmed by his scent and they are still not close enough.

She shifts, climbs to her knees and onto his lap, feels his thighs beneath her.

In the moment before she settles down she remembers his wounds, so well hidden today without his cane, the limp gone.

She looks into his eyes, sees the moment he follows where her thoughts have gone. His hands, moved to her hair and neck while she shifted, slide back down to her waist, tug and push in turn until she is almost forcefully pressed down into his lap.

"Not tonight, love." He whispers, lips against her ear, nose nuzzling behind. "Don't let it touch us tonight."

She thinks of arguing, laying reason out between them, but she trusts him. He has shown no sign of pain today, as he lifted her. Has not for several days now.

So she settles, relaxes into his hold. Follows his collarbone back to his throat, leans forward and sucks a kiss into the shallow. He growls, she feels it through her lips, against her cheek and she presses fluttering kisses up his neck to his Adam's Apple, to his jaw.

Tips back into the hand at her neck as his mouth copies hers.

Okay, she thinks, okay.

Next time: the first undoing