PW
Santander – Lol, I'm sure Willow wants to do plenty of things to Tara's but ;) Haha, I like that 'love is letting your honey prick you'. It's true though, I wouldn't let just any non-medical person jab me! Glad you're liking the story :)
Saga Vasuki – That doesn't sound too pleasant! I have to give blood on the regular so I kinda don't mind needles (plus I have 5 tattoos lol) but I don't know if I'd be able to give them!
fire'n'water – I know! I'm so sorry with the shortness! This one's back to more normal-length because I had the flu and had a little more time to write. Glad you enjoyed the chapter though!
Sky King Haruka Tenoh – I talked to a mother of a friend of mine who went through the IVF procedure in my research and she told me pretty much exactly what you said. I giggled when I got your comment, 'cause it was pretty much exactly what I was writing hehe.
Juggler – It begins and continues! :D I'm glad things are coming across as realistic :)
Willow quietly walked down the stairs after getting JJ settled in bed and stretched her back muscles as she did so, looking forward to snuggling on the sofa for the evening.
"He finally went to sleep," she said with a sigh as she started to turn into the living room, "I think he got his hands on some serious sugar at school today or something 'cause he was just crazy hyp–hey, what's wrong?"
Willow rushed over to Tara's side as she saw her wife sitting on the sofa, hunched over and with her head in her hands.
"Headache," Tara replied through gritted teeth.
Willow's eyes widened in alarm as her hand went to the back of her wife's head, stroking her hair comfortingly.
"It's not a migraine, is it?" she asked in a whisper, "You haven't had one of those since we lived in Boston. Do I need to take you to hospital?"
Tara weakly shook her head between her hands.
"No. It's not that bad. It just hit me from nowhere."
"Oh, baby," Willow replied soothingly, leaning forwards to place a kiss on the middle of Tara's forehead.
Tara was about to lift her head to offer the redhead a small smile but instead jerked back against the sofa as a as she felt a sudden wave of intense heat going through, feeling like it was emanating from her pores.
"Oh my...!"
Willow jumped up to sit beside her wife and tried to take her hands but they were quickly slapped away, Tara not able to handle any more warmth being passed into her body.
"Tara, what's wrong?" Willow asked, her voice full of concern and some hurt, "Baby, you're scaring me. You're going bright red! I'm not letting you collapse again from a migraine, Tara, I'm calling an ambulance!"
Tara reached out and grabbed Willow's wrist to stop her from moving and took a few short breaths.
"I think...just a hot flash."
"From the injections?" Willow asked gently, moving her hand to the blonde's clothed knee to give her some comfort without touching her skin, "You only started them yesterday, I didn't think they'd hit so soon."
"Well they are," Tara replied curtly, her breathing heavy.
"Is the loss of libido thing hitting too or can I take your top off?" Willow replied with a grin that quickly faltered at the look Tara shot her, "Sorry. Bad joke. I–I'd give you a hug but I don't think you'd appreciate it right now."
Tara brought her hand up to her forehead and started to rub her temples, closing her eyes to stop the bright light in the room making her headache worse.
"Could you just get some me ice or something? And some Tylenol?"
"Of course," Willow's voice went to Tara's ears before she felt the smaller girl standing and a quick kiss being placed against her cheek, then moments later seeing the light against the back of her eyelids plunge into darkness as she heard the lightswitch being turned off.
It only took a minute for Willow to return and Tara felt something cold and hard, wrapped in a dishcloth being held against her chest in the open part of her plunging blouse and being brought up around her neck and against her cheeks.
"Open," Willow's soft voice came as Tara felt something being held against her mouth and complied silently, taking the two pills that were placed on her tongue and gratefully swallowing them a moment later with the water her wife offered next.
After several minutes of Willow silently holding the cold compress against the blonde's flushed skin; Tara opened her eyes again, dimly able to make out her wife's features from the streetlight streaming in through the windows.
She covered Willow's hand and brought the dishcloth from her chest.
"That hug would be appreciated now."
Willow smiled and placed the contents of her hands on the coffee table, revealing a bag of peas wrapped in the cloth and turned back to Tara, wrapping her arms around the blonde's shoulders.
Tara gratefully squeezed back and held on for a few long moments before pulling away.
"Sorry I was a grouch. It was just a lot all at once."
"Don't worry," Willow replied, shaking her head gently, "We'll get some of those ice gel pack things for you to carry around. That hot flush seemed bad."
Tara gave a small shrug and quirked her lips slightly.
"Good practice for menopause."
Willow grinned too.
"Or maybe if you ever get pregnant."
Tara laughed and felt the final remnants of her headache lift.
"Let's get this one in you first before we start to think about number three, okay?"
"Honey, I'm ho–"
Willow didn't get to finish the sentiment as she found herself suddenly shoved against the shut door she had just walked through and a pair of lips began hungrily devouring her own.
Before she could even register what was happening, she felt hands pushing her jacket over her shoulders and her shirt being ripped over her head.
"I thought you'd never get home," Tara spoke throatily as her hands went to the redhead's chest, slipping under her bra to knead her breasts, "I dropped JJ off at a play date an hour ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about you since."
Willow moaned as Tara rolled her quickly-hardening nipples between her fingers and tried to reign in her raging desire, wondering if she could be dreaming; Tara had rebuffed any advances she'd tried over the course of the week, sometimes apologetically, sometimes with irrational annoyance, but Willow had resigned herself to the fact that her wife wasn't likely to want to be intimate while going through the hormone therapy but it seemed now they were making her go to the opposite end of the spectrum.
"You're, um...you haven't really been in the mood all week..."
"I know," she replied as what could only be described as a mischievous grin fell on her lips, "And I'm very, very sorry. But I'll make it up to you."
"D-don't have to m-make up anything," Willow stammered out with a gulp, "I know the hormones are making you–"
Willow was cut off again as Tara removed one hand from her bra and reached up to the redhead's face, pursing her lips with her fingers before pressing their mouths together almost roughly, forcibly pushing her tongue into her wife's mouth.
She felt her mouth being explored and her tongue being teased as the hand against her breast continued its ministrations until there was a sudden, abrupt stop of all contact.
Her eyes flew open, prepared for her hormonally-off-balance wife to tell her she wanted to stop but instead found herself greeted with that smile and thoseeyes as Tara hooked her fingers into the belt hook of the redhead's pants and pulled her forwards.
"You're wearing far too many clothes and are much too vertical."
Willow let herself be turned and walked backwards up the stairs, Tara's smouldering eyes burning into her as the blonde's hands roaming along the soft curves of her hips. She slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of the redhead's pants and tugging the fabric of her panties that settled around her hips gently upwards, making the smaller girl moan as the front of the material rubbed against the hard bud that was swelling in need.
Despite the fact that they were moving quite quickly, the ascent up the stairs and into their bedroom seemed to Willow like it was taking an age, her breath and eyelids getting heavier and heavier with desire with each passing second until she finally felt the back of her knees hit against their bed.
Tara kept a firm hold on her wife's hips to keep her in place before snapping the button on her pants open, yanking the fabric down her legs and then pushing he back onto the mattress and pulling the pants off completely, discarding them on the floor so the redhead was lying in just her bra and panties.
Willow watched with hitched breath as Tara climbed on top of and straddled her, her eyes roaming over the smaller girl's smooth torso and encased-breasts before she locked eyes with her wife and uttered just one word.
"Better."
Willow pushed herself up into a sitting position and wasted no time in capturing the blonde's lips, kissing her fervently as her hands worked with speedy zest in discarding Tara of her clothes; buttons blindly loosened and fabric cast off, forgotten, to the floor until the redhead found her hands roaming her wife's body, free of any material barriers.
"Off," Tara mumbled during a half-second kissing break for air, pushing her lover's bra straps down her shoulders before reaching behind to unsnap the hook.
The garment fell between their bodies onto the sheet but quickly got shoved out of the way as the blonde slipped her fingers into the elastic of the redhead's panties and jerked them down to her knees.
Willow pulled away breathlessly from the kiss and, aided by Tara pulling her legs upwards, shuffled her lower half until the panties fell off her ankles.
Finally both naked, Willow moved in to resume the kiss but was stopped as the blonde placed a single finger against her lips when she was just an inch away.
Her brow crinkled in disappointed confusion but could only gulp as her wife started dragging her finger, agonisingly slowly, down onto her chest and around her breasts, brushing off each of her nipples enough to send shivers down her spine and further onto her stomach, tracing the outline of her toned muscles before grazing along the fine hairs of her mound, then letting her hand fall off to the side.
Willow almost groaned in frustration as her body tingled with need but one look into Tara's twinkling eyes made her swallow the groan in a second, gasping quietly instead when the blonde pushed her back against the mattress with her body so they were flushed against each other and pressed their lips together in barely-there kiss before moving them down and following the same path her finger had just moments before.
Moans of varying degrees of intensity escaped the redhead's mouth as her flushed skin was caressed by Tara's lips, her tongue jutting out and swirling around the hardening peaks of the smaller girl's hardening peaks and then moving lower to dip into her bellybutton.
Willow tensed her body as she felt kisses move down to her mound, sure Tara would move her mouth away the same way she had her hand, which made the moment when the blonde's tongue suddenly sank into her waiting, wet folds all the more sweeter in surprise.
"Oh my...ohhhhh...!"
Tara lifted her hands to either side of her wife's thighs and moaned in appreciation of the flavour hitting her tastebuds, feeling Willow shiver in response. She worked her lips and tongue against the redhead's heated flesh, teasing her by moving tantalisingly close to her clit before moving away again and lapping at her entrance but never giving her the satisfaction of pushing inside.
Willow had her hand entwined firmly in the blonde's hair as she tried in vain to get her mouth where she wanted it. When she felt like she had taken all she could without exploding, she decided it was time to turn the tables and took her fingers from Tara's hair, using both hands to pull her up by the shoulders.
She let out a shaky moan as she saw Tara's mouth glistening with her juices and crushed their lips together as she took complete control by flipping her wife onto her back and reaching down her body, between her lips and thrusting two fingers inside her without any preamble.
Tara unwittingly broke the kiss as her back arched and head through back against the pillows; her body more than ready for any and all of Willow but her mind shocked at the sudden change.
"Fuck!" she groaned as her hips instinctively thrust upwards, the redhead's fingers moving in and out of her speedily, "Fuck."
After a moment her eyes opened to see Willow smirking down at her. She responded in kind as one side of her lips curved upwards and her own hand found its way to her wife's core, slipping inside in one fluid movement, moaning as tight heat surrounded her and hearing a throaty groan fall down to her ears.
They started a hard and fast pace inside each other, fingers stretching and delving deeply as they communicated with wordless moans and body movements. Their hips grinded against one another, getting faster and faster as they both became closer and closer to their peaks until Willow's head suddenly snapped back and a shrill cry left her lips.
"Tarrraaa!"
Tara felt a heated explosion around her fingers and a gush of juices fall down her wrist, making her own body shiver and shake silently in response, her fluttering eyelids capturing images of Willow's face contorted in pleasure which only served to prolong every jolt of ecstasy that rushed through her until the redhead collapsed on top of her, their sweaty skin sliding against each other.
After a minute or two of gasping breaths and trembling limbs, Willow turned her head into Tara's chest and began placing gentle kisses along her collarbone.
"God. Wow," she mumbled, her voice heavy and satisfied, "So worth the wait."
Tara glanced down and watched her wife kiss her jutting-out bones, bringing a hand up to stroke the back of her hair.
"I'm sorry, honey. I've been kind of all over the place this week."
"Don't apologise," Willow replied, shuffling her body the few inches upwards so they were face to face, "I didn't mean it like that."
Tara lifted her head and placed a kiss against the redhead's forehead before settling back against the pillows.
"I'm not trying to be grouch-y Tara. Or withhold sex from you."
"I know that, baby," Willow reassured, "You're not."
"I just haven't been feeling very sexy with the hot flashes and headaches," Tara replied before giving a small smile, "Until today anyway. Whole other kind of hot flash."
Willow smiled back.
"It's, it's like PMS," she said and saw Tara shrug and give a nod of agreement, before the redhead continued, "Which, you know, you never really get. I've never had to deal with that. So, you know, if you add it all up..."
Tara looked at her wife with a mixture of confusion and amusement and waited for her to continue, which she did, looking off in thought.
"Let's see...So, you've always been regular, so that's 365 divided by 28, which is basically 13. And let's assume that for every period, you had 7 days of PMS. That's 7 by 13 which is 91 days of PMS a year. 91 by 10 for the first 10 years we were together is 910 plus the extra 8 months since our anniversary makes it...966 days of Tara-PMS I am owed. Which, even if we say that these drugs are...10 times more potent than PMS, then that's still only...140 days. Which is only 14.5% of what I technically should have endured. The way I see it, I'm still getting off super lucky."
Tara blinked a couple of times before shaking her head slightly.
"Only you would see 140 days of PMS crammed into two weeks as 'lucky'. Or that math was good pillow talk."
"Hey, math is sexy," Willow protested, before smiling apologetically, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to trivialise how hard it must be with all those hormones pumping around."
Tara shook her head again and leaned up to place a gentle kiss on the smaller girl's lips.
"You didn't," she replied before giving a wry grin, "Anyway, I'm the one who's getting off super lucky. I only have a few weeks of this. You'll have nine months."
Willow giggled and gave a wide smile.
"You better remember how nice I was during this when I'm yelling for pickles at 2am. With mustard. And ice-cream."
Tara closed her eyes and chuckled silently before opening them again and moving her arms around her wife's back in a hug.
"I'll be here no matter what random foods you decide to put together."
"Willow, Tara, come in."
Dr. Wells smiled at the couple from the doorway of her exam room and gestured them forwards.
Willow and Tara walked into the examination room and took the seats opposite where Dr. Wells had sat down.
"So, I've had no phone calls, can I presume the Lupron treatment is going well? No issues with the injections?"
"No issues," Willow replied happily, "We have a routine now; brush our teeth, wash our faces, jab Tara in the butt and snuggle in bed."
Dr. Wells let out a low laugh.
"Well, that's great. And Tara, have you had any side effects?"
"One or two," Willow spoke up first and Tara cast her a momentarily side-long glance before speaking.
"Just what I was told to expect. But nothing terrible. Like Willow says, we have a routine."
Dr. Wells seemed satisfied at that and smiled.
"Excellent. Well, I won't waste any time, I know you must both be on your lunch break. Tara, I'll just draw some blood and then we can move onto the ultrasound. Do you remember which arm I took your blood from last time?"
"I think my left," Tara answered, holding up her left arm in indication.
"Okay, let's go from the right this time," Dr. Wells responded, gathering the needle and vials she needed and sitting on Tara's right side, "You're probably going to feel like a pin cushion over the next couple of weeks."
Tara smiled softly.
"It's okay. I don't mind needles."
"Unless Xander or Jesse ask," Willow piped up jokingly from beside her wife, "They're gonna we wondering why I'm going out for lunch instead of just eating at my desk like I normally do, so I'm staying with the 'you-have-a-doctor's-appointment-and-need-me-to-hold-your-hand-while-you-get-a-needle' shtick."
Tara raised an eyebrow.
"They won't find it suspicious that I need to go to a doctor's appointment every two days? They're FBI agents, Willow."
"I'll just tell them it's about something girly and they won't ask any more," Willow replied with a reassuring smile, "They may be FBI agents, but they're still men."
Tara gave a small laugh and didn't even notice as Dr. Wells drew her blood and put a band-aid in the crook of her elbow as she withdrew the needle.
"You've got great veins, Tara," Dr. Wells said as she put the vials of blood on her desk.
"Um, thank you?" Tara replied, unsure what the correct response was to that 'compliment'.
Dr. Wells just smiled and stood up.
"If you could climb onto my examination table there, Tara, I need to perform a transvaginal ultrasound to check on your ovaries. If you could just remove your pants and underwear and then cover yourself with the blanket. I'll be back in one moment."
Dr. Wells left the room while Tara walked over to the examination table and started and started removing the lower portion of her clothing.
"I'm very unhappy that another woman is about to come in the room when you have absolutely nothing on below the belt," Willow quipped, playing with the ends of her fingers nervously, "Can I, um...could I hold your hand?"
Tara climbed onto the table and covered her exposed parts with the blanket provided before holding her hand out towards the redhead.
"Now there's a question you never have to ask."
Willow smiled and lifted her chair over to beside the exam table, sitting near her wife's head and clasping her hand between both of her own.
"I love you for doing this," she said quietly.
"Me?" Tara asked with a laugh, "You're going to have to do all the hard stuff."
Willow just smiled again and moved forwards to place a lingering kiss on her wife's temple. Dr. Wells returned in that moment, wheeling a machine with a monitor on top and a basket beneath filled with various pieces of medical equipment.
"All ready?" Dr. Wells asked with a smile as she wheeled the machine over to the exam table and took a seat between Tara's legs, snapping plastic gloves over her hands, "Could you place your feet in the stirrups and shuffle down just a little please, Tara?"
Tara followed the doctor's orders, not as uncomfortable in the position as she could have been; having attended Dr. Wells for the past 5 years meant she'd been exposed in front of her before.
"Okay," Dr. Wells continued, pressing buttons around the screen to turn it on and producing a large, white, cylindrical probe from the basket beneath, "I need to insert this into your vagina so I can inspect your ovaries and make sure everything is coming along as it should so we can start you on the follicle-stimulating hormones. It may be a little cold, but if it hurts at all, let me know and I'll stop, okay. It'll be easier if you relax as best you can."
Tara cleared her throat and took a few deep breaths to try and relax her inner muscles. Willow kept her gaze locked on her wife's face, not wanting to watch the doctor insert anything to an area of Tara she claimed solely as her own, medical procedure or not.
"You okay, baby?" she asked lovingly when she saw the blonde wince slightly, presuming the doctor had started the procedure.
"Fine," Tara answered through an exhaled breath before smiling at her wife and lowering her voice to a somewhat-embarrassed whisper, "It's just...I'm not quite used to...it not being you."
Willow brought the hand between hers and kissed her palm.
"You better never be used to it not being me."
Tara laughed quietly, careful not to shift her body at all and pursed her lips to blow a kiss towards the redhead.
Dr. Wells kindly tuned out the conversation happening between the couple, focusing solely on the screen as the images being conveyed from the probe played out in front of her, letting her see and examine all of Tara's reproductive organs.
It only took a few minutes for her to be confident in her findings before she gently slipped the probe from Tara and wiped the lubricant she'd applied to it, before placing it on a metal tray beneath the machine for sterilisation.
"Everything's perfect in there," she smiled as she slipped her gloves off, "Your ovaries are definitely ready for us to start the new hormone therapy. You can get dressed again, Tara, I'm just going to go return the machine."
Dr. Wells wheeled the machine back out of the room and Tara extracted herself from the stirrups, sitting up. She went to grab her pants and panties from where they'd been lying near her on top of a set of drawers, but they weren't there. She looked around for a moment before noticing the cheeky grin on her wife's face and the fact that she was very obviously hiding something behind her back.
"Really? You stole my clothes?"
"I didn't get a proper look when you were changing," Willow grinned, "It's a law that anytime your pants come off, I get a full and proper period of time for the appropriate gawking required."
Tara held back an answering grin and held the blanket up, spreading her legs just wide enough to give the redhead a tantalizing view that Willow, though having teased about, really hadn't been expecting before the taller girl closed her legs again.
"Now give them back before the doctor comes in. Or have you decided you're happy with another woman seeing me naked now?"
That last sentence snapped Willow from the reverie she'd started to get lost in and she quickly thrust Tara's clothes into her hands.
"Quickly, Tara, quickly!"
Tara chuckled at her wife's swiftly-changed demeanour and quickly, as instructed, pulled her underwear and pants on. Willow took her hand when she was done and dragged the chair back to its original place and both women sat down as the doctor returned and sat opposite them.
"Okay, so like I said, everything looks good for us to ahead with the next stage," she said with a smile, "And we're going to be seeing a lot of each other over the next little while. I'll need you to come in again on Friday, and then Monday and then Wednesday of next week as well, you'll have to gets bloods and ultrasounds each appointment, like this one. I'll be able to tell you next Wednesday whether we need to go a little longer with the hormone treatment or whether we can schedule the egg retrieval."
"So we just continue with our routine like we are?" Willow asked, "But with the FSH injections as well?"
Willow had stuck to her promise of not over-researching everything, without her laptop even needing to be 'confiscated', though Tara had never had any intention of doing that anyway, it was Willow's possession after all. The redhead did, however, still remember all she had read, filtering it in her mind to purely the medicine and not the overwhelming amount of unsuccessful stories she had read, but wanted to make sure she had everything correct in her head moving forward.
"That's right," Dr. Wells nodded as she typed something into her computer, the sound of the printer whirring a moment later ringing throughout the room. The doctor pulled the piece of paper from the machine and handed it over the desk, "There's your prescription, for one week. If we need to keep going, I'll give you another one. So, you'll come back Friday, that's the...31st. Oh, Halloween. Have you any plans?"
"Our friend's little boy is staying the night," Willow answered with a fond smile, "We're taking him and JJ trick or treating and then they want to watch scary movies. Of course, scary for them is Ghostbusters and The Addams Family."
"Yes, 5 is a little young for The Exorcist or similar," Dr. Wells replied jokingly before a curious look crossed her features, "Are you two dressing up?"
Willow just got a small, secretive smile on her face.
"Well...it is Halloween."