Bygone
Chapter 21: Thrill of Discovery

The noise started low, a mechanical groaning that grew into a steady whine. The air raid siren. Ten feet below street level, with a solid wall of concrete and lead between them and any potential falling explosives, Darcy had a hard time finding the sound anything more than annoying. Especially now that Margo wasn't screaming under her blankets in the corner.

A pair of knuckles rapped out Shave and a Haircut against her door.

She opened it to find Bucky standing outside. He offered a shrug and a cavalier, "Nazis. They sure know how to spoil an evening," and held aloft what looked suspiciously like half of a bomb with leather handles attached. "I have a contingency plan."

"Is that...?"

"The closest thing I could get to a picnic basket in our present situation? Yes, it is."

She stepped aside and allowed him entrance to her room. "How did you manage picnic provisions on such short notice?"

He grinned. "Lizzie the Nutter is sweet on Steve. She hands him extra sandwiches every time he even looks at Mess. The chicken salad ain't half bad, but her relish is worse than my sister's." He started emptying the makeshift basket, laying out the provisions with care on and around a starched white handkerchief with his initials embroidered in the corner. He held up a bottle, "Even got some booze."

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from commenting on how precious she thought he looked, all eager smiles and gallant effort.

Being careful not to dislodge anything, she settled down on the bed, accepting the sandwich he held out for her. Somehow she felt like he was offering far more than just a wedge of National Loaf with some chicken salad in the center. She tried not to dwell on it as she ate, though he didn't make it easy. The giddy excitement rolling off him was infectious, and she couldn't help but giggle whenever his eagerness got the best of him as he fumbled over his words or his fingers. Despite her modern sensibilities and all her experience with lovers, she had never felt this level of thrill before. Not even her first time groping awkwardly in the backseat of Pete Fallon's car. Maybe it helped that she really loved Bucky where with Pete, and all who followed him, it was just mild like and being a dutiful girlfriend.

"I can't take it anymore," she declared, throwing the last of her sandwich down.

Bucky eyed her with a curiosity that bordered on caution. "It's the relish, right?"

"No, it's you," she clarified, taking up what little remained of their picnic and tossing it haphazardly back in the general direction of the hollowed-out bomb. "You're all handsome and adorable. I have to see you naked. Like now."

She launched herself at him, giving him zero room for misinterpretation of her meaning or intentions. Her hands tore at his uniform, nearly snapping the threads holding his polished buttons in place.

"I feel like we ought to be moving a lot slower," he hedged even as his hands went to work on her blouse.

"And I feel like we ought to be naked by now. Stop stalling."

"Yes, ma'am," he grinned and leaned in to kiss her, his fingers expertly extracting each cloth-covered button from its hole even as his tongue swept into her mouth. Those expert fingers went to work on her breasts, his thumbs sliding roughly over her nipples until she moaned in his mouth.

She couldn't touch him enough, his muscles so hot under her hands. All her lovers had been scrawny, so easily manuevered around a bedroom, but not Bucky. He was solid and strong and moved only when he wanted, which is what he did now, pressing her into the mattress as his hands roamed her body.

"You sure I'm not dreaming?" he questioned.

"I'm starting to think I might be," she replied in a breathless groan as his hands moved up her thighs. He unclasped her garters with practised ease, rolling her stockings down her legs and tossing them aside. He paused to admire her laid out on the bed before kissing his way back up her legs, his face vanishing beneath her skirt and lips laying light kisses along her thighs.

Darcy's praise to the heavens that he knew about foreplay might have spilled out of her mouth as he kissed her sex through the satin knickers.

His mouth was hot and wet and perfect, his tongue probing through the fabric, making her writhe and whine. "Dammit, take the damn things off already!"

He reappeared from beneath her skirt, face flushed and hair sticking up in all directions. He offered her that boyish grin that never failed to make her knees wobble. "This is usually the part where girls tell me to stop."

"Never going to happen," she assured him.

As further proof of her investment in the night, she rose to her knees, offering his mouth a teasing kiss as her hands unclasped her bra and moved down to the zipper of her skirt. All the satin, silk and linen fell away, leaving her in nothing but a pair of ridiculously oversized underwear. She thought them hideous, but Bucky looked at the blue satin as if it was the most intoxicating thing he'd ever encountered.

"I'm definitely dreaming," he declared.

"Then we should make the best of this dream, shouldn't we?" she smiled and pulled him closer, feeling his heated skin against hers.

Apparently, that light touch was all it took. Darcy found herself back on the mattress; Bucky kissing and touching her with the kind of enthusiasm she hadn't thought existed in men over the age of twenty. As he had promised, not one inch of her naked flesh went without attention. His tongue, she decided, was a national treasure, bringing her to the edge of release so many times she found herself begging for him, something she had never done in her nearly seven years of sexual experience.

For all this zeal, Bucky stopped short of entering her. He looked down at her, his skin flushed and shining with his efforts. "Can I?"

"God, yes!" she cried, wrapping her legs around him and drawing him closer.

The shaking breath he released spoke to how worried he had been she would tell him to stop, like all those other girls back home had done. She didn't know how they had the determination to push him away. She couldn't. She wouldn't. So long as he was here, she would want him.

She felt him, hard and practically scalding, against the lips of her sex. With a groan and a litany of curses that ran into a prayer of sorts, he pushed into her and then did nothing. He lay perfectly still, gulping in ragged breaths and huffing them out again.

"You know we're supposed to move around a bit," she prompted, jerking her hips and making him curse again.

"Give me a minute. I—You're," he swallowed down his words and pulled out slowly. "Fuck, you're perfect."

"Say it again, and I'll make sure it's true," she breathed, tightening her grip on him until he cried out and collapsed onto his elbows, his face buried in her shoulder.

"Darcy, you're killing me," he groaned into her skin. "You have no idea."

She didn't answer, just let him find his rhythm, achingly slow to start as if he was afraid the he might break her. After what felt like an eternity of that teasing, torturous delicate motion, he started to move faster, his fingers digging into her hips as he earned his nickname and bucked into her harder, screaming her name and making her see stars.

"I'm sorry," he groaned some minutes later, his voice both rough and soft. "I got carried away."

She studied his face, her fingers reaching up to trace all the worried lines marring it. "You only get to be sorry if you never do that again."

"Huh?"

"That was fucking epic sex," she said, poking at his sweaty pectoral. "I will have more of it. Lots more. In five minutes if you can handle it."

"If I can handle it?" he scoffed. "I thought I broke you, all those noises you were making."

"Not yet, you haven't. I'm looking forward to you trying harder next time," she grinned, knowing her lipstick was a mess and not caring one bit. He didn't seem to care much either, taking her mouth and pulling her close until they were sliding against one another again, friction building as his thigh found its way between her legs. Twenty minutes later, they were breathless and flopping back down on the mattress once more. This time, Bucky had nothing but a smile on his face.

"How was that?"

"Still not broken," she gasped. "I'm starting to think you're not trying all that hard."

"Give me a few minutes," he breathed.

She laughed. "You know, you don't have to do it tonight. There's always tomorrow or the next day or the next. I'm not going anywhere."

"But I am," he said, smile falling. "Italy. We're leaving at 1100 tomorrow."

In the past, putting on a suitably worried face had taken a bit of effort; she knew Rogers and his Commandos would be back alive. After so much time in his company, it took almost no effort for concern to color her tone and put creases between her brows. She didn't want him to go. Even knowing he would come back relatively unharmed, she didn't want him away from her.

"How long, do you think?" she questioned tightly.

"If we're lucky, two weeks," he replied, not sounding at all convinced the mission would go as planned. "But I've been there. I know the terrain. It'll probably be closer to a month."

"Fucking hate Nazis," she complained. "All right. Think sexy thoughts, Barnes. We are getting a month's worth of sexy times into this night."

"Way ahead of you, doll."

He kissed her hard, his tongue mimicking the motion of his fingers as he brought her over the edge. Hours they spent making one anther moan and scream before they collapsed into a comatose tangle around two in the morning, so thoroughly exhausted that neither stirred until First Call blared through the speakers. Even that sharp bugle cry only managed to make them curse and roll closer together under the blankets.

Reveille followed five minutes later. It wasn't enough to get either of them to anything more than blink at the ceiling with annoyance.

The hard, authoritative rap at the door, however, made Bucky stand at attention. "Shit," he cursed.

"Whazzamater?" Darcy groaned.

"I'll get court marshalled if they catch me in here," he hissed, struggling to put his pants on while hopping into the blind corner behind the door.

"Yo, Sarge!" a voice shouted through the door.

His agitation dropped along with his pants as he recognized the speaker calling through the solid wood barrier.

Darcy wrapped herself in a blanket and stomped to the door, throwing it open and glaring at the body on the other side. He was nearly a foot taller than her, barrel-chested and muscular enough to take down a bull, but Dum-Dum Dugan seemed terrified of her. His hands even shook as he hurried to remove his hat. "Uh, ma'am."

"What do you want?" she demanded.

"I need Sarge. We've got to meet Phillips in five minutes, ma'am." He hesitated a moment. "Sorry about this, ma'am. I didn't want to, but I drew the short straw."

Sergeant Barnes pulled the door open and stomped into the hall, fully dressed in his uniform. Dugan flinched at the hard look he sent him and hurried to mumble a second apology. Bucky offered her a smile and a kiss before shoving Dum-Dum down the hall and kicking him in the backside. Darcy grinned at their stupidity and closed the door, falling against it as her delight slipped away.

Another mission.

She had been stupid to think time would stop just because she and Bucky were together. He still had a job to do, one that would ultimately kill him in a few months' time.

Rubbing furiously at her eyes, she glared her aggravation at the room, noting that Barnes had taken the time to throw the bed together the best he could. While he was at it, he had deposited an envelope on her pillow.

A/N: Just a reminder that there is a reason why I rarely write smut. Feel free to drop a line below to let me know if I did okay or if I really need to work on my smut-writing skills.

Also, FYI, the next few chapters need a lot (read: a metric crap-ton) of editing, so there is a chance updates are going to slow while I sort out what the hell to do with them. I can't promise comments/reviews will make updates faster, but they might help motivate me... hint... hint...