That Last Year in Vegas Chapter 21
The tickle along her neck was a light feathery touch with a slight scratch, pleasing and pleasant enough to wake her and cause a turn of her chin. The feel was a welcomed one, and she rolled and smiled. Grissom had not shaved, but he smelled of a recent shower and a soft clean shirt. She nudged her nose against his chest.
"You smell good," she mumbled.
"You went to sleep before the movie ended."
"I know the ending—it's sad. She leaves her lover." She started pushing his shirt up, stopped, and rolled quickly out of bed. "Be right back!" She scooted around the bed and into the bathroom, returning within minutes.
Grissom stayed in bed, removed his shirt, straightened the covers, and pulled the sheet up to his waist. Waiting for Sara, he grinned as he worked the sheet around himself. Sara was half way to the bed when she saw his 'arrangement' of a peaked tent over his hips.
"Is that for real?" She teased.
A provocative smile played across his mouth changing his expression to one of deliberate anticipation. His hands lifted. "It happens around you! I can't help myself."
She plunged into the bed, messing up the covers, and laughing, finding an erection that would make any young man boast.
His laughter joined hers, "Wait, wait! You can't do that!" He grabbed her hands and pulled her up. Once he had her face within his hands, he threw a leg over hers and wedged her against his aroused body. "You okay—about everything—not angry with me?"
When her smile widened and her fingers caressed his stubbly cheek and gently combed through his hair, he needed no answer. He kissed her, gently and quickly, but she responded eagerly, parting her lips for him and pushing fingers through his hair. A delicious tension began to build inside her as his palm closed over her left breast. His thumb circled her nipple; his mouth moved to her neck.
Perhaps it was the long years of wanting him, but she could respond to his look, his touch in seconds. As she returned his kisses, she felt a quiver ripple his chest. She moved her hands lower, gliding along the expanse of bare flesh until she was again surrounding his maleness. He made a sound, half groan, half laugh and captured her exploring hand.
"If you go there, this will be over in seconds, dear," he said against the curve of her shoulder. Cradling her in his arm, he pushed her shirt away and placed lips against her skin slowly moving to her right breast where he kissed, tasted and gently sucked until her nipples were erect and her muscles were fluttering across her belly. His knee moved between her legs and with delicate pressure, he made room for his hips to meet hers.
Sara felt his hot erection against her thigh and he shifted to bring it between her legs. His hand moved and he began to stroke her in the most intimate way, probing the damp, warm entrance of her body. She kissed him deeply, penetrating his mouth with her tongue as he eased himself into her body, filling her as he moved. She sensed he was at his limits of control—a rare occurrence when she could withhold her desire longer than he—as he rocked against her, moving faster. She felt the muscles of his back go rigid beneath her palms. In seconds, he would be spent and she met his rhythm as her own desire soared; she knew when he came, feeling the pulsating sensation inside her, but by then, she was rapidly diving into her own passionate whirlpool.
Her first climax was as gentle as a wind before a summer storm, warm, expected, knowing what was coming; the second came as that storm, gathering great thunderclouds before dumping sheets of rain, flooding everything in its path. Grissom worked her as an accomplished player of a Steinway. His fingers knew what to do, his mouth worked, his eyes watched and Sara responded. Her breaths came in pants as she twisted against him, called his name before thoughts and consciousness lost to the overpowering culmination of sexual passion.
When he lay beside her in the drowsy, heavy-eyed moments of peace following orgasm, tracing invisible lines on her body with his finger as she regained normal breathing, they both knew how much this life meant to them yet they were quiet. Once, Grissom had tried to tell her how much she had changed his life, but stumbling over words, she had shushed him saying "I know."
Today was no different; yet Grissom felt the need to say something—to make up for his thoughtless actions and for causing her pain.
"Sara," he begin, "if there is any thing you want—anything you need—you will tell me, won't you. I've never gotten you candy—or a ring—the usual things a man buys the woman he loves—but I will." He had wrapped his hand around hers, possessively, intertwining their fingers into a clasp. "One day—we'll take a trip, I promise—to Venice and Paris and Rome."
She smiled, pressed her lips together before smiling again. "Is this a proposal, Gilbert?"
Her words surprised him, but the lilt in her voice was playful, yet uncertain. He lifted an eyebrow, "It can be—if you want—we could get engaged."
The look on her face went from playful to full blown tease. "Not me, Gil. I'm not one for engagement—but a trip would be nice—off to some remote part of the earth. Maybe the rainforest before Venice and Paris."
"We'd need to tell everyone," he reminded her.
She nodded. "I know—but not yet. I like us this way. No one knows but Greg and he hasn't said anything—and I think Jim might know." Her eyes danced and glittered when she looked at him. "You haven't told him, have you?"
"He might know."
Sara grinned, knowing that would be as close to an admission as she was likely to get from him.
"We have to go to work in a while," she whispered, kissing his chest and working her way to his neck, along his jaw before reaching his mouth.
Another quiet shift followed; the usual dead body on a park bench, a hit and run, a random shooting kept everyone busy except for Grissom who remained in his office running down hints from internet clues to the miniature killer. The unsolved puzzle and murders weighed on everyone's mind and especially on Gil Grissom. He closed his office door and left with the others as shift ended.
When he placed the thick legal-sized package on the kitchen counter, Sara tore into it using her fingernails instead of waiting for Grissom to pass her scissors. Her instructions had been carried out—she had doubted if the attorneys would really do as she asked. Money had been transferred into her mother's bank account for usual and daily expenses and Kris' name had been added to her account along with Sara's. Another set of papers established the remaining funds as a shared account in her name and Grissom's—he had protested but after she pointed out the need for someone else to be able to pay her mother's bills should anything happen to her, he agreed, reluctant but willing. Another bundle was copies of old legal documents, birth and death certificates, military records, even Social Security numbers of men Sara had never known.
"Why did you ask for these?"
"I wanted to know who they were—how an old man made money and left it to a relative he never met." She chuckled. "I'll find out about these old ghosts," she said and then frowned. Her look became sober. "My father has always been a ghost—it's hard to remember him except in a fog." She brightened just as quickly. "So I am going to learn what I can about him—his father and this uncle who left us this money!"
Grissom decided to say nothing more. He was obsessed by the maker of miniatures and at least her free time was not in search of a killer. Later, she spread the papers over the bed and read about a grandfather and a great uncle she never knew while he searched the Internet for a clue to a murderer who made tiny replicas of mundane every day things.
On a day much like any other, they read, slept, walked Hank, and dressed for work. Later, both would realize there was no premonition, no warning of what was to come. Grissom left Sara at the scene of death for one of the Dell foster kids. Only later would Grissom remember using a term of endearment as he left her. At some point DNA discovered their killer was not a male, but a female, and Grissom was back in the modeler's shop with the tiny doll dressed in white wearing a silver bracelet.
While they had all walked around confident in their ability to find this killer, she had walked among them—unseen, unnoticed, unimportant to their lives. Grissom was right; by observation, he had changed her pattern. As he lifted the red car, his heart almost stopped beating. The doll—the doll with its dark hair wearing its tiny vest—his eyes blurred and he had to blink as realization flooded his brain—the doll was Sara.
Sara had no time to lift her pink whistle to her mouth before sudden, intensifying pain stiffened her body knocking her with a vengeance to the concrete as she crumbled into a helpless heap. Tased, she thought. She was cognizant of being dragged across the floor, trying to talk, to resist, as her body was scraped and bruised by a strange young woman who heaved and shoved her into the trunk of a car. She was aware of a liquid being forced into her mouth, a hand covered her nose and she gasped, choked, and swallowed. For a few seconds, everything around her reached a point of crystal clarity—unbelievable physical pain as a result of the taser, an intense smell of musty dirt in her nose, the feel of the rough carpet in the trunk. She felt the girl's hands—soft hands treating her roughly—and heard breathing, rapid huffs and puffs of two people before realizing she was hearing her own lungs trying to fill with air. And, as if a switch was flipped, all went black.
Confusion came first; she remembered the elevator and talking to Grissom. Someone said her name as she reached her car but it took a while before she woke; alert enough to realize she was in the trunk of a moving car, hands fastened behind her back. Her mind began to clear as she remembered Grissom's voice on the phone; she twisted and the band on her wrists tightened. Flex-cuffs, she thought. She and Nick and Greg had spent an entire shift working with a sharp tool to release the catch on these flexible strips.
She remembered Grissom naming the miniature killer—Natalie Davis—but how did she end up in the trunk of a car, captured, drugged, and cuffed, and no one knew where she was. Her head hurt so much it was hard to think. Determined she was not going to die in a trunk, adrenaline poured into her blood stream and she worked with furious speed. She was not going to become human soup in a hot car. She struggled, used her teeth to pull the taser barb from her shoulder, grunted as she maneuvered the sharp point to her hands. Her mind raced—or functioned as fast as she could make it work with lingering effects of some knock-out drug—as she tried to put events in order. Her thoughts stumbled as she tried to figure out who had hit her with the taser and why she had been kidnapped.
A/N: And it begins--Sara's dark descent, but this is only the beginning! Keep reading--next chapter soon! Review, please!