Twenty-eight: Boundless

Sometime in the still as yet quiet stillness of the morning, Sara woke to the smell of the sea, the gentle rock and sway of the boat and the sure, steady beat of Gil Grissom's heart beneath her ear.

As she had slept like she hadn't in months - years - probably since the last time they'd been cuddle up close like this - and with all the attendant strangeness, it took Sara a rather long moment to register precisely where she was and the fact that she wasn't in fact still dreaming. Although she probably should have immediately recognized the latter as him here with her was all too good to be any dream.

From the firm almost protective arm about her waist and the equally tender brush of his thumb along the back of her hand, she sensed she wasn't the only one awake.

"Hey," she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep as she eased herself up on one elbow to beam down bright at him.

"Hey," Grissom replied in kind, impressed that he'd even been able to manage to get that single syllable out, captivated as he was by the sight of Sara before him. But then she always was beautiful first thing upon waking: fresh faced, hair mussed, her warm gaze still drowsy, all the cares of the day having yet to settle over her again.

Only this morning even more so.

"Good morning. It is morning?" she asked.

The cabin lacking any windows, there was no natural clue to the hour.

Grissom glanced over at his watch. "Only just."

Brushing her tousled curls back behind her ear, he urged, "Honey, go back to sleep."

As tempting as that idea might be, Sara found herself too pleasantly wide awake with him to want to wish so soon to slip back into slumber. That and Grissom's alertness didn't strike her as being of the recently acquired variety.

"Please tell me you slept," she said.

Grissom nodded, smiled, recalling as he did so all the times he had said as much to her over the years. "I did."

In point of fact, he, too, had slept better than he had since the last time he'd fallen asleep with Sara in his arms.

It was then Sara realized that as comfortable as she had been, considering neither of then had moved much during the course of the night, with him having been pinned beneath her like this, Sara knew Grissom couldn't have been.

"I think," she sighed with a rueful smile of her own, "we may need to rethink the sleeping arrangements."

To which Grissom gave her an uncharacteristically emphatic, "No -"

"Come on, I know you have to be sore," she insisted, indicating the shoulder she had slept on.

Grissom grinned this off, his expression indicating he couldn't care less, even if he had indeed woken to his arm definitely asleep. True, too, he'd had to flex his fingers back from numbness and his whole left side still tingled with pins and needles. Though as it was worth any amount of discomfort to have her close again, there was no way he was going to ever willingly surrender that pleasure, discomfort or no.

Particularly as he found it already all too soon gone, Sara having suddenly slid from the sheets; leaving him feeling oddly bereft.

"Come here," she said, indicating he should take a seat at the edge of the mattress.

However unclear he might be as to her intentions, Grissom did as he was told.

His momentary disappointment at the loss of her warmth beside him gave way to delight when her ever nimble fingers set to work freeing the stiffness from his shoulders. At the way the heat of her hands bled through the thin cotton of his undershirt, his eyes drifted contently closed.

The barrier, however, soon proved too much for them both.

"This would be a lot easier if -" Sara supplied, clumsily tugging the T-shirt over his head without asking. Grissom wasn't about to complain.

Only -

He was suddenly struck by an abrupt bout of self-consciousness. While Gil Grissom had never been a particularly vain man, as his hair had gone mostly grey these days; his body more than a little soft about the middle over the years, it was hard not to feel that way next to Sara's persistent youth and slightness.

He needn't have worried. Sara didn't seem to notice nor care, her gaze as warm, wanting and appreciative as ever as she took in his deep sailor's tan, his now far more salt than pepper thin patch of chest hair, the several scars which hadn't been there before (there were stories there, she knew). His sun and aged silvered short-cropped hair was certainly, she thought, sexy as hell.

As if sensing the source of his sudden reticence, Sara leaned in and murmured into his ear: "Relax, Gil. I have seen it all before you know.

"And you don't have any reason to be shy either."

Any further hesitancy instantly vanished at the all-consuming contact of skin on skin. Her hands were heaven.

Overcome, Grissom's eyes drifted closed once more; his head fell forward. His body relaxed as her tender touch took him in.

His contented sigh escaped before he could contain it.

"Better?" Sara asked.

"Mmm," was as coherent a comment as he could manage at the moment.

Before long, her strong, yet gentle, deliberate fingers had worked the last of the knots free from his shoulders. Grissom wasn't about to tell Sara this however. He was enjoying having those hands of hers on him again too much to want it to stop any time soon.

Herself apparently grasping that her massage had done the trick, Sara began to shift her ministrations from Grissom's shoulders and neck down his spine. Her thumbs walked their way down each of his vertebrae, while the tips of her short nails traced up his back. Before long, the contact left him barely breathing.

When a low rumbling purr gave way to a rather emphatic moan, Sara chuckled, "Been a while?"

While her comment may have been meant more as a tease than anything, Grissom replied in earnest, "Too long. Nearly three years too long."

Sara did the mental math before stammering in surprise, "There... There hasn't been anyone... since -"

"Since you?" he finished. Then meeting her gaze, he answered with an equally honest, "No."

Caught off guard at this, Sara simply stared.

"You can't make love to someone when you're still in love with someone else.

"At least I can't," Grissom readily confessed.

However doubtful he might be of her answer, he hazarded to ask, "You?"

Sara shook her head. "No, not really. I mean Nick tried to set me up a few times. Finn, too, but -"

Despite all of Nick Stokes' well-meant, good-natured comments about it being time for her to get back on the horse Sara just hadn't been interested. Thankfully, work had frequently provided a convenient excuse.

"His heart was in the right place," she said, "Hers, too, in her own way." Then with a shrug Sara added, "Would never have worked out.

"They weren't you."

They shared a smile at this.

Nevertheless, there was one thing Sara needed to know. She hesitated, not entirely certain she wanted or was ready for his answer. Yet she had to ask.

Heather Kessler's taunts about the shared intimacy between her and Grissom coupled with Dalton Betton's When she got you into her bed, you didn't want anything else, still ringing in Sara's ears, she stammered, "So... you and Heather didn't - weren't -"

Grissom's brows knitted as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him, which apparently it hadn't.

"We... We spoke on the phone several times after I'd heard her granddaughter had been killed," he said, still more perplexed than anything. "But I only saw her again a few hours before you did."

Besides, there hadn't been anything even remotely beyond friendship between him and the former dominatrix turned therapist for far more than a decade now. That and honestly what little once had been paled in comparison to the life he'd had with Sara, at least that life before he'd gone and royally screwed it up foolishly attempting to be noble.

Surely Sara knew this. Though from the way she was looking at him now, more surprised than relieved, perhaps not.

Grissom reached up, brushed her hair back behind her ears.

"Sara," he said softly, "Honey - I told you: You'll always be my last."

Sara, unable to summon up any verbal reply to this, opted instead to press her lips to his in response. The last of her fears assuaged, she let herself go and melted completely into the kiss and the ones that followed.

Upon them finally breaking apart to breathe, Grissom slid his arms around her; drew her close so that he might lean his forehead against the barely there bow of her belly. Her hands settled in his grizzled hair. They rested there together like that for a while.

Until Sara felt, rather than heard, him chuckle.

"What?" she asked.

Fond amusement filled his upturned face. "What is it with you and buttons? I just noticed -"

That wasn't all he'd just noticed. His eyes roving over her, Grissom happily took in how the flannel shirt he had lent her the night before concealed very little of the long, lithe lines of her bare legs.

No, there really was nothing more heartrendingly alluring than Sara in one of his shirts he had to admit, albeit it privately. In that moment, he swore never to complain about her habit of appropriating them ever again, except perhaps in jest, as in now.

At his open display of simultaneous appreciation and hilarity, Sara glanced down to find she really had managed yet again to do up her buttons wrong.

Some things never changed.

Still, she offered by way of excuse: "It was late and I was a little -"

"Preoccupied?" he offered in return.

"Distracted," Sara countered. "And very."

She might have sighed and shook her head after saying this, only his fingers were hovering just above said offending buttons.

"May I?"

"Be my guest," she said by way of amused assent.

Only far longer than Sara would have deemed wholly necessary, Grissom toyed with the bit of round white plastic before finally slipping it free. Equally slowly the next and a third followed as he worked his way up from hem to collar.

Except instead of doing the buttons up properly again once they'd all finally been undone, he eased the fabric aside, three of his fingers tracing their way along the bare skin of her sternum down to her belly button before both of his thick, palm calloused hands slid about her waist.

It was her turn to sigh and shiver more than a little weak-kneed at his touch.

Pleased, more than pleased, to discover she wasn't wearing anything underneath, Grissom nuzzled her soft, warm skin. His beard and lips grazing along that sensitive space along her ribs, Sara luxuriated in the attention.

"Please," she murmured breathily, "tell me you aren't planning on shaving it all off again."

While he might not always be the most socially astute of individuals, Gil Grissom knew there was only one answer to a question asked like that.

Accordingly, his "No, dear," buzzed against her flesh.

Sara nearly swooned as his rough, rope-worn hands slid up her legs.

"Gil -"

When he unexpectedly withdrew, her eyes snapped open wide.

Sara was about to ask what the flash of concern on his warm, willing, wanting yet waiting face portended when he asked, "Too soon?"

Perhaps it had been a while and maybe rationally neither of them should rush into anything, but Sara found she didn't want to wait or to be wooed. All she wanted was him. Besides, they had wasted far too much time already; would have nearly lost everything if Betton had gotten his way.

Life was too short.

So Sara shook her head. "Too long," she replied and kissed him in such a way there was no way to mistake her desires.

Definitely too long, she thought.

Too long since his hands - his mouth - had been on her like this. Too long since he'd rendered her speechless, breathless, thoughtless in that way only he ever had. Too long since she had felt so utterly lost - and found - all at once.

Her lips urging his open, they kissed as if they were both young and hungry again. Melting into each other, neither resurfaced until they both needed to come up for air.

However each proved pleased at the prospect, neither, too, had any clue how Sara had ended up straddling Grissom's lap. Nor did they care. They were far too busy kissing in any case.

While Sara doubted any of their former coworkers could have even possibly begun to fathom it, Gil Grissom knew how to kiss. He kissed like he did everything - thoroughly - and with a passion that superseded his love of insects, obscure quotations and other various arcana. She could feet it heart and soul - and down to her toes.

That morning, after the past few days - and years - of distance, neither could get close enough, be close enough, stay close enough.

Wanting nothing more than to be skin on skin close, Grissom slowly peeled the plaid from first one shoulder than the other, tracing lingering kisses along her newly exposed collarbones as he went.

For her part, Sara didn't even have the chance to feel self-conscious. His eyes and hands took her in with an appreciation that bordered on reverence. For the body beneath them proved even more beautiful - more everything - than he remembered. But then somehow his memories of her - of their times together - had always paled compared to the reality of her.

They always had.

True, he had seen it all before, kissed and caressed it all before, and yet as familiar as it all felt, it felt, too, like the first time. Sara simply happened to him all over again. She always had. She, he knew now, always would.

"Beautiful," he breathed into her hair as his palms and fingertips played over her bare back, inhaling as he did the scent of sunshine, sea, salt, the stars and Sara on her skin.

"So beautiful."

Sara, never having seen herself that way notwithstanding, with him here like this, she could almost believe the words could be true.

"Sara -" he said, so much in those two syllables and yet nowhere near enough.

His eyes searched hers, his lips twitched as if there was much he wanted to, but couldn't quite say.

She understood this, felt much the same. Nor did she need the words. They were obvious in his eyes, his touch, in that smile he never wore for anyone but her.

No, she didn't need the words.

In that moment, she realized the truth of this:

While sometimes all we have are words to make love with;

sometimes we need no words at all.

Taking his face into her hands, she pulled him close and against his lips murmured, "Show me."

He did.

xxxxxxx

Unable to get enough of her, Grissom drew Sara in for another kiss. And another. These longer; deeper.

How had he forgotten how it was to kiss her? The feel of her lips as ever soft, warm, giving and yielding and so very Sara.

Words might fail him, but his hands knew what to do. How to touch and take in the body he knew by heart. How to please and pleasure her. How to make her moan and murmur his name.

Grateful for the gentle pressure at the small of her back to steady her, Sara arched into the hand sliding down her spine. She gasped. Her head fell back.

His mouth made its way from hers down the full length of her exposed neck.

The better to brush his lips along her breasts, he eased her onto her knees before he teased first one then the other of her pert nipples taut with his tongue.

Near whimpering with pleasure, yet wanting - needing - more, there was no way to misread her long, low moan of "Gil -"

"Soon," Grissom grinned against her skin, his pleasure at her pleasure plain.

Oh how he loved being able to satisfy her like this, watch her eyes both darken and brighten with desire as she turned wanton - and wet - beneath his mouth and the motion of his facile fingers.

Near desperately, she clung to him as his lips and thumb tormented her into ecstasy.

Before long she had to bury her moans into his shoulder; he cradled her quivering body close, losing himself in the catch and hitch of breath, the shudder and sigh of pleasure pouring over her.

Sara sank against him spent, content, albeit wanting more, wanting all of him, to be once more as near as two bodies could be.

Barely back to breathing again, the persistent twitch of him against her inner thigh roused and aroused her.

In between their renewed open-mouthed kisses, Sara relieved him of the last barrier between them.

As easy as they ever had, the two of them fit easily together again.

With a great gasp of pleasure of her own, Sara eased him deeper into her snug, wet warmth. Skin against skin, breath against breath, the slow sweet sultry sway began, adding their own rhythmic rocking to the gentle lapping of the waves outside.

The love flowing freely between them, the rest of the world faded away in those breathtaking moments; then, there, there was only each other, lovers once again in every sense of the word.

I love you. I love you. I love you, each longed to say, but with barely air for breath, there were no words.

Their lips and hands, bodies and eyes, spoke for them instead.

It took every last shred of his self control to hold himself back, to make it all last even just a little longer. It felt too good; she felt too good, to so soon surrender.

But feeling her begin to quake and tremble in his arms once more, Grissom's body joined hers. With moan-filled kisses, they let go together.

Definitely too long, they both silently agreed as the peace and quiet comfort settled over them both.

They stayed lost in each other, kissing, caressing; relishing the continued closeness. As Grissom traced absent circles along the small of her back, Sara settled deeper into him.

It wasn't until he tasted the salt on her lips that Grissom drew back in concern unsure as to what he'd done.

If he'd hurt her -

"Sara? Honey?"

Only Sara practically beamed. While her eyes may have been wet, her smile blazed bright.

"Happy tears?" he asked, recalling her earlier assurance that not all tears were unhappy ones.

"Very."

Understanding this, he thumbed then kissed the last of the wetness away.

They shared a fond smile.

How she loved that man, bugs, quotes, awkwardness and all.

Except, even though she had said as much to Heather Kessler, indirectly hinted as much to Catherine, Sara realized she hadn't as yet told him, hadn't said the actual words. She had to tell him.

Her resultant "I love you" came quick, but true.

He knew. Grissom already knew, but it was still good to hear.

His own reply proved as solemn as any vow:

"Always."

xxxxxxx

Much later that unhurried morning found Sara Sidle relishing how the warmth of the sun and the cool of the breeze played along her skin as she stood along the forward railing of the Ishmael, clad once again in Grissom's shirt as well as her own now freshly laundered jeans; her shower damp curls blowing about her.

She enjoyed even more the silent slip of one of Grissom's hands along her waist as he drew himself to her. He pressed a kiss into her hair. She leaned back against him, content.

They lingered like that a long while, silently snuggled close.

Not all silences were hard or hurtful. This one felt like a stolen bit of paradise neither had ever hoped nor dared to believe they might possess again.

"So," Sara said after a while, "what happens now?"

Grissom appeared to consider this for a moment, before replying:

"Anything -"

"Anything?" she echoed.

Then in the same instant they each agreed:

"Anything -"

Continued in Handheld