Author's Note: This chapter starts in on the M rated material right away and we pretty much stay there. There's no room, nor any real need, to ease into it or shy away from it. We've had an easy few chapters, all things considered, but as our intrepid duo broaches the topic of penetrative sex, it's important to remember there are some issues still to be dealt with.
There are some really ugly things that are recalled during otherwise sexy scenes. Sometimes these things halt forward momentum, sometimes Sam and/or Jack work around them. For folks with sexual trauma triggers, this chapter may cause issue.
One last piece of housekeeping and then we'll get on with things… Join us for the Sam and Jack Quarterly Claiming Challenge hosted at AO3 (again, link in my profile if you're reading this on FFN). This challenge is for Sam/Jack fans and is open to prompts/challenges/requests of all sorts: fic, art or vid (perhaps even something else we haven't thought of). If you have something you'd like produced or want the opportunity to produce something for someone else, hop on over and check it out. The more the merrier!
She's gotten bolder and he's gotten damn near reliable about forgetting to close the bathroom door, so it's almost inevitable when she catches him in the shower, one hand braced against the tile, the other wrapped around an impressive erection. She stops in her tracks. He hasn't heard her over the pounding of the water – or the blood rushing in his ears – and she's got front row tickets to a show she's suddenly very curious to see. Clearly he's not embarrassed about being caught in such a position. He is, after all, the one who left the door open. And, in recent weeks, it's become commonplace for them to coexist within that space.
She's also noticed he's not a man who is shy about his sexuality. She's quite pleased to discover, actually, that he's not all that modest within the confines of his own home, as she rather enjoys seeing him in various stages of undress.
Naked and aroused, however, is quite different than naked, aroused, and masturbating, her hormones supply, and she's suddenly flooded with desire – a real and aching desire that has no part of fear within it.
The glass enclosure of the shower hides nothing from her – especially considering that stuff he sprays on it to discourage fog; once spec ops always spec ops, he'd said with a spray bottle in one hand, a squeegee in the other, and a glint of the past in his eyes. Finally she must breathe too deeply, or maybe he just opens his eyes because he catches sight of her. He smiles lazily, his hips moving steadily into his grasp.
"So," he says, "Step Ten was fun this morning."
"Yes," she replies and can't quite believe the breathy quality of her voice. "It was."
He'd teased her nipple with his tongue, flicking it quickly then laving slowly before drawing on her deeply and then repeating until she'd slipped a hand between them and then between her own legs to press tightly against her insistent clit that was keeping time with her racing heart. The cotton beneath her hand was damp and warm and the pressure allowed her to take a deep breath in those moments she was sure she was going to hyperventilate. He'd followed the path of her hand with his eyes, pulling back from her breast long enough to groan. Abruptly, he'd rolled onto his back and she couldn't help but notice how hard he was, the way he grasped himself at the base of his penis and took deep breaths. They laid there, panting, hands between their own legs cooling down rather than heating up.
It feels a little stupid now, watching the way he's happy and languid in his arousal and quest to bring himself off, to have stopped this morning what her body is all but begging for right now. Then he offers to take his party to the bed if she really wants to watch and she's faced with the prospect of watching the fruits of his labors spill against his body. The momentary image of semen on skin makes red flash in front of her eyes and the pleasant light-headedness from moments ago is suddenly something acrid winding down the back of her throat.
It must shadow her eyes, because he's out of the shower, holding her by her upper arms and soaking her clothing, guiding her to the toilet where she can sit on the lid and catch her breath. All the while the hot water runs behind him, unheeded. He's not hard anymore, she realizes – confronted with his groin the way she is – as he regards her carefully. Somehow it makes her feel better to know his arousal can be tied so closely to her own.
"Sam? Tell me what it was?" he drops down in front of her, one knee digging in to the fuzzy, u-shaped rug in front of the toilet.
She's had little moments, here and there, as they've learned how to touch one another – as she's learned her body and its responses all over again – little moments where something didn't sit quite right or things she remembered loving suddenly felt wrong. She's not as sensitive as she used to be in certain places. Far more sensitive, she's found, in others. He's talked to her honestly about all those things. Coaxed words out of her she didn't even feel comfortable saying before her concept of sex had changed.
She tells him now how she'd wiped semen from her dirty thighs and belly, how at first, when she was healthy enough, she'd reached inside herself to empty what she could in the wake of a birth control shot that was overdue just days after they'd been delayed on that planet. She leaves to take some Tylenol and when he joins her for coffee she doesn't mention she overhead him throwing up.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
A couple of days after the upsetting masturbatory experience, Jack finds himself clicking through all the pages he can find online regarding Step Eleven – hand to genitals – especially if those sites specifically reference rape victims. He finds nothing of value. Or, at least, he finds nothing that gives him the guts to broach the idea of Step Eleven with Sam.
Finally, out of desperation, he calls Natalie. It's Saturday and he's grateful when she agrees to meet with him that very afternoon.
In her den, they sit on buttery leather furniture with cups of hot coffee and he comments that Erin's car wasn't even in the driveway. Natalie shrugs, smiles and says their session gave Erin an excuse to spend some time digging through an antique store she'd found.
He doesn't pull any punches when he recounts the events in the bathroom and he's pretty proud of himself when he doesn't blush. In the end, he just asks, "So what the hell am I supposed to do now?"
"Exactly what you have been doing," Natalie supplies, unhelpfully, in his opinion.
"No, I mean, at some point she's going to ask me to pull out the Step Eleven stuff, and I've got to tell you, Doc, this might be the first time in my life I'm not looking forward to getting my hands wet." This time he does blush. "So to speak."
"Jack, there's no telling what's going to set her off and what isn't. I don't think any of us saw the semen thing coming. The memory is a funny thing. You and I might watch the same event, at the same time, from the same angle. But your brain might choose seven or eight details to help in recalling that event while mine might choose only four and they might all be different. That's why there's no magic formula for helping victims of sexual trauma reintegrate into sexual relationships. You two are further burdened by not having prior positive sexual encounters to call upon.
"You've been doing great so far. You're taking your time with her, you're not pressuring her, you're being honest with her. You just keep doing that. Most importantly, you keep giving her as much time as she needs. It seems like she's coming to you when she's ready for the next step. If it takes a little longer to get her through this one, well, that's the way it goes."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She waits impatiently for him to get home. When he told her he was going to talk to Natalie, she pulled out the books Natalie had given her and tried to figure out how to get past her sudden aversion to the physical proof of his pleasure. She'd called Janet and the two of them had a frank discussion about ejaculate that Sam could have, in hindsight, probably lived without. But turning it into a bodily function seems to have helped. And now, when she pictures Jack coming she pictures the flex of his belly and the slide of his hand instead of sticky white fluid.
She wants to feel his abdomen tense under her hand. She wants to find out if his hips will press into the mattress or into the air. She wants to know if he'll bite his lip or if he'll say her name and if he closes his eyes when he comes. Somewhere along the line she'd forgotten there was more to his orgasm than the messy part and her body hums with the desire to learn him.
When he walks through the door he's barely set his keys on the little table when she's telling him what she wants. His eyebrows climb towards his hairline but she can tell he's interested. She kisses him, trembles with the way he groans into her mouth and follows her with his lips when she starts backing down the hallway.
She likes the way he sucks in his belly when she reaches for the button on his pants and the way the hairs on his abdomen feel against the backs of her fingers. With a little more moxie than she truly feels, she trails the backs of her fingers down his zipper and feels the power of an erection for the first time in far longer than she really even remembers. One thing she was never made to do was touch the Jaffa. And for that she's really grateful. Because when he says it's okay, when it's not going to be too much of a tease, her palm is already itching for the feeling of him in her hand.
He lays back on the bed, naked thanks to their busy hands, and she settles next to him on her side, propped up with her head in her hand. When he takes himself in hand, he looks her in the eye and tells her that she's beautiful, that he's so happy she's in his life, and that she makes him feel like a good man.
She doesn't look at his penis, he watches the way she licks her lips, she puts her hand on his forearm and revels in the power of the muscles there as they flex. Before he comes he holds her hand to his belly, she feels the way he quivers and when he comes he's careful to come into the cup of his hand.
When he goes to clean up she catalogues his reactions: the way his hips pressed up into his hand, the way he bit the tip of his tongue and groaned, and mostly the way he never took his eyes off hers.
When he comes back to the bed he lays down facing her where she's still propped up with her head in her hand. He puts a hand on her hip and kisses her deeply. He ignores the way she reflexively rolls her hips into him but lets his caress feather down onto her ass, touching a part of her he's carefully avoided until now. It's pleasant and it makes her tingle.
After a few moments they're just lying there, petting one another softly in the wake of the heat they'd created.
"Have you touched yourself since you've been home?" he asks her, seemingly out of the blue, but in the wake of what they've done she doesn't quite feel embarrassed by the question.
"Once," she says and is amused at the incredulous look he doesn't quite school in time.
"Okay, I've gotta say I wasn't expecting that." He glides his hand over her hip and tucks his finger into the belt loop of her jeans. "Did you come?"
She shakes her head. "No. But I wasn't trying very hard. I just wondered if I felt different."
"Did you?"
"No. Not at all."
"That's good, right?"
"I don't know."
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
It takes a few days but finally she says something about wanting to touch him. Part of him screams YES! while part of him worries that maybe it's not really time for Step Eleven. All the literature says that it's really the point of no return. That if they start touching each other that way and then don't go all the way, that secretly one or the other of them is going to be pissed about it. He likes to think his self-control is better at his age, but it's been a long time since he's been in a relationship where sex wasn't the foregone conclusion to heavy petting.
"Look, it doesn't actually say this anywhere, but I can't help but think it's important that you're able to touch yourself before I touch you. I'm just saying that the first thing inside you after everything you've been through should probably be something you've got complete control over."
While she mulls it over, he considers that it's probably the most sexually insightful thing he's ever said – even if it turns out to be a load of crap.
"I have touched myself," she finally reminds him.
"But you didn't come."
She blushes and looks away from him, embarrassed in the light shining on her own body's lack of reaction.
"What if you took care of that part, and I was with you? Talking to you? Touching the parts of you I've already touched?"
She tells him she's uncomfortable with the idea of masturbating in front of him, how it's something she hadn't even been comfortable doing before. Finally, she agrees to think about it.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
He's sitting on the couch when she tells him she trusts him and she wants to try. She goes off to take a hot bath with a half a glass of wine – enough to take the edge off but not enough to lower her inhibitions to some place she may not be happy about afterwards.
When she rejoins him, she finds he's taken the time to build a fire, lower the living room lights, and make a soft palate of blankets on the floor. A dry snow curls around outside and she figures this is as good a place as any to get in touch with her feminine side.
She's barely dressed in a short satin robe and her hair is wet and tucked back behind her ears. The look he gives her makes anticipation prickle low in her belly. She settles next to him on the floor and pulls the slick tie on her robe before her nerves get the better of her. He reaches for her, but he stops just short of actually touching her. Instead he kisses her deeply, probing the deep parts of her mouth with his tongue.
The feel of his mouth against hers, so familiar now, so exhilarating, makes her fingers itch to touch skin. She settles for her own, knowing this is why they're here. She threads her other fingers into his hair and guides his mouth down from hers until she can nudge his lips with her breast. He looks up at her and smiles and she feels the first real flood of arousal sweep down her body and settle behind her clit. She's compelled to trail her fingers down her body. She remembers the way she'd finger the edges of her belly button and how the almost-tickle would heighten her anticipation. She's pleased to discover that trick still works, that somewhere inside her the same things still bring her pleasure, that while Major Carter might be different, Samantha – at the heart of things – isn't so different after all.
She dips her hands between her legs and feels the way she's already wet to the touch. She strokes up one side of the sensitive bundle of nerves and down the other, faltering before she finds a familiar rhythm perfected over a decade ago. She concentrates on the scrape of his teeth against her nipples, the flick of his tongue against her skin, the light suction over her breastbone, the way he can't go more than a few breaths without leaning into her and kissing her.
When he stops to catch his breath, resting forehead to forehead with her, she catches the heavy, heady scent of her arousal and so does he. Together they look down her body. Her fingers glisten wetly in the firelight. He watches her draw almost lazy circles around her clit, and she feels oddly like she should be doing more to race towards her finish line. In her past, she'd have been rough with herself, a little insistent, fast. She'd have buried fingers inside herself. And while what she's doing feels good, it doesn't feel good enough.
But she knows she can come this way. If she just concentrates hard enough, if she just pictures him in her mind… he's a better lover than she ever fantasized him being and there's so much they haven't even done yet. Back when, back before everything that happened, just the thought of him in her bed, the imagined feel of his mouth on her skin was enough. The reality, in this moment, it's not enough. She wants things she's afraid to give herself. She feels empty and clutching.
"Hey," he says softly, "it's okay to stop."
She realizes she's tense and the sounds she's making are frustrated. He's still stroking the skin of her belly but the tension she's quivering with isn't from the pleasured end of the coil.
"No," she says in a rush of breath. "It's not."
He reaches for the hand that's buried between her legs and pulls it up to rest damply between her belly and his hand. "Yes. It is."
"I'm so close," she says and squeezes her eyes shut. A tear slips down the side of her face and she suddenly hates herself.
"Open your eyes, Sam."
The sound of his voice, a soft and loving bedroom version of the Colonel she'd followed so long, makes her stop the spiral into her thoughts. She breathes for a moment and then locks eyes with him. He drags her hand back down to her heat their fingers tangle together where she's not as wet as she was. He kisses her; she arches under their hands in a way that must be ingrained. He pushes her fingers down farther until they're positioned at her opening. He taps the back of her hand to indicate she shouldn't move when he pulls his hand away and despite a little trepidation, she doesn't. Not even when he licks the ends of his fingers. He reaches back down and taps her clit softly. Her hips spring up into the cup of his hand and she mewls into his mouth. The intensity of her reaction to his touch surprises her even after everything she's already experienced with him.
He kisses her languidly, his fingers moving rhythmically beneath her wrist and then she shifts, her body hungry for things her brain is still fighting, and she gently, slowly slides a finger deep inside herself. Her muscles clench around the intrusion but not in the way she feared, not in protestation but in appreciation for filling the chasm that's been a part of her for so long now. They move together until she's wet all over again and it's only minutes more before she wrenches her mouth away from his and sighs against his ear. She's unusually quiet when she comes. It's not powerful, the earth doesn't move, but she tightens and then she relaxes into the pleasure that rolls through her like waves.
She disappears inside herself for as long as she can, cataloguing their reactions to one another. When she resurfaces, he's stroking her hips, her ribs. He threads their fingers together and grounds her against blankets they're lying on.
When she meets his eyes again he says, "Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
She laughs.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Off-world he eats goop out of an MRE bag and warms his feet by the fire. He shivers and scoots a little closer to the flames. As far as he's concerned they shouldn't be traveling to planets in their winter season when it's already winter on Earth. Where's the fun in that?
"Cold, Jack?"
Damn straight he's cold. At home there's a woman and a fireplace he can't get out of his head. Instead he's got a campfire, a couple of two-man tents, and a team of guys who haven't showered in three days.
Three days. He thinks about what he's missing. She's probably at home, he checks his watch, in bed, doing her homework. He's wondering if she's worked back up to earth-shattering climaxes yet or if she's saving that part of the experience for him.
Across the fire, Daniel and Mctierney exchange knowing glances and he knows his far-off gaze gave him away. "I'm fine," he grouses, but takes the fourth watch in retaliation for their good humor.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
At home, the smell of his aftershave makes her tingle in all the interesting places. Without him there, she finds her body yearning for things she can't give it – like the hard planes of his chest against hers and the as yet untested feeling of his heavy arousal against her thigh. She finds herself cycling through all the anticipatory feelings she'd had just before she'd slept with Harrison Adams the first time after junior prom.
Suddenly, in its absence, the idea of Jack's hard penis is something she wants more than anything in recent memory. The night before he comes home, she's turned on in a way she hasn't been in a very long time, she forgets her fear and thrusts two fingers deeply inside herself, and when she comes it's loud and harsh and familiar, the way her fantasies of him were before he'd become her reality.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
In the end it's not awkward the first time she wraps her hand around his hard-on. Her fingers are slick with her own arousal when their mutual masturbation turns into Step Eleven. She tenses when he slides his middle finger inside her, pressing upwards against her tissues, but he coaxes her through it with soft words and the flick of his tongue against her ear lobe. He thrusts into her hand and when the head of his dick bumps against her thigh she jumps, closes her eyes and redoubles her efforts to stay in the moment.
When he comes he turns from her so he comes on himself. He doesn't stop her when she reaches out to trace her finger through the white ribbon of pleasure on his ribcage.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The next time, she asks him to come on her and he resists. Can't, as a matter of fact. The simple request kills his desire as quickly as she makes it. She hugs him, kisses him, but he leaves their bed and storms around the kitchen looking for Guinness and a pint glass for fifteen minutes before he gives up on both and goes back to bed. He's angry at himself for getting angry during sex but she just smiles, kisses his forehead and strokes him back to readiness. When it's time to come she doesn't mention where he might do that and when he lets go he doesn't notice the way he spills over her fingers.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
When it finally happens, it isn't a conscious decision. His fingers are inside her, her head is thrown back and she's begging him for something but neither knows just what. With a quick movement, he's on his back and she's astride him, his hard cock trapped between them drenched in her insistent desire. She moves against him, rolling her hips over him. He raises his hands to her breasts but it's not enough. Then she's reaching between them and before he can ask her if she's sure, he's inside her.
They stop. Her eyes fly open and she plants a hand over his heart. She releases a shuddery exhale and the shocked look on her face melts into an intense pleasure he's never seen. Her head falls back, she worries her bottom lip with her teeth and then she's moving. Sliding up and down, she grasps his waist with her free hand.
He coaxes her down and kisses her deeply, revels in the way her teeth scrape across is jaw, rests his hand on the jut of her hip bone.
"Do you want…on our sides?" he asks, not sure if she wanted or needed the control or if she just needed him, finally.
She nods and they tip over. He coaxes her thigh up over his hip and he leans back just a little until she's completely open for him. He pushes his hips up into her and the pleased and needy sounds she's making are better than anything he's ever heard because whatever it is that's happening in her head has nothing to do with her past and everything to do with their future.
She doesn't come when he's inside her, but she clenches around him as he does and he watches her carefully, subjugating his greater pleasure to see if anything negative happens in her eyes. When he reaches between them and fills her with his fingers and presses into her clit with the heel of his hand, she tenses and he murmurs to her; forehead to forehead, her eyes squeezed closed, she comes, mouth open, hips tipping into his hand.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Later they make toast and coffee in the dim lights from the Christmas tree two rooms away. There's an ease and fluidity about the way she moves, a boneless liquidity. She drinks half of her coffee and eats both their toast before pulling him into the living room with the smile he remembers from the early days when all he had was the way he could make her laugh.
The make love again and he watches the way the white lights turn her pale skin golden and blonde hair silver. This time when she comes it's clenching tightly around him so he follows her over the edge. There's no hesitation. There's no fear. There's no memory the two of them haven't made together.
