Disclaimer: I don't own them.

A/N: First and foremost, I would like to thank my beta, Pati, without whom this would have likely taken much, much longer to get up (if that's possible...).

Secondly, I want to thank all my readers for sticking with me, and apologize for the long delay. Between final papers and projects and attempting to plan a wedding that is (holy shit!) less than three months away now, I just don't have the time to keep up with my writing. This is my last week of school, so things should get better, but the wedding will probably be a distraction from now until August. I'm sorry about that, not much I can do. Come August, hopefully I'll be back to my regular posting. I haven't forgotten about this story, or any of the others, though I know that waiting sucks! Thanks guys. 3

Hope you enjoy...

Chapter Twenty Four:

I had already spent countless hours staring at this particular ceiling, at one time or another. Countless, frustrated, blue-ball-induced hours noting the texture and the occasional crack, trying to lull myself into some kind of sleep while repeating the mantra that Sara deserved better. Though my insomnia this time around was not occupied with said mantra, nevertheless, I laid awake.

It had not been my intention to end up here, tonight. No, I had planned on leaving Sara at her door with a sweet goodnight kiss and a promise that I would take her out again—with the mental note that I would take her to more average restaurants in the future; I might not know much about women, but I hadn't been a CSI for nothing, either. She had still had a tag on her dress, peeking out in the back. When I pointed it out to her, she'd blushed in embarrassment and pulled it off quickly, despite the awkward stretch required to grasp hold of the thing, and had promptly dropped it on the ground at her side while I lead her into the restaurant. A quick glance told me it had cost her more than she could afford to spend, and that perhaps I had been much too concerned with taking her somewhere to pamper her—it had clearly caused her enough worry to make her spend money she didn't have.

She had been really, very beautiful in the yellow dress, of course. A glance at her as she opened the door had me somewhat breathless as I offered her the bouquet of roses and stammered out a customary—but completely true—comment on her loveliness. But she was beautiful so much of the time without even trying that I had expected as much—and, true to my vehement resolution that I would not end up here, staring at her ceiling, again—I had taken care of "business," so to speak, before coming to get her.

Never in my life had I been a man who felt the need to do such a thing, nor had I ever been so presumptuous, but Sara was a force of nature that I had succumbed to on more than one occasion, just barely preventing myself from taking what should be the most intimate of moments between us and cheapening it into a torrid, rushed encounter, and I was bound and determined that, on a night in which I was demonstrating how a man ought to treat the special woman in his life, I would exert more willpower.

Sara had never told me much about herself or her past, but I could piece together enough to realize that she probably hadn't been treated like she deserved to be treated in a very long time; maybe not ever. Her expectations of me and our relationship were especially revealing, but it was visible in other areas too. Her choice of a friend in Anni was the most obvious, but there were other things—the way she reacted to compliments, her relationship with Tony, Tony's strange warning, the way she carried herself as if she was simultaneously arrogant and insecure. And though I knew that it would be altogether smarter to avoid someone as obviously… troubled as Sara was, she drew me to her like a magnet. I had spent time as her teacher, her pursued love interest, her friend, and was just now stepping into the role of actual lover, and in each role I had felt like something deeper than mere attraction was resonating within me in her presence.

I still wasn't sure I really knew her, but I did know that she was absolutely worth the apparent risk involved.

Or, at least, I was pretty sure.

And the night had gone well; dinner, soft lighting, romantic music. She had commented a little curiously that there weren't any prices on her menu, and once I informed her that they were on mine, she seemed to be lost between feminist indignation and excitement over the idea. Conversation came easily; we'd been spending time together, not-dating, for months after all. We laughed, we ate, we danced, and after dinner we took a long walk along the ocean, despite the chill in the air. She blushed sweetly when I draped my suit jacket over her bare shoulders, and somehow I ended up at her front door, with Anni's car nowhere in sight, and a most fervent desire to continue the evening, despite my plans to the contrary. It did not seem appropriate to suggest we curl up with a movie like we usually did, after a night as magical as the one we'd just shared.

When she slid hands over my chest, grasped my tie, and pulled me slowly into a kiss, I admit that I might have had an idea where it was leading. But the slow sensuality of the act was so different from Sara's normal aggression in all things intimate that it was much easier to lose track of things. Much easier to be seduced when the seduction was subtle.

And it was. It felt like the very first time we'd seriously kissed… slowly. The first time it had been a steady build up rather than an explosion. It sent shivers through me, and it was really only natural to take the step closer to her, and to welcome her into my arms when she closed the remaining space between us. To my utter surprise, it was my tongue that parted her lips, not the other way around, and it took me a long moment to realize that she was attempting to open her door behind her back, to get us inside.

I wasn't mindless, so there was no moment of realization; perhaps I was like the frog who would sit in gradually heating water until I boiled, simply because the evolution of my reality was gradual. Perhaps it was just easier to cede tacit control to her when she gave me no reason to believe I should be fighting her.

I pulled back from her slowly, breathing deeply, and our heavy lidded eyes met. I had meant to wait; after all, tonight had been about showing her how a gentleman behaves, and sleeping with her on our first formal date was not the prime example of that, no matter how expensive the restaurant nor how romantic the evening. Her deep eyes though, molten chocolate with flecks of gold that really weren't visible until you were this close… they made me think that, just maybe, this could be okay. Maybe the perfect night was not about following protocol, but about the way I treated her. I could still be a gentleman in her bed, couldn't I?

Whether I could or not, she had already turned from me, fitting her key into the lock and twisting it almost desperately while my lips fell, again and again, to the nape of her long, gorgeous neck. It was not a thought-out action by any means; no, it was like gravity. Keeping away from her was an impossibility.

When she turned back to me, there was a slightly vulnerable look in her eyes, telling me that she was worried I would stop this again. It was this, more than anything, that made up my mind for me. Gentlemanliness aside, she didn't need the pain of rejection, and I truly, honestly, did not want to deny her anything, but especially this, tonight, in this moment, when she was so god-damned beautiful and her expression so uncharacteristically honest.

We did not stumble in a kissing, interconnected mass up the stairs, but rather, Sara slid out of her shoes and set her purse on the table, waiting for me to set my shoes beside her heels before she took my hand and pulled me up the stairs. She did not bother turning on the lights, but did take a moment, once we were standing in the darkness of her bedroom, to lock the door behind us, as well as the bathroom door that connected her room to Anni's. When she came back to me, she seemed almost hesitant—a trait I did not associate with Sara—and so I bent to press my lips to hers, willing her to trust this, and to trust me.

This time, we did move en kissing masse; my knees buckled beneath me as I backed into the bed, and together we rotated and then scooted, until a pillow was beneath my head and she was above me, her eyes bright even in the darkness, a siren looming over her captured sailor. I truly could not help but bury my fingers in her hair, despite the obvious care that had gone into putting it up. She reached up and, after a moment, her curls tumbled down, surrounding my face in a cascade of dark beauty. I struggled out of the jacket I'd slipped back into, after the beach, and she helpfully tossed it to the floor and tugged on my tie once more, this time in an attempt to remove it.

She had regained her confidence, and it was showing. Her movements were becoming quicker, more aggressive, her tongue darting in and out of my mouth with force and her lower body moving further up so that she could grind herself against me. I groaned out my reaction, but this was beginning to feel wrong. It was not the quiet, honest, intimate affair it had started out as, nor was it what I'd imagined for our first time, all those nights I'd stared at her ceiling and insisted that I was doing the right thing, in waiting. She had gone from one extreme to another, and I just wanted some middle ground.

My tie untied, she left it tucked beneath my collar as she began unbuttoning my shirt. Uncertain with her aggression, I attempted to give myself the upper hand again, unzipping her dress down the back and sliding it down, groaning out loud when I realized that she only wore a tiny pair of panties under it, as bright a yellow as her dress. For some reason, that was maddening, and for a brief moment I was lost in sliding my hands from her bare breasts to her barely-covered ass, squeezing and grasping and lifting my hips into her distracting movements, letting myself indulge. It was only when, having spread my shirt wide and licked a wet trail down the center of my chest to unfasten my pants, that I realized how similar this was to all of our other almost-encounters, and how much I didn't want that.

I didn't want to set a tone of lustful interaction, nor did I want her to think that I had expected this, in return for the date. I wanted to love her, slowly.

I did the only thing I could think of, and flipped her over, pressing her into the mattress and kissing her slowly, trying to take control of the speed and let her know that it truly was about her, not about the act of sex. Well, I mean, not that I didn't want the sex, but it was so much more than that.

She would not be deterred, a hand sliding down my side and then between us, to press against my barely-behaving erection, inducing a groan and an unintentional thrust against her hand and making my head spin. "Sara," I grunted out, trying to regain some control. "Sara, honey, slow down."

"I can't," she breathed against my cheek before dipping her head to kiss a line along the underside of my jaw. "I've wanted you for too long…" Her hand sped up, and in a bout of frustration, I seized her hands—one still pressed against me, the other gripping the curls on the back of my head—and pinned them to the mattress on either side of her head. There was a slight flash in her eyes, containing too many emotions to define simply, but her following actions hinted at some of them. An amused smirk slid over her lips, even as her voice trembled with slight apprehension. "…You like control, hmm?"

No, I thought, not any more or less than the average person. But I kissed her instead of voicing that, slowly, teasingly, biting at her lips gently, trying to entice her into a more relaxed exploration. She shivered beneath me, and I spread her bare legs with my knees, slowly sliding down until I was cradled between her thighs, putting most of my weight there and gently draping the rest of my body over her torso. Kissing her more deeply now, I released her hands and held her face between my palms, trying to communicate the depth of my affection for her in the gentle, measured pace I was setting. Her newly freed hands slid immediately down the sides of my chest, where she could touch me, and attempted to maneuver between us to touch me again, but couldn't. She huffed in frustration, breaking the kiss, but I continued on as if I hadn't noticed, kissing my way over her neck and sucking on her earlobe with just enough pressure to make her break out in goose bumps.

Her arms, complete with pebbled skin, gave up their attempts and moved back up, catching the sides of my shirt just below the collar and sliding them down over my shoulders, prompting me to first remove my hands from her face to let her remove the shirt, and then to pull away completely when they got stuck on my wrists. Pulling the entire shirt, still wrapped on my wrists, over my head, I tried desperately to unbutton them in the dark, frantically worrying that all the progress I'd made in slowing us down was about to be lost if I didn't get the damn things undone in the next few seconds.

I felt her shaking first, and a certain part of my brain—the tiny part that was unconcerned with remembering how buttons work—wondered at it, but it wasn't until I actually heard a giggle escape her lips that I realized she was laughing at me. I lifted my eyes from my wrists to see her pressing fingers over the deliciously kissable mouth, trying to stifle her reaction to my frustration. Even as I felt my own lips quirking in response, I narrowed my gaze at her, doing my best to look frustrated—and not entirely faking it—and her giggles burst forth, louder and stronger than even both of her hands could hold back. Her nose scrunched up, her eyes squeezed closed tightly, and her whole body shook with laughter. After a moment of watching her, so unreservedly happy at something so simple, I felt myself smiling too, and eventually laughing myself, not only at my predicament, but also at her explosive laughter. She had tears beginning to slide out of her eyes and down over her ears, and I knew without a doubt that I had never seen her look more beautiful than naked beneath me, convulsing with mirth.

If I could have bottled the moment, to keep with me always—into the long, dark moments when I wouldn't have her like this—I would have.

Eventually, we both relaxed, letting the laughter slowly ease its way from our systems, a stray chuckle escaping here and there as we came back to the moment, both breathing heavily (from the laughter, not the sex). My head was against her bare chest, pressed between her breasts, and it felt like the most natural position in the world, here with my ear tracking every breath in and out and each strong, vibrant heartbeat, even if my hands were still trapped in the dress shirt pressed between our naked stomachs.

As the full catharsis of the moment finally lifted a little, I raised my head and smiled lazily at her, wiping at the residual tear tracks while she smiled back at me, taking the hand by her face and slowly unbuttoning the cuff of my shirt, before reaching for the other and repeating her actions. It was a slow, sweet, simple action—honest and caring, with no small amount of intimacy—and we both felt the slight shift. My upper body was held up by my elbows, both hands up between us from her ministrations, and with our eyes locked she slowly pulled the shirt from between us and let it fall to the floor on one side of her bed, leaving a bare expanse of skin before us, each of our chests pressed together, merging into one form.

I was lifted enough that her breasts were open to the air, and after a long moment I broke eye contact with her to press kisses along the tops of them, descending into the valley, before kissing my way up from sternum to clavicle. This time, her hands slid languidly up my arms, fingertips cataloging their shape as they slipped onto my shoulders and into my hair, massaging lazily. A moan slipped from her lips when I kissed the hollow in her collar bone, and when I lifted up again to look into her eyes, she kissed me.

There was still purpose there, in her kiss, but not the urgent, burning kind. Her fingers tightened in my hair and mine found their way into her curls as well, and I quite lost track of things until her hips started rocking beneath me. This too, was different. Less about tempting me, and more about relieving her own tension while she was otherwise engaged in kissing me. I could feel her heat and wetness through my pants, and through the lacy, barely-there panties that still clung to her body in just the right way, and just the thought of finally pushing inside her was making me lightheaded.

It was a relief when her hands slid down our bodies again, fumbling with my belt and then roughly pushing down both my pants and boxers, baring me to the scratch of the lace and the delicious burn of being so close and yet so far. I bicycled my leg to remove the offending garments and broke the kiss to reach down and remove my dress socks too. Naked. I was completely naked with a woman fifteen years my junior who, less than a week ago, had been my student… A rush of uncertainty moved through me, but I was reassured when, instead of putting her hands on my newly-exposed arousal, she smirked at me, a silent tease over my need to remove the socks, and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, tugging me back down to her and renewing the skin-to-skin of a moment before that had been so intimate.

"Sara," I murmured, between kisses, trailing my hands down her sides in slow curves, intent upon removing those yellow panties and tossing them in the direction of my pants; it was absolutely my intention to keep them to remember this night. "Gil," she breathed back, her lips moving over my neck and shoulder, her voice breathless and husky.

It was, perhaps, the first time she had used my first name without prompting, and my hands on her hips trembled as they slid her final garment down her legs and threw it towards the end of the bed. "Are you on…?"

"Yessss," she breathed, her legs coming up on either side of me and putting my throbbing erection right where it wanted to be, pressed into her folds, encased in the heat and the wetness.

I swallowed hard, unable to prevent sliding against her. "Do you want me to use a… I mean, I don't have…"

"I trust you." She said, this time more clearly, and her hands gripped my shoulders as the second stroke against her had the head of my penis bumping against her clit.

I kissed her, then, and pulled back even farther in my stroke, until I felt the change—the slight dip as I lined up with her opening, accentuated by the soft gasp into my mouth as I did. I pressed slowly, and her body received me willingly, no resistance telling me to pull back and ease in again. No, it was a slow slide into paradise, and she arched up against me, hands gripping my shoulders again, her head thrown back against her pillows. Fully sheathed, I paused, panting, waiting for her to meet my eyes, and I was not disappointed. She shuddered, her inner muscles gripping me, and she rolled her head down and lifted heavy lids to lock gazes with me.

It wasn't about the slowness anymore; I moved within her at the only pace I could maintain without finishing prematurely or perpetuating my frustration, steady but not slow, but that didn't seem to matter. I could have been pounding into her like a madman, and there still would be no question that this was the most intimate experience of my life. We were making love, in the truest sense of the word, and it sent an emotional wave through me that had my mouth moving in response. Kissing and biting and licking her neck, all the while murmuring how good she felt and how beautiful she was and how long I'd wanted to be wrapped up in her, just like this.

When she went over the edge, it surprised me—I'd sped up, a bit, and I knew that I was getting close, but I had thought it was still too slow to get her anywhere. I'd been trying to gain control over myself long enough to get her to come, and then all of a sudden she was pulsing around me, her body arching violently, shuddering, and she was wailing out her pleasure to be heard by any and all. Her nails gripped my back, her ankles hooked around mine, and I was right on that fucking precipice, poised to go over. I hit the point of no return while she still writhed beneath me, and the most intense waves of pleasure rolled through me, rocking my hips harder and faster, anything to prolong the feeling. And then her wail became words, and her nails raked up to my shoulders, and everything changed.

"Oh, god, fuck, Dr. Grisssssoooommm!"

She collapsed against the pillows, sweating and panting, aftershocks within her still squeezing me sporadically, while I stared down at her with uncertainty. Mid-orgasm, the bliss had become hollow, almost painful, and my release into her had left me wanting. When we were making love, she called me Gil, but when she was coming… she was still with her teacher.

She let out a sound, half-hum and half-moan, and rolled her head gently on the pillows, and reached up to me without opening her eyes. "Put your weight on me, it's okay. I want to feel you."

I acquiesced, wrapping my arms around her, and rolled us onto our sides a few minutes later, feeling myself slip from her and the accompanying pang that came with the loss and the cold, and before long she was deeply asleep beside me, sweaty and sated, and still beautiful beyond description.

And I, I turned my eyes once more to her ceiling.