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A/N: :) Once again, I doubt my readers will be very happy with me. Sorry... hehe.

Enjoy!

Chapter Seventy Nine:

I felt Gil climb into bed behind us, still fully clothed, and finally let myself relax, drifting quickly off to sleep despite the overwhelming weight on my mind. A part of me recognized this as significant, but another part of me said I was simply desperate for human interaction. Because I wasn't ready to deal with what Gil and I were or what we would become, and I felt guilty for wanting him, after everything that had happened with Jace… I found myself arguing, internally, that I really didn't want him.

None of these arguments, of course, held any weight when I woke up hours later with him still pressed up close behind me, something distinctly hard and familiar pressing into my back. From his breathing, it was clear that he was asleep… he was unaware of his erection and it was certainly unintentional. I knew, as a scientist, that the body was in a state of arousal when in REM sleep. It was natural. …I also knew, as a scientist, that nine months after a tragedy, birth rates skyrocketed—people sought comfort in each other… and biologically, sought to create life when confronted with the loss of life.

I rationalized that the presence of his erection meant nothing just like the fact that I could feel myself reacting to it meant nothing—they were both scientifically explainable and the occurrence of them together was coincidental… and anomaly. Really—I could write a thesis on the all the reasons why it was meaningless and I should just forget it and go back to sleep.

My mind, however, seemed to be far from controlling my impulses… my hand had already released Ayla's small form and was sliding over my hip, moving slowly but surely behind me to run my fingertips over him. I bit my lip as his arm tightened around me in response, remembering vividly the times in which I had been intimately acquainted with this part of his anatomy… how it had felt, smelled, tasted, looked… the expressions that crossed his beautiful features and the sounds that had slipped from his lovely lips when I had laid my attention on him…

I felt, almost as if I were removed from the action, my hand tightening around the length of his shaft. A delighted smile crossed my lips, unexpectedly, when he hissed in my ear and his hips arched up to me. But his breathing had changed now and his head was lifting in confusion to look down at me. I felt the smile fall away and a strange sort of defiance cross my features instead, anticipating his disapproval and already angry with him for it. He swallowed loudly in the stillness, his breathing fast and yet still shaky.

"…Sara?"

"Gil." I responded, and though I intended this response to be very enigmatic and emotionless… instead it came out in a quavering voice I did not like nor recognize.

I blinked several times, feeling my features warring between defiance and uncertainty and shame at the very real desire I had to feel him close to me again… feel life pulsing through him and, vicariously, through me. He could make me feel alive again, when I had really only been functioning for… longer than the 48 hours of hell I'd just endure. …I'm been merely functioning for months, but as this had been an improvement from not functioning, I had been content with that.

Tonight, I wasn't happy to simply not be dead. I wanted to be alive.

His eyes moved in long, slow sweeps over my face, making me feel like he was looking right through me—like he saw everything that I was and everything I lacked and all of my emotions that even I couldn't truly understand in the moment were laid bare to him. Though I did not move my hand from him, I braced myself for the rejection I knew was coming… for him to say that he didn't really think it was a good idea or for him to insist that we talk about what this meant and what we were and where it was going.

He made no demands… he closed his eyes slowly and then reopened them, his voice soft and gentle. "…Are you sure?"

Oh god yes, I was sure. I rolled over to face him, capturing his lips and already tearing at his shirt with both hands, desperate for the press of his skin and the feel of his light layer of chest hair and the hard throb of exactly what had started all of this… but he pulled back from me gently, his palms running over my shoulders, slowing and calming me. "Sara… Sara, honey, Ayla's right there…"

I blinked in surprise and felt a stab of guilt that she had completely slipped from my mind in the moment, but I shoved it aside. "…My bedroom." The words came out on a rush of breath and then he was slowly sliding out of bed, reaching out a hand for me to take, and leading me gently down the hall to my bedroom. I still felt the heat and the speed and the adrenaline rushing through me… I wanted to tear his clothes from his body—feel every inch of him. I wanted him to pound into me until it hurt, because it would mean feeling something acutely, without the heavy fog through that had been obscuring everything.

But Gil would not indulge me, in that… I pushed him roughly to the bed and straddled his hips, and his hands came up to my waist, slowing my movements even as my hands finished what they'd started moments before, tearing his shirt from his body. Once they had, his palms inched up my spine, slow and deliberate, bending me forward until our chests were pressed together. He kissed me with a gentle kind of fierceness that took my breath away and left me reeling, and calloused fingers did not tear my clothes off but rather slipped them from my body with caresses.

I wanted ferocity… I wanted him to fuck me. …He wouldn't let me. Wouldn't give in and give me what I wanted. He made love to me, instead.

He lovingly traced my curves with his palms, curled his fingers into my hair, pressed his lips to every inch of skin he could reach and dipped his tongue into each dip and valley—between my breasts, the hollow of my throat, my belly button. He refused to let my urgency sweep us up, and so I had no choice but to match his pace, despite my frustration that he was denying me what I so desperately needed. I felt tears stinging my eyes I was so upset at him denying me… but a voice in the back of my head told me that if I let these tears fall, they would never stop… because they were for far more than my minor irritation.

I choked them back, though they arose again when he gently rolled me onto my back and slipped inside me, his breathing and the pounding of his heart against my breast the only indication that he might feel desire as acutely as I did. He loved me slowly, fully, patiently, and though I was certain that my desperation would prevent me from finding the release I sought, I underestimated him. He wouldn't let me give up, though I gasped out several times, "…I don't think I can."

He would simply draw me closer to him, run his hands up the length of my sides, and press a kiss into my hair. I wanted him to give up and just finish already… or to argue with me… to try to force the orgasm I was certain would not come so that I could get angry and storm away. He didn't… he murmured into my hair that I was beautiful, and that Ayla was beautiful… that she was safe and I was safe and he was never going to let anything hurt us ever again. He whispered through ragged breaths that he had never stopped loving me and that he would never find another woman like me if he lived for another thousand years.

He breathed against my ear that he only knew what it felt like to be whole when he was deep inside me and that I made him feel things he'd never imagined before. He swore, lips moving along my neck, that nothing had ever tasted sweeter than my skin did right now and that nothing had ever sounded better than the gasps on my lips, with the possible exception of Ayla's laughter. Finally, he pressed his forehead to mine, stared me deep in the eyes, and told me without the words that had narrated the past fifteen minutes of our encounter that he loved me too much to fuck me, even if it was what I thought I wanted or needed.

It hit me by surprise and I let out a desperate, keening wail as I was swept over an edge I hadn't even thought I was close to, and he emptied himself inside of me, gasping and panting and grunting… but never breaking the eye contact that had sent me over in the first place.

When he finally collapsed against me, I found myelf strangely relieved that I no longer had to endure his piercing gaze… no longer had to feel like I could hide nothing. …No longer had to feel all the things he had forced me to feel by denying me to the mindless encounter I had envisioned. I closed my eyes, trying to push the emotions away, but they refused to go… My head was spinning, my heart aching, my eyes watering…

No, I was crying. I was sobbing, in fact. I tried desperately to stop the tears… slow them, silence them, hide or disguise them… but Gil knew. He always knew.

I struggled out from under him with difficulty and hurried from the room despite my nakedness, feeling far less exposed by my nudity than by his eyes. I slammed the door to the guest bathroom, collapsing on the floor as my body shook and trembled and my world spun out of control. …I could have forgiven myself for fucking Gil in the wake of Jace's death—it was biological, after all. …Hadn't I spent half an hour rationalizing as much?—but I could not forgive myself for making love to another man two days after he had died to save our baby.