Watching You, Watching Me
CH 1: The Challenge
Summary: When their relationship falls into a bit of a holding pattern, Maura concocts a challenge to heat things up.
Author's note: This will be a short multi-chapter fic. Maybe about 5 chapters.
Vanilla. The word rolled around Maura's head and settled just on the tip of her tongue. Jane was ensconced on the sofa, one leg tucked underneath her, arm holding the other to her chest, beer in hand, watching the baseball game. She'd barely paid any mind to noticing the new dress Maura was wearing when she had arrived home from the gallery opening. Maura was miffed, nearly outdone over it. Jane had to work late and couldn't accompany her; that she understood. But, when she had sashayed in the house in the skintight emerald silk sheath with the plunging neckline that came to a V just between her breasts, she had expected more than a casual glance and smile. The dress had been selected specifically for Jane's eyes. Maura loved the way brown eyes turned black with lust when she wore something low cut. How Jane's mouth got dry and she licked her lips repeatedly as she stared. How she protested that Maura should cover up when they both knew that she secretly relished the way perfect strangers stared at her because it gave Jane the opportunity to possess her. And tonight, she hadn't even given it an honest look. No after-the-fact scolding of her attire. No interrogation on how many men had hit on her and the way the thought of such a thing made the tendons in her neck bow and strain and the vein in her temple pulse with jealousy.
Vanilla. That's what Jane's CI Rondo always called her. Maura had often wondered why. Until now. Not that Rondo or anyone else could possibly know why that word was the perfect descriptor for Jane in Maura's mind at the moment. But, perhaps Jane's semi-conservative tendencies were more apparent than she thought.
It happened in relationships sometimes. A sexual holding pattern. The chemistry had exploded when they first started dating, raged like wildfire when their bodies and particular pleasures were new to each other. That exploration was kindling. Their lovemaking didn't lack for frequency, but lately Maura had felt it slipping into the mundane, a rotation of positions tried and true. There was no experimentation anymore. The spark had dwindled. But, as she looked at Jane in that threadbare tank that she refused to throw away, the dove grey one that clung to her breasts and exposed just a sliver of midriff before soft and worn sweatpants covered the rest of her, Maura knew the spark wasn't extinguished.
She could feel it in the pit of her stomach, where it always started, that simmering urge to reach out and strip Jane naked, run her hands and tongue over her sun-kissed and lithe body until her lover begged for more. The flutter spread and she could feel the flush creep up her chest and neck as her breathing accelerated. Last of all the ache would settle between her legs and make the desire pulse until released. Her eyes danced across the edges of that soft grey tank, down the straps and swooping over the curve at the chest, lower to the tattered hem with its errant strings. She didn't want Jane to get rid of that shirt, because then the memory would be gone. The night Jane pulled a double and Maura lay awake in bed with a throbbing need that her lover wasn't there to satisfy. She'd pulled that tank off the foot of the bed where Jane had discarded it and slipped it on, palming her own breast through the skimpy fabric and writhing to her own touch until she jerked and shuddered with Jane's name spilling out of her mouth.
"Jane…" Maura muttered on a breathy exhale.
Jane knew that tone of voice as her lips slipped slowly from her beer bottle with a pop. She turned her head and let a wicked smile play at the corner of her lips as she glimpsed the lust in her girlfriend's eyes, dilated pupils, Maura had taught her that. The flush on her chest and neck and the rosy heat that had settled into Maura's cheeks were even more obvious and telling. Her eyes dragged down, watching as Maura's tongue slipped out to wet her lips, lower still until she noticed the dress for seemingly the first time. Or rather, what little bit of dress there was given the cut and the ample heave of Maura's straining cleavage as she breathed.
"Maura…" Jane answered with a gravelly husk to her voice. Reaching out she ran the backs of her fingers from Maura's jaw line, down her neck, over her collarbone, until she traced the edge of the dress over the swell of Maura's breast before hooking her finger where the fabric met in the center.
With the flick of her wrist, Maura brushed Jane's hand away and cocked her eyebrow. "I don't want you to touch me." She smiled slyly through pursed lips and stood, looking over her shoulder with beckoning eyes until Jane, a look of slight confusion on her face, stood and followed.
Once in the bedroom, Maura moved about slowly, but with purpose, taking out her earrings, checking behind her to make sure Jane was watching. Next, her watch. She turned and ran a hand through her hair, watching Jane watch her. Bracelets. With a slow and gliding walk she made her way to the closet, again, a quick check over her shoulder as she stood with her back to Jane. Balancing on her left foot she lifted her right and slowly removed one heel before switching and removing the other. Jane's gaze was a fiery touch that she felt traveling down her spine to wrap around the flexed muscles of her calves
"You…don't want me to touch you?" Jane repeated.
Maura turned, "Correct. I do not."
Jane stepped closer and clasped her hands behind her back as she looked down into smoldering hazel eyes. She was perplexed. Maura's mouth said: don't touch, but her eyes said: take me. "Is that so?" She teased.
With a curt nod, Maura leaned in and pressed her lips to the pulse point in Jane's neck with a suckling, bruising kiss. "I feel like…" she whispered, her breath ghosting hot across the skin she had just wetted, "…our physical relationship has…become a little formulaic. A little…vanilla."
She felt Jane pull away and reached out and grabbed her hips to keep her still. "Don't…please."
The playful smile previously on Jane's lips had sunk into a frown. "You think having sex with me is boring."
"No." Maura said it as forcefully and bluntly as she could. She pulled Jane in closer so that their lower halves were flush against one another. "I love touching you. The way your skin feels against mine, I ache for it, I think about it every day…at inappropriate times. How you taste, from your lips, to here…" she let her finger tips caress across Jane's chest and down to her abdomen and then over the heavy fabric between her legs until she could feel Jane arch forward to meet her touch, "…to here. Your smell, sometimes the memory of it overwhelms me even when you're nowhere near. The sounds you make when we make love, they make me shiver because I know I'm the only person that's ever going to make you sound like that ever again. I love how you touch me, when your hands roam all over my body, like I'm some priceless treasure you can't believe you're holding and you want to worship. You know when I need you to be gentle and when I need more and I don't have to say it, you just know. No one has ever made me feel like you make me feel. No lover in my past is your equal. I live you, I breathe you, I crave you."
Maura's reassurance soaked Jane's neck and melted into her skin.
"But…" Jane whispered, relaxing into the words, her face nuzzling against Maura's, into the soft down of her hair and lower until her breaths rolled across her lover's ear eliciting a shaky breath.
Maura closed her eyes as Jane's heat seeped into her, "Every sexual relationship needs experimentation and challenge in order to grow. Will you accept my challenge, Jane?" When she opened her eyes she could see the devilish smile had returned to her girlfriend's face. Maura had never known Jane to shy away from a challenge.
"Name it," Jane purred slowly, seduction heavy on her tongue and dripping like honey.
"Unzip me," Maura spun on her heels and presented her back, sweeping her hair over one shoulder as she felt Jane drag the zipper down. She shrugged and shimmied out of the dress and with a quick kick tossed the garment to the side.
Bare-breasted and clad only in a whisper of a black lace thong she turned, fingering her own nipples until the tease set them hard and erect. Wide-smiled and with a mischievous glint in her eyes she again grabbed Jane by the hips and pulled them together. Lifting slowly on her toes Maura grazed her nipples over Jane's through the thin fabric of that revered tank. She lowered and raised again, repeating the motion until she could feel Jane's nipples harden against her own and see the stiff nubs straining against the flimsy material.
Lips hovering a hair's breadth apart, Maura laid out the rules, "You can't touch me from the waist to the knees, and I can't touch you. Anywhere else you have to ask permission, and me the same. First one to break the rules…loses," she accentuated the last word and let it linger on her lips and tongue as the last s hissed across the infinitesimal space. Maura's eyes darted down and she watched Jane's lips part and drink the word in. Jane hated to lose. "Maybe someone wins tonight, or maybe…the rules stay in play for days."
"Could be…weeks," Jane growled softly with a sneer as one finger on each hand bore down into Maura's hands and pushed them away from her hips.
"Maybe…we never touch each other again," Maura whispered into Jane's ear.
"Mmmm," Jane hummed. "I suppose we'll have to get VERY creative then. But, do tell; if someone should break the rules…what does the winner get?"
Maura cocked her head and smiled, and moved out of their almost embrace and towards the bed, "Anything they want."
