Author's Note: This chapter took a while to produce. Not because I didn't want to write it, but it seems because I did. I had a lot I wanted to do and say in this chapter and hopefully I've succeeded. Also, I realized while writing this chapter, somewhere along the way my style changed a little. I tried, desperately, to go back to where I started this story, to pick up the crucial moments as they passed through the weeks of the pregnancy. I hope you feel like I've cut out the unnecessary bits as well.
Thanks to all for, what is to me, the overwhelming response to this story. It's had a lot of readers and a lot of reviewers and I can't thank you all enough.
A quick reminder: Nano has begun. I'll try to update this as often as possible, but I've got word count goals to meet each day on multiple projects. It's still my goal to produce a chapter of this story every three days, but I can tell you it won't always work. It took five days to write this one. But I'm trying. I promise I'm not holding out for begging or holding out for reviews. Those things won't make the story come faster. It's just, there are only so many hours in a day. And, while I'd love to spend twelve hours a day writing fanfiction, it's just not possible.
I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I did!
~Amara.
Re-uploaded May 27, 2010 (sorry if you got alerted for it...) - FF has been killing section breaks. Several readers noticed they were now missing and it impeded the flow of the story so I'm going back through to fix the missing breaks. Sorry if readers end up with a stack of alerts for old chapters! ~A
"While it may seem as if you've doubled in size over the past few weeks, it's your baby who actually has!"
The morning of the sonogram she woke up feeling pregnant. She didn't wake up feeling sick or lightheaded. She woke up happy. But most of all she felt pregnant. She'd see her baby later that morning, finally.
She looked down her body at her still-flat stomach and discovered she had to try a little harder to look over her breasts than she normally did. Well, they'd certainly gotten bigger, even if her midsection hadn't really. According to her scale she was a half pound heavier than she was the morning she found out she was pregnant.
A soft knock on her door frame pulled her away from her cursory examination of her body. Booth stood there holding a cup of tea and wearing a soft smile that turned her stomach over and over again. Since when did he look at her like that? "Good morning, Sunshine."
He gave her a moment to prop herself up in the bed before he set the cup in her hands. As the sheets settled around her hips she watched with fascination as his gaze dropped to her breasts. She cleared her throat but laughed and it came out a jumbled throaty chuckle that spread a lazy smile across his face. He'd been caught but he didn't seem embarrassed.
She'd been catching him looking at her a lot over the past couple of weeks. At first he'd flush and spin on his heels making excuses about dishes or laundry or work. After a while he wouldn't flee but he still colored. But in the last couple of days, when she'd catch him staring at her chest or her belly or her hips he'd meet her eyes and smile. Like he knew something she didn't. Had her body really changed that much?
She'd been wearing fewer of her button down blouses since they didn't seem to want to close properly but her slacks still fastened satisfactorily. She didn't know what to make of his new attentions but he always seemed to be looking at her.
He pulled her back to him when he'd mentioned breakfast and bacon. As it turned out their zoo-keeper really did have a taste for meat. She'd read about pregnancy cravings but she really didn't expect them so soon nor had she ever considered she'd be unable to resist them. But he'd said "bacon" and she flicked the sheets back and followed him, night-gowned and barefooted, into the kitchen.
Her new-found love of meat products amused him to no end. She swiped several slices off the paper towel covered plate anyway and munched happily as she leaned up against the counter. "Our appointment is at eight. I tried for earlier but that's the first of the day."
He shook his head and swallowed a sip of coffee, "That's fine. I don't have anywhere to be until ten."
"What do you have? Do we have a case?" She couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice. She hadn't been out in the field in a couple of weeks and they'd wrapped their last case over a week before.
He chuckled, "No. I'm helping Krantz with his thing."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed, even to herself.
"Don't worry. We live in D.C. Something will come up."
She eyed his coffee longingly. He was still a stickler over her caffeine consumption but when he followed the track of her eyes to his cup he looked between it and her several times before he finally sighed and held it up to her, "Okay, okay, I'll share."
She felt like a child who'd been given permission to stay up past bed time and smiled then crossed to him and took the mug out of his hands and took a grateful sip. She didn't relinquish it immediately, though, and he had to wrestle it back out of her hands. She fixed her face into the pout that always seemed to earn her that look and grinned when he didn't disappoint. But he didn't give the coffee back either.
She gave his watch a quick glance – it was only seven. They were both early risers and it was a fifteen minute trip to the doctor's office. That meant she had at least a half hour of sitting at her dining room table with him, him dressed in a suit and she still wearing her nightie, stealing his coffee, eating a breakfast he'd prepared and reading the paper. Something about that felt oddly intimate to her. And it wasn't, she noted with ambiguity, the first time she'd had such a thought since he'd moved in.
A piece of bacon dropped onto the satin on her chest and she looked down to scoop it up before it damaged the fabric. She realized then, sometime since he'd moved in she'd stopped caring about preserving her modesty. At first she'd tried to tempt him. She'd wanted him, badly, during those first couple of weeks after they'd found out she was pregnant. As the weeks progressed, though, her sexual desire had melted into an unnerving mix of sexual cravings and something else she was hard pressed to identify. She couldn't quite define what she wanted but she had a feeling it was leaning more toward what he demanded from a sexual partner and she flashed back to a night when he'd had darkness in his eyes and had said "when" they made love.
She'd touched him a lot then. She'd always touched him a lot, as he had her. It seemed like lately the only touching they'd been doing was when she melted down into some strange version of herself. She wanted that easy familiarity back. She'd never have imagined it might go away if they spent more time together.
Unknowingly, he pulled her out and away from thought that would likely lead her down another road like last Tuesday's when he said, "We should leave a little early. I want to stop by my place and get the mail. And I'm going to need my good blue suit, there's a funeral this week."
"Are we riding in together?" It seemed like they did, more often than not. And it didn't really matter to her. He drove everywhere on their cases and once she was at the lab, if it wasn't for him, she'd not leave in the middle of the day anyway.
He shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"
"Hmm," she agreed as she took another sip of his coffee.
"Woman," he said playfully, as if he knew it would earn him reproach, "enough." And he, again, removed his coffee cup from her thieving fingers.
He opened the dishwasher and pulled out the top bin while simultaneously flipping open the cabinet for the glasses. Together they sent all the clean dishes to their homes and she found herself amazed, a little, by the fact he didn't have to ask where a single item went. She should have expected as much from him, though, with his attention to detail and ability to surprise her with the things that mattered to him.
She'd left him to the rest of his morning puttering, he seemed to do a lot in the mornings before leaving for work, and went to shower and dress. He'd come for her a while later when she was putting the last touches on her makeup. "We're going to be late if we don't go now."
"Why do you always wait until we're going to be late to tell me it's time to go?"
"Sparing myself the "Booth, I'm a self-sufficient woman" lecture you roll out on occasion, I guess." She looked up into the vanity mirror and noticed the sparkle in his eyes. She did trot that one out fairly regularly.
He watched her for a few moments then prompted, "Well, come on." He'd herded her towards the front door and helped her on with her jacket. "I had to park a block and a half away. Parking here really sucks, you know."
She felt bad when he said that. In her bedroom, in a drawer, under a book, were the parking decals she'd procured. She could give them to him. It would make his day when he realized she'd thought about him. She wanted to give them to him but how to do it without turning into a sycophant who begged him to stay with her? That would require some thought.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
He'd left her alone long enough to change out of her clothes and into the white and blue papery-cotton garment provided by Dr. Ashbacher's office. She'd poked her head out into the hall when she was done and invited him in to the examination room. She looked at ease, if a little excited, but all the posters on the wall of the female reproductive system and fetal development along with the plastic cut-away model of the birth canal left him slightly queasy.
"Booth, you're staring." He'd felt himself blush at being caught staring at a poster that perfectly depicted the baby's descent through the pelvic girdle. He wondered then, if when it was time, he'd be allowed in the room. And, if he was, would he be expected to watch the baby…come out?
"Sorry," he finally said, "but it's a little fascinating. Creepy, but fascinating."
"Creepy," she asked with a smirk. "Honestly, Booth, there's very little about the birthing process people would call "creepy"."
"Not in the "oh, scary" sort of way," he clarified. She was reclining on something that looked like a cross between a chair and a hospital bed. There were stirrups and a section that looked like it would fall away at the touch of the correct lever. He felt as if he'd entered a secret lair men should be denied access to.
"You look very uncomfortable. Would you like to wait in the waiting room?"
No, he wouldn't. He wanted to hear his baby's heartbeat and see its grainy, practically unidentifiable picture on the screen. He wanted to be one of those incredibly annoying expectant fathers who stopped the other agents in the hall at the Hoover Building and shoved pictures, which were upside down, into the hands of their coworkers. "I'm staying."
She shrugged. "Whatever you want." A moment later there was a knock at the door and Brennan called out, "Come in."
A nurse bustled into the room carrying a clipboard. She was pleasant and smiled when Booth shook her hand. She weighed Brennan, took her blood pressure and temperature and asked how she'd been feeling. Brennan recounted her battles with morning sickness, lightheadedness and mood-swings but Booth felt like she'd left out some of the most compelling examples of her symptoms. When she'd said "mild mood swings" he'd actually snorted and she shot him what he'd come to think of as her "death glare".
"I can see daddy's been bearing the brunt of the mood changes," the nurse said with a conspiratorial smile. Booth took a step back until he was out of Brennan's line of sight and rolled his eyes while nodding emphatically.
He was a little taken aback when Brennan smacked him, hard, on his belly and he looked down to see she was looking up and back at him. He knit his brow and formed his mouth into and "o" while rubbing the place she'd hit.
The nurse took them through the rest of the exam and then suddenly Brennan's gown was being raised until her stomach was exposed. He watched in fascination as the nurse squeezed an opaque blue gel onto Brennan's stomach then pressed the sonogram wand into the goop. He waited for the "woosh" sound he knew to expect. And suddenly, there it was.
His knees threatened to give out as he listened to the sound of their baby's heartbeat fluttering inside Brennan. She had an awed look on her face. "See?" he whispered. "Some things you can't just read about, you have to experience."
And when her eyes had teared up he handed her his grandfather's handkerchief. He'd accepted the printed out screenshots and she'd let him stare at them. It wasn't until they were back in the SUV, her next appointment card tucked into the side pocket of her purse, that she'd gently removed the photographs from his grasp.
He'd tried several times to engage her in conversation between the doctor's office and the Jeffersonian but she was enamored and it made his heart swell. He wasn't entirely sure it felt real to her until the heartbeat had filled the room. If he were being completely honest it hadn't really been to him either. She'd not had an easy first twelve weeks but all of a sudden her eyes told him it was worth it.
He pulled into a parking spot in the garage and let the engine idle.
"He looks like a baby," she said with wonder and passed one of the pictures over to him. "He's still so tiny I hardly know he's in there, but look at him, Booth. He's a baby."
His throat thickened with emotion. "Yeah." Suddenly she'd leaned across and hugged him tight. He hugged her back, but the angle was awkward and he needed her right up next to him. He pulled back from her and jumped out of the truck. He was around to her side before the look of confusion had completely set. But he'd seen her confusion soften into a smile just before he tucked her back up against him. Her arms circled around his waist and they'd just held each other.
"That was incredible," she said against his neck. "Intellectually you know how fast a baby's heart beats but hearing it."
He still couldn't get over the reverence in her voice. Neither of them could say much, it seemed, but he felt like they were speaking volumes. Their baby, on that screen. Her heartbeat, in that room. He pulled back from her and her eyes were huge on his. He tried forming words in his head but it didn't matter what he came up with it just didn't seem like enough.
Then, when he'd taken just a split second to blink, she'd kissed him. She was soft and sweet against his mouth tasting vaguely of the peppermints she'd taking to carrying around. Her lips slanted against his as she changed her angle and a shiver ran through him.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
She'd initiated the kiss when nothing she could think to say could really tell him how she was feeling. But as soon as she'd tilted her head for a better angle she'd lost control of the kiss. It heated quickly and what she'd originally intended to be a communication of one kind quickly turned into communication of another. He nipped at her lips playfully in between heart rending intimate connections and the dichotomy threatened to unbalance her.
Her hands seemed to have a mind of their own and they ran up through his hair and back down across his shoulders, met once at the small of his back and caressed his chest. She didn't remember moving but suddenly she found herself pressed up against the SUV, the cold metal behind her leeched the warmth of his body from her front and she shivered with the sensation.
It occurred to her then that the kiss wasn't really a kiss anymore. He was ravaging her mouth. The word had always made her giggle when she read it in print and she realized it was because she'd never truly understood it. She gasped when one of his hands ghosted along the sensitive hollow under her hip bone and he'd flicked his tongue against her top lip in an invitation she couldn't turn down.
Before she could adequately prepare herself, his tongue was sliding sensuously across hers then running along the sharp edges of her molars. He tasted of coffee and cinnamon gum and she thought maybe she'd never get enough of that particular combination.
Then he was dragging his mouth from hers and pressing their foreheads together. They'd gotten carried away, she thought, when she realized they were both panting. What had started as a way for them to celebrate what they'd just experienced in the doctor's office had quickly turned into something entirely different.
She pressed her head back into the glass of the back passenger window. She looked into his eyes hoping to find answers to "why" and "will we do that again" but all she heard was his harsh panting, the gentle purr of the truck's engine and the annoying ding from the steering column reminding them the engine was running and doors were open.
He saw the exact moment she started to withdraw from him and he sighed against her ear. But his sigh turned to a chuckle as he said, "Sorry. Got a little carried away."
His heart soared when she breathlessly said, "Me too."
"I've got to get to the office." He pressed the picture he was still clutching into her hand. "Take this one too. Nobody at my office knows yet."
"That sounds like sour grapes, Booth," she said saucily.
He couldn't help it. He growled a little in the way he found usually made women shiver and dropped another quick kiss to her lips. She didn't disappoint him. He felt the tremor run through her where his hands rested on her hips. "Two weeks. Then I'm forcing everybody there to look at almost-baby-pictures."
She laughed. "You're probably not going to be nearly as popular with the secretarial pool, then, you know."
He regarded her carefully. What was she looking for? "I'm popular with the people that matter, that's all I need." He held his breath waiting for her response. She nodded as if he'd said something right and he exhaled. "I've really got to go. Dinner tonight? I'll even take you to that frou-frou vegetarian place you like."
She smiled. "That sounds nice."
"Six thirty. Have a good day."
"You too." They stood there staring at each other until she finally shifted uncomfortably and said, "You'll probably need to let go of me."
He huffed out a nervous breath. "Yeah. Okay, I'm gone. See you at six thirty."
Later that day she'd handed the sonogram photos over to Angela. "This is why you were late today," her friend asked. "I just figured you and Booth finally decided to get it on."
Brennan flushed at the memory of just what she and Booth had gotten up to in the parking garage and she wondered whether or not she should share that with Angela or keep it for herself. She knew Angela would want to know but it felt wrong to share. Finally, though, her mouth made the decision for her and she blurted out, "I kissed Booth."
Angela looked at her like she was a little insane. "I know," she said slowly, "you told me. You two kissed when you found out you were pregnant."
"No," Brennan huffed, "I mean I kissed him today. Why would I tell you about something I'd already told you about?"
Angela shook her head, "Never mind. You kissed Booth today? Where?"
"On the mouth," Brennan said as if it should be obvious.
Angela laughed, "No, Sweetie, I meant where geographically."
"Oh. In the Parking Garage. Why? Does it matter?"
"Yes, it matters!"
Brennan couldn't see how it could possibly matter but her friend was insistent. She recounted the whole of the encounter and finally Angela said, "How you can possibly still say there's nothing between you is completely beyond me. You two clearly want each other. You're having a baby together. And you were right about him always being around. I drove by your place three times last week and his truck was always there."
Brennan colored. She'd long been considering Booth a resident of her apartment – even if it did cause the occasional emotional breakdown – but she'd yet to share that information with anyone else. She hadn't even said anything to him about it aside from her outburst the week before when he'd asked her if she wanted him to go.
She struggled with his presence. She'd found she really did want him around. She knew she wasn't ready for him to go. She just couldn't really figure out why. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself and she'd always liked having her own space – even when in relationships. But, she reminded herself, what she was doing with Booth wasn't really a relationship. She's not entirely sure how he felt. Although, if the kiss they'd shared that morning was anything to go by, perhaps there was some talking to be done.
Brennan decided the only good response to Angela's observation was a nod.
"Hopefully," Angela said with a wink, "recent changes mean things will soon be heating up with Special Agent Who's-A-Hottie."
"I have to admit I'm not longer certain exactly where his line is."
Angela turned serious. "You've got to talk to him. It's time, Bren. You guys have made this huge change to your relationship but you haven't talked about what it means for later. What's going to happen when the baby's born?"
"I don't know."
"Talk to him," her friend stressed. "You're one of the few women out there with a man who will really talk about the way he feels. Take advantage of it. Booth won't ever make you guess but he will make you ask. It sounds like it's time to take a leap of faith."
Over dinner that night she'd tried, several times, to work up the courage to talk to him about anything on the growing list of things she needed to discuss with him. After several false starts he'd finally said, "You seem like you've got something big on your mind. But I'm going to need a little more help deciphering the subject than four or five false starts."
She nodded. "I have been thinking about a few things." She looked everywhere she could but at him and evidently her evasiveness was noticed. He reached an encouraging hand across the table and brushed his fingers against the wrist that was fiddling with her stemmed water glass. "I just...Booth we kissed this morning. Not like we've kissed before, either, and I'm not sure what that means."
He sighed heavily as if he knew it was going to come up but he wasn't yet ready to talk about it either. "We did."
She'd expected an "I didn't mean to let it go that far" or maybe even a joke of some kind but not his quiet acknowledgement. "And," she continued, "you appear to have moved in." She rushed to continue, "Not that I'm asking you to leave, but we never really talked about it. But you've been there nearly a month now and I wasn't sure what your intentions were."
He exhaled through pursed lips. "You have had some stuff on your mind, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"Anything else?"
"Well, what's going to happen after the baby comes?"
"Bones, you've got some issues there that can probably be called big, bigger and biggest. You really want to get involved in them all over dinner?"
She thought about it and finally shook her head. "No, but I think we do need to talk about them. Angela said I should consider myself lucky you're the kind of guy who is willing to talk about things like this, though. So I thought maybe I'd take advantage of it. I'm not, however, very good at talking about such things."
"Well let's just agree we need to talk. Let's think about it, both of us, and figure out what we're really thinking and feeling. I don't want to start arguments here because we're not sure what's going on."
"That sounds very reasonable."
"It's not...I don't know, Bones. I'm not sure I'd use "reasonable" here. There's going to be very little reason involved in issues that are mostly emotional."
"I study change, Booth. The change in societies and cultures is something I can identify and see the necessity of. But we're changing and I'm still not certain how I feel about that. What we had worked. But this seems to be working too."
"I don't think we've changed as much as you think we have."
"You never would have kissed me like that before," she pointed out.
"Yeah, I would've," he said quietly. "But I couldn't. Now I can."
"But why now?"
"Finish your dinner. We'll talk about all of it. But just remember, while you're thinking, what I said about us not changing as much as you think we have. Find out what that statement means to you."
She thought over the course of dinner, the drive home, and through Wednesday and Thursday she didn't see much of him. By Friday she realized she'd spent more time thinking about how she felt than she had in years. She'd been home several hours that night when he'd finally come in looking as if he'd collapse if he had to take even one more step.
She'd sat on the couch and watched as he walked by her with a quick, "hi" and a squeeze of her shoulder, into his bedroom. Five minutes later he'd reappeared and then disappeared into the bathroom. She heard the shower start and she sat and waited until shut off. A few minutes after that he'd come out dressed in navy blue sweatpants and turned as if to go back to his bedroom.
"Booth?" she called. He looked over at her and raised his eyebrows with question. "Would you come in here, please?" He was incredibly tired, she could tell, but he didn't resist and he didn't seem at all upset she'd asked. "Sit down," she said patting the space on the couch next to her. He did and she stared at him until the corners of his mouth quirked up in uncomfortable amusement.
She'd been stalled by him when he sat. He smelled like Irish Spring soap and the broad expanse of his bare chest filled her view. She reached a tentative hand up to his chest and jumped when his pectoral muscle flinched at her touch. She chuckled nervously but he remained still and quiet. She didn't know what to say, wasn't sure how she'd explain her hypothesis or experiment so instead she tilted forward from her hips until her lips hovered in front of his.
They stayed there, suspended in limbo for the span of four quickening heartbeats before he'd finally closed the last shred of distance between them. She'd intended to just kiss him, softly, to find out if her reaction to him on Tuesday was an anomaly. She quickly discovered it wasn't. She opened her mouth to him and he swept inside. His kiss was gentle and unhurried but also tender and questing. And before either of them seemed aware, he'd leaned forward into her space and forced her to arch until one of his hands supported her at her lower back and the other was palm-flat on the couch and stiff armed to create a frame of empty space between his body and the couch for her to fill.
He kissed her breathless but remained calm and diligent taking long, reassuring breaths through his nose so finally she was the one who'd had to break the kiss. "That tell you anything?"
Of course he'd have known what she was up to, she reflected. He knew her. Knew the way her brain worked. "Yes," she'd said simply.
"Good." He pressed one more kiss to her lips, got up and disappeared into his bedroom. She remained on the couch, lost in thought.
Later that night when she laid in bed she thought about him, the way he looked and smelled sitting there bare-chested in front of her on the couch. Then, the way he'd tasted. She felt a rush of arousal spread through her body. She'd wanted him for a while but hadn't been successful with her attempts at seduction weeks before. She still fought powerful waves of arousal she knew were caused by the hormones her body was producing in excess.
She'd tried, several times even, to find release. Alone. In her bed at night before he'd moved in and after. She was a woman who'd long ago perfected her technique of bring herself to orgasm but nothing had worked. She'd been frustrated so long. But that night, with the memory of the kiss they'd shared on the couch as well as the one in the parking garage she tried again.
She swept her hands lightly over her incredibly sensitive breasts, careful to avoid the pain she knew would follow a heavy hand, down her body to the apex of her thighs. She could feel heat there before she even touched her skin. And when she'd touched herself she'd found herself wet and ready, swollen with the flush of desire. She didn't need any technique at all that night because she'd barely begun to circle her aching clit with a deft finger when she spun apart.
She'd cried out her release, she knew she had. She waited, anxiously, to find out if her cry brought him running to her aid. But, it didn't. Perhaps he'd slept through it. Perhaps he'd identified it for what it was. She couldn't be sure. But part of her, a part she wasn't familiar with, was embarrassed. She'd needed that climax, she had. She'd been on slow boil for weeks and the kisses they'd shared the past few days had done nothing but create a thrumming between her legs that wouldn't abate. However, he might know what she'd just done. Would he look at her differently then?
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Booth lay in bed reflecting on what had turned into an incredibly long and busy week. He worked late that night to ensure that short of a new case being assigned he'd have nothing in particular to do over the weekend. He was ready for a break. A couple of days of ballgames and beer.
And Bones. If what had happened on her couch that night was going to keep happening he'd be a happy man. Sexually frustrated, perhaps, but happy. Then he'd heard her moan long and low and he'd been out of bed and to his door when he heard her cry out. He knew that sound even if he'd never heard it from her. That was completion. Satisfaction. Relief. He smiled, hand on his bedroom door knob, amused by what she'd done just one room away. But the more he though about it the more he found himself in a predicament of his own.
He found himself painfully hard when he settled back into bed. She had a way of doing that to him. He'd spook her for sure if he took the matter into his own hands and didn't manage to be quiet. She'd know what he was doing. He was sure she knew he did it. She'd probably be down right clinical about the whole thing as well. But underneath she'd shy away from him if she knew his response to overhearing her was the need to do the same himself – she'd long ago proven what was normal didn't necessarily apply to them. So he willed his erection away and laced his fingers behind his head in an effort to keep them off his aching cock.
The next morning when they met in the kitchen he saw a flicker of inquiry in her eye but he paid it no mind and set about making pancakes.
By Monday he felt as if he was going to explode. He'd overheard her coming, he could deal with that. But evidently her release had made her bolder. Sunday morning she'd opened the windows in the living room and settled cross legged on the couch to write on her lap top. She hadn't bothered to change out of her silky nightgown, though he was glad to see that one flowed all the way to the floor. But in the cool springtime air she'd encouraged into the room her nipples had beaded up. He'd stood there for long minutes staring at her. He was a grown man, for crying out loud! Since when had hardened nipples, covered ones at that, required minutes after minutes of attention?
So yes, by Monday he'd gladly bid her goodbye before they'd left separately for work. He, for his part, escaped to the privacy of his apartment where he'd picked up mail, cleaned out the last remnants of the refrigerator and then, despite trying to abstain, jacked off furiously in his bedroom. He'd had no need for lubricant and hadn't even bothered with the pretense of pulling out his magazines.
When he came it had been her picture behind his eyes and her name on his lips. Soon, he thought then, he had to have her soon. But first he had to convince her what was between them was more than sex. It could never be just sex. He was starting to get the feeling, though, she thought the very same thing.