- Chapter Thirty-Four (and A Half) -

Body Language

[Body - actions and reactions]

Fingers tentatively slipping and sliding around the unguarded small of her back, as his path cut through the diminishing suds in a trail of house-brand soap, Sam could feel himself beginning to rise in anticipation. Reminding himself to take care with the young one, the motions riding her slender hipbones allotted a literal moment of silence for the virginity she would be shedding. This was going to be it, with victory's sweet blessing all but certain at that point, he just knew it in his bones, in the absolute deepest part of his very core.

Reveling in the semi-formed moan that escaped below the disguise of a hitch in her breathing, the thief hadn't imagined baby girl shuddering from the base of her spin when he made his move. Nor had he misread the reflexive jerk her knee made when his intent became transparent as the moral in a children's book. Sponge simultaneously rising to the surface as his knuckles grazed the jut of her hip bone, the entirety of his palm became wet with a second, sharper gasp.

Every sign was there that her body wanted it just as bad as his did, that it knew what was happening as soon as the thoughts came into his head, and it was all before the rest of her caught on.

Shy of the infamous point of no return, Sam paused himself before he did anything he couldn't take back. Innocence on the verge of being being called into question, physically she may have been rearing to go but emotionally the girl wasn't prepared to accept what he was offering. Dammit.

Once she realized that Sam had stopped dead in his tracks Daniella peered deep into his crinkled steely blues. There was a little bit of brown in the light flecks, just behind the part that wants me to think. But think about what?

Pulse alive in a place that had no business being thought of in polite company, the heiress could only feel the eager radiation as it spread outwards. Tingling deep, each wave of the the beating murmur grew more demanding and more desperate for action, all while robbing logic and replacing it with an urge she would not name aloud. His action, her own, the madness stirring within was caring less and less with each second it was ignored.

Hot enough to boil a lobster for dinner, the lavender water had eased the majority of her hurts; so long as it involved avenues that had already been explored, in the young woman's mind there was nothing that would be too much. Unless Sam's shy friend (who really wasn't all that shy it would turn out) decided to play conventional, then there might be a few things that could cause concern if it came down to that...

Practically on fire herself, the bolder Daniella that had yet to be fully explored didn't think she'd mind all that much if the thief did want to take it that far.

More than ready to take matters into her own hands if he didn't act soon, it would have been lying to say that there wasn't a silvery-blue peek in the older man's direction. White shirt sticking close from steam and sweat and maybe even a few stray drops that had somehow hit him, it was what was happening below his jeans that had caught her attention. Not that a lady would ever dare dream act on such an impulse as that...

Mama would roll in her grave.

Warm as a fire could get without searing off the flesh and aching deep inside, the thief was reminded how uncomfortable women in corsets must have felt. Restraints torture - yes, he was still going to use that exact word under the circumstances - Sam could have sworn that her eyes had softened just enough to implore him. Just like so many married women he'd known in the past.

Debating whether or not he had to talk her into going along with it or if that look had been her form of consent, the brunette used the hand that wasn't about to slide the bright young girl some skin to support himself against the tub. Far from kind on the knees, he had a new-found appreciation for anyone to take a similar position for an extended period of time. As for the heiress herself, Drake offered some comfort to see if he couldn't warm up those feet.

"We can take this as slow as you need." Smolder enough to destroy a weaker woman well before this point, the thief knew exactly what he was doing when he smiled at his partner.

Need. It sure felt like she needed to do something about the feeling in her loins, but then again she had once been fooled into believing that she needed to help her professor in a similar fashion.

If this was going to happen in any capacity, it was probably only right that Sam know about Jay, that she wasn't completely uncharted territory. Head, shoulders, knees, toes, and everything in between, she could feel it in her marrow that something was going to transpire. It had to after this build-up.

Actions louder than words ever could be, the heiress gave herself over to the bold streak and brought his wrist from where it was lingering near her thigh. Bashfully closing her eyes, the young woman deliberately brought her lips together and kissed the inside of his wrist before replacing his hand on her waist. Hopefully he'd get the clue that she wanted him to pull her close. And all the things that followed after.

Forehead leaning against his forearm, she whispered into the skin, "Could you at least kiss me first? He only ever kissed me to get inside my head, and never until it was what he wanted." In hindsight Daniella could have smacked herself silly for ever allowing herself to be so taken advantage of, but being unable to travel through time it was what it was.

Reeling the prized catch in enough to bring her to the edge of the tub (and disturb the blanket of bubbles that had served so faithfully until that point), the brunette briefly brought his lips to her hairline before yanking her in for a back-breaking bear hug. It might not have been the sexiest of the embraces, but it was the one Dells needed the most. It was what they both needed, it turned out. Returning the touching gesture with interest, Sam first noted that her everything was pressed against him, soaking through his shirt, but he didn't care.

... And then he saw the blood that was beginning to bloom in the water. She hadn't seemed to notice, although it was inescapably obvious that something must have ripped open when he hugged her.

Maybe he could have tried to ignore the blood just long enough to score his team a home run, however his good heart had to win at least one victory for the day. "We need to get you out of there."

Mind clearly caught in the gutter and sight only on him, she blushed a flustered carmine and stammered over her own tongue in a betrayal of that previous bravado, "O-oh! We-well I've never done it from this angle before, but I was still thinking that I could at least get you started before the water got cold and we had to change venues. Unless it's your back?"

A little blood never killed anyone, right? Not scared of a little scarlet and finding it increasingly difficult to keep from just taking the heiress then and there, Sam figured that he was going to make her bleed at least a little before the day was over. Unhelpfully feeling the tug of her trying to find her way blindly to his zipper, a part of him knew that the "right" thing to do was stop them there, before anything too serious happened and she had to get put under for even more work. But the uncertain way she was bitting her lower lip was driving him crazy - crazy enough to tumble right over the ledge.

[Mind - the innermost monologues]

Dark underside of the thief's dirtiest thoughts coming to life, as the bathing went away from entirely wholesome, he couldn't help but to grin to the devil within. How fitting was it that after everything, he would be the one to steal the last of Rafe's remaining treasures? In some small way, it almost made up for the wounds of Libertalia. Almost.

A small kindness not for the fact that his prey was who she she was but for what she was, Sam attempted to convey a gesture of comfort; this was no small thing, and there would be no turning back after it was done. So naturally it had been disheartening to his better side when she failed to meet his gaze. Disheartening, but not nearly enough to dissuade him from cherishing the effect he was having from the very beginning.

Clear as a summer day to anyone that was paying even a speck of attention, there was a very real struggle to resist going on below the bathwater. Too sharp to not catch on on some level, the brunette had figured that the letting go of the last certain part of her past was just one more thing the girl was scared of. Understandable as that would have been, even being as experienced as he was, it was tough to know anything for sure when her eyes were fixated on the spare sponge in the blocky handhold.

Studying the young woman pensively - not unlike if she had been the answer sheet to a test he had stolen - there was a slight melancholic look below the glowing blush. In no uncertain fashion, the frightened little girl within his princess was silently screaming in the immortal words of The Supremes, "Stop!". Dammit.

Inside the mind a very different place from what was going on inside her body, the disconnect in her head was just a little bit stronger than the need for stimulation, although how long that would stay the case remained to be seen. Once she realized that Sam had stopped dead in his tracks Daniella peered deep into his crinkled steely blues. There was a little bit of brown in the light flecks, just behind the part that wants me to think. But think about what? Young adult she may have been, there was just enough room for her to give herself the label that she was old enough to consent... although...

Tremendously apologetic and as confused as he was about why she couldn't respond the "right way", it was impossible for her to move forward without reflecting on what brought them here to this place now.

Beginning in the rain on a night that changed everything she had ever known, it was tough to recall her exact thoughts on the stranger that had taken her in, however there was definitely something there when he saved her from drowning. Encouraged to discover that he had been there by her side for the first set of stitches, the girlish fantasy took a sharp turn when she'd overheard a private conversation that entailed mention of his mother and a possible attraction. Ordinarily that should have been a great thing, but what about their arrangement was normal? Mr. Drake was being paid to take care of her, so of course he was going to have to pay her some attention - it was her own lack of social skills that made it so hard to understand the game.

Line blurred further, her wish for just one true friend ate into a starved desire; Sam couldn't be counted on, and on some level she knew that, but that hadn't stopped her from hoping. Hoping that he would protect her from all the bad guys, that he would save her from the loneliness, that he would be better to her than anybody else had been. Than any man had been... Sleeping on her cot in the safe house, it would be lying to say that she hadn't entertained the thought... Only she had usually stopped herself before anything had gotten too out of hand.

Except that was all pretend, and this was real life. In real life Daniella had been kidnapped while out shopping with Miss Chloe, her main reason for going being feminine products and needing some space to distance herself from conflicting feelings still in the earliest stages of infancy. While the need for the former seemed to have passed, the later had only grown in her isolated desperation. Goddammit.

Not quite caught up to the present, from that point in the narrative she had been tortured on the orders of the man her grandfather would be most likely to chose as her intended. Because that was just what she needed - more unresolved problems to deal with. Taking some initiative in her own story, after meeting her captor-face-to-face she had rescued herself by jumping out of a second-story window. As one obviously does. Cherry on top of a perfect shit sundae, there were some additional gaps between that could use some filling, however as she stewed in the bathtub, those were the last gaps she was thinking about...

Why then couldn't she engage?

Drawing from the mere surface of the limited well of her sexual knowledge, Daniella had learned enough from Jay to know when she wanted it, and there was no doubt that her body was ready to be ravaged. Troubled by the word due to recent events, that alone wasn't enough to put her off... was it?

Guilty of playing the 'man is a man' card in her head, the young woman had long since learned that sex was a selfish act for two, yet unlike the teacher she couldn't depend upon, there was a part of her that felt like maybe that could change. I know that fairy tales aren't real, that no matter how hard you wish for something (or how much money you throw at the problem) it won't come true, but he's been there for me. Before Sam, the only man that hadn't let her down had been her father. Well, Shen too, but just this once it wasn't such a crime to lump the two together.

Conversation playing out in the back of their heads basically the overall same, the only real difference of note was the order in which it had sprung. For Sam, who had at that time thought of the girl in terms of being both a virgin as well as clingy, at least Sleeping Beauty had it going in her favor that her crazy was upfront and not like to go all fatal attraction psycho stalker status. Potential stripper material in another life, the historian had a partial inkling of what this incarnation might go through mentally once he'd had his way with her; young girls had a way of seeing their first as something special, so why would this have been any different?

On one hand it was never a bad thing to get out what you needed to get out (at least not in Drake's experience), but on the other there was no knowing how it would affect the relationship moving forward. Expect in this case, what relationship was there to ruin?Between picking egg out of her cleavage that one time and watching her try (and fail) to hold down straight tequila after dance lessons with Logan, when precisely had they bonded? The few times he'd tried to speak with her at the safe house, Dells had pretty much turned a panicked pink and zipped off to be anywhere else. More than simple embarrassment, it seemed as if she were avoiding him intentionally.

As for the present, aside from one possible witness next door no one had to know about this little escapade beside the two of them; the doc might not have even been in, so frankly Sam couldn't come up with a single reason why they shouldn't. Well, not a good one that was a deal-breaker.

Though she couldn't quite nail down any particular reason why she wasn't completely comfortable with the scenario, all Daniella knew was that she wasn't ready. Alone with Sam for who knew how much longer, there was no telling when another opportunity like this would come along, but was that really a good enough reason? She doubted that her father would have approved. Mama certainly wouldn't have, which on its own was more than enough motivation to swallow her big girl pants and get out there on that pony... Or whatever the saying was.

"We can take this as slow as you need." Meant as encouraging she knew, experience made it sound like there was more to it then mere generosity.

Need. Huh, now that was an interesting choice in words considering he was playing with a loaded gun. Truthfully there were no shortage of things he could do to her that crossed the mind, but there was also a list of things that had been done that hadn't exactly left the best of impressions.

It sure felt like she needed to do something about the feeling in her loins, but then again she had once been fooled into believing that she needed to help her professor in a similar fashion. "You mean that you'll see to me after you've been taken care of, right? Because that's what happens, right?" Honestly asking, Daniella forgot her manners and pointedly peeked over her shoulder at her companion's equally compromised condition, "You take your hand there and grease me up, and I'll return the favor until somewhere in the middle of it all you just forget about me. And of course I'm the bad guy if I try to remind you that you aren't the only one here."

Um, why did that sound like the voice of someone that knew from experience? Mind unable to keep from jumping immediately to the stalker-type he saw back in the precinct, he was nothing short of baffled by the sudden flip in the script. "You, uh, have something to tell me Dells?"

Tender and chaste, Daniella made a move that Sam hadn't been expecting; trouble was, he couldn't say if it was the action itself that struck him, or the confession. "Could you at least kiss me first? He only ever kissed me to get inside my head, and never until it was what he wanted."

Oh dear God, no wonder the long-suffering princess had hesitated and made such fuss digging her heels in the mud when he had made his move! A bit disappointed to hear that he wouldn't be the one to take Rafe's final treasure, part of Sam was honestly relieved that he wouldn't have to bear that cross after all.

[In The Italian Vila]

Cold pizza on the menu for the woman (who, for the record looked like holy hell), the older gentleman that was basically her Sully settled on orange juice and toast. Neither one was particularly with it yet, although given the fact that they had practically emptied the bottle of luxury vodka that had been squirreled away, that didn't come as much of a surprise. Falling sideways against her near-constant companion as she nosily nibbled on the first bite, for a moment Cutter thought that she might have actually died. Or fell back asleep. Probably that last one.

Legs inked up due to juvenile pranks and in danger of also falling against Sam, as the slugger-thief looked at the pair he honestly had to wonder when exactly they had become so close. One of the most memorable things about the story he'd read last night being the unexplained gap that occurred in the hotel bathroom after she'd been rescued by Logan and the young doctor, it made a lot of sense to have happened there. She wanted it, he wanted it, and from what Charlie could tell they were both willing to ignore a potentially serious medical condition that could have ended up setting them back by days.

Although that didn't necessarily mean that they had done the deed - it didn't happen often, but the older Drake brother had his moments of being the good guy. And having just come back from two very dangerous places one after another with zilch for breathing room between, Adler had no business subjecting herself to something as serious as intimacy, no matter how much she thought she trusted her partner. Even now the bald brawler would have called that a dumb move, but at least by this point in time their bond had been tested and strengthened enough to handle that step. If it was even a step, but come on.

"What happened?" Cutter knew he shouldn't have asked (or even admitted to just reading all of what he had without an invitation), but damn if he wasn't genuinely curious. "In the hotel bathroom?"

Head rolling to the side as Sam nudged her back awake, the dark-haired woman scowled in return. He was such a child! Returning to the real culprit, she gawked at Charlie as if she'd never seen him before, brain struggling to pull itself together enough to understand the question he was asking. Having re-read parts to make sure that she was keeping everything in order, it took her moment to remember that she had been working on her story before digging into the good stuff.

Fresh enough in her mind to finally connect the dots, the answer was short as it was simple. "It cut out."

Bonds messy thing in even the best light, some people might not appreciate, want, or understand the kind of relationship she and the thief had went on to develop. And it could have just been that she had the worst luck ever, but it just seemed like there were just way too many stories with incest plot lines going on at the time. Anyone that had read the story would probably accuse her of having her cake and eating it too, but frankly she was too hungover to care. Or even think about cake.

Anyways, even if it was anyone's business, it was no secret what happened to them in the end.

Sam was just lost and had no interest in bringing himself up to speed. "Shhush. My head feels like it's going to explode if you say another word." If he had been in on the conversation, she had no doubt that he would have claimed they had christened the bathroom and the bedroom too, just to be that difficult rogue he was.

Rolling her eyes at his dramatics, the would-be author simply leaned her head back against his shoulder and closed her eyes to the faint light that penetrated the intentionally thick kitchen drapes. We really have come a long way, haven't we Sam? After all those assassination attempts and betrayals, their work ethic had definitely defined itself on the field; less professionally, there had been jealousy. On both sides. And... Mind drifting from a boyfriend that hadn't been all that great to finding her first treasure, it was inevitable that she remembered her lowest point too.

Well if it's true that time heals all wounds, some scars just take longer to heal than others.

AN:

Just wanted to try something a little different with the format. My apologies if it jarred anyone or caused confusion.

Actually, since I have you here, I'd like to go on the record with that potential relationship:

Sam and Daniella were originally intended to just be a father/daughter duo. Kinda like Joel and Ellie, Kratos and Pandora, Nathan and Shiloh (whole theory about Repo! The Genetic Opera right there), Ray-Ray and Ella (yeah, maybe slight spoilers for the last two episodes of Lucifer? Sorry! But gender aside, also another theory). In fact, in the first two chapters I was even contemplating if maybe Sam would be her biological father. Obviously I quickly decided that no, he wouldn't be. Being close to a year ago now, I can't really recall my exact reasoning for that, so... yay?

Anyways, I did want to make this story be a pure father/daughter type relationship, largely in part because I thought it would be great to see that for Sam. And yes, also as a challenge for myself - I always tend to bring my characters together romantically. Except that's usually long-term (or at least endgame, in my head). I may have failed in my mission (thank you in part to the last few chapters just being cranked out at astonishing speeds, taking the story for its own as I went), but I'm not going to beat myself up over it too much. For one thing, I beat myself up too much as it is (seriously, a complete stranger told me I beat myself up too much when I was in the store one day), and I'm trying to work on that. For another, I kindly refer you back to the opening quote and remind you that this story is listed as FAMILY. Families aren't black and white, and neither are relationships, so why should one automatically exclude the other? Genetics aside, obviously - family in this case mean people with close ties, not necessarily those that you are born to.

Point is, Sam and Daniella are going to have a relationship that won't be easily definable. What that means is that you'll have to keep reading :D