Pairing: Nick/Sara (get used to it people, I'm a shipper)

Rating: This is an M for sexual activities, don't read if it bothers you.

A/N: Sadly, this probably isn't as graphic as some of you would like. It does have a nekkid Nick and Sara, though. And I think you'd agree, a naked Nick and Sara is enough.


Inspection

When the doorbell rang Sara raised her head from the close inspection of the kitchen table almost too quickly, almost too eagerly. She didn't know what had possessed her to ask him over earlier that day. It was a fleeting moment of courage, she decided, for none of it remained now.

After her forced leave of absence, Sara had taken up cooking. It was therapeutic to come home and make whatever you wanted, even if it meant cleaning up dishes. It gave her control over a small part of her life, which she liked. He, the man at her door, had been a driving force in her pursuit of a hobby outside of work, and it was with the intent of thanking him that she had asked him to come to dinner.

Well, and the intent to test the waters. Sara Sidle knew how to tease, though she very rarely employed it. She would do so tonight and see if he was receptive. Her attraction to him had only recently flared into life, though it had smoldered for the four and a half years they had known one another. In a moment of clarity, Sara decided that if she didn't act on her feelings, she never would. His reaction would then determine the course of the rest of dinner.

Her sparse apartment had been much changed since her DUI. She had added more color, more life to it in an effort to make her work stay at work. Candles were burning on the kitchen counter and the coffee table, which caused a tendril of nervousness to unfurl in her stomach. Calm down, Sidle, she told herself, you light candles all the time!

Her attempted reassurance didn't do much, but she answered the door anyway. "Hey, Nick."

The million-watt smile that was his trademark flashed in her direction, fortifying her resolve. "Hey, yourself." He replied, his Texan drawl causing a shiver to run down Sara's spine. "Oh," he said, pulling out some flowers from behind his back, "I brought you these."

A small blush painted Sara's cheeks as she murmured "thanks" before opening the door wider, allowing him access. Taking the bouquet of daylilies from Nick's hand she turned and closed the door.

It took her a minute to find a vase, but after doing so she set the flowers on her kitchen counter, giving Nick a smile. "You really didn't have to bring these, you know."

"Oh, I know, but since you're feeding me I figured it was the least I could do."

Sara raised an eyebrow, "considering how much you eat I'm starting to see your side."

He feigned a hurt expression in response before brightening, "so, what did you make?"

Sara turned back to the kitchen and flashed Nick a grin. "Garlic bread, tossed salad, linguine with cream sauce, and a chocolate torte for dessert."

"Damn, Sara, when did you start cooking?"

She gave a flippant reply, "about an hour ago." She bent down in front of him to fish a bottle of wine out from the refrigerator, giving her male coworker a nice view of the cleavage that her black, sleeveless top did little to hide. Straightening she said, "you want some wine?"

He nodded mutely, which Sara took as a good sign. To reach the wine glasses she had to stretch, and she did. This, she knew, caused her shirt to ride up slightly, exposing her midriff. Nick stared, transfixed and confident in the fact that her eyes were solely focused on the glasses and not on his blatant appreciation of her form. However, he couldn't stop a small exclamation as he saw a glint of silver on Sara's abdomen. "You have your belly button pierced?"

"What?" she replied, voice still muffled by the cabinets. However, Nick couldn't see the triumphant smile that washed over her face. "Oh," she said, putting the glasses on the counter, "yeah. I got it pierced when I was seventeen. It's a silver stud right now, but I've got other jewelry for it. Do you like it?"

Gaining a bit of his flirtatious bravado back Nick replied, "Oh I don't know, I might need a closer inspection of the jewelry at hand."

She matched him with a comment of her own. "Play your cards right and you just might get that inspection, Stokes."

The prospect of that alone caused Nick's lungs and heart to stop functioning for a moment as he thought of all of the ways in which that inspection could take place.

"Nick…Niiick…Nick!"

"Huh?"

"You want your wine?" Sara was giving him a confident little smile as if she knew exactly what he had been thinking. Taking the glass from her fingers he moved to the table and the plate of food that she placed in front of him. From there, all he could think of was the meal.

After eating and light conversation, Nick gained a wicked glint in his eyes. Sara noticed this over the rim of her wineglass, giving a small smile as she did so. Her voice was mockingly innocent, "what?"

"So," said Nick, leaning forward, "got any other piercings I should know about?"

She set her wine glass down and cocked her head to one side. "It depends."

"On what?"

"On whether or not I can trust you to keep a secret."

He was struck dumb, giving her a little nod since he didn't trust his voice. "Alright," she said, taking another sip of her wine before continuing. "I have my tongue pierced, but I wear a skin-colored stud in it during work hours so I won't get fired. My ears are pierced twice, too."

Nick, hearing the words "tongue" and "pierced" together exiting from Sara's lips, quickly dove into the carnal sections of fantasy. Trying to shake himself out of it he managed to get out, "your…your tongue?"

She gave him a little smile. "Yeah. You want to see?" Not waiting for an answer she stuck out the pink appendage, displaying a silver barbell. Considering Nick's uncomfortable state, Sara leaned back in triumph. Things were going well.

"Uhh…anything else?"

"Nooo…" she said in a tone that implied that there was.

"You're a bad liar, Sidle."

She raised her hands in a defensive gesture. "Fine, fine. I wasn't lying when I said I didn't have any other piercings, though."

"Oh, so you have a third leg," Nick quipped in an effort to relieve the sexual tension that was quickly building through their combined effort. He wasn't exactly sure when this simple dinner had stopped being simple. But then again, maybe it never was. He couldn't deny how excited he was to spend an evening alone with Sara, but it never even occurred to him that she would reciprocate those feelings.

"Nope," she replied, "no third leg. I do have tattoos."

His throat became painfully dry as he swallowed. If there were tattoos that he hadn't noticed in all the four and a half years of working with her, then they must be…he didn't want to finish that thought, but his mind did anyway. They must be underneath her clothes. That thought alone was enough to send most of the blood allowing him rational thought down south.

"How…how many tattoos?"

"Three."

Sara pushed her chair back from the table and walked gracefully over to him. Nick crossed his legs in response, trying his best to prevent his painfully aroused state from being noticed. Leaning in front of him, once again exposing cleavage, Sara looked him brazenly in the eyes. The rational Sara was wondering where the hell all this courage was coming from, even as she leaned even closer to Nick's face. Placing her mouth near his ear she whispered sweetly, "you want that inspection now, Cowboy?"

There was just a moment when Sara's heart leapt to her throat, worrying he might reject her, but it was silenced as he pushed the chair back, grabbed her by the waist and set her on his lap in one smooth motion. When Sara came in contact with his arousal she gave a little whimper, her tongue sweeping out to savor the last drop of wine that lingered on her lower lip. Nick stared, openmouthed, as the sinuous organ made a quick pass over her beautiful, seductive lips. She swallowed, the thin column of her throat constricting, and it was the single most erotic moment in his life.

Straddling him, Sara looked into his passionate brown gaze and murmured, "Are you going to stare or get your mind out of the gutter and kiss me?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said in reply, "I think the gutter is right where my mind belongs thanks to you, Sar."

Giving a small laugh Sara simply closed the distance between them, her lips coming into contact with his in a sweet, chaste kiss, their first. It didn't take that long for that to end though, as she opened her mouth, inviting him to deepen it. He did so, and as she swept her tongue through his mouth he caught the little stud of silver there between his teeth, sucking on it lightly. Her eyes flew shut, a sure sign of pleasure, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Scooting back onto the table, pushing plates off of the surface and onto the floor, Sara lifted her black top over her head, exposing a lacy bra of the same color.

Releasing her hold on his mouth for a moment she said dryly, "I remembered that when I asked you if you preferred leather or lace, you went for the latter."

"I think I'd like anything on you, Sara," was his reply as he stood from the table and took in her form, "though the end result of you getting out of it is always the same."

Sucking in his breath, Nick wondered if he had overstepped some boundary, though the lust-filled section of his brain reasoned that if Sara was sitting here in a bra and jeans then there couldn't be that many in the first place. She simply stepped off the table and began to walk down the hallway, giving him a little glance over her shoulder as he followed right behind her.

Something in Nick's mind said that this would be one inspection he enjoyed performing.

Nick had never been in Sara's bedroom before, but curiosity had been his companion for a long while. The room was dark, a few candles burning on her bedside table. There was a scent that pervaded the room, an earthy, sexy smell that would always bring images of Sara to his mind.

"It's sandalwood," she murmured from her cross-legged pose on the bed, the luminous globes of her almost exposed breasts like ivory in the dark. Nick swallowed once before continuing towards her, coming to stand at the foot of her bed. His voice was low, intimate, "I never thought you were one for tattoos or piercings, Sara, but then again it seems like I was wrong about lots of things."

She crawled forward on the bed until she was even with him on the mattress. "Oh yeah? Like what?"

"Like when I thought that there was no way in hell that you'd seduce me. Like when I figured you weren't one for being dominant in a relationship. Like when I thought you would never return my feelings."

Pausing, he tentatively extended one finger, running it along Sara's collarbone, stopping at the sternum before continuing down to her breast. It was like ivory, smooth and just waiting to be lavished with touch, with fingers and mouth. The gentleness, the worshipful gaze he gave her, was enough to bring Sara to tears. She kissed his neck where it met his shoulder before saying huskily, "this isn't a time for what either of us thought."

And she, being Sara, was right. She gripped his biceps, pulling him back onto her bed, onto the satin comforter she had bought. Her almost bare back against the sensuous fabric was a new feeling for Sara and she shivered, arching towards Nick. Giving a little whine in frustration she began fingering at the buttons of his shirt, though her normally nimble fingers were fumbling in the dark.

"One second," she breathed before reaching over to her bedside lamp, turning it on. She thanked her lucky stars that the light she had bought wasn't very bright, so it didn't detract from the romance of the current scene. Now able to see, she made quick work of Nick's shirt, though she had to stop every once in a while when Nick's mouth would touch an especially sensitive patch of skin. Pushing her back, Nick kissed her, openmouthed and hungry, clutching the silver stud in her tongue again before trailing a burning path down to her belly button and performing the same torture on the piercing there.

"You know," she whispered lowly as he made another path of kisses back up her abdomen, "piercings make the skin around them especially sensitive. It stimulates the nerve endings."

"Hmm," was Nick's reply as he kissed the hammering pulse in her neck, his hand slipping between them in an effort to undo her jeans. Failing, he gave a noise of irritation, causing a little giggle from Sara. "Seeing as you can't even unfasten my pants, Greg must have exaggerated your reputation as a 'ladies man'."

"That's dangerous territory there, Sidle. You're going to force me to prove you wrong."

"Please?"

He silenced her with a rough, bruising kiss, distracting her while he, now suitably motivated, made quick work of her jeans. Flipping them over and now on top, Sara looked him in the eyes and said, "Jeans. Off. Now."

"A bit pushy aren't we?"

She gave him the look that he had learned meant she was going to do something very un-Sara like before saying, "It's you who should be pushing, now get your goddamn jeans off."

He complied, deciding to skip the next step and pushing off his boxers in the same motion. Sara, still straddling him, reached over and pulled a condom from her bedside table. Seeing his look of almost indignation she whispered, "I bought it awhile ago. I haven't been with anybody since I came to Vegas."

Her look of embarrassment caused love for her to surge in Nick's veins and he craned his neck to capture her lips in a sweet kiss. As it ended, both of them breathing heavily, he murmured, "You said something about tattoos?"

Placing her hands on his well-muscled chest she replied, "one's on my foot. The other two will require the removal of more clothing to find."

She leaned down to kiss him and as she did so he undid her bra, the lacy garment falling loose on her shoulders before she removed it and flung it away. There, he spotted one on her left shoulder, a phoenix in red and gold. He traced it with one finger and she shivered before whispering, "I got it after my DUI, after I got over Grissom. It represents going through the darkness and being reborn. Seemed appropriate at the time."

He pressed a kiss there, solely focused on the taste of Sara. He felt sure at that moment that there would never be enough opportunities for him to savor the essence of the woman he loved. Retracting his mouth from her flushed skin he realized that, while he was preoccupied, Sara had divested herself of the last article of clothing, her panties. Now that they were both naked, Nick noticed the last tattoo, a Chinese symbol below her right hipbone. "It means 'love'," she said quietly, still sitting atop him, "and now that the scavenger hunt for my tattoos has ended, are we going to get to business?"

Giving a laugh, Nick rolled her over and lay atop her, quipping, "I was wondering when you would ask."

The next morning, sitting at her kitchen table eating breakfast, Sara asked, "So, Nick, did I pass inspection?"

"With flying colors, Sar, with flying colors."


A/N: Now that you've made it through that, I have a question to pose. I've got three chapters written to follow this, but it also works really well as a one-shot. If you've got a preference, I would love to know either through review or email.