The early light of dawn was just creeping into the tent when Kate awoke and remembered where she was. Sawyer lay asleep at her side, one arm draped casually across her torso. His steady breathing reassured her that he was still asleep, and moving very slowly, she tried to slip out from under his arm.
He stirred at her movement but did not wake, instead tightening his hold across her body. Instinct, she thought. It's nothing personal. He sleeps with a lot of valuable stuff around and he doesn't want anyone taking it, that's all. He probably thinks I'm a suitcase or something.
She waited a moment before attempting to move again, and again was stopped. Now he pulled her solidly against his body, and if the hardness she felt pressing against her bottom was any indication, he had not mistaken her for a suitcase, after all. The instinct to flee became severe. Any moment and things might escalate beyond even this.
"Mmmm," he moaned into her hair, a little unconscious noise of sleep that sent her almost to the point of franticness to extract herself. Taking his arm, she forcibly flung it off of her, and sitting up, reached for her boots hastily and began pulling them on as quickly as she could.
The movement of his arm had woken him, and Sawyer propped himself up on his elbows and grinned at her suggestively. "Mornin', Sunshine," he said silkily, with the knowing smirk usually only favored by one addressing a lover after a night of sex.
"Hey," she said with a glance across her shoulder at him and a small smile, fumbling with the laces on her shoes quickly. She was half standing and close to escape when Sawyer grabbed her arm and with a hard jerk that knocked her off balance, brought her tumbling down on top of him.
"Ooompfff," he grunted involuntarily from the impact of her hitting his chest and bad shoulder, but there was a smile on his face, as if he had almost enjoyed it. "Where you headed in such a hurry?" he asked slyly, his eyes still sleepy but with a mischievous glint in them. "Thought you'd want breakfast in bed."
"I have to pee," she lied, heart racing.
"Liar," he said, but he was smiling. "You're just trying to slip out unseen, ain't you?"
"Let me go," she said, struggling against him and succeeding only in grinding her hips into the hard bulge in his jeans. He inhaled sharply, his eyes drifting closed in pleasure for a moment. When he opened them again he smirked at her shamelessly.
"You feel that, Freckles?" he asked her. Her eyes looked huge and alarmed. "Yeah, I thought so," he said when she didn't answer, chuckling a little. "You really gonna leave a man in that condition?" He cocked an eyebrow at her, his question both a challenge and an invitation.
"You're disgusting," she said, trying to give her voice an edge of toughness.
"Oh I am, am I?" he asked mockingly. "I guess that's why you're always checking me out then, huh?"
"I do not check you out." She pulled away from him and he let her go.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," he teased as she grabbed for her backpack desperately, ready to run. She was just pushing aside the flap of the tent when he stood suddenly and blocked her exit. "Uh uh uh," he clucked, shaking his head. "Not just yet, Peaches. I know you ain't in such an all-fired hurry to get outta hear because you've gotta pee. You're just in a rush because you don't want everybody and his brother to see you crawling out of my tent in the wee morning hours and have them sayin' to themselves, 'Well golly damn, I wonder what they were up to.' All you gotta do is admit it and you're free to go."
"That's not it," she insisted, trying to push past him. "I don't care what anyone thinks."
"We both know that's a lie," he said, smirking, halting her with one strong hand on her shoulder. He looked down at her with a smirk. "I just don't see what the big deal is, really... hell, they all know about us, anyway."
Kate shook her head, eyebrows knitted together in feigned confusion. "What are you talking about, Sawyer? There is no 'us.'"
"Don't play dumb with me, Freckles," he said, teasing gone. "Anyone with half a brain out there knows there's something going on between you and me, and so do you."
"I'm leaving," she said brusquely, pushing past him and out of the tent. She tried to act nonchalant as she spotted Hurley and Charlie in the surf, fishing, and wondered if they had seen her leaving Sawyer's tent.
"Bathroom's that-a-way, Sweet Cheeks," he called after her, pointing towards the jungle, the opposite direction of where she was heading.
She ignored him and continued walking, and as he disappeared back inside his tent with a frustrated laugh, a glint of red fabric caught his eye.
"Hey, Kate!" he yelled, emerging from his tent again and drawing the attention of several people beginning their morning routines on the beach. "You forgot something!" And before she had time to react, he had thrown her a bright red bra that she caught on instinct.
Recognizing it as her own and fumbling to stuff it in her pocket before anyone saw what it was, she furiously stormed back into the tent.
"You've been going through my stuff!" she asked incredulously, holding the bra in a clenched fist. "Stealing my underwear? What kind of a pervert are you?"
"A pervert that wants any little piece of you he can get," said Sawyer, his hands held out and open away from his body in a gesture of honest confession. "But I can't take credit for stealing that, although I can't say I'd mind that kind of souvenir," he said with a smile, pointing at the bra. "It must've fallen out of your bag when you were zipping it up just now. That's what you get for being in such a hurry, now isn't it, Smary Pants?"
Unsure of what else to do and still feeling violently angry and unsettled by how well he read her and how right he always was about these things, Kate slapped him hard across the face. He looked surprised and reached a hand up to his stinging cheek, licking his lips and chuckling bitterly. "Is that how you wanna play, Kate?" he asked softly through narrowed eyes as she stood there in front of him, surprised at her own actions. "That's how you want it to be? Well," he laughed humorlessly, "I should've guessed you'd like it rough."
And before she saw it coming he was kissing her, not slow and gentle like before but angrily, roughly, hard, lips bruising and pulling at hers fiercely. "Is that how you like it?" he demanded as he broke away from her briefly, his fingers tangling in her curly hair and pulling just hard enough to sting her scalp, a hand on her waist gripping just tight enough to cause discomfort. "Is it?" His eyes were demanding and angry.
"Let me go or I'll scream," she said angrily, her face defiant.
"Good," he sneered, his eyes hard and unforgiving, "let the whole damn camp hear and come running to see what we're doing. Reckon what they'll think when they see you in here like this? Ain't that the exact thing you were trying to avoid? Hell, I'd kinda hoped you'd be a screamer, anyway." He kissed her again, still roughly, and as she opened her mouth in protest and surprise it only served to let his tongue slip in, warm and wet. She struggled to pull away from him out of habit before finally ceasing her efforts and allowing herself to melt languidly into him, realizing the futility in trying to overpower him and finding herself lacking any real inspiration to break away from his lips that were becoming gradually more kind, moving from hard, angry kisses to softer, open-mouthed ones, not quite wanting to part from the warm hand that was no longer bruising but had slid under the hem of her shirt with rough fingertips grazing the sensitive skin of the small of her back. Finally they separated and they were both breathing heavily, Kate looking down, too afraid of what she might see in his gaze or what he might see in hers to meet his eyes.
"How long are you gonna keep fightin' this, Kate?" he asked softly.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, still avoiding eye contact.
"You know exactly what I mean," he said, taking her face in his hand and forcing her to look at him. "But you're always either pretendin' like it ain't there, or runnin' from it like a scared rabbit."
Kate looked simultaneously defiant and guilty, her jaw set but her eyes sad. She sighed and pulled away from his arms, turning away from him and brushing the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. There was a long moment before she spoke. "Okay, fine," she said reluctantly after a moment, turning back to him and throwing her hands up in exasperation. "So yeah, I'm – I'm attracted to you." She was tripping over her words as she spoke, uncomfortable with these kinds of admissions. "Maybe... maybe I even have feelings for you. But it – it doesn't mean anything, Sawyer."
"It means everything," he said gruffly, his voice low and serious and his eyes intense.
"It's just lust, Sawyer," she said quietly, wanting to explain it away with the easy answer but not quite convincing even herself. "It can't last."
He shook his head and said gravely, "It ain't just lust and you know it, Kate. But then, I never met anyone in my life that hates honesty more than you do." The look in his eyes was hard and accusing, his jaw squared with determination. Grabbing her backpack off the ground where she'd dropped it when she stormed back in, he shoved it into her chest roughly and gave her a small push out of his tent. Lowering his voice and speaking into her ear, he said, "You come back when you're ready for the truth."
Kate looked back mournfully at his tent as she walked away, but he had already closed the flap behind her. The image of the blue tarp blurred with the mist of tears gathering in her eyes. Hastily, she wipe the moisture away, and shouldering her pack headed off into the jungle.