Chapter 6

Kate couldn't believe how relaxed Jack was making her feel. She just lay there and let his fingers glide over her skin, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply, letting everything-all the stresses of life on the island-drift away. After a little bit Jack was still caressing her cheek and admiring her. Kate lifted her hand and placed it over the back of Jack's, holding his hand in place. Then she shifted her head so that his hand was practically covering her mouth and kissed the soft, fleshy part of his palm just under the thumb.

Jack giggled slightly and tried to pull his hand back, but Kate wouldn't let him go. She realised that he was ticklish, and kissed his hand again. It made his scalp tingle. Again, he tried to pull away, but she had a good hold on his hand now, and lightly kissed the inside of his wrist, barely brushing her lips across the tender skin. This time Jack pulled his arm out of her grip firmly but still with a playful smile on his lips. Kate smiled and narrowed her eyes at him. She "humph"ed, stuck her nose in the air, and then rolled onto her stomach with her arms crossed on the ground in front of her, and rested her head on her forearms, pretending to be sulking.

Jack's breath caught slightly when she rolled, because she'd gotten close enough to brush her shoulder against his chest before settling to the ground. Then he slowly raised his arm over her back and to the opposite side of her. Suddenly he began tickling her furiously and yelling, "AhhhhhhhhhhH!"

Kate jumped in shock, and then tried unsuccessfully to pull her arms down to cover her sides while laughing hysterically. She began gabbing at Jack's arms, to try and get him to stop tickling her, but he was too strong for her to hold back. Once she realised that she couldn't stop him she did the only other alternative. She began tickling him back as best she could while blocking her ticklish parts. But Jack was quik and soon Kate was laughing so hard she could barely breath and tears were running down her face. "Stop! Jack...please. You're going to...make me...pee my pants!" she finally got out through the laughter. But he kept tickling her for a few more minutes before stopping.

When he was finally done, Kate lay on her side with her arms crossed around her middle and her head laying on the ground giggling softly. Jack was smiling and breathing hard with the exsertion(sp?) of tickling her and getting around her flailing arms. He rested next to her and watched her catch her breath. Kate looked up at him from the corner of her eye and her smile widened a little. "That was not very nice." she said trying to look upset...or something.

Jack got a fake 'shocked' look on his face. "oh? Well, I guess I'll have to remember that for future reference. Buuut...it was quite fun...so I might end up disreguarding the 'not-very-nice' part." He laughed quitely at his own sarcasm which made Kate laugh.

After a little while, Kate dramatically pulled herself up from her position on the ground to where she was sitting indian style. Jack remained laying down like he had been before the tickling escapade. She just looked at him, content for the moment to just sit there. Her fingers played with a piece of grass out in front of her crossed legs. But Jack's hand reached hers and he entertwined their fingers slightly, sort of playing, sort of holding her hand again. Then he remembered something that had kind of disturbed him. Looking up at her face he asked, "hey, when we first got here, you seemed, disturbed, somehow. Was something wrong?"

Shaking her head, Kate glanced around at their surroundings. "No. I was surprised, you kind of caught me off guard. This deffinately wasn't something I was expecting. But, um, the reason I seemed weird is because, a while back me and Sawyer were out in the woods (Jack frowned slightly at the mention of Sawyer's name) and we came upon this waterfall (his frown deepend) that was a lot like this one. But it was arranged differently. Anyways, that's where we found the briefcase, with the guns. It was stuck under a seat in the water, there were people still strapped in down there." Kates face scrunched with the unpleasent memory. "I saw them when we were swimming, and Sawyer being Sawyer, he went down to see if they had anything on them. So, when you brought me here I was a little surprised cause at first I thought it was the same waterfall. And I didn't particularly enjoy the idea of swimming in water where there are dead people again." She kind of smiled at this last bit.

Jack, still holding Kate's hand, looked around them. "Well, I don't think I'd want to swim in water with dead people either." Kate laughed. She looked around too and noticed the sun was almost completely gone on the horizon. They must have been been here for a while. She stood up and pulled Jack up with her. "We better head back, people are probably wondering if we got eaten."

About ten minutes later, it began raining.