Author's Note: Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews and messages about the first chapter. I'm so thrilled that there are readers who are excited about this story. I honestly wasn't sure there would be an audience after all this time. I hope you enjoy this next chapter. I'm posting a little earlier than planned, but I made good writing progress this week and built up my buffer a little. And the first chapter was on the short side compared to the rest of the chapters, so I thought I'd go ahead and post the second chapter.

Chapter 2

Despite the fact that Sara was expecting the knock – had in fact been listening for it for the past hour – her heart still leapt into her throat when it came. She reached automatically for the remote on the coffee table and turned the music down a few notches until it faded into the background.

The flutter of nerves that began low in her belly spread out through her body as she made her way to the door of her apartment and opened it, so that by the time he was standing in front of her, grinning, the tingling had reached her extremities, and her hands reached for him as if they had a mind of their own. She pulled him into the apartment, though given how easily he allowed himself to be led in, it could hardly be called pulling.

Once the door was shut, she hesitated, suddenly shy. He quirked an eyebrow, clearly amused by the heat she felt blooming across her cheeks. She rolled her eyes and slid her hands up, resting her palm against the soft hair on his cheek and curling her other hand around the back of his neck, drawing him closer.

His smile softened, the teasing replaced by a gentle affection, and he tipped his head forward and kissed her.

When they separated, she could not help but smile. She had dreamed of moments like this for years. Sometimes she still could not believe she was this lucky.

"Sorry that took so long," Grissom said, running a hand down her arm. "Just when I thought we were about to be done, some kid from IT showed up and gave us a demonstration of the scheduling software update that lasted four times longer than necessary. Did you eat?"

She nodded, stroking his cheek with her thumb before dropping her hands back to her side. She had made herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when she got home, knowing he usually ate at this monthly shift supervisor meeting.

"I brought you a present," he said playfully, reaching in his bag and pulling out a magazine.

She perked up immediately when she saw it was the brand-new issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.

"Are you finished with it already?" she asked, reaching for it. He smiled, and her heart fluttered in response. It was six months since they tumbled over the edge and fell into this as-yet undefined new relationship, and she was more smitten than ever.

"I haven't even started. You can have it first. I know you've been waiting for those papers about fire and arson residues."

She leaned forward impulsively and kissed him on the cheek. "Do you want a drink?" she asked, realizing suddenly they were still standing just inside her doorway.

"Sure," he said.

He fished around in his bag, extracting another magazine and a newspaper folded to display a half-finished crossword puzzle, while she made her way into her small kitchen and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass.

Outside the sun and the temperature were rising as the morning rush hour tapered off and most of the world began their work day, but inside her apartment it was the end of a long day, and they were ready to relax and wind down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him make himself comfortable on her couch as she fixed his drink and grabbed a bottle of beer for herself.

By the time she joined him on the couch, he had his magazine open. She handed him his drink, and he reached for it automatically, without lifting his eyes from the page.

"Thanks, darlin'," he said, lighting a candle of hope within her. This was new, this casual use of a pet name outside the bedroom.

From the beginning, from the first time he made love to her, he peppered her with endearments; honey, sweetheart, darling.

She had fantasized for years about him, imagining what he would be like in those private, intimate moments. And her imagination was right about so many things: about the way he made her feel, about his quiet confidence, about his single-minded focus and attention to detail.

But she had never imagined how sweet he would be. She never dreamed he would whisper poetry against her skin as he worked her into a frenzy or murmur words of wonder as she lay contented in his arms.

Hearing this endearment now, outside the bedroom, in a casual moment like this, stole the breath from her lungs. It was more than she dared to wish for.

"Are you going to read that article, or are you going to stare at me all night?" he asked, still not lifting his eyes from the magazine.

His tone was amused rather than annoyed, but she jerked her eyes from his face automatically, embarrassment blooming in her chest. And inside the embarrassment, creeping around the edges, fear.

She tried so hard to appear casual about this. About him. Years of complicating their friendship with her barely disguised longing made her hesitant, skittish. Always in the past, one step forward led to two steps back. Sometimes ten steps back. If a little flirting could lead to weeks of the cold shoulder, if a dinner invitation could result in months of him barely speaking to her, she couldn't help but wonder…what would the fallout be for loving him?

For months, this thing between them had been so new, so fragile, she had been scared to look directly at it. But it has been six months now. Six months since after-shift breakfasts to check up on her stretched into long conversations and movies on her couch. Six months since gentle touches and heavy looks led to lazy afternoons tangled in her sheets. Six months of creeping slowly, wordlessly toward something…more.

In the beginning, she had held her breath, choking back the sickening fear every time he climbed out of her bed and kissed her goodbye. When he was with her, she was deliriously happy, overwhelmed by both their shared passion and the tenderness she hadn't expected from him. But when she was alone, sleeping beside a pillow that still smelled like him, the panic would creep back in, warning her that this might have been the last time. When he was seated across the break room table from her rattling off shift assignments, his eyes placid and devoid of the fire she had seen in them just the night before, that quiet voice warned her that he was silently composing an "it's not you, it's me" speech.

But the speech never came. Instead, he told her he wanted to take her to dinner. He invited her into his home. He spent the night.

Somehow, miraculously, the months began to slip by. And now it has been six months, and she spends more nights in his bed than her own. And that quiet voice is quieter.

She can see that he is happy now, that she is making him happy. They are in the delirious honeymoon phase of a new relationship, sneaking glances at each other at work, tumbling in bed as soon as they escape the watchful eyes of their coworkers, staying up late whispering confidences and sharing long-buried stories. But they have made no promises, no declarations.

She wants, more than she has wanted anything ever, for this to be forever. For years, the thought of leaving Vegas – leaving him – and losing his presence in her life, however minimal it was, had been untenable, even when things were so strained between them that they radiated hostility and she wished she was strong enough to just go.

But now, after six months of knowing the touch of his hands on her body, six months of hearing his whispers in the dark, six months of being called darling…. The thought of losing him now was unspeakable. Just the mere thought of it sent a creeping, burning panic through her veins. It had taken them so long to reach this point. If he knew the way she mooned over him, if she allowed him to see the way she pined for him still, if he understood how much more she wanted from him, he would be a deer in the headlights, frozen in horror for just a fleeting second before disappearing into the dark safety of the woods.

"I was just lost in thought," she said finally, forcing a note of breeziness into her voice that she didn't feel. "About work."

He raised an eyebrow and lifted his gaze to look at her. She turned her attention to the magazine, paging through in a quest to find the article on arson residue, noting articles about prostitution-related homicide and gun shot residue patterns to come back to later. She passed an article, then went back and skimmed it quickly.

"Did you see this?" she asked, nodding her head toward an entomology case report from the Amazon.

He shook his head, and she read from the abstract: "The first case of application of forensic entomology in the Brazilian Amazonia…. The corpses of 26 men were found…fly larvae collected from the bodies….The total development time for Paralucilia fulvinota was measured in field experiments inside the forest…" She trailed off and smiled up at him. "Estimated age of the maggots and postmortem interval was 5.7 days."

Five days. Just like their pig. Just like Kaye Shelton. It's the same experiment they ran years ago, only in the jungles of Brazil rather than the desert of Nevada. She beamed at him, remembering that night.

"Remind me to read that when you're done," he said, and she nodded, continuing to scan the text. He winked at her, eliciting another smile, then turned back to his own magazine.

"I spent six months in Brazil in grad school," he said after a moment's pause.

She felt her body jerk to attention immediately. She loved when he talked about his past. He was so private — it always felt like a gift.

"What were you working on?" she asked, raising her head to look at him.

"We were studying population decline among Megasoma elaphas – Elephant beetles."

"Are those related to rhinoceros beetles?"

A smile spread across his face, and he nodded. "Rhinoceros beetles are the subfamily. Elephant beetles are just one of the species in that subfamily."

She wrinkled her nose playfully. "Giant bugs with giant horns."

He scowled at her, pretending to be offended. "Gentle giants. They're harmless – they don't sting or bite. And they're nocturnal, so you aren't even likely to see them unless you are looking for them."

"Did you enjoy the rainforest?" she asked, pivoting the discussion as she twisted her body to face him.

He nodded immediately, and launched into a soliloquy about the biodiversity of the jungle. She listened as he described the bumblebees that built their nests underground, and the butterflies with their transparent wings, and the ants whose bite was as painful as a bullet wound.

She was struck, as she always was when people talked about their travels, by how little of the world she had seen. When she was a student – studying physics at Harvard and then Berkeley – she would have had no reason to venture into the rainforest. But she would have loved to have spent a summer or semester abroad.

There was never any money for that though. Her scholarship covered tuition, but she had to work to cover the rest of her expenses. She didn't have family to help cover costs. There were no graduation gifts. No family car to be handed down. No one to pull strings and get her a cushy job after graduation. Even if she could have won grants to fund her travel, she couldn't have afforded to take the time off from the part-time jobs she had cobbled together to keep herself afloat.

The farthest she had ever traveled from home was Miami, for an ill-conceived spring break trip during her senior year of undergrad that left her with a membership in the mile high club, a meaningless tattoo on her ankle, and a handful of blurry, drunken memories with people she thought would be her lifelong friends. She had imagined that trip would be something they would laugh about for years, something to reference in wedding toasts and Christmas cards. Instead, she had all but lost touch with everyone on that trip, not due to any falling out, but just the natural result of life pulling people in separate directions.

"I'd love to go back someday," he said, jolting her from her memories. She was surprised by this confession. She had never been able to successfully imagine him leaving the lab.

"A sabbatical?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe someday."

"Sometimes I wish I had studied something else," she confessed. "Biology. Primates, maybe."

She thought momentarily about the gorilla dumped in the desert; imagined herself as Jane Goodall in the jungles of Gombe, living among the chimps. She thought about the Sea Shepherd; about protecting wildlife from human interference.

"You would have been great at that," he said, his voice soft and affectionate. "But then… you would have been great at whatever you chose."

She pursed her lips, refusing to smile at his blatant flattery.

He reached out and ran a hand gently down her arm. "It's not too late," he said. "You could always go back. Get your PhD."

"Maybe," she said. "Maybe someday."

She tried, and failed, to imagine them in the rainforest together, doing research for her PhD. Instead, she saw herself there alone. Unbidden, the little voice inside her surfaced: maybe that was where she would go when he broke her heart.

Suddenly, she wanted him with a ferocity that scared her a little. She raised her gaze to his, and let him see the desire while trying to hold back the desperation. When he registered what he was seeing, he smirked at her for a second, clearly amused that a conversation about grad school and insects in the Amazon had her suddenly feeling amorous.

She could see him trying to puzzle her out, but she didn't give him the opportunity. Instead she leaned forward and kissed him soundly, teasing him with her tongue, sucking his bottom lip between hers and then releasing it with a wet, popping sound before moving her lips to his neck. It took him only a second to catch up, settling his hands at her waist and nuzzling her cheek until she lifted her head and let him kiss her on the mouth.

Her heart was racing already, and he had barely touched her. She ran her hands up his chest, urging him on. She wanted him to go fast, to erase that image of her, alone and lonely, in the rainforest.

Instead, he continued kissing her slowly and leisurely, keeping one hand at her waist and raising the other to cradle her cheek, to tuck her hair behind her ear, to stroke her hair. Her heart clenched at the tenderness of it. He was so, so sweet.

He trailed kisses over her cheek and down her neck, and she gave in, slowing down to meet his pace and savoring his touch. He kissed lower, pushing aside the strap of her tank top to blaze a path to her shoulder and then back to her neck. She inhaled shakily, then sighed deeply, and felt his smile against the crook of her neck.

He lifted his face to look at her, and she tried to memorize the way he looked in that moment: the blue of his eyes, the flush of his cheeks, the sharp line of his freshly trimmed beard, the honeyed warmth of his smile.

"You want to go to the bedroom?" he asked softly, and she nodded.

He stood, and held out a hand, twining their fingers together on the short walk to the bedroom. They separated once they crossed the threshold, and she tossed the decorative pillows to the floor and pulled back the comforter and sheet while he walked to the window. He pulled shut the thick sheers, but left the heavy blackout curtains open, allowing the light to filter in but dimming the late morning sun and suffusing the room with a warm glow. He smiled at her as he approached, and she reached for the hem of her tank top, but withdrew when he reached for it too. He liked to undress her, and she certainly would not deny him that.

He pulled the black cotton shirt over her head, and tossed it aside. She reached behind her back and flicked open the clasp of her bra, but waited for him to reach for the straps, drawing them over her shoulders, before she shrugged out of it. It joined her shirt on the floor, and it was her turn to undress him. She took her time unbuttoning his dress shirt, then pressed kisses to his chest and unbuckled his belt while he divested himself of the shirt.

They pulled apart, completing the disrobing process, and climbed into bed together. He let her lead for the moment, and she took advantage, exploring his body with her mouth and her hands, silencing the sad, scared voice in her head by filling her senses with him.

Eventually she wound up on her back under him, and she surrendered to his touch, floating on a sea of gentle kisses and whispered words. "Sweetheart," he breathed as he kissed his way from one breast to the other.

And then he was inside her, and her body rocked with his, the world swirling and fading until the only thing still in technicolor was him. His eyes closed, whispering her name like a supplication. "Sara. Sara."

She answered his cry, clenching around him. Distantly, she heard his voice groaning her name, felt his body trembling above her as he followed her over the edge.

She stroked his damp skin as he came back to himself, sighing happily. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him, and she lay with one leg draped over his, boneless and happy and free of the whispering voice.