"You okay?" Eric asked her quietly, laying Jackie gently on the leather seat of the Vista Cruiser. He turned her face lightly to the side, then laid the backs of his fingers against the softness of her cheek.
She nodded, and his fingers clenched into a fist at the mark that Donna had left on her face.
She noticed and looked up, threading her fingers into his and gently uncurling his. "It's okay. I think she had every right."
He pulled the seatbelt silently across her body and fastened it securely. "No she didn't," he told her flatly. "They didn't."
She exhaled slowly. "So now they know," she said softly.
"Now they know," he agreed, "not how we planned it, but." He broke off and shrugged as he closed her door and walked around to get into the driver's seat.
The engine rumbled and he pulled out of the driveway and before long, they had exited the neighborhood and were on one of the busier main streets of the town.
"Where do you want to go?"
She lifted a shoulder, staring out of the windshield of Eric's car. Her mind rolled through a list of places and she rejected them all. There wasn't a place that didn't carry a memory of the gang.
She thought of a far-off land, of yellow ochres and red clay, of smiling black faces and open arms. She remembered thatched roofs and mud walls; a stormy night with heavy rain. She thought of the umbrella tree where they first made love; an endless sky, glittering stars. She remembered a waterfall and a hidden cave; the echo of birdsong, the fullness in her heart.
Closing her eyes she swallowed a heavy feeling. She shrugged again.
Eric drove on aimlessly, and ten minutes later cut into an empty parking lot and killed the engine. His hands were tense on the wheel and he glanced over at her, misunderstanding her melancholia.
He opened his mouth to say something just as she reached out for him.
"He hurt you," she said, as her eyes narrowed on the shadow that was beginning to darken his jaw.
He leaned his jaw into her hand, which like her, was dainty and small. "I don't like it when people hurt you," she said quietly.
Her eyes took on a pensive cast and she turned judgement towards herself, and her words came out on the whisper of a breath, "I've hurt you."
A smile lifted the corner of his lips. He turned her hand to place a kiss on the inside of her wrist. The veins were blue against the milk of her skin and he traced one of them with a finger, following its path until it disappeared halfway up her forearm.
He smiled again, a small one, and brought his eyes up to meet hers. "You've given me so much more."
She snorted, and wrenched her hand back to swipe at her eyes. After a couple of deep breaths where she could feel his eyes still on her, she turned back to him.
"Will you drive us? There's some place I want to take you to."
They pulled into a secluded copse surrounded by trees that Eric was unfamiliar with, but Jackie knew very well indeed.
She took his hand as he stepped out from the car and pulled him gently along with her. "Come."
They walked on in silence among evergreen trees, picking their way through fallen branches and upturned rocks until the undergrowth lightened and gave way to the small grassy edge of a short cliff. The view from the top was clear, unobstructed and the hazy grey line of mountains could be made out in the distance.
She stopped in front of him, pulling his arms around the curve of her waist and folding her arms on top of the width of his forearms.
The sun glinted off the surface of a large body of water nestled below them. It stretched far and wide off into the horizon, looking to all as if it melted into the craggy grey of the rocky range.
"Hey, it's the lake," Eric said, pleasantly surprised.
"No other," she confirmed with a smile. She leaned her head back onto his shoulder and he rested his chin against her temple.
"You know," he said after a short while, "that night, when we all went skinny dipping down there?"
"Yeah?" she answered, enjoying the rumble of his voice in his chest against her back.
"I was totally in love with Donna, of course, but I couldn't help but notice you've one of the finest asses I've ever seen on a woman."
She let loose a delighted giggle, which led to a full out laugh, and angled her face and lips upwards towards him. He smiled and bent down to kiss her.
Her laughter soon subsided on the feel of his tongue against hers and eventually they broke apart for air. Their breaths mingled as he rested his nose against hers to stare into her eyes for a long moment.
"I love you, you know," he told her quietly.
He saw something in her eyes shift. They darkened as an intense emotion churned in their depths and she surged upwards again to kiss him so deeply he was blown away. She pulled back suddenly, lips swollen and breath short. Her pupils were dilated and wild but he read a slight apprehension in them.
He frowned in concern. "Jackie?"
She leant upwards urgently for another kiss, even more thoroughly this time, that he was left blinking for a moment when she broke the kiss abruptly and he realized that she had sunk to her knees on the ground before him.
"What're you—,"
Even in the years that followed, Eric could never figure how she had managed to get his jeans around his ankles so deftly. He attributed it to how his brain had completely shut down the moment he felt the heat of her mouth and the fullness of her lips close around the length of his manhood.
"Jesu—,"
He broke off with a sharp intake of breath as she pulled sensuously back until only the head was in her mouth and the tip of her tongue started a teasing dance around his tip.
His hand flew out to grip her shoulder and she let her open palms trail up the backs of his calves, up the backs of his knees, and then his thighs, relishing the feel of hair-roughened skin against the softness of her palms.
She tasted salt on her tongue and wetness pooled between her legs and with a soft moan, her hands dug into his behind as she opened her mouth to draw him fully into the heat of her.
The suddenness of the action sent him flinging his other arm out against a tree for support, and his fingers clenched around bark and the other went around the base of her neck as she pulled back and then forwards and then back again, before abandoning her game to let her tongue take over instead.
She licked, she stroked, she grazed with teeth; lavishing him with attention and loving the feel of him all around her tongue, the fullness of him in her mouth, against her cheek, and in her hands. Satin and steel and the scent of musk and arousal and saliva, they mixed and mingled and filled her senses till she was drunk on the potent cocktail of it all.
A guttural groan worked its way out of his throat and her lashes flicked upwards to find his eyes, heavy-lidded and wild with need. His fingers tightened around the base of her throat, and it gave way to an intense desperation in her for the feel of more.
Her hands covered what her mouth could not, and she boldly reached out to test the weight of swollen and heavy globes at the base of him. She massaged and caressed, and soon took one gently in her mouth and then the other.
And yet again, Eric was finding it difficult to breathe. Dark hair spilled around her shoulders as she knelt between his thighs and with every little hum that she made, every sensual look she threw up at him and every mischievous smile she sent up his way, he was finding it harder and harder to hold on to his sanity.
His hand clutched the back of her head under her hair as she returned to the length of him, and took him deeper and deeper; and just when she thought she couldn't take any more of him into her mouth, she found that if she angled her jaw just so, and opened her throat a little more, she could take in just that little bit more.
And she wanted to. She wanted to possess him as completely as he did her.
She bobbed and he bucked and a furious rhythm was established between them. The muscles in her jaw ached along with those in her throat and she embraced the feel of both with all her heart.
She heard Eric let loose a curse above her, and she was unprepared for when a hot burst of salt hit the back of her throat, gagging once at the unfamiliar taste, before instinctively and eagerly swallowing it all.
He sagged his weight against the tree and she finally let go of him when she was satisfied that she had sucked out every last drop. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips were rosy but she continued to kneel on the floor before him, resting her head against his thigh, and running her hands up his legs, enjoying the satiny feel of the backs of his knees.
The woods were quiet about them, which seemed surreal in the tumult of what they had experienced. She gave him time for his breathing to return to normal, and turned her head slightly to the left, burying her face in the warmth of his flesh at the point between his groin and his thigh where the scent of him was the strongest.
Wood and spice and earth.
Her heart was so full of him she thought it would burst. She breathed him in and pressed a long kiss to the warmth of that very spot. Rising up a little, and pulling the waistband of his jeans up with her, she then pressed another kiss further up, in the sculpted indentation between his hips and abdomen. She trailed her hands under his shirt and up the sides of his waist before he hauled her to her feet.
Her legs were unsteady and she leaned on his strength for support as a dreamy look entered her eyes as she met his. Something primal roared in him as he cupped her jaw, and with his thumb, carefully wiped the corner of her lips where a trickle of him lingered.
His voice was low and husky as he looked into her eyes. "Jesus Jackie, where did you learn how to do that?"
She gave him a winsome smile. And then with an impish arch of her eyebrows and a toss of her hair, she replied primly, "Cosmo."
He barked out a laugh. "Seriously?!"
She nodded her head playfully. Then, she sobered and cast her eyes towards the ground. He watched as her lashes formed shadows on her cheekbones and waited till she spoke again.
"With Michael… we never did 'it', as often as he claimed to have. And when we did, it was over in oh, two point oh six seconds anyway."
A wry smile crossed her lips. "And Steven…," she took a deep breath and looked up into his clear eyes. "With Steven I… I had already given him so… much. I just... I couldn't give him anymore of myself. So this, this, we never did." She smiled another small tremulous smile. "This part of me... I could only bring myself to give to you."
Her arms tightened around his waist. "Only with you, Eric."
It took him a long moment before he could find words. Mulling over what she just shared with him and the implications of that. He stared down at her dark head as she dipped it so that she could lie it against his chest.
So that she could hear the beat of his heart.
"Only with me, huh," he said, and even to him, the slight crack in the tenor of his voice was clear.
She nodded, and her hair rustled against the fabric of his shirt. "Only with you."
He breathed in the fresh scent of her hair, pressing a kiss to the rich black locks, and then another one to her forehead. His arms were full of the precious girl that held his heart and he didn't think there was a thing he wouldn't do for her.
They stood that way for a long, long while, wrapped in each other's arms, and neither of them wanted to be the first to let go.