She felt the sharp inhale, felt her breath hold in her chest, pausing while her body relaxed and accommodated the change. He hadn't given her much warning but he paused now. Though her eyes were closed she could feel the shadow cast by his hair as he watched her face, waiting for the intrusion to feel ok.

It was barely a second of silence, but a silence that was still broken by the pants of catching breath. She imagined that second hard for him, he was not the one sitting in the balance of feeling pleasure or pain. He only felt the pleasure, and she imagined he needed it more than she did.

Natasha breathed out slowly, relaxing, nodding her head and permissing him to move. Her eyes tried to open but fluttered instead as he shifted forward a hand on her jaw and met her mouth in a fierce kiss. His hips jolted forward and she gasped at the change in position, feeling him push further into her body.

God, she'd thought his entirety was already inside her.

She gasped into the kiss, causing him to try and pull back but her hand blindly palmed up his arm to grip his shoulder, keeping him close and nodding assurance once again.

'Yes?' He asked, his voice a raspy whisper. Again Natasha didn't need her eyes open to perfectly picture the hunger in his.

'Yes, please, please,' the words had been formed in her mind but had come out in a mix of whimpers and gasps, she wasn't even certain they came out in English.

Again she was attacked by a kiss, feeling the heat of his breath and the slow delicious thick feeling of arousal in her stomach. This time when James thrust his hips forward she was ready for it, meeting his movements with a gentle circling of her own hips.

His kisses moved and her lips felt cold at the loss, but the warmth of his mouth moved in patches along her jaw and down her neck. Here the hunger set in, the desperation. Taking the opportunity to make two moves at once James shifted his weight to place his cold metal hand on her hip, sliding it down her thigh and moving her leg up and back, allowing her to rest her foot across his back where her toes searched for some form of grip, something to squeeze, to release the energy building. In the same instance, he bit her neck, gently nipping the skin between his teeth and holding for a second before sucking it, and keeping her encased in the mix of pleasure and pain.

'Ты моя.'

You are mine.

That she did not doubt, not now, though she had for the past few years. When they had found him two years ago, yes they had found the Winter Soldier but James Barnes had still been missing, hidden deep inside the cage and a complex booby-trapped maze of his mind. The hope had been lost, even when it seemed elements of the true person began to emerge he didn't see her, not in the way he used to.

Now, as his skin brushed hers from groin to stomach, feeling each stroke of his body in and out of her own, the way he held her, his words, kisses and the places he focussed his attention, this was him, this was her James.

Natasha tossed her head, straining her neck to try and blindly connect with his face but losing this she opened her eyes to find him looking back, watching her.

They did include the hunger she had expected, but they held more. Love, recognition, a softness that meant his soul was defenceless at that moment.

He groaned upon seeing her eyes open, and released his hold on her leg, shifting his body weight back to the left to free his right arm. She knew this plan, knew the destination for his flesh hand, given she had shown him how to touch her. No, it wasn't enough, she wasn't ready to let him speed the process.

Natasha used the opportunity of the shift in his balance, pushing off with her foot against his back and rolling so James was beneath her.

Smiling at the brief look of surprise on his face that quickly changed to desire when he drank in the view of her body above his.

She winked, waiting for the gasp that came as she took him in her hand and directed his full length back into her body.

This time felt better, no pain, no adjustment, just the perfect middle ground of being filled by him.

James stares up at her, mouth slightly open and seemingly entranced. He licked his bottom lip, swallowed but nothing more.

Natasha allowed her hips to circle, closing her eyes once more to feel everything she has missed, listening as she experimented with the angle, finding the spot where he was deepest and causing low sounds to leave them both.

His breathing hitched further, and involuntary inpatient thrusts of his hips met her own.

Natasha leaned down over him, moving slowly to keep him inside, meeting his eyes before she spoke.

' I want you for as long as I can have you, I need this to last but you are out of practice милый if you can't hold on then help me.'

Natasha paused, lifting his right hand and moving it to the tops of her thighs, urging his involvement.

' ты нужен мне, пожалуйста.'

No more encouragement was needed, his cold steel hand found her hip, gripping and kneading at the skin, occasionally slipping further back to grasp her butt. The other went where it was needed most, his memory of where and how to touch her all but perfect.

She felt the change happen, the move from gentle and sweet to the filling of a need. She allowed her eyes to close, concentrating on the build within her lower stomach, pushing herself further up from his body, feeling him pushing up to meet her.

She remembered feeling her head tilt back, as though her body moved to try and relieve the building pressure. She remembered hearing her voice change from quiet, low mutterings to gasps leaving her with each thrust. She remembered his groans also, remembered hearing them both crying out but not consciously hearing it.

His hand gripped her hair, holding a handful of it in a fist but she didn't remember when it happened.

His warm release inside her triggered her body, falling into euphoric gasps, her body jerking in response to the extreme stimulus. Her eyes squeezed tight to show colours and sparks of light behind her eyelids. They came down from the high together, Natasha slowing the movement of her hips to a gentle stop just as James slowed the circling of his fingers against her skin, causing her to jump occasionally, now hypersensitive to his touch.

He had pulled her to his chest, still inside her, and they kissed. Urgent peppered kisses which gave way to slow open-mouthed kisses, their hearts thundering together in their chests.

Again Natasha closed her eyes, laying her head against his shoulder. This time they closed not out of pleasure but out of sadness, out of desperately wanting to stay here, to stay with him.

In less than a half-hour, she had gone from knowing James didn't remember, and accepting that reality, to him catching her arm on passing and pulling her into the small bunk room. He had breathed her name, not Nat or Natasha, Natalia - the name only James had used.

They had kissed, he had briefly explained that the memories were recent, that he hadn't known the last time they met.

She had made a joke of it, saying she couldn't let him go into a war having been celibate for fifty years without a goodbye. Natasha didn't know what she expected, she hadn't thought, only felt. She hadn't expected to feel this reconnection, not like this. In the last glorious twenty minutes not only has she remembered the love they shared but she had slid back in and fallen hard.

James' hand found the base of her neck, holding her, his other arm folding over her back. He felt it too, there were no words needed to explain it.

It felt as though they dressed slowly, as though fixing her hair took longer than usual, as though the flush held in her cheeks even as her eyes reverted to professional, focused.

James gently grasped her wrist just as she went to leave the room. She would go first, give him five minutes to avoid anything being seen, they didn't need questions at a time like this. They had a mission, Steve needed them on the field, she needed to find focus and shake the feelings from her mind, both emotional and physical.

'After this, when this ends, I can't be apart again.'

It was both a question and a statement, he was looking for her guidance.

She paused before answering but didn't allow herself to think, if she thought too much then the world would be strategic, she would allow fear to take over. She had been the one to prevent his fear taking over, she had reminded him of love and laughter of positivity, and she needed to let him be the same for her.

'After this ends Barnes, maybe I'll let you do the right thing you used to bang on about, let you make an honest woman of me.'

She saw the surprise in his eyes but didn't allow him to express it, pushing up on the balls of her feet to kiss him one last time. For now. She replayed the thought over as she left the room, tugged on the hem of her vest and tried to focus on calculating the clips she had and the overall firepower in each.

For now.

She had just entered the main congress for the scientific facility when she heard a loud, staged throat clearing from behind. Rhody caught up to her with a quick jog. There was a smirk on the edge of his mouth and Natasha felt the dread rise in her instantly.

Christ, how much noise had they made?

'You ugh, have a nice power-up session, Romanoff?' He joked.

'What are you talking about Rhodes?' The sigh was an attempt to cover the fact she knew, whether she expected him to fall for it was ambiguous.

'Oh, just heard a lot of mumbling and all, presumed you were having a pre-match spar with someone.'

'No, just getting some anger out, getting in the zone that's all.'

Rhody nodded, silence forming for a second,

'You might want to fix the collar you've got, it's lying a bit flat and, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure even the captain in his old man naivety knows you can't get a hickey on your own.'