Author's note: As always, thank you for your continued support. It always encourages my writing. Please let me know if you think the characterisation is accurate, or the plot seems thin. I like to know these things. If you don't have time to do that, thanks for reading and - hopefully - enjoying.


They lay in the huge, unfamiliar bed that had groaned under an ecstasy of desperate passion only minutes before. It was uncomfortable perhaps, but they'd fallen against each other like this in the moments after, and the thought of her moving seemed as painful as it did probable. She lay, her back pressed to his chest, the sheets pushed carelessly to the bottom, his legs spread wide and hers in between. Where his breathing had still to steady, hers was already whisper-quiet.

"Full disclosure?"

He grinned against the sticky yet still-cool skin of her shoulder.

"I suppose…"

She did not move and her voice floated towards the ceiling instead of towards him.

"My sister?"

He didn't know whether or not he should tread carefully.

"She's falling for you," she suddenly said, not giving him time to answer, "You know. I think you know. You must. Ophelia is hardly…subtle."

He nodded in agreement, his hands dragging over her hips and up to her ribs and back down again. When he was with her his hands calmed to these sort of caresses. He didn't feel the needs to be constantly in motion. She brought him a calm which couldn't even be shattered by mention of Ophelia.

"Yes, I do know," he said softly, "But I don't feel-"

"I know that," she answered, "But you underestimate her. She is a formidable foe."

"I don't," he answered, "What you're mistaking for underestimation is the strength of my conviction. I do not love her...but you, I am enslaved to you. Love is nothing compared to how I feel about you. Love is a pale emotion when I think about you."

He could practically see her feline grin, despite the fact he couldn't see her face.

"You are a charmer," she said softly, then rolled off of him.

He held out his arm so she could lie against his chest.

"Maybe I am not making my point clear," she continued, "Ophelia wants you. And when she wants something, she gets it."

"And you're not understanding mine," he tilted her chin up and placed a gentle kiss on her lips, "That I am as equally ferocious as your sister, and I want you."

"What we're doing," she sat up and placed her hands on either side of his body and her hair slid over her shoulder and landed weightily on his abdomen, "Is wrong. I do not know if I can continue to do this. Yet, here I am."

"Yet here you are," he nodded, feeling untethered by the panic in her eyes.

"Yet here I am…" she conceded, "But is this it, forever? Do you marry her and I am your-"

"I won't have you as a mistress," he interrupted gently, "You are so much more than an inamorata. I want you as my wife."

"Oh I know that," she laughed, "But I think it should be me who makes that decision. And if we were to examine what we're doing right now, I am not quite so far away from being your inamorata, Gomez."

He nodded in concession, "Then we shall tell them. Disappear for a few months to let the dust settle. Let's tell them Mortica."

She sat back a little, sliding away from him into a more comfortable position. He folded his hands behind his head to prop them up a little, so he could see her as she answered.

"It isn't as easy as all that. I can't simply waltz in and break her – their – heart."

"Morticia," he said plainly, "They'll still have the marriage they wanted. You know that. You're being frightened for nothing."

She was silent for a second, "You have to see how it will hurt them. It's not nothing."

"Not as much as it will hurt when I disappear a day before the wedding," he reached for the cigars set on the bedside table and chose one.

"You weren't considering that?"

He struck up a match and, lighting it, took a calming draw on the cigar. He watched her watch him and biting it between his teeth, he smiled despite his mild frustration at her determination.

"Yes," he nodded, "I was. Very much. I won't marry her. I don't want to. And I was going to abduct you and take you with me."

"She'll be devastated."

He tried not to lose his patience with her, because he felt the same stinging misery in the face of such betrayal once, and he empathised with her. But it was hard to give her what she wanted, when what she wanted was so similar yet so different to him. He knew, sensibly, that there was wrong in what they were doing but to keep it secret for longer than it needed to be seemed, only to him, to amplify the deception.

"Morticia I know. However, in the long run it's better. One day, she will have to know about us. Unless there is no us," he said seriously, "In which case my life is no longer of any worth and she will be a widow before she is a wife. If I cannot marry you, if I cannot acknowledge you publicly, I will never be truly happy. And I will be dead."

She nodded and lay down beside him, silent in her contemplation. He waited out her reflection, because he knew she'd answer eventually.

"Okay, I understand. Just not right now, not yet. Give me time, please."

He placed his hand over his heart, relief loosening his blood to flow again, "I swear it to you."

-0-

He set down at the bottom of the bed, she lay at the top, languid and relaxed. She was beautiful like this; in his shirt, her hair pushed away from her face, her lipstick faded to ruby lips.

"You're beautiful," he said, sliding his own piece across the chessboard (she'd said she loved it, so he had the concierge send out for a set on which she was now roundly thrashing him), "Even in my shirt."

"Is that because I am beating you?" Her fingers fluttered over a pawn, then moved to a knight.

He'd hoped she wouldn't see that move, but he'd already learned she was five steps ahead of him, at least, at all times – and not just in chess.

"I played this, against myself, all the time when I was little," she finished her move and said this over his groan of defeat, "When I was a child, no one would play with me. Thus I mastered all sides of the game."

He examined the board, "No? Fester and I, we played all the time."

"Did you enjoy your childhood?"

He nodded, "I don't think it could have been more perfect. It was idyllic. At times, my parents' marriage was cold, but apart from that… I don't ever want my own children to witness that."

"You want children?"

He nodded and made the move that would seal his fate, "Yes."

"I didn't think I did," she knocked over his king with hers, "Until I met you."

He grinned and pulled her towards him, letting the chess board fall to the floor and the pieces scatter everywhere.