A/N: This is part 2. Takes place perhaps a year after part one. The man is Ranger, the woman is Stephanie. If you braved part 1, this is your reward! Thanks again to Katbaby, Vicki, Dee, Jaime, Alf, Steph, Cat and Deb (have I forgotten anybody?) for giving me the courage to write and post this. Thanks to Dee for her wonderful beta skills.

Warning: This is smut…more artistic, introspective smut. But it's Ranger and Steph, so I figure it's okay.

I Step into Her Light

I step into her light.

She stands before me, beautiful and unsure. The glow of her decision radiates from the depths of her eyes, the bearing of her posture, and the aura of her skin. I drink her in. Her hair, that riot of chocolaty ringlet curls, a tangible manifestation of everything she is. Wild, uncontained, unexplained, yet so soft, so natural, so right.

I don't want to ask why she's here, afraid it's only for a minute, a day, one night. I say nothing.

I hope.

Brave blue eyes scream for me to listen to what they have to say. I force myself to look, to see. Her eyes, they say, I'm here.

To stay.

Somehow she is beneath me and I am drunk on her acceptance. Her lips want to taste me, her arms want to keep me, and it is in this moment I feel a peace I have never known. She is my home.

I methodically undress her, piece by piece. Unwrapping, unveiling her beautiful body, the body, she says, that will only belong to me. I am humbled and I am awed, but somehow I acknowledge my acceptance.

I splay my body over her skin, her heat. I lower my face until my lips are just a breath away from hers. She stops me. She tells me she needs to see my skin, has to touch my skin, she wants all of me from the outside in.

My head spins as I peel off my armor, offer her my skin, offer her my body, and offer her my soul.

I am on my knees figuratively and literally. I take her in as she takes me in and it is only my passion, my resolve that keeps the sting of tears at bay. My soul cries out its relief.

Before her, I have never made love, and certainly not after. She is the only one.

She is the one.

I lean forward, propped on one elbow and cup and knead and relearn her breast. A perfect tear drop shape, full and firm and kissed at the tip with a nipple like a blushing pink tea rose. I trace its texture with my tongue for seconds that turn into minutes. I feel her uneven breaths blowing on the top of my head, her fingers pulling at my hair, pulling me towards her, into her. She moans and pleads for more.

I suckle her perfect breast into my mouth. I nip at that perfect tip. I give a glancing thought that this breast, meant to sustain a life, also has the power to sustain me. I swallow a groan.

"Please," she says. "Please…please."

I can never deny her. I give her nipple a parting lick, admiring its now darker hue. I kiss my way down the valley of her breasts, lick in a long, slow line down to her navel and swirl my tongue there.

She jolts and writhes and I know it gives her pleasure. It gives me pleasure too. I pay homage to this place that sustained her life, which made her strong so she could come into this world and change my world. Become my world.

I leave that place and kiss and nibble my way down to her mound, her curls. I kneel up and gently fold her legs, press her knees up and wide. She lets me.

I look up at her face and see that she is offering herself with no shame, no fear. Her body is mine, her eyes tell me, and I am free to see it as I am free to see my own body.

My eyes leave hers reluctantly and I find them drawn back to her dark curls, trimmed short. The curls are kissed in droplets, like dew, and they sparkle of her need for me. Her cleft is swollen and slick and I find my calloused finger reverently giving her slit one long stroke from bottom to top.

Her body shudders, she sighs, and I watch a drop, like a tear, fall from between her legs, down to the sheet below her.

I have to taste her.

I lower my face between her legs. Her scent and her taste are like ambrosia. I can't understand how I lived without this, how I survived without this. I lick, I lave, I eat, and I dine. I will her to give me more.

I give her my fingers, I spread her, impale her. She clasps me like a glove, refusing to let me go. I don't want to leave, I can't get enough, but she pulls me, tugs me, and begs me to come inside.

I slowly glide my body up her body and I feel our skin, our soul as it sparks with the poignant friction.

I lower my mouth over hers and glide my face, my lips, slick from her juices, back and forth, forth and back, along her cheeks, her jaw, her lips.

She grasps my head and fastens her lips on mine. She lets me in.

I glide my tongue along her tongue and we both moan at the taste we are sharing. I hear her moan. I hear her moan. I hear her moan.

It is this kiss that tells me everything she has never had the courage to tell me. Words she has never said aloud. This kiss tells me of her heart, her soul, her lust. It is a kiss that only the two of us can share. I belong to her. She belongs to me.

I thrust my fingers into her hair, into her curls. Curls that obscure the pillow and swallow my hands up to my wrists. My fingers become entangled and entrapped. I revel in my bonds.

I feel her slick heat slipping and gliding over and around the length of my cock. I pause for a moment at her entrance. I catch her eyes.

She whispers, "Come inside."

I enter her in one swift thrust. Then I stop. My head hangs low, between her shoulder and her neck, nearly buried in the pillow and her hair. The sting of tears is sharp again and I swallow hard against the lump in my throat.

I never thought…

I am inside her. I am home. I feel her silky walls embrace me, surround me, hold me and I relish the sensation, the trust she gives me that allows me to feel her wet heat against my skin.

I begin to move, to thrust slowly and gently. I lift my head and my loose hair falls over my eyes. She brings her long legs up to wrap around my waist as she brings her hands up to skim my hair back from my eyes. She wills me to show her, to tell her what I have held from her these three years.

As I glide, as I fill her, I see she has seen the answer as I fall into her eyes, into her body, and into her soul.

I am just about to say the words without addendums or stipulations when she clasps her hands in my hair, her legs around my waist and says, "I know. I love you too."

We move together in communion. Over time our connected bodies merge and glide and roll. It begins gently, tenderly and changes into something more until we are elemental, primal, marking, biting, clinging, and shouting.

I gather her to me, hauling her up as I kneel, knees splayed with her legs clamped around me. I don't want to come; I never want this to end. Then she comes, and I come. I come home.

She clings to me as she catches her breath. I wait, afraid. Will she let me go?

She pulls her head from my shoulder and I become aware she has left a trail of tears behind. She graces my lips with a tender kiss, a mere meeting of lips and asks me to open my eyes.

She says, "I'm here. I'm home."

I step into her light.