CHAPTER SEVEN: Slopes

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[HFCE suggested a ski trip… this probably isn't quite what she had in mind, but since I know nothing about skiing, it's the best ski-smut I could do.]

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"You want me to what?"

Juliet's heart sank at the disbelief in Carlton's wide blue eyes. Was it terror, or revulsion?

"I'm sorry," he added quickly, obviously trying to relax. "I just can't imagine why they would want anything like that."

"Anything like what? You're my guy. The love of my life. Of course they want to meet you."

"They met me before and thought I was an ass," he said darkly. "Not that they were wrong."

Juliet sighed. "Carlton, stop. That was over four years ago. They barely remember you."

He frowned. "I'm not sure if that makes me feel better, and you know it's not true. The adults thought I was a jerk for not bringing any food and your nephews thought I was—"

She put her hand over his mouth. "Stop. You didn't bring any food because I didn't warn you about the tradition. And my nephews are all in high school now and probably forgot the whole thing. My aunt Olivia and her husband John weren't even there that year, and my stepdad has the memory of a gnat. Besides, it's not the whole family—just Olivia, John and my folks."

"On a ski trip. I don't ski, O'Hara."

"Neither do I. Neither do they! We're from Miami, for God's sake."

He was genuinely puzzled, the familiar frown line marring his forehead. "So you want to put six adults, one of whom has a reputation as a jerk, into a situation guaranteed to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible?"

She got up from the table and stalked to the sink, rinsing out her cup with enough force to bang it on the edge of the faucet.

"I'm sorry," he said wearily, coming to stand behind her. "Please just—"

As his arms circled her waist, she leaned back against him, sighing. "The ski trip was their idea. They asked me to join them and I asked if you could come. They said yes without hesitation. We don't have to ski—we can go walking or sledding or snow-tubing and drink a lot of cocoa and sit by the fire and talk. It's only for a weekend and if you wanted a chance to make a good impression on my folks, now's the time."

Carlton's arms tightened. "What if I can't do that? What if it's too late?"

"It's not too late," she assured him, turning to slide more fully into his grasp. "And even if it was, so what? I love you and it doesn't matter what happens up there. I'm still yours no matter what."

He still seemed unhappy. "Don't get me wrong. Of course I'll go. I'd go to hear Olympia Dukakis speak at the Democratic Convention if you asked me to. I just reserve the right to freak out about it."

Juliet smiled and pulled him down for a long, savory kiss. "As long as you let me soothe you in a risque manner of my choosing."

Finally her blue-eyed man smiled. "Well, that's part of the incentive for freaking out." He slid his hands down to cup her derriere. "Would you like to soothe me now?"

She slid her hands around to cup his. "I've only just begun."

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Lassiter was tense. More so than usual. Actually he hadn't been as tense "as usual" in the past seven or eight months, since Juliet had burst out of his dreams and into his reality, so the kind of tense he was now had to be measured against an old standard.

In short, he could go off at any minute.

They had arrived at the ski resort ahead of her family, and Juliet was happily unpacking their stuff while he stood tensely at the window looking tensely out at the snow, feeling tense about being forced to ski (he had exaggerated with her before; he knew how to ski, but it had been decades and he wasn't at all sure he should be allowed to do it in public after all this time), but not nearly as tense as he felt about having to make a good impression on her mother, her step-dad (forget making a good impression on Frank O'Hara; it was nothing to Lassiter to be disliked—if it came to that—by a con artist), her aunt and uncle.

Juliet had promised they were all nice people, and since she was "nice people" herself he knew they would, in all likelihood, be at least civil to him.

But they weren't really the problem.

He was the problem.

He had always excelled at unwittingly alienating people, particularly when he didn't want to. It still was a mystery to him that Juliet, having lasted so long as his partner, still somehow came to love him and make love to him and let him make love to her (suddenly he felt less tense)... but what if he screwed it up with her family again? What if it made her question her future with him?

Okay, tense again.

"Relax," she called from the other side of the room.

"How?" He said it mostly to the window, miserable now with fear.

"Carlton." She crossed the room and tugged at his arm. "Look at me."

He did, seeing the concern in her eyes, mixed with abundant love. "It's going to kill me to embarrass you."

"Stop," she pleaded, hugging him. "You're going to be fine."

He hugged her back, trying to achieve a facsimile of calm. He'd been holding steady in the weeks since she'd asked him about the trip, but today, now that it was happening, he was a basket case. "It's not too late to hire someone to pretend to be me."

Juliet laughed, squeezing him hard. "No. My mother remembers your eyes. She said she'd never seen eyes that blue in her life."

"They'll be closed when I go into a fetal position," he muttered.

"That's it." She stepped back and dragged him over to the bed, pushing him to sit. "Lie down."

"O'Hara, I don't—"

"Yes you do, and so do I." She pointed to the bedside clock. "They won't be in from the airport for another two hours." She pulled her sweater up over her head. "Why are you still dressed?"

"I'm not in a mood conducive to..." He trailed off. "Oh."

"Maybe you are?"

"Maybe I am." He was mesmerized, just like always, as she unhooked her bra and cast it aside, giving him a chance to look her over before she climbed up on the bed and straddled him. "Yeah, I could be."

"If we have to come back here and have sex every time you start to get nervous, so be it." She went after his belt, smiling. "Now take your shirt off, Lassiter."

"No," he said, grasping her arms and pulling her down to lie on top of him. "Just let me hold you a while."

"Oh," she said, sounding surprised and touched, and obligingly snuggled herself against his body. "I'd like that, too."

"I'm not saying no to sex, you understand."

"I understand." Amusement was in her tone.

He stroked her hair, slowly running his fingers through its soft thick golden length, caressing her bare shoulders and making her shiver a little. Her head rested on his chest, and he felt himself calming, relaxing.

It was always best to be with her. From the early days of their partnership, she had been able to calm him down, usually with just a look, sometimes with words. Initially he calmed himself down because he knew her "look" was a warning he was crossing a line with a suspect or a witness or even Vick, but then in time, he only had to glance at her; it became less and less of a struggle to "behave." She was a salve whether or not he thought he needed her, and everything was better with her.

"I love you," he murmured. "You know how much."

"I know." She patted his chest, looking up and nuzzling his jaw lightly.

"But I am afraid sometimes."

"You don't need to be."

He kept his tone even. "I'm afraid you'll see me through everyone else's eyes."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Yes. Because then you might ask yourself what the hell you're doing with a guy like me."

She lifted her head again and stared at him. "Carlton. Does anyone know you as well as I do? I mean, really? As an adult?"

He met her gaze. "No."

"And I've known you for seven years now, right?"

He traced a line across her perfect mouth. "Yes."

"Good, bad, light, dark, strong, weak—caff, decaf—I know you. As much as you let yourself be known."

Lassiter let his fingertips trace her cheek now. "I have no secrets from you. Just things we haven't had occasion to talk about yet."

"Okay. So let's say my mom decides you're a douchebag."

Despite himself, he laughed at the unexpectedness of her word choice. "Uh, sure?"

"Or whackaloon, if you prefer," she added with a smile. "So what if she does? How does that affect what I know about you?"

"It doesn't. But it'll be hard for you to know the most important people in your life don't like the man you love."

"Carlton," she whispered, sliding up a little to kiss him. "You are the most important person in my life. You have been for years. Even if the entire family moved up here from Florida just to hate you, there's no way it would affect my feelings. I'd suggest we transfer out, that's all."

He searched her gaze, seeing only the same love and tenderness which cut through all of his defenses, just like always.

"Okay?" she persisted.

Lassiter kissed her in response.

"Okay?" she asked again more insistently.

"Yes, and now I feel like skiing," he answered, and rolled her onto her back. "All over you. With my tongue."

Her lovely eyes widened, and her smile was slightly wicked. "Be my guest."

Lassiter dispensed with her jeans and panties quickly, and while she watched, he got out of his own clothing as well. He kissed her sweet lips, gentle at first and then harder, feeling her soft skin pressed to his body as the kiss deepened and intensified.

He loved her body, and loved his effect on her. It wasn't ego; he simply knew this woman wanted and sought out and appreciated his touch. She didn't have to tell him so, although she did—he knew it by her reactions.

Turning her to jello was aphrodisiac for him. Each shudder and sigh aroused him more than almost anything else she could say or do, and that was saying a lot, because she could certainly do a hell of a lot for him, and had.

Right now he trailed kisses down her throat, pinning her hands by her shoulders. He "skied" a path between her breasts and then up their slopes, circling and engulfing her nipples, making them hard before sliding down again to her abdomen.

Juliet was already moaning a little, wriggling just a bit. He admonished her to keep still, at which she laughed, and his answering laughter must have rumbled against her skin because she shivered and whispered his name.

He let go of her hands as his skier tongue meandered down her stomach, across to the curve of her hips and then over to her navel, circling there. Her hands came to rest on his shoulders, caressing his neck and sliding into his hair while he teased the skin around her navel, moving slowly, slowly, southward.

Her shudder of anticipation aroused him even more, and he grasped her hips to hold her steady as he wandered into the ultimate skier's valley between her soft warm thighs.

There was no way to express to her how much he loved exploring her here, just here, in this intimate, welcoming heat. He kissed her inner thighs, licking and kissing and nuzzling, and when he registered her anxious words and movements, he finally let his mouth go to where he knew she most wanted him.

Juliet sighed profoundly, thrusting her hips up despite his attempts to keep her still, but he managed to ride out the motion, relentlessly pushing and suckling and stroking to drive her to what her moans and writhing indicated was a tremendous orgasm. She bucked against his mouth, wanting more, and gasped out, "Need… longer… tongue…"

Lassiter took this as his cue to slide back up her silky body and drive himself home, deeply and ravenously kissing her as he took her, feeling her legs hooking around his thighs as he pushed into her again and again, fierce and intent and lost in the passion between them.

Her arms clutched at him, not letting him away from her torso, and nothing was better, nothing—connected everywhere, hard and sure and desperate and complete.

Complete.

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Carlton braced himself up on his arms, still breathing hard, and said, "I think I can meet your family now."

"I think they can ski by themselves," Juliet countered, loving the emotion in his vivid blue eyes. "I'd rather stay here and do this again."

He smiled and sank back down against her. "It's the only skiing I do well."

Juliet sighed and kissed his cheek and chin and forehead. "I love you, Carlton Lassiter. You and your ski pole are welcome in my bed any time."

Carlton laughed and kissed her back. His warm weight on her was wonderful, sexy, loving. "I still think they're not going to like me, but now I don't care."

She shifted underneath him, so that one of his thighs was between her legs. "They are going to like you, but now you understand I don't care either?"

"Yeah," he murmured, moving his thigh against her. "I do."

She pushed up to meet the pressure of that thigh. "We still have time for more, you know."

He growled something unintelligible, sending his hand down between them, and Juliet arched involuntarily at his touch. "Then we'll have more," he said clearly, and whatever she might have said in response was silenced by his intent kiss.

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The rest of the weekend went fairly well. He was nervous, but her family didn't hate him, the skiing was uneventful, and Juliet loved him, so nothing else seemed very important by comparison.

There were two times his tension threatened to take over. The first time, Juliet found a reason to excuse them from the conversation, took him back to their room, stripped off his clothes and quite simply ravished him. Afterward, he wasn't quite sure who he was.

The second time, when they were in town sightseeing and he'd inadvertently made a few snarky remarks about other tourists, she said there was another shop she wanted to check out, got him in their rental car, drove until they ended up at the end of a deserted lane and then did things to him in the front seat which he would have sworn could only be done in the back seat.

It was an effective method of distraction, he had to admit, and she was only slightly smug about it.

But she was certainly surprised when he suggested another ski trip in the future… and not at all surprised when he amended it with, "Only no family."

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