Chapter 6: Columns

Laura had no illusions the evening wouldn't end in sex, and grew more tense as the evening wore on. She had to give Remington credit, as he did his utmost to help her relax, keeping conversation light, impersonal, as they dined, even reaching across the table several times to clasp her hand in his, stroking her palm with a thumb. She tried, she really did, to calm her tattered nerves, but much like the night before, she only grew more anxious. She escaped to the living room after dinner was over and the kitchen was cleaned, while Remington uncorked the champagne and poured them each a glass in the kitchen. Emerging, he found her perched on the edge of the couch, hands shoved between her knees, and unconsciously rocking.

His gut clenched at the sight. Setting the champagne flutes on the coffee table, he pried her hands from between her knees and urged her to her feet.

"Come. Sit with me," he requested softly. Sitting on the floor his back pressed against the end of the couch and facing the fire, he eased her down to sit between his legs. His hands settled on her shoulders, seeking out the tension there. A quick, sharp intake of breath told him he'd found a tender spot, and he concentrated his touch there. "I don't imagine either of us would argue last night failed to live up to our expectations… perhaps, our fantasies, even. Hmmm?" he suggested. She snorted her agreement, but said nothing in answer. "Why do you think that is?" Tensing further, she crossed her arms around her body and turned her head to stare at the wall.

"I don't know," she answered, tightly.

"I think we've spent so much time worrying over, avoiding… anticipating… consummating this relationship, that it's no wonder our nerves got the better of us, hmmm?" She sat up a little straighter at the admission.

"You were nervous?" He chuckled low in his throat.

"More so than my first time." That little tidbit of information piqued her interest, as he knew it would and offered her a temporary escape from the conversation he was trying to initiate.

"How old were you?" she ventured to ask.

"Thirteen or thereabouts. Old enough to understand the… mechanics, the need to protect against an unwanted pregnancy," he answered, matter of fact, before adding, thoughtfully, "Too young in all the ways that mattered, I suppose."

"First love?" she wondered aloud. He laughed a wry laugh at the question.

"Nothing so noble as that, Laura," he admitted. "Survival." Her stomach clenched at the implications.

"You mean—"

"No. I never resorted to selling myself as so many do." She relaxed under his hands. "But as I grew into my skin, girls, women, made it clear they found me… attractive. It didn't take long to realize an enjoyable shag meant a warm bed, perhaps a decent meal." She bit her lip to keep the impulse to apologize for life's cruelties from passing her lips. "You? If you don't mind me asking, that is."

"Nineteen. My Sophomore year at Stanford."

"First love?" he echoed her earlier question back at her, drawing a soft laugh from her. She barely noticed when he tugged her shirt out from beneath the waistband of her slacks. His hands glided over the smooth silk of her teddy, before settling on the bare skin below her shoulders to search for more knots.

"Nothing so noble as that," she echoed his words back to him this time. "I was tired of being given a hard time for being the only virgin in our crowd. It wasn't as if I wasn't curious what all the hype was about. I was. But I knew I didn't want to find out at the hands of some bumbling guy not much older or more experienced than myself." She gave a shrug and a little laugh. "The glasses worked." A smile tugged at his lips as a memory came to mind.

"Remember the calc professor?"

"Mm-hmm.".

"The glasses worked."

"Did the trick, did they?"

He'd been bemused… intrigued… when she'd made that admission two years before. The straight laced, never mixing business with pleasure, Laura Holt… seducing her professor. Now? He found it in keeping with who she was: she wouldn't leave that first time up to chance, but would carefully calculate what she wanted from the encounter and how to get it.

"And did he? Do the trick… so to speak?" She laughed a throaty little laugh.

"You could say that," she smiled. "Let's just leave it at: I found the remainder of the semester very… educational." His hands stroked up and down her back again, his blood stirring at the sensation of silk… then skin… beneath his bare hands. Daring to take a chance, he gathered the hem of her shirt in his hands, and eased it up over her head. She lifted her arms willingly, although she noticeably tensed at the action.

"Tutoring has never sounded so… enticing," he hummed.

"I don't think you're his type," came her saucy retort. He barked a laugh.

"I was rather thinking of a particular tutor," he murmured, skimming his hands up her back then sweeping a heavy fall of hair to the side, so that he might brush his lips, whisper soft, against her freckled shoulder, making goosebumps dance across her skin.

"I'm afraid your knowledge in this subject matter already far exceeds my own," she drawled. But she forgot he knew her far better than anyone else, and in just the slumping of her shoulders beneath his hands he recognized her self-confidence taking a dive.

"Do you find that bothersome?" he inquired, his hands working to relieve the tension in her shoulders that had reappeared. She exhaled another puff of air.

"Not bothersome, per se," she answered, elongating each word. "Intimidating, maybe," she admitted, uncomfortably.

"If experience was a positive in your professor's column, why should it be a negative in my own?" he countered, truly perplexed.

"I'm not a nineteen-year-old virgin any longer, to start. I'm twenty-nine and have neither your experience nor the experience of the women you normally favor," she pointed out. He ducked his head forward, to lay his lips near her ear.

"Once favored," he corrected quickly in a low voice, then dropped a kiss on her collarbone. Leaning back, he kneaded his thumbs into her spine, working downward. "You said to start. What else?" She shifted with unease underneath his hands, and wrapped her arms around herself, protectively. "Lau-ra," he drew out her name, "Tell me," he told her, insistently, then brushed his lips over her shoulder while giving her upper arms a gentle squeeze.

"I didn't care what he thought," she finally answered, so quietly he had to lean in to hear her. "He was a means to an end, I never imagined him to be anything more." She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, as she worked up the nerve to say the next. "He didn't matter. You do." He stilled when he believed he finally understood what she was saying, in not so many words.

"Surely you don't mean you think you'll disappoint me?" he exclaimed. She looked back over her shoulder at him, her doleful brown eyes meeting his.

"I think we've already checked off that column, haven't we?"

(TBC)