It's more than a month later and he's being intolerable with everyone. And she knows (reminds herself not to take it personally) that it really is with everyone. It's not just her, and it's just him, and he's so completely focused on the case that he walked himself into. So involved that Emily's ended up in her office just to get away from his frenetic mannerisms and sharded tone of voice, using her computer as she chews on Twizzlers at quarter past nine.
"What's that?"
Gill lifts her head from the study proposal that Loker had dropped on her desk before leaving, "Hmm?"
"The puzzle thing." A half chewed Twizzler points toward the frame on her wall that holds just two puzzle pieces and Gill just grins as the girl aims a wave across the room. "What's it mean?"
"That's your father's way of saying he likes me sometimes." She smiles unbidden at the memory of finding the pieces on her desk and doesn't even try to cover it, not with Emily. The girl is acutely aware of leaking emotions – she's always, always, been her daddy's girl.
Emily snorts a half amused and half bored sound into the room, kicking the chair back, "He likes you all times, Gill."
She says it as a benediction, like the end of an argument they didn't even need to have because both parties already know the end result.
Gillian nods a stare over her paperwork, not seeing much of any of the actual words. "I know, Em."
"You do too." The teenager is looking at her with such wide-eyed surprise that she has to swallow down a laugh that's gotten stalled up in her throat. "You know."
Of course she does. She's known forever. He's not nearly as subtle as he believes.
He's a terrible liar sometimes, if it really comes down to it. Especially when fully facing her, especially when he speaks, most especially when it's her name.
She also knows... he's got to get to that realization and acceptance himself or he's going to destroy them.
Gillian gives the girl a tired but warmly loving smile, shrugging as she points at the nearly empty bag of candy and motions for the girl to share, "You are your father's daughter."
"Why?" His voice crowds into the room but quietly and she's not quite sure how he's managed to sneak into her doorway when hours before she could hear every coming and going by the stinging of his tone. "B'cause she's prone to harassin' you after work hours?"
Gill just smiles wider into the commentary and the way he waves between the two of them, "Give 'er the sugar before she takes you hostage, Em. Pack up, yeah? Time to go home."
His gaze skates off his daughter and rasps over her, an oddly unexpected calculated look claiming his face as he takes in the way she's curled onto her couch. His glance lingers on her shoes and the way she's left them lonely on the carpet before he smiles. She watches it encompass him as he swallows and jerks his head toward the door as if in offer of something, an implication that she's to join them. And she just blinks confusion back at him silently as Emily starts shoving textbooks back into her bag and grabs up the bag of candy, heading in her direction. Cal takes it from her gently before she manages to pass the border of the desk, let alone cross the office. His other hand aims back toward the desk and her books and Gillian studies the quirked way Emily just confusedly follows the silent order, her shoulders shrugging it off.
"Foster?" He intentionally deprives her of sugar, his hand calmly laying the candy back to the desk as he passes her a surprisingly affectionate look and exhales through his nose in a strangely still calmness. "You hungry, darling?"
It sounds so... silken and soft and promising. Calm and perfect and like a final acceptance.
He wouldn't dare make an implication like that in front of his daughter.
Except... his daughter reads the (dis)honesty of the faces around her – just like him.
Or she judges events and moments based upon facts and evidence acquired – just like her mother.
Despite the fact that she's known this girl since she was gawky and too big in the doe-wide eyes for her little eight year old face... she's never taught Emily to hear implied duality in the tone of her father's voice. It would have been too unfair an advantage to give a precociously beautiful little girl who already had the man twice double wrapped around her little pinky finger.
He's got a tweaked half smile aimed in her direction, head cocked long into angling as Emily waits at his side, her bag tucked up on her thin shoulder. "Gill?"
Is she hungry? For food, for sweetness, for him, for sex, for the illusion (or possibility) of domesticity, for such a brilliantly beautiful child? He damn well knows the answer to that - every unspoken question. And he's a sneaky little bastard for all the implications made while his daughter watches and hears nothing out of the ordinary between best friends. Damn him. Sometimes he's too good and damn him still. For being insufferable, for making her forgive him with just a few words, and (maybe, most of all) for offering everything with his daughter as innocuous and innocent and unrealized witness.
"A little." She drops Loker's paperwork to the cushion beside her, blinks a glance to her heels and then back up to him. There's a millisecond in which his eyes widen out and then thin as he schools himself.
A grin curls his lips regardless of his attempt to stay passive and he huffs off a dumbstruck laugh, looping his arms against Emily's shoulders before nodding at the door. "Come on then. You too."
They're dangerous to him in combination, he realizes (not that he hasn't known it all along). When together, the two of them create an unrealistic but oh-so-tempting softness of domesticity - but one with keen edges on it. Because neither of them let up on him at all while he's making dinner, neither while they're eating it and simultaneously teasing at every fault of his character and/or person. They make it seem like a tag-team event, really, mocking and loving him at once while eating and chatting and generally just being the two women in his life he'd purposefully stop breathing for...
And that realization is the one that stings – not that he's got a standing deathwish when it comes to keeping Foster safe, which is more than a bit obvious to the wide world – but that he's started to think of his daughter as a woman rather than a child. Terrifying, that is - and he's sure he'll find a way to blame both Zoe and Gillian for it if given the time.
He grins into it, though, as he makes another pot of tea, listening to Emily rummage around in the hall closet while Gillian closes inside the border of the kitchen.
She's left her shoes layin' about somewhere in the house but he's never needed to hear her heels to know she's close. He's had the measurement of her nearness ascertained since the first step into her office, years before.
"You're stayin' for another cup," he tosses it over his shoulder. "No makin' excuses, Foster. Just the way it is."
He can hear the shrug in her shoulders just by the movement of the air in the room and it crackles on his spine like heat before dry lightning. "Hadn't planned to."
Fuck, 'dangerous' is an understatement if he's honest with himself.
She's sheer uncalculated risk, she is.
And he never could stop placing bets without her at his shoulder, curbing his recklessness.
"To stay?" he asks tentatively.
"To make excuses." Gillian corrects along his side, letting her body turn opposite his as her jaw angles over the kettle. "Besides, your daughter wants to work on a puzzle."
"And where'n the hell'd she get that idea?" He squints a quick accusation in her direction, leaning forward into it to keep her from shying back as she turns her head.
The puzzle pieces themselves had been as far as he'd been willing to go weeks before. Far as he'd dared. And the fact that something about them has teased at his daughter's curiosity niggles at him, makes his shoulders crank up tighter as he blinks and watches Gillian's face stay still under his studying. After a moment she just shrugs at him, unwilling to bend into how clearly he's trying to draw information out of her. The two of them are too much a pair, too easily a partnership against his already admittedly crap resolve. The two of them in combination could, conceivably, twist and twine him into anything they set their minds to and, well, if the very idea of that didn't terrify him he'd admit that he sorta loved (adored and plainly craved) the probability.
"She's incredibly observant, Cal," Gillian explains softly, blowing out a breath of explanation as her hips sink her weight into the edge of the counter. "She saw it in my office. I didn't tell her much."
Truth and a lie combined if he has to place a wager on it - because maybe she hadn't physically said much but, knowing Emily, knowing Gillian, she'd said just enough for assumptions to be made and ideas to start spinning about in the girl's head.
Which, no doubt, had led to his little girl being cheeky and wanting to play out a puzzle between the two of them while he's losing the last of the day's patience to how fucking delicious she smells so close to his shoulder.
"About the puzzle bits or whatever's goin' on behind your eyes, huh?" He shores up against the nearness of her by making implications, because if he knows anything, truly, about Gillian – it's that she's either going to wave him off or snag him in. And if he knows her entirely true (which he's fairly sure he does) she's in no mood to wave off any of his antics. She's in the mood to dig right back as he holds her glance. "Christ, they're pretty. Aren't they? What're you hiding back there, Foster?"
"Possible she saw both," Gill admits quietly. "Probably both."
He grins on a shrugging, pride in his voice as a smile washes on her to match his own, "She is her father's daughter, yeah?"
"You taught her everything you know, didn't you?"
"Well, not everythin'." Cal lustily lowers as he leans closer into her space and watches the infinitely slow turning of her jaw closer to his. "Y'know what I mean."
She can't help but roll her eyes at him, can't save herself from finding him impossible at random intervals. It's comfortable for the both of them, it's a breathing relief when the conversation is doubled between spoken truths and silent implications.
"I never taught her how to hear your voice."
He snorts into a laugh, nodding doggedly as he considers how tragic it could have been had she been training a his little ten year old monkey (climbin' all over every. little. thing.) to hear weakness in her father's voice. By sixteen, near seventeen, he'd have been dead in the water in regards to authority of any sort... not that he isn't a bit anyhow. "Thank you for that."
"I'm not promising that I won't." And that's the truth, he knows. It's assertive and brashly honest and in-his-face contrary. "She deserves to know. Someday. I deserve to know... someday."
"Gillian."
A noise comes up her throat like she's already negating anything he could say to pause this moment, to stay the onslaught of truth that's inevitably about to come off her and he can't do a damn thing but watch her face as it falls out of her quietly but quick. "Things don't always have to be perfect to fit together, Cal. A perfect fit's the easy way out, isn't it? Doesn't actually take any work."
"Gill - "
"Unmotivated, isn't it?" her fingers follow the tenderness of her voice as she pulls at his shirt, tucking the fabric in her fingers as she breathes out through her nose.
He can't help the smile that twitches on him as she curls her hand tighter into his shirt and leans closer and clouds her smell up the side of his body just before she heat of her presses along his arm. "You implyin' I'm a lazy lout?"
"I'm implying that you're habitually stalling," her knuckles rise up the front of him just to take a slide down the left of his chest, pressing on fabric and reactionary tension, "while you tell everyone in the world how much you love me. Other men, employees, clients, bartenders..."
Yes, sure, okay... she might have a point there. Possibly.
"But you never actually tell me, Cal."
What, say the exact words out loud, all out and in a sound that she can pick apart and tear to shreds if she's in the mood? Trap himself into the fact she can hear everything in him just by the way of his words?
(Why in bloody hell isn't there a deaf spot equivalent to the fact that he cannot, sometimes, fathom how she really feels - about him, about anything)?
That's a risk he's terrified of, actually.
That she'd hear how much it is exactly that he loves her.
It's maybe the one bet he doesn't yet have the balls to place.
"Tell you I love you all the time, Foster." It's not a lie, not really, regardless of his inability to look up at her.
Because he tries to tell her. At the very least, he tries to let it be bright and obvious, he tries to say it without having to say much. Because... he can't seem to force it out of his throat when she looks at him with those unreadable eyes, can't part with the words when she already knows them just by the way he looks at her. And he shouldn't have to say it, really. Should he? Doesn't he prove it enough? Doesn't he show her?
"No, Cal," she leans honest (and obvious) sadness in his direction as she says it and he's not sure he's ever felt as broken down into pieces by her as he does when she blinks her glance down, "you don't."
The loud rattle of a puzzle box precedes his daughter's voice just by a breath and he can feel the step back and fall of space between them like a trench as she leans into the room. "Gill? Still up for this?"
"Yeah, absolutely." Foster's already deserting him for the innocence of his own daughter and he exhales as her voice takes on a masking sway of familiar teasing. "Your dad's making us some tea. Sound good?"
"Sure." Em smirks as her brows come together, her eyes darting between them all too knowingly. "Ice cream too?"
"What? At your beck and call then, Princess?" he can hear the telltale weakness of his voice and it's damning, it's a fucking bright flag to his daughter's surreptitious study of their very movements. Or it would be, if Gillian had been her mother and she'd trained her from birth to hear every inflection.
But, she isn't her mother (and something small inside him blinds aching at that inherent truth). And Emily sees more than she hears - and she can see his face without having to really look. Little shit sees and knows and intuits too much for her own good - and she can't help but push and meddle and be just like him, actually.
Emily backs toward the living room, the box hugged into her chest as Foster starts to follow her slow movement, the both of them leaving him to the tea kettle that's steaming up at his back. "Well, you did start our relationship by feeding me whenever I got the whim."
A smirk cages his lips up as Gill shoots him another triumphant grin. "Got history on 'er side, doesn't she?"
Gill just half smiles, turning away from his watching as she moves away. "Ice cream sounds pretty good actually."
He watches her at nearly two in the morning like it's normal and this prized picture is something he possibly deserves instead of having somehow fallen luckily into. Because watching Emily sleep is an indulgence that he's had access to for years and he's enjoyed the flat out innocence of her face while she dreams for her entire life. But having that comfortable stability in the background while also watching Gillian finish a puzzle in silence and sip at yet another round of tea? He's got to etch this image of her curled on the floor between his couch and coffee table into his brain somehow. He's got to engrave it somewhere because he's not sure it's likely to ever really happen again, not like this. Not with his daughter's hand curled so near her shoulder that they make a pair, they make something more like family than usual.
His head rises up off the break of his palm long enough to exhale, "Gillian?"
"Hmm?" The noise is throaty and full of patient warmth but she doesn't turn to him, instead studying the puzzle piece she's got between her fingertips before glancing down over what the two of them had managed to finish before Emily had slacked back sleepily on the couch.
"I do, darling," he asserts an answer to the earlier conversation softly between them, his body slunken low in the chair as he watches her confidently press the puzzle piece into its place.
There's pleasure on her that is simple and clean and he feels his lips thin in a small reflexive smile just from watching its evolution. He isn't sure if the sheer victory in her smile is due to the puzzle or his almost admittance of her being, once again, all too right when it comes to him. Frankly, so long as that particularly crowing smile somehow traces back to this moment in the middle of his living room, he doesn't much care what the true impetus actually is.
"I know," she agrees gently, a thoughtful and surprisingly patient look washing over her face as she lifts her head and then turns her eyes on him, "but someday I need to hear it."
"Tryin'," he admits on an especially tight swallow, voice hushed quiet as he digs his knuckles into his temple and leans harder aside.
She blinks slowly, head tipping as though she's the one reading him (and he doesn't actually doubt that her ears are hearing him clear as crisp daylight). "Keep trying."
"She's fine where she is," he lifts his jaw into nodding over Emily's stillness, the way she's slacked out comfortably over the length of the couch. "She'll take herself to bed at some point."
She calculates him, head tipping farther over the puzzle as she blinks into watching him stand, her eyes following his hands as he wipes against his jeans and then steps along her side. "And?"
"Well, dealin' with me must be exhaustin'." Cal lets his fingers slick her hair behind her ear, lets himself fully embrace and enjoy the fact she's willingly allowing the movement. "Come on then."
"You asking me to bed?" her voice taunts the cheeky accusation as though she thinks he'll brush it off – and maybe that brief assumption is exactly what goads him into stroking along her skin with sigh.
He catches her chin up higher with the break of his palm and lets his fingers find the weak softness along her throat as he shakes his head minutely, grazing his voice quieter as Emily just barely shifts in her sleep. "M'not askin', love."
Her eyes widen into a slate shade of blue that looks simply delicious in the one lamp light that's still making shadows through the room, her head still as he bends over her whispering. "You usually don't."
"So why start now?" Cal drops his other hand enough to catch at her forearm, giving her a tug and smirking into the astonished way she just follows into his urging, standing with a perplexed but bemused look on her face.
He leans again into her quietly interested watching, tags a throw blanket over his daughter's legs before catching her eyes again as he rises along the front of her and grips her tighter and closer.
No, he can't out with it just yet, can't take that risk.
There's only so far he can go in a night (a month, a year or ten) and, damn it all, he is trying. "Come to bed, Gillian."
"Cal." She's moaning weak and it's suddenly as though they've traded proficiency, like he can hear everything but he's white blind to the surprise of her mouth hitting his so hard that he's startled at first, surprised by how strong her hands are in the front of his shirt. By how sure she is in that particular tip of her head and the flush of her hips into his as she nips his bottom lip between her teeth and, fucking hell, this is a kind of kiss he didn't even know she had stashed away. It's rough and near desperate and sexy in how promising it is as she digs the heels of her palms into his chest.
He'd always assumed he'd be the aggressor the first (if ever) time their mouths met outside of some silly act for a case or just of mere friendly affection... but she's the one slicking their tongues together and he's groaning his pleased amazement into her mouth. He's figured, since his first foray into her office at the Pentagon (primarily by balls out swagger and nimble paranoia) that if they ever, ever, got to this point... he'd be the one who pressed forward first. The adverse tricks his brain and his lungs up at once, jerks him back. His hands are suddenly flat palmed against her cheeks and he breaks her back just far enough that he can suck down a gulp of oxygen while he forces her head even to his.
Cal swallows hard, forcing air and hesitation and concern down his throat and deep into his lungs as they'll go. "Okay?"
He's asking her because he has no bloody idea what's okay when she's so unashamedly changing every fucking rule they've agreed to abide by for a decade. Where's her line now? Cause it feels like she's just blown it apart behind them. Her eyes widen and go brightly soft at once, pinkened and roughed up lips twitching just before she smiles fully and tugs tighter into his shirt.
"You're asking me?" she laughs the words forward, brushing them along his lips as his hands loosen their hold and let her lean closer. "I started it."
"Y'did too." Cal agrees as he studies how full her bottom lip looks, glories in the fact that she'd so invitingly let him nip at it. "Bit capricious of ya, Foster."
Gutsy, his girl Gillian.
Gutsy and, surprisingly, wearing an impatience that looks a hell of a lot like wanting. Beautiful fucking want. He's absolutely astounded by the existence of desire on her in the moment – because he's never seen her let it unleash so easily across her face. Well, with the exception of some silly drunken or addled moments the two of them have shared when they probably shouldn't have.
Her brow arches as her voice drops dry. "Was it?"
Gutsy and minxy and deliriously sexy. Fucking hell.
"You comin' along then?" He doesn't necessarily give her an option not to, hands grasping onto her hips and driving her closer up the front of him before he takes a backwards step, clinging her with him as he draws them away from the couch.
"You know we're just proving Emily right?" Gill's voice is breathy humor as he groans a lay of kisses along her throat, arms both claiming around her as she minces her steps cautious in following, grasping up the fabric of his shirt to keep them balanced.
"True." He snugs her closer, as though suddenly horrified that this is just some sort of lesson learning for him, trapping her up so that she can't turn this into an example of his sheer repetitive recklessness. "She'll be a pretentious shit in the morning, for sure."
Her throat hums at him again and it's a sound he can't deny having always enjoyed. "Takes after her father."
"Cheeky." His knuckles draw her chin higher before he spreads his fingers out to raise her head and hold it there, pausing half in the hall just to suck along the side of her throat and enjoy the way her moan hums up under his lips and tongue. "Gill?"
"We're okay."
It's the breathing assurance that he hadn't completely realized he'd paused for – but she had.
First truth: she's lucky they've even made it to the bed because, even while feeling all his age at two in the morning, when her legs had hooked round his hips he'd considered less than gently lowering her to the floor and diving between them on the hall carpet. He's also a bit short on both ends and he knows it and while she doesn't often tease him about it, it's possible that Gillian climbing him like he's a fucking tree coulda take them both down if his head hadn't been in the game.
Which, considering his blood flow had taken a southern detour, it wasn't, isn't.
Second truth: she kisses like a fucking sea siren but tastes sweet rather than salted.
Third truth: he's really, honestly, absolutely, unsure as to how he's already lost his shirt while she's still warmly dressed and leaning hard and forward in his lap.
Fairly sure he's gone and lost his belt too, actually. Au revoir little belt buddy, on your own now.
"How'd y'do that?" Cal groans it up into the wandering of her hands down his chest, watches the way she smiles selfish pleasure as she draws her head back and wipes the heels of her palms back up his skin.
Her palms go slowly following the curves of his shoulders as he winds her legs tighter around him, skimming fingertips up the undersides of her thighs before digging into the denim of her jeans and tugging for an answer. He rumbles another questioning noise up under her jaw, feels her laugh up her throat and through her nose as her fingers keep up their distracting tracing and touring of his shoulders. She strokes along his neck and the only response he can muster, the only counter offensive he can even come up with his to swipe his tongue along her throat before nuzzling near her ear.
"Tell me how you managed that, yeah?" he whispers on her as his his hands dig against her thighs and squeeze, leading her hips into tipping forward as she grinds farther into his lap. "Why'm I the half naked one?"
Fucking hell, the woman is... she's every secret she's never told him, curled into his lap and wrapping around him as she sluices both hands up the hair along the back of his head.
"The man who makes demands rather than requests doesn't get to ask pointless questions," she warns hazily before raking her nails slowly down the back of his scalp, drawing a gritted noise up his throat as he sinks back into the tantalizing tracing onto his neck.
She so silkenly calm and achingly slow in her movements, like she's got unlimited patience and daylight isn't ever coming. Drives him itching mad and makes him feel comfortably lulled at once and his pulse is trying to pound fast or low and slow to match the stumble of his feelings.
Dear Heartbeat, Meet Gillian Fucking Foster.
"Christ, Gill." He banks his head farther back into how calculatedly she keeps the movement scrolling up and down his scalp, her arms pressing into his shoulders as she watches over him. "Can I ask pointed ones then?"
He can hear the snort of amused approval come off her even as one of her hands lifts to brush his hair back but he's still surprised, eyes-shut-shocked, when she lays a tender kiss against his forehead, another above his left brow. "Provided they pertain to - "
"What's under these?" Cal lets the interruption off breathily as he strokes his palms along her ass, voice smug with impertinence and a good throbbing of adrenaline as he pulls at the doubled layer of her pockets. "Now, I'll know if you're lyin', Foster."
The look she passes him suddenly is broaching murderous, darkens her eyes even as she presses her lips still to block an inevitable smile in response to his cheekiness. He just grins in response, watching her face as she exhales through her nose and shakes her head as though he's a loss to all of humanity. Then she kisses him, lightly along his lips, and he can't help but drive it rougher. He can't help himself from pressing his tongue firmly between her lips and reveling in the taste of her mouth mashed against his as he curves his hands back to her waist and grips his palms around her. She patiently slows the kiss again, tipping her head in an infuriatingly perfect angle so that she can break the one kiss into two, five, seven before she's ribbing her teeth gently on his bottom lip.
"Tell me." His fingers are plucking at the dark but satin fabric of her shirt, unable to stay still as he teases at her and tries to memorize the sultry darkness of her eyes. "Lace? Silk? Cotton? French cut, thong?"
"Cal - "
"Nothin'?" He chips up at her on a grin, using the roll of her eyes and her feigned annoyance as a distraction to skid his hands up and stroke his palms along her breasts.
He lets both hands close around them, fingers light in their repetitive stroking as she arches into the movement and one hand latches onto his forearm loosely. His thumbs find her nipples through fabric and he pulls lightly on them, rubbing them into his fingers and simultaneously pinching as she reflexively digs against his forearm and a full shiver rivets down her.
"Cal." Now that's a pretty way to say his name. Shame she's waited so long to put that much heat to it.
"I'm gonna find out, ain't I?" He runs his right hand slowly down the front of her, wiping along the expensive fabric so that he can press against her stomach and then tip his hand between her still clothed thighs. "Out with it, Doctor Foster. Thong?"
"You're incorrigible."
And hard as a damn rock, not that he's complainin'. And she's more than just warm between the legs, hell... she's got pure heat cradling his hand as he strokes teasing touches up and down the inner seam of her jeans. Her first response is a large swallow of air and then she keens out a yielding sound as he keeps a circular up and down brushing against the crotch of her pants. Her hips are bringing her closer into each touch and he can feel her thighs tense against him as she catches on his shoulders and digs in for purchase.
She'll mark him up tonight, he has no doubt. She can't control how close she keeps digging him close any more than he can control the fact that he wants to feel how wet she his before he even gets her pants off her. It's a goal to reach for at the very least.
"French cut then." He gutters out a groaned half laugh of amusement as he sideways studies her face, watches her lashes flutter lower before she realizes he's reading her reactions and stonewalls him blankly. "Silk or lace, love?"
Her head merely shifts back and forth, cheeks flushing pink as she brushes a slow and near innocent kiss along his lips.
Not gonna work this time – sure, she's his good girl, she's his pinnacle. Doesn't mean she doesn't have a bit of sharp on her edges. Always has, really. Part of the fun of loving her for so fucking long – waiting for those few moments of watching how utterly and surprisingly sinful she can be when so otherwise sweet and virtuous and gentle.
"Lace?" He times the question to the heavier pressure of his fingers, rubbing the denim inseam tighter into her and uncontrollably grinning into the wordless little moaning she makes as her head drops blushing forward into his shoulder. "Lace it is then."
He can hear her suck in oxygen from along his collarbone, can feel her slick her tongue against her lips and graze his own sweated skin at once. He stills one hand just to take a tug at a nipple through silky fabric with the other, smirking into the whimpered sound she makes, half approval and half surprise. Cal nods his chin closer to her face, both hands still relentlessly owning on her as he rubs his nose against her cheek to draw her attention back.
"If you're so interested, why haven't you checked yet?" Her head carries back up on the challenging tone and he smirks into how controlled her voice is, her mouth rising on the stubble on his jaw. "Afraid you're wrong, expert?"
"That's it." He groans his mouth nearer hers, taunting and ducking away from the kiss she tries to turn his way just before he tugs hard against her pant legs. "I'm testin' this theory right now. We'll see, yeah?"
She's laughing, full and throaty as he energetically flips her back onto the mattress, hands cradling on her thighs so that he can land between them as he aims for another kiss. He's entirely astonished by how easily she lifts her lips into the searching of his, by how loosely she flattens out her hips beneath him as he settles down low and drags the kissing from her mouth down her throat. Most of his weight is leaned into the palm that's pressing his sheets and the other hand is already loosening buttons down the front of her, working them impatiently as he lets his head lean into how playfully she keeps tugging on his ear.
Lace, definitely, if the dark bra curving on her creamy skin is any hint at what matches. And black. And, hell, had she planned this somehow? Had she known it in the early hours of the morning while picking out what underclothes might most be likely to make Cal Lightman a whimpering puddle of misfiring neurons? "Fuck... Foster?"
"Right here," her whisper traces along with the tips of her fingers on his forehead just before she slopes her hand through his hair and pulls his face into her, watching as he takes the pressured hinting and skims kisses down her stomach.
"Makin' sure," he wipes the words on her tensed stomach, stroking his hand along her side and then down the front of her.
"Did you think I'd gone somewhere?"
He takes a handful of denim and pulls, dragging down on it so that it loses its hold on her hips and she drops her hands to thumb under the waistband, letting him keep pulling them down as she lifts up from the mattress. "Thought maybe I was dreamin'."
Her affectionate chuckle doesn't necessarily negate the fact that he may still actually be in a dream – but a legitimate first sighting of little lace knickers manages to remind him, cock first, that this is probably more real than imaginary.
"Bloody hell, Gill."
Her fingertips are keeping the fabric high against her pelvis as he strips the denim off her, his glance focused on how gently she's got the thin and airy fabric plucked between her fingers. It makes her seem innocent, actually. Makes her seem charmingly adorable (yeah, fuckin' adorable) as she wiggles higher against the mattress and kicks the fabric into giving way to his tugging. She lets her leg catch along his hip and she slacks comfortably beneath him as he dumps her pants aside. He catches up under her knee before he realizes he's reached for her again and the sigh that breathes past her lips matches how deliriously happily she just wedges deeper into his bedclothes and lets him stroke the back of her knee.
He sees nothing – no deception, no lie. Absolutely nothin'.
He sees only her pleasure and it simply, instinctively, terrifies him.
She's fucking stunning is what he sees if he accepts peripheral blindness and trusts this torture of tunnel vision when it comes to her. - because she's always fucking stunning to him. And the fact that she seems so pleased to be right exactly where she is makes his lungs stutter still as he takes his fill of looking at her. He doesn't even need her naked yet to know that this is going to be slow to build and wickedly damn fast to end – because he can tease with the best of 'em, but he can't stall anymore. Not when she looks so pleasantly comfortable and at ease as her fingers reach against his chest and tap a silent questioning at his pause.
"You're a knockout, Foster," he chuckles over her with a blink of shy embarrassment. "Been KO'd."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure you've still got some fight, Cal." Such an assured tone, so clearly positive that she's right, that she knows him, that she knows he could participate in this particular moment for hours.
She's partially right, anyhow. Maybe not hours.
He's gonna need oxygen to circulate back to his brain at some point.
"Only ever been completely sure of two things, love." His body leans into the way she's stroking against his chest, head dropping against her shoulder as he simply enjoys how welcoming warm she is as she hooks her legs back along him and cradles his weight heavier into her. "In regards to you."
A sound of acknowledgment murmurs off her, "Enlighten me?"
"You'd never let me touch you this way. And you truly shouldn't anyhow."
A snort of deprecation comes off her and instantly knots his spine still – not the reaction he'd been expecting, really. "I'm not letting you do anything, Cal."
Hello there, that tone of voice has some bite to it. Like a bite and a kiss at once.
He's sweetly offered up his lips and she's gone straight in for the throat, she has. And with teeth.
"Come again?" he taunts as his hand makes a particularly pointed swipe between her legs.
Her eyes darken farther as she skims her tongue over her lips and melts his mind at once. "I'm asking you to."
The unforeseen screeched halt in his brain brings an uncontrollable flinch up with the lift of his jaw. And she's a hair smug in the way she's smiling at him as it happens, a bit haughty and with a sweet little coquettish smirk that says (oh, bleedin' Christ, thank you) Foster's got a twist of good old fashioned kink in her. He shoulda seen that one coming, really - if he's honest with himself. Hadn't he been the one to piece out that she wasn't anywhere near as good a girl as she portrays? This smile, this sensual and mischievous little hitch of the side of her mouth, it's got her lips quirked more to one side than the other as she lifts her fingers back along his forehead again and slowly traces his hairline with the shifting of a more relaxing smile. It's like a requiem somehow, that look of utter loyalty and affection she so easily wears. Got the grace and patience and still-water-calm to it that always, always, reminds him how long she's been at his side.
"You're not quite askin' either, love," Cal murmurs as he lets another look linger down the front of her.
"True. More like telling." Her hand is just as forthright as her tone, takes up against the back of his head and pulls down on him. "Make yourself useful, Lightman. I've been waiting a long damn time for this."
"Have you then?" he chuckles as he rubs the back of his head into her palm. "Really?"
And she's so obviously patient with his teasing, so happily attuned to it. "Shut up and get to it."
"Aye, aye," he hums it suggestively under his breath before wiping his face against her stomach, letting his tongue riff along the edge of her underwear before he rubs his lips down the warmth of the fabric.
She considers exactly how long she has actually been waiting for this as he touches her... for him to own up to everything he's been implying and holding over her for years now.
For her to just accept that completely loving him (despite all the logical reasons as to why she just shouldn't) is so fucking inevitable that his mouth rubbing between her legs just finally feels like, God, completion. And how stupid is that?
When he skims the last of the fabric down her hips the graze of his hands thrums a feeling through her lungs and into her gut that she can really only remember having felt once before. And even as she knows it's an awfully romanticized and probably immature feeling to have, she can't help it.
Her fingers trace through his hair, digging in as his mouth traces a path up her thigh. "When we met..."
He's laughing. Jackass. He knows exactly what she's thinking and he's got the audacity to just... laugh. She could feel miles of guilt for everything they've ever put their exes through when it comes to the highs and lows of the Lightman & Foster Psychological Adventure...
But he's chuckling pleasure along her skin as he licks and nips at her thigh and finally (Jesus, about goddamn time) slips a finger into her. "I know."
She doesn't believe in love at first sight and neither does he.
She believes in infatuation at first sight, interest and obsession, but not this kind of love.
He believes nothing on first sight, especially not the possibility of what he (finally) has in his hands.
No wonder it's taken the both of them near ten years to get here.
He's holding himself back as he stills his hips and she can tell there's more than just lust to the shiver that takes him over, sinks his weight down onto and deeper into her. It's in his arms and his face and in how roughly he rasps his stubble between her breasts as a groaning chokes up from somewhere deep in his chest. His lungs are grappling against any attempt he makes to actually breathe evenly and she can't blame him in the least because she's whimpered a few of her own tripped little pants into his ear. Both her hands catch against his face and when she draws his eyes up to meet hers she loses her smile to the intensity of his doubt, his suspicious fear as he breathes out roughly through his nose and stares her down.
His eyes are usually so color twisted gorgeous.
Now they're just like muddy mingled paint and confused as he shakes his head at her. "Gill."
"Let it go, Cal," she whispers it quietly, keeping it held mid-air between their mouths. "I want you here."
"Y'think that - "
"I want you," she interrupts while digging him deeper and tighter with her legs and her arms curling on him even as she turns her mouth into his stubbled jaw and moans, "right here."
The sound he makes in his throat, face finding the curve between her neck and shoulder, it's a sound she's pretty sure she's never heard Cal Lightman make – and she's heard a hell of a lot of lusty little noises come off him. Maybe not always directed at her, but she's heard well enough of them to know.
This is different. This is frighteningly separate from his usual impishness.
And it's so... honest.
Because it's gratification and pleasure and accepted pain at the same time that it's heat and humility and a hell of a lot of things that he wouldn't necessarily let anyone else in the world hear and especially when it makes him sound a little weak as he drives his hips tighter into hers. The shift of movement makes her moan enough - let alone the fact that he groans his appreciation into her jaw and then lifts his head so that he can watch her face as his movements continue. His thrusts are incrementally slow and intentionally deep and long and teasing. Exactly what she'd expect from him when he feels like he's lost the upper hand and he has to somehow, even by cheap shots, level himself back up over her. Because he's still the absolutely cocky and wonderfully self righteous son of a bitch she's let herself fall in love with so, really, had she expected anything else?
But, Christ, she has actually let herself go there. Hasn't she?
Let herself love him despite every damn annoying little bout of tactless, self aggrandizing, pretentious and puerile bull -
"Don't, Gill," he breathes it over her roughly, one of his hands bracing against her forehead with a tender warmth as he watches her face and shakes his head into kissing her chastely. "Don't block me."
"I'm not," she moans it loudly out as he grins, jacking his hips tighter into hers as her chest arches up into his and she lets her nails scrape onto his shoulders.
A shrug takes him over as he searches over her face, his features more passive than either expects as he catches the brightness in the blue of her eyes and his grin shades a little more self conscious. "Think I don't know when you lock me out, love?"
"I'm your blind spot?" she asks as she skims her nails on sweated skin. "Hmmm?"
"Doesn't mean I don't see you," he counters tightly, his throat constricting on the words before he lays a groan down her breasts. "Every minute. Every day."
"Jesus," she's kissing her exhalations along the side of his head, aiming her mouth down his neck and onto his shoulder as he drives harder into her, hips tighter and faster and rougher as he shivers on her. "Been practicing that line?"
"Truth doesn't need to be practiced, Foster." It's the blatant clarity in his tone that has her biting down against his shoulder, clamping her teeth against muscle as his fingers find her clit and she moans the muscles of her body tighter around him. "Y'know that."
It's nearly three in the morning when he just starts chuckling, the quiet echo of it low in his lungs before he turns his head into her hair and buries his face. She can't help sleepily smiling a breathy sound of amusement back as he fists his hand in her hair and exuberantly chucks his body sideways into hers, his nose rubbing up under her ear. He curls around her even as she stays on her back, stretching into how comfortably he lets her slope her head onto his arm.
"What exactly are you so happy about?" she murmurs it out semi accusingly even though, were she pressed, she'd admit to being pretty damn happy herself.
His laughter hums down her throat and she lets him nudge her head angling as he scrubs his face into her neck, rashing his stubble against flushed skin just to tease at her. "Think I've a right to be smug. Got a naked Foster in my bed, I do."
Well, that's entirely true and his hand stroking from her stomach and up her ribs to ride his fingertips on her sternum is more than a reminder, the movement has her snugging tighter into the touch. She's completely naked, physically and openly turning a look toward him that's as unguarded as she can manage, sated and pleased and more comfortable that she'd expected as her fingers lift back into the way he draws his head up. Her smile flares out as she realizes how intensely he's studying her, how tightly he's watching the reaction of her skin to his touch as he swipes his fingers back down and presses along her stomach, lays his hand onto her thigh and squeezes. Her fingers find his mouth, touch along his lips, let him kiss something besides her mouth.
"Alec and Zoe have every right to hate us sometimes." She can't help the slight self scolding or the accusation, a measure of guilt still trapped up inside her as she lets him ridge his short nails against the inside of her thigh. "The first six months? The first year after we met?"
A chafed and sardonic laugh huffs past his lips, a noise that wears enough of something near shame that she knows he's already considered this very thought before. "We tag teamed against 'em, didn't we? You were my new best friend, my pal. Zo hated it."
"God, Alec was so jealous of you." Gill rattles off and loses her breath slightly as he grips his fingers into her inner thigh and pulls at her, leading her leg up between his so that he can tangle them up and lean tighter along the side of her. "Never breathed a word of it, though."
"O'course not," he snorts out, eyes flinching thin as he cocks his head over hers and finally meets her eyes. "You woulda heard it."
Her head presses back into his arm as she thumbs pressure along his jaw, eyes drifting closed into how warmly trapped they are along each other. "I heard more than enough in his silence."
"Why we talkin' about them?" Cal questions softly, the hush of his voice thrumming over her as his thigh rises between hers and his jaw dips to press sidelong to her cheek. "Should be about us."
"You don't think that's a little selfish?"
"I am selfish, Foster," he chuckles into her ear, the laughter true but the tone a shade deprecating, rueful and dark as he rubs a kiss on her ear.
"No, you aren't." Her argument is sharp and uncompromising and she blinks her eyes back open when his head juts up in response, a smirk lacing his lips and a brow arched as though he's just realizing how defensive of him she can to be. "I can't wait another ten years to hear it, Cal."
"You won't. I swear." He doesn't look away from her as he says it but it means more to her that he says it clearly, staccato and sure into the stillness in the room."Gillian, I promise."
She lifts her fingertips against his lips again so that she can trace against his mouth and he's squinting over her, searching for a response she doesn't necessarily have.
"You believe me?" Cal questions past her fingers, his hand flattening out on her stomach and pressing down to demand an answer.
He really never been able to mislead her when speaking promises out loud.
She's always heard every intention anyhow. "I do."
"Mornin'." He can feel his face go sheepishly flushed as he forces himself farther into the brightening living room, tagging his fingers against her mussy hair as he steps around the coffee table. "How long you been up?"
"Since six." Emily shrugs up into his hushed watching, a grin on her that goes beyond smug or pleased with herself. She's right pleased, she is. Innocently though. Happily so. And he can't help but grin as she drops her smile back down over the puzzle and hums consideration before exhaling. "My butt got numb."
"And how's it now?"
She nods once as both her elbows lean onto the table, her back folded forward while her legs are drawn up under her still, all the waved length of her hair full around her head like a sleep-hazed halo. "Tingly."
"Sensational," he mocks lightly, waving a hand toward the puzzle as he flops hard into the cushions beside her. His hand unconsciously and casually tucks the blanket she has littered around her tighter along her side. "Almost done, yeah?"
"Half." Emily murmurs as she fingers against the fabric blankly and turns her head toward him, a smile gradually curving her lips. "You want coffee?"
"Love some." Cal scuffs his palm warmly up and down her back as she stretches up from the awkward angle, her shifting as she stands reminding him how tall and lanky and long she is, how much more like her mother she's becoming as she ages. "Em? Thank you."
"For coffee?" She drops the leftover blanket into his lap and he bunches it under his arms, cradles the warmth into his chest as he snugs lower.
"For not sayin' 'I told you so'." The words follow plaintively after her, obvious appreciation and adoration in how gentle they are, how sincere he's being.
"I glory in my victories." She tells him perkily, her head lifting as she shakes her hair from her face and heads for the kitchen. "I don't gloat."
He leans over the table, brow furrowing up as he studies the empty space and the unfinished image before his hand hovers toward the scatter of loose pieces. "Opposite of the way your mum does things, in'it?"
"Hey – don't."
His body startles straight, hands shot up into the air as he grins at her accusatory point and the way she's waggling a finger toward him and the unfinished puzzle. "Don't what?"
She feels the smile rise from her lips to her eyes, leans the front of her body sleepily into the door frame as she watches the two of them. Emily is remarkably like her father, it's true. In looks and acts, in heart and sopping sarcasm. There's still such an unencumbered sweetness to her, though – something she knows that Cal has only ever tried to protect and shield because it's the leftover lingering of her childish innocence. It's the thing that remains even though her face and body has aged so damn much in the decade that Gillian's spent watching her from the sidelines.
It's not like she hasn't surreptitiously (and sharply jealously) watched them huddle up and silently declare their alliance untouchable by the world.
The two of them are... flawless in their respective adoration.
And she wants to keep them both, she realizes – hungrily and for as long as possible.
Sometimes she considers herself his best friend – and regardless of what happened hours before she'd still considers it to be, mostly, true. Sex does nothing to change the fact that, despite how easily they can fit their knives into each others ribs and twist, they cannot ever be less than what they've always been to each other. And they've always been there for the other. However, most times she realizes that Emily is the only best friend he's ever utterly trusted in.
And that makes her flush warm, her smile now tentative but all full of unintentional affection.
"Em made coffee." he slacks back on the couch, his voice gentle and surprisingly hushed in the morning hours as his daughter frowns over the yet unfinished puzzle. "Interested?"
"I'll get there." she affirms just as lightly, letting her head rest into the solid framing as she quirks an amused look over his fuzzy ratted slippers and back up.
There's something patiently settled in him, something unexplainably controlled and still as he flashes her a broad grin and then slinks lower into the cushions with a charming wiggle. She can't help but notice his hands as they spread against his thighs and then roll so that his palms are up in some sort of unspoken offer or subtle invitation. And she sees that shift as though it's an impossible gift, actually. One that gives her unguarded entrance to that silent pact of Lightman Defense. Somehow he's allowed her an alliance to the unbreakable deal he's got with his daughter.
"I'll get it." Emily offers as she drags her eyes off the puzzle and reaches for her own mug.
"It's okay, Emily. I can - "
"Need a refill anyhow." The teen is already stretched up and shrugging it off like it's nothing and early morning puzzles with the woman who's spent the night in her father's bed is the norm. "Don't let him finish that without me."
It's not that that she was in his bed, she realizes. Not for Emily.
It's that she was in his bed. And that melts a warmth over her that makes the moment more important to her than maybe any other that she's had with this girl in ten years or so.
"Cream, please."
Emily just blanks her a wry look. "I know that, Gill."
The wink he offers as Emily leaves the room is far more innocent than it usually would be, more affectionate than if he'd just been acting silly or teasing at her. It's more legitimate somehow, as he slumps low on his couch with tattered bunny slippers bridged against the edge of the coffee table and both palms still openly relaxed as an offering. She can't help but step into that offer because she's been waiting endless years for an invitation that's quite so quietly and subtly honest.
"And you thought she'd be smug," Gill accuses mockingly but soft.
"Not til after you leave, love." He digs his hand into the shirt she's stolen as she moves into his space, the span of his fingers curling up fabric as he tugs at her and pulls down on her balance. "Doin' a happy little jig in the kitchen right now, I assure you."
Her head cocks as she leans over him but refuses the way he's trying to pry her into his lap. "I doubt that."
"I don't." Cal smiles up into her leaning, lets her press her slow moving palm flat to the rise of his cheekbone so that the heel of her hand is catching up against his jaw. "She adores you. Always has."
"I adore her." The admittance has her crumbling a little into his pull, letting him shift a foot down so that he can hook her down and flop her half tumbling into the cushions. "Always have."
He can't help himself from being silly and elated and oddly energetic as he shifts to face her, his hands uncontrolled as they crave her closer. In moments he's got her pried up close into his chest and he's turned on the couch and his knee is up between them but he's managed to draw her leg up to bridge over it. Suddenly she's thanking God that she pulled her jeans on as she laughs into how unabashedly and surprisingly happy he looks as he leans his head closer and nudges his jaw up, implies something in silence as he lifts her a crooked smirk.
It's not in his eyes though. And he knows it. Knows she knows it.
Well, he taught her that, hadn't he?
Taught her how to see everything in him so that they were closer to even ground?
"We all right?" he questions tentatively, fidgeting at the buttons on his pilfered shirt as he knuckles the fabric into her skin. He can't meet her eyes then, can't lift his head from this innocent fidget of worry.
She doesn't think he even realizes that there are multiple moments in their lives wherein she finds him utterly and undeniably adorable.
He's no innocent – he'll tell the world that himself.
But he's so guileless sometimes, impeachable in how selfless he can sometimes be in regards to her.
Always when it comes to her. Reflexes and movements and motions change, only in regards to her.
"I'm more than all right, Cal." Gill traces how tightly flexed his wrist is as he tugs at a button, lifts a smirk that lightens his eyes in pleasure as she nods. "You all right?"
"Needed to ask."
She laughs into the chippy explanation, how rapidly and breathlessly it's launched between them. "You can ask any time."
He only shrugs once, that grin sparking up brighter all over his face. "You all right, then?"
"Cal."
He yelps a little noise into the pinch she digs on his tattooed forearm, grunting as his hand flexes into the shirt she's wearing before he jerks her close and drops his eyes onto her lips. "Y'said any time."
Not subtle, this little exploration of her mouth, his eyes focused as he studies her lips and licks at his own. She's never accused Cal Lightman of being subtle, though. His concept of a light touch weighs about the same as a Baby Grand.
"You're going to make me crazy, aren't you?" She asks as he groans his mouth closer but doesn't close the deal, doesn't fold into the way she's obviously laying her tone lusher and quieter and intentionally sensual.
"Seems I've managed already. Crazy stupid lettin' a bloke like me in those knickers, huh?"
She disregards his tone, lifting her head higher so that she can arch him a demanding glance, "Speaking of?"
"Of stupid?" He feigns innocence, brushing his lips once across hers. "Or crazy?"
She must be stupid. Stupid crazy. Because he is eight out of ten levels of insane when it comes to her. She knows this in her head. Doesn't much care as he finally leans a kiss into her momentary and mulled quietness, his tongue pressing between her lips and skidding her teeth as he catches along her jaw and tips her mouth higher into his. She feels the groan break past his throat as she slicks their tongues together in response and her hands catch on him, tug him leaning over her as she sinks into the cushions and lets him make the kiss hungrier. He's got a fantastic mouth on him, always has. Even when being a wise-ass (or just an ass in general) she's always appreciated the sharpness of that mouth, the honesty in it and the way it moves, where it leads her.
After letting him wander it all over her body, she's got a whole new appreciation for its previously unseen (unfelt) talents as well.
Gill draws the kiss slow and breaks it up into smaller increments so they can breathe, so she can murmur against them, "Where are they?"
He grins into the kiss that she begs onto his lips, lets it hum into a delightful laugh as he slicks his tongue from hers and meets her eyes, chin high. "M'not tellin'."
Audacious son of a bitch.
She knows he's not lying. She knows, for a fact, she's not ever getting that particular pair of underwear back.
"You're shameless."
"Me?!" His teeth are still plaintively nipping along her bottom lip, his tongue still soothing after them as his hand manages to clandestinely twist the blanket that Emily had left over her leg. "You're the one not wearin' your panties, Foster."
"Oi!" Emily's tone is sharp but playfully bright as she steps into the room, extra large coffee mugs curled in her palms as she nods over the both of them. "Not an acceptable breakfast topic."
She's surprised and yet not at all affronted by how possessively he curls her down into his side, letting his head drift low along her shoulder so that his voice brushes a feigned petulance on her collarbone as he pouts at his daughter, "I haven't yet made 'er my breakfast topic. Seems there's a child in the house."
She does her best to ignore how spiced warm and familiar and perfect he smells when she's so inherently close to his skin, so accepted as an extension of him as he curves them closer.
It doesn't work. She doesn't necessarily want to ignore it. Doesn't need to.
So she just lifts her face into the side of his neck and sighs out the last of the air in her lungs.
"Puzzle. Finish it." The teenager seems perfectly comfortable in just plopping down onto the floor on the opposite side of the table, the mug cupped up in both hands so that the steam can cloud her face as she blinks between the two of them. "Both of you."
She sighs again, letting her head rub into how comfortable he seems in just keeping her tucked up close to himself. "I need to get to the office, Emily."
"You don't." The girl's knowledge of their lives and lies is insurmountable in moments like these and Gill just blinks amazement into how sure comfortably Emily's voice is in countering her. "Not yet."
"I have a meeting at - "
"You're fired." Cal breathes the words along her ear, takes his daughter's side against her argument in a teasing that has his hands tucking her closer. "Takes care of that."
"You can't fire me, Cal." Gill turns her head and her exasperation in his direction, near instantly losing all her fight (not that there'd really been all that much) into how smugly he's grinning up at her, how sparked up his eyes seem now that he has a proverbial partner in being a pain in her ass.
"C'mon, darling." He brushes a kiss on her cheekbone and she can see the half swallowed smile Emily turns over the both of them as she uses her coffee mug to hide the rest of her amusement. "It's just a puzzle. Won't take long, not b'tween the three of us."
She's broken by that, any resolve she may have had utterly shattered. Because Emily is actually smiling like someone turned her sunshine on even as she stares down at the puzzle and pretends (horribly) not to notice them. And he's laughing quietly up his throat as the implied dual weight of what he's said strikes her speechless and makes her pin a half glare on him. This puzzle, this unfinished thing between them, it's almost whole. And the bare implication that it's made complete by the three of them? Hell, he knows exactly what he's doing. Brilliant little shit. He's completely impossible.
He winks at her again and this time it's every inch of his teasing and playfulness as he suddenly leans past her and energetically picks up one of the pieces, dances it around below his daughter's nose before plopping it into place.
"You're such an ass." Emily mutters as she frowns over the piece he's placed.
Gillian can't necessarily argue it. He is, really. And what's worse is that he knows it, exploits it.
But he's a hundred times more than that as he chuckles and slacks back once again, his hand stroking heat long down the line of her spine as she leans in to help his daughter.
She can willingly accept that he's an (im)perfect fit.
Clean edges would never have worked for them anyhow.