AN: This is not just a smutty chapter but a kinky smutty chapter (all Jessa).
Tessa left them alone and went home. She had shut down Jem's suggestions of anything else. They could talk without her there. Jem had the car and had been looking forward to taking Will out driving. He'd been resistant when she'd drawn spells on the vehicle that would function as warding. He cared little for most technology but he loved that car. They'd warded the car the night before and he'd asked questions about whether magic would interrupt the machinery or leave permanent marks anywhere.
She had laughed at the time thinking that she would be there if anything were to go wrong with it. She couldn't be there. She couldn't close herself up in a small space with Will's suppressed anxiety and Jem when he was doing that Silent Brother calm thing that he had been doing on the sidewalk. She talked herself into trusting her own magic and trusting that the two of them could take care of each other if it came to it.
Will couldn't talk to her and would probably never trust her in any way again and she needed the space. She needed to be alone. She needed to think and grieve. That person might be Will but he was not hers and she missed her Will with a ferocity that she hadn't felt in years. Her loss had grown old. It was a scar not a wound. Not anymore. When she was standing on that sidewalk, telling Jem that neither of them were ok, it wasn't old anymore. It was new and fresh and he was gone. He had come back and yet he was still gone.
The pain of that loss was sharp.
She wanted to turn back and throw her arms around him again because he was Will but she knew that he wasn't the person she wanted. He wasn't the one who knew her better than anyone. Will was a part of her and this boy wasn't. He didn't know her secrets and her worst days. He hadn't been there through failures and triumphs. The good and the bad. He didn't know that the people she loved most were the same people he loved.
Will was right there but the person she wanted was irretrievable.
In the silent apartment, she wrapped herself in one of Jem's sweaters and a pair of flannel pajamas. Then she very slowly made a cup of tea and watched the leaves float in the water and the colour deepen. Once the tea was poured and she had brushed out her hair, she was calm enough to breathe normally.
The old rituals helped. They had been true rituals, almost a religion at one point in her life. Hair, tea, and sorting. She sorted books or papers or the kitchen cabinets. It didn't really matter what, what mattered was alphabetizing or building genre lists or finding every expired can of vegetables and throwing it away. Ritual. She did it until she was calm. She controlled things she could control until she was able to let go of the things that she couldn't control.
This time she didn't sort books or food or Jem's music. She would never sort Jem's music on him again. He still gave her funny looks when he saw her with a piece of it in hand even when she was just putting it back on the stand. His madcap piles were apparently not madcap. There was a system that had nothing to do with composers or eras or any other sane method she could understand. She had sworn she wouldn't touch them again.
On the bookshelf in the main room was a long low wooden box with a heron carved on the lid. It had been a Christmas gift from her daughter in 1945. It was exactly the right size to hold letters in envelopes. She took it down off the book shelf and ran her fingers over the wood. There was no dust. Magic kept things better dusted than a maid might but even if it weren't for the magic this would be clean.
Will had written her more than a hundred letters over the later years of his life. He hadn't told her about it while he was doing it. He had told her of their existence in the same breath that he apologized fro them. He told her where to find them and how sorry he was to have written them. He didn't tell her that he had written even more to Jem. She found that out a long time later.
"You should burn them Tessa, I had thought," he had stopped talking, his voice failing for just a moment before he continued, "It doesn't matter because it was hubris. Burn them if you need to. You shouldn't live in the past and they'll never be anything but the past. I shouldn't have forced them on you. You deserve everything the future will bring. Promise that you will always look forward."
She had promised and she had tried to live up to that promise.
She had also kept every one.
They were the past but the past was a piece of her and a piece of the present as well. There were opened ones tucked back into their envelopes and filed near the back and the unopened ones at the front. It was these that she picked out and started to sort. She read them rarely. She saved them like a miser with pennies and even still the unopened section was smaller than the ones she had left to read for the first time.
Each one had an inscription. Always her name but sometimes not only her name. Over the years she had found the patterns. The doodled envelopes were always silly notes. The ones that repeated her name Tess, Tess, Tessa, on the front were love letters. The ones that simply said, Tessa could be anything. There were even ones that were simply literary criticism or little journal entries detailing his day. They were shards of the life she'd lost saved on pieces of cream coloured stationery.
She sorted through the ones she hadn't yet read. The paper was heavy and old and charmed to protect it from growing brittle. The handwriting changed just slightly. Once she had her piles sorted by salutation, she picked up the pile of love letters and resorted by handwriting. She looked for the weakest. She wanted something written by Will late in his life, as far from the boy Jem was driving around in an expensive car as he would ever be.
She picked one and turned it in her hands.
Tess, Tess, Tessa.
That was all it said on the front. The same salutation he'd used in the first letter he had written her, the one she still had memorized. The handwriting, in dark blue ink, wavered just a little on the long strokes of the Ts. The visual memory that came with running her fingers over the ink was vibrant and forced her to close her eyes and pull herself tighter into Jem's sweater until it passed.
Her memories of him - like her grief - were old. They were stretched and tattered from being taken out too many times but Will was here and the colour of his eyes was as recent to her as the colour of her own. The memory didn't feel old. It brought her back to the cabin in Wales where he pushed snow white hair off his forehead and held up papers to read new chapters of his most recent history aloud to her so she could pick out his errors before he mailed them off to his editors.
That was the Will who had written this. Will who had to meter how long he wrote so that his joints didn't bother him. It had never stopped him but it had slowed him down. In this memory her mind called up his fingers were ink stained and pale and his skin crinkled into wrinkles around his knuckles.
"Remember when my hands were graceful?" he'd said waving his fingers at her.
"Yes, you're an ugly old goat now. I should divorce you. I only ever liked you because you were pretty," she'd said barely looking up from her book.
"I hate you," he had said.
"I hate you too," she had grinned at him and finally looked up from whatever she was reading to see those eyes staring out of a face so utterly familiar she imagined she could recognize it in the pitch blank. Growing old had never made him less perfectly handsome. Different but never less. He had laughed and thrown a crumpled up piece of a draft at her. His aim had been good. He had hit her in the head with the ball of paper. As he read her the most recent paragraphs she had rerolled the ball thrown it back. He'd caught it without breaking what he was reading.
"It needs more sword fights. I'm becoming a stodgy old man," he said grimacing at the page when he had finished. He gestured with the ball of garbage while he spoke.
"They edit the sword fights out, they've done in to your last three drafts. It's a history not a penny dreadful," Tessa had told him.
Tessa smiled at the letter in her hands and savoured the reality of the memory. She had forgotten that it had ever happened until her mind dredged it up for her. The way his voice sounded and the way that room smelled when it was being heated by the wood stove. It was a little like being there.
She opened the letter and began to read.
Jem shook her awake very gently with his hand on her shoulder. He brushed the remains of tears off her cheeks with the pads of his fingers and helped her gather up the letters. They were still spread in stacks around her. She had only opened one new one but then she had reread everything else that was already open. Jem refolded the open ones and put them back where they belonged. He didn't say a word.
He settled down beside her on the sofa and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. She leaned in. There were no more tears, she'd run out. He stroked her hair and smoothed it back.
"How is he?" she asked.
"Confused," Jem said.
"Will he ever speak to me again?" she asked and her voice was a near whisper. She had been wrong, there were still tears. She bit them back and held onto Jem a little tighter.
"Why wouldn't he speak to you?" Jem asked.
"I betrayed you," she said.
"You did not," he said.
"In his mind, I did, utterly," Tessa said, "I did and Will is far more likely to forgive me for breaking his heart than he is to forgive me for breaking yours."
"Don't talk to me about everyone else's broken heart while you are the one crying yourself to sleep in the middle of the afternoon," Jem said. His fingers found her face and tilted it upwards.
She stared at him until she started to understand his expression. Pain and resolve and over it all that unshakable Brother Zachariah calm that had nothing to do with the real Jem. He was preparing to say something and she didn't want to hear it. Panic flared in the pit of Tessa's stomach.
"Tessa," he started.
"Don't you dare," she said and her voice was almost too thick with emotion to choke out even that many words. "Don't you dare even suggest it. Don't."
His face was so calm that she almost hit him. She didn't believe that calm, not an inch of it. Sensing it, or maybe just wanting to draw her attention, he gathered both her hands in his and held on. Her eyes darted over his features but couldn't find anything to focus on so she shut them.
"You love him," Jem started.
"Would you really say it?" Tessa asked, her eyes flying open.
"It's true," he said.
"I love him, yes, that's true. Of course that's true. You know that, you've known that for so long. That's not what I meant. Don't say it. Don't say it. I don't want it and I don't even want to hear it," she said.
"Tess," he said again.
"I love you," she said putting all the emphasis on you. She did choke on the emotion this time and he was wiping tears off her face when she said, "I love you and I waited lifetimes for you to come home to me. If you dare even suggest leaving, I don't know what I'll do. Don't tell me you're going to leave me for my own good or something stupid like that. Don't even say it."
"You would choose me over him?" Jem said it so softly she nearly missed it.
"Are you asking me to? Are you asking me to tell you that I love you more? Because I don't. I've never loved anyone the way I love you. But I have also never loved anyone the way that I loved him. There is no measure of it. There is no mathematical formula to explain it and make some definitive ruling. Love doesn't work like that," Tessa sounded angry and she stopped to collect herself.
Jem watched her as she swallowed and pulled all the scattered bits of her emotions back in close. She held onto his hands and looked down at their fingers. Hers were smaller and paler than his and the lattice of scars and old runes on his knuckles seemed to hold secrets the longer she looked at the patterns.
"I will go see him again. I will worry about him and I will fight the Clave on every terrible decision they make and I will love him. I can't stop. He's so young that he doesn't know who he truly is yet. He isn't Will as I want him to be and yet he is. I love this piece of him too. You of all people should understand that," Tessa said. Jem nodded very slowly.
Her head snapped up and she looked him in the eye when she said the next part, "I shouldn't have to tell you that I will never choose a life that doesn't have you in it. I have never willingly chosen that life and I never will. Do not offer to leave me and think you're doing me a favour," she said. She wanted him to tell her that she was wrong and he hadn't been planning on saying that. Sitting among those letters, wrapped up in the loss of Will, Jem was the thing that kept her sane. The very theory of him leaving was shattering and terrifying.
"Would you ask me not to see him?" she asked.
"I'm not asking you to do that. That's not what I want. I just want you to be happy, I'd give up anything to make you happy," Jem said catching her face between his hands.
"You make me happy," she murmured. At some point in the conversation he'd gone from sitting beside her to kneeling in front of her. The sofa was low enough and he was tall enough that she only needed to lean down a little bit to accept the hug he offered. Whether he pulled her down or she slid into his lap on her own didn't matter once she was wrapped in his arms.
"Promise me," she said.
"I promise I won't ask you to abandon him. He needs you. He's always needed you. And Tessa, believe me, I would never leave you. I promise you that, I will never leave you. As long as you want me I am right here," he said.
She nodded against his chest and he held her a little tighter.
She tilted her head up and kissed his neck just below his ear. He made a soft noise and relaxed. She pulled herself closer to him and kissed a line from his collar to his ear as he exhaled very slowly. They moved together without Tessa having to explain what she wanted. She swung her knees so that they straddled his and he held her close with his arms around her waist.
She could look at him properly now. She ran fingers over his eyebrows and his nose and his cheeks. She leaned in and kissed his eyes when they fell shut. Her fingers played over the shape of his mouth first and she paused before her lips followed.
"Tell me that again, the last part," she said and he looked at her with eyes that were a little hazy.
"I love you and I will never leave you," he said.
"I love you and I will always choose you," she said and then she closed the kiss. He caught her head with a strong hand and prevented her from kissing him with the intensity she had intended. Instead she found herself being kissed gently and repeatedly. He kissed her lips, her cheeks, her throat and then started over again.
She protested how slow he was and he caught her wrists when she tried to slide her hands into his hair and pull him closer that way. His hands were large enough that it only took one to hold both her wrists in place. She fell still and gave him a very small smile. It was an offer.
There was a possessive streak in Jem that she rarely saw. She had never seen insecurity bring it out before. For a moment she was angry with herself for giving him any reason to doubt her but it settled fast. Doubts could be erased. He saw the change in her expression and stopped. They were nose to nose. His eyes were all question but the moment was silent.
"Anything you want, I'll do whatever you ask," she said.
"That's a dangerous offer," he said.
"Not with you," she said. "I trust you."
His hand was no longer holding her head, instead it lay flat against the side of her neck. The other one still held her wrists. He was considering her with dark eyes and just the hint of a smile. The Zachariah mask was long gone. There was no one here but her Jem.
"Would you rather I didn't stop or made you wait for it?" Jem asked taking her silent offer and turning it into an idea that made her entire body warm just a little. . When they'd first been together, any request to put what he wanted into words was met with a flush that coloured his face to the roots of his hair. Those days were gone. These days he was much more demanding.
She considered his question as she spread her knees a little wider so their bodies were pressed together everywhere that she could manage. His eyes were darker and his hand on her wrists was just a little too tight. Anyone else might have been frightening but Tessa couldn't imagine being frightened of Jem. He was asking to hold her down and offering the kind of sex that meant giving him complete control. He would push her from one orgasm into the next until she couldn't quite remember her own name.
She still chose the other option, "Wait for it."
His face broke into the first smile she'd seen on it since he'd grinned up at her on the Institute steps before seeing her expression.
"You don't like that as much," he said.
She felt herself blush when she said, "It's maddening but I like it."
"But you chose it because I like it," he said.
"Yes," she said. "I like it but I love how much you like it."
"I'm going to take my time and begging won't help you," he said and she could hear the offer in his voice to take another option.
"I don't beg," she said. She wanted possessive demanding Jem. She wasn't going to take the offer of something gentler or easier because it would mean taking some of the edge off of his dark eyes and that little twitch of a smile.
"Yes, you do and you will tonight," he spoke into her ear and every piece of too hot skin on her body shivered with the words. She felt the smile on his lips against her ear and her neck as he lifted her up to the sofa.
Jem when he was like this canceled out every demanding instinct of her own. She let him put her where he wanted her and she did as she was told. He stood up and she ran her fingers up his thighs to his waist band and he trapped her wrists again before she could touch anything she wanted. It was hard but she fell perfectly still and looked up at him.
"You get to go first otherwise it won't last nearly as long as I plan for it to," he said. She licked her lips and leaned back to wait for what he had planned. He kissed her gently and traced patterns on her neck with his finger tips. She stopped short of pulling him in against her but her fingers traced answering patterns up his arms and his chest and his face because she couldn't stop from touching him.
It was compulsive the way that touching Will had been but this was perfectly matched gravity pulling them together. There was nothing standing in their way and she could throw herself into the pull of him without doubts or worries slowing her down.
He tugged on her sweater and gave her a puppy dog look so incongruous with his demanding body language that she laughed as pulled the shirt off and tossed it away. She didn't look up to see but it landed on the same table where they had set Will's box of letters. She was too busy watching Jem's eyes for the next challenge.
His fingers moved over her shoulders and down her bare arms. She still wore a cotton bra and his fingers stepped over the strap as they moved towards her wrists. They stepped over again on their way back up. She was responding far to fast to fingers on her wrists and she tried to calm herself but forcing her breathing into sane patterns only helped until his fingers found her waist. The skin across her stomach crackled and she gasped as though he'd ran ice over her.
"This is too easy," he said into her ear as he leaned down over her. She was usually able to manage her body better than this. He couldn't usually shatter her self control this quickly. He was right. She was going to beg and she was going to do it far earlier than she usually would.
"How scandalized would Will be if I thanked him?" Jem asked. His mouth was against her skin and she could feel the same energy that crackled through her running in him as well.
She froze at Will's name and found Jem's face. It took her a moment to understand what he had said and then another to understand what it meant. She waited to see if pain came with the name but it didn't. He knew that he'd said the wrong thing but he waited for her to react before he apologized. The energy crackled between them and she put her hands to his waist band and tucked her fingers into it to pull him a little closer.
"Very," she said once she was sure the pain wasn't coming, "I'm a little scandalized that you would say that and I'm not a Victorian teenager."
Jem laughed softly in relief perhaps that he hadn't destroyed the moment by saying that. She smiled back as he continued, "Do you want to be scandalized? I can be scandalous. I can tell you that if kissing him is going to get you this worked up then you should do it more often."
"Jem!" she said.
"I don't think I even need to touch you right now to get a reaction," he said. His smile was easy and confident and her body betrayed her by shivering when he blew on the skin of her neck.
"You mean that," she said looking at the smile.
"Yes, see," he did it again and this time she didn't react as strongly because she was too busy looking at his face.
"No, about kissing other people," she said.
"Not other people, Will," Jem said. "Is there anyone else you want to be kissing?"
"You," she said softly.
"That's unfortunate, I seem to have terrible aim tonight," he said still grinning. He kissed her cheek and when she turned to meet him he dropped a little lower and kissed her on the chin then near her eyebrow. She laughed when he got her nose. His mouth was on her collarbone when she got tired of losing the game of hide and seek and tried to turn his face towards her with her hands.
He grabbed her wrists again and raised his eyebrows. His fingers ringed her wrists. She pouted just a little through her smile but honoured the terms of the game. She stopped struggling and sat still. Jem leaned in and touched her nose with his which made her laugh again.
"I thought you were doing as you were told tonight," he said.
"So tell me what to do then," she said.
"I would like you to take off the rest of your clothing," he said.
There were smart ass comments to be made. There was any number of sarcastic things to say but instead she stood up and stood back and started pulling clothing off very slowly. He reached out and she shooed his hand away.
"No helping," she said. "If you wanted to be the one to take my clothes off you should have said so. I'm only doing what I'm told."
He laughed and sat back with his hands folded. The way he watched her made her want to blush and turn around. In the flood of shyness she closed the distance between them and this time when he put his hands on her bare thighs and slid up towards the last piece of clothing she still wore she didn't stop him. He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and pulled them down. He barely touched her and she barely contained a little gasp.
They stood together now. Him in dark jeans and a polo shirt and her wearing nothing at all. The room around them was quiet, even the cat had made himself scarce.
He never said it in so many words but she knew that he liked having her naked when he wasn't. His eyes roamed over her body before his hands followed them. She leaned her face against his neck still seeking comfort as much as she sought the kind of touch he kept skipping over. He stroked her hair and offered that comfort but his hands traced frustratingly chaste lines down her back and arms and all the wrong parts of her stomach. She murmured a protest against his neck.
"Are you begging yet?" he asked.
"Shush," she said shaking her head.
His hand closed on her breast. He was gentle but the change from no contact to that soft pressure made her gasp. She cuddled closer and arched her back to push herself against him. He caught her other breast in his other hand, still gentle.
"Look at me?" he said and she did. He held her breasts and he rubbed his thumbs over her nipples and watched her expression which she already had no control over.
"Time to go to bed," he said before gathering her in a fireman's carry and tossing her over his shoulder. She yelped in surprise and he laughed at her.
He dropped her onto her back in the middle of the bed and then climbed up after her. She spread her knees and lay flat in an offer she knew he wasn't going to take yet. Just having him over her made her stomach tighten and he wasn't touching her at all.
He kissed the skin near her knee and then kissed an excruciatingly slow line up the inside of her thigh. When his mouth made contact in the right place she tried to tell her body not to be so relieved. His tongue ran over her, tracing the lines and folds of her body there as she tried to stay still. He was slow and her fingers were in his hair tracing the same rhythm through the strands.
The contact changed and there was pressure to go with the movement. She adjusted her hips and let her head fall back. Her fingers were still in his hair but twisted now. His hands found her thighs and pinned them down to the mattress. Not hard but inescapable. She had been relaxing into him and he was reminding her of the offer she had made. This wasn't going to end with the release she could feel building. This was going to end with frustration before he moved on to something else which would also end with frustration and the frustration would build until she was half mad with it.
When he stopped and pulled away she twisted from the hips but he was too strong for it to do any good. For a brief instinctual moment she fought his hands with all her strength. He didn't even noticed the switch to a true struggle. The panicked realization that there was nothing at all she could do to stop him rocked through her but vanished when she met his eyes. Dark brown with just hints of gold and silver. The panic evaporated because it was Jem.
"Let go," she whispered and he did. Immediately. Her breathing was too fast but that had more to do with what he hadn't finished doing than the panicked moment. She stayed in the place where he had held her though his hands were braced on the mattress on either side of her waist and she could have pulled back from him easily.
He reached up to run his thumb along her lip and she pulled it into her mouth. His smile told her he got the hint but instead of taking off any of his clothing he wove his fingers into her hair and laid down beside her. She turned to keep him where she could see him as his fingers ran down her stomach and didn't stop.
"Are you going to beg yet?" he asked touching places that would not bring her the release she still hovered at the edge of. He knew by touch where his fingers were and he watched her face while he walked them down her thigh then back again.
A stubborn competitiveness and just a little bit of pride made her shake her head and say, "You're not even bothering me yet."
"No?" he asked.
His fingers found their way inside and her mouth fell open as she pushed her hips down to meet the intrusion.
"Maybe just a little," she said.
He stroked her hair and whispered little soothing noises into her ear as his hand stayed perfectly still. Two fingers as far inside as they could reach and his thumb not-so-accidentally brushing against her. He caught her hip with his other hand but couldn't hold her in place as her hips tried to find the movement that he wouldn't offer her.
"Don't move, Tess," he whispered into her ear.
She groaned but stopped moving. It took a lot more willpower than she thought she had left. He flicked his thumb over the very right spot and her whole body reacted. She yelped and it took a long few moments for her to settle to being still again. She was so close and she could feel that confident smile where his face rested beside her ear as he talked to her. It wasn't just the physical contact that was making her body feel too hot. It was also how much Jem liked each reaction. Each time she was sure she couldn't do it again, she would feel the smile against her ear or he'd slide his body in just a little closer to her. He was lying right against her when he thrust with his fingers and pushed her too close to the edge and she cried out.
He stopped and left her at the start of the orgasm. She wasn't quite sure what she was saying when he kissed her but it was probably begging. She felt needy and desperate enough for it to be begging. She lost herself in the kiss. He had laced his fingers with hers and held them above her head against the pillow so she couldn't use her hands to finish what his had started. His knees were between hers so she couldn't close them. She didn't care for a moment. She threw all her frustration into the kiss and he answered her intensity with his own.
There was a moment of confusion when she found herself kneeling with him on the bed. She didn't quite remember how she had gotten from flat on her back to sitting. His arm was around her waist which was a pretty good clue. She twisted her fingers into his shirt and tried to remember how it came off. He did it for her and she kissed her way down his neck and across his shoulder. Then she worked her way down to his stomach. He had to stand to get his pants off.
Once he was as naked as she was she considered trying to match his teasing but she wanted too much to even attempt it. He had to brace his hand on the wall to avoid falling over while standing on the mattress. He was already hard and he groaned when she ran her tongue over him. She caught him in her hands and settled her breathing and found enough shards of calm to remember the things that he liked.
He took her wrists and she froze in confusion and looked up at him.
"I want you to, just no hands," he said.
She nodded because she didn't trust herself to speak. He held her wrists, one in each hand while she took him back into her mouth. It was harder to do without a hand to guide the angle. With him inside her mouth she ran her tongue along the bottom of the shaft and he responded with not a shift of his hips but a thrust that pushed it too far back. She pulled away with a caught and he dropped down in front of her with an apology that she interrupted with a kiss.
"You're a little needy," he laughed, "Do you want something?"
"I need you," she said and kissed him again.
He pushed her and she fell back onto the mattress. He positioned himself in just the right place but didn't enter her.
"Relax," he said, "Stay still."
She let out a hiss of breath, she knew he was close and she had thought it was over. Once she was still he pushed into her just a little and then linked his fingers with hers again and stretched them up over her head. He held her in place as effectively as if he had tied her down and the competitive part of her tested how tightly he held on. They were nose to nose and he grinned at her and held a little tighter when she tugged on the restraint.
"Try a little harder," he said and she was struggling against him in response to the challenge when he entered her. He slid all the way in and she cried out. They were pressed together. His weight held her down but all she cared about was that he was finally close enough. She was begging now, pleading with her mouth against his. He held still just long enough to convince her that she couldn't survive this near release any longer.
He moved from his hips, a slow rolling motion that pressed her down against the mattress. He held her hands a little tighter and stretched her arms a little farther. There weren't any spaces between them and he stayed that tight to her even as he started to thrust harder and then harder still as his own control finally fell apart.
All the control was his, she barely had the room to move to meet him though her body knew his well enough to match the thrusts. He might have been close but she was far closer. He managed to stop before she came.
"Damn it Jem, please don't stop," she said. The panic didn't come back though she was more tightly held in place than she had been before. He was still inside her and she was so close that she couldn't stop the little rocking of her hips.
"Are you begging?" he asked.
"Yes, please, yes," she said.
He rolled them so she was astride him and the switch from helplessness to being on top made her freeze for a second. She had forgotten how to do it but then he was inside her again and her conscious mind's inability to remember how her legs worked didn't matter.
She rocked against him until her back arched and she screamed. He pulled her down and kissed her as he rolled her back onto her back and pinned her again. It was a sort of relief to have him take the control back. He didn't stop and she found herself trapped on the crest of the orgasm instead of the start of it. She was incoherent and when he released her hands she wrapped her arms around him and held on. She was shaking when he came as hard as she had and they collapsed together.
They were wrapped up in each other, tight and close. He stroked her skin wherever his fingers found it and she let any last shreds of anxiety go. He was hers. Jem Carstairs belonged right there and she knew it was true beyond any doubt. The little happy almost tune he was humming against her temple as he ran his fingers over her skin let her know that he knew it too.