ILLUMINATION

by SayItRight

Two months after his debut, Clark finally takes a day off, during which he and Lois discuss the new man in their lives, and further address their past, present, and future intimacy. Set post-"Pandora." Sequel to "REVELATION," Prequel to "CONSUMMATION."

15. Chapter 15

Author's Note: To all those who have been reading and/or reviewing "Illumination": Thank you so much! I couldn't have finished this epically long final chapter without you! Also, though I have begun writing another multi-chapter companion story (tentatively titled "Veneration"), I'm not certain of when it'll be complete. So, for now, if you're interested in the events before and/or after "Illumination," you can find the prequel ("Revelation") and the sequel ("Consummation") listed on my bio page. Thanks again, everyone! Cheers!

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[Rating: NC-17 - For occasional mild profanity, and for explicit depictions of sexual situations.]

CHAPTER 15

Their eyes meet as the import of what she's asking strikes him. He's predisposed, she's well aware, to distrust what he feels, what he cannot control. And given the scale of both the constructive and destructive feats accomplished at his hands, she can understand the logic to his rationale. In his mind, even the slightest slip for the slightest second could have a devastating effect on her, a notion with which at least one of his reactions earlier tonight have told her he still struggles. But then, he doesn't know what she knows.

She's felt him lose himself to her before - when his mouth is pressed to her neck and he can't hear someone approaching them; when he pulls away from her kiss to gasp for the air he hardly ever needs - and at no point has she ever sensed even the potential for ill in his touch. What she's learned, what she understands that only experience itself can teach him, is that his subconscious - the part of him that was bound to her before they ever met; the part of him that drives his passion for everything about her - is not the source of his troubles, but the key to resolving them. For at every level of his being, all the way down to his very core, he's incapable of doing her harm. It's not just that he wouldn't hurt her; it's that he couldn't. And while he hasn't yet embraced that fundamental reality, his efforts in arranging their first night together and in progressing it thus far make her all the more confident that he someday will.

For now, though, as he gazes back at her with the same anxious resolve that he did when he initially suggested the present course for their evening, she can't help relishing this stage in their journey. He won't always be so circumspect, so diffident. The moments they share won't always be so fraught. All the same, she feels fortunate that for as many experiences as will someday constitute their relationship, she'll be able to count this one - as unique, as extraordinary as it is - amongst them.

With his silent assent given and accepted, she melds her mouth to his a final time, before trailing her lips down the front of his throat. His eyes closed, he girds his psyche for its imminent tumult. But as she dips her tongue into the hollow between his collarbones, sending a tremor deep down into his belly, he realizes the futility of any and all attempts at preparation. Unfamiliar, thoroughly disconcerting - such is the nature of the territory he's agreed to explore. And with no compass of his own to guide him, he's obliged to look outside himself to the only other means he trusts to light his way.

As she dots her lips back across the base of his throat, she feels him hold her a little closer in spite of the tension she can perceive throughout his body. His tacit appeal for her reassurance brings a smile to her face, and she lifts her head long enough to kiss his cheek.

"Just breathe," she murmurs against his skin.

He nods slightly and swallows the knot in his throat as she withdraws. Her words echo through him, and he repeats them in his mind, forming a kind of mantra. As she feels him beginning to relax a bit, she shifts slightly and lowers her mouth to his neck once more. He moans softly, reveling in the slow descent of her suckling, nibbling kisses as she makes her way down onto his torso.

Running her hands over his sides, letting him enjoy the pressure of her breasts, her hips against him, she teases her lips around one of the points of his chest. He gasps a little and reflexively presses his groin into her thigh as she touches her tongue to his tightened nub. She persists, and he sharply inhales when she lightly scrapes her teeth across him.

Conscious of the further increase in his temperature, she soon turns her attention to the other side of his chest. He licks his lips and winces, sensing his arousal approaching an irrepressible degree. As she feels his lower body stir again, instinctively and aimlessly seeking out relief, she raises herself off of him. He exhales a plaintive groan at the loss of contact, blinking his eyes open as his head begins to spin.

Hearing the need in his voice, she trails her kisses farther down and rubs her hands across his thighs.

"Lois…" he quietly pleads in response to her kneading fingertips, though hardly knowing whether it's mercy for which he's asking.

As she presses her mouth to the defined, trembling musculature of his stomach, she nudges one of her knees against the inside of one of his. Despite his fervid state, he still manages to understand her cue, and thus widens the space between his legs, making room for her. She turns onto her side, leaving most of her weight on her hip, and takes a hand away from him. The sudden absence of her touch jars his mind, and he looks down his body to discover her tucking several strands of her hair behind her ear. Automatically trying to be helpful, he sits up just enough to assist in brushing the rest of her tresses over one of her shoulders.

"Thank you," she whispers against the front of his hip, just before pressing a hand to his chest.

Following her unspoken instruction, he reclines back onto the bed and lets his eyes fall closed.

From behind the darkness of his lowered lids, he threads the fingers of one hand farther into her hair, keeping it out of her way, and threads the fingers of the other hand into hers, still resting on his chest. With her unoccupied hand, she grazes her nails up his inner thigh and watches him squirm as a result. The heat, the humidity from his core radiate into the air all around her. She glances up at him, taking a moment to memorize the emotions playing across his face: his lips, his cheeks flushed from want; his brow, his jaw contracted in uncertainty.

More now than perhaps ever before, she believes the tearful sentiments he offered to her three months ago as they stood opposite each other on a makeshift sun, for nothing short of the feelings he professed that night could carry him to the place at which he's now arrived. Humbled by his courage, heartened by his trust, she lowers her gaze, tilts her head down, and closes the small distance between them.

"Mmh…" he softly intones at the first contact, as she brushes her lips along the underside of his length. His grasps on her hair and her hand reflexively tighten at the novel sensation, and she proceeds slowly as he adjusts.

Gliding along him, she maps the winding trails of his pulsing blood vessels, first with her lips, then with the backs of her fingers, gradually acquainting him with her. He drones another appreciative tone, though less audibly than before. Suddenly conscious as he is of overarticulating his pleasure, he bites his teeth in the vain hope of remaining somewhat composed. His consequent stream of a few muffled sounds strikes her, and she smirks from within at his needless discretion.

Parting her lips just enough, she exhales her breath over him while leaving a moist, open-mouthed kiss near the base of his girth. He trembles, gritting his teeth even harder. Continuing with her kisses, she begins working her way up along him, tracing her fingertips across him in meandering patterns as she progresses. His jaw slackens and he writhes against the bed, feeling a further rush of blood coursing into his groin. As he grows still hotter, still firmer, she hums a reflexive moan in delight of his responses. The resulting vibrations resound through him, eliciting a low groan from the pit of his throat.

Urging more of his communicativeness, she flattens her hand against him, running her palm and her lips up and down the sides of his fiery rigidity.

"Unh…" he moans, deeply and huskily, his concern with propriety rapidly fading away.

She wraps her fingers all the way around him and adjusts her position as she nears the height of his desire, flushed from and engorged with blood. Carefully, she skims her tongue around the thin, delicate fold just beneath his tip. He draws in another sharp breath, and she withdraws, content to wait until he's further acclimated.

The rises and falls of his chest stagger as he feels her drift farther upward and extend her tongue to him again. Gently, she teases away the initial traces of his longing, trickling out onto his skin. Closing her eyes, she spreads the first hints of him across her palate, memorizing the sweet, mellow quality of his taste. She sighs her appreciation against him, and as she leans farther down toward his flesh, she's as certain as she's ever been that she'll never get enough of him - of this.

He gasps and his entire body seizes when he feels the circle of her lips surrounding him. His heart skips, his nerve-endings pique as his mind and body contend with the torrent of new sensations. Mindful of overwhelming him, she takes her time familiarizing him with the textures of her mouth - the smooth ridges of her hard palate, the soft expanses of her cheeks and tongue.

Immersed in wetness and warmth, he croons her name as she begins an easy rhythm. His volume increases with her every ministration, and he senses his baser instincts surmounting his apprehensions. Still hesitant, though, he balks at the searing tingles running down his legs and through his toes, down his arms and through his fingers. But then, as she varies her tempo, the clasps of his hands, which he previously tried to relax, tighten once again. Torn between his need to hold onto her and his worry that perhaps he shouldn't, he squeezes his eyes further shut and struggles for a resolution.

Just as his anxiety begins to manifest, her words of comfort come to his mind and he reminds himself to breathe. Deeply, he inhales, filling his lungs with balmy, lightly scented air. He instantly recognizes the fragrance of her shampoo and conditioner, absorbed into the case of the pillow on which his head rests. But, underlying the artificial bouquet of her hair products, he can still discern the alluring notes that are naturally and distinctly hers. Focusing on those subtle identifiers, he takes in and lets out several more breaths.

Soon enough, his nerves calm, leaving little else to occupy him other than the raptures flowing through his body. She alters her position and approach once more, swirling her tongue across the patch of skin that was too sensitive to attend minutes ago. He moans headily, the full force of his delectation carrying his gruff voice, and unconsciously rubs his fingers into the base of her scalp and the back of her hand.

Something within him tells him to let her go, to reach for some other anchor. And yet, something far more instinctual, far more fundamental urges him not to. "Oh, my god," he huffs, weary of the war he's been fighting for far too long.

He could ask her for a reprieve of some kind, he well knows. And without a word, she'd sympathize with why. But he can't. No words, no sounds come except the endless succession of gasps and whimpers escaping his lips. No gestures, no actions come except the approving caresses of his hands as they wander along her arm and down the nape of her neck. Thus, with neither the will nor the capacity to conceive of an alternative to his present moment, he does the only thing he can do, and gives in.

The second his lingering disquiet leaves his body, she feels it. The wrenched muscles in his stomach and legs release, and he melts all the way into the bed. She wonders for a moment whether he's willingly conceding to his desire or he's simply reached a point where he has no other option. If his steadily more expressive responses are indicative of one explanation or the other, then she suspects the latter to be more accurate than the former. But she's little time to dwell on such thoughts as the fire at her own core begins to spread in consequence of his plainly evident gratification.

She sits up a little higher on her hip and presses her thighs together, trying to quell her reaction to his fingertips roaming her scalp and inner wrist, and his smooth, swollen girth sliding against the highly sensitive surfaces of her lips and tongue. When her efforts fail her, she moans against him, as much from need as from want.

"God, Lois…" he shudders, in disbelief that anything could feel more affirming or more wondrous than her trilling exhales.

Relishing the unabashed tenor of his articulations, she manages to shift the entirety of her focus back to him. Eager to indulge him, to satisfy him further, she breaks her rhythm and ignores his subsequent groan of discontent. He starts to worry that something's the matter, but he's prevented from doing so by her hand descending to the underside of his length. As she cradles and caresses him, she relaxes her throat and sinks down over him. His breath catches as he awes at the feeling of himself slipping farther and farther past her lips, until the curves of her mouth reach his base.

Enveloping him, she begins slowly, gauging his reactions to various manners of touch. Before long, she finds the pace and pressure best suited to him.

Back and forth, around and again, she continues in an entrancing, ever-intensifying rhythm that entices his desire toward its inevitable conclusion.

"Unh…"

Awash in, transported by her lavish attentions, he rasps her name over and over as the lowest parts of him constrict and a distinctive tingling radiates outward from deep within his belly. Feeling his thighs tremble, she withdraws from him enough to wrap her fingers back around him.

"Oh, god…"

His entire body quivers and writhes as she moves her mouth and hand in tandem, moaning with him as his end begins. Clinging to her hand, her hair, he breathes in a final time as every muscle in him tightens and strains. And then, with a force that overtakes his every reservation, he exhales, pushing out from his core and surging forth across her palate. Persisting, she kneads him steadily through his contractions, drawing out his ecstasy until he collapses into the bed.

The next few minutes progress slowly for him. Unable to move, hardly able to think, he comprehends very little beyond the blissful numbness affecting every inch of his body, every corner of his psyche. At some point, he even questions whether he's still fully conscious, in view of how outside himself he feels.

In time, the atmosphere around him begins to register again. But, rather than the quiet flickers of the candles or the now-sultry quality of the air, various other minutiae pervade his cognizance. The thrum of blood pulsing through dilated arteries and veins, the pheromonal allure of sweat covering heated skin - wave upon wave of the signatures of her arousal drift through his inexplicably hyperaware mind. How he can involuntarily perceive the things he usually has to attempt to discern, he's not certain. Although, considering the transcendent state in which he finds himself, his susceptibility to the nuances of her physiology doesn't seem quite so implausible.

Finally endeavoring to move, he slides his eyes around behind their hoods and stretches out his fingers. As he recognizes the slope of her lower back against his hands and suddenly makes out the outline of her lips against his temple, he tries to recall when she made her way back up his torso, but he discovers his memories clouded by the haze of the last little while.

"You taste like summer," she murmurs against his skin, prompted by his evident return to lucidity.

He smiles in response to her sentiment and lifts his lids. As she continues dotting kisses to the side of his face, he notices her ruddy complexion and wonders how she's able to maintain so calm a countenance when her need is so palpable. Maybe she's just ignoring it, he supposes, as he turns his head to capture her lips.

Smirking, she slips just out of his reach. "You don't mind?"

"Why would I mind?" he asks in a hoarse tone, as he lifts a hand from her back and runs his fingers through her hair.

She chuckles a bit at his gravelly timbre, choosing to disregard whether he should be so affected by the strain to his voice, and lets him ease her lips down to his. The depth of their ensuing kiss takes her by surprise, but she doesn't resist his thorough, almost coaxing lead. Her pulse strengthens between her legs, and, contrary to what she'd expect from herself, the backs of her eyes begin to swell with moisture. Breathless, she retreats from their kiss and clears her throat, stemming the latter of her responses to his affection.

"Do you want something to drink?" she offers, glancing toward the glass of water on her nightstand and angling for a brief diversion.

He brushes his lips across the corner of her mouth and guides her eyes back to his. "I want to touch you," he whispers, holding her gaze.

As she takes his meaning, he hears her heart flutter and he watches a series of bald emotions play across her features. The viscerality of her reaction concerns him, and he starts to inquire as to her thoughts. But, before he can, she blinks away her discomposure, and quietly replies, "Are you asking me?"

For a moment, he hesitates, considering whether to answer her question or to ask his own. Ultimately, however, he decides that whatever the cause of the brief lull in her equanimity, she seems fine now. Besides, he tells himself, perhaps he's sensationalizing things because of how overly receptive he presently is to her signals.

Suppressing what he's sure she'd characterize as his fussy nature, he addresses her query. "Yeah, I am."

She licks and then chews her lower lip, regarding him in silence for several seconds. Without doubt, she reasons, he hasn't had time to think through what transpired minutes ago. As feverish as he was, as conflicted as she knows he felt at times, he still managed to defy his trepidations and to maintain his contact with her. And whether he realizes it or not, that feat must be what's emboldened him to propose that which she didn't expect their first night to entail. Nevertheless, even if he hasn't yet fully reconciled himself to his intuitive behaviors, his willingness to continue trying speaks to the fact that, on some level, his mentality is indeed changing.

Setting aside her ruminations, she allows her longing to shine through as she replies, "Just for the record: You don't have to do that."

"Do what?"

"Ask me."

"I know," he gently assures her, tilting his head up to press his mouth to the dip beneath her ear.

Her eyes fall closed and a whimper flows past her parted lips. Firmly, he massages his fingers into and across the small of her back, while running his lips and his tongue around and behind her lobe. She feels herself flush with further warmth, and she exhales a plaintive sigh, hoping that he doesn't intend to make her wait.

"Will you show me?"

Barely able to make out his question over the sound of her pulse in her head, she shakily asks, "Show you?"

"Help me," he clarifies.

She softly chuckles in disbelief, amusing herself with the notion that he heard her unspoken plea. But, as he winds his hand deeper into her hair and nibbles at the back of her ear, a thought occurs to her. "Are you reading me?"

"Not on purpose," he tells her, growing fretful about her feelings on the matter. Withdrawing his mouth and finding her gaze, he offers, "But maybe I could sorta block it out if I try hard enough."

"Don't."

Assuaged by her simple reply, he inclines his chin to kiss her once more. She pulls away, though. And, after giving him a pointed, solicitous look, she begins shifting off of him and onto the bed.

As she turns onto her side, facing away from him, he follows after her, vaguely noting the heaviness in his limbs and torso as he changes position. When he's nestled his body behind hers and draped an arm across her stomach, she reaches over her shoulder and grasps the back of his neck. He lets her pull him down to her, and he meets her lips with his.

Deliberately, he focuses his considerations on the supple contours of her mouth, while sweeping his hand over her trim abdomen and full breasts. She arches back into him, mewling in delight and squeezing his disheveled locks.

Soon enough, he feels her releasing his hair and then skimming her nails down his forearm. She threads her fingers into his and rests her ankle on the side of his calf. Understanding her cue, he slips his leg between hers and lifts his knee, widening the space between her thighs. The draft created by their shifting about breezes across her delicate, freshly exposed skin, sending a shiver through her. Her lips shudder and he inhales her accompanying whimper, as she draws his hand down her stomach, over her hip, and up along her inner thigh.

He gasps and she sighs when they reach the moisture dampening her flesh. Centering him against her, she gradually runs his fingers through her folds, coating them in silken heat. Sparked by her desire, his vigor renews and his eagerness to attend and appease her manifests in a subtle contraction down his arms, prompting his instinct to pull her closer. But, reminding himself of the purpose to his present deference, he channels his energy away from its principal object and presses his tongue deeper into her mouth.

Languidly, she guides his hand, allowing him to rediscover her textures and terrain, and to learn her responses to so evocative a manner of contact. Listening to her hushed sounds, noting her slight movements, he gathers every one of the details that their initial wanderings afford and patiently awaits her inevitable need for more direct an approach.

After a short while, her breath catches as they near the highest and most sensitive part of her, occasioning that which he anticipated. Unable to maintain their kiss any longer, she retreats from his lips and surrenders to her natural inclinations, initiating the patterns and pace that she's fallen into many times before, while lying alone in her bed and imagining a night such as this.

Her eyes closed, she commits to memory the sensation of her touch as his. The breadth of his palm, the length of his fingers - each of his characteristics that contrast with hers heightens her awareness of the reality in which she's immersed. And yet, to have him like this - his body surrounding hers, his mouth winding across her neck - stirs within her the feelings that she barely managed to rein in some time ago. She slows her rhythm, balking at the budding re-emergence of so many emotions and at the possibility of their unwelcome expression. But, before the fear of losing herself to the depths of her regard for him can entirely take hold, his hand shifting beneath hers diverts her attention.

Softly, he traces his way up and then back down her flesh, gauging her reaction. When her grasp on his hand lets up, he recognizes it as an approving gesture, and continues.

Leaving a trail of kisses from the base of her throat to the curve of her jaw, he circles his fingertips against her, imitating her motions from just moments before. "Like this?" he whispers into her ear, increasing his pressure just enough for emphasis.

She hums a scarcely intelligible affirmation, lolling her head back onto his shoulder and aimlessly grazing the space between the back of his wrist and his knuckles. Encouraged by her reply, he smiles against her skin, while maintaining his easy, kneading ministrations.

His body warms as she relaxes into him farther, letting him take his time with her, letting him convey the tenderness that is based not in any notion of apprehension or uncertainty, but in his conviction that it's what she deserves. For him, it's not enough that she merely see and hear his devotion; he wants her to feel it, too - to know that the range of their experiences matters as much to him as it does to her, and that their present tenor is beyond neither his capacity nor his inclination.

As he glides across her middle, her stomach flutters and she presses down into his grasp. In response, he constricts the range of his motions, lingering over and around the source of her heat. She rocks against him, bidding him deeper, but as she feels a concurrent moan threatening to surface, she reflexively bites her lip to prevent it from so doing. Still, in spite of her effort, the remains of her articulation, a burning rasp, makes its way to his ears, reawakening the concerns he previously put to rest.

She's holding on to something, of that he's now convinced. But of what it is and of how best to approach helping her to let it go, he's not sure. Indeed, the only thing he knows with any certainty is that which her writhing hips seem perfectly willing to convey.

She whimpers in disappointment upon feeling his movements cease and his hand slipping away from her. Just as she begins to protest, though, his voice enters the air, entreating, "Turn around."

Obligingly, she does as he asks, shifting about within the circle of his arms until she's lying on her side, facing him. He greets her with an indulgent kiss, paying particular attention to the rosy extent of her lower lip, due to its having endured the clench of her teeth. Her hands threaded into his hair, her thigh draped over his waist, she presses her chest into his, holding him to her as closely as possible.

Quietly, he reiterates his prior appeal while caressing the shorn, downy vee between her hips. For his answer, she melds her mouth to his again and reaches for his hand. He opens his eyes to watch her face, as she slowly draws him back down through her folds and poises the tips of two fingers at the core of her desire.

An expression of what he recognizes as both relief and elation overspreads her features the moment she presses upward, easing him inside of her.

"Aah…" she softly exhales, her chin shuddering.

His breaths falter and his groin tightens as her fiery billows yield to his touch, inviting him still deeper, almost as if to assure him that he's exactly where he belongs.

Gently, she withdraws him a bit, before guiding him forward once more and slightly turning his wrist. He blinks his eyes and takes in as much air as possible, trying to steady himself and to focus on the mode of her actions. Yet, he's hardly had time enough to regain his bearings when she unexpectedly releases his hand.

He hesitates for a moment, reeling from having been left to his own will. But, as she curls her fingers around the base of his scalp and entices his lips back to hers, he's reminded of her trust in him - in his understanding and instincts. Emboldened by her gesture, he thus suppresses his doubts, brushing his tongue across hers as he carefully begins.

Swirling here, swaying there, he explores her, studying her responses and the subtleties therein - the pitch of her voice as he advances, the tremblings down her legs as he retreats. His mind inflames, set alight by his ever-intensifying sense of her need, and, somewhere within, he registers the results of his internal pique. But neither the sweat down his back, the pounding of his heart, nor any of the other signifiers of his present condition manages to inspire more than an inchoate and ephemeral thought, as he finds himself entirely enthralled by the elevating temperature and swelling surfaces of her longing.

"You're so warm…" he breathlessly remarks against her lips, powerless as he is to contain his wonder. "So soft…"

A further flush of arousal wets her flesh as she absorbs the ingenuousness and the generosity of his sentiments. In the past, she imagined he'd be reticent - quiet, even - given circumstances such as those of the present. And yet, to both her surprise and her delight, she's found him to be as vocal in his appreciation of her now as he would be at any other time. Perhaps she should have foreseen that his openness would translate here just as it has into every other sphere of their relationship, for with only two exceptions - one, which was resolved in the middle of an open field three months ago; the other, on a vacant rooftop several weeks prior to that - he's never failed to assure her of how highly he thinks of her or of how deeply he feels for her. But then, it could be just as likely that his expressiveness only seems so marked in contrast to the inhibition she chose to not expect of herself.

After maintaining their kiss for as long as she can, she breaks away from it when he discovers a cadence to which she particularly responds. As her breathing becomes a succession of increasingly heavy sighs, punctuated by the occasional gasp or whimper, he lowers his lips to the hollow of her throat and presses forward enough to coax the backs of her shoulders onto the bed.

With his torso above hers and their legs entwined, she basks in the glow of his affections, relishing how attuned he is to her. Fleetingly, she wonders how someone with as far-reaching, as complex a life as his can shut out every other care so completely - how he can touch her as if there's no world beyond that of their embrace. Still, despite having only occurred to her for an instant, her musings somehow trigger a vague sense of remembrance. She's felt this way, exactly this way, before. As swept up by him, as rapt by his proximity. Nevertheless, she can't begin to suppose why of all the moments between them, she'd settle on one with which she sometimes struggles - not for it in and of itself, but for its immediate aftermath. Subsequent to another second or two of contemplation, however, she begins to suspect the basis for her seemingly disconnected thoughts. But no, she tells herself as she cuts short her acknowledgement of the parallel. That doesn't make any sense.

"What doesn't?"

His question, murmured absently against her collarbone, catches her unawares. When she therefore offers no reply, he repeats himself more clearly.

"What doesn't make any sense?"

A deep blush blooms across her cheeks as she realizes that she must have given voice to the conclusion of her interior monologue. Her mind whirling, she tries to come up with something to say that will satisfy his curiosity, without amounting to a flat-out lie. Before she can, though, he perceives the slightly elevated degree radiating from the sides of her face, and he immediately comprehends that her words, though welcome to him, were in fact unintended for his ears. Briefly, he considers asking her outright as to the import of her utterance, but he quickly dismisses the notion for fear of pressing her too hard on something she's apparently not yet ready to address.

Deciding on a more circuitous approach, he slows his rhythm and lifts his head from her chest. Having braced herself for an interrogation, she mewls gratefully as he captures her lips in a pacifying kiss.

Before long, she forgets her unease and gives herself back over to him, sliding a hand along his upper arm and rubbing the pad of her foot into the crook of his knee to encourage, at the very least, a return to his previous pace. Happy for the reaction on which he was counting, he slips just out of the reach of her mouth and takes advantage of her lowered defenses, whispering, "Talk to me."

"Hmm?" she replies, pursuing him.

"Tell me what you want."

"More…"

He beams from the inside out upon hearing her engage him with something other than a subdued intonation. "Will you be uncomfortable?" he checks, continuing to speak to a plane of her consciousness baser than the one fraught by her anxieties.

Without hesitation, she reaches farther down his arm and into the space between her legs, telling him, "No."

He remains still as her grasp finds his and she guides another of his fingers inside her. Her limits expand to accommodate the dimensions of his touch, and then compress snugly enough to hold him within.

She exhales shakily.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Pressing her lips to his, she nods as she wraps her arms around his shoulders. Assured, he reciprocates her kiss and gently stirs his fingertips. She hums her pleasure, arching into his chest and writhing against his palm.

Gingerly, he follows the swerves of her hips, rolling his wrist as he glides back and forth. She runs a hand up his neck and grips his hair, whimpering in time with his long, fluid strokes. The tremors from her mouth reverberate against his and echo down into his belly. He groans, both overtaken and staggered by the sensation of himself hardening all over again. Yet, as he recalls how beset he became when last her satisfaction was his to give, a shade of doubt clouds his thoughts and he breaks their momentum.

Breathing her plea across his lips in a sigh, she implores him, "Don't stop…"

He only just manages to make her out, but the second he does, the gloom cast over his mind dissipates, for regardless of in how quiet a manner she does so, she's at least begun to enunciate. And that, given his concern for her ease and his wish for her abandon, he doesn't take lightly. Thus, refocusing on the faith in him that she continues to convey, he sets aside his misgivings and begins once more.

Steadily, they seek out and rebuild their rhythm. Pushing and pulling. Time and again.

Her breasts heave more rapidly against his chest. Her fingers dig harder into his scalp and back.

As he happens across a tiny area more delicate than any other, she reflexively moans, tearing her mouth from his and dragging her nails from behind his shoulder. He winces a bit from the thrilling sting, but suppresses his own response in consideration of hers.

Smoothly, he withdraws one of his fingers and curls the tips of his two others. "Here?" he asks her, pressing up against a swollen, ribbed patch.

Her head thrown back and her body on fire, she softly rasps, "God, yes…"

Spurred by her most emphatic expression yet, he persists, trailing his lips down her bared throat and moving within her in tighter, firmer, faster circles. But, as a telling tremor begins to ripple through her thighs and her back bows higher off the bed, he perceives the first in a series of pangs radiating down his forearm and into the back of his hand. His muscles wearying, he buries his brow in the curve of her neck and huffs from exertion. As he strains to work through the pain, to maintain their pace for a few moments longer, his hearing hones in on her racing pulse, offering him just enough of a diversion.

She sways down into him one last time, clutching his hair and his upper arm, clinging to him as the searing energy that's been building throughout her peaks. He braces himself likewise, staying his ministrations and relishing the nuances of her release: The ardor of her gasps… The convulsions of her core… The rush of warmth spreading across his palm…

His mind abuzz and skin ablaze, he follows her collapsing torso back onto the bed, panting with her while he struggles to regain some semblance of his composure. Very soon, though, he senses her hold on him relaxing and her hand sliding down his arm to his wrist. His heart sinks as her flutterings subside and she gradually begins to draw him away from her. Already missing the luscious pressure of her surrounding him, he considers saying something to dissuade her. Alas, lacking the breath to take any such exception, he simply opens his eyes and watches as his grasp emerges with hers into the small space between them.

The sodden, gleaming surfaces of his hand instantly capture his gaze. Enthralled, he starts to run the pad of his thumb along the length of his fingers, but a sharp ache seizes the joints and sinews therein, and shoots all the way up to his elbow. He grimaces, making a fist and then stretching it out, trying to soothe the remarkable soreness he feels. While so doing, he chances to discern the glossy texture of the dampness trickling over his palm and down onto his forearm. His discomfort all but forgotten, he marvels at the thin dew and glances around her inner thighs to discover more of the same sheen there as well. Instinctively, he wonders at its taste, only to have his thoughts derailed by her suddenly pressing against his chest and turning him over.

Her lips fall swiftly and insistently upon his, catching him off guard as his back lands on the bed. Rallying, he welcomes her tongue with his and reaches for her waist, helping her to situate her knees on either side of him. In the midst of lifting his arms, though, the confluence of both exhilaration and exhaustion suffusing every part of his body finally strikes him, and he begins to understand how unequal he is to contending with his wrought state for much longer. Still, no matter the prospect of his limitations, he can't resist urging her nearer to him.

Circling a hand around his neck and winding her tongue deeper into his mouth, she sits back across his groin. As she settles upon him, her plush folds meet his firm girth, and he lowers his hands to her hips, pressing against them. Coaxed by his gesture, she rocks down and then back up, gliding slowly and easily along him. To her dismay, though, he responds with a violent shudder and a desperate groan.

Opening her eyes and pulling away from him, she worries, "What is it? What's wrong?"

As quickly as he's currently able to, he leans up from his supine position and wraps his hands around her thighs, keeping her from shuffling off of him. "Nothing," he says, his breaths still ragged. "I'm fine."

"I've heard that before," she points out, nervously tucking a wayward lock behind her ear.

Indulging her skepticism, he waits while she briefly scrutinizes him for herself, checking for any sign of the bruises and abrasions that marred him earlier. After having assuaged her alarm by finding nothing distressing, she lingers on the only discernible breaks in his skin.

He follows her line-of-sight to his shoulder and glimpses the thin welts left by her nails. Anticipating her thoughts, he grasps her arms and drapes them back around his neck, telling her, "It doesn't feel any worse than it looks."

She contemplates his reassurance as she widens the focus of her gaze, taking in the arresting extent of his complexion's sweat-slicked glow. Caught by the lure of his appearance, she shifts off of her knees and peers into his eyes, asking, "How positive are you?"

"At least one hundred percent," he replies, gathering her in his arms and folding his legs underneath her.

Contented, she lets him draw her farther into his lap. Their chests meet, as do the base of his desire and the apex of hers. Accepting his kiss, she crosses her ankles behind his back and hugs him closer. He groans again, though less harshly than he did so a moment ago, as the moistures coating her flesh spread along his. Finding him less severely affected than before, she rolls her hips down into him, and smiles in appreciation when his fingers descend to and coil across her backside.

With her weight supported in his arms and hands, she writhes freely and leisurely against him. Entranced by her motions, he sighs headily and presses his tongue past her lips. She receives his advance with alacrity, cradling the back of his head and tilting hers farther to one side, as the sumptuous friction between them escalates.

At some point, she registers a slight tremble from his shoulders down to his palms, but then dismisses it as incidental when it soon passes. Shortly thereafter, though, his instability returns, becoming both more pronounced and more prolonged.

Slowing her rhythm and slipping away from his mouth, she whispers, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he answers, reinitiating their kiss in the vain hope of her giving up her pursuit of the matter.

She runs a hand down to his bicep to make sure she's not imagining things. Having verified her initial observation, she edges against his lips, "You're shaking."

"I'm okay."

His adamant response only sharpens her suspicion, and she promptly concludes that he's in denial about something. "Wait, wait…" she tells him a second later, halting her every movement as an extraordinary notion occurs to her. "Are you… Are you tired?" A wide grin stretches across her face as he ignores her question and declines his mouth to the side of her throat. Growing more amused by the second, she arches into him and lifts her ankles higher up his back, teasing, "Super-stamina, my ass. How much do you think I weigh compared to a high-rise?"

"Lois -"

"- You know, your ego is outrageous. If you need a break, just say so," she chuckles, leaning away from him as he tries to silence her with a kiss.

His voice gruff, he reaches for her lips again, insisting, "Come here."

She giggles harder. "Is that an order, Kent?"

"Yes."

"But you didn't say 'please.'"

No sooner has she finished her quip than she finds herself being picked up off of his lap and tackled onto the pillows near the head of the bed. Tickled all the more, she resists his retaliation, hooking an arm firmly around the back of his neck and refusing to let up. Her laughter spurs him on in spite of both his depleted condition and his better judgment, as he tries with little success to subdue her. After some scuffling, he manages to pry apart her grip. Nevertheless, he's hardly begun to calculate his next move when she loops one of her legs over his shoulder and the other under his arm, and locks a foot behind her opposite knee.

Stuck within the triangular grasp of her calve and thighs, he grumbles in exasperation.

"You are so bad at this," she taunts, holding his brow to her stomach with her hands.

"I wasn't raised to wrestle women."

"Hasn't stopped you from picking fights with me."

"You don't count."

"Oh, really?" she asks, rolling over and taking him with her.

"Ah!" he complains, the crown of his head pressed into the bed. "Fight fair."

"Fight better."

Shoving her hips into his shoulder, she sits up onto her knees and forces him onto his back. Sprawled out beneath her, he glances up her body to see her looking smugly down at him.

"Had enough?"

Defiantly, he fumbles about, trying to stretch far enough to get a decent grip on one of her legs. Inevitably, the volume of her mirth only amplifies further as she watches him struggle and wonders if he'll ever accept that his bulk can be less of a help and more of a hindrance when countered with her agility.

Recognizing the familiar smirk on her face and intuiting the musings that it signifies, he maintains, "I'm letting you win."

"You always say that."

"It's always true."

"Liar."

"Bully."

"You started it."

"That's mature."

"Says the grown man who can't even admit to being tir - Hey!"

She loses her thought and her center of gravity when he attempts a more useful maneuver, pushing against the front of her stomach and toppling her off of his chest. Much to her chagrin, her subsequent wobbling allows him to wriggle out of her trap and to sit up onto his knees. Having not yet even fully regained her balance, she lunges at him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and trying to knock him over. But, for once, his size works in his favor. Holding his ground, he absorbs her driving blow and reaches behind her to pull her legs out from under her. She shouts something indignant as she begins to tumble backward, and he laughs derisively at her as he feels himself on the verge of a rare victory.

She goes with their fall, confident in the knowledge that he'd never let her land awkwardly, and, sure enough, they hit the bed with one of his arms cradling her back. Intending to exploit his gallantry, she blindly scrabbles for a pillow and quickly acquires one above her head. Before she can whack him, though, he catches her wrist, pins it down, and then rashly tries for the kiss he's yet to achieve.

Just short of her lips, he's stopped cold by the hand he neglected to restrain seizing a fistful of his hair.

"You just can't help yourself, can you?"

Perhaps it's the sharp tug across his scalp that intensifies his reception of her accompanying remark, but whatever the cause, her question, though posed in jest, pierces its way deeper into his psyche than it would have otherwise. That conceit, he realizes, he's heard manifest itself more than once over the last few hours. And while he didn't appreciate the underlying significance to her various mentions - some forthright, others not - when she initially made them, he now sees it with perfect clarity.

She's often given him grief about the manner in which he kissed her for the first time only because of her discomfort with the circumstances under which he did it. For long moments, she stood with him in front of her desk, just as oblivious as he was to the existence of anything beyond their embrace. Soon enough, though, a round of whistles and jeers from a number of their colleagues obtruded upon her awareness. Startled, she pulled away from him. Then, in so hurried a manner that he hardly had time to register her stricken expression, she grabbed her things, rushed off, and spent the next two weeks out of town, ignoring his phone calls.

He didn't understand at the time that she was avoiding their workplace as much as she was avoiding him. He didn't understand that, without any real assurance as to his intentions, even the kind of physical affection that she'd never discourage once they were together was disconcerting when offered in view of prying eyes.

The early parts of their relationship, however, posed more questions than they did answers as to where and why her lines were drawn. On one occasion, he complimented her while they were in the company of a group of mutual friends that'd gathered for a game night, only to receive from her a sarcastic aside and a humorless punch to his shoulder in reply. On another occasion, he delivered a sentimental toast at the surprise birthday party he planned for her, only to have her disappear from the festivities soon afterward.

Disheartened, he mistook her behaviors as a sign of uncertainty about them, and it was that notion of doubt that long kept him from definitively affirming his regard for her. When he eventually did, it was only by accident. They were fighting. He was losing ground. And, in desperation, he shouted the three words that he'd been choking down for months. Their argument thus came to an abrupt halt, as she, her face stricken all over again, left him standing alone atop the roof of their office building, convinced that when next they spoke at length, it'd be the last time they did so as a couple.

Despite being displeased by it, he expected the distance at which she kept him for the rest of the day and for many more after that; he'd at least learned by then what the consequence of his miscues with her would always be. What he didn't expect, though, was the end to which she put his exile, when she grabbed his arm the second he walked into the bullpen one morning and dragged him back to the roof. In a state of bewilderment, he watched and listened to her as she paced around, rattling off an apology that he only just followed, for fear of it being a mere pretense to her tearing them asunder. After which, he nearly fell over from astonishment and relief when she finished her ramble by pulling him down into an earnest kiss, and then reciprocating his avowal in a whisper across his lips.

He didn't wonder after that. He understood that regardless of her posturing, she embarrassed as easily as he did, just about a very different matter.

Even so, what her latest allusion has brought to light is that while his reveal to her several weeks subsequent to their rooftop interlude did indeed effect a fundamental change in their relationship, it didn't do the same for that which is inherent to her nature. Whereas he'll tell anyone who'll listen how much she means to him, she could count on one hand the number of people with whom she feels comfortable discussing what he means to her. Whereas he has no reserves about laying bare his feelings to her, she continues to struggle with expressing a similar degree of emotional abandon around him, even under the most private and conducive of circumstances - even now.

Confused by him responding to her most recent tactics with nothing but stillness and silence, she loosens the grip of her hand. "Was that too hard? Did I hurt you?"

He smiles a bit and shakes his head.

"What then?" she presses, unnerved by the serenity that's begun to settle over his countenance.

He nearly laughs as he considers her persistence. This is, after all, the woman who'll scarcely give a second thought to voicing any concerns she has for him, any assurances she thinks he needs, and any mockery she's convinced he deserves, but who, from the dread of seeming selfish, will sooner find him a home, offer him a shared bed, and treat him to an entire day of her undivided attention, than simply tell him straight out that she's missed him.

After another brief interval of quietude, she shifts anxiously and repeats her question. He chuckles, watching her squirm under the focus of his gaze, and feels himself enchanted all the more by the same irritability, the same eccentricity that he first began falling for years ago. But, before her determination for an answer can morph into a hostile pursuit, he decides that perhaps the only way to help her overcome her insecurities is to address the latent conflict that she's long experienced, and to make plain that which he's thus far left unsaid.

"I have a confession."

The solemnity of his ultimate reply takes her further aback, and her heart wavers as she watches his eyes darken. Sensing the blithe atmosphere of their past few minutes giving way to the gravity of whatever's on his mind, she makes a futile attempt at circumvention: "You've been faking the whole alien-superhero thing?"

He delays his response for a pointed moment, conveying to her that there's no way around or out of her position. When she exhales a subtle breath of acquiescence, he reaches his unoccupied hand behind his head, threads his fingers into hers, and slides her palm around to his cheek.

Her lips part and her blood ignites as she feels exactly what she's meant to - his raw, feral heat. Seeing that she's understood him, he lowers his voice to a rumbling timbre as he speaks directly to one of her less forgiving reactions to his ill-timed impetuosity. "Earlier, you yelled at me for trying to kiss you while you were upset. I told you that I was trying to calm you down. That wasn't the truth."

Though almost afraid to do so, she nevertheless asks, "So what was?"

Holding her gaze, he takes her hand from his cheek and presses it back onto the bed, next to its counterpart. "There are some things that get you so angry - so worked up and so beyond reason," he quietly explains, looming over her with carnal menace. "And when you lose it like you did tonight, you remind me that I'm one of them - that I make you as crazy as you make me… I've never wanted anything like I want you."

Only when she reflexively inhales several moments later does she realize that she's forgotten to breathe, for his acknowledgment - an overture, really - leaves her with a choice that couldn't be more clear or more essential. She could demur; she could retreat behind a veil of false humor and refuse to engage what he's brought to the fore. Or, she could answer him in kind, and in so doing confirm the truth undergirding his sentiments - that his passions, in all their sweeping, upending force, are also hers. But to commit to the latter would moreover mean admitting why she's at times shrunk from or begrudged him his advances. It's not the physicality that unsettles her, but the heightened and therefore irrepressible emotions that are necessarily entailed when she's already beside herself because of him.

And yet…

And yet, she's longed for this night - the textures, the colors, the honesty, the intimacy, all of which he's realized for her. In the midst of such a setting and in the presence of such a man, denial seems somehow ignoble. Thus, she finds herself not only accepting the offer he's made her just now but also honoring the request she made of him not long ago, and simply tries.

The kiss with which she conveys her assent takes her halfway across the distance separating him from her. He leans down to welcome her gesture, and then, after a moment, presses forward and eases her back onto the bed.

She sighs softly, her affections stirred by her having been met not with desperation or hunger, but with the same reverence, the same tenderness that he's shown her since she first entered his wondrous world.

Consciously, she tightens the grasp of her hands in his as she endeavors to resist suppressing the feelings swelling within her. Empathizing with her apprehension, he glides his tongue across her faintly trembling lower lip and entices her thoughts to a more pleasing focus. His diversion quickly achieves its end, and she soon after begins whimpering into his mouth and rocking her hips up into him.

He releases her hands, and she takes the opportunity to wrap them around his head and to deepen their kiss still farther. He appeases her persistence for several moments, but eventually starts to pull away. She blinks her eyes open in disappointment and gazes at him in question. Without a word, he slides a hand down her waist and nudges against the back of her hip, effectively communicating his answer.

She hesitates as she considers the significance to that which he intends. But, coaxing her through her indecision, he tells her in a compassionate tone, "I'm right here."

After another second's delay, she manages to take his reassurance to heart and lets him help her over onto her stomach. As she lies out underneath him and props herself up on her forearms, he pushes away the various pillows nearest to them, leaving only her own. Instinctually, she pulls the familiar item to her chest and holds onto it in lieu of him.

Her breathing unsteady, her body piqued as much from arousal as from anxiety, she closes her eyes and tries to will her mind to a place as tranquil as that of her surroundings. As he stretches out over her, though, she finds herself all the more unsettled. Under any other circumstances, his imposing form would assuage her, comfort her. But this moment is unlike the many that have preceded it. Now, as a warm hand and an even warmer gaze slowly wander her shoulders and back, she feels every bit of the vulnerability in being so situated.

As her uneasiness gets the better of her, she edges, "You're staring."

He nuzzles and breathes in her tousled curls, his resolve unshaken. "What gave me away?" he asks, in a voice absent any hint of repentance.

"You got quiet."

"Do you wanna know what I'm thinking about?"

She nods, and he proceeds to brush her hair away from her neck and to lean down far enough to whisper into her ear.

"Your kindness. Your warmth… How strong you are. How gentle you can be…" he says to her, running a hand along her side as he reciprocates her earlier admirations of him. When he notices a corner of her mouth coiling slightly upward, he leaves a soft kiss to her cheek, before lowering his voice a bit more, and adding, "There's nothing about you that I'd ever change, Lois… You're perfect."

If not for her lowered lids, the tears presently threatening to fill her eyes would surely succeed. However, in reaching for the back of his head and turning hers to find his lips, she leaves herself no time to consider how she'd handle so naked a display.

He greets her with indulgence, offering her the kind of prolonged, meaningful touches that ultimately take her breath away. She withdraws from him with a gasp, and their eyes meet. His pulse staggers as he catches sight of something he's never quite seen from her before. Something aching. Something absolute. Something as yet unbestowed. In an instant, though, his glimpse passes as she takes her hand from his hair and turns to bare her throat to him.

Requiring no further inducement, he winds his way down the nape of her neck and between the blades of her shoulders. Yielding to him more with each passing second, she settles onto the pillow folded up in her arms as he continues his gradual descent, pressing his lips here, grazing his teeth there. When he comes to the small of her back, he lingers, tracing the tapering, sloping musculature, while stroking her sides and legs.

Her low hums and muffled rasps amplify as his hands spread across her backside, followed shortly thereafter by his mouth. Massaging, caressing the length and breadth of her curves, he steadily fans her inner flame until she begins to writhe from want.

To her vexation, though, he progresses his attentions no farther, deliberately denying her the contact she most needs. Feverish, she arches up and back, seeking him out. Still, he refuses, choosing instead to maintain his current focus and tenor.

Doubtless as to and no less exasperated by his purpose, she sharply exhales, extends her arms in order to clench the edge of the bed, and buries her brow in her pillow.

"…Please," she quietly shudders after a weighty moment, very nearly conceding that for which he's still waiting. "Please, touch me…"

Nonetheless incited by her articulation, he drifts closer to her heat, while lying down between her parted legs and reaching underneath the front of her hips. Her upper thighs resting in the crooks of his arms, she holds her breath in anticipation, as he wraps his hands up around her lower back and eases her toward him just slightly.

The bedroom's glow shimmers delicately across her flesh, sodden with both prior ecstasy and renewed longing. At last able to, he leans into her and runs his lips over her inner thigh, relishing the remnants of her more recent release.

The frustration amassed within her flows outward in a whimper as he sweeps higher, nearer, and then presses his mouth to her at last. She sighs her relief and instinctively sways backward. But, holding her more securely within the cradle of his arms, he restricts the range of her motions and obliges her to rely solely upon his will.

His initial ministrations, meandering in both pace and aim, do more to further excite than to satisfy. Tortuously, he rolls and weaves through her lush folds. Languidly, he circles and skims around her swollen nub. She bites down on her lip and huffs something unintelligible in a pleading tone. In defiance of her wishes, however, he returns to her backside and thighs, lavishing sultry, nibbling kisses upon them.

Incensed, her body besieged by an oppressive confluence of desire from within and denial from without, she grips the sheets still harder and strains to shift her hips enough to convey to him her anguish. Nevertheless, despite the fatigue that he's ceased trying to rationalize away, he summons what's left of his vigor and resists her exertions.

If only she had the presence of mind to scream, she would. She'd scream. She'd rant. She'd tear into him for putting her in such a position. For asserting his concern for her in so exacting, so gallingly effectual a fashion. For caring for her too deeply and too abidingly to simply leave her to her insecurities. But in the end, done in by the war she's been fighting for far too long, she resigns herself to the only option left to her, and gives in.

Her surrender, earnest and abject, manifests in precisely the utterance she came just short of making minutes ago:

"Clark…"

That breathless expression - spoken, as he's all too aware, for the first time tonight and for the first time since their impromptu public tryst during the afternoon - carries with it all the meaning for which he was hoping. For inherent to her submission is not only the exposure of that which rages, not merely smolders, beneath her surface, but also of why and for whom it burns.

His name hangs in the air only briefly, before her pangs are allayed by his mouth centering over her and melding against her. Swirling forth into her billows, he starts directly to offering her the intent, rhythmic touch that he no longer has any reason to withhold. She mewls and she croons, her former displeasure all but forgotten as she revels in the raptures of being subjected, subdued, and yet nonetheless adored.

In time, he varies his manner, withdrawing from her depths and dragging his lips upward toward a halo of smooth, constricted skin. She tenses, however only at first, and soon relaxes into the unanticipated, though not unwelcome, sensation. Persisting, he glides his tongue across her, while running one of his hands from around her lower back to down beyond the front of her hips. As he curls his palm against the span of her flesh and begins softly, steadily kneading her, a sweltering tremor radiates up her spine and down her legs, and she moans, "God, Clark…"

The litany of torrid sounds and words from her lips urges him onward. Increasing his pressure, his tempo, he moves over her and against her with undeniable purpose.

Twirling and twisting... Around and about… Over and again…

"Aah…"

As her back bows deeper and her hips lift higher, he relishes his recognition of how far gone, of how achingly near she is. Just as her release seems imminent, though, he's confounded by her suddenly slipping out of and away from the circle of his arm. Still, by the time he's regained his bearings, she's already begun turning over into a seated position, and his momentary confusion as to her purpose is almost immediately surmounted by his prevailing preoccupation. Rising up onto his hands and knees, he pursues her farther up along the bed, promptly resettles himself between her legs, and lowers his mouth to her inner thigh.

She says his name to entreat his attention, but her heady tone and ragged breaths give her voice an accent that hastens, rather than halts, his ascent. Resorting to another means, she hooks one hand around his neck and the other around his upper arm, and tugs.

The return of her touch to his skin has an overpowering effect on his psyche, and he pauses at the line where her groin ends and her margins begin.

"Come here," she implores, pulling impatiently, though still ineffectively, at his burly heft. "I want you with me."

Her profession jolts him to his core, stirring and elevating every one of his baser instincts. Impelled from within, he lets her drag him up her body, and he meets her lips with an insistence that nearly sends them tumbling back into the headboard's partially upholstered surface. She answers his urgency with her own, running her tongue across his as he wraps an arm around her back and slides a hand up the side of her thigh. She moans, delighted by the traces of her sweetness and spice on him, only to have that lilting intonation morph into a gasp when she feels her hips being hoisted off of the bed.

Advancing on her further, he presses her into the headboard with something of gentleness, but more of aggression. His torso flush with hers, her legs about his waist, their ensuing moments transpire in a heated exchange of roaming, grasping hands and eager, demanding mouths. She pulls him tighter to her, raking her nails across his scalp and drawing his lower lip between her teeth. When she bites down, he responds with an ardent groan, and, without thinking, grinds against her. His subtle shift, however, aligns them unmistakably and poises him at her precipice.

Her eyes fly open in alarm and she tears away from their kiss. Her abrupt recoil startles him, stopping him in place and commanding his gaze. She watches him as he reads her expression, as the understanding of the posture they're in strikes him, and she immediately regrets having neglected to think far enough ahead to prevent herself from having so brusque and discouraging a reaction.

His face falls, partly from his fear of the unknown end to which his impulses could've carried him, partly from his shame in having come so close to chancing her well-being in spite of that deep-seated misgiving. Awkwardly, he readjusts the positioning of his lower body, and, through his heaving pants, starts to pose an apology of some kind. But, anticipating him, she clamps a hand over his stammering mouth, and hurriedly tells him, "No. That was my fault. You didn't do anything wrong. We're fine."

Still doubtful, he tries again, prompting her to cut short his contrition with a kiss. He hesitates at first, but soon concedes to his reliance upon her convictions.

After several quieting moments, she retreats a bit and waits for his eyes to find hers. When they do, she swears to him, "I won't let us. Not before we're ready. All right?"

Her tender assurance reins in what remains of his present anxiety. Comforted by the knowledge that she'll never lose sight of the line that he may sometimes fail to perceive, that she'll never allow him to do anything destructive to his trust in himself, he nods in reply to her question and reaches for her lips.

"Sit back," she says, before he manages to reinitiate their contact.

He follows her instruction, bringing her with him as he rocks back to seat himself on his heels. The slight wavering of his arms as he supports her weight doesn't escape her notice, and as she scoots up his thighs, pressing the pads of her feet into the bed on either side of him, she takes a second to glance over his haggard appearance. Upon finishing her perusal, she circles an arm around the back of his shoulders for leverage, and skims her free hand across his chest and down his stomach.

His groin tenses as she gradually sways up along him, while running her thumb through the dribbles of moisture spilling out onto the swollen height of his rigidity.

"Can you?" he hears her ask him, as she inches back down the underside of his length. "…Again?"

A tinge of uncertainty flits across his eyes as he considers her overture. But when her long, slender fingers coil around him and her sodden, satin folds glide along him once more, his want trumps his reason.

Tilting her chin down, she receives with unfettered zeal the kiss that he offers. And though her tenor initially takes him aback, he quickly reciprocates, digging the fingers of one hand into her thigh and rubbing those of the other down the cleft of her backside.

She presses her tongue farther past his lips, while rolling her wrist and rocking her hips.

"Mmm…" he moans, as the compounding of her sensations rapidly begins to overwhelm him.

His arms tremble and his jaw shudders. His skin perspires and his muscles inflame.

Beset by both rhapsody and weariness, he breaks their kiss and cleaves to her in so fiercely a manner that he can't help becoming wary of hurting her. And yet, to his relief and wonder, his apprehension is met with nothing but tangible signs of her pleasure: The further heightening of her temperature and dampening of her flesh. The punctuating of her tempo and quickening of her pace.

His doubt dispelled, he lowers his mouth to her chest and re-secures his hold on her. At first, she dismisses his altered grasp as a passing reflex; however, when she feels him not only pulling at her hips as she pushes forward, but also pushing at them as she pulls back, she realizes what he's doing - helping her, guiding her. And although the mode of his response isn't enough to overtake her command of their desire, it nonetheless convinces her of the extent of his abandon.

As the gravity of that gesture - that open testament to his determination to defy his own limits and that tacit reaffirmation of what's motivating him to do so - settles upon her, she senses both the brimming of her emotions and the approaching of their end.

Without any disruption to their rhythm, she takes her hand from him, laces her fingers through his hair, and draws his mouth back up to hers. As the fire between them glows ever brighter, ever hotter, she kisses him soundly, deeply - until he pants her name against her lips.

"I know," she huffs in commiseration, letting him drop his brow to the front of her throat. "I know…"

Any further exchange they may have shared manifests instead in cries of ecstasy, as their mutual release extinguishes the burning tension at both of their cores.

Racked, he melts into her, wrapping his arms as far around her as he can and resting his cheek in the curve of her shoulder. Still, even as he strains to catch his breath, the euphoric flush of satisfaction spreads throughout his body, soothing and sedating him so much so that he doesn't notice the bit of wetness falling onto the nape of his neck and rolling down his back.

A subsequent droplet, however, makes its way over the welts on his upper arm, and he twitches a little as its salty composition stings his broken skin. Vaguely perplexed by his reaction, he gathers what he can of his wits and idly rummages through his haze for an explanation. When he feels several of her fingers slipping out of his hair, though, he instinctively opens his eyes and follows her hand as she lifts it to her face, where he immediately discovers a far more imperative cause for his concern.

Even without directing her eyes toward him, she can tell from his protracted silence that he's gazing upon her in disbelief. Nevertheless, she steals a quick glance at him to confirm her suspicion, and, upon perceiving exactly that which she expected, she turns away from him, sighing, "Oh, please, don't look at me like that."

His chest still heaving and his heart still racing, he tries as speedily as possible to get his mind around what he's witnessing. But, the implausibility of the sight before him continues to astound, for never before has he beheld such tears from her - such a quiet and continuous overflow of not only her regard for him, but also of her grasp of his for her.

"Or, maybe you should, right?" she weakly suggests, wiping away the thin stream flowing over one of her cheeks as her mortification becomes all the more unbearable. "You didn't exactly fall for someone who does this kinda thing."

Her despairing notions redouble his efforts to think of a reply reasonable enough to console her. Although, no sooner does he conceive of a suitable reassurance than the familiarly stricken expression beginning to oppress her countenance thoroughly displaces his sense with his sensibility. Releasing her back, he reaches for her hands and pulls them away from her face, while she utters the last of her despondence that he's prepared to abide.

"I'd totally dump me if I were you. Nobody should be stuck with someone they don't recognize anymore -"

The concluding words to her rambling thought never take audible form, as he cradles her cheeks and brings her lips down to his. The impulse to refuse him instantly seizes her, and she tenses noticeably. But, whether out of sympathy for him or for want of solace for herself, she braves her initial response long enough for an ensuing one to prevail, and, once able to, she accepts his kiss as best she can.

Her tears trickle over his fingers and down his wrists, while he focuses into every caress, every touch with which he attends her the sentiment that even the loveliest of settings and the noblest of vows still only ever approximate.

When, after some time, he starts to gradually withdraw from her, he does so with the hope for a resolution that has eluded them over and again since she fled their first embrace, with the hope that she'll absorb what he's tried so earnestly to convey. In spite of that wish, though, all that's left in his power to do is wait…

At last, she opens her eyes to meet his. And in so doing, the most basic of truths becomes clear. She now feels what it means to have trusted herself with someone as considerate of her, as generous toward her as he: …She doesn't have to hold back. In his arms, she is free from restraint, free from any fear or reservation in sharing the most intimate of moments with her true, great love…

A man who would never betray the high esteem in which she holds him…

A man who would never ask of her for a night what he couldn't offer her for a lifetime.

As she exhales away her insecurity, he watches the depth of her affections color her features, brightening her skin and softening her eyes. He beams, knowing beyond question that she finally understands, and leans in to press a kiss to each side of her tear-streaked face and to envelop her in a lengthy hug.

When he eventually pulls back to regard her once more, she finds herself surprised by, though not in the least resistant to, the prospect that's begun to take shape in her mind. In the past, she's scarcely contemplated such a notion, even when he himself, almost always inadvertently, has alluded to it. But, for the first time, the image of the life she'd have them share appears plainly before her, and she parts her lips, having never wanted to ask him anything more than that which she now longs to.

Just as she's on the verge of giving voice to her question, though, it dawns on her that she's no token to present, no declaration to make, and she stops herself short. His expression changes somewhat, communicating his curiosity about whatever it is that she intended to say, and, for another second or two, she toys with indulging her caprice, regardless of any niggling qualms.

In the end, however, she apprehends the position she'd be putting him in by acting in advance of their relationship's final consummation, and thus decides against rushing something that she'd very much like to get just right. After all, she muses to herself with a smile, he deserves nothing less.

Her gaiety has a mirror effect on him, occasioning him to disregard his scratchy throat, and he grins, "What?"

She takes a long breath, setting aside her whimsy for the time being, and then changes the subject to his evident exhaustion. "How are you?" she checks, glancing over him.

He delays responding in order to give her a probing stare, but when she deliberately ignores him, he lets the matter of her prior ruminations rest. Peering around the rumpled surface of the bed, he finds one of the spare hand towels and picks it up, telling her, "I'm good."

"You're still kinda warm."

"So are you," he replies with a smirk, after having reached off to the side and dipped the cloth into the basin on his nightstand.

"My normal isn't your normal," she rejoins, watching him direct his heated gaze at the towel. And though happy to see that his abilities haven't been impaired, she persists, "C'mon. Fess up."

"I'm fine. Honest." Then, as he carefully wipes the steaming fabric along her inner thighs and lower stomach, he gradually admits, "I just think I'm… Well, I may be just a little… run-down."

She snickers, "You mean 'tired'?"

"I mean 'run-down.'"

"We didn't drain your solar battery, did we?"

"I don't think so. I'd be unconscious if it was that. This is different."

As he folds the towel over and swabs it across his own skin, she mulls his both audible and visible state of fatigue. Moments later, he looks up at her in confusion when she starts sliding off of his lap.

"Hold on. Where are you going?" he asks, discarding the towel onto the small heap of other soiled items on the carpet.

"To get you something to drink. And you should probably eat too."

He extends an arm around her back to slow her down, claiming, "It's okay. I'm not even…" As the thought he expected to dismiss occurs to him, though, he trails off, registering a sensation he's rarely ever experienced.

"You are, aren't you?"

"…Yeah, I guess I am."

"Which means you need to rehydrate and refuel," she triumphantly quips, continuing to move toward the edge of the bed. "You'd know that if you ever had to work out a day in your life."

"Okay, fine. But stay here and let me do that."

"Why?"

"Because I'm asking nicely."

"Doesn't count this time."

He chuckles to himself, while grasping her waist and wondering where she gets her energy. "Would you just hold still, please?"

At his request, she stops her progress and turns back to him.

He quietly laughs for a few seconds more, using the interval to run his hands over her shoulders and his fingers through her hair. When he's finished, his face assumes a more solemn expression, and he inquires, "How do you feel?"

"Terrible. Just awful. Probably the worst that I've ever felt before."

"Lois -"

"- I couldn't be better," she says, interrupting him with a light kiss. "Scout's honor."

Pleased by her reply, he smiles. But, all the same, he begins his next query with halting unease. "Well, um… Was anything… I mean, is there anything that you weren't quite…"

"Really? Right back to the humble routine?"

"I'm serious."

"Of course you are," she retorts, pulling him to her. "And it's adorable."

He sighs in defeat as she teasingly dots her lips around his face. "Do you want me to get you one of my shirts?" he offers, once she draws back.

"Why would I want that?"

"If it'd make you comfortable."

Giggling, she nudges the side of his leg with her foot, and insists, "Stop fussing and go fix us a snack."

Out of habit, he mutters that he doesn't fuss, while making his way off of the bed and grabbing the red garment spread over part of it. She follows him with her eyes and rolls them when he wraps the large drape of material around his waist, covering his lower half.

"Fair warning: I won't always let you get away with that."

His cheeks redden ever slightly as her comment reaches his ears, and, in silence, he goes about foraging through the items they left near the pallet. By the time he returns to her, he's piled a dish with all the fruits, almonds, pretzels, and ganache that it could contain, and stored away the remaining foods.

As he crawls back onto the bed, she notices him peeking at the raised ridges on his shoulder and very nearly smiling at them.

"You're happy about that?" she intuits, grabbing the chilled bottle of water in one of his hands.

He shrugs. "I just always figured this sorta thing couldn't happen to me. Not when I'm myself, anyway. If you would've told me yesterday that -"

Her jaw slackens in awe as he halts mid-sentence, deferring to a reflex that she can't recall having ever before seen from him - a yawn. After he's exhaled, they stare at each other for a beat, until she breaks in with, "Oh, my god. You really are tired."

At a loss as to how else to react, he laughs, prompting her to do the same. When their amusement subsides, she helps him to seat himself between her legs, and then eases him back with her as she reclines into the headboard.

They spend the next little while lounging about, eating and drinking together in an atmosphere of intimacy and serenity. Nonetheless, their quietude doesn't prevent him from noticing when the hand she's been aimlessly running across his scalp subtly takes up a more decided and mischievous approach, molding his damp locks into the style he finds ridiculous on him. "Very funny," he dryly states, plucking her hand from his hair and laying it across his chest.

Before returning his attention to their treats, though, he finds it drawn down to their entwined grasps and arrested by one spot in particular. For a moment, he almost forces himself to avert his gaze. However, upon further reflection, he recognizes that the obstacle that would've impeded the course of his thoughts just a few hours ago no longer seems so insurmountable. And without any further hesitation, he lets himself gauge the exact distance around the base of her fourth finger.

Halfway through their plate of desserts, she feels his temperature lowering to its usual degree and she thus turns his head in the direction of his upper arm.

As they watch his welts heal and fade away, she casually poses, "You know, maybe the kind of fuel you burn just depends on what you're using it for. Maybe you tap into more than just your solar power when you're worked up. That could explain the headaches you get from arguing. And why, nights like tonight, you can handle being really hot, but you still have to sweat."

"Regardless of the how, I think the why's pretty clear. None of that stuff happens to me when I'm with anyone but you."

She scoffs in feigned indignation and tilts her chin down to nip his ear. "So you're saying this is all my fault?"

"Something like that."

His sentiment stretches the corners of her mouth up toward her eyes and earns him a peck to his cheek. Hugging him closer, she leaves the rest of their snack to him and relaxes deeper into the cushioned surface against her back.

Some time later, at a volume so hushed that his hearing nearly triggers to pick it up, she addresses him by the name she's never used in private and seldom ever uses in public. Delighted by the sound, he forgets their last couple morsels, places the dish and the water bottle on his bedside table, and turns to face her.

"Yes, Ms. Lane?"

She chuckles at the satisfaction he receives from such a simple thing, but nevertheless hesitates before edging, "It's, uh… It's been twenty-four hours. Your off-day is officially over. You can turn your perception or whatever it is back on…"

Her roundabout mention bewilders him. Even so, he endeavors to maintain his levity, joking, "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

She shakes her head a bit and begins tracing his shield across his chest. "What I mean is, I understand why you spend most nights out and about. The world doesn't stop spinning, I get that and it doesn't upset me. You know that, right?"

"Of course," he replies, his voice low and sincere. "But we can always discuss it more if that's what you need…"

His solicitude reassures her, and she gently remarks, "You're sweet." Afterward, she steadies herself with a deep breath and reaches the end toward which she's been ambling. "I'm saying that even though I'd be fine on my own, I'd still rather you stay here with me. Just 'til morning, at least… Please, stay."

Initially, her intimation troubles him, as he wonders how she could suppose he'd consider leaving her by herself for even a second of so pivotal a night for their relationship. But, when he thinks the matter through once more, he grasps that she's making her gesture notwithstanding what must be her instinctive knowledge of his intentions, and every one of his emotions stir from the realization that she's finally able to ask him for that which only her recent revelation and release could've allowed her to - his time.

Quietly, he promises her, "I'm not going anywhere."

In the moments that follow, they share a long, lingering kiss, from which she withdraws only when she senses the activity of their day starting to take its effect on her. With a knowing smile, he arranges the area immediately surrounding them and helps her stretch out along their bed. Lying together, their heads resting upon her pillow and their bodies nestled underneath his cape, they bask in the calm of candlelight and in the glow of each other's warmth.

Closing her eyes, she cozies up to him a tad more, and softly hums her appreciation when he brushes a stray tress away from her cheek and then resumes rubbing her back.

He whispers his love to her and she whispers hers in return, feeling from his tone and his touch that he means to stay his own repose for just a little longer - at least until he's certain of her sleeping comfortably, peacefully in their embrace.

- FIN -