A/N The Doctor and Rose begin "exploring" their new relationship. This is the edited down, non-explicit version of this chapter. The Adult version of the full love scene can be found posted on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind.

Chapter 30

With emotions surging, tension wound as tightly as a coiled spring about to snap, and final walls tumbling like a crashing rockslide, it was a marvel that the two had somehow managed to even make it to the nearest bedroom, which just happened to be the Doctor's. The significance wasn't lost on either of them. He was welcoming Rose into his sacred abode in the same way he was welcoming her into a part of his soul.

The trek down the corridor had involved the precarious choreography of the two trying to move as one, tangled as they were in each other. They paused for just a moment outside the room, the Doctor taking the opportunity to back Rose against the door and plunder her mouth as his splayed hands roamed down her sides and then back up to tangle in her blonde tresses, the elegant jeweled combs that had pinned her hair back from her face falling away as her hair cascaded through his fingers.

Maybe there was something to be said for impulsive and uncontrolled, the Doctor was realizing. There was also something to be said for communication, though, and considering their recent lack thereof, this situation needed certainty that they were both on the same page with this. Their body language seemed loud and clear, but still, the Doctor put in the effort to confirm.

"Rose...," he rasped, between allowing her to take in brief gulps of needed air, "Do you...is this...? Are you sure?"

"Yes," she managed to reply, pulling his mouth back down to hers with urgency as her fingers sank deeply and disappeared into the dark softness of his thick hair.

They were on the same page. Definitely.

The corridor wasn't quite the destination they had in mind, though. But it might have to suffice if they stayed here much longer. Rose groped blindly behind her for the door handle to the bedroom. Her hand fumbled down the dark wooden door, found and grasped the large brass knob and turned it as the door swung open behind her. Their frenzied mouths finally parted once they tumbled forward into the room.

They stood-face-to-face, chests heaving with hard, ragged breaths as the sobering reality set in for both of them.

This was really happening again. With purposeful intent.

Rose barely noted the dark, rich furniture within the softly-lit room where they now stood, with a large desk and several table surfaces strewn with absent mechanical components the Doctor tinkered with in his spare time, nor did she take notice of the organic coral structure of the room, so much an integrated part of the TARDIS and a part of him. Her eyes were focused elsewhere; focused on the ones boring into hers like liquid fire.

In a smooth motion, the Doctor reached out for her again, and there was a sureness, a deliberateness in his every touch as his hands settled on her lower arms and roved higher. A shudder rippled through them both as his palms moved up and connected with the bare flesh afforded to him by the off-the-shoulder gown.

His eyes studied the silken, dark blue fabric of her dress as if it were one of the universe's most grand complexities, but he made short work in solving this puzzle. It wasn't long before he had chased all barriers separating her from him away. The Doctor dropped to the floor, helping Rose step out of the deep blue silk surrounding her feet.

Rose felt her legs tremble as she looked down at him through glazed eyes, vividly remembering another time they had been in such a position when he had been without sight yet had soothed her bruised flesh as he knelt before her.

The Doctor was vividly remembering, too, speaking of the memory as if their mutual thoughts had been voiced. "I wanted so much to see you like this before," he confessed, and this was the first Rose knew of just what this closed-off Time Lord had been thinking and feeling at the time. "Not just because you're...," he shook his head slightly, as if to clear it and articulate his thoughts, "because you're magnificent like this, as nothing but Rose, and I wanted to see all of you – but also because I wanted to see for myself that there was not a mark left on you to cause you pain."

Rose steadied herself with her hands on the tops of his shoulders as his lips moved to her left hip, his words whispering across her flesh. "But I could see you by touching you...here..." His lips fluttered over the skin where his sensitive fingers had once done the same. She had opened a part of herself to him then. Now she was giving him all. His head lowered and his lips descended to caress her knee. "And here..."

His lips left her knee and followed up her thigh, murmuring against her skin. "But I never knew. Never knew you would ever allow me this..."

Intimately, the Doctor caressed Rose with his lips. He wanted to take her over the edge of ecstasy, to give her all that he possibly could, recompense for the things he might never be able to give; but he wanted her to soar as he looked into her eyes and she took him with her. He stood then, and shushed her whimpered protest with butterfly kisses up her torso as he rose to his feet.

He sought out her lips, but Rose moved directly into his arms. He held her to him, her body trembling. He heard the faint sound of her cry muffled against his chest as her breath hitched, and his hearts nearly broke from the tenderness of the moment.

"Shhh, shhh...," he whispered against the crown of her head, his hands stroking up her back and lips finding her temple. "I'm here. I'm here," he answered her unspoken emotion.

Rose lifted her head from his chest and tipped her face to his as his lips descended to catch her tears. "It's just that I never thought we would ever...that we wouldn't...not again."

He smothered her words of doubt with his mouth as her hands clutched the back of his head and pulled him closer still. The kiss transformed from frantic, to reverent, then to a slow, powerful, consuming heat which stoked the flames rising between them.

The friction of his suit against her skin was an arousing contrast, but what Rose craved against her at that moment was the man still hidden beneath the wool. As their tongues dueled, Rose began making short work of the remaining barriers between them.

Her eyes took a moment to survey what was in front of her, and for once and on every level, finally within her reach. His unruly hair was even more gloriously rumpled from the vigorous attention of her fingers, his eyes were nearly black with desire, lips plump and glistening from ravishing her own, mouth slightly parted as he breathed heavily, his lean chest rising and falling with each rapid breath.

She reached out for him then and ran her hands across the tops of his deceptively-strong shoulders. The crackling of energy, like tiny sparks igniting on her fingertips and traveling up her arms and down her spine, once again took her by surprise as she drew back enough for her inquisitive eyes to inspect her fingers.

"It sounds daft, but...'s like I can feel sparks of...something...like some kind of energy just from touching you," she breathlessly remarked.

"It's the bond," he explained in a low, gravelly voice that made her stomach do somersaults and heat spread through her veins. "It's heightened by shared arousal." Lifting a hand towards her, his single finger then drifted across her jaw and down the column of her throat in a tactile demonstration that made them both tremor.

"Might have to practice getting used to that...," Rose murmured with a glint in her eyes as her exploratory touch continued, and soon, there was nothing left separating either of them.

Oh, he was gorgeous, this man before her. Rose wanted to take her time getting to know every inch of him that she had previously thought might have been a one-time privilege.

She was temporarily distracted from that thought as he did some more exploring of his own, hands eagerly claiming her again. Rose soon stilled him, though. She cupped his cheek, stroking her fingers down his left sideburn and bringing his eyes to hers. He moved towards her lips like a man seeking sustenance, but she pulled back.

With her eyes conveying the words, she took his hand in hers and led him with her to the bed draped in linens of dark blue. Turning, he sank back onto the mattress and moved to pull her with him, but she held back. He looked up at her, eyes dilated and questioning.

"I want to look at you," she murmured. "Get to know more of you. 'S that okay?"

He licked his lips and nodded his head, but Rose could see the uncertainty suddenly lurking in his eyes. His inhibitions had lowered in this moment, but he was still learning to let himself be this open. Rose was also learning. Learning to trust that this was a permanent commitment – that he wasn't going to run from it once again in the light of day. She couldn't bear that again.

Except for his heavy breaths as his eyes remained fastened on her, he was silent.

Just like before.

She needed to know what he was thinking – what he was feeling. He scooted back up to the head of the bed to allow her room at the end as she knelt on the mattress by his feet. Rose was momentarily transfixed by the sight of the Doctor before her, but despite this level of openness, there remained the tenacious caution lingering behind his dark eyes, still refusing to fully loose him from its grip.

"Talk to me," Rose softly requested, her hands stroking the sides of his ankles. "Tell me what you're feeling."

He swallowed hard, fearing that his gob, for one of the few times in this regeneration, had failed him. But he attempted to comply because he knew she needed this. In light of their recent history, she needed as much openness from him as he could give.

Rose ran her hands up his shins, feeling the soft manly hairy-hairs tickle her palms. She loved his legs. Long and agile, yet strong and toned, chiseled from running.

"Good," he managed to answer her first question, lifting his head to watch the progression of her exploratory touch. "It feels good. No...more than that. When you touch me it feels..."

"Yeah?" Rose softly prompted when he trailed off to silence, looking up at him from beneath lowered lashes. "What does it feel like?"

Her hands glided higher, pausing at his knees and then moving on to his strong thighs as he sucked in a breath.

"Hot," he rasped. "Oh, Rose. You're so hot, your skin so much warmer than mine. It's like you can burn through me with just one touch. But it makes me feel...alive. So alive."

Rose smiled emotionally at the confession as he opened himself up to her in this way, just a little more. Her hands skated higher, but moved further out from where he was anticipating. She wasn't intending to tease or torment – this moment was much too precious for them both. She just wanted to learn and discover, and didn't want to rush to the end.

The Doctor let his head drop back to the bed as her inquisitive hands moved on. Just like during his time of temporary blindness, the Doctor was in a vulnerable position of relinquishing control; but again, he knew Rose was the only one for whom he would put himself in such a position for. He found that putting a voice to what he was feeling was actually liberating, surrendering, for once, rather than always fighting so strongly to hold back.

"I didn't know I could crave just a touch," he continued, his voice deep and rough. "But that's what you do to me. Ever since last night, it's consumed me whether I wanted it to or not, remembering how this felt. It leaves me wanting to feel this again and again. Every place you touch me makes my receptors come to life and my sensory neurons fire rapidly from receptor, to circuit, to perceptual level. That's what you can feel too, through the bond, when I touch you and you touch me – that spark, that electricity. But like I explained, it's so much more than ordinary sensation. It's heightened between us in moments like this to an even greater extent." His coherency level dropped a few degrees as she reached his chest, her thumbnails brushing and circling. "And...and it feels so good," he repeated dumbly.

His tongue pressed to the back of his upper teeth as her hands crept higher, and her eyes were momentarily riveted to his face. He had to know what that particular gesture always did to her – made her want to do...well...what they were currently, miraculously, gloriously in the midst of indulging in. He then let out a sound very similar to a squeak when she discovered an unexpected erogenous zone over his collarbones, and Rose reveled in exploring the Doctor in this new way. His voice took on a decidedly deeper tone as a throaty moan rumbled in his chest when her hands moved up his neck, along the sides of his face, and to his temples, lingering to stroke what she was now discovering to be a highly sensitive area for him.

"Mmmm," he responded huskily, "That's...that's brilliant. Oh, Rose...you're..."

Rose's hands moved into his hair as her mouth plummeted to his, their kiss long and hungry and deep.

Words were lost on them both now, lost in the flood of sensations and emotions, words rendered to gasps and long, drawn-out moans. The connection of their minds deepened. That little flutter of awareness became more of a pulsing thrum, bringing a level of completion beyond the physical.

The Doctor had been struggling to handle how just a touch from Rose could now circumvent his control, but this, this brought him to the end of himself and the beginning of her as their bond overtook him. He could easily lose himself in this, in her, he knew. But in moments like this he was beyond fearing it.

His breath caught as she confessed to him again of her love, and the lyrical string of words that came pouring from his lips – or from his mind, neither was quite sure – brought tears to her eyes as they touched and caressed and enveloped her soul.

He loved her. Desperately. With all that he was. This time she comprehended the solemn words on a level beyond language.

Rose wondered somewhere in the back of her barely-coherent mind if they would ever make love when it wouldn't feel like a desperate final act before dying. Yet unlike the night before, this time it didn't feel like an ending or an aching goodbye. This felt like a beginning. The start of something new and terrifying and breathtaking and so completely brilliant. This was the arrival at a destination they had been running towards and sometimes running from, but where they were always meant to be in the end.

And it felt very nearly like perfection. It was perfect in the same way that their hands fit together and her smile lifted his hearts and his eyes made the stars pale for her in comparison. It was not perfect because it was without flaw. It was perfect because it was them – the Doctor and Rose. That was all either had ever needed. And come what may, that was possibly so much more than just enough.

Later, both fell into each other's arms, feeling weightless. They caressed with the delicate movements of gliding noses and lips and soft breaths of air across cheeks and eyelids, not kissing but giving unhurried, nuzzling touches. Lips then opened as mouths met, and they exchanged slow, warm wet kisses, tongues gliding and caressing, lips suckling and savoring, languid and sensual and affirming.

They finally turned to their sides, face-to-face, just gazing into the eyes of the other. They were each still trying to come to terms with this finally coming to fruition, to comprehend its magnitude as they wordlessly moved closer and the Doctor wrapped Rose in his arms, where she was meant to be.

-:-:-:-

Rose lay deep in sleep as the Doctor lay deep in contemplation. This was the beginning of a journey, thrilling and terrifying and new. Yet the path they had just taken which led them here was yet to be complete. There was one last critical stop to make, and what came next could alter the very Fabric of Time – with the power to create or fully erase.

The commanding pull of Time exerted a powerful force as one crucial, fluctuating moment was beckoning. Time was summoning the Doctor to a specific point which even now stood in chaotic flux.

In contrast, he gazed down at Rose, peaceful and safe and loved as she lay in his arms and in his bed – a sight he beheld as nearly inconceivable.

For just this once and for at least this moment, the Doctor decided that Time could wait.