The second and last part of Into the Woods, for the enviably productive Rese. As always, massive amounts of thanks goes to my two lovely betas, Elisabeth Harker and elizabethisboss. You two are utterly invaluable, honestly, And thanks again to all the wonderful-- and brave!-- people who read and reviewed part 1 of the story. If I write more strange configurations of smut for the fandom, it will most certainly be for you. ;)

Title: Into The Woods, Part 2/2
Fandom: Little Women
Series: Into The Woods
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Bhaer, Amy
Rating: NC-17
Summary: 'And when she puts her mouth against that of her sister's husband, she can almost pretend she only does this merely to gain silence and peace in their pocket of smooth, bone-chilled beauty.' Jo, Laurie and a secret in the dark that could destroy everything...

Important Note: This is the NC-17 rated version of the story. If you'd rather skip over the explicit sex to linger on the emotional convulsions, you can read the explicit NC-17 rated version of this story at my livejournal, where my name is still Mariagoner. If you can't locate it, leave me a review for this story and I'll mail you a link to the explicit version of the story.

The first time he had done this (that she had allowed him to do this), she had thought she would not be able to take everything he had given over to her, his heart or his warmth or his strength. The first time he had done this (in a meadow, in the heat of summer, in a picnic they'd abandoned for far darker pleasures), she had thought she might well collapse from the heat of him pressing beneath suddenly liquid skin, as though the sinews that held her together might collapse from the strain of taking him in. The first time he had done this (and she had let him, she had almost begged him, and wasn't that the hell of it?), she had thought there would be nothing left, as the stars galloped in and out of her eyelids as he bewitched her until she felt she should have carried on his name instead of the sister he had taken instead.

Jo had thought that the first time. And in the sixth, the fifth, the fourth, the third, and the second.

This time, their seventh time in as many months, she presses her hands to his hair. His mouth strains against hers, staining her lips with her own wetness, and she feel him arch his back against her, one hand between her legs, the other one stroking her cheek. Her eyes flutter shut, half in surprise and half in pleasure, and she feels him laugh gently against her, his tongue flicking out to stroke her lower lip, though she'd never enjoyed the sensation, even at present.

Men, she huffs inside her head, but before she can open her mouth to complain, he smiles down at her and cocks his hip back a little and--

--And presses. Right there. Right against.

And suddenly, she looks at him, eyes wider than the stars, and finds no room for complaints left.

"I love this too," he murmurs against her, eyes bright, so cocky she could nearly scream. And when he begins to move inside her, the warmth left by his lips aiding him, his presses and caresses turning just a little bit rougher, just a little more intent, she finds her throat becomes occupied with other noises entirely.

It never fails to surprise her, how he feels inside her, how he fills her up, how he makes the whole world seem coiled between her knees. It hadn't been the first time-- their first time, when she had been so narrow and raw with inexperience and he so thick that it had been a wonder she had been able to fully accommodate him. But it's been seven months since then, and still it's all she can do now to arch her own back and slide her legs up to his boyish hips, her ankles locking up against each other so she can keep a grip and make sure he knows that she isn't about to yield to his charms quite so easily.

This time, it's his turn to have his eyes flutter shut with surprise, although he jerks back to consciousness more readily than she does, his teeth glistening when he begins grinning.

Beneath her lashes, she can see his eyes darken again, the wolf in him once more appearing.

"You've never done that before," Laurie whispers, and he arches again, settling firmly inside her, making warmth blossom in her from her cleft to her dark curls. "What brought this change on currently?"

She manages a smile, her blunt nails stroking his back, and before he can say another word, tightens as hard as she can around him and before he is almost done gasping, she relaxes and runs fingers through his damp hair, her face gazing at him beatifically.

"Change?" she asks, almost innocently, knowing that they are playing once more as they may never play again. "What change?" And when he growls and she laughs brightly at his frustration, she can almost forget that he isn't hers and she isn't his and they have no right-- no right whatsoever-- to be doing this, in her bed, in the house that the aunt who had re-introduced him to his wife had so generously granted.

It's less difficult than it should be to block out those remembrances and memories, especially when he hangs over her again. He parts his lips, and the memory of Amy looking helplessly at them underneath her cloud of limp hair folds itself over and tucks itself neatly away. He presses a kiss to her chin, and the memory of Friedrich's mouth parting softly against hers beneath a sodden umbrella blew away with the feel of his smooth, damp hair. He groans at the feel of her hand at the very tip of their joining, and even betrayal draws itself away with a single puff of his shaky breath.

He begins to grind against her once more... and she forgets everything in the world simply to be with him again.

The first time they had done this, he had pressed her against the bark of a tree that had stretched out to encompass her, and she had ached days later from the weight and press of his length. The first time, they had been clumsy and sodden and guilty and wretched and unable to tear themselves from each other, thinking they would never touch each other after, so hungry their ached with it. The first time, she had told him not to ever come near her again, had told him to go back to his wife and do whatever he had to to make amends, and sat down and written to Friedrich, asking him to come visit her, telling him she needed a friend.

And he had come, with his sad eyes and his gentle smile and his world-weary skin, miles and miles away from the man she had coupled with, and wanted still in her bed. Friedrich had come and she had looked at him and thought: I could love this man one day. He could be my deliverance from sin.

They had announced their engagement a bare week later. Laurie had smiled and smiled with warm, bright eyes and looked just as pleased at her impending happiness as any of the rest of her kin. And fool that she was, she had almost convinced herself into believing that he would let her go so easily, so quickly, as though she had finally made him see sense.

Laurie cornered her the night afterward and kissed her until all her fine morals turned to powder and here they are again.

Here they are, she on her back and he atop her, as primitive as the first man and woman might have. Here they are, and for all her fine hopes and dreams, she is splayed open and welcoming for a man others would call her brother and God help her, she wants him.

Here they are again-- and when she flexes again, he falls flush into her as though he were stabbing right into her, and she whispers: "Oh God, don't you dare stop just yet, Teddy."

(cut scene)

And when she can finally look up as she feels him withdraw before spending himself inside her fully, she feels almost strangely scraped clean in their aftermath.

She knows she shouldn't have.

After all, this is filth and they are filth for so desperately wanting this, for giving them over to this most terrible of bliss.

She doesn't have the right to look over him as he collapses next to her and smile sleepily and think: This is what I needed.

The candles barely burn in the darkness now; they must have spent at least an hour in this repast. An hour she should have spent writing to her dear Friedrich, only a month away from joining her on her wedding day, and he should have spent with his wife, beautiful and increasingly grave, tucked away in their marital bed.

She looks away, and the burn in her body suddenly collects in her eyes.

Filth. That's all that they are. Perhaps that's all they'll ever be in the end.

It's too much to expect he wouldn't notice, that he wouldn't make that damnably tender noise he always made in the back of his throat, and press his fingers to her hair again.

(He's always so gentle in the aftermath and Jo wishes, just for once, he'd be a little bit crueler, a bit more the obvious villain, a bit more a man she wouldn't love to her dying breath.)

"What's wrong?" he whispers, and his voice is so, so tender, as tender as if they were innocent children once again. "Did I hurt you again?"

Jo almost wants to cry out for a minute, at the irony of his words. And when she finally speaks, her words are low and bitter and addressed to the wall of her bedroom as she curls away from him.

"Everything we're doing hurts someone, Teddy." She swallows hard. The candles flicker. "You already know that."

She did not glance over at him as he sighs beside her, but she could picture his smile in her mind's eye, knew it would be exceedingly ironic. "Every day, I learn I know far less about the world than I thought I did. But yes, sometimes I do think that. Just as I think that--"

"Say it," she says wearily, when his voice falters. She knows what's coming. Has known it since she first saw him rear his head in the night. "I know you want to, so just say it."

He sighs for a minute, and it's long enough to let her thinking-- with a bubble of hope, with a tremble of despair-- that maybe she was wrong about him after all. Maybe he will let her slip by quietly after this end. Maybe they can once again be brother and sister, once again be simple friends, once again be able to look at each other in the eyes outside her bedroom without wanting to die from the shame of it.

Maybe... Oh God, maybe...

Her fingernails cut bloody half-moons on her palms and she waits for him again.

"Don't marry your bloody Professor," he whispers, and under the tone of his voice, she can almost hear the sound of his insides cracking. "You don't love him and you don't owe him a life of servitude. He'll lead you to your ruin."

She knows she should have expected this, knows it, knows it. But even as she jerks down and away, her mouth tastes of copper and disappointment.

"You're not doing any better for me," she whispers, and hears him take a quick breath. "He's a good man and he loves me and I can't-- I can't live like this anymore, not even for another seven months. I can't-- I can't! And don't you dare ask me to. I don't want to be the woman you bottle up until you're ready to set me free for your use."

He touches her neck with shaking fingers; she takes an equally shaky breath.

"I love you," he says, and even if his tone is gentle, his words are so cruel. "And I have never thought that of you like that."

And the hell of it is that she knows he's not lying. With her, he almost never has.

"We could run away together," he says again, and though she does not look at him, she knows he looks at her, and can imagine the grim patience on his face, the tender madness, the unrelenting resolution, the slow and never-ending despair. "Just you and I, like thieves in the night. We'll leave Amy my fortune and she'll find solace with better men. We can go to London or Paris or Milan or Rome, and lose ourselves in the crowds therein. You'll write and I'll play and compose and we'll carve out a living somehow. We'll be just what we've wanted to be, all our lives. And we'll be so happy, you and I."

She knows without looking who he is thinking of; she knows all too well of his strange providence.

"So happy," he whispers and she knows, and he knows, that they never will. That they very simply can't.

That this is the one thing, of all things, that she will never, ever allow.

"You don't need me for that," she whispers, hoping it's true, hoping she can make it true. "You don't need me for anything, since you've already acquired what you want to have. You don't need to lead your grandfather's life, with or without me anyhow."

He laughs, and she knows without even looking that his eyes are narrow and his smile is grim and he has no hope in this, no way of reaching a resolution.

"What would you have me do?" he asks, though she knows the question is academic. "Would you have me wait until grandfather is safe in his grave and sell it all off, then? Would you have me live the life of a starving artist while the fortune withers trying to support my mansion and the style of life to which I've become accustomed? Would you have me sacrifice all the baubles I have off for the sake of a dream when I've already been told that those of no great genius may as well give in?"

She takes a shaky breath, holds the pillow closer. "Why would you listen to anyone who would tell you that? Why, when you've ended up so miserable you have to turn to me for consolation?"

He takes a breath; she can read centuries in it, in his every move and refrain.

"That's not what you are," he says, and she wishes she did not know him so well, could not tease out the notes of sincerity in the midsts of so much chill and pain. "And you know as well as I do that I don't turn to you for the sake of mere appeasement."

And she thinks of his dreams and her dreams and the music he plays for her when they are together, under the watchful eyes of others. His old compositions for which she pens lyrics to set him back to the work he truly loves, over and over and over.

("You shouldn't," he had told her once. "I was going to write an opera for you and then the heroine became your sister. You should leave it undone."

And she had looked at him and thought of his hands falling all over her, all over, and said-- even through the sound of something cracking in her breast-- "No. You should finish this. You could fall in love with Amy all over again.")

"I know nothing of that sort," she finally says, and her fingers twitch underneath her, as though holding the flat of a pen. "I don't know why you do these things to yourself. Why do you allow yourself to be miserable? Why and for what reason?"

And she does not turn but she does still burn and she knows that if she were to look at him, he'd be staring wistfully at her.

"Amy," he says, and his voice is sweet and low, "will never, ever forgive me if I became a pauper. I've already done so much to her. I can't also deprive her of her rank."

Another small eternity passes, she staring at the wall in front of her, he gazing at the back of her head. When he finally rises to get up and dress, she does not bother to pick herself up, only sits and listens to the sound of him as he prepares to leaving her for the life that he's chosen instead. And even when he speaks again, she will not speak, fisting her hands into her hair to avoid answering him.

"Even if you marry, you'll still let me in when you can, won't you? Whenever we have the chance? Whenever I can come back?"

She makes no reply, forces herself to silence. And finally he laughs again, throat closing over bitterness, and says: "Then I suppose this means it's over at long last."

She shutters her face until she hears him walk away. And when he's begins to close the door, she rolls over and touches the place on her bed where she can still feel the warmth from his bare skin, where he ought to be, where she knows it's all gone wrong.

It's only the last mistake she'll make in the evening, but also the most important one. And before she can withdraw her hand, she hears the door open again, hears his footsteps trail into the room-- and hears him take the image of her in, before she can fully turn around.

"Jo," he says suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, and she flinches at the sound, sits up, stares disbelieving at him. She stares and he stares back and she knows, God help her, that the inevitable will continue here, that every decent thing she's tried for has stopped.

"You really do love me, don't you?" he begins, his voice a sharp, startled, disbelieving murmur. "And you truly would miss me were I fully lost?"

She had thought he was gone. She had thought she was safe.

As always, she had been so, so wrong.

And when she cranes her neck to look into his eyes, she can see the wild dancing the dark.

"You'll be waiting for me," he says, and this time it isn't a question. "The first chance we get, when he's away. This isn't an end."

And the hell of it is that when it comes to this, Laurie's never, ever wrong. Not even when he should have been.

She closes her eyes again and nods, just once, because she knows she's already gone. And when he stumbles forward to touch her raw face once again, the two of them know that without a word, she's already doomed them both with a single, unspoken yes.

Author's Note: As always, I truly do appreciate reviews, comments and bits of criticism from my wonderful readers. If I wrote more smut for the fandom, would you read it?

And would anyone be interested in reading what happens in this story line after this night? I'm half-tempted to go on but I must warn you... so far, what I know of this plot is very, very bleak. Not that this two-parter was exactly sunshine and roses...

Also, there is an uncut version of this story at my livejournal. If you want access to it and cannot find it on your own, please review this story and tell me you want it!

Otherwise, try this link:

http:// mariagoner dot livejournal dot com slash 177851 dot html