Still Feels Good


Part 1:

The heater of the car spun a web of calm across her lap, under her dripping, frozen nose, along her braced knuckles and ears. Florida in January was no better than Boston, it just didn't have snow. There was a curse in her head for having left the hotel, dressed the way she was, with only Shane's extra coat to ward off the cold as they drove in silence across a bridge. Tampa was lit up, as it should be, the way she wanted to experience it. But for Lily, all that was left was guilt, shame, embarrassment and the sole idea that she had done nothing on this night but make herself appear to be a tramp in front of the one man whose opinion, still meant anything to her in this world.

Jeff and she had been through more together than most people would ever wish to handle, or survive for that matter. He had once been her rock, when she felt there was nothing left to be held up by, and she had been his, even when he fought her off out of bravery. And here they were again, eight years later and two broken hearts consumed. Shane could do nothing to console her, not the way she required at this point, and it broke her own heart as well watching Lily sit in silence, drumming over the heat, the radio, the sights in the cold window's reflection.

"Umm…Carter and Andy wanted to go out and get drinks, since it's still pretty early…did you want to come with us?"

Hesitating with a response, she watched as a red Mustang full of laughing, singing, smiling girls pulled up alongside them near the end of the bridge. The tinted windows prevented them from seeing her staring, but she could see them in whole, the innocence, the excitement of being that age, without a care in the world. She'd been there once, with a college boy's warm lips melting her skin, half empty Corona bottles on the hood of a tired Trans Am, exhausting every possibility of ever growing up or away from each other. She felt this still when she turned to respond to Shane's offer.

"No, that's ok. I'm really tired."

Shane nodded with a quick smile, "Alright, I'll just let you out at the hotel?"

"That's fine Shane, thanks."

Again she looked back out of the window, seeing the sparkle of the moon on the icy waters of the Gulf Bay, stretching out forever, with a few blinking lights on the horizon. It was beautiful, a sight that reminded her so much of the boats on the distant Atlantic coast of Chatham, that it nearly made her cry, for the second time that night. But it was the music, spilling out through the speakers, classic rock from her past, from her time of whirlwind adventure and romance that brought her back down to earth, and kept the moisture from her eyes. More Than A Feeling, recorded and released in the year of her birth, by a band that not only grew up in the same basements as her father and his friends, but were the band that took her heart away every single time Jeff would cover their songs on his guitar. The song drained out of the speakers, meaning very little to Shane, but the world to Lily, for it was her sign.

This was the song that had played the first time Jeff had caught her hand in his own, and walked her down to the Old Grist Mill. It was the tune that blared out as he leaned in with a whisper and kissed her on the dirty and empty streets of Boston, the night the Red Sox lost their chance at the World Series, again. It was the song that Jeff made sure was filtering out of the speakers the night that Lily came into his room, nervous, ill equipped and desperate to know what he felt like, for the very first time. It was in many ways their song, as it was to millions of other lovers, friends, Bostonians. And as she sat with a renewed smile on her face, a spark in the center of her heart, she tried to fill her head with the details of their first time spent together, the first time she felt the heat of skin that had otherwise been covered and out of reach on his body, the first time he had lit up her world with only his tongue. It was way more than just a feeling when she was around him, it was the earth, shaking, shimmying, doing back flips over the Green Monster.

The song played for minutes, just long enough to get them back to the hotel, and right out in front at the valet. Lily looked over to Shane with a drowsy but thankful smile, hugged her quick with a kiss to the cheek, and tore out of the black SUV with a hop on her now bare feet. Shane tossed out the pink heels to her with a wink and nod as Carter and Miles came jogging out of the hotel.

"Hey Lily." Danny greeted her with a smile, and a warm hand to her shoulder. "You doing ok?"

"Yeah, yeah Danny I'm fine. Just tired."

"Right." He shuffled for a moment with her, helping to secure all of her belongings in her arm with laughter, until she questioned timidly.

"Is Jeff upstairs by any chance?"

Danny grinned, knowing full well what it was that had come over each of them, even though he still had very little detail on the subject. He would have to pull them from Shane later. "He's up there. Sleeping, I think."

"Oh." She was defeated.

"But don't worry; he always wakes up for beautiful women."

Her eyes lit up again when she peered into his with acknowledgment, patting his hand kindly and replying once more, "Thanks for the flattery." And then she was off into the warmth of the hotel, bare feet and all as Carter called out back to her.

"No problem, Harvard!"

She slightly heard him as she rushed across the hotel lobby, not in any sort of embarrassment this time, not because she felt out of place in her dress and bare feet, messy hair and tired eyes, because she actually fit right in with the crowd in that case. She was running, darting through bodies and luggage, to get to the elevator, the button, her toes on the shiny tile floor, the wobble of her knees, her shifting eyes, sparkling smile, all keeping a rhythm of the song that had brought her back to life instantly, the beat that meant only passion to her, only Jeff beneath warm covers in the middle of darkness and intimacy. It was more than a feeling, because it was now a stifling need.


Jeff wasn't asleep, but he was exhausted and slammed into the comfort of the bed, directly in the middle, the most comfortable he had been since leaving Washington. His bones were aching, throbbing with a sting he couldn't discern, it wasn't the need to pleasure himself and it wasn't being overworked, God knows it wasn't that at all. The pills were only making him more lucid, more tired, but they also helped, just like his doctor said they would. Sneaky, little physician that she was, she wanted him to rest, and he knew it now by the medication's effects.

The radio was playing out with something somber, a country station that Carter had left playing when he darted out, and Sands had to admit, it wasn't half bad. Whoever was singing was at least singing the truth to him, a deep, Cash wannabe of course, but honest all the same. 'Girl, I've made a name, everybody writes off. An open road hard-case, a honky-tonk lost cause. The fate I'm looking at, there ain't no way around. A long and lonely path…I'm destined to go down.' It was certainly where he was headed, any day now, soon as this case of revenge was settled, he'd be back in DC, alone in an apartment, paid for by his dad's still increasing inheritance to him, and without the one thing he knew he needed, despite all his work to push it away. 'Yeah, there ain't much of nothing in me, left to be saved, but baby I bet…if you could love somebody like me…(again)…there might be, hope for me yet.'

His eyes were killing him as he lay wondering on the lyrics, the cold chill entering in through the opened balcony, and on the sound of his cell phone ringing, from halfway across the room. There was no way in hell he was getting it, not a chance in this world, he was too relaxed. He needed…

"Ah, what the fuck…" he grunted, annoyed at the caller's persistence. It was draining out the hick music he was becoming accustomed to and he didn't like it one bit. "It better not be fucking Dane." In no mood to deal with his arthritic and probably livid boss, he knew he had no choice but to answer the ring, constant and blaring through the wide room, the blackness. He jumped out of the bed in only his boxers, shivering as he stood with a hand to the mattress for balance and walked along the edge of the bed, following the sound, trying to remember where the phone was. Table…no. Couch…no. The pile of clothes dropped into the middle of the floor, allowing him to trip and crack the screen of his phone as it was determined to ring….yes. He reached under his foot, a deep sigh as he flipped open the phone, and responded with a tired grunt.

"What?"

"Its Carter man…you better be fucking up."

"Why…" he yawned with a stretch.

"Because," he chuckled through the receiver, as they drove into the heart of Tampa. "You're about to have company."

He stopped out of the stupidity of his partner's words, the ridicule, the absurdity, the complete Carter-ness of it. Jeff hated him sometimes, especially when he called him at midnight with stupid fucking statements like this.

"Got hammered that quick, did ya? He's amazing…" another yawn with a wicked chuckle.

"I'm fucking serious. Lily's on her way up, just passed her. She's coming for you…man."

This wasn't a statement, this was a fact, an honest to God need-to-know detail. And he sure as hell needed to know, his head did, his heart did, his gut and balls needed it. Sands shot his head up over to the doorway, or at least where he pictured it would be, contemplating the time he had to make himself look sexy without being able to actually see the sexiness of it. It wasn't worth it. She was on her way.

He breathed once, hearing the noise inside of the SUV as he felt the cold breeze on the ass of his boxers from the open sliding doors. "Ah, shit."


"I can't believe you're going up to my brother's hotel room…to seduce him…you, Lily Hanson…simply amazing, you are."

She laughed while strolling out of the elevator, shoes still in her hand and hair in wisps of nature. Lily had changed completely since leaving the club, she was confident again, she felt sexy as hell, and saw nothing wrong in what she was about to do. As much as she needed it, she knew, being a doctor, that the blind man needed it more.

"Look, Jeff never passes up sex. And I doubt he's been having much of it lately…"

"You're the devil, God, it's no wonder we're friends!" Shane was cracking up while still driving the SUV, Carter on the phone beside her, all in plot and scheming, Andy in the back seat shaking his head. "You better hurry up though…"

Lily halted silently in the middle of the long hall, listening intently. "Why?"

"Because in about, oh…8 minutes, the pornos' in the suites are free."

"So what?"

"So…it's Jeff. You and I both know what--" Her brain clicked with humor, but defiance. Lily fell into her heels and toes again, darting from the wall, running down the hall in hysterics, not caring about the sleeping guests. Her feet pattered across the high carpet, shoes flinging back and forth as she shouted and laughed with Shane all the way to the their rooms. "You better get in there before some twenty-five cent hand job takes over!"

"I'm going…I'm going…"

"Good…I'll see you in the morning, slut!" She smiled when her feet landed at the doorway of the guys' room, laughed once more, and hung up with Shane. Her pink shoes slouched in her hand at the thigh of her black dress, still falling down low, still revealing everything she knew Sands couldn't see anyway. Lily breathed in deep, knocking once, twice, feeling seventeen again, knocking again and then stopping, her heart racing like the first time this happened, like the first time she crawled under the covers of his bed without clothes on.

She heard fumbling from within the room, a few shouts of pain and torment, and stifling another giggle, she waited with patient eyes on the room number and peephole. Thirty seconds passed, the knob twisted, the door cracked open, and the view changed immensely.


Boston, Mass.

September 12, 1993 – midnight

It was raining, and that should have been her first sign that all of her intentions would follow through, even against her nervousness. Rain always seemed to make Lily do rational things, crazy, barely planned, spontaneous but usually beautiful things. Standing on the step of Jeff's apartment building, her finger maniacally pressing the button for his place, she tapped her boot on the rug, licked her chapped lips with a bite, and watched car lights pass in the streaming rain. It would be almost two minutes before he heard the buzz in his sleep, and answered.

"Yeah…" he spoke groggily, "…who is it?"

"Jeff, open up! It's raining!"

"Lily?"

"Yes." Her answer was short, but he immediately buzzed her up and she threw open the iron gate of the community brownstone. The tiled floor was slick with the wetness of her boots, but she prevailed, darting up the steps one by one, not caring to take the elevator two floors tonight. Jeff was at the top of the stairs, leaning over the spiraled lookout, watching her with a confused and sleep ridden smile.

"What in the hell are you doing here, Lily? It's like…twelve."

"I know," she shouted with a whispered tone upwards, as she finished off the last flight of stairs.

"Are you okay?" he asked finally as she made it to his level, came nearer to his form, and wrapped her arms around his waist. Holding her tight, he whispered into her ear, "Is everything ok? Did something happen? It's the middle of the week…"

"I'm fine, I just…" she pulled back away from him, a sparkle in her eyes, a light that wasn't there the weekend before when he had driven away from her house. "I just needed to finish something."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm ready Jeff. I know it now, I do. I'm ready to be with you…" He tried not to smile at this and remain serious, but when her lips fell into his with a fluttered force, he couldn't help but drown in the beauty of her ridiculous nature. The fact that she had taken a taxi all the way from the Cape, to show up in the rain at his apartment, in the middle of the week, just to tell him she was ready to finish off something they had started in the New York Harbor four months before. It was so Lily that he couldn't help but to laugh, kiss her harder, and give in.

No matter that it was twelve o'clock on a Tuesday. No matter that he had a Detective's exam in the morning. No matter, but what color lace she was wearing under her jeans this time.


"Room service, or something?"

"Sure…" she smiled at him through the crack of the door, scratching her nose anxiously. "I come bearing…pills. What do you think?"

"I think that you sound an awful lot like a girl I used to know. Ugly little thing, knobby knees, and no breasts." She shook her head at him, seeing the red puffiness of his eyes in the light of the hall, without his glasses on.

"Carter was right, you were asleep."

"And now I'm not."

"I'm sorry."

"Well, you should be." It was mean the way it came out, and Sands didn't know whether he intended on it being or not, but he soon fixed it as he heard her ankles crack in a motion to walk away from him. "But…your pills should help, and I've got beer. We can make a party out of it."

She laughed at him, "That's ok, you're probably tired."

Then turning off, he caught her with his voice again, "Hey kid…" her eyes motioned up to where he wavered in the doorway, his body propped away from her out of pure disillusionment, "I'm inviting you in. You better come."

He was right, he was always right. She was the one who had come to his room, knocked, issue the need for sex in her head, wanted to feel his body upon her for the rest of the night, and now she was trying to cop out. Literally. Jeff was inviting her inside, to continue what her mind had already climaxed to a hundred times in the last ten minutes of running through the hotel. She needed a chance to get closer to that sensation, Lily wanted to find the option in her hand, so she went inside past him.

The room was dark, cluttered, and smelled of stale cologne and Budweiser, things she knew all too well from having been raised with an older brother, as well as having been in Jeff's company for so many years. Nothing had changed, with him or the other men in the world, and it was a comfort to know this at least. She dropped her shoes to the floor by one of the beds, walking around carefully in the dark, touching the bedspread he had been laying upon, rumbled now, walked atop his jeans and black shirt in a heap on the floor and smiled when she heard him speak to her from the other side of the room.

"So you came back pretty early, for someone who was getting hit on all night…" he elaborated and gave the word a plural effect for the mere fact of showing her his disinterest in what she had so been interested in at the club, for proving to her why he had tore the headset away and taken off from the help.

"Actually, it wasn't all night for your information, and it was only one man."

"Lily…I don't care."

"You obviously do…"

"Oh come on..." She winced at him annoyingly, as he handed her one of the cold beers from the fridge, and moved to sit down behind her on the bed's edge. Lily remained standing though, just off to his side, watching him as she sensed he was watching her in his mind, with his scent, his ears and taste of air, of her around him. The nature of being blind fascinated her, but at the same time, as in the current situation, it made her want to break down and cry.

"Nothing happened, Jeff."

"Fine. Again…what do I care?" He asked with emphasis, wanting to make clear to both her and himself.

"I didn't say you cared, I just--"

"You're a grown woman now, Lil. Even if I was bothered by the thought of you sleeping with someone else, it would do me no good to tell you. You have to make your own decisions now, like a big kid. Right?" He chuckled as he took another swig of his beer and settled further onto the bed, feet straddling the base board. Lily could only study him, the man he had become from the boy who she thought could never have been anything but, the college boy, the rebel without a single cause to his name, the fleeting romantic. Jeffery was broken now, and by the looks of it, had little hope of thinking that she was there for any other reason but to continue annoying him. Lily knew, she had to change that somehow.

Shifting gears on him almost instantly, she came nearer to the bed, where his knees were settled high on the edge, and pressed her stomach against them, leaning into his legs, his body on the bed. Jeff felt her come to him, her chest and belly at the skin of his legs, and he sat up on his elbows, wishing he could see what his mind was tracing for him. He wouldn't have believed it if someone had been sitting on his shoulder assuring him it was happening. This wasn't happening, not now, not again, not ever. It wasn't happening because he couldn't let it, he had to hold strong, he couldn't let her know.

"Do I get to make any decision I want now, Sheldon?"

"Uhh…why?" He wasn't necessarily nervous, just stricken with a resolute fear. He sat up straighter, his knees falling away and Lily standing tall before him on the bed again, beer slipping from her fingers.

"Because if the territory is open…" she leaned back on her heels, stepping out towards the open space near the now closed balcony doors, seeing the glittering waves again, the lights of boats, the beat of that song still reeling in her head. "…then I'm wondering if you'll let me investigate it."

Jeff stood up again, rubbing at the hunger in his gut, which wasn't for food. He sensed her near the large glass doors, standing there, waiting for him to accept her to his bed; it was what she wanted, because it was what he wanted. The blackness around him faded into grey as her light changed, her voice softened, and he came closer to her.

"I wanna see…"

"You wanna see what?"

She turned, dropping her now empty beer bottle to the carpet below, making a stride towards his half naked form in the deep darkness of the room, "I want to see if it still feels good."


"Kiss me, Jeff…I need you…" she whispered loudly, pulling him by the thick cotton of his sweatshirt back inside of the apartment, his lips falling to hers just as his hands found a safe haven on the wall above her head. Below him she writhed, as he instantly became in control of the situation, the way she had always wished it to be. Jeff grabbed at her arms, her waist, thighs, hips, mouth especially, bringing him into her from the wall space, touching the hardness of his boxers to her jeans.

"Thank God for regrets…huh?" he chuckled against her ear as he drew it between his lips, tongue lapping over the back and front, teeth biting down hard on its softness.

"I won't…." she gasped as he blew against the now warmth of her neck, pulling her hips up to settle her high against the wall near the door, legs wrapping around him, "I won't regret anything else."

Her every word was bringing him closer to needing release, closer to breaking the barrier of his boxers with his own pressure, and grunting with delight as he came to her ear again, "Good," he growled, shoving his still protected blade into her warming center. His teeth loosened as he drew back, fumbling with the button and zipper of her jeans, her own hands scrambling with his sweatshirt as she tugged it away.

"Music, Jeff. We need music first." Her breath was haggard, but sweet in his ear as he carefully let her feet fall back to the floor and kissed the top of her head.

"You're damn right, music…let me get some."


"If what still feels good, Lily?"

She hesitated with a wild grin, her hand moving up to brush back the fallen black strands of his hair, behind his ear. "The first time, Jeff."

He couldn't think, and Lord knew he couldn't see which made it worse. He could run away, but he would kill himself just making it to the door. He could fuck her, but he wouldn't be able to see the marking it left upon her face as she screamed his name. Either way, Sands knew he was screwed, literally or not. He opted in the end, to try and not let it happen, which of course, was stupid.

"It probably won't." He huffed, making his way back to the fridge for another beer, trying to completely disregard her wish. "It's not the same anymore."

"And why not?" she grew immediately defensive, following him to the kitchenette of the room. "Because we're not…sitting down on the Cape, talking about the future that's already come and gone? Because we're not…I don't know, stealing your dad's yacht or jumping off of Hangman's Peak?" Nearing his bent body from behind, just over the mini fridge, she sighed deeply and concluded, "Or is it because Tommy's not here? You feel guilty; trying to be anywhere near me because of what happened to Tom? Eight fucking years ago, Jeff. You have to move on…"

It hit him like a bag full of bricks to the head, and rising from the cabinet, beer missing from his grip, he turned towards where her voice had spoken, his head following an invisible gaze down upon her own, his teeth clenched and knuckles gripping into fists. He wasn't mad at Lily, he wasn't mad at Tom, he was mad at himself, for letting what she said, be the truth. Though he tried his damndest to hide it away.

"No. It has nothing to do with Tom. We just shouldn't."

"That's a shitty excuse. I'm twenty-nine years old Jeff, I'm not married, I don't have kids or a boyfriend or a dog. All I have is a handful of memories that involve time spent with you, and time spent without you. I'm tired of trying to ignore one for the other." She spun away when she sensed tears, but didn't allow them to flow, instead she only stomped her bare foot and shouted, "Dammit. I swore I wouldn't bother with this. I wasn't going to force you to accept me, there's no point." Picking up her shoes from the floor, her phone, she leapt over a pile of dirty clothes and shoes, and jumped back towards the door. Jeff though, almost as if prepared for her, prepared for the moment that had arisen against his own judgment, reached over the counter of the bar, and pressed play on the small stereo system in the room. A beat immediately flew out, and quit her tracks on impact for the doorknob.


PART 2:

"Lily?" he knocked clearly once, and then let his hand slid down the shut bathroom door. "You fall in or something?"

Her giggle was apparent even through the door, but more so when she finally opened it, apprehensively. She had discarded everything but her pink lace bra and panties, ones she had bought with the intention of this sort of night, never once expecting it to be tonight. It was supposed to happen months ago, and after it didn't, she thought it never would. Proven wrong though, Jeff eyed her both whimsically and drained completely, she was and had always been the most breathtaking sight to him, no different, only better in the light of the moon and rain at his window. He smiled, walking towards her as she coiled her arms over her waist with hesitation, but he drew them away with his hands.

"Don't be so nervous, Hanson. It's not like I've never seen you before…"

"I know that."

"So…let me soak it up…" he grinned, bringing her chin to his face, taking with it her only breath, covering her lips with as much heat as he could create. The music instantly took him away, her away in him. The song, classic, meaningful, theirs and Boston's alike. There was no better tune for this moment, nothing that could seduce their minds quicker into the sheets. Feeling her hands on the warm skin of his stomach, she pushed away and he drew back with still closed eyes.

"Is there a reason you just so happened to choose this song?" She wasn't upset, but rather smiled devilishly as she leaned down to kiss along his neck, his chest, his arms wandering about her waist as he stepped back with her towards the bed.

"This song kicks ass. Don't even try to tell me Tiger Lily…that this song…" his breath was catching between her kisses and nibbling on his skin, her demeanor so much more confident than the first attempt, "…this song…doesn't do something to you…to me…"

"Really? What's that?" She bit down hard on the underside of his jaw, licking to sooth it after as he growled and eased onto the edge of the bed. "It's uhh….you know…ah." His breath caught as she laughed quietly, easing down onto his lap, her legs straddling across his waist, hands tangled in his hair as he held her to him.

"Ah? What's….ahhhh…." she teased, taking the tender flesh of his earlobe between her lips, stroking over it lightly with tongue and teeth and then falling back to see his eyes shrunken and shut. "What's ahhh, Sheldon?"

Her hand, strategically falling down his chest, over his hip, and between his thighs and her legs atop him, carefully nudged the growing pain below his boxers, rubbing it past the fabric. "Is that it?" She was good, she had gotten only better, amazing, out of nowhere, out of hardly any experience. Jeff was proud to know her, to be with her, to call her his. His gratification was shown with one more loose breath, a groan, and a quick flip of her body onto the mattress, back to cotton, his hardened size grinding into the thin, barely useful lace of her underwear. He leaned down to her ear, hearing her breath catch just from the heat of his body atop hers, and cooed with as much emphasis on both words and crushing hips as possible.

"You tell me…what ahhh is now."


I woke up this morning, and the sun was gone…The once clear skies outside were rumbling when Lily turned back around in the doorway, the music striking her eardrum beat for beat, her toes needing to tap on the carpet to the beat of the thunder outside, to the beat of her heart.Turned on some music to start my day… It was officially 12:18 when she looked over to the alarm clock on the nightstand, past his shoulder, and then back to where he was standing, a coy frown on his face as if he thought she might have disappeared through the door already. But she hadn't and wouldn't. I lost myself in a familiar song…too familiar, for her, for him, only now sensing her breath across the space, the sound of her shoes falling back down to the carpet, the crack of an ankle, another ankle, a laugh as she came nearer. He didn't move. He was lost in the lyric; he was lost in her again. Sands had done everything he could think of to stop it from happening, but the rain, the music, the darkness, the way her hand had felt on his cheek as she brushed his hair away, it was Boston again, a cold night in September, which very rarely occurred.Closed my eyes and I slipped away…He was blind, but felt as though he could see the world in the moments that passed. She was walking, but hadn't made it six steps before he took off in her direction, from where the sway of her hips met open air, the sound of her breath hooking as his arms tucked firmly around her waist and lifted her entire body back, towards the doorway, against the wall, hard, desperate, at last.

"Jeff…" she struggled, drawing her arms around his neck as his body locked her into the wall, hands on her back, her waist, her neck. He didn't kiss her, not yet, only relaxed, felt her, touched her, reminded himself of her and learned about what she had become. His hands were his eyes now, and they felt just as relaxing, just as intoxicating as she remembered the embers in his gaze once being. "Are you sure? Don't change your mind just for me…"

His response was as debonair as anything before it, the heat, the coiling of his tongue directly across each of her lips, the passion, the grief, the demand that hadn't been there all those years ago, the aggression that had grown even far away from his father's hate, his death. This was something concocted in him over the eight years she hadn't known who he was, this was the CIA, this was Agent Sands, this was Mexico, and she could feel it on her neck, her ear, her jaw, lips, even down to the tight separation of her breasts in the front of her dress. His hands, fingers extended down the length of her stomach, her thigh, drew up the draping black satin, wrinkling it in his palm as he slid his hand higher and deeper past her lace panties, holding onto her moist center. Teasing at the throb of her heightened bud, he grinned into her shoulder blade as he found the tormented folds, wet for him, giving his finger the opportunity it needed, to seduce and drive inside of her. Clenching his teeth as she whined into his ear, "God, Jeff…" he felt immensely proud, to still know her so well.

"Does that answer your question?"

Lily had nothing to say, nothing to wonder as she let her eyes fall down, lustful, hungry, only known by her. But Sands could hear her desire, he could feel it tighten around the joint of his index finger as he slowly pushed it further inside of her. There was no need for intellectual, Harvard studied responses…he only needed to hear the same sigh from her that had once sent him over the final edge, and made him a confident, one woman man. A long time ago…before he lost himself.


"Feel okay?" She had yet to breathe once in almost three minutes, as he gently, carefully inched his finger inside of her strapping heat, her innocent form, breaking into a painful zone by the distraught on her face. Her relaxation was coming on slower than it had with the other girls Jeff had been with. But it didn't matter, because those other girls didn't matter to him anyway, only she did. "If it hurts too badly I can st--"

"No…" she cut him off with exasperation, moving her hand to brush back his fallen hair, as she always did. "I want this. Please, just kiss me again."

He leaned into her fallen form upon the bed, dropping down onto her lips, his finger still tickling and sliding within her core, one easy stroke at a time to the inner walls she had never known could exist in such ways. Lily deepened the kiss as he moved his finger more, nearly in a pumping motion, as she held onto his neck as tightly as possible, his tongue probing through lips to meet hers royally, dripping with lust and fire. His momentum was paced, but came on quick, with his own need staggering with depth inside of his boxers, as close to begging for release as he imagined it could be. He wanted her to touch him, just as soon as he brought her out of her own sparkling ecstasy.

"Jeff…please…it…"

"It what? Tell me, Lily…what?"

"It feels so…" a gasp of air she much needed, a drop and buck of her hips as she allowed herself to grind against his single finger, which at an instant was met by a second one entering her, and then another suction of air between her lips. "It feels so…so…GOOD!" Jeff watched her body easing onto and away from his finger, her own natural pace taking over in the manipulation, the game of it. Lily had taken to fucking his finger and had never even realized it, nor the smile she had brought to his face so innocently.

"It's all for you, Lily…take it…take it, baby." And she did, took every last centimeter his fingers had to offer her in the dark light of the bed. She drowned his fingers with her warmth, the essence of her inner sanctum soaking him in ways he'd only dreamed since the day they had met. Her scream, followed by a tilt of her head away from him, heavier breathing, and a bite of her lower lip, practically did him in with merely a view.


His finger was hooked inside of her, like a fish to bait, stuck, hidden, deadly, and she screamed his name out in an octave she thought she never would again, even in fighting. The sweetest of her spots had been pummeled by the delicate curve of his fingers edge, not once, not twice even, but a countless number in her head. He was rough with her in the act, sensually rough, animalistic, brutal almost to the point of being perfectly acceptable, perfectly in tune with who he was, who he had obviously become now. He allowed her body to ease down to the floor with her climax subsiding into imaginary stardust, and held her gently at the waist, still pressed into the wall, his mouth holding a breathing note at her forehead, kissing only once for emphasis of his good intentions.

She was buried under his weight at the doorway, face tickled by the dewy spot on his chest, hands on his back holding him to her, for whatever reason she couldn't discern. Something had just happened, that was never meant to, at least not at that moment in time. And yet, perhaps somehow, someone had decided it was. It made no sense whichever way the world spun, because hers was upside down from the moment he pushed her into the wall. This was why she had come to his room, run up the elevator and down the hall. This feeling of completeness, of belonging again, the whole of her being filled to the brim, excited, reminded of passion, of something that remotely resembled love in the way his brow twitched with his finger's action, and the way his hands held her. Sands had been dangerous, he'd been tough with her from the moment he met her again until the jolting end of her first orgasm, led by him, since 1996. But at the same time, she had felt the other side of him, inside of her, around her, breathing down her neck, whispering in her ear. It was the side that once knelt down with a small diamond, on the dock at her house, with her mother and brother watching from the window.

That side.

This side now.

"Lillian Grace…Hanson." Her full name, that's all he could think to say, was her full name in pure excitement as his flannel pajamas twitched with his own need. "You still tremble exactly the same."

Smiling in confusion, she replied in note, "I did that, just so you'd say so." He was humored by her wit, still to this day, like everything else. He couldn't see her anymore, no, but he could sense deeper within her than anyone before him, and anyone after. He saw things that one can't determine with eyes, he heard and felt her in moments, in motions that most guys had fantasized about when around her. Jeff and Lily were always one, and now, they were reunited awkwardly, beautifully, confusingly.

"You got tougher on me, Jeff."

"Did I?"

"Yeah. But it's good…it still feels good. I told you…" she breathed deep as she watched him pull away from the wall, and saw the strain in his pajamas bottoms, what she herself had caused. Guilt washed over her with a grin, and as her hand reached out and took the waistband of his pants, she whispered to him again, "Let me fix that."

"Fix it? It's not broken, Lily. In fact the damn thing is in supreme condi--" She stopped him with her second hand to his lips, leaning up to kiss each one of his eyelids, swollen, sewed shut with yellow, green, brown bruises from his return back to the States. His body warmed from head to toes in an instant, the calm, motherly affection she had about her, which at the same time could be as vixen a mother as she wanted to be. He imagined that if one's mother could have Florence Henderson's sweet mind, but with Cameron Diaz' legs, they would be Lily. All of this he felt still too, sensed, tasted, took in better without eyes than ever before with.

"It's my turn to help you. I promise…," she continued, kissing him lightly on the lips, with her tongue ever so gently breaking them apart, licking once across the inside of his mouth and then withdrawing again, "…I'm better than I was in 96'." Stepping aside with only a hand on his stomach, sliding over his now bouncing cock under the fabric, she walked towards the bed.

"You, kid…are fucking killing me. Between those magic pills of yours…and those legs of yours…Christ Lily, did you plan all of this?" He wandered over to where he felt the closest bed's posts, and heard her jumping across the mattress. She laughed, tucking herself underneath the sheets and tearing away her black dress. With as strong an arm as she could, she tossed it across the bed to the end, hitting Jeff in the face with it. He was struck instantly by the aroma of her stale Chanel, lingering in the slinky fabric, taking a naughty whiff before tossing it to the floor and crawling up and onto the bed, his hands outstretched in a blind hunt for her nearly naked form. "I think you forgot something, miss."

"Oh yeah?" she asked, opening her legs wide in the center of the bed as he huddled into them on accident, in search of her hands, or face, or lips, and instead found his palm against her still throbbing center.

"Yeah…but not to worry." He grinned wickedly, rubbing harder along the sensitive spot beneath her lace garment, refraining from plunging in a second time. "I provide assistance in stripping…for only a base fee."

Lily giggled as she felt the tingle of his fingers unwinding the thin, strapping material of her laced thong, and watched him pull it down over her hips, between thighs and eventually off the tip of her toes. She was nude, completely, half drunk even, under Sheldon's hold, under his breath and hands. In other words, as blankly as she could put it in her mind…either way tonight, she would be screwed, fucked, hammered hard and rough, satisfied, or as they used to refer to it on the Cape in the summers, she would be a wobbly legged, wicked dooney. She liked that one best in fact, it was perfect.

"What color were they?" referring to the now discarded underwear, he smiled from between her legs.

"Guess."

"Shit…I have to go with red. Red-Sox…red-thong…"

"Good analogy, but you're wrong. Blue."

"Ahh…my second guess. Blue…" he whispered, his hands falling down to her inner thighs as he shoved his weight into her against the pillows of the bed, settling his mouth just above her own. "…just like those eyes of yours. God, I wish I could see them."

He sounded angry at the mere thought of it, and it made her want to cry for him. Never again would he see the world unless it was in his mind, where her eyes were locked away, her body, her smile, her everything. Everything she could see, he had to pretend to see and enjoy. But she knew he remembered her eyes, there was no possible way he could have forgotten such a thing, and as she pulled at his tangled hair and brought his lips down to hers finally, she could have sworn she felt a tear fall against her cheek, his. Lily would never, not once admit to this, or bring it up to him in question, ever. But the thought took her back, and that's all that mattered anyway.


She couldn't remember a time she was more scared, more innocent to the ways of the world. Lily was shaking under him, and when he realized this, he held her to him closer, nearly naked together atop the sheets. The rain had slowed a bit, leaving glitter on the window beside them as they both stared out. Her skin was growing pimply under his grasp, but she breathed deep and leaned her back further into his bare chest.

"I didn't know it was supposed to feel like that. I wish…" she sighed, turning over to look into his eyes, "I wish I hadn't waited so long to find out." He kissed her, nuzzled his nose at her ear and leaned back into the pillow.

"There's still more to it ya know?"

"Yeah…I know…"

He worried she was tired, or too much in pain to continue with what had been started. There was tightness in his boxers that made him grow almost nervous should this be the case.

"We don't have to do anymore if you don't--"

"No." she stopped him, pressing her palm to his cheek. "I do. Please…let's do it all."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Sparky."

He smiled, pushing back atop her with a jolting kiss, and lowered her body to the sheets, his intense length settling over to one side of his boxers, at her open thigh. She felt awkward with it there, awaiting her, nearly coming to her, but she realized that it was all part of the moment, the act.

"Jeff…?" She whispered under him, hands coiled in his own.

"Yeah?"

"Is…is it going to hurt?"

At this he stopped again, knowing that the question was more than appropriate, more than fair, way more than expected, and he carefully aligned himself with the mattress so that he could kneel above her. "Lily, I don't know." A brush of her hair in his fingers, a stroke over her cheek, her chin. "It might."

"I heard once that it does. A lot."

"Is that why you didn't want to before?"

"No…no."

"And you're sure you want--"

"Sheldon, yes I do. I swear." She laughed at the force of trying to convince him, their mouths meeting fervently to awaken even more passion and ease their minds.

"I promise I'll go easy, ok?"

She nodded quietly as he slid down from her lips and settled his body between her legs further, boxers pulled down and off of his feet. He felt the nerves rising and falling in her legs, her toes, and he had them too despite admitting such. Before meeting Lily, Jeff had slept with three other girls, all of which had lost their virginities prior to being with him, even beating him in one instance his senior year of high school. He hadn't known what it was like yet, at only 23, to take a girl's purity from her, to be the special one in her life. But even so, he knew that Lily meant more to him than anyone ever would, or could, and to have something that sacred, given by her to him, gave him every last reason in the world to call her his own.

"You okay, babe?" She smiled up at him, not knowing what else to do, but appreciating his care for her, the way he always, no matter what, made sure she was fine before the rest of the world. And the way he called her babe, baby, for almost twelve months now, she adored it.

"I'm good."

"Breathe for me, ok."

"Ok."

She tried, desperately, as she felt the strain of his length glide over her inner thigh, further towards the heat that was now boiling between her legs, and very gently sliding, circling the skin of her core. Trying not to laugh, or cry, or freak out and run, she allowed him to go on, assuming he probably knew better of what to do anyway. He stroked the head of himself around the folds of skin, slippery moisture gliding the movement, her own as she determined. And as if the bed began circling around in the sky, she felt the tip of him, glaze itself at her opening once more, and then move inside.

Hitched breathing swelled in her throat as she tried to relax against the pressure, the blocking sensation, the fitting of two bodies together. There was no pain yet, only discomfort. Jeff realized she was barely breathing, let alone speaking to him, and leaned his body down to her, pausing the movement of his length within her. He came inward, mouth quiet at her ear, shampooed curls tickling his nose, and spoke, "Breathe, baby. I wanna hear you breathe for me…deep Lily, breathe deep…"

She responded by filling her lungs and slowly releasing the air from between her lips as he stole them away in a maddening kiss. He kept her there, pinned near his mouth for the sole intent of fighting down the wall he knew was still set to arrive, one he'd heard of in hushed conversation between guy friends. The breaking point. He eased further inside of her, sensing the friction, and as she bit down on his lower lip in their kissing, he also felt the penetration occur, and her body writhe in a flash. It stung her in an instant, forced her eyes open wide as she let go of Jeff's lip and winced into the stale air.


"Now?"

"Yes."

"You sure…?"

"Dammit, Jeff. If you're not going to do it…"

"Oh, don't think I won't kid." He smiled down at where he could see her form, beautifully in his mind, but sensed what was really happening between them. Lily was desperate to feel who he was at that moment, to see what had come between them in eight years, she wanted to know what she had been missing out on. And Jeff, in his locked state, blindfolded by a will of God, only wanted to feel what he could see in his head, which was Lily eight years before. He was afraid that should he enter her, should she breathe his name continuously, that it would be too different to bare, it would be lived, it would be spent by other men after and before him. He wanted his Lily back, the one who had said she'd be with him forever, the one who walked with innocence even after he had taken it from her. Accepting that she had grown or changed or become something else, was too difficult a task to accomplish, without being able to witness it.

She was tensing now, loosened by gravity and wound up again by the clutches of fear in both of them. She was afraid of Agent Sands, and he, was afraid of not feeling Lily anymore, but a new, grown woman, with ideas and opinions long since stretched into the world without him. Drawing her legs down against his thighs between her, she sighed, looking up at the ceiling. "Maybe you were right."

Twitching his swollen brow together, leaning back on his heels, and moving away from her he appeared defeated. Defeated by his own mind. He said nothing, only listened through grays of light as she went on.

"I guess I thought that it would be the same, you know." She sat up in front of him in the middle of the bed, eyes at her knees where she wrapped the sheet around herself, "Like no time had passed, kind of thing. That's what I wanted. It's been so hard to think that…"

"That what?" he finally questioned in silence, sitting down with his legs covered by blankets as well.

"That we're two different people now."

"Are we though?"

She sighed again, hair falling in and around her eyes as she looked up to his bobbing head in the light, he was lost save for the fact that she was nearby and he was on a bed. Other than that, he knew not of anything else going on in the room, or the city, or the world.

She replied quietly, "I think we are, Jeff."


Hours. They made love for hours. Until the sun poked in through the curtains of the apartment, and the taxis down below began honking their horns aggressively to wake them. They made the love they so had missed in each other.

Lily woke first, nudging her shoulders back further into the warmth of Jeff's body, where he held her waist and kept his chin nuzzled into her neck from behind. There was nothing in that moment that she would have changed about him, or her, or who they were becoming now. Nothing would be the same between them again, they had been one finally, and there was a different air about the room they were in, the bed she had slept in before, but never made love upon, the city that had given them a reason to love each other in the first place, was different.

Sheldon woke up without his usual headache, but instead a jumpy spirit, a need to run a mile, or skydive, or do anything to bring him back down from where he was. Her arms tightened around the form that he imagined to be asleep still, the one that had tasted and felt sweeter than anything else God had created thus far. He kissed her shoulder, her ear and the mass of unruly curls spilling down against her back and his face. He kissed the girl of his dreams.

"Jeff?" she asked groggily when she sensed him waking up and felt his lips on her body.

"Morning."

"Morning," she smiled, tossing about in his arms to see him again for the first time in almost and only three hours.

"You look so beautiful." He said defiantly as he saw her face in the light of the room, needing nothing more than such a view for the rest of his life. Lily smiled shyly, but tapped her finger on his chin in appreciation as he spoke of nothing but love. "Lily Grace you are so, so perfect. I don't ever want you to leave this room, or this bed, or my--" cutting him off with a kiss, he was grateful, and pulled her closer into him. Her skin was softer than the cloud he was resting upon, and when her leg ran up high to hook at his hip and draw his body down, Lily straddling him, he laughed away the kiss.

"I need you to tell me something."

Reaching up to her breast, she growled with giggles and pushed his hand away, forcing him to listen to her, "I'm serious, I need to hear you say something first."

"Okay."

"Tell me…" she began, tracing circles on his open chest with her coral pink fingernails. "…promise me actually, that you're not going to change. I don't want you to change who you are."

"Lily, I'm not going to--" stopping him again with her hand to his mouth, she smiled and went on to conclude.

"I mean it. People always change, and grow apart and do stupid things. I don't want to do that with you, I don't want us to wake up one day and hate each other, because we're someone else completely."

He tried to gurgle words past her palm, but she resisted a second longer.

"Don't you dare change on me, Sheldon. I might not hate you when you do…but it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to get me to stay." She drew her hand back, and he said nothing, he didn't nod, or try to kiss her, or do anything but take her in, her strength, her determination in the matter. Jeff vowed never to change himself if only for her. And he vowed silently, that should such a thing ever happen, he would do everything in his power to give up what he had become, and return to the Sheldon she knew, the one she loved.

God only knew how she did, though.