There's a flurry of rushing about and packing overnight bags and forgetting things and coming back and then they're gone. And we're alone. I pick up Cody's wet towel and Astor's discarded sweater and then realise I'm doing the stalling thing again. I put them down and Lumen is leaning on the door, smiling at me. She shakes her head.
"What?" I ask, laughing at myself, but she shakes it again. "What?" I ask again, walking over to her, throwing down the sweater and the towel in a heap of stuff the kids have left. She puts her arms out to me and I step into them. She looks up at me.
"I was just thinking that I don't know what to do first." I frown at her, not really understanding what she's saying. "I mean, I've missed you so much. There are so many questions I've thought of that I want to ask you, so many things I have missed about being with you." She stands on tiptoe to kiss me. I feel her soft lips against mine and I can't seem to catch my breath. My knees feel weak, my pulse races. She pulls back and laughs, gasping for air herself.
"See? And then there's all that too!" I nod, biting my lip, unable yet to talk for fear that my voice would give away some of the trembling I am feeling at her touch. "What do you want to do first?" Oh no, trick question.
I pause and close my eyes. What am I supposed to say now? Automatically, I go into the cycle of thinking I would have had with Rita. Am I supposed to say sex? Because yes, god, I want her and yes, I have been thinking about it for a long time but I also want to savour this. Is that the wrong thing to say? Does Lumen want my desire to win out? Or am I supposed to say that I want to talk? Because yes, I want to do more of that intoxicating sharing. Hell, I've never been able to actually talk to someone openly. I can't second guess her. She puts her hands on my cheeks. I open my eyes.
"Hey," she says softly, "that wasn't a trick question. I can't decide whether I want to ask you all the questions I've dreamt up for you, dive on you and take you to bed or just enjoy sitting here with you. I really was asking what you wanted to do." I nod, I have to remember this, she's like Deb. If she wants to know something, she'll ask. She doesn't do subterfuge.
"Can we do it all?" I ask, kissing her again. She twines her fingers in the hair at the nape of my neck and I put my hands on her waist. For a moment or two we let our mouths just wander, exploring what we have both been missing. She mumbles something and I pull back to check what she said.
"Not all at the same time, I just don't have the attention span," she giggles, "you're distracting."
"So are you," I smile. She throws herself on the sofa.
"Well, let's start out talking, and see what happens," she grins. "Have you got any beer?" I nod and get two bottles from the fridge. I pass her one and she takes a long drink. I sit at one end of the sofa and she sits at the other, our legs cross over each other.
"You first." I point the neck of the bottle towards her. She screws up her face, thinking.
"Have you killed anyone since I left?" She's right to the point and I have to remember that I'm allowed to be honest. It's like making an articulated truck do a U turn after all the years of lying.
"No." I shake my head. "Daniels was going to be the one, my distraction from you. But someone got there first." I raise my eyebrows, mock frown and she laughs.
"A distraction from me? You needed distracting?" I nod and drink my beer. How much of the animal inside does she want to see? She must notice something in my eyes because she leans forward, catching me in her gaze. "What? What was that? What were you just thinking?" I put my head back and look at her along the line of my nose.
"Yes, I needed distracting. Everything reminded me of you, all the time. Even when I was asleep my brain played out the memories, over and over, with embellishments. And then my body joined in." I bring my head back up, level my gaze, let her see it all. The naked animal, the wanting. She takes a deep breath.
"You dreamt about me?" I nod, her eyes are wide and the pupils are huge. Her usually dark irises are like coals and she puts down her bottle and comes towards me. She lies over me, her arms either side of my head. I flash back to how she straddled Daniels, the position almost exactly the same. I bite my lip and nod again.
She brings one leg up, over my hip, settling herself over my groin, still leaning forwards on her arms. She gently kisses my neck.
"What was I doing, in these dreams, Dexter?" The way she says my name, the way her breath is hot on my skin has me fixed to the spot. I almost dare not breathe in case this isn't real. My body doesn't need a second invitation, in a heartbeat I am hard. She leans back a little and smiles. She doesn't miss a thing. "Dexter?" Her nose is against mine, I reach up to kiss her but she pulls back a little. Her expression is teasing, questioning.
"Touching me." My voice sounds low, dark and she smiles slightly, a corner of her mouth lifting. She makes a noise, it's almost a growl, and then her hand moves down my body, over my chest, trailing fire in its wake and she cups my hard cock through the fabric of my pants. I push up against her, mouth open, eyes rolling back. It feels so good.
"Like this?" She says, her voice husky. I nod and she strokes along my length and it's too much. All the weeks of not thinking, all the sneak attacks by the combined forces of my libido and my memories burst through the dam. I open my eyes, she is looking right at me, into me. I reach up with my hands, holding her by the shoulder with one, she leans her weight on me while I caress her breasts with the other. Her eyes narrow, her mouth opens. I run a nail over her hard nipple and she hisses through her teeth and drops her head. Her hair falls around her face and she looks up at me. There is something feral in her expression, I recognise it from when she brings down the knife.
"Can we just fuck now?" I whisper the words because, somewhere inside me, I am still afraid she will say no. I look at her, watching for her reaction to the suggestion, the word. Have I been too direct? She smiles a slow smile, it's warm and darkly happy.
"Yeah," she nods and increases the pressure with her hand, I moan. "Yeah, we can definitely fuck now."
I push her back on the sofa, copying her position from before, as I grind against her and she arches beneath me. I know that both of us want this to last but the pressure is building. She pulls my head away from the kiss, grabbing my hair and forcing me to look at her. Her face is flushed, the pink blush down her neck into her t shirt, her scars stand out silver against the rose. Her lips are red, her eyes wide.
"We've got lots of time for slow, right." Oh, slow, she wants slow. Ok. Right. I push out a deep breath, almost scrabbling back from her, trying to still the rushing tide of desire. I should have known this would scare her. She frowns and grabs my shoulder, pulling the fabric of my shirt in her fist. "No, no. Dexter, I'm asking. We have plenty of time to go slow, right?" I nod, body and brain racing to keep up. She smiles and pulls me back for a kiss, her tongue darts between my teeth and I lose the race.
"Good, then let's do slow some other time." She reaches down and pulls the hem of my shirt over my head. It's an echo from the first time and I get the same feeling. The same wonder and confusion and hope. She smiles at me and grabs her own shirt. When it's gone, she pulls me down against her. Her skin sears me, I feel her rib bones against mine and the heat is scorching.
"Mmmm." She wriggles beneath me. I smile down at her and kiss the side of her mouth. "I want you so much, Dexter." I raise an eyebrow and then sit back, pushing up from her with my hand by her head. I unfasten my pants and pull them down over my hips, I'm about to stand and take them all the way off but she puts her hand on my lower stomach and stops me.
"That's enough, no time for being neat." She says, unbuttoning her jeans. She wriggles them down and pulls on one leg of the fabric, lifting her hips to move them down. Her panties follow. I hold her leg under the knee and tear the denim down, leaving the other leg still dressed. She grins.
I look down at her and the feeling is like nothing I have ever experienced. The possibilities, the openness are all there in her posture, her smile. Simultaneously we reach for each other. I stroke my hand down the soft skin of her thigh until she is gasping and arching. My fingers find her hard and wet and we both moan as I tease my thumb over her clitoris. After a few strokes she seems to recover and her hand finds me and she mimics my movements with her slim fingers along my length. I watch her and she watches me.
There's a kind of sacredness, a holiness in the moment. Neither of us need to speak, there is no call for instruction or encouragement. When I know the time is right, I move her hand away from me, she lets it lie back alongside her head, the gesture vulnerable, mind blowing. Still moving my thumb in small circles, the other hand underneath, lifting her hips, I enter her. Her body tenses, her eyes roll back and she arches towards me. I go slow, even though every fibre of my being is shouting for me to take her, make her mine.
"Oh, Dexter." She opens her eyes, her cheeks shining and her mouth is a smile. She pulls me down against her and I slide slowly all the way in, my arm trapped between us, my thumb still moving. She hooks a leg over the back of the sofa and I go deeper still. I see my expression, eyes wide, mouth gasping, mirrored in her face. I smile and she smiles with me.
I rock my hips forward and her hips move to meet me. Slowly, carefully, we savour the sensation of union. I look at her and I hold nothing back. I feel her muscles begin to clench around me and I try to slow down but she pulls me to her, one hand on my hip and the other on my face.
"Time," she gasps out as I thrust forward, "time for slow later." She pushes back against my shoulders, the angle forcing me deeper and I let go of control.
All there is, is Lumen. Lumen's breathing, her body enveloping and consuming me, her heat, the crush of her muscles. I feel them tightening, feel her owning me, making me hers and I spiral out from this moment. She shudders underneath me, pulling me down over her and wrapping her arms about my back as she clings to me.
"Dexter, Dexter, oh god," she calls out, her voice becoming a hiss as I feel her body calming. It is the sound she made in the motel bathroom. Unbidden, I see her bringing down the knife, the violent pleasure on her face and I come hard, shouting her name, frightened by the intensity of this experience. Not wholly carnal and not wholly cerebral but a fierce amalgam of both.
I lie over her, I drag the breath in over my lungs, listening to the blood rushing in my ears. She kisses my cheek and I turn my face, almost afraid to look at her now we have shared this intensity, this intimacy.
"Wow," she says, smiling, and I nod. "That was better than I remembered. And I'd remembered it being pretty good." She laughs. I pull back on my arms and slide carefully away from her. She stretches like a cat and then frowns. I sit back on my haunches.
"Was that ok Dexter? Are you ok?" She reaches out her hand and her fingertips brush against my stomach. I nod, I feel overwhelmed, like something life changing has just happened to me. Lumen sits up and puts her arms around me, presses her hand to my cheek. "Dexter?" I frown, trying to find words for how I am feeling. As though in slow motion I see Lumen begin to cover herself with her hand, somehow this sharp image cuts through the numbness.
"I'm fine." I bend down and kiss her, moving her hand away from her body and putting it back around my shoulder. I kiss her neck and breathe in the scent of her skin, her hair. "I think I'm just a little stunned." I laugh and I see her smile. I struggle back into my pants, standing up so I can fasten them even though I am sticky and a little uncomfortable.
"We could have a shower?" I am volunteering to shower with another person, will wonders never cease? Lumen pulls on her panties and jeans and grins up at me.
"Maybe later, washing can wait. I've got things I want to know!" I laugh and pass her the now warm beer. "I'm glad we got that out of the way. Didn't want it to get awkward but I've wanted to do that since I met you at the cafe." She says clinking my bottle with hers.
"Mm. I know what you mean. It was only going to make things tense, huh?" I grin and she leans against me as she drinks her beer.
"Yeah, and we can always break off and do it again if there's a lull in the conversation. I guess we don't need to worry that we'll get bored." She sighs and I put my arm around her. We sit like that for a minute, bodies sated, minds racing. She sits back and looks at me.
"So, who was your first?" I frown, is she asking about ex girlfriends? My experience with this tells me this is not a happy path to take. She sees my expression and laughs.
"Not your first, Dexter! Your first kill!" I sigh, visibly relieved, and she laughs at how ridiculous it is that I am more comfortable with talking about victims than ex girlfriends. I suppose she's right.
"Nurse Mary," I say, leaning back against the cushions, watching Lumen's eye go wide.
"So, this was... before the Code?" She says this in a whisper, a part of me shelves the idea away for later consideration. I shake my head and she frowns.
"No, Nurse Mary wasn't a nice nurse." I sniff and she laughs. "It was when my foster father, Harry, was in hospital. He noticed this nurse was giving her patients too much morphine. She was killing them off. Who know how many people she'd 'helped' already?" Lumen nods.
"So, until her you hadn't killed anyone?" I shake my head and stretch out my leg. She rubs her hand across my foot idly.
"No, Harry didn't give me permission to do anything like that until he'd made sure I understood the Code."
"So he trained you?" I nod, remembering all the lectures, the hunting trips which Deb so envied. I realise, not for the first time, that Harry has kept me alive. Without his teaching I'd be another name on Death Row. "Like you're going to train me?" I look up at her and she smiles.
"I think we already started that training. You've got three kills under your belt now." She gets up and goes to the fridge, coming back with two more beers.
"Before the first one, the nurse, did you still have the darkness?" I frown, this isn't easy to admit, even though I know the answer. If I tell her that the urges, the need to kill, has always been there, for as long as I remember, will she be able to deal with that? She prods me with her foot. The gesture is so domestic, familiar, that I can't help but smile.
"Yes. Yes it was still there. I didn't know what it was at first. Sometimes it felt like rage or like an itch you can't scratch, a discomfort with my skin that I couldn't shake off." She holds my foot tightly in her hands and I daren't look at her.
"Did you kill other things, animals?" Oh god. People are so sentimental about animals, if I tell her about the dogs, the cats, I don't know what she'll think. I nod, not looking at her, staring straight ahead.
"It was like some secret I kept from myself. You know, I would do it and then pretend to everyone, even to myself, that it hadn't happened, like it was a part of me I compartmentalised, locked away even from my conscious thoughts. I'd be ok for a while and then I'd have to do it again, and again.
My mind would be scoping out a good victim, someplace to do it, the right time and I would try not to listen to it but... in the end I always caved." I can hear her breathing. This is like catharsis, I have to say it all. I turn to look at her.
"Can you imagine how it felt to finally have permission? To have someone I trusted tell me it was ok to do the things I was hiding even from myself?" She holds my gaze, she doesn't let me go. "After all those years, all those furtive, hidden moments that I couldn't even think about when I was on my own, to finally, finally, be allowed to let the Dark Passenger out and not be ashamed? To have a justification to do what I had to do?" She doesn't nod, but she doesn't look away either. This is like the sex, intimate, terrifying, real and intoxicating.
"One of the first times it was the neighbour's dog. My foster mom, Doris, was sick and the dog just kept barking and barking all night, all day. She couldn't sleep. I'd watch her weep with the fatigue." I rub my hand over my face. There is a long beat of silence.
"So you made your own Code until Harry gave you his." Lumen says it quietly, matter of factly. I look at her, expecting to see disgust, anger in her eyes. Instead she looks at me, just the same as she did before, open, interested. "You killed the dog because it was causing someone pain. Then Harry gave you the Code and you channelled your darkness. How many people's lives have you saved Dexter?" I look at her, not understanding her question.
"How many people's lives have you saved by killing the monsters?" She leans across and kisses my cheek, slipping her hand through my arm and pulling me to her. "And now we'll save even more. Together."
Ok, I ma posting this with fear and trepidation in my heart. Hope it lives up to expectations. Thanks so much for all your support and encouragement with this fic. It's great sharing it with you. Don't just favourite, review and let me know what you like! Thanks VB for commas and making it make sense. Love you Cx