He was as good as his word.

She heard them return, the car pull into the drive, their footfalls and voices come muffled through the ceiling, the thud of bags being dropped, then the door at the top of the stairs creak open, click shut… she'd only just had time to mark her page and clap her book shut before he was in the room, his face – looking worn and tired – breaking into a smile when he spied her on the sofa. She stood to meet him as he strode towards her.

"Oh, you're a sight for sore eyes." He crooned as his hands went to her waist. His eyes searched her face for just a second, trying to read her mind, before seeing the want in her eyes and pressing his mouth to hers.

It was like he had extra hands. Unlike the night before – unlike any night she'd had with anyone – she couldn't keep track of when his palms were dragging across her skin, where his fingers were digging into her flesh. He crushed her to him with his forearms, explored her with his hands, bending her back as his tongue searched her mouth, as his hips shifted forward… and the result was awesome, her entire body flaming, a weird sense of dislocation, of shapelessness…

"Bed or sofa?" He mumbled against her mouth, just as his impossible fingers, everywhere at once, pushed roughly under the waistband of her leggings, gripped hard at her ass, and he groaned at her lack of underwear.

"Bed." She gasped in reply.

He chuckled, the deep voice thrumming straight through her. "Dangerous." Helga didn't know what he meant by the murmured word, but she didn't care. She just followed him when he broke away from her, led her to her own bedroom. She started to peel of her top, but he stopped her, "Let me", and helped her up under the covers…

… and began his honeyed torture.

He lay between her legs, he allowed her grasping hands to pull off his shirt, to tug down his jeans… but he didn't let her touch him. Instead he lay heavily, deliberately on top of her, and nestled the hard length of himself into the dell between her legs. Then started to roll his hips, pressing hard against her, shifting and adjusting his weight until her eyes fluttered close and her hips raised to meet him.

"Oh god." Her voice shook.

"No, just me." There was laughter in his voice, but it cracked when she matched his movements.

The joke gave her something to cling on to, something for her mind to clasp so that she didn't just fall to pieces, so that she didn't totally lose control. "Oh Joel." She countered, but her voice held no laughter, only longing, and he growled.

He braced his arms above her head and shunted against her, the pace and force of his movements merciless. Pushing against her, backing off, pushing forward again… denying her the pleasure of a sustained touch, teasing her and building her up at the same time. She started shaking, mewling as she begged him please… though she didn't know what she was asking him for. He just growled again in reply, one of his hands moving to fist in her hair, pulling her head back to bite and kiss at her throat.

Her legs raised, hooked over the back of his thighs, and she keened when the shift pressed more of him to her. She rocked her hips in sync with his cruelly measured movements, and somewhere in the unthinking mass of feeling, she recognised the inevitable swollen sensation of imminent orgasm.

He was unrelenting, he was shaking, he shifted his weight again, spread his thighs to trap her legs where they were wrapped around him, and started to push her down into the mattress, the weight of him awakening nerves deep under her skin. The seam of her leggings was rough against her, but somehow the slight discomfort heightened everything, gave her a point to focus on, when she couldn't tell where the rest of her body was.

"Are you going to come for me?" He rasped in her ear, and she nodded stupidly in reply. Her legs rose higher, the fist in her hair tightened, and she felt the flesh around the fabric seam swell. Joel was humming, his arms shaking, and when she started to whimper, he pushed his mouth to hers.

Everything stopped, for just a second, a moment of eerie calm, where she could hear her own heartbeat, hear Joel's laboured breathing… a moment of lucidity before she exploded.

As soon as she went rigid, Joel stopped his relentless onslaught, he tugged harder at her hair, but moved his hips in lighter, smaller circles, letting her ride it out, eking out as many seconds of climax as he could… not that she noticed any of that, she was oblivious to everything but the colours behind her eyelids and the dissolving of her nerve endings.

Eventually her breathing slowed, and his movements stopped. Her eyes fluttered open and she sank heavily back into her pillow. Her legs fell from his thighs, splayed wide on the bed, shuddering. "Wow." She slurred, a sleepy smile on her face. She reached shaking hands to his face, raised her chin to invite his kisses.

But they weren't the gentle, dreamy kisses of someone who had just been sated…

She shifted up, struggled to push herself up onto her elbows, forcing him to sit back, kneeling between her spread legs. His very obvious arousal pressed hard against his underwear. She noticed how the fabric was darkened with moisture at his head, but also down the length of him… that's from me she thought dimly.

"Show me." She couldn't manage more than a cracked whisper, but he responded instantly to her demand. He tugged at the waistband with one hand, and grasped at himself with the other. Without any urging, he started jerking himself off. Helga watched, transfixed, as he pulled back the skin of himself with the hand that had tugged down his briefs, and ran his other fist back and forth over his head. The muscles in his thighs twitched, his eyes raked over her, and under his gaze, still leaning on her elbows, she grabbed her own breasts, pushing them together, and squeezing her nipples between her fingers.

"Is that an invitation?" Judging from how his body was growing taut, and the swelling beneath his hands, he wasn't far off. And Helga just smiled, nodded in response, before tilting her chin up and opening her mouth… holding his gaze as she stuck out her tongue…

He swore, and stumbled as he shuffled awkwardly over her legs… his hand still working, the veins on his forearms standing out. He straddled her ribs. "Ready?" She nodded again, mouth still open… and groaned as he released onto her chest, his hips bucking. The lust in his eyes… there was a flash of self-satisfaction on his face, before he dropped the hand working his head, and thrust forward to push himself into her mouth, pumping the last of his load onto her tongue, holding her gaze as she swallowed.

"Jesus." His shoulders slumped as he finally sat back, the weight of him heavy across her hips.

"Yeah." She smiled, released her elbows, fell back onto the bed. Her fingers and breasts were covered in him, and she fidgeted slightly, knowing his eyes were still on her, ran her fingertips around her own nipples, trailing him across her skin.

"Jesus." He said again, and he bent over to kiss her, not caring that he just came in her mouth. He got her a towel eventually, carefully wiping her clean, kneeling between her legs and taking her hands, drying her fingers one by one, kissing each fingernail as he did so. Laying the towel flat over her chest, and cupping her breasts through the rough material… "All clean." He sighed, and lobbed the towel into the corner.

"I'd planned on more than just dry fucking you like a teenager, by the way." He yawned as he nestled in beside her, rolling her over to spoon her. "But you kind of got me carried away."

She snuggled back into him. "I'm not complaining." She shivered. "That was… OK, weirdly, I think that was the best orgasm of my life."

He chuckled, pressing kisses behind her ear. "It seemed pretty intense…" He paused, "so, no regrets?"

"Oh my god no." she pushed against him, tightened her fingers where they twined with his.

He was nuzzling the back of her neck, his face buried in her hair, and her stomach cramped when he breathed a sigh, heavy with contentment. "You can handle Ma fussing over you?"

Well, that was a little embarrassing… but it was too late now. "Sure."

"Then you'll come up to dinner?" He pressed a kiss to her skin. "She invited you."

She felt like she should be more upset or conflicted about this kind of thing, but she was just too sleepy. "Sure." She closed her eyes, missing whatever it was that Joel asked next as she drifted off.

He urged her awake after an hour or so nap. She was still groggy enough to not have butterflies as she splashed water on her face, and gently cleaned herself up before putting on clean clothes. Wandering around in front of Joel naked like she wasn't usually self-conscious…

"Do you never wear bras?" He asked as she pulled a shirt on over her head.

"Not often." She shrugged. "I just kinda…" she yawned "… stopped wearing them, unless it feels like it's necessary. I don't even really think about it anymore."

He nodded, but didn't say anything more… and though part of her wanted him to tell her that it was sexy… another part thrilled at how he didn't assume that her choices about undergarments were based on how a guy might feel…

So she moved to kiss him, leaned over where he was sitting on her bed, and took a shaking breath as his hands cupped her naked ass… but he pulled away. "Not now…" and she might have felt stung, if it weren't for that challenging smile that was back on his lips…

Dinner wasn't actually that bad. Lucy and Dyna knew, obviously… but they weren't too merciless in their teasing. All around one end of the over-large dining table, Dyna sat them together, and said nothing about how Joel ate most of his meal one handed, the other palm roving across Helga's knee, her thigh… occasionally draping over her shoulder when he stopped eating to tell a story or explain something in detail.

And once she got over her initial shyness, and started engaging in the conversation, things went back to normal. Well, close enough.

"You'll be coming up for Christmas, won't you?" Lucy's eyes were sparkling as she looked over her wineglass. Helga made to protest, but Lucy waved a hand. "You just said yourself you'll be just downstairs… what are you gonna do, hide all day like a yuletide troll?" She had a sharp mouth on her, but her expression was nothing but warm. Apparently she only teased people she liked.

What could Helga do but agree? Especially when Dyna and Joel were both enthusiastic about the idea… though they did wait until she said yes before they told her that extended family would be there… sneaky.

Joel apologised later, when they were alone, but he was grinning the whole time. "Don't worry about it." He breathed, between kisses, rolling her shirt up her stomach. "They're all laid back, it's not a big deal, I promise." She hmphed at him, but didn't still his questing fingers, didn't stop him from murmuring the sweetest things against her neck, from peeling off her clothes, from leading her to bed…

And Christmas was actually fun. It started way too early, with Lucy rapping on the door and insisting they come up to open presents (Joel had bought her something, she was amazed… a book of Andy Warhol's writing, and while she struggled to find something suitable to say, he kissed her, right in front of Lucy and dyna, who just rolled their eyes and smiled sweetly respectively.), then back downstairs to shower and dress and mentally prepare for the rest of the long, busy, food-stuffed day.

Joel had been right, the family was laid back. They accepted her presence with a minimum of questions, all knowing about how Dyna normally had boarders… there were a few raised eyebrows at Joel easy touches, at his constant closeness, but nothing too bad. And after three massive meals, untold wines, a drunken sing along and a long, lazy evening of continual left overs and the loosening of many belts, they fell happily into bed. Too stuffed and too drunk to do anything but sleep.