A/N: Hello there, readers. Thanks for making it this far! I hope you're enjoying it... This chapter has earned its M rating, so if you're easily scandalized, turn back now. You will also find one mild (not related to the main plot) spoiler for the BBC Doctor Who New Adventures novel The Dying Days, by Lance Parkin. Anyway... happy reading!
Her kiss felt like an electric shock.
The Doctor's body responded instantly, the inexplicable attraction he felt for Rose sparking into desire at the hot touch of her lips. He could feel her heart beating faster, and not just from the dancing. For a moment he lost himself, aware of nothing but the warmth and softness of her skin. His heart rate was increasing too, and his mind, for once, was not racing, but rather basking in the sweet simplicity of the moment.
Yes, he thought, yes.
It felt right to kiss her. This is what he'd been wanting since he met her, and the taste of her lips both slaked his desire and stoked it. Lightheaded, he surrendered himself to the sensation, shoving all fear of paradox aside and forgetting, just for a moment, that there was a universe waiting to be saved.
It was too much and not enough at once: he found he was almost overwhelmed by her nearness, yet all he could think of was getting closer. Shocked at himself, he realized he wanted to see her naked underneath him, wanted to memorize every silky plane of her skin, kiss every part of her, this tantalizing creature who had stumbled into his TARDIS smelling like time and shrouded in secrets. He wanted to claim her, like a primitive- like an animal. The thought terrified him, but that didn't stop him from wanting it.
Rose's hands slipped up into his hair, pulling him down towards her to deepen the kiss. He let her, parting his lips to allow entrance to her tongue- the cheeky, insolent tongue that teased him every time she smiled. He caressed it gently with his own, and shivered at the feeling.
As her hands ran through his curls and raked over his scalp, his own slipped under the hem of her shirt, and she moaned as he ran his fingertips over her hot, human skin.
How is she only human? He wondered. She seemed maddeningly exotic, completely unique in the universe.
Rose pushed his coat back off of his shoulders and he let it fall on the floor behind him as she began to work on his cravat and waistcoat. She tossed them to the ground as well, while he kissed and nipped at her lips, ears, neck. Slowly he drew down the zipper of her jacket, looking into her dark brown eyes as though asking permission. She grinned at him mischievously and shrugged it off, then wrapped her arms around his neck as she reached up to kiss the hollow of his throat. Her body deliciously warm through the thin fabric of his shirt.
"Rose..." He groaned as she led him the short distance to a divan the TARDIS had crafted in the style of his favorite reading chair. This was all moving so fast; he needed to slow down and think.
He felt his body growing impossibly aroused as she guided him to sit, then crawled onto him to straddle his lap- certainly far more aroused than a Time Lord ought to be. His eagerness made him feel like a stranger in his own body, like an adolescent in his first regeneration. What was this woman doing to him?
It wasn't that he was ignorant about copulation - he'd spent several years of his youth exploring and experimenting with sex and dozens of other activities he was explicitly instructed to avoid, especially when he was off-world away from Gallifrey and the scrutinizing eyes of his tutors. His earliest impressions had been that it was amusing and exhilarating, despite being a bit messy and ridiculous.
There had been a few trysts since those days as well, even in this relatively new incarnation. He spared a quick, fond thought for Benny - audacious, brilliant, delightfully blunt Benny - and a whirlwind of a night he'd shared with her, full of laughter and discovering. She'd tumbled him into her bed after a few glasses of champagne, and he'd been pleased to let her do it. Sex with Benny had been fun, a lighthearted diversion to see how it would feel in this new body to act on baser instincts nearly forgotten by his entire race.
No experience in his memory, however, even began to compare to this, the urgent sense of need that came over him when Rose pressed herself against him. His hands came to rest on her hips, and he had to restrain himself from pulling her pelvis hard against his, an animalistic impulse he'd never experienced before. He felt like he was drowning in her intoxicating scent.
"Rose," he murmured again, tilting his head back to look up into her lust-drunk gaze. "You know we sh-"
She cut him off with a fierce kiss.
"I know." Her full mouth was swollen and her hair was in disarray. "But right this second, I don't care. Do you?"
As if to punctuate her point, she rolled her hips, grinding softly down into him. The sudden pressure against his aroused flesh made him gasp.
"I should care," he replied in a hoarse whisper.
"That's not what I asked."
"Our timelines-"
"Will be no more screwed up if we do this than they already are."
She was right. Most likely, anyway.
"I'm not human, Rose," he went on to say, his voice rough as she nipped along his neck and collarbone with her teeth. "You know Time Lords are different..."
"I am aware of that," she whispered in his ear, then grazed her hand over his erection through his trousers, making him gasp in pleasure. "Maybe you should have a word with yourself, though. It feels like you could use a reminder."
She stripped off her top, then took his hands from her hips and moved them to her lace covered breasts, arching her back, pushing forward into his palms and down onto his hips with the same motion. Despite himself he groaned. She met his eyes and licked her lips.
"Doctor, if those years trapped in a parallel world have taught me anything, it's that anything and everything you love can be taken away from you like that."
She snapped her fingers.
"You can lose everything in a split second, so you have to appreciate the good things when you have them."
She unbuttoned his shirt as she spoke, and unhooked her own bra, tossing it aside carelessly as she stared down into his eyes.
"I've wanted you for so long Doctor," she confessed quietly, her voice losing some of its bravado.
"Another me," he murmured wistfully, allowing his eyes to wander over her bare torso, gliding a hand along the curve of her hip, the soft swell of her breast. He wanted her, yes. But he didn't particularly want to be a placeholder for a man he had not yet become.
"Doesn't matter. You're still him. He's still you," she reminded him, assuaging some of his doubt, then leaned forward to kiss the hollow of his throat, allowing her breasts to brush against his chest, naked skin to naked skin.
She sighed in pleasure at the contact, then pulled back to meet his eyes. He looked at her pleadingly, wishing for a single moment of clear thought to help him decide what he should do.
She moved off of him with reluctance, as though sensing what he needed, and sat beside him to give him space as she spoke.
"I know that you just met me," she whispered, leaning over to brush her lips gently against his ear once, twice. "So if you tell me to go, I will stop. I will leave you alone, and we don't need to mention this again. But I promise you, you will know me so well in the future that I can't imagine life without you. And I miss you so much, all the time, that it hurts me to breathe when I think of you. I want to share this with you. I know you're a Time Lord, and this connection isn't as important for you as it is for me. And I know I could get in a world of trouble over it, if something I do screws up our timelines. But Doctor... if I let you walk out of my life again without doing this I am absolutely certain I will regret it as long as I live."
She placed a hand on the side of his face to turn his head towards her, and looked into his eyes, imploring.
"One night," she begged. "Can't we just forget about the rest of the universe for one bloody night? It's not enough, but it's all I have. Please."
The look on her face was so sincere, so full of love and trust and profound sadness, it sent an unexpected jolt of emotions coursing through him: fierce protectiveness and an intense sense of affection that cut through the haze of lust in his mind. And at that exact moment he knew for certain that he couldn't possibly send her away.
"Oh, Rose."
He stood up and pulled her to her feet, taking both of her hands in his. She watched him carefully, suddenly unsure of what to do, searching his face for cues.
He could smell the individual scents on her body: the salty sheen of her perspiration as it mingled with the heady smell of her desire, the light perfume of her shampoo, and the unmistakable scent and feeling of time as it clung to every cell of her. He would not back down, even though he should. He would not step away. And if he was going to so this thing, he was going to do it right.
Taking a deep breath he drank in her hot, human pheremones and surrendered himself to the most feral, primitive part of his brain. And then his world shrank down to the size of a pin - nothing existed except for him and the woman in front of him: Rose, who wanted him; Rose, whom he was going to claim for his own.
Letting his lust wash over him, he took her hips almost hard enough to bruise her, and pulled her body against his. He could feel her bare nipples contract as they touched his chest, could see her eyes widen and darken as she felt how achingly hard he was as he held her against him.
"You're right," he confessed, speaking low, right next to her ear, "I do want you... and I want to tell you that I can smell how much you want me, how wet you are right now. It's maddeningly distracting - I can barely think of anything except how much I want to touch you, taste you, bury myself inside you until you barely even know your own name.."
Her eyes darkened again with heat and desire as he spoke, but she didn't move a muscle.
He slid his hands up to rest on her waist and leaned forward, taking first one breast and then the other in his mouth, biting softly at the nipples, dragging his fingernails gently over her flesh as her hands flew up to tangle in his hair. Touching her was so satisfying, so intoxicating. Now that he had granted permission to his base instincts they threatened to overwhelm his reason. He felt like a madman, powerless to his lust.
He fell to his knees in front of her. She gasped when he reached up to stroke her smooth, velvety breasts with their dark pink nipples tightened into achingly hard little points, pinching them hard. He planted a soft kiss right above her navel.
Her skin was so soft. He wanted to kiss it, stroke it, caress it... mark it, claim her. The smell of her pheromones made his cock even harder, engorged almost to the point of pain in the prison of his trousers. He had to taste her, had to touch her and know how wet she was, how swollen and tight she was... for him.
Still kneeling, he unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down her legs, then hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and pulled down, leaving her naked in front of him. He clenched her hips firmly enough to make her gasp again, then leaned forward on his knees to lovingly kiss her vulva, flicking his tongue out to graze her clitoris as he did. She cried out and a fresh wave of dampness covered her thighs. She was so sensitive, he thought, so responsive.
He stood, raking his fingers over her ass and up her back as he did, leaning in to kiss her deeply with the salty, earthy taste of her arousal still on his lips. She moaned into his mouth and strained towards him, craving contact.
"Doctor!" She cried out, shivering as he gathered her again into his arms.
"If we are going to do this," he murmured against her ear as she whimpered, "let's do it properly. Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?"
A/N: This chapter was getting really, really long, and I know it's been a while since I updated, so I decided to do it in two parts. Again, I know this is a bit of an agonizing cliffhanger, but I thought it would be nicer to update now than to wait until I finished the entire thing...
The mention of Benny (Bernice Summerfield) is a reference to a scene in an actual BBC Doctor Who New Adventures novel, The Dying Days by Lance Parkin. You may think I'm reading too much into the scene... but here. Have the text and judge for yourself.
'I had better go,' the Doctor said quietly, when he had finished his champagne.
Benny hesitated, looking into those deep blue eyes of his. 'Yes. Look, before you leave, there's one thing I have to do. I'd never forgive myself otherwise.'
The Doctor looked puzzled. 'What would that - '
She grabbed the lapels of his frock coat, kissed him square on the mouth and pushed him down hard onto the bed.
Thank you all for your reviews and follows. Let me know what you think! I love hearing from you! xo -OA