Author's Note: This is a very hesitant "M" chapter. Having been through quite a bit of fuss in another fandom over things like this, I was unsure if I should include this chapter in the series or let it stand alone. Let me know what you think and consider this a bit of an extension to the first chapter. See End Notes for more information.
Her skin tastes like sterile fabric and spice.
Her lips taste like searing will and hope.
She brands his skin with her touch, the fever in her fingers leaving trails of desire across his flesh, and he can't remember what sanity feels like. They are tangled and twisted, sweat-slicked bodies gliding against one another as they rush forward to oblivion.
Because that is what they've become, two creatures fighting for release in a world that no longer makes rational sense. He has lost a constant in his life, she has lost her way, and they both find mindless distraction in these acts of capricious fucking.
Isn't that what they are doing? Fucking? Because it isn't simply sex, simply an act they do for passing the time. And it certainly isn't making love, because he is convinced their haphazard scramble to find some sort of tangible proof of life isn't love. It is something else all together. Something he has never experienced and he prays to God will pass soon.
He prays it will pass because he is becoming addicted.
She can be as inviting as the clear tropical waters, or as mercurial as the cold black seas, and he feels her touch crawl under his skin with every moment they spend wrapped in one another. He wants to come up for air, knows he should, but this desire, this need for her and the escape she brings holds him fast with ropes braided from failing will and weakness.
So she drags him down into the depths of their insanity, her body welcoming and her words like a siren call.
He knows she is hurting as well, so she chases in him something other than the fear and doubt she feels at every moment. There is a presence in her scorching touch that calls to him, a presence born of that same fear and doubt, and it reminds him why he seeks her out, if only to share the briefest of contacts.
But for the moment, her slicked skin is smooth over his, and her body has opened to him with wet invitation. The guilt over his wife - he almost hopes that reminder will never fade - is riding just below the surface of his thoughts, bound tight there as he fucks the woman he is losing himself in.
His hips encourage her pace, while his hands roam over the hard curves of her stomach, and the flat plane between her breasts. A gold band glints in the failing light, a reminder to him of what he has lost, a reminder as to why he is buried so deeply in a woman made of wild conviction and sorrow.
He is addicted.
She tastes like a false promise and hope.
Author's End Note: That isn't particularly graphic "smut", so I decided to allow it in the series. I do enjoy writing the more graphic scenes, but this one called to me, and I had to write it. I feel like their relation ship could go a number of different ways, and this is simply one take on it. And thank you once again to my regular reviewers, as well as newcomer shepweir always. Also, Scousedancer, no worries.