A/N Thank you for all the reviews, although I'm now horribly worried I'm going to disappoint you all. It's peculiar reading people's thoughts on how a story should progress when you've already planned it all out and can't imagine it going any way other than how you've imagined. Eh, over-thinking: story of my life.

ANYWAY, completely M rated now, scenes of a sexual nature below.

The heavy white door was completely shut. The room was quiet, very quiet and she felt particularly alone, sitting on the edge of the large double bed, his folded pyjamas in her hands. She scanned her eyes about the place, much like the rest of Anthony's flat it was largely empty. Bed, chest of drawers, fitted wardrobe in the corner, but no pictures, nothing to mark it as his, save for a few discarded pink ribbons and a copy of Blackstone 2011.

With a heavy sigh Edith stood and started to undress. Her limbs were aching again, a full day at the restaurant making itself known in the balls of her feet. They hadn't bothered her at all when she'd been gadding about the RCJ with Anthony.

She took off everything and stood almost naked in his room, pale blue knickers the only item left. She took a moment, pushing her feelings of ridiculousness to the back of her mind. She imagined he was waiting for her in the bed.

With a huff of frustration she pulled on his pyjama top, freshly washed and irritatingly devoid of his scent.

She did up the buttons and wandered to the bedside table. Lying on its empty surface was the list of books she'd written for him over a month ago. A series of precise ticks next to each line of her looping script. He kept it here, right by his bed, with a pen on hand so he could show her his progress. The room was barren, utterly devoid of anything personal, other than the list. Her list. In pride of place.

She was back in the hall. Going towards the living room. Her feet went, one in front of the other, her legs holding up her body. Her mind was half against the plan, although apparently powerless to stop the movement.

They were going to talk in the morning. To sort the jumble of feelings, physical and emotional, into something they could understand. It had been her idea for God's sake. The cold light of day would provide cleansing perspective, wisdom and openness. The dark wasn't the place for sensible thoughts to prevail.

That was obviously the case because the flat was dark and her thoughts weren't sensible; she was outside the living room door now. And turning the handle. She wanted to be more than the author of the list by his bed, to be more than a maker of recommendations to be read and crossed off. She wanted to be the list by his bed – in his bed - and she wanted – desperately, achingly– to be precisely ticked.

The hinges creaked and he darted up, hair mussed at the back from where his head rested against the arm of the sofa.

She came further into the room, quite unable to speak. Hopefully the fact she was half naked might convey the message. He practically leered at her legs, she imagined that he very rarely leered and she was inordinately pleased.

"Hello."

"Hello."

Her hand shook as she offered it to him. He looked good. Edible.

This was the best worst idea she'd ever had.

"Come to bed?"

"Yes."

They scurried back to the bedroom together like teenagers trying not to get caught. Quick, light-footed, determined in their silence. She pulled him down the corridor, several eager steps ahead, practically on tip-toes urging the wooden floors not to creak. There was no one to catch them, of course, but it felt clandestine: her heart on the run from her head. Desire evading pragmatism.

As she reached down for the handle of the bedroom door his body caught up with hers and he pressed fully into the back of her. As the door opened to a slither of light he kissed the nape of her neck. Goosebumps arched in wings across her shoulder blades.

She bolted through the open door like a wild deer. She stood at the far side of the bed, arms crossed. Her stomach suddenly churned with nerves. She was terrified she might get what she wanted and terrified she might not.

She pulled at her top. As though she could yank it all the way down and cover the fact that she was half-naked. Going to him like this had been part of the plan. Not that there had been a plan as such. Need, desire, urgency, but no real plan. She told herself they could just sleep together. They might have no future but she could divide sex from feelings.

The magnitude of the lies she was willing to tell herself astounded her.

Anthony's head was tilted and he spoke softly, "Edith, what's wrong?"

"Suddenly feeling awfully nervous. My bravery only extended so far. Apparently the length of the hall and back." Her fingers went to her forehead, but the act of raising her arm lifted the top again and revealed her underwear. She squeaked and yanked it back down.

"I'll go back to the sofa if you want me to."

"No!" There was no equivocation in that answer, not about his presence in the room at least.

"Alright." He spoke quietly but firmly, "I'll do whatever you want."

She whispered, "I want you but –" The words crowded in her mouth. She was certain of that: she wanted him. But she was utterly uncertain if they should act on it or even how they should act on it. He would think her a tease.

"But what?" He stepped towards her, slowly.

"I don't know whether – whether we should –" She eyed the bed nervously. Mid-twenties and she still flushed at the whispered words, "have sex. I do want to – like you wouldn't believe –"

He stood in front of her now, looking down with searching blue eyes, "Oh, I think I would believe it."

She pinched his arm in reprimand, "but I'm just – oh, I don't know – you look good and you smell good and I like you. Did I say that before? Because I do. Very much – like you, that is. But I shouldn't, I know. And we were going to wait and decide tomorrow."

He nodded solemnly, "we were, because there are real reasons not to do this and they haven't changed in the last thirty minutes."

"Well, exactly." In the morning she'd lose him, it seemed inevitable and tragic. The thought made her idiotically willing to put her fragile heart on the line.

She took a deep breath, "I'm worried that I already know what the decision will be tomorrow and it's probably the right decision, except that it's a dreadful one really. I want you, more than kissing you. I don't know if I can bear it if we just walk away from each other and we haven't - " She put her forehead onto his shoulder and exhaled a rueful laugh, "you've got me at sixes and sevens."

He put his arms around her, "You think I smell good?"

"Whiskey and sandalwood."

"You know the way I smell." It could have been a question, an incredulous exclamation, but it wasn't. It was a reverent repetition of a fact. He looked at her like a present on Christmas morning. She wanted to be unwrapped.

He pushed his hand through his hair, "Edith, this is almost certainly not something I should do."

She bristled at that, he wasn't the only one wracked with uncertainty and battling with desire, "It's not something we should do."

"Do you want to do it?"

"Yes. At this moment, yes. I can't promise I won't be plagued with doubts in a couple of minutes though."

"How about this then?" He tightened his grip around her and then relaxed back with a steady exhale, "I'll try some of the things I've been imagining and when you want me to stop – if you want me to stop – say so, and I'll stop."

"You've been imagining things?"

"You, Edith Crawley, smell of lavender and fresh linen, and there are some days when I do nothing but imagine all the different things I'd like to do to you."

Aghast and slack-jawed she felt herself blushing, as hot as the sun, and not just on her face. He'd imagined her. More than that: he'd imagined doing things to her.

Her voice was thick with nerves, anticipation, arousal, a positive maelstrom of feelings, "ok."

"Ok to what Edith?" Bloody lawyers.

"To that. To you trying some things."

The corners of his mouth kicked up and then he was solemn again, "good, but I meant it when I said you should tell me to stop if you want me to stop. Don't do anything out of a sense of obligation to me. You have no obligation, you've given me far more than I deserve already. I won't think anything of it if you send me on my way back to the sofa at any point. You understand that?"

"Yes."

He stepped away from her, she felt conspicuous again without his embrace, she had to wilfully resist the temptation to cross her arms. His eyes roamed over her legs, across her torso - still clad in his too-large pyjama top - they darted along the length of her shoulders and crept up her neck back to her face. They were hungry now, a darker blue somehow. Those looks left her feeling physically touched. A searing promise of contact to come which was almost as potent as the contact itself.

"Sweet one, you are exquisitely, extraordinarily beautiful."The endearment was new and she would have considered it but he kissed her soundly on the mouth and the art of thinking was lost to her.

The shiny blue button at the neck of her top was the next focus of his attention. He pushed it through the fabric, then he moved to the second and the third. He pulled at her collar to create an open v at her neck, it pointed towards the valley between her breasts.

He tongued the notch at the base of her throat.

Her stomach curled and she stopped breathing for several beats, "oh, Anthony."

"Sensitive there?"

She was sensitive everywhere. A spring being squeezed, pent up energy waiting to release.

"S-seems that way."

"I will remember."

There was such intimacy in that – he wanted to remember, as if the information would be required again. But, of course, it would be, Edith knew now. She wasn't going to tell him to stop, not ever. Risk or no risk, no one would choose to give up feeling this way and she couldn't give up the man doing it.

Tugging on the arm of the top he shifted the v and kissed along her clavicle and then repeated the process on the other side. His lips traced a path up her neck and to her ear. She bent away from him, offering herself, he nipped and soothed before sucking her lobe into his mouth.

"At first –" his words were a mumble on her neck, "I thought your skin was soft like silk, but now –" the tip of his tongue traced the shell of her ear - she shuddered - "I think it's more akin to a fresh rose petal."

He opened the rest of her buttons, running his thumb softly from sternum to navel.

"I can't believe you don't think you're a romantic." She was breathless.

He manoeuvred her backwards to the bed, "you bring it out in me, sweet one."

"Don't start that again. You have not lost your ability to be romantic. It's nothing to do with m-"

The words caught in her throat and became a choked sob of urgent, consuming, need.

He'd brushed her nipple with his thumb.

His eyes were wide with shock, "God, if that's your reaction when I'm just touching, imagine the sounds you'll make when I put my mouth to them."

She whimpered.

He chuckled, "lie down."

She almost groaned that he wasn't going to do it straight away. She wanted to wrap her hand around his neck and force his mouth down. She didn't, she sat and shuffled back onto the bed: head on the pillow, feet at the end, terribly generic. She held her top together so she didn't expose herself, a ridiculous concession to modesty given what was happening.

He continued to stand and took off his top, but left his bottoms on – was she relieved, or disappointed? Disappointment was the predominant feeling, but just for a moment. The surprisingly thick thatch of blonde hair covering his chest distracted her, thinning around his stomach and then thickening again where it disappeared in a narrow line into his trousers. His chest seemed broader out of clothes than in them and his stomach was flat.

Edith could barely remember the body of her first and only boyfriend, which rather suggested it was nothing special. Most of her experience of the male form had been informed by the men at the clubs she went to with Thomas, and Thomas himself - all frighteningly chiselled. Anthony was not like that, but he was solid and substantial and she ached for him. She licked her lips, almost unconsciously.

"If you've quite finished objectifying me?" He settled beside her on the bed.

"I-I wasn't. It was – I -" She laughed and shook her head, mortified.

He settled beside her, throwing his leg over hers, "Look as much as you like, sweet one. You can even touch if the fancy takes you."

"Have you imagined that?"

"You touching me?" He levered himself up, his knee pressing her legs open, "only thousands of times."

So she did, running her hand along his collarbone and down his sternum, the softness of his hair was somehow surprising. Mirroring his earlier actions she tested his nipple with a thumb. It firmed under her touch.

"Edith, do you have any idea, the effect you have on me?"

"Perhaps –" She arched her hips and brushed his erection with her pelvis, surprised at her own forwardness.

He growled and pushed her flannel top off her shoulders and, after a mere moment of simply looking, he took the tip of her right breast into his mouth.

This time her hips bucked of their own volition, as natural a reaction as breathing. His tongue circled the areola and drew across her nipple. Then he sucked and the acutely empty space between her legs pulsed. Unashamed sounds emanated from her throat – she was panting, of all things, and forcing her breast further into his mouth. He brushed his fingers across her other nipple and gently pinched.

Was it possible to die from feeling too much?

He moved across to sooth the pinch with his mouth, enveloping it in warmth. Her right nipple was left firm and glistening with his saliva. Anthony's saliva. It should have been discomforting, but it wasn't, it was beautifully carnal. Edith was almost as aroused by that as she was seeing his lips tend to her other breast, although it couldn't contend with the flat of his tongue teasing her nipple to a peak and sucking, harder than before. She moaned her approval - a strange, breathless, garbled version of his name – Anthony, interspersed with sounds and vowels which didn't belong. Her eyelids fluttered the room in, and out, of focus.

This was why she had breasts. A woman with children might point out that there were other, rather more practical, reasons. But when Anthony had her nipple in his mouth she felt like she'd been given her small, slightly uneven pair for that sole purpose. They'd been waiting this whole time for Anthony to bring them to life. She was so grateful for them, for what he could do to them, to her.

His head lifted up and he kissed her mouth, breathing heavily, "That was even better than I imagined, everything is better than I imagined. You are extraordinary."

He kissed her neck and down her stomach. To her consternation he reached her naval and went lower still. She sat up with a start and twisted away, "you don't have to do that, really. If you're going to –" She couldn't even speak the words, she was flushed and hot and aroused and hoped the flapping of her hands conveyed her meaning. No one had ever done that. She suddenly felt terribly naked. As if only just realising they were exposed she folded her arms across her breasts.

Her voice was a croak, "you don't have to do that."

Kissing her stomach, he arched an eyebrow, "and if I want to?"

Her mouth was dry. He couldn't really want to. Any words she might have wielded fled from the tip of her tongue. She was curious, of course, to see if anything pleasant could arise from such a personal act. Films and television and books told countless stories about its wonders. But fiction so often fosters disappointment in real life, it couldn't be as good as it was portrayed.

Dumbly, she shrugged, hating herself as soon as she did because there were very few things less intimate, less sexy, than a bloody shrug.

"I do want to sweet one." He levered himself over her. Slowly he moved one arm off her chest and back to her side, then the other before kissing each breast gently, reverently.

He pulled away, "I desperately want to. I want to taste you everywhere Edith, not just here –" he kissed her lips, seaming them with his tongue, "and here –" behind her ear, "and here –" the pulse at her neck, "and here –" breast again, "but everywhere - please."

If she had ever had the capacity to respond in the wake of such onslaught of desire it had long since deserted her. She settled for a nod.

His smile was marvelously wicked. He leant up, erection fully apparent, tenting his trousers, and pulled behind her knees. She laughed, finding herself flat on the bed again, eying the cracked ceiling. Nervous and giddy. He wanted to do this; she wanted him to do it. If she could have managed words he'd done enough to have her begging for his lips where no lips had ever been before.

He hooked a finger under her underwear and drew it down her legs. She couldn't look. He kissed her ankles and up her calves and in the pits of her knees, first one, then the other. He was close now. The ornate flowers carved into the coving were beautifully intricate.

Then he was kissing the smooth flesh between the tops of her legs. His breath was warm. He must be looking right at - it. 'It' felt like the right word, so alien was her own body.

He must have liked the look of it because he did exactly what he said he would - he tasted. A slow tongue between her folds.

Her hips jerked in response and tiny eruptions of pleasure covered her body. She was wet, not just between her legs, she'd been wet there for what felt like months, but everywhere; her skin alive with perspiration and need.

She had to look then. It was almost unbearably erotic. Anthony's flock of blonde hair between her pale thighs. Strong shoulders and flexing back muscles keeping her legs wide apart. His blue eyes darted up, she couldn't see his mouth, of course, it was occupied, but he was obviously smiling. Looking at her, looking at him.

Another sweep of the tongue, and just-the-right-spot, "ah – fu – oh." Her neck arched her head back into the pillow and she was looking at the ceiling again. She couldn't have named the colour it was painted, let alone considered the intricacies of the coving or the length of the cracks. She was insensible, vision blurred. He drew his tongue in rapid patterns and – she couldn't believe it, or believe how much she wanted it - sucked.

Her muscles tensed and relaxed and she pushed her hips forwards, forcing herself further onto his face. She needed more, just a little more.

His hand pressed to her stomach, firm but not hard, easing her back down to the bed, although his tongue kept right at it. Then he was touching her too. Parting her flesh, and he was caressing deeper. Startled, she shouted her capitulation to the new intensity, "Ah-oh – fuck!" She rarely swore - it spurred him on. She thought she might break clean in two, or shatter into a thousand tiny parts, her whole body was keening, hurtling towards something magnificent.

He curled a finger inside her, and then a second, drawing them in and out.

That did it.

"Yes - yes, I'm – God - Anthony - yes."

Edith had experienced orgasms. All under her own steam when she felt the inclination, which wasn't all that often. They were nothing compared to this. A brush stroke to a whole painting, a raindrop to an ocean, a first line to a completed novel. White light blazed in front of her eyes.

The undulations of her hips and Anthony's clever mouth drew the sensations out. She panted and moaned – loudly - but she didn't care, she'd never felt less self-conscious in her whole life.

Blissful exhaustion rolled through her, every muscle relaxed. She was vaguely aware of Anthony speaking and she caught a glimpse of white teeth in the midst of a broad smile. The room was covered in a foggy, blurry haze and she shut her eyes, telling herself it would be just for a moment.