A/N Happy Easter everyone! How's this for a weird follow up to that sentiment: M rated, scenes of a sexual nature below.

Anthony ran his index finger along the wooden edge of the desk pushing his flesh into every divot and cavity. The pale skin turned red. He raked his hand through his hair and wondered when exactly he'd buggered everything up so completely.

There was a soft knock at the door, not Mrs Hughes who was loud and would've let herself in by now. His heart skipped a little with the excitement, immediately doused by the reality.

"Come in."

Edith breezed her way in with a lovely smile, "Good morning, sorry I'm late."

Over the weeks she'd established a pattern. Jacket off and set atop his, pencils and sketchpad on the coffee table and bag tucked at the end of the sofa. Usually she made them tea but today she'd bought two take away coffee. She went about her normal routine explaining that she was late because a customer had bored her to tears the previous evening raving about caramel macchiatos and a trip to the Starbucks at the tube station had been the inevitable consequence.

A chance conversation was all that prevented her from running straight into Maud. Anthony didn't know whether to be grateful or annoyed, in some ways it would be easier if the job of ending their liaison was done for him. It was a shameful thought, he really was a coward.

"Edith?"

She turned, uncapping her coffee and pursing her lips to blow a cooling path of air across the top. She tucked a stray wave of hair behind her ear.

How could he give her up?

"Let's go out tonight."

She tilted her head, "I thought you couldn't whilst you were summing up?"

"I have most of tomorrow's written. I just -" Need to wreck the best thing that's ever happened to me. "I just want to spend the evening with you."

"I'm supposed to be seeing Mary, but I can move it to tomorrow night. Do you want to go out for a meal? Or something else?"

"Let's do something different." If they went for a meal he'd have to talk to her, there would be no excuses to ignore the issue.

"There's a Scrabble tournament at your local."

"A Scrabble tournament?"

"We can go, get knocked out in the first round and then cheer the other contestants on?"

"Sounds great." He took a glug of his first caramel macchiato, deciding immediately it would be his last, "God that's quite disgusting."

"They're an acquired taste."

"Not if I never have one again."

She chuckled, "philistine."

"Hang on, how can you be so sure I'll get knocked out in the first round? I got three bingos last time we played."

"And I still won by thirty points. You're all style, no substance." She flopped onto the sofa and tucked her legs up, "Scrabble isn't about impressive words; it's about strategy."

As ever, Edith was exactly right. He played a wide variety of words in his first round match against a computer programmer from Credit Suisse, including a fantastic bingo - 'pinning'. Except that in doing so he opened up the triple word score, which was immediately used against him. Then, to cap off the humiliation, his opponent played 'qi' on a double word score providing him with nearly as many points as if he'd played a bingo himself. Anthony lost by forty points.

Somewhat predictably, Edith sailed through her first round. She was apologetic that their planned night together had become an evening of watching her play. It worked quite well for Anthony, an ideal situation to avoid having the conversation he must eventually have.

He drank more as he watched her second victory. The alcohol lowered his inhibitions, loosened his hands and his lips. All the structures he'd put on their interactions when they were out in public fell away. He rubbed her shoulders like a boxing coach, her rehydration was another sip of whatever sickly pink cocktail she'd last ordered, he moped her brow with the occasional kiss and whispered words of encouragement. The ref, wearing skinny jeans and a Fox and Hound t-shirt, rather than a peculiar take on a black tuxedo, told them to stop cheating. Edith just giggled and said "he's a terrible player, he's not helping one bit with the words!" Then she craned her face up to his and whispered "you are helping though, don't stop." He laughed and caught her lips in a quick kiss.

She beat the next two opponents in a cantor and then she was in the final. His brilliant and beautiful Edith. Quite the crowd built around the table. Groups looked at the tiles and suggested words to one another in hushed tones and pointed at potential placement options. One group of suited City workers did a shot for every two-letter word. Three particularly drunk females tried to re-arrange the sedate words into rude ones – they nearly always had to add a letter or take one away – 'oh, tucks! That's almost fucks!'

Amidst the rattle of the rabble Edith played, methodically and thoughtfully, thinking at least three words ahead. Scrabble was a game of strategy, she'd told him so over and over. He'd never beaten her and no one in the pub managed it either. She won the final by thirty points.

She jumped out of her seat and was warm and willing in his arms, "I can't believe it!"

"I can! You're infuriatingly brilliant at this game. Congratulations sweet one." He kissed her full on the lips as the drunken pub-goers cheered.

The manager bought her up to the bar and presented her with a trophy. After announcing the winner to the crowd he thrust the microphone into her hands and a swell of chants built from her audience – 'Speech! Speech! Speech!'

"Oh – I – Oh" The sound system emitted that familiar high pitched squeak as she tried to hold the microphone at the correct distance, "Sorry! Oh God, I'm not one for speeches really. That's my other half's specialty."

She nodded in his direction. Eyes flicked to him and back to her. He was the other half. For a moment he was delighted, he wanted to crow – that's right, I belong to her and she belongs to me; that brilliant Scrabble strategist is mine. All mine.

Then the reality burst in. It had only been this morning that he'd sat across from Maud. He couldn't be Edith's other half because he was already one to another woman, in another life. His real life.

She finished the rest of her short thank you speech, flushed and proud and beautiful. Anthony stared at her and smiled dumbly. They walked home, hand in hand, he fed the fire, and he knew it. He'd spent the night acting like a boyfriend, and she'd called him as much in that little speech, yet he'd spent the morning resolving to end it all, and soon.

The click of the front door was like a starting pistol in his head. It shouldn't have been that way, he should have been able to control himself, but he found he was quite unable to show restraint. His hand went to her hip and he pulled her around, trapped her against the wall and pressed his lips to hers, tongue seeking entrance and receiving it. He heard her bag and the trophy slide to the floor. Her legs parted and he ground against her, a man possessed, guided only by his desire for this woman. His mind screamed with the relief of it: Edith, at last, Edith.

Therein lay the difficulty. She was everything and without her he was surely nothing.

"God I've missed you."

"You've seen me everyday."

"But not every night." Three days had been three decades, three centuries, the whole of time rolling slowly and pointlessly past.

There were more words bubbling up, words of affection and arousal. They suffocated the words he should say. It was as it had always been with Edith, the right course overridden by the wrong one. He went so willingly down a path that would hurt them both.

He brushed his thumb across her lips and she sucked it inside. Warm and moist right down to the knuckle. How is it possible he was harder than he had been before? He shoved up her skirt. The bed was continents away, at least two doors, almost the length of the flat. Knickers were gone, pooling on the floor, he'd find them the next morning. Then his hand was between her legs.

His lips left hers and kissed behind her ear, "you are always so wet."

She answered to his lips, pulling his shirt from his trousers, hands on his bare back, "for you, always for you."

He'd been a damned fool. Stupid and selfish. He'd have to tell her. Hurt her. He was so sorry for it all. Perhaps he could kiss it away, fuck it away. If he made her feel good in this moment perhaps she wouldn't hate him the next.

He kissed her as he touched her clitoris. She moaned into his mouth. His name in mumbled tones as her tongue met his. He adored that. Her hips pushed into his and her hands fumbled with his trousers.

"There's a condom in my bag." Her words were a breathless caress.

"Is there?"

"You think you're the only one who thinks about sex, who's missed the sex?"

He bent down to retrieve the bag and its contents, "you're a marvel you know that?"

She took it from him and put it on. Then her hazel eyes were intent on his face. Fogged with desire and absolutely certain.

She pulled his hand from her waist to the back of her soft thigh. She arched her leg up around his hip and, instinctively he held her. Between their legs, she positioned him and - there was no other way of putting it - took him. Angling herself and driving onto his thick erection.

He growled his capitulation, "Jesus, Edith."

It should have been 'forgive me, Edith' or 'I'm sorry, Edith' or 'I've been such an idiot, Edith', but the words wouldn't come. All he could do was show her his feelings and hope that she would come instead.

Both her legs were tight around him, hips grinding. Her head thrashed backwards. He wished he'd taken her top off; the angle of her back pushed her breasts to the perfect height for his mouth.

"Hang on." His hand left her thigh, the leg dropped slightly causing a shift in rhythm and angle which somehow bought him closer to finishing. He tried to grasp at the front of her shirt.

"What are you -" her eyes were half shut, voice laced with pleasure, "oh - oh - let me."

He lifted her leg back into position and thrust as deep as he could. She moaned with it as she pulled her top over her head. She wasted no time on attempting the clasp. Instead she plunged both her hands into the cups of her plain pink bra and pulled her breasts out over the top. The bunched fabric pushed them up. Her nipples were taut, and that perfect shade of delicious rose. She ran her own thumbs over them and pinched, biting a groan into her bottom lip.

"Oh, fuck, Edith." He wanted that to be his fingers. She was close, her slick passage tightening as her thighs gripped him more firmly. All the telltale signs.

She rolled her hips again, meeting the movement of his, her back arched and finally he was able to capture a nipple in his mouth. He sucked.

They never came precisely together. He usually followed her, a few seconds after her climax had abated. Not so today, the erotic charge he felt when he finally had her breast in his mouth went straight to his groin and he was emptying into her as her own climax wracked her body.

She sobbed out cries of his name, "Anthony! God, Anthony!"

He left her breast and crushed their mouths together without art or forethought, taking her mouth as her orgasm rippled around his sensitive cock.

She slumped onto his chest and he hooked his arm under her legs and carried her to the bedroom. They undressed. She took a t-shirt to sleep in and curled into his chest, her ear close to his still-thumping heart. Her fingers ran idly along his hipbone before she drifted to sleep, soft snores filling the silence of the bedroom.

Her hair smelt of lavender and was nearly as soft as her skin. She fit perfectly against him. He stared at the ceiling and blinked away tears.

One thought echoed around his head: how can I give her up?