Once they had returned the horses, the sky was a blend of pink, orange, and yellow. Jack slid his hand from Rose's for a second to roll up the bottoms of his trousers once again and Rose watched him, amused. She turned her head to the left and gazed out to the endless blue sea which seemed to span as far as the eye could see. The sea breeze hit her face sending her curls billowing about her face and she closed her eyes relishing the moment. She clutched the bottoms of her dress tighter and turned to see Jack's eyes on her. Her face was peaceful, and it was how she felt too - peaceful and calmness. Their hands slipped into each other's again as they continued their stroll across the beach. The feeling of the sand between their toes was glorious, freedom had finally come to Rose, and she had found a love in Jack she thought she never knew existed. Was this the life which he was inviting her to join him in, to live to peacefully and happily?

Jack came to a small spot beneath the pier, and he gestured for Rose to sit down on the soft sand. He felt his nerves flutter slightly, and Rose positioned herself so she could sit in front of him in-between his open legs and rest her head on his chest. Their fingers entwined and silence fell over them for a few moments.

''So, this is what you wanted to show me?''

Jack nodded. ''Yes, it is.''

She sighed with contentment. This was what she could get used to. How could she have lived by the beach for so long before Jack had brought her here and not even thought to witness this beauty? She could stay here forever. Worries were lost. Nothing mattered. She sighed though as her head wondered back to the reality of the day.

''I spent three hours at the boutiques today. Just with my head so lost...buying dresses, silly expensive dresses with Cal's money.''

Jack felt his stomach sink. ''Is that what you want?''

''God, no. I don't want the dresses. I don't want to marry him. I don't want that life. I want this.'' She realised that she was still wearing her engagement ring and she held up her hand. ''I don't want this.''

Jack sat upright. Carefully, he removed the ring from her finger. The relief which followed was wonderful. Her confidence had come from Jack, she had never felt this way. He felt like throwing the ring into the ocean so that it could never be retrieved but he knew he shouldn't.

''Then don't do it. Don't marry him. Come with me, tonight.''

Rose leant forward to throw her arms around Jack but instead they ended up tumbling backwards into the sand in each other's arms laughing hysterically until she stopped and remembered something.

''What about all of this? About what happened today?''

Jack placed his finger on her lips to silence her. ''Let's not worry yet.'' He told her. ''Nothing could come of it. But we can be out of here before anybody even notices that we're gone.''

She nodded. She needed to forget. Her ring fell from her lap into the sand, and it was long buried. She grasped his hands and led them to her hips; he massaged them as he had the night before. She found his lips with her eyes closed. The heat coming from him almost set her alight. She knew they would need to dim their behaviour but once she started with him there was no stopping. She found the strength to pull away and sat up so that she was straddling him.

''I'm yours, if you want me. All of me.'' She told him, quietly and shyly.

''Oh, Rose. I want you; I have since the first damned day I met you.''

She smiled as he kissed her fiercely and felt the breath knocked from her lungs. ''I love you.'' She whispered against his lips. There, she had said it. ''You were my first everything and I don't want you to let me go.''

He tightened his grip on her waist, grasping at her skin through her dress. ''I love you, too.''

The first time he had told her so, he was unsure, not of his feelings but of her reaction but now he had never been surer about anything in his life.

''Rose, I would marry you tomorrow if that was what you wanted. I won't ever let any harm come to you.'' Jack's voice was soft, it almost was inaudible from the sound of the waves lapping gently against the sand. Rose turned her head slightly, feeling her stomach knot. A small smile came across her face.

''Oh, how I would like that.'' She giggled. ''To be your wife.''

Jack couldn't help but smile. ''This is crazy. You know that.''

''Yes. But I trust it.''

Rose nuzzled herself against him. She noticed that the sky was now darker, and they would need to take the horses back soon but right now they seemed as content as Rose was with Jack. She glanced out at the ocean, taking everything in. The moment was wonderful.

''There is something which I must do before we leave town.'' Jack told her ever so quietly.

''So, what do you have to do?'' She asked suddenly so serious.

''I must take you to the church and make you, my wife.''

Her face rested and her lips curled into a smile. ''Yes, I am all right with that.''

He could taste the sweat on her face as he ran both of his hands down the curve of either side of her body. She allowed him to kiss her neck as she ragged his jacket from his arms and it fell to the floor in a puddle right there. Their eyes found each other's eyes in the darkness as the passion within burnt brightly. This time, they were both as sure that resistance would not be offered. Without so much as a hesitance, Jack's hands caressed the swell of her breasts on the outside of the dress, she arched into him, pulling at his shirt wanting him to remove it and every layer which separated them. Somehow, blindly, she was led towards the beach, further near to the spiralling ocean. It was peaceful until spots of rain came, slowly at first until it hammered at them at full pelt.

The rain slanted the opposite way, leaving Rose free to see Jack, pulling his shirt untucked from his trousers and her hands tickled across the top of his buttons, in an unknown tease. Backing her further out, Jack continued to play with her, pinching at her erect nipples and applying just enough pressure to make her ache and not cry out in pain. Since the moment he had laid eyes on her, he had wanted to feel her there so thoroughly, to test how she liked to be touched in places where no one but he had ever gone.

''Jack, I've never-never been naked before another but you.'' Her strained voice, whispering against his sensitive ears was like torture. "I was scared of how you'd see me."

''Don't think of that now.'' His eyes were lit with such flames of love that they almost set her on fire there and then. "I see you."

"And?"

"You're so God damned beautiful."

Both of his palms came up, flat to her face. Slanting his head, he targeted her lips softly, taking them ever so slowly, carefully and yet they felt utterly bruised as though he had kissed her for an eternity. Oh, how she wished that he would. The slow caress of his lips was torturous and so alluring that though she tried to escape the grasp of him, he slowed his pace even more. Her hands went to his sides, sliding inside his open shirt, clasping at his skin and gliding down his wet torso. Tufts of hair were spread about his chest, going down towards the top of his trousers and once she reached there, he stopped kissing her abruptly to pant and catch his breath.

Rose took her chance to move away and place a slight distance between them on the soggy sand. How was everything else suddenly disintegrating into nothing, leaving them as the only two souls within this absurd world in which they lived?

All naivety was left behind. As she twirled, moving her body like a Goddess under a moonless sky. She wanted to strip down bare, exposing everything and allow the rain to wash away all sins which she could have committed. To take away the nightmares of the past. To allow the black clouds to break away, to let the roof of the sky cave in and bring fractured sunlight slowly before revealing a full and beautiful beam of light which could be endless.

''Don't be afraid to stare,'' she called to him, breathless. The sodden sand beneath her stocking feet sank beneath her weight. Reaching to the hems of her dress, she snaked her hand up to the edge of her stocking before pulling it off in one swift move, before repeating with the other. Now, she was bare between her legs.

Now she was naked.

Beneath the tremendous rain, she stood almost bare to his eyes. His own shirt was soaked through, clinging to his torso in a sordid way. A way which could have made even the most innocent of minds play away with them.

Worrying her teeth between her lips, suddenly, she was unable to stop herself from needing to feel herself against him once more. The mystery of him now was arousing her, wishing that she could touch every single inch of his torso. As the droplets of rain fell from his hair, down to his chest she came to him in a dizzy stumble, her feet digging into the sand.

Seeing him, this way, dazed and blinded by the sensual gaze upon her body now was feeding her infatuation. She could lose herself without redemption. This time, as his lips came down on hers it was frenzied, slanted to gain deeper entry. Their tongues sloshed together, sliding with the wetness of their faces and yet clammy from the nerves, the adrenaline and the intensity of been unable to hold each other in their arms for ten whole years.

No longer able to hold their own weight upon their feet, they crashed to the ground, rolling with the beach unable to move from their own passionate embrace. Teeth nipped at necks, clashing against the others as they claimed lips again. Jack's shirt was discarded with one fast attempt, and then Rose's fumbling hands found his trousers as with trembling fingers she found a way to help him to escape.

Rose leant forward, cradling his erection between her thighs and relishing just how he felt against her. For her. As she was pressed to his torso, brushed against him and his head fell to the side as the sound of her voice tickling his ears.

''I never could have imagined this."

''No, well I have.'' She told him, with such certainty. ''This is the most erotic moment of my life."

Jack ran a hand, steady down her shoulders, to the top of her breasts, where it swelled, full and rounded.

''I was afraid to touch you at first."

''I didn't know how to touch you."

''I know that.''

Lightening flashed and Jack held onto her body for dear life as she shuddered beneath the golden shine across the sky. It was hardly recognisable though as instead of reaching down how he wished to, to touch her there, between her thighs. Instead, Jack's hands came to cup her rear and with a palm on each cheek, her legs clamped around his waist as in one single movement, he was on his feet and carrying her forwards.

Effortlessly, he took her to the edge of the water where beneath a grey sky his feet dipped into the surf without so much of a gasp of the coldness as it enveloped him.

Lethargically, Rose lifted her head from his shoulder, her hair a blanket about them as it stuck to her face, her belly...all over. Swollen lips turned up into a smile, and slowly, without warning, he kept moving forward until the water was up to his legs, without even so much of a flinch. How could he even move an inch when his entire life had been spent wishing for this moment when Rose would be this way with him. Stripped down, without care. Lights low enough for them to be exposed bare to the other.

When the splashes hit her legs, her back, her belly, Rose gasped but had no time to think as Jack's mouth was on hers in the most precious, claiming way. It was intoxicating how a man could kiss with such love and affection present there within the way he massaged her tongue and explored her in a way that before that night, he never had done.

He kissed her face, her brows, her cheekbones and down to her neck as he cherished everything about her. As her hair clung to her shoulders, Rose flicked it away, to allow him better access to her collarbone. Her weight in his arms, mixing with the need to feel her entirely properly, caused his legs to buckle beneath him and they fell into a tangled heap upon the soft sands with the cold waves washing about their bodies. Her head fell backwards, burying into the sand, it almost felt like a pillow beneath her head, cushioning the embrace and allowing him deeper access to her most sensitive spot. His skin, bare and warm against her own, and the contrast of the freezing water was causing her breathing to grow shallow. Her hair was covered in the flakes of sand, his hands fisted in the strands and as he was suddenly above her, with her long, lean legs wrapped about his waist in a way which she had never had, caused him to wish to soar. In a single second, Rose was pinned beneath that gaze which had filled her entire universe for so long. Her lips wished to quiver in response to him, just the way her body did. She treasured him, the way he responded to her in the same lustful manner.

Jack slowed his pace, aware that he was starting to tremble, feeling something of a build-up already. The utter intensity was almost a dire shock to his system. Their bodies stuck to the other, her breasts rubbing against his own chest and Jack moved upwards to take a look at her beneath the dim light of night, beneath the roaring thunder which claimed the sky. She glowed pale, with goosebumps painting her body. She writhed beneath his touch, beneath his tongue and knowing that he was still, even now, the only man to have her this way was enough for him to now die happily.

Lost in her embrace, he arched his spine upward and kissed a fiery trail down her throat to her breasts. He licked and savoured the pale skin, stroking the sides with his hands, cupping their weight as they become heavy and taut. He bit her there, slowly. Marking her. As he would mark her everywhere. Only when she begged did his mouth open and engulf her completely again. He suckled her with slow, deep, rhythmic pulls of his tongue and lips, shuddering as the sensation travelled through her body. He could come like this, just from the measured clench and release of her. How was a man ever supposed to stop making love when this was how it felt? Heaven didn't exist anymore; there was only the two of them. Two souls completely entwined.