A/N: Thank you for all your reviews, feedback, and constructive criticisms. Just for context, Ed Sheeran's 'Shivers' played on repeat in my mind while I was writing what Scarlett recalls in the more, ah, descriptive passages of this chapter.

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Chapter 11

Yet Rhett didn't make a move so far as her person and merely continued to regard her with that impassive, yet piercing gaze. Scarlett felt more and more uncomfortable and unsettled as the seconds ticked on.

She looked him up and down from beneath her eyelashes. On closer inspection, he'd changed clothing from the games and stories with the children and donned all his finery from the day of the train wreck, down to the cravat, even though it was loosened.

He appeared quite ready to embark on an evening on the town, while she—she shifted in her thin-as-air silk.

"I am feeling decidedly underdressed," she motioned to his attire. He hesitated a mere moment before standing and taking off his frock coat.

"Careful you don't catch cold," he said as he draped the coat around her shoulders, and didn't undress himself any further at all before sitting back down.

"I found your story particularly interesting, if a little aggrandized," he said. " I suppose something untoward must have taken place over the years at your beloved behemoth." He lit his cigar from the birthday party and she knew with a sinking feeling—or perhaps with relief, she wasn't sure which—that there would be more discussion before matters progressed.

She huffed. "Of course bad things happened, people were sick and suffered injuries, and my baby brothers died." My mother may very well not have ever loved my father, and mourned Phillippe Robillard until the moment she passed …

"There was hardly any point in me focusing on those occurrences at a birthday party for a child." She drummed her fingers unconsciously on her thigh through the nightgown. "Did we come up here to socialize or — " she gestured behind them at the makeshift bed.

"Certainly." He made a mocking motion in the same direction. "But we can at least be civilized, can we not? We have all night." He leaned back and drew deeply on the cigar again. She narrowed her eyes at him and crossed her arms as he continued unperplexed.

"It seems Tara is—rather, was—your Eden. Or at least, it would have been with Mr. Wilkes."

She made a frustrated sound and he raised a hand.

" Yes, yes, I know you claim it's water under the bridge and all that." He took another drag. "Nonetheless, I find I would like to hear your reply."

"Tara was indeed my Eden. Yes, he would have made it complete, or I thought he would for the longest time. He was a part of that world, and my life in it, you see. You wouldn't understand."

"Ah, but I do understand. I feel sorry for Mr. Wilkes, though he has robbed both you and me. But I disagree with your statement, at least in part. He may have been in that world but never has he been of it, or of any world that is real and present; whilst I could not slide a single page from one of his vaulted books between you and the earth."

Rhett's dark gaze narrowed as he went on, even as a false smile touched his lips. "As a result he takes what little energy and strength he has from you, flitters like a hummingbird to drink of your nectar, and then flies away before the potency of it does him in." His expression became a bit rueful. "Though I would like to know precisely how much he drank, the one time you've admitted that he forgot himself."

Oh, he was going to spurt nonsense and then go on about her slip of the tongue yet again, was he? Scarlett shifted in her seat, stung by the ring of truth in his words even as she discounted them. She thought of Ashley, briefly, and his odd, restrained courtship so long ago, and wondered why she had ever found it so fascinating; then again, probably just because he was so different from the other suitors.

It was beyond her at the moment to wonder how it had ever gone on so long, not now she that had Rhett and this night right in front of her, and how would she think of another at any rate? She didn't understand why she ever had, but being a supremely practical person, shrugged and shook it from her consciousness.

He appeared to be taking note of the expressions flitting across her face, yet the next thing he said surprised her.

"I imagined an Eden myself once, and a woman to complete it. But it was not to be."

"You have been in love?"

"Once."

She felt the pricklings of jealousy. "When?"

"I suppose it's been about ten years now."

Rhett in love. She tried to wrap her mind around it. Ten years. That meant during the war, and after, and he asked her to marry him in the midst of it.

"So you were in love with another woman when I met you, and all through the years?" Scarlett tried and failed to keep the pique out of her voice. "You never mentioned it. Are you in love with her presently?"

"I was smitten, at first sight. The love took a little longer." He neatly sidestepped her question.

The unsettled vortex of emotions again took her by surprise. Rhett, she repeated in her mind, in love! The concept blew all the wind out of her sails.

"You told me you didn't have a sweetheart, that day you visited me at the store after you got out of the horse jail."

"She wasn't my sweetheart, she belonged to another. My, er, feelings went quite unrequited for years of yearning and longing. The pining does take a toll."

He continued smoking his cigar as if they were discussing the weather.

"What happened? Why did you marry me?"

He didn't answer for a moment, just stretched with that lazy grace of his, while her eyes traveled the length of his body as he did so.

"At first it was a joyous ache, bittersweet with need, that became much more bitter than sweet as time went on."

Something about this conversation wasn't sitting right, something about it was off. He was evading, giving bits and fragments, yet still avoiding. She couldn't grasp exactly what it was, and felt as if she was underwater in the Flint River, words escaping her reach like water weeds, slick, elusive, yet their presence confounding and real.

"Someone I know? That Watling cre—that woman?"

"No, not Belle," he said with a dismissive gesture. " You've always given Belle far too much credence."

She knew a brief moment of relief before the niggling at the back of her mind started again, the concepts that were right there but still out of her reach.

The muddy water wouldn't give away its secrets, and neither, apparently, would Rhett. Scarlett stood.

"I didn't come up here to be toyed with, and listen to you speak of loving another woman. I'm going back to the cabin."

"We have to begin again," he said as if she hadn't spoken at all. "Tell me about your husbands before me. I want to hear the intimate details."

She sat back down, distracted by the indecorous question. "Whatever for?"

"To see where we went wrong. As I stated previously, it has occurred to me that even before my ejection from your inner sanctuary I may have been somewhat unmindful." He stubbed out the cigar on the hardwood wall. "When you were intimate with Charles—"

"Well, what about it?" she snapped. "We discussed that on our honeymoon."

"We discussed it very briefly as you were wont to give any details and only parlayed the most basic and paltry of information—that you didn't care for it, which I already knew. Tell me what it was really like, and be truthful. We haven't the time for any of your faux shock or dismay or blubberings about indecent and improper conversations that we both know don't bother you at all deep inside." One corner of his mouth raised as he went on.

"Imagine we're not married, if that helps, and we're on Aunt Pitty's porch after drinking a vat of homemade scuppernong wine when the discussion veers into this territory."

"We would not discuss this on Pitty's porch, for all that is holy. What's gotten into you?"

He continued undaunted. "If that doesn't work imagine I'm driving you around Atlanta in my buggy like I used to do; we had some fairly enlightening and enjoyable conversations, back then, before all the—" he waved his hand in the air.

Before we married and what that did to us, Scarlett finished in her head.

"I'm not telling you anything. You'll just laugh."

"We do have a deal. You won't be mocked for your answers."

She viewed him warily, then allowed herself to relax. Well, then. What could it hurt? Perhaps telling him would help him understand at least some of her reluctance.

"I hated it. There was pain," she stated flatly. "Charles had a great deal of—bulk."

"Bulk?"

"His—body. It was cumbersome, unwieldy."

Rhett wrinkled his brow. "I recall Mr. Hamilton as being average in stature."

"I'm not speaking of his stature."

Comprehension dawned. "So he was large," Rhett mused. "Good tidings for Wade."

"God's nightgown! Don't bring my children into this. And yes, large, are you satisfied now? You did ask for frankness."

"Larger than—" he gestured to the front of his trousers.

"Ah," She swallowed, and mentally squared her shoulders before continuing. "About the same. But I was only sixteen, had never been married or had children, and he—"

Rhett sighed in resignation. "Didn't know what he was doing and hurt you more than necessary as a result."

"I suppose." How mortifying could this night be? Would there be a limit? She'd really like to know. Perhaps he'd stop hounding her now that she'd—

"And Frank, in the bedroom—"

Oh, he wasn't going to shut up anytime soon. Scarlett reached over and poured herself a half-shot of whiskey, throwing it back neatly and cradling the cup against her chest.

"Frank reminded me of a hermit crab changing his shell when he took his pants off," she blurted out. "Pink and wrinkled and looking for a home."

Rhett's eyebrows threatened to disappear into his hairline. Then he screwed up his face and his mouth drew down into those deep frown lines.

To Scarlett, it almost looked for a moment as if he were trying not to laugh, which would be completely unlike himself, before he indeed lost the battle and proceeded to guffaw as loudly as she'd ever heard him do it. She rolled her eyes and looked about the room.

"What do you know of hermit crabs?" he finally managed to gasp.

"That's what you ask me?"

He merely coughed in reply, and were those actual tears in the corners of his eyes?

After a beat he waved his hand for her to go on, too overcome to speak, apparently.

"I've been to beaches," she replied grumpily. "In Charleston when I visited my aunts, and Savannah to see my folk on my pa's side. I've seen plenty of those creatures molting, and it's exactly what he looked like. And smelled worse." She pursed her lips and went on, goaded by her husband's rare discomposure.

"When he was—well, during—his eyes would bulge and his mutton-chop whiskers would tremble." She put her hands on the sides of her face and wiggled the index and middle fingers in an imitation of a crab's antennae. "Just like that. And one of those crabs is all I could think of the entire time, every time, no matter how hard I tried."

"Stop," he said, nearly choking, much to Scarlett's satisfaction. Another round of deep laughter boomed from his chest so loudly she thought the children would hear from clear down the hill. "Stop, I can't take it."

Presently Rhett managed to compose himself, somewhat to her disappointment.

"So I suppose Frank found his home in your er, shell." He gestured in the vicinity of her nether regions this time.

"It was never his home." Face on fire, then. "And after Ella we never, well, we never engaged in that manner again."

"Ah yes, your modus operandi." The amusement drained from his face.

She shuddered. "It was horrific. I could not."

"After that, I suppose I should be flattered that you were willing to marry me at all. Seeing as how I followed in the wake of a stinking crustacean. And yet you gave me up as well."

You gave me up echoed in her mind.

"It was better with you than both the others," she offered an olive branch.

A raise of that damnable eyebrow in response. "Not a high bar, Scarlett."

"It was much better, all right?" No need to feed this man's conceit, after all.

Thankfully his mood seemingly shifted with his next words.

"Moving right along. I'm not sure I'll thank you for the hermit crab imagery regarding old Frank, but it will be useful."

He bugged his eyes and held up his fingers beside his face and wiggled them, making a much more convincing imitation of antennae than Scarlett did, even she would have to admit.

"You stop it now."

"I don't think I ever shall. I'm going to do it all of tonight, at the most inopportune times, and, nay, any time Frank is mentioned in the future, no matter who is around. You'll be the only one who will always know exactly what I mean when I do it."

Scarlett bridled, starting to buck up and argue when she saw the laughter in his eyes and realized that he was happy, as happy as he'd ever been, his voice teasing, without malice and his eyes alight with mischief.

He had been happy all day, she thought with a start. And not only because of Bonnie, for once. Her heart swelled. She'd let him be as asinine and odious as he wanted, as long as it made him that happy, and with that look in his eyes when he gazed at her.

He continued to shake his fingers, looking even more crabbish, and Frank-ish, if that was even possible, and she erupted into peals of laughter as he joined in.

And just like they were back, back to the camaraderie that had been missing for so long, and she could have cried with relief; they were back, if only for a moment, to when they were at their best, and it felt glorious and she couldn't help but feel her own tears prick as a result.

It took a moment to realize he had sobered somewhat and was speaking again.

"… I went slowly with you before in part because I thought we had years to get it right, but it's obvious we're going to have to change our path, shift our trajectory.

"When I asked you on this trip we had a marriage in extremis, and we're still tottering on the very edge as we speak. Was it all a mistake, Scarlett?"

His suddenly earnest demeanor took her aback. She thought of what their marriage had become in Atlanta. The trashy society they both associated with, though separately; his continuous airs of condescension and disdain, supported by all the power and control he so effortlessly exuded. Not to mention the harrowing, acerbic arguments, how he became bigger and somehow she became smaller during each of them, no matter how diligently she fought back.

"No, not completely. We have Bonnie," she made a flailing gesture with her hand. What did he expect her to say?

"And yet you go your way and I go mine. We don't talk back home and argue when we do. The only way this is going to work is to forget anything you ever thought you knew. Another honeymoon, as it were.

"Which is why I dressed up a bit and tried to—" he gestured to the room. "If we were somewhere else I would have bought you a fine meal and a hotel suite, and wined and dined you, and perhaps danced."

Scarlett glanced at the candles and boughs, and once again the fine figure he made.

"You needn't try to seduce me. I'm a captive audience, it seems," she attempted to joke.

Truth was she felt frowzy in comparison, the feathers still in her braided hair. As if he read her mind he reached out and touched them, running his hand along the braid. It did something to her.

"I thought you might remove them," she said, and he merely nodded and motioned for her to turn around on the berth.

"Wait," she pulled a hairbrush out of her coat pocket, and suddenly shy, handed it to him.

He lifted a brow but said nothing as he began to undo the braid, and it was not at all like when he had fixed the feathers in it earlier; he moved slowly this time, running his fingers through the strands every few inches, and she found she could only breathe shallowly as a result.

"When was the last time you were touched, Scarlett? I am assuming Mr. Wilkes does not touch you, at least not recently, as you maintain."

"You would be correct." She adjusted the coat around her shoulders primly.

"So you haven't been touched in two years." It was not a question.

"Well, we both know you have."

"It wasn't my choice to go without," he said pointedly. "Having someone other than the person you want is better than nothing, yet not a vast improvement."

"You've been touching me all day."

"A little yes here and there, and stolen a kiss or two, but that's not what I'm talking about."

He finished her hair and turned her to face him, picking up her hand. He started playing with her fingers, massaging the joints and rubbing circles in her palm with that broad, warm thumb. She looked at his against hers. Brown, large, with dark hairs growling thickly across the backs, cruel hands that could be gentle, ruthless, yet tender.

"Do you know why I mentioned Alston Brooks on the train?"

Surprised by the question, she shook her head.

"I wanted to show you the world in so many ways. I was jealous because I wanted to teach you, wanted to be the only one to expose you to you new things, and unknown realms.

"And I still do. I always have wanted that." He dropped her hand.

"There will be no politeness tonight. Be who you are, ask anything, touch me, or have me touch you any way you think of, with no judgment, no mocking." He lifted her chin with his index finger.

"Furthermore, it will be just us together, with no thoughts of any man you might have cared for before. Although once I've 'turned loose', you'll lack the ability to think of another." He gave her a cocky grin.

"And what about you," she challenged, "you'll not be thinking of the woman you fell in love with, either?"

His lips threatened to twitch. "I can assure you I will be thinking of none other than yourself."

Mollified for the moment, she inclined her head. He went on.

"Forget everything I ever said. Everything you think you know. In mere moments we will be in our barest and most base forms, and there will be nothing between us quite literally."

He stood with intent, an expression on his face she'd seen before, and she knew there was no getting away from this, away from what this night would bring, even if she wanted to, which she found she didn't, not at all.

"Not to be pedantic, but I feel I must make it extremely clear. I'll let none of your hemming and hawing slow me down or stop me, and I'll tolerate no clutching of your metaphorical pearls or whispering of any nonsense you've been taught about the act.

"Before, I may have allowed a bit of it, but not now. I didn't want to scare you away then, though it did me no good.

"This night is ours, a boon. I'll not make the same mistakes and neither will you."

He'd been undressing as he spoke, a slow, smirking striptease she couldn't look away from. Suddenly he shoved down his pants and there he was bare in front of her.

Rhett pushed the coat off her shoulders and the silk down her body in a single smooth motion.

And after that, she stopped thinking in words.

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

Scarlett woke to streaming sunlight across the covers, taken aback for a moment as she realized she was in her bed at the cabin. At some point before sunrise they'd moved, she remembered drowsily.

She stretched her hands over her head, then brought them back down in front of herself clasped, preparing to meet the day. And what a wondrous day it would have to be … after such a night.

She turned to the bare space beside her and ran her hands instinctively across the sheets; still warm, but just barely.

The smell of coffee wafted in from the kitchen but she only heard noises from outside. She rose enough to peer out the window to see Rhett and Wade with the girls balanced on top of their snowshoes, moving through the yard. Rhett was wearing a pair identical to Wade's—oh she knew he'd made himself some! He had Ella and Wade had Bonnie, and then they switched. They all appeared to be having an uproariously good time.

Well, they could have the cold. She snuggled back into the quilts, a small smile spread across her face. Memories of what had gone one mere hours before assailed her; the delicate feasting of flesh, the non-so-delicate insistence, the heated commands and demands. Rhett above her, behind her, in and all around her.

She'd worried a bit about their first coupling after so long, the first time since Bonnie's birth, wondering if said birth and time's alterations or perhaps even subtractions had affected her charms, and would, subsequently, diminish Rhett's desire, although she would have never admitted it.

Her worries had been unfounded. He'd wasted no time in finding his own pleasure and delight while giving hers, in consuming her, and she, desperate with want and longing, tried her damndest to give as good as she got.

And his body! Scarlett felt a flash of fire kindling below at the mere thought of it. Long and lean and thick and muscular, all in the right places, all where it counted; oh, she was a wanton woman now, just to think of it and react this way!

Not to mention that her husband possessed an archivist's deep knowledge of the subject at hand, and as promised, did not hold back; and, saints alive, neither did she.

But she didn't care! It was all hers, he had said it, all hers, and she intended to revel in it and to hell with the consequences, at least for the time being.

The things they did! What he did, with his hands and his mouth and his—oh, and she was no innocent, could never claim a shred of innocence ever again; furthermore, what manner of animal had she married that could go on and on as he had, taking her with him, for hours upon end?

She raised the covers surreptitiously and examined her thighs, lightly bruised in the shape of hands. And bite marks, in the most tender of places! And then, he had thrust over and over at a brutal, punishing pace, grasping her hips; she ran her hands over said hips, and, oh yes, they had to be bruised, front and back.

Yet that punishing pace had ended in a rapture so unnerving she'd screamed and then inexplicably wept, much to her horror and embarrassment.

He hadn't teased her about it, surprisingly, or gloated, merely held her and soothed her in a manner that touched her more than she could express, even to herself.

After several rounds, they became quite overheated and both were covered in a sheen of sweat. Rhett tore the covers away, lifted her up amid her protests, and carried her, the heathen, out the door of the smokehouse into the coldest part of the night.

To be transported by a naked Rhett, proud and magnificent, a burnished, tarnished Greek god, through the white landscape, both of their forms reflected onto the snow by the bright winter moon—it was something she'd never forget.

Of course, he immediately dumped her unceremoniously into a pile of freshly laid snow and jumped right in beside, laughing merrily at her outraged shrieks and squealing.

But she jumped up from the snow and there they were, cavorting and frolicking, and it was as if the bad had never happened, not even the war, and she felt so young and so free! Running like children through the paths and walls of snow in the moonlight, she became someone else, or perhaps who she had been, long ago, a wild, elemental thing, and he her personal devil of a companion, perfectly suited to the task.

They returned to the smokehouse renewed and reinvigorated and went at it again, two primordial beings bent on knowing and pleasure and nothing else, God help them.

And when another kind of hunger hit they threw on their coats and boots over their nakedness and ran down the hill to raid the cabin kitchen, thieves in the night. Scarlett thought no food had ever tasted better, never in her life, not even after she'd starved at Tara.

They hand-fed each other morsels of the smoked turkey, warmed only slightly over the smoldering hearth, and tiny slices of leftover cake, standing in the kitchen in their mutual states of undress, her giggling and him chuckling softly at their antics, scandalous they were, and Scarlett would have died if the children awoke and found them, but thankfully they did not.

Scarlett's face warmed as she recalled the rest of the night and early morning hours in minute detail; she felt raw, as if she'd been ravished, skinned alive by a savage, and who could say she had not? Nothing left he hadn't seen, didn't know inside and out, nothing and nowhere to hide.

And … things were said, weren't they? Sweet murmurings and words of passion, more than just whispers across a pillow, absolute professions of devotion, from both sides.

She put her face in her hands and laughed out loud.

A sound at the door and the scraping of feet made her look up, blushing. He'd caught her.

Rhett walked in with the snowshoes dangling by their laces from his hand and another long package under his arm. He called over his shoulder to Wade about watching the girls before shutting the door and turning to approach Scarlett.

Her eyes lit and she smiled widely, only to feel that smile immediately fade at his cool demeanor.

"Oh, hello," he said and waved a hand airily in her direction.

OOOOooooOOOOoooo

A/N No worries, my darlings, it's all under control … Rhett's just being himself, combined with a bad case of post-best-sex-of-his-life-jitters. Caught him rather off-guard haha. It'll be all right, I promise :)

I'm off to Savannah and Daufuskie Island for Thanksgiving, and hoping it will give me great inspiration for my other story The Force yada yada. There will be a little of the island at the end of that tale, so I'm looking forward to the trip.

This site is super messed up! No email notifications, no traffic stats still after a couple of months; no spell-check even. I did my best. So drop me a line or review so I know I'm not shouting into the wind here! Only two, maybe three more chapters left to this little tale. Thank you for your readership and reviews, they are everything! Peace, misscyn