A/N: I want to start this off by thanking everyone for all the follows and all the love on my other works! I really appreciate it, very much. Here's a little something quick and dirty, I tend to go over the top whenever I want to write something and it becomes so much longer than what I initially intended. So this is just practice for me to keep it short and sweet once in a while. Enjoy!
Ink blanketed the sky above, swathing the horizon in a pitch black gradient. Disturbed only by the white twinkling of stars, and the intrusion of fluorescence from the neon below, the contrast was something to behold.
It almost made him feel as though he were somewhere far removed from the restrictions and mundanity of Point Place. Almost.
The stagnant humidity of a summer in its peak, the breeze was still warm, but it cooled him down nonetheless as it rustled through his chestnut mane, pawing his lanky build. With its reprieve from the heat, sticky on the back of his neck and matting his shirt down against his shoulders, it also carried a barrage of smells. Corn dog batter, and molten fried Oreos in stale oil. Artificial piña colada and cherry syrups, coagulated on the nozzles of the snow cone stand, not too far from where he stood. The unpleasant, rogue whiff of urine and pot that slipped through from the back alleys belonging to the little buildings and stands that stretched out in rows, both in front of and behind him.
Ah, Point Place. Your foul familiarity never disappoints.
Eric shifted in line at one of many alcohol concessions, moving a step and a half forward. A step and a half closer to his cheap, overpriced beer unceremoniously served in a plastic cup, his third of the night. All around him children ran and screamed, teenagers cackled, heckling the attendants that weren't already busy hawking at young couples and tired parents. The Point Place County Fair hadn't changed much from his childhood memories. Only now, the luster had dulled. The same rides falling deeper into disrepair with every year, the air still uncomfortably hot and sticky, cut mercifully by the breeze.
Every carnival ride and prize stand in the vicinity piped some cheerful, generic tune through their speakers. All slightly different from one another, all playing at the same time and volume in competition. Had he not been so practiced in zoning out, and had the cheap ryes not been doing their damndest to numb him with amateur inebriation, it might have driven him crazy.
The husky kid in front of him stepped away from the counter juggling three cups of what reeked of Old Milwaukee, sloshing over the rims as he struggled to carry them all at once. Eric took his place, a tired smile that didn't meet his eyes pulled at his lips.
"Hi again," Eric smirked dryly, already beginning to pry his wallet from his back pocket. He tossed his head over his shoulder in the retreating youths direction. "I'll take whatever he was having."
Similarly young and stocky, the underpaid and unamused kid behind the counter just nodded, silently filling Eric's request.
The gang had all decided on catching the fair on its last night in town. All fresh high school graduates, save for Jackie, it seemed they all craved the sweet medicine of childhood nostalgia. They were staring down the barrel of the impending adulthood, and none felt equipped to pull the trigger.
While Eric stood there waiting for his beer, sweating in the harsh overhead lights and the heat of a late night Wisconsin in early July, he saw her.
A little ways off, up a small incline so as to distance itself from the central alley of the fair proper, were the bathrooms. An over-sized, mobile trailer comprised of some stalls, it was essentially just a glorified port-o-potty. There was a sizable line for women's, and just some teenagers loitering in a haze of cigarette smoke in front of the men's.
Standing outside after having just come out, was Jackie. Smoothing her palms on the tops of her thighs, her cute nose wrinkled in disgust from having to subject herself to not only a public restroom, but the public restroom at county fair, no less.
The stickiness of humidity did little to take the sheen and bounce out of her feathered, midnight locks, her rosy cheeks dewy with glisten. The flickering neon of the many lights and attractions played off the shine of her roots and her twinkling irises in breathtaking vibrance. When she finally noticed him, a willing captive to her visage and holding up the line of impatient twenty-somethings behind him, she lit up like a firefly.
They had spent just about the whole evening in each others company, but they were yet to be alone.
Cartoonishly doe like eyes scoping around him to make certain Fez, Kelso, and Hyde weren't around to see, she skipped towards him with the giddy enthusiasm of a high-school cheerleader rushing to meet her quarter-back beau. Only Eric was quite possibly the furthest thing from a quarter-back, and Jackie would never refer to him as anything even in the same ballpark as her beau.
Not in front of their friends, at least.
Though he kept his expression cool, finding himself stealing quick glances himself towards the restroom to keep an eye out for Donna, as he stepped forward to meet her he couldn't still the rapid thump of his heart.
Everything about Jackie, whether he wanted to admit it or not, reduced his insides to gooey, liquified sugar.
Her kisses lingered against his lips melted cotton candy. When he swallowed, Eric could feel that sweetness melting down the back of his throat and tickling his sweet tooth, leaving him wanting, every time. Her perfectly manicured baby pink finger nails left angry streaks of her admiration up and down the musculature of his back. A roadmap of her approval towards his ministrations. The whimper of his name on her tongue echoed against the shell of his ear, visiting him even hours after she had already left. A reminder that the care and attention he paid to her most favorite, and most sensitive spots, were always well-rewarded.
Whenever Eric got together with Jackie, he saw stars. A personal fireworks display all for him and his greed. He could see the explosion of their electric chemistry whenever he so much as closed his eyes.
Each giving cursory glances around to make sure their friends weren't anywhere close, they still stopped once they were within a foot of one another. Even through the smog of B.O. and fried food on the air, he could sniff out the candied praline and warm vanilla sugar of her perfume like a hound, salivating like one at the mere scent of her.
"Hey," she chirped as cheerfully as ever, dragging her eyes up and down the length of him in a way that made his jeans tight. After drinking him in and getting her fill, her lust-laden gaze began to flick around in search once more. "So uh... Where is everybody?"
A vision of a bygone summer, the blushed tops of her shoulders were bared by the white, puffy sleeve peasant top she wore. Displaying the slenderness of her neck and shoulders, and the delicate dip and curve of where her clavicle met in the center. Just begging him to run his tongue along her grooves and lift from her hot skin the smeared notes of tanning oil and cocoa body butter.
His stomach roiled and his cock twitched as he took his turn of exploring the slope of her curves. His gaze trailed to the modest slip of midsection that teased him from between the hem of her top and the tiny, clinging high waist of her printed skirt. Stopping just above the knee, it was there he could spot, just faintly, the beginnings of bruises staining her knee caps, blotchy and discolored. Eric suspected she allowed them to be exposed in order to show off, to stoke the fires of perverse satisfaction he gleaned.
And proud he was to see the consequences of allowing her to take him in her mouth in his parents garage earlier that week. Spur of the moment and steeped in scandal, his parents, Hyde, or hell - even Bob - could have barged in that time of the night for any reason at all. They kept the lights off, posted around the Vista Cruiser by the trunk, obscured from view as her lips suctioned half way down his throbbing girth with kitten-flicks of her tongue. The dirty, grease splattered concrete brutal on Jackie's knees, not that she seemed to care.
Eric's back molars ached with the desire to sink his teeth into her flesh, fitted between her toned thighs and bucking like a bronco against the back wall of a concession stand. He wanted to scuff her perfect, tanned flesh with the coarse brick in victory of his conquest. He wanted to make her scream his name despite their very public location. And once he broke her into giving in, he wanted to swallow every last whimper and groan he drilled out of her.
"Well," he cleared his throat. Eyes pulling regrettably away from her and back to the restrooms, staunch in his lookout for Donna as he spoke. "Hyde took Fez to the Tilt-a-Whirl to see if they could find any lost money or jewelry," he sipped his beer, growing more impatient the longer he went without a sighting, "aaaand Kelso's currently out about twenty bucks at the Break-a-Bottle trying to win a gigantic stuffed giraffe so that tall blonde he's been dogging all night will go to bed with him, which," Eric waggled his brows, "I can personally vouch that he's a terrible shot, so, I think he's good for at least another twenty, give or take how desperate he is."
Jackie hummed, nodding. Lifting to tip-toes despite the high cork wedges strapped to her dainty ankles and feet, she peered over Eric's shoulder to the carnival stand in question. Though it was dark and disorienting, she could still make out Kelso down the dirt alley, over-exerting himself with every wind-up, failing to shatter anything much beyond his patience. To his side she could see the blonde, her boredom evident in how slowly she began to distance herself from him. "Hm," Jackie tossed her chin before she shook her head. "Yeah I saw that one earlier. Yeah, you see, I can personally vouch for his desperation. Forty bucks is nothing to him."
Eric smirked. "What about you guys? What are you up to?"
Jackie crossed her arms with a jingle of the bangles that hung from her slim wrists. With an adorable pout and dramatic flutter of her long lashes, she huffed. "I jokingly suggested we could check out the hatchet throwing, y'know, since Donna's into all that grizzly, lumberjack-y stuff," she rolled her eyes, "but she actually wants to go." She wrinkles her nose just like she had after braving the bathroom. "And she knows how much I hate Buffalo check, and mindless displays of masculinity with a bunch of boorish men and butch women!" Eric couldn't help but chuckle as she genuinely scoffed at such a notion. "I can't go over there. Besides, could you picture me around all those guys throwing hatchets? I'm a major distraction, someone would end up hospitalized."
"Can't argue with you there." Eric still hadn't seen any sign of Donna. Tossing his free hand out to get a good look at his watch, he continued slyly. "So what you're saying is we have at least half an hour where, potentially, no one will be looking for us?"
Jackie's face bathed in neon, he could see her eyes twinkle. She dared to take a step closer to him, her purse swinging as she planted her balled fists on her hips. Shaking her hair out of her face, she craned her neck up to look at him from her shorter stature. "What I'm saying is; I'm far too much of a princess to be subjected to something as heinous as hatchet throwing," she nearly spit out the word, "and I need my prince to rescue me."
The way she came just below his nose, batting her lashes and exuding all the confidence of the royalty she most often actually believed herself to be, Eric could have stolen a kiss right then and there. Out in the middle of the county fair for all to see, their secret relationship be damned. But he relented. He shot her a look of smoldering mischief. "So in a way you're... kind of asking me to be your Luke Skywalker right now."
He was pleased to have worked that in. Jackie not so much. She furrowed her brows, giving him blank stare. "Eric we talked about this." She cocked her head, almost scolding, yet her tone was soft despite the disappointment. "This works a lot better when you don't bring up Stars Wars."
Without another word, and unbothered to waste anymore time making certain they were safe from prying eyes, Eric reached down and grabbed her hand. She giggled as he ducked down the closest alley and led her behind the vendors, sandwiched between their canvas tents, and the thick woods that surrounded the perimeter of the dirt field the fair occupied. They moved through the dark; the light of the main alley not quite reaching the outskirts they skulked.
Eric's chest tightened at how right Jackie's petite hand felt enveloped in his own. Even if their relationship, whatever it was categorized, was only between them, it was moments like these that made him want to flaunt it.
Neither of them wanted to hurt Donna or Kelso, but he was growing tired of having to restrain himself in her presence just for the sake of their feelings.
He continued, albeit awkwardly, to gulp his beer as he maintained a steady pace onward. It was a miracle he didn't end up on his ass, his footing unsure despite the confidence with which he moved. Eric kept advancing towards the music tent; a large, central covered area where speakers rumbled, and patrons drunk enough to dance, danced. Jackie's breathless gasps and squeezes of her palm around his spurred him on faster. He stopped once when the music was loud enough to drown out errant noises, but if she really sang his praises, they would surely get caught.
You know I need your love
You've got that hold over me
Long as I got your love
You know that I'll never leave
Multiple, smaller vendors had set up shop up and down both sides of the main alley, but posted to either side of the music tent were two small, brick and mortar buildings. Exactly what he had been looking for. One dedicated to food service, and the other to none other than more alcohol. Their rigid structures acted as not only a sight and sound barrier, but a sturdy purchase as well.
Gulping down the rest of his beer in one motion, Eric dropped the plastic cup to their feet, taking half a step back until his he met the brick wall. Hand still intertwined with Jackie's, he tugged her along with him. Her macrame purse sliding from her shoulder to join his empty cup, she sprawled against the length of his body, draping her arms around his neck. Her finger tips playing with the soft hair at his nape, Eric dropped his head and stole Jackie's smile with his own.
She sighed into his full pout in relief. Even with the bitter taste of beer soaked into his lips, she worked hers against them with fervor. She almost liked how the beer tasted in tandem with just the taste of Eric himself. With her eyes fallen shut as she deepened their kiss, his hands sweeping down her back and over her rear, she melted. Fully and completely.
"God I almost threw myself at you so many times tonight," Jackie panted in between frenzied kisses she pecked at him, nipping his bottom lip here and there. She released the back of his neck to drag her palms down his chest, twisting her fingers in his shirt. "You did this on purpose."
She was of course referring to his shirt. The cotton thin and airy, the white and navy raglan was a snugger fit to his body than his other shirts, making it Jackie's favorite.
His wide palm cupped the bottom swell of her rear through her skirt. Long, sinewy fingers clamped down over her clothed flesh, goosing her with the authoritative force he knew revved her engine. She moaned, arching her body against his to rub herself against his growing, denim erection. Eric grunted.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
The changes that I've been through
Have left a mark on me
You've been as constant as the Northern Star
The brightest light that shines
It's been you, woman
Right down the line
Nimble, manicured fingers tracing down to cup him through his jeans, Jackie began to pet him, reveling in how he twitched and throbbed to her touch. "You know, Eric, if we're gonna keep this up we're gonna need to establish some more ground rules."
"Mmkaaay," Eric began, his breath turning more ragged by the minute. Her petting continued, as did his throbbing. Hot and hefty between his legs, his length had a mind entirely his own when it came to Jackie. Sweeping her hand upward, she found his base and gave him a firm squeeze. Fireworks. White hot and blazing behind his eyelids. "For starters?"
"This shirt is saved for me and only me," she stilled her palm, and subsequently, her kneading. A cruel power move she used to her advantage well, she tilted her head to the side with a coy expression. "Understood?"
"Y-yes ma'am." He all but whined, his hips spasming against her hand for more. After a beat Jackie grinned, cooing at him while she resumed her stroking.
"And no more cologne unless you're coming directly over to my house." To this she actually pouted, lifting to her tip-toes to inhale deeply at his collar. The notes of sandalwood, orange and bergamot brought her to dizzying intoxication. Childlike in her whining, she pawed at his crotch with impatience, her finger tips fumbling in the dark to snatch at his zipper. "It's not fair."
Finding himself equally as impatient, his hands abandoned her rump with much chagrin, coming to her aid in yanking down his zipper. Jackie needed no further assistance from there. As Eric needlessly busied his hands with his belt, prying the seam of his jeans apart to give her some more room, her tiny hands had darted through the fly of his boxers. Fingers, baby soft and moisturized, gripped ahold of his cock like she owned it.
Another explosion. Red, fiery and blinding. Attention-grabbing in its magnificence.
A choked growl trickled from his agape lips. "Oh... f-fuck, Jackie." Eric swallowed hard as she began to pump him with an even pace. Quick enough to string him along, slow enough to be maddening, but her pressure was just right.
He hunched over her, one hand coming up to cup the back of her neck gently, fingers knotting in her hair, as the other pressed the small of her back. Trying not to crush her as he curled in around her, huffs and groans spilling from him like a sick dog.
"D-don't-don't stop." He rasped.
But they both knew better. If she continued the fun would be over in a matter of minutes.
I just wanna say this is my way
Of tellin' you everything I could never
say before
Yeah, this is my way
Of tellin' you that every day I'm lovin' you
so much more
To the surprise of them both, Eric was the one who stopped Jackie. His cock swollen in her grasp, it pulsed in aggravation that her attention ceased. The familiar, burning hot ache coiled deep within his groin, at the ready to burst.
Erection freed and bobbing worth at attention, Eric ignored how hot and swollen it pulsed, exposed in the night air between them as he snatched Jackie off her feet. Ripping another delightful squeal from her lips, numbed and naked, he gathered her in his arms, grunting himself at the friction of her bare midsection brushing his now very sensitive tip.
Burying his face in her neck, smothering himself with her perfumed hair and motioned skin, he sealed his lips around the rapid thumping of her pulse. Sinking his teeth down in a less-than-gentle love bite, Jackie jolted against the unyielding force of his larger, lean frame.
Eric doubled down and sucked hard at the sight of his bite, making her gasp and fidget as he tightened his hold on her. Jackie clawed at the back of his neck and pulled at his hair, tossing her right leg to hook around his hip, as much as her skirt would allow, all but climbing him.
Eric could feel the heat of her need, even though her skirt and his jeans. His mind slipped away in fantasy of how warm and snug her pussy was. Apple-pie sweetness and decadence, the All American girl of his dreams who was also, somehow, his reality.
His hands roamed her petite, toned figure with practiced familiarity. Cupping the small of her back to hold her steady as she wobbled on one heel on the uneven, grassy, dirt field beneath their feet, his other hand explored. It dragged down the length of her spine and over the mouth-watering swell of her ass. Following the taught musculature like a trail, his finger tips pulled down the thigh she still had hooked around his hip to her knee. Once he grasped at the hem of her skirt, and began to push it up her thigh to make way, something in her shifted.
And the one thing that really separated him from Kelso, was that he noticed. Everything Jackie did was purposeful, planned. Some might say manipulative. And Eric was an observant lover.
Her bottom lip sucked in between her teeth and her eyes clouded with arousal, she awaited his fingers to creep up her thigh and under her skirt in anticipation.
When the smooth pads of his fingers brushed her naked, completely shaved cunt, her eyes rolled back just from that contact alone.
Something about Eric dredged up something primal from deep within her, something she never knew was there. Head lulled back and sighs of delight siphoning from her swollen lips, a low, almost pained sigh of approval fell from his own.
"You... h-have you been? You're not wearing-have-,"
Jackie pouted, dramatic and playful. "Oh, what's the matter, Eric?" She simpered. "Don't you like that all this time tonight I haven't had panties on, and you had no idea?"
To this, Eric's eyes widened and his spluttering intensified. "I-wh-you-you-all night?!"
"Was that...bad of me, Eric?" She leaned in with a vicious smirk, picking at the raglan that clung to his torso with his sweat. "Is that... not fair?"
Of course, Jackie most certainly hadn't gone to a place as dusty and greasy as The Point Place County Fair of all places, in a skirt, without panties on. That little touch only occurred to her when she was in the bathrooms, stewing in frustration over Eric, and his audacity to tease her with that shirt. Jackie was never one to shy away from embellishment, especially in the bedroom. And in this case, just like most, it did the trick.
"Ohoh... what was it about ground rules you were just talking about?"
"They're for you, not me." She bit back with a smirk, twisting her hands in his shirt to steady herself as her legs wobbled. Eric stroked her nice and slow, groaning aloud at how wet she was, how primed and ready she was just from some hot and heavy making out.
Her hold on him shifted to grab at his shoulders for balance. With the grace and self-assurance as if she were mounting a horse, she hopped up and swung her other leg around his other hip. Having successfully mounted him, she grabbed a hold of his cock once more, lining his head at her swollen, sticky lips.
"Well, Eric, you did very well tonight," Jackie did her best to keep her tone even, but she was breathy. Excited. "Now all you have to do is claim your prize. What will it be?"
It took tremendous restraint on Eric's part to not grab her hips and slam her down over his cock like flashlight. His voice cracking, "I uh, I'll take the tiny, bossy brunette please."
"You forgot cute."
"The tiny, bossy, cute, brunette."
Her mouth opening, Eric ducked in quickly to silence her with a kiss as he bucked his hips up. Her breath hitched in a strangled whimper into his mouth. The initial intrusion always came with the slightest twinge of pain from his heft in comparison to her pinhole core. He savored the way her walls scrambled to accommodate him, stretching out over his entrance and pulsing in sinfully tight squeezes up and down his shaft. He gently sunk her down the rest of the way until he was hilted, feeling her honey already began to soak into his boxers as they joined at the center.
Multiple, fantastic fireworks. Orange, yellow, red, and white pops of brilliance. Disorientating. Loud.
A grunt seethed through his grit teeth, the sensation of her walls squeezing down around his girth so tight she almost cut off his circulation. After allowing them both a moment to bask in the sensation of joining together at last, he wrapped his arms with pure dominance around Jackie's petite body, so tightly he almost snapped her in half like a candy-cane, and flipped them. Her back now against the wall.
His decision to take charge of the situation was rewarded with a delicious squeal that she lacked the self-control to stifle.
Jackie had more or less pieced together in their many rendezvous that Eric was far stronger, and manlier, than she ever sought to credit him for. Though she was much smaller than him, he always handled her like she were no more than a doll, his personal plaything. A revelation that never ceased to thrill her, it fueled her own ego as much as his. They complimented each other well, wether or not that charming happenstance ever received proper acknowledgement.
He was the maturity she craved, the stability and loyalty she needed. And in turn, she was the hyper-feminine, traditional sort of girl that he knew deep down his future required. She needed protecting, she needed to be taken care of, provided for. Eric could and would give her all of that. And in exchange, he was handsomely compensated with a woman who met the physical, emotional, and mental needs he didn't even realize he had. For all of the times throughout their colorful history that she undermined his manhood, Jackie was the first woman that introduced to him what it truly was like to be a man, and expected no less from him.
Eric understood his role in their relationship, and she hers.
He slammed her back against the concrete wall none-too-gently, knocking the wind out of her only to then breath it right back in with a kiss. Eric's lips met hers neatly despite his ferocity. He was eager, impatient, ragged - but never sloppy.
Jackie mused that was on account of his budding maturity, a luxury she never experienced with Michael.
Despite the threat of his impatience, ever precipitous, Eric no longer explored her body, but bent it to his whim. He knew where to suck on the junction of where her collar met her neck, and how hard. He knew the exact pitch his growls needed to be, in order to make her cunt flutter around him. He knew how hard to yank on her hair, snapping her head back just enough to bare her throat for his tongue to trail upward. He now knew Jackie better than himself, though she was never wanting for directions. She read his cues and nurtured his needs with just as much prowess.
In every way that they opposed, is what in turn brought them closer and closer to equals.
With the building holding a majority of their combined weight, it afforded Eric the leverage to give her all he had. Her delicate ankles locked at the small of his back, he humped her up and down the brick like the starved teenagers they were still clinging to identify.
Even over the buzz of the fair, he couldn't faintly hear the salacious snapping of wet flesh against each other. Jackie's huffs and moans were hard, unable to maintain the girlish lilt of her noises with the wind repeatedly knocked out of her.
The skin at the small of her back stung from the concretes abrasion, a new decoration to her skin of their risky exploits. Eric's own back and shoulders burned which the force in which he snapped up and against her. He could feel his release coiling with more insistence. More blinding, white hot pressure.
Fireworks. The howling whistling of a rocket spiraling up into the night sky, ever closer to erupting with each screech.
"Jackie," he huffed, his hair falling into his eyes, matted down to his forehead with the beads of sweat that began to form, "where-w-where... D'you want m-me to-,"
He almost couldn't get the sentence out. His throat was dry, smearing his words to the cottony insides of his mouth. Jackie didn't need him to finish, and the frantic response she gave almost brought him to release right then and there.
"Inside me!" She shrieked, unable to believe what she was saying herself. She couldn't help it, the primal succubus within had assumed complete control. She prayed he didn't make her repeat herself.
Even through the hint of his sobriety that remained, he didn't.
"E-Eric, Eric please-!" Jackie knew she didn't have to beg, but she knew it stoked his fire. "Please, please Eric! I need you-!"
With a growl that was so guttural and raw it shocked them both, Eric followed her directions.
The rocket exploded in all its shimmering, thunderous glory. The long awaited finale.
Eric shot himself hard and deep within her, buried in the agonizingly tight velvet of her cunt. She was impossibly swollen around him from their bumping and grinding. Riding out his high, body tense and rigid, he held her pinned to the wall underneath him. He could feel her finger tips teasing and combing his hair, and her lips curving into a smile of approval into his damp hairline.
A beat of silence hung between them, wet and heavy on the humid air as his cock, now soft and sensitive. He slipped out of her with a hiss, offering his dropped shoulder and free hand to help her back down to her feet. Gingerly, he went about putting himself away, and cleaning himself off to the best of his abilities.
It was then his post-nut clarity took over. Even in the dark, he could see the remnant of his release dribbling down her legs, and over the ankle strap of her wedges.
"Oh, uh, Jackie, I-," he looked around for something to clean her up, patting his pockets for the handkerchief he knew wasn't there.
Her breathing almost back to normal, she brushed her fingers through her hair, and began smoothing her skirts back into place. Coolly, utterly unphased, and without even looking at him, she sighed. "Grab my purse, I'll just use my panties."
Bending to scoop up her purse out of the dirt, he had it outstretched to her when he froze. "Hey, wait, I thought you said you didn't... have panties." His brows knit, big baby blues sparkling with innocence.
Jackie giggled, reaching for her purse, she reached up to pat his cheek with her other hand. "Oh, Eric. You're-," old habits die hard. If she were speaking to Michael, condescending words like "easy" or "cute" came into mind. But she stopped herself. Looking up at him, even though it was dark, she knew the handsome, puppy-dog like face that peering back at her, patiently in wait. Jackie smiled with a hum. "You're so perfect."