FIC: Eden Sank to Grief (8/12)
TITLE: Eden Sank to Grief
AUTHOR: shutterbug_12
PAIRING: House/Stacy
RATING: R
SUMMARY: House and Stacy escape Princeton to go camping together; Stacy learns a new skill.
DISCLAIMER: Don't own them. Make love, not lawsuits.
NOTES: A series of twelve episodes set during House and Stacy's relationship. Title taken from "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. Thank you to amy_119 and phinnia for the beta-reads. Concrit and general feedback is love.
July 1998
By the time Stacy had stacked an armful of their supplies on the picnic table, the sun had sunk below the treetops. Hazy sunbeams washed the campground in orange hues. Overhead, the light diffused to paint the western clouds pink, reminding Stacy of a branch of magnified cherry blossoms, fully bloomed and vibrant. The campground hummed with a symphony of organic sound. Stacy heard the faint rush of the Delaware beyond the trees, the last whistle-chirps of birds, the buzzes of mosquitoes. A fire already popped and crackled in the neighboring campsite. Crickets would emerge soon, complete the natural composition with a stirring, lively rondo before the morning sun rose and the piece began again.
Behind her, Greg's voice sliced through nature's soundtrack and assaulted Stacy's ears. "Fuck!"
She peered over her shoulder. Greg grimaced, shaking his left hand and bouncing on the balls of his feet. His mallet lay abandoned in the dirt beside their half-assembled tent. "You manage to hurt yourself hammering a stake into the ground, yet people trust you to handle multi-million dollar equipment."
"In case you haven't noticed, you don't have to pitch an MRI machine," Greg snapped, gingerly flexing his thumb as he knelt, took up the mallet, and steadied the stake to ground the last corner of the tent.
"Really? I could have sworn those machines had to be assembled with each use," she said, crouching to retrieve the sheet of directions that he had tossed to the side. "Good thing I'm not the doctor."
Stacy caught Greg's eye roll as he stretched for a long vinyl bag, opened it, and withdrew several long poles. He scrutinized them, glancing from each pole to the crumpled material of the tent. His brow creased and his lips extended into a tight, stubborn line. As Greg searched the tent, pole in hand, Stacy scanned the diagrams printed beneath the directions.
"Greg, if you'd just read the directions--"
"I'm not an idiot," he said, slipping the pole inside a loop of fabric that spanned the width of the tent.
"You're not a Boy Scout." She extended a second pole in his direction.
"You don't have to be a Boy Scout to put up a tent."
Stacy pursed her lips and discarded the directions as Greg, determined to raise the tent unassisted, slid each remaining pole into place.
Minutes later, he stood proudly beside the tent, his arms spread wide. "Ha! See?"
"Congratulations," she drawled as Greg disappeared into the tent. She gathered their sleeping bags and crawled inside. "You've validated your manhood." She laid both sleeping bags across the floor, side by side. "If you were a Boy Scout, you'd be well on your way to earning your camping merit badge."
As he scooted onto his sleeping bag, the top of his head brushed the low, domed ceiling. His hair reached upward, charged with static electricity. "You know a lot about the Boy Scouts. Is there something"--he paused to ruffle his hair and scowl at the ceiling--"you're not telling me? Secret obsession? Secret operation?"
"Secret boyfriend."
The corner of his mouth twitched, a grin threatening to pull across his face. "I know you prefer younger beaux, but I never thought you'd go after jail--"
"I was in high school," she interrupted. "We were both in high school."
"Spend your dates doing good deeds together?" Sarcasm dripped off his tongue. "Volunteer at a soup kitchen one week. The next week, a nursing home. Then, the week after that--"
"Greg," she whispered with a low, husky voice that never failed to capture his attention. As she swung one leg over his and straddled his lap, she eyed him with a focused and intense stare that, over the past three years, she had learned to mirror. Stacy ghosted a forefinger over the fabric of his t-shirt, down the center of his sternum, his abdomen, and dipped into his navel.
"Yeah?"
Her eyes scanned his face, his body, and she recognized his efforts to control his physical reactions and keep himself stubbornly still--his unblinking eyes, the strain in his shoulders and stomach muscles, the tight clench of his jaw. With a quirk of her eyebrow and a confident half-grin, her finger snaked below the waistband of his shorts, tracing his hipbone. She noticed the silent bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed. To his credit, Greg's reservoir of self-control was not shallow, but years of practice had equipped Stacy with a featherbed of fail-safe ways to deplete it--a slow roll of her hips, a throaty moan, an aggressive kiss, locks of his hair caught tightly in her fists.
Now, Stacy brought her mouth to his ear and blew a hot stream of air into the canal. Her fingers danced across his hip and wrapped around his penis, hot and already semi-hard. She heard his sharp intake of breath and felt him pulse once in her hand. Stacy smiled against the shell of his ear. With a gentle squeeze of her fist, she whispered, "We did some very bad deeds together."
Greg groaned softly, tilting his head to press his cheek to hers. His hand rose to cup the base of her head and guide her into a kiss. Hot breath gusted through his nose and over her cheek, the sound of it drowning the outside noises, as his tongue hurried past her lips and swept into her mouth. His hand dropped to the hem of her shirt and lifted it, fingers splaying over the small of her back.
He became a whirlwind of energy and motion. His hand stroked and clasped at her back, pulling her against him as he noisily sucked her top lip into his mouth. His body arched gently and his hips canted forward, pushing his erection into her palm. His urgency was raw and contagious, and Stacy nearly failed to notice the faint rumble of her stomach. Seconds later, as Greg's hand slid up her spine to grasp the nape of her neck, hunger pains accompanied a second, louder rumble, and Stacy withdrew her hand from his shorts, pushed gently against his chest, and breathed a frustrated sigh.
"Honey, I'm--"
"No-o-o," he whined, falling back onto his elbows and breathing heavily.
"I'm sorry, but I haven't eaten since this morning," she said, genuinely apologetic, and climbed off him.
His head fell back, and he offered a whiny groan to the ceiling of the tent. "This would have taken seven minutes. Your stomach couldn't wait for seven minutes? "
Stacy bit her bottom lip, grimacing as her stomach rumbled again. "I'm sorry," she whispered, rubbing his leg and affectionately squeezing his knee. She jerked her head toward the open tent flap. "Come on. If you feed me now, I can promise you more than seven minutes later." Before he could argue, she crawled out of the tent, into the last slivers of hazy twilight, and walked to their car.
As she opened the trunk, Greg appeared beside her. With a scowl, he cupped his crotch and adjusted himself. "Could've been half-way to a mind-blowing orgasm by now."
Stacy pressed her lips together, refusing to acknowledge his remark and reaching for several plastic grocery bags. She extended a handful of bags in his direction. "Here. Take these." Stacy smirked, shaking her head as he begrudgingly accepted them, turned, and stomped toward the fire ring. As she gathered the remaining bags, she heard plastic rustling and, a moment later, a loud, excited exclamation.
"Yes!"
When Stacy closed the trunk and raised her head, she spied Greg kneeling on the ground beside the fire ring. Two roasting forks were propped against the ring of rocks, and he was tearing open a bag of marshmallows.
"Oh, no," she said, setting the grocery bags on the picnic table. "Not for dinner."
"Oh, yes. Definitely for dinner," he said, cradling the bag in his arm as if it were a football, and, with childlike enthusiasm, bounded toward the wood pile.
Ten minutes later, flames bloomed within Greg's teepee of firewood, and, eleven minutes later, the two of them were extending their skewered marshmallows toward the fire. Stacy sat in a folding chair and stared into the flames, which lapped at her marshmallow with glowing, golden tongues. Greg crouched near the edge of the fire ring, his marshmallow poised close to the ground.
"You're doing it wrong."
Stacy threw a sideways glance in his direction, pursing her lips. "I am not."
"You are, too," he declared calmly. "You're holding it too--"
As her marshmallow caught fire, she interrupted him with an involuntary shriek and frantically withdrew her fork, waving it through the air to extinguish the flame. When the flame died, she peered at the marshmallow; black char formed a crisp, cracked outer layer, and Stacy frowned as she carefully grasped the marshmallow between her thumb and forefinger.
"See? You were doing it wrong," Greg said. "You burned it."
"It's not burned. It's"--she paused to slide the marshmallow off the prongs--"well done." A portion of the charred layer fell away from the marshmallow like moulting snake skin; the marshmallow suddenly failed to appeal to her appetite, but, hoping to disprove Greg's claim, she raised it to her mouth.
"Oh, no. Stace, don't--you don't want to--" The entire marshmallow disappeared into her mouth, and Greg groaned with disapproval.
A triumphant smile appeared on Stacy's face, but faded within milliseconds. She averted her eyes and turned her head, hiding her face as it scrunched with displeasure. The sweet, sticky marshmallow was tainted with the taste of ash, and it took an enormous amount of effort to swallow it.
As she shifted to face forward, Greg pulled his marshmallow from the fire and asked incredulously, "You thought it would actually taste good?"
Stacy glared at him, temporarily forgetting that, for Greg, threatening glances inspired more speaking rather than silence.
"Next time, just lick the ashes," he said, sliding his marshmallow from his fork. "I'll set some aside before I build the fire. Just for you."
"You're so sweet, honey," she drawled, reaching for the bag of marshmallows to spear a second.
"See, this is how you roast a marshmallow," he said, thrusting it toward her and rotating it for her inspection. "Golden-brown on the outside. Gooey on the inside." With a grin, he crammed it into his mouth, chewed for a moment, and hummed contently. "Mmm."
Stacy rolled her eyes and asked, "Gooey? That a technical term?"
"Scientific. Very precise." He propped his roasting fork against the rocks as he swallowed, waving her nearer to him. "Come 'ere."
She eyed him suspiciously, but when he gestured again and repeated himself, she scooted her chair closer to him.
Greg shook his head. "Nuh-uh. Here." He patted the ground beside him. "Ass in the dirt. Let's go. You need to learn how to do this right."
"Like you, you mean."
"No-o-o," he said. "Right."
With a staged put-upon sigh, Stacy took a seat on the ground, crossing her legs as she stretched her fork into the fire.
"Whoa! Hang on." He shuffled across the dirt to kneel behind her. Peering over her shoulder, he reached around her to take hold of the fork's handle and guide the marshmallow away from the flames. "You can't shove it in the fire," he said, breathing a tiny laugh. "Jesus, you're a slow learner."
Stacy scowled at him, glancing out of the corners of her eyes, but let him steer the marshmallow close to the coals, which reflected pulsing, red-orange light off its white surface.
"Keep it there," he instructed, releasing her roasting fork and laying his hand in the curve of her waist. "Turn it every thirty seconds or so. Don't let it touch the flames."
Stacy bit her bottom lip in concentration, but her attention shifted when Greg closed the distance between them and pressed his body against her back. His face hovered in her peripheral vision, and she tilted her head for a glimpse of him. His eyes, their color muted by the fire-glow, blinked slowly and closed before he tucked his face into the crook of her neck, dropping a soft kiss there.
She would never reveal to him that these were the moments she stored in the deep of her memory, locked and guarded; these were the moments she cherished during long work hours and periods of separation. She catalogued his actions, his words, her emotions, her reactions. She absorbed as many details as possible; none were insignificant or too small. Not caring if her marshmallow drifted into the fire, she shut her eyes. Her ears filled with the crackle-snaps of the fire and the rhythm of Greg's breathing, broken by the sounds of his kisses. The familiar scent of him, the campfire smoke, and the faint lingering traces of bug spray all coalesced, fusing together in the warm, nighttime breeze. His touch was light on her waist. His occasional squeezes were gentle. The blazing heat of the fire blanketed her face, her front, but Greg's breaths, the press of his body, warmed the rest of her; she felt wrapped by warmth--by him.
The low rasp of his voice brought her out of her thoughts. "You're going to burn it again," he whispered.
Stacy cleared her throat as she repositioned the marshmallow near the coals. Turning her head slightly, she grinned at him. "Maybe I wouldn't if you weren't trying to cop a feel," she teased.
His lips pulled into a grin against her neck. He dropped a kiss behind her ear and, with a playful tone, asked, "Want to hear a scary story?"
She reached behind her to swat at his leg. "Greg," she warned half-heartedly, withdrawing her marshmallow--toasted, not burned--from the fire, and faced him.
"Come on," he goaded. "It's a good one. You won't be able--"
She hurried to pull her marshmallow from the prongs and stuffed it into his open mouth. His wide, surprised eyes made her grin, and she pointed at him. "You know I don't like scary stories."
He wrapped his fist around her index finger. "That wasn't fair," he complained around his mouthful of marshmallow.
"When do you ever play fair?"
He swallowed, then released her finger. "Always," he said, a smirk slowly stretching across his face. "Not bad, by the way." He nodded to her roasting fork. "Although, I think I'll need another taste. I couldn't really enjoy that one."
"Knock yourself out," she said, nudging the bag of marshmallows in his direction. She stood, turned, and started to walk toward the picnic table. "Fill up on all the marshmallows you want, but I need to eat dinner. A real dinner."
"You always have to ruin our fun, don't you?"
"Yep, always," she called over her shoulder, peeking behind her to see Greg smile and defiantly extend another marshmallow toward the fire.
Previous chapters can be found here.
AUTHOR: shutterbug_12
PAIRING: House/Stacy
RATING: R
SUMMARY: House and Stacy escape Princeton to go camping together; Stacy learns a new skill.
DISCLAIMER: Don't own them. Make love, not lawsuits.
NOTES: A series of twelve episodes set during House and Stacy's relationship. Title taken from "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. Thank you to amy_119 and phinnia for the beta-reads. Concrit and general feedback is love.
July 1998
By the time Stacy had stacked an armful of their supplies on the picnic table, the sun had sunk below the treetops. Hazy sunbeams washed the campground in orange hues. Overhead, the light diffused to paint the western clouds pink, reminding Stacy of a branch of magnified cherry blossoms, fully bloomed and vibrant. The campground hummed with a symphony of organic sound. Stacy heard the faint rush of the Delaware beyond the trees, the last whistle-chirps of birds, the buzzes of mosquitoes. A fire already popped and crackled in the neighboring campsite. Crickets would emerge soon, complete the natural composition with a stirring, lively rondo before the morning sun rose and the piece began again.
Behind her, Greg's voice sliced through nature's soundtrack and assaulted Stacy's ears. "Fuck!"
She peered over her shoulder. Greg grimaced, shaking his left hand and bouncing on the balls of his feet. His mallet lay abandoned in the dirt beside their half-assembled tent. "You manage to hurt yourself hammering a stake into the ground, yet people trust you to handle multi-million dollar equipment."
"In case you haven't noticed, you don't have to pitch an MRI machine," Greg snapped, gingerly flexing his thumb as he knelt, took up the mallet, and steadied the stake to ground the last corner of the tent.
"Really? I could have sworn those machines had to be assembled with each use," she said, crouching to retrieve the sheet of directions that he had tossed to the side. "Good thing I'm not the doctor."
Stacy caught Greg's eye roll as he stretched for a long vinyl bag, opened it, and withdrew several long poles. He scrutinized them, glancing from each pole to the crumpled material of the tent. His brow creased and his lips extended into a tight, stubborn line. As Greg searched the tent, pole in hand, Stacy scanned the diagrams printed beneath the directions.
"Greg, if you'd just read the directions--"
"I'm not an idiot," he said, slipping the pole inside a loop of fabric that spanned the width of the tent.
"You're not a Boy Scout." She extended a second pole in his direction.
"You don't have to be a Boy Scout to put up a tent."
Stacy pursed her lips and discarded the directions as Greg, determined to raise the tent unassisted, slid each remaining pole into place.
Minutes later, he stood proudly beside the tent, his arms spread wide. "Ha! See?"
"Congratulations," she drawled as Greg disappeared into the tent. She gathered their sleeping bags and crawled inside. "You've validated your manhood." She laid both sleeping bags across the floor, side by side. "If you were a Boy Scout, you'd be well on your way to earning your camping merit badge."
As he scooted onto his sleeping bag, the top of his head brushed the low, domed ceiling. His hair reached upward, charged with static electricity. "You know a lot about the Boy Scouts. Is there something"--he paused to ruffle his hair and scowl at the ceiling--"you're not telling me? Secret obsession? Secret operation?"
"Secret boyfriend."
The corner of his mouth twitched, a grin threatening to pull across his face. "I know you prefer younger beaux, but I never thought you'd go after jail--"
"I was in high school," she interrupted. "We were both in high school."
"Spend your dates doing good deeds together?" Sarcasm dripped off his tongue. "Volunteer at a soup kitchen one week. The next week, a nursing home. Then, the week after that--"
"Greg," she whispered with a low, husky voice that never failed to capture his attention. As she swung one leg over his and straddled his lap, she eyed him with a focused and intense stare that, over the past three years, she had learned to mirror. Stacy ghosted a forefinger over the fabric of his t-shirt, down the center of his sternum, his abdomen, and dipped into his navel.
"Yeah?"
Her eyes scanned his face, his body, and she recognized his efforts to control his physical reactions and keep himself stubbornly still--his unblinking eyes, the strain in his shoulders and stomach muscles, the tight clench of his jaw. With a quirk of her eyebrow and a confident half-grin, her finger snaked below the waistband of his shorts, tracing his hipbone. She noticed the silent bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed. To his credit, Greg's reservoir of self-control was not shallow, but years of practice had equipped Stacy with a featherbed of fail-safe ways to deplete it--a slow roll of her hips, a throaty moan, an aggressive kiss, locks of his hair caught tightly in her fists.
Now, Stacy brought her mouth to his ear and blew a hot stream of air into the canal. Her fingers danced across his hip and wrapped around his penis, hot and already semi-hard. She heard his sharp intake of breath and felt him pulse once in her hand. Stacy smiled against the shell of his ear. With a gentle squeeze of her fist, she whispered, "We did some very bad deeds together."
Greg groaned softly, tilting his head to press his cheek to hers. His hand rose to cup the base of her head and guide her into a kiss. Hot breath gusted through his nose and over her cheek, the sound of it drowning the outside noises, as his tongue hurried past her lips and swept into her mouth. His hand dropped to the hem of her shirt and lifted it, fingers splaying over the small of her back.
He became a whirlwind of energy and motion. His hand stroked and clasped at her back, pulling her against him as he noisily sucked her top lip into his mouth. His body arched gently and his hips canted forward, pushing his erection into her palm. His urgency was raw and contagious, and Stacy nearly failed to notice the faint rumble of her stomach. Seconds later, as Greg's hand slid up her spine to grasp the nape of her neck, hunger pains accompanied a second, louder rumble, and Stacy withdrew her hand from his shorts, pushed gently against his chest, and breathed a frustrated sigh.
"Honey, I'm--"
"No-o-o," he whined, falling back onto his elbows and breathing heavily.
"I'm sorry, but I haven't eaten since this morning," she said, genuinely apologetic, and climbed off him.
His head fell back, and he offered a whiny groan to the ceiling of the tent. "This would have taken seven minutes. Your stomach couldn't wait for seven minutes? "
Stacy bit her bottom lip, grimacing as her stomach rumbled again. "I'm sorry," she whispered, rubbing his leg and affectionately squeezing his knee. She jerked her head toward the open tent flap. "Come on. If you feed me now, I can promise you more than seven minutes later." Before he could argue, she crawled out of the tent, into the last slivers of hazy twilight, and walked to their car.
As she opened the trunk, Greg appeared beside her. With a scowl, he cupped his crotch and adjusted himself. "Could've been half-way to a mind-blowing orgasm by now."
Stacy pressed her lips together, refusing to acknowledge his remark and reaching for several plastic grocery bags. She extended a handful of bags in his direction. "Here. Take these." Stacy smirked, shaking her head as he begrudgingly accepted them, turned, and stomped toward the fire ring. As she gathered the remaining bags, she heard plastic rustling and, a moment later, a loud, excited exclamation.
"Yes!"
When Stacy closed the trunk and raised her head, she spied Greg kneeling on the ground beside the fire ring. Two roasting forks were propped against the ring of rocks, and he was tearing open a bag of marshmallows.
"Oh, no," she said, setting the grocery bags on the picnic table. "Not for dinner."
"Oh, yes. Definitely for dinner," he said, cradling the bag in his arm as if it were a football, and, with childlike enthusiasm, bounded toward the wood pile.
Ten minutes later, flames bloomed within Greg's teepee of firewood, and, eleven minutes later, the two of them were extending their skewered marshmallows toward the fire. Stacy sat in a folding chair and stared into the flames, which lapped at her marshmallow with glowing, golden tongues. Greg crouched near the edge of the fire ring, his marshmallow poised close to the ground.
"You're doing it wrong."
Stacy threw a sideways glance in his direction, pursing her lips. "I am not."
"You are, too," he declared calmly. "You're holding it too--"
As her marshmallow caught fire, she interrupted him with an involuntary shriek and frantically withdrew her fork, waving it through the air to extinguish the flame. When the flame died, she peered at the marshmallow; black char formed a crisp, cracked outer layer, and Stacy frowned as she carefully grasped the marshmallow between her thumb and forefinger.
"See? You were doing it wrong," Greg said. "You burned it."
"It's not burned. It's"--she paused to slide the marshmallow off the prongs--"well done." A portion of the charred layer fell away from the marshmallow like moulting snake skin; the marshmallow suddenly failed to appeal to her appetite, but, hoping to disprove Greg's claim, she raised it to her mouth.
"Oh, no. Stace, don't--you don't want to--" The entire marshmallow disappeared into her mouth, and Greg groaned with disapproval.
A triumphant smile appeared on Stacy's face, but faded within milliseconds. She averted her eyes and turned her head, hiding her face as it scrunched with displeasure. The sweet, sticky marshmallow was tainted with the taste of ash, and it took an enormous amount of effort to swallow it.
As she shifted to face forward, Greg pulled his marshmallow from the fire and asked incredulously, "You thought it would actually taste good?"
Stacy glared at him, temporarily forgetting that, for Greg, threatening glances inspired more speaking rather than silence.
"Next time, just lick the ashes," he said, sliding his marshmallow from his fork. "I'll set some aside before I build the fire. Just for you."
"You're so sweet, honey," she drawled, reaching for the bag of marshmallows to spear a second.
"See, this is how you roast a marshmallow," he said, thrusting it toward her and rotating it for her inspection. "Golden-brown on the outside. Gooey on the inside." With a grin, he crammed it into his mouth, chewed for a moment, and hummed contently. "Mmm."
Stacy rolled her eyes and asked, "Gooey? That a technical term?"
"Scientific. Very precise." He propped his roasting fork against the rocks as he swallowed, waving her nearer to him. "Come 'ere."
She eyed him suspiciously, but when he gestured again and repeated himself, she scooted her chair closer to him.
Greg shook his head. "Nuh-uh. Here." He patted the ground beside him. "Ass in the dirt. Let's go. You need to learn how to do this right."
"Like you, you mean."
"No-o-o," he said. "Right."
With a staged put-upon sigh, Stacy took a seat on the ground, crossing her legs as she stretched her fork into the fire.
"Whoa! Hang on." He shuffled across the dirt to kneel behind her. Peering over her shoulder, he reached around her to take hold of the fork's handle and guide the marshmallow away from the flames. "You can't shove it in the fire," he said, breathing a tiny laugh. "Jesus, you're a slow learner."
Stacy scowled at him, glancing out of the corners of her eyes, but let him steer the marshmallow close to the coals, which reflected pulsing, red-orange light off its white surface.
"Keep it there," he instructed, releasing her roasting fork and laying his hand in the curve of her waist. "Turn it every thirty seconds or so. Don't let it touch the flames."
Stacy bit her bottom lip in concentration, but her attention shifted when Greg closed the distance between them and pressed his body against her back. His face hovered in her peripheral vision, and she tilted her head for a glimpse of him. His eyes, their color muted by the fire-glow, blinked slowly and closed before he tucked his face into the crook of her neck, dropping a soft kiss there.
She would never reveal to him that these were the moments she stored in the deep of her memory, locked and guarded; these were the moments she cherished during long work hours and periods of separation. She catalogued his actions, his words, her emotions, her reactions. She absorbed as many details as possible; none were insignificant or too small. Not caring if her marshmallow drifted into the fire, she shut her eyes. Her ears filled with the crackle-snaps of the fire and the rhythm of Greg's breathing, broken by the sounds of his kisses. The familiar scent of him, the campfire smoke, and the faint lingering traces of bug spray all coalesced, fusing together in the warm, nighttime breeze. His touch was light on her waist. His occasional squeezes were gentle. The blazing heat of the fire blanketed her face, her front, but Greg's breaths, the press of his body, warmed the rest of her; she felt wrapped by warmth--by him.
The low rasp of his voice brought her out of her thoughts. "You're going to burn it again," he whispered.
Stacy cleared her throat as she repositioned the marshmallow near the coals. Turning her head slightly, she grinned at him. "Maybe I wouldn't if you weren't trying to cop a feel," she teased.
His lips pulled into a grin against her neck. He dropped a kiss behind her ear and, with a playful tone, asked, "Want to hear a scary story?"
She reached behind her to swat at his leg. "Greg," she warned half-heartedly, withdrawing her marshmallow--toasted, not burned--from the fire, and faced him.
"Come on," he goaded. "It's a good one. You won't be able--"
She hurried to pull her marshmallow from the prongs and stuffed it into his open mouth. His wide, surprised eyes made her grin, and she pointed at him. "You know I don't like scary stories."
He wrapped his fist around her index finger. "That wasn't fair," he complained around his mouthful of marshmallow.
"When do you ever play fair?"
He swallowed, then released her finger. "Always," he said, a smirk slowly stretching across his face. "Not bad, by the way." He nodded to her roasting fork. "Although, I think I'll need another taste. I couldn't really enjoy that one."
"Knock yourself out," she said, nudging the bag of marshmallows in his direction. She stood, turned, and started to walk toward the picnic table. "Fill up on all the marshmallows you want, but I need to eat dinner. A real dinner."
"You always have to ruin our fun, don't you?"
"Yep, always," she called over her shoulder, peeking behind her to see Greg smile and defiantly extend another marshmallow toward the fire.
Previous chapters can be found here.