Lightning Strikes Twice - Part 47A
Title: Lightning Strikes Twice
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Okay. That part where I said I was woefully behind on my feedbacking? Still true. But I appreciate all the kind words, and as you know, I'll get to you individually as soon as I can :) Thank you so much for the continued feedback and support on this story. I've had a lot of trouble lately with motivation, particularly in light of how busy work has been. Comments really, really, really help me keep going. I cannot stress enough how thankful I am to have all you lovely readers out there :)
Anyway, I'm happy MerDer are having sex on the show again. But just in case that's not enough for you... Here's some more...
~~~~~
Meredith yawned as she flipped the page in her book, sniffling, trying to keep her eyes from watering over. The text blotted until she could refocus. She wasn't sad. Or crying. She was just tired. And every yawn brought the idea home that maybe she should sleep, reminded her that she'd come home from a thirty-six hour shift and needed to rest, that maybe, just maybe, she should join Derek, who had been comfortably dozing since before she'd gotten home forty-five minutes ago.
But she couldn't. She'd learned throughout the course of the year that even after a thirty-six hour shift, unless she literally couldn't think, it was better to wait until a normal hour to sleep again, so she wouldn't get tossed off her already precarious sleep schedule. Sadly, normal wasn't 6PM. 6PM was for dinner. And thinking about upcoming sunsets. And, apparently, 6PM was also for watching Derek sleep away their last evening together before she failed dismally and had to repeat her intern year.
She'd been confident before. Confident when she'd come home from her vacation with Derek that everything would be fine. That she wasn't behind. That she would kick ass on this stupid test. Confidence had come easily when there'd still been two weeks to go, she'd been freshly-but-secretly engaged, and Derek had just been head-achey and not imminently on his way to the operating table, possibly just to die with his skull cracked open.
She curled up tighter around her book, resettling in the chair beside the bed as she stared at Derek instead of the words she was supposed to be absorbing. His back was to her, the line of his body forming a tapering wedge that rose to a point at his left shoulder, which peeked out from under the sangria-colored sheets, bare, tempting, lickable. He had his pillow jammed into submission under his cheek in a crumpled pile barely visible in the gap between his right shoulder and his head, and his slow breathing muffled itself into the pillowcase. He slept for an hour or two before lunch. He slept for an hour or two in the late afternoon. And, somehow, he managed to sleep through the night and would only open his eyes enough to mumble a sloppy, smiling, kissy farewell to her in the morning when she left at 5 AM for work. He slept a-freaking-lot.
For a vague, twisting moment, she found herself jealous, only to bite her lip, frown, and force herself to stop. To embrace the sleepy, sluggish glaze of study-itis settling deep into her limbs and muscles and brain. He slept because the brain surgery had robbed him of his energy, and he was still rebuilding it, brick by brick by brick. It was a slow project that would take weeks. Many weeks. Any jealousy over that was sorely misplaced. It wasn't like he wanted to be sleeping all the time. He didn't have much of a choice when his body called it quits.
She stared at her textbook, trying to read the words and failing as a yawn ripped away her focus. Her test. Her test was at 8 AM tomorrow. Fourteen hours away. At least she knew she'd ace the neuro part of the exam. Derek had helped her study for everything from orthopedics to pediatrics to urology, but neuro was the area he could chase into minute specifics, could drill her down into the most obscure questions, and he had. Thoroughly.
She was ready for neuro.
It was the rest... The rest that she was going to fail at. She wondered if Cristina felt the same way about cardio, or if Cristina thought she'd fail at all, at anything.
No.
Cristina Yang was probably lording over her books more out of habit than necessity at this point, because Cristina Yang was a giant. Freaking. Nerd. And Burke would probably be cooking her dinner, most decidedly not helping her on cardiothoracic questions, because Cristina Yang already knew everything there was to know about cardiothoracic stuff.
Probably.
Derek's even breathing shortened. The sheets rustled as he rolled to face her, blearily wiping at his eyes. She highlighted the first word on the page for good measure, not really paying attention to what it was beyond the fact that it had been emboldened.
Study. She had to study. Or at least look like she was studying. Except Derek was waking up, she was home for the first time since before dawn on Wednesday morning, and smiling at her sleepy fiancé seemed much more fun than studying at that moment, particularly when studying seemed so freaking futile in preventing failure. A grin peeled back her lips, even as she embraced the drowning crush of pessimism. You're going to faaaaail, a tiny voice whined in her ear.
"Hey," she said, breathless as she watched Derek's progression from asleep to semi-sentience.
For a moment, he stared at her, blank and dazed, a lazy, pleased smile pulling at his face despite the fact that he had the remnants of dreaming glazed across his eyes, dulling the usual twinkle into something glassy and not quite there. A blink, and the glassiness disappeared. Another blink, and something in his brain connected with his eyes. He stared at her with some amount of purpose. A final blink, and he woke, inhaling deeply, sluggishly, but not looking like he wanted to ease back into slumber, which was excellent, because that meant the tiredness wasn't sticking to his mind like honey when he woke.
A cute, groggy-sounding thing that could have been an ugh, or perhaps just a manly grunt fell from his lips. He wiped his face with his palms and pushed the sheets back, revealing his long, pale, toned torso.
"Hey," he said, the word long and drawn and breathy, reverent, as he leaned over his knees, glancing at his watch. "When did you..."
"A little after five," she answered when his voice trailed away. "I didn't want to wake you up."
Whether or not he approved, he made no comment. She watched the way his muscles flexed as he stretched, pulling himself by force back to wakefulness. He ran his hands against his scalp. A light dusting of fine, soft, ebony-brown hairs had sprouted in the course of the last nine days, giving him about half a centimeter of growth, enough to make his scalp feel like soft velvet when she ran her fingertips against it.
He stood and lumbered into their private bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him. The door caught on a towel and didn't latch, bouncing back a little on its hinges with a moan, giving her just an inch of the line of his boxer-clad body as he bent over the sink and splashed the last bits of slumber away with water from the faucet. He shifted out of view, and she tried desperately to focus back on studying while he relieved himself.
Study. Study. Study. Test in fourteen hours. Test. Had to pass test. Passing test was good. Passing test was vital. Naked Derek would not be on test...
If he was on the test, she wouldn't have to study. She wouldn't have to study, because at that point, she felt like she knew every feature of his body, every line, curve, pucker, and dip. Not that she'd mind studying naked Derek. She wouldn't mind at all. It would be like reading her favorite book all over again, but there would still be the thrill of it, too. She didn't think she'd ever lose the thrill of that sort of repetition. Sort of like skiing when you sucked at it. Every time down the same mountain would still replace your heart with a jackhammer in your chest. Not that she sucked at sex. Just skiing.
She sighed, leaning back against her chair. Naked Derek was definitely study-worthy.
There was a dent on his left hip the size of a pea that she loved to lick and tease and touch. He'd said it was a birthmark, and he always made a soft, hitching gasp when she found it in her roving explorations.
She loved to run her fingertips through the whorl of soft hairs just under his belly button that spilled out of its spiral pattern into a brief, fuzzy line before disappearing into the coarser forest below. Usually, he would groan for that. Low, soft, rumbly.
He had a tuft of hair in the dip between his pectorals that she loved as well, loved to tease and tangle with. She knew the path his Adam's apple followed when he swallowed, straight and rolling toward his chin. She could never get lost along the winding trail of his veins underneath the skin of his wrists, and she knew he had precisely sixteen freckles between his shoulders and his ass, though she didn't ever think she'd tire of searching for a seventeenth. Those places were the territory of sighs.
He had a twisting curl of perhaps ten gray hairs on the left side of his forehead, his left, not hers. The streak of silver sometimes contrasted with his darker mop of curls obviously enough that it seemed like it belonged on a skunk, but sometimes it blended, hiding like a treasure to find when she ran her fingers through his hair. Though, it wasn't a twist of gray, now, just a pale spot amongst the darker velvet on his scalp. He would growl when her fingertips reminded him of it, as if to assure her the gray didn't make him any less virile.
She knew every bump of his spine, the way it ended in a fine point just before his body cleaved apart, the way it dipped at his waist and curled up with the rising triangle of his shoulders. She could follow that, the taper of his hip into his quads, and the precise slope of his trapezius muscles, all from the picture behind her eyelids that brought him to her in the flesh, even when he accompanied her merely in thought. He would purr, then, when she touched those with her palms, touched his spine, his hips, his back, his ass. He would purr like a big cat.
He had soft calluses the size of dimes on the soles of his feet, protecting the skin near his pinky toes from the constant rub and grind of his cross trainers. She had discovered them once when trying to decide if he was ticklish anywhere despite his protestations to the contrary. He was, though he'd let his skin flush deeply red before he'd burst with paroxysms of soft, feathery laughter.
She knew his features, from the superficial, public bits any observer could figure out, to the deeply private, like the clean, Ivory taste of his skin, sometimes slightly salted with sweat, like the way his erection had a subtle upward curve, only becoming evident as the last of his foreskin peeled back, like the way his pupils dilated and blush crept like a weed down his skin whenever she kept him in a prison of uncompleted lust, stroking him along his perineum. She knew the sounds he would make when she framed those features, public and private, in moments of sexual artistry, and by the end, he would always be hoarse, a deep, needing, throaty timbre turning his rich, soft voice into something base, something to remind her they were connected on the most desperate, primal level.
The silence between the end and the next beginning was always her favorite part, when they lay together sweaty and spent, and she could run her fingers absently along his many perfect imperfections, listening to the blood rush in her ears, underneath his skin, the dull, remaining vibrations of pleasure and relaxation telling her she'd done her job as a composer.
Her anatomy book shifted in her lap, forgotten, and with it, all remnants of exhaustion. Her left hand had slipped underneath the waistband of her sweatpants, absently trying to cultivate the low, throbbing pressure developing in her groin, and her highlighter dangled loosely in the fingertips of her right hand.
"You're studying too much," Derek said, his voice breaking like thunder into the soft drizzle of her musing. Her highlighter pen slammed into the spine of her book as she dropped it in surprise, and the hot feeling of blush sprawled across her skin.
He stood in front of her, only his black-silk boxers between her and another study-session on his anatomy. Something landed on the floor beside the chair with a hollow, crinkling thud, but she couldn't tear her eyes away as he settled onto the floor by her feet and stared at her with sparkling, scolding blue eyes. Dim, late afternoon sunlight streamed through the side window, dusting half of him with golden hues.
"Derek, my test is in fourteen hours," she replied, struggling to speak with coherent selection of syllables. Had he caught her staring into space? Thinking about... God. He probably had. He put his palms against her knees, leaning forward. She pulled her hand out of her pants, hoping the book covered her escape from his notice.
"You're still studying too much," he said, smiling. Or smirking. Definitely smirking. She narrowed an eye at him, shifting in her chair, uncomfortably aware of how close he was, close and breathing and hot.
Study, a small voice said. You have to study. Not have sex.
"It's impossible to study too much," she said.
"It's possible," Derek replied. "The information will start to leak." He raised an eyebrow on the word leak, his eyes sparkling with mischief before he settled into a slightly more humble, reassuring gaze. "You're going to do fine, Meredith. Seriously. It's not as bad as you're thinking."
"Really?" she said as her heart slowed, losing track of the lust that'd built it up to thumping. "Because I'm thinking it'll be catastrophically bad. I don't want to repeat my intern year. Minus bombs, drownings, appendicitis, my mother dying, you going back to Addison, brain surgery, and amnesia, the year still pretty much sucked. I can't do it again, Derek. I barely made it through this time."
He blinked, pulling back. He settled Indian-style on the floor, his knees bumping up against the edge of the chair. The skin around his eyes crinkled, and she could tell she'd wounded him. He licked his lips, taking a deep, soft breath before replying, "You won't repeat your intern year, Meredith. I promise."
"I might."
"Mere, you're brilliant," he said. "You're one of the best interns SGH has. And I'm not saying that because I love you. I'm saying that because I'm Head of Neurosurgery, and it's part of my job to know which interns are in imminent danger of failing."
"Which interns are going to fail?" she demanded.
"Not you," he said.
"Which interns are going to fail, Derek?"
"None of your friends, Mere."
She sighed, deflating at his serious look. "I'm sorry," she said. "That's a boss thing, right? I'm not supposed to pry about that crap."
He shrugged, staring at her helplessly. "Sorry."
"It's okay," she said. "There's stuff. There's boss stuff. That you know. That I'm not supposed to know, because you're a boss, and I'm... Not. Not a boss. And it has nothing to do with our personal life, and it's not like you're keeping secrets or anything. Not relationship secrets, anyway."
"I'm not," he said.
"Not what?"
"Keeping secrets that would have any impact on you and me."
"I know."
"Even if it was part of my job as Head of Neurosurgery, if I thought it might mean something for you and me, I'd tell you, Mere," he said. "I'd tell you anything. I swear."
She stared at him, wondering if he realized the position the gap between his job and hers put them in. He would be the one to make the decisions on what mattered and what didn't. And she wouldn't be in a position to censor him at all. He'd hold all the cards. He'd hold... everything.
That's it. That's all you've earned for now.
He'd looked her straight in the eye, smiled, said that, and had kept Addison firmly tucked away in his brain somewhere for a later day, perhaps never. He'd said he had been going to tell her the night Addison had showed up. She believed him. She did. But...
She swallowed, reaching forward over her book. He looked down curiously as she placed her sparkling ring finger in plain view. Something in her mind snapped, some last remnant of doubt. Derek Shepherd was a stupid idiot a lot of the time. But he was her stupid idiot, and he at least showed a very good propensity for learning from his sometimes heartbreaking mistakes. And, through no fault of his own, there would be some things he couldn't tell her, at least in the foreseeable future. Professionally, they were separated. She was Hawaii to his lower forty-eight. It was something she'd always accepted, though not necessarily thought about.
"I trust you, Derek," she whispered.
He leaned forward, pulling her left foot into his lap. "Put the book down, then," he commanded as he started to scrape his thumb and index finger along the sides of her Achilles tendon as though he were trying to separate it from her ankle.
She sighed, trying to ignore how pleasant his ministrations felt. "You really think I'll do okay?"
"I know you'll ace it," he replied without hesitation. "And I've barely seen you since Monday, Mere."
"I was here on Tuesday and Wednesday!"
"Tuesday meaning after 5 PM, and Wednesday meaning only until 5 AM," he said. "Which, compared to every hour of every day?" He shifted his grip and began to stroke her skin along the bone lines of her toes. He stopped, looking up for a moment. Sunlight glanced off his irises. His eyelids dipped as he appraised her. His lips curled in a vague smile, his grip tightening around her foot.
"Okay, point," she said. "Derek, are you..."
"Much better, Mere. I just..."
"You seem better," she said, smiling down at him as he devoted attention to each and every toe. "More lively."
He frowned with concentration, and she couldn't help but linger her gaze on the way his fingers dexterously plowed away the tension. He ran his thumb along the inner arch of her foot, the line of his nail leaving a crease of skin that sent a shiver of pleasure coursing up her spine. A low, tense throb down below told her even if she thought studying was logically the better idea, her body was all for the sex thing. The sex thing was goooood. And, despite her protestations, her desire for the sex thing wasn't going away. Because Derek was touching her. And he was almost naked. And it'd been four days since they'd had any sort of sex, which, frankly, was three-and-a-half days too long to go without having sex with him.
"I still get really tired," he explained, but she was beyond caring as she leaned back in the chair, and he continued to tease and untwist every tendon and muscle and sinew below her knees. "But I'm fine after a nap." He stopped and looked up at her. "It makes me feel old that I can't make it more than about five hours without snoozing."
"Good," she muttered helplessly, staring at him through hooded eyes as she tried to resist the urge to reach down with her hand and start stroking herself. Everything began to blur, and she sighed, only to stiffen when she realized what she'd said. Her eyes snapped open, and she sputtered as he stared at her, a bemused expression on his face. "I mean... I didn't mean good. It's not good that you feel old. You shouldn't feel old. Derek, you're supposed to be tired. The first two weeks are purely-" She sucked in a breath when his warm palms left her skin bereft of his touch.
"Recovery. I know," he said, expression slathered with amusement and something deeper, something slightly more desperate, as he moved to her other foot and began again, sliding his grip along her Achilles tendon. He quirked a beautiful grin at her. "Better than studying?" he inquired.
"Oh," she said, moaning. "That feels good, Derek."
He laughed. "Of course it does."
She twisted, sending the forgotten book across her lap tumbling to the side between her hip and the arm of the chair. The hard corner stabbed her in the side, and she winced, flinching as it brought enough pain into the haze to make her reconsider.
"Der, I really..." she managed, pulling her foot away. "I shouldn't... I need to study."
"You don't need to study."
"I do. I really, really do. It's... I'm only good on neuro," she babbled at the same time the back of her mind was screaming. Why, why, why are you trying to make him stop? He's practically naked, he wants you, and I'm haaaaaaaappy. "And... Fourteen hours, Derek. Can't... I... You... Huh?"
"Fine," he said. For a painful moment, he stilled, his expression melting into something serious. His thighs flexed as his weight shifted, his body tensed, and then he lunged, grunting as he pushed her back against the chair and stretched her from waist to fingertips, sliding his palms in an upward, slanting trail that took her shirt with it and left her half-naked in the chair. "I'll help you study," he said as he caught the garment on its downward tumble to the floor and tossed it aside, far away from reach.
"This isn't studying," she said, breathless as the chill air struck her bare skin. She hadn't bothered to put a bra on when she'd changed out of her work clothes, opting for studying in comfort over studying in style.
Touching. He was touching her. He was touching her skin. She leaned back as his palms swept past her nipples, lower, and lower still, to the waistline of her sweatpants, toying with the fabric over the elastic as his body slipped back down against the floor.
He smirked. "It will be after I get set up," he assured her.
"Set up?" she said, breathless. "What?"
"Alex, have you seen my purse?" Izzie yelled as she thundered past the door, her footfalls loud and thumping on the area carpet. Her query seemed to echo off the walls, vibrating, horridly close, considering the position she and Derek were in.
"Sofa downstairs," called Alex from a distant place.
Meredith shot her gaze to the door, confirming it was closed. Had she locked it? She didn't know if she'd locked it. She racked her brain, trying to think of the moment her fingers had clutched the doorknob and twisted...
"You'll just have to be quiet," Derek said. The soft strains of his laughter made her frown. How could he always be so blasé about who caught them?
"Derek, what about your moth-"
He leaned forward and kissed her lips, ripping her question away from her as he plunged deep, sampling the taste of her like a fine pinot noir, rolling his tongue against her. A moan slithered from her throat, but the twist of their movements muffled it until it dissipated on the coattails of their heavy breathing.
"I said you'll just have to be quiet," he murmured, nip, nip, nipping to accent his syllables before diving back in. His kisses felt so good, she didn't have the presence of mind to protest. Me? I'll have to be quiet? What about you, Mr. Loud and Grunty?
She slipped her tongue along the ridges at the roof of her mouth, mingled it with his sliding exploration, gasping at the taste of him, slick and yielding to her guidance. When he pulled out and roamed down the side of her neck, nibbling at the pulse of her jugular, sucking, sliding along her clavicle and onto her shoulder, she felt a senseless sort of loss and leaned forward, moaning for another taste. He pushed her arm back behind the chair, sampling slowly with his lips and teeth and tongue down to her elbow before coming to a stop. She was mindless, breathless, impassioned, and when he encircled her wrist with a tie and looped it closed, she didn't think about the implications until she tried to touch him and couldn't.
"What?" she gasped, twisting to see behind the chair what he'd done. Her lower back and neck whined in complaint as she struggled to see exactly what obstruction held her hand at bay. He'd looped one end of one of his ties around the rear leg of the chair, the other around her wrist. It was a loose knot, comfortable, but no matter how she twisted her fingers, she couldn't quite seem to grasp the edge of the tangle to set herself free. "What is... Derek, what?"
"I'm sharing," he said. "Better late than never."
He pushed her against the back of the chair, rolling over her like a wave until the back of her neck cut against the high ridge of the chair. He devastated her with another kiss, squeezing her jaw between his index finger and thumb in a gesture that explained to her that, while he might be easily tired, he was not weak, not weak at all. The full weight of him settled against her, pinning her back against the chair as he kissed her, kissed her, kissed her again, leaving her with only the option to be crushed and swept away by the bliss of it.
Dryly thrusting against her, he pushed her free left arm backward, down toward the floor like he had with her right arm, but she didn't try to stop him, didn't do anything but let him take her away with another devastating kiss, pained not by the knowledge that she was apparently receiving Derek's payback for their Algonquin adventure, but by the fact that now she couldn't touch the soft carpet of hair on his scalp that hovered so close in the storm, begging to be caressed. She felt the knot slide into place, and she sat there dumbfounded and dazed and wanting as he pulled back, heaving breath after panting breath.
He stared at her, a wanton, desirous darkness overriding his normal, loving gaze as he evaluated his handiwork. Her breasts were on display for him, perky, beckoning, and she was unable to do much more than let him look, wishing he would touch her, or do something other than just watch.
He smirked as his breathing slowed into something permitting speech. "You said I get to tie you up," he said.
"Now?" she squeaked as the weight of the situation sank into her awareness. She remembered what shape he'd been in when she'd finished with him, barely able to move. It sent a throb of lust through her lower body, and she swallowed. "Now, you want to tie me up?" she said, even as something screamed, yes, yes, yes, let him! "When my test is in fourteen hours?"
He nodded. "I'm feeling much better. And I did want to share."
"Share."
"Yes. Share," he said as his expression devolved into a base smirk that stripped off the rest of her clothes with a blink. He started pulling at her pants to bring his daydream to fruition. She put her feet down and shifted her weight, letting him slide the waist under her butt and off without thinking much about it until they puddled at her ankles. He smiled as he tossed them away. "I told you I'd do this when we got home."
"Derek, are you sure?" she said. Yes. Yes, let him, damn it. Let him do it. It feels good. Just... But... "I mean. You're... You're sure? You're absolutely sure?" As wonderful as all of this felt, she had no desire to be stuck tied to a chair naked with only his mother, Izzie, or Alex to intervene if he... If something happened.
"I'm sure," he confirmed. "So, unless you have a strong moral or mood-based objection to me doing this, be quiet."
"But I..."
He flashed an evil grin at her as he slipped his fingers underneath the front piece of her panties. She moaned, kicking slightly with her feet in a spasm of pleasure. "Stop. Talking," he growled, but the command wasn't necessary.
He put light pressure down with his thumb, and she bucked, trying to slide into it in a vain effort to fill the void between her legs. She wanted him. She wanted him now. She wanted him right now. Inside. A gasp tore from her lips as he nudged her panties down and tossed them away. He leaned forward and grabbed the book stuck against her side. It landed with a thunk on the thin carpet, forgotten and unimportant in the whirl.
He resettled on the floor, his body hitching as though it were a difficult task to keep himself away, a task which he failed when he slanted toward her, cupping her breasts, winding a hot, warm trail down her sides, to the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips. He hooked his hands under her knees and pulled her forward, inch by inch. It wasn't uncomfortable. The pillow slid down with her, and the chair back kept her head forward, looking. Looking at him and nowhere else. Not that anything in the room mattered beyond the barest detail. Nothing mattered except him and all the features she'd endlessly catalogued.
She pulled at the ties, wishing she could lean forward and participate, but they went taut as he inched her closer, and her whole torso sloped away from him like a waiting canvas. Waiting to be touched. Waiting to be loved and desired. He was so close, so close and hot and strong, and she was at his mercy. She breathed, short, tight, clipped, as he nudged her in the small of her knees until the only comfortable way for her to sit was to hook her legs over his shoulders, offering him her most private gift.
He wrapped his arms over her legs, splayed his warm palms against her inner thighs, and spread her wide before his eyes. His fingers ran along her skin, stroking the lines of her femoral arteries, and then he blew softly on the cleft between. She tilted her head back, moaning as he stripped her of her senses.
"You're so beautiful," he said, his tone low and shivery as he rested his cheek on the inner bend of her thigh and inhaled the scent of her. "You're beautiful, Mere," he said, the barest whisper of vibration. He stared up at her along the line of her belly, nose resting a bare inch from the nest of curls below her navel. He stroked an index finger against the side of her leg, and she couldn't help but twitch. A dark lust hooded his eyes with the movement.
"Derek," she moaned.
He blinked, long and slow, his eyes torn with a desperation that betrayed the calm, suave, haughty look plastered across his face. Their eyes met for a moment, time seemed to rip to shreds, and she hovered in the silence, breathing, watching his plans unfold one by one across his face. Naughty, mischievous plans. His eyes narrowed, and he gave her a wanting, needing look that peeled away every last inch of her skin as though he were making his own catalogue of her and her flaws for later recall.
This was going to be...
"Time for me to share," he growled.
His fingers sliced into the skin that connected her legs to her torso, and his face disappeared from view. "Crap!" she hissed when she felt his tongue bisect her, only to have her breath fall away as he laved her with slippery, sliding, wandering attention. She jerked, only to still in the vice of his iron grip around her thighs. He groaned as she bent her knees and pulled, helpless to do anything but try to find an outlet, an outlet for the pleasure winding through her lower body. She thrust forward, trying to put pressure where there was only touch, but instead of responding to her desperate pleas, he leaned back and laughed, deep and throaty, as though this were something truly amusing.
He smirked as she stilled against him. "Impatient woman," he growled, lowering to renew his attentions. He kissed her with all the severity of a butterfly, tormenting, teasing, giving her soft hints of his mastery without revealing his full hand. She yanked at the ties, wishing she could tumble onto the bed with him. This was... He was...
"Oh," she moaned as he spun her tension like a spider web. The web sprawled slowly as he moved from strand to strand, extending, rearranging. His fingers flexed against her skin. The tip of his tongue slipped deep into her folds, and she gasped. "Ohhh, please. Please, Derek."
A deep, rumbling sound tore through him. "You're mine," he said.
She squeezed her thighs helplessly as she reached the beginning of a peak. Tension coiled in her gut, and she couldn't help but present herself more eagerly, opening herself, pushing into him until her wrists were aching and her fingers started to tingle with numbness. She was lost to it, lost to everything but the moaning, "Oh please, please, please," that she hoped would bring her to the explosion at the end of it. He licked her until every muscle shivered with it, and she thought she would die if something didn't happen soon. Anything. "Oh, please," she continued, a mantra, unable to stop the tension winding up like a pitcher getting ready to...
He pulled away, grunting softly as he caught his breath.
"No," she whined, jerking helplessly against her bonds. She tightened her legs and tried to drive him back into her, but she had no leverage, and he was prepared for her protests.
He smirked at her, and somewhere in the roar, she heard a plastic crinkle, the same one she'd heard before when he'd first sat down. "So, I found something rather interesting in your sock drawer," he commented, his tone matter-of-fact as he toyed with something below her field of view. She strained, strained against him to see, but it was useless. What did she have in her sock drawer? Socks. Socks and...
"What?" she gasped, trying to focus. Focus on anything except the fact that Derek had left her bereft and unfinished.
He showed her the bag first. A generic, unlabelled plastic bag that he'd found in her sock drawer... Oh, god.
A low hum began to supplement the roar in her ears. She swallowed. Something cotton-candy pink appeared briefly between her legs before he cupped his hands over it, over her, and pressed it against her. Vibrations tore through her, sending her winding toward the top in moments, flailing, clawing.
"Derek!" she hissed, almost pushed over the edge, but then it all stopped when he lifted it millimeters away. She moaned, trying to make sense of what he was doing, and why he was doing it to her. Why couldn't he just let her finish? Why, why, why.
So it's better at the end, a tiny voice of reason snarled through her mind. You did it to him. You did it until he was nonsensical and begging and helpless, and now you're paying for it. You're so, so paying for it. Her eyes watered. She'd really just settle for a bunch of little ones at this point. No need for a big, firework-y finish. Right? God.
"Don't stop," she whined, but her imploring words caressed the air between them far too late to do anything but make him smirk.
An eyebrow quirked in inquiry, he pulled the device away from her. It was shaped sort of like an oblong boomerang, fatter and wider at one end, thinner and more cylindrical at the other. It was perhaps four inches long. His index finger lingered over the circular minus button until the hum faded to silence. He tilted the object in his hand, peering at the screw cap that housed the batteries.
"Fun Factory?" he said, haughty, not-quite-laughter stuttering his tone. "Not that I'm knocking your brand choice. Sex is fun. But pink?"
"My... You found my..." she babbled helplessly. "They were out of black. How did you find..."
He shrugged. "You're the one who wanted me to do laundry while I was healing."
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Duh. (Mer/Der)
Rating: M
Timeline: Post Time After Time.
Okay. That part where I said I was woefully behind on my feedbacking? Still true. But I appreciate all the kind words, and as you know, I'll get to you individually as soon as I can :) Thank you so much for the continued feedback and support on this story. I've had a lot of trouble lately with motivation, particularly in light of how busy work has been. Comments really, really, really help me keep going. I cannot stress enough how thankful I am to have all you lovely readers out there :)
Anyway, I'm happy MerDer are having sex on the show again. But just in case that's not enough for you... Here's some more...
~~~~~
Meredith yawned as she flipped the page in her book, sniffling, trying to keep her eyes from watering over. The text blotted until she could refocus. She wasn't sad. Or crying. She was just tired. And every yawn brought the idea home that maybe she should sleep, reminded her that she'd come home from a thirty-six hour shift and needed to rest, that maybe, just maybe, she should join Derek, who had been comfortably dozing since before she'd gotten home forty-five minutes ago.
But she couldn't. She'd learned throughout the course of the year that even after a thirty-six hour shift, unless she literally couldn't think, it was better to wait until a normal hour to sleep again, so she wouldn't get tossed off her already precarious sleep schedule. Sadly, normal wasn't 6PM. 6PM was for dinner. And thinking about upcoming sunsets. And, apparently, 6PM was also for watching Derek sleep away their last evening together before she failed dismally and had to repeat her intern year.
She'd been confident before. Confident when she'd come home from her vacation with Derek that everything would be fine. That she wasn't behind. That she would kick ass on this stupid test. Confidence had come easily when there'd still been two weeks to go, she'd been freshly-but-secretly engaged, and Derek had just been head-achey and not imminently on his way to the operating table, possibly just to die with his skull cracked open.
She curled up tighter around her book, resettling in the chair beside the bed as she stared at Derek instead of the words she was supposed to be absorbing. His back was to her, the line of his body forming a tapering wedge that rose to a point at his left shoulder, which peeked out from under the sangria-colored sheets, bare, tempting, lickable. He had his pillow jammed into submission under his cheek in a crumpled pile barely visible in the gap between his right shoulder and his head, and his slow breathing muffled itself into the pillowcase. He slept for an hour or two before lunch. He slept for an hour or two in the late afternoon. And, somehow, he managed to sleep through the night and would only open his eyes enough to mumble a sloppy, smiling, kissy farewell to her in the morning when she left at 5 AM for work. He slept a-freaking-lot.
For a vague, twisting moment, she found herself jealous, only to bite her lip, frown, and force herself to stop. To embrace the sleepy, sluggish glaze of study-itis settling deep into her limbs and muscles and brain. He slept because the brain surgery had robbed him of his energy, and he was still rebuilding it, brick by brick by brick. It was a slow project that would take weeks. Many weeks. Any jealousy over that was sorely misplaced. It wasn't like he wanted to be sleeping all the time. He didn't have much of a choice when his body called it quits.
She stared at her textbook, trying to read the words and failing as a yawn ripped away her focus. Her test. Her test was at 8 AM tomorrow. Fourteen hours away. At least she knew she'd ace the neuro part of the exam. Derek had helped her study for everything from orthopedics to pediatrics to urology, but neuro was the area he could chase into minute specifics, could drill her down into the most obscure questions, and he had. Thoroughly.
She was ready for neuro.
It was the rest... The rest that she was going to fail at. She wondered if Cristina felt the same way about cardio, or if Cristina thought she'd fail at all, at anything.
No.
Cristina Yang was probably lording over her books more out of habit than necessity at this point, because Cristina Yang was a giant. Freaking. Nerd. And Burke would probably be cooking her dinner, most decidedly not helping her on cardiothoracic questions, because Cristina Yang already knew everything there was to know about cardiothoracic stuff.
Probably.
Derek's even breathing shortened. The sheets rustled as he rolled to face her, blearily wiping at his eyes. She highlighted the first word on the page for good measure, not really paying attention to what it was beyond the fact that it had been emboldened.
Study. She had to study. Or at least look like she was studying. Except Derek was waking up, she was home for the first time since before dawn on Wednesday morning, and smiling at her sleepy fiancé seemed much more fun than studying at that moment, particularly when studying seemed so freaking futile in preventing failure. A grin peeled back her lips, even as she embraced the drowning crush of pessimism. You're going to faaaaail, a tiny voice whined in her ear.
"Hey," she said, breathless as she watched Derek's progression from asleep to semi-sentience.
For a moment, he stared at her, blank and dazed, a lazy, pleased smile pulling at his face despite the fact that he had the remnants of dreaming glazed across his eyes, dulling the usual twinkle into something glassy and not quite there. A blink, and the glassiness disappeared. Another blink, and something in his brain connected with his eyes. He stared at her with some amount of purpose. A final blink, and he woke, inhaling deeply, sluggishly, but not looking like he wanted to ease back into slumber, which was excellent, because that meant the tiredness wasn't sticking to his mind like honey when he woke.
A cute, groggy-sounding thing that could have been an ugh, or perhaps just a manly grunt fell from his lips. He wiped his face with his palms and pushed the sheets back, revealing his long, pale, toned torso.
"Hey," he said, the word long and drawn and breathy, reverent, as he leaned over his knees, glancing at his watch. "When did you..."
"A little after five," she answered when his voice trailed away. "I didn't want to wake you up."
Whether or not he approved, he made no comment. She watched the way his muscles flexed as he stretched, pulling himself by force back to wakefulness. He ran his hands against his scalp. A light dusting of fine, soft, ebony-brown hairs had sprouted in the course of the last nine days, giving him about half a centimeter of growth, enough to make his scalp feel like soft velvet when she ran her fingertips against it.
He stood and lumbered into their private bathroom, pushing the door closed behind him. The door caught on a towel and didn't latch, bouncing back a little on its hinges with a moan, giving her just an inch of the line of his boxer-clad body as he bent over the sink and splashed the last bits of slumber away with water from the faucet. He shifted out of view, and she tried desperately to focus back on studying while he relieved himself.
Study. Study. Study. Test in fourteen hours. Test. Had to pass test. Passing test was good. Passing test was vital. Naked Derek would not be on test...
If he was on the test, she wouldn't have to study. She wouldn't have to study, because at that point, she felt like she knew every feature of his body, every line, curve, pucker, and dip. Not that she'd mind studying naked Derek. She wouldn't mind at all. It would be like reading her favorite book all over again, but there would still be the thrill of it, too. She didn't think she'd ever lose the thrill of that sort of repetition. Sort of like skiing when you sucked at it. Every time down the same mountain would still replace your heart with a jackhammer in your chest. Not that she sucked at sex. Just skiing.
She sighed, leaning back against her chair. Naked Derek was definitely study-worthy.
There was a dent on his left hip the size of a pea that she loved to lick and tease and touch. He'd said it was a birthmark, and he always made a soft, hitching gasp when she found it in her roving explorations.
She loved to run her fingertips through the whorl of soft hairs just under his belly button that spilled out of its spiral pattern into a brief, fuzzy line before disappearing into the coarser forest below. Usually, he would groan for that. Low, soft, rumbly.
He had a tuft of hair in the dip between his pectorals that she loved as well, loved to tease and tangle with. She knew the path his Adam's apple followed when he swallowed, straight and rolling toward his chin. She could never get lost along the winding trail of his veins underneath the skin of his wrists, and she knew he had precisely sixteen freckles between his shoulders and his ass, though she didn't ever think she'd tire of searching for a seventeenth. Those places were the territory of sighs.
He had a twisting curl of perhaps ten gray hairs on the left side of his forehead, his left, not hers. The streak of silver sometimes contrasted with his darker mop of curls obviously enough that it seemed like it belonged on a skunk, but sometimes it blended, hiding like a treasure to find when she ran her fingers through his hair. Though, it wasn't a twist of gray, now, just a pale spot amongst the darker velvet on his scalp. He would growl when her fingertips reminded him of it, as if to assure her the gray didn't make him any less virile.
She knew every bump of his spine, the way it ended in a fine point just before his body cleaved apart, the way it dipped at his waist and curled up with the rising triangle of his shoulders. She could follow that, the taper of his hip into his quads, and the precise slope of his trapezius muscles, all from the picture behind her eyelids that brought him to her in the flesh, even when he accompanied her merely in thought. He would purr, then, when she touched those with her palms, touched his spine, his hips, his back, his ass. He would purr like a big cat.
He had soft calluses the size of dimes on the soles of his feet, protecting the skin near his pinky toes from the constant rub and grind of his cross trainers. She had discovered them once when trying to decide if he was ticklish anywhere despite his protestations to the contrary. He was, though he'd let his skin flush deeply red before he'd burst with paroxysms of soft, feathery laughter.
She knew his features, from the superficial, public bits any observer could figure out, to the deeply private, like the clean, Ivory taste of his skin, sometimes slightly salted with sweat, like the way his erection had a subtle upward curve, only becoming evident as the last of his foreskin peeled back, like the way his pupils dilated and blush crept like a weed down his skin whenever she kept him in a prison of uncompleted lust, stroking him along his perineum. She knew the sounds he would make when she framed those features, public and private, in moments of sexual artistry, and by the end, he would always be hoarse, a deep, needing, throaty timbre turning his rich, soft voice into something base, something to remind her they were connected on the most desperate, primal level.
The silence between the end and the next beginning was always her favorite part, when they lay together sweaty and spent, and she could run her fingers absently along his many perfect imperfections, listening to the blood rush in her ears, underneath his skin, the dull, remaining vibrations of pleasure and relaxation telling her she'd done her job as a composer.
Her anatomy book shifted in her lap, forgotten, and with it, all remnants of exhaustion. Her left hand had slipped underneath the waistband of her sweatpants, absently trying to cultivate the low, throbbing pressure developing in her groin, and her highlighter dangled loosely in the fingertips of her right hand.
"You're studying too much," Derek said, his voice breaking like thunder into the soft drizzle of her musing. Her highlighter pen slammed into the spine of her book as she dropped it in surprise, and the hot feeling of blush sprawled across her skin.
He stood in front of her, only his black-silk boxers between her and another study-session on his anatomy. Something landed on the floor beside the chair with a hollow, crinkling thud, but she couldn't tear her eyes away as he settled onto the floor by her feet and stared at her with sparkling, scolding blue eyes. Dim, late afternoon sunlight streamed through the side window, dusting half of him with golden hues.
"Derek, my test is in fourteen hours," she replied, struggling to speak with coherent selection of syllables. Had he caught her staring into space? Thinking about... God. He probably had. He put his palms against her knees, leaning forward. She pulled her hand out of her pants, hoping the book covered her escape from his notice.
"You're still studying too much," he said, smiling. Or smirking. Definitely smirking. She narrowed an eye at him, shifting in her chair, uncomfortably aware of how close he was, close and breathing and hot.
Study, a small voice said. You have to study. Not have sex.
"It's impossible to study too much," she said.
"It's possible," Derek replied. "The information will start to leak." He raised an eyebrow on the word leak, his eyes sparkling with mischief before he settled into a slightly more humble, reassuring gaze. "You're going to do fine, Meredith. Seriously. It's not as bad as you're thinking."
"Really?" she said as her heart slowed, losing track of the lust that'd built it up to thumping. "Because I'm thinking it'll be catastrophically bad. I don't want to repeat my intern year. Minus bombs, drownings, appendicitis, my mother dying, you going back to Addison, brain surgery, and amnesia, the year still pretty much sucked. I can't do it again, Derek. I barely made it through this time."
He blinked, pulling back. He settled Indian-style on the floor, his knees bumping up against the edge of the chair. The skin around his eyes crinkled, and she could tell she'd wounded him. He licked his lips, taking a deep, soft breath before replying, "You won't repeat your intern year, Meredith. I promise."
"I might."
"Mere, you're brilliant," he said. "You're one of the best interns SGH has. And I'm not saying that because I love you. I'm saying that because I'm Head of Neurosurgery, and it's part of my job to know which interns are in imminent danger of failing."
"Which interns are going to fail?" she demanded.
"Not you," he said.
"Which interns are going to fail, Derek?"
"None of your friends, Mere."
She sighed, deflating at his serious look. "I'm sorry," she said. "That's a boss thing, right? I'm not supposed to pry about that crap."
He shrugged, staring at her helplessly. "Sorry."
"It's okay," she said. "There's stuff. There's boss stuff. That you know. That I'm not supposed to know, because you're a boss, and I'm... Not. Not a boss. And it has nothing to do with our personal life, and it's not like you're keeping secrets or anything. Not relationship secrets, anyway."
"I'm not," he said.
"Not what?"
"Keeping secrets that would have any impact on you and me."
"I know."
"Even if it was part of my job as Head of Neurosurgery, if I thought it might mean something for you and me, I'd tell you, Mere," he said. "I'd tell you anything. I swear."
She stared at him, wondering if he realized the position the gap between his job and hers put them in. He would be the one to make the decisions on what mattered and what didn't. And she wouldn't be in a position to censor him at all. He'd hold all the cards. He'd hold... everything.
That's it. That's all you've earned for now.
He'd looked her straight in the eye, smiled, said that, and had kept Addison firmly tucked away in his brain somewhere for a later day, perhaps never. He'd said he had been going to tell her the night Addison had showed up. She believed him. She did. But...
She swallowed, reaching forward over her book. He looked down curiously as she placed her sparkling ring finger in plain view. Something in her mind snapped, some last remnant of doubt. Derek Shepherd was a stupid idiot a lot of the time. But he was her stupid idiot, and he at least showed a very good propensity for learning from his sometimes heartbreaking mistakes. And, through no fault of his own, there would be some things he couldn't tell her, at least in the foreseeable future. Professionally, they were separated. She was Hawaii to his lower forty-eight. It was something she'd always accepted, though not necessarily thought about.
"I trust you, Derek," she whispered.
He leaned forward, pulling her left foot into his lap. "Put the book down, then," he commanded as he started to scrape his thumb and index finger along the sides of her Achilles tendon as though he were trying to separate it from her ankle.
She sighed, trying to ignore how pleasant his ministrations felt. "You really think I'll do okay?"
"I know you'll ace it," he replied without hesitation. "And I've barely seen you since Monday, Mere."
"I was here on Tuesday and Wednesday!"
"Tuesday meaning after 5 PM, and Wednesday meaning only until 5 AM," he said. "Which, compared to every hour of every day?" He shifted his grip and began to stroke her skin along the bone lines of her toes. He stopped, looking up for a moment. Sunlight glanced off his irises. His eyelids dipped as he appraised her. His lips curled in a vague smile, his grip tightening around her foot.
"Okay, point," she said. "Derek, are you..."
"Much better, Mere. I just..."
"You seem better," she said, smiling down at him as he devoted attention to each and every toe. "More lively."
He frowned with concentration, and she couldn't help but linger her gaze on the way his fingers dexterously plowed away the tension. He ran his thumb along the inner arch of her foot, the line of his nail leaving a crease of skin that sent a shiver of pleasure coursing up her spine. A low, tense throb down below told her even if she thought studying was logically the better idea, her body was all for the sex thing. The sex thing was goooood. And, despite her protestations, her desire for the sex thing wasn't going away. Because Derek was touching her. And he was almost naked. And it'd been four days since they'd had any sort of sex, which, frankly, was three-and-a-half days too long to go without having sex with him.
"I still get really tired," he explained, but she was beyond caring as she leaned back in the chair, and he continued to tease and untwist every tendon and muscle and sinew below her knees. "But I'm fine after a nap." He stopped and looked up at her. "It makes me feel old that I can't make it more than about five hours without snoozing."
"Good," she muttered helplessly, staring at him through hooded eyes as she tried to resist the urge to reach down with her hand and start stroking herself. Everything began to blur, and she sighed, only to stiffen when she realized what she'd said. Her eyes snapped open, and she sputtered as he stared at her, a bemused expression on his face. "I mean... I didn't mean good. It's not good that you feel old. You shouldn't feel old. Derek, you're supposed to be tired. The first two weeks are purely-" She sucked in a breath when his warm palms left her skin bereft of his touch.
"Recovery. I know," he said, expression slathered with amusement and something deeper, something slightly more desperate, as he moved to her other foot and began again, sliding his grip along her Achilles tendon. He quirked a beautiful grin at her. "Better than studying?" he inquired.
"Oh," she said, moaning. "That feels good, Derek."
He laughed. "Of course it does."
She twisted, sending the forgotten book across her lap tumbling to the side between her hip and the arm of the chair. The hard corner stabbed her in the side, and she winced, flinching as it brought enough pain into the haze to make her reconsider.
"Der, I really..." she managed, pulling her foot away. "I shouldn't... I need to study."
"You don't need to study."
"I do. I really, really do. It's... I'm only good on neuro," she babbled at the same time the back of her mind was screaming. Why, why, why are you trying to make him stop? He's practically naked, he wants you, and I'm haaaaaaaappy. "And... Fourteen hours, Derek. Can't... I... You... Huh?"
"Fine," he said. For a painful moment, he stilled, his expression melting into something serious. His thighs flexed as his weight shifted, his body tensed, and then he lunged, grunting as he pushed her back against the chair and stretched her from waist to fingertips, sliding his palms in an upward, slanting trail that took her shirt with it and left her half-naked in the chair. "I'll help you study," he said as he caught the garment on its downward tumble to the floor and tossed it aside, far away from reach.
"This isn't studying," she said, breathless as the chill air struck her bare skin. She hadn't bothered to put a bra on when she'd changed out of her work clothes, opting for studying in comfort over studying in style.
Touching. He was touching her. He was touching her skin. She leaned back as his palms swept past her nipples, lower, and lower still, to the waistline of her sweatpants, toying with the fabric over the elastic as his body slipped back down against the floor.
He smirked. "It will be after I get set up," he assured her.
"Set up?" she said, breathless. "What?"
"Alex, have you seen my purse?" Izzie yelled as she thundered past the door, her footfalls loud and thumping on the area carpet. Her query seemed to echo off the walls, vibrating, horridly close, considering the position she and Derek were in.
"Sofa downstairs," called Alex from a distant place.
Meredith shot her gaze to the door, confirming it was closed. Had she locked it? She didn't know if she'd locked it. She racked her brain, trying to think of the moment her fingers had clutched the doorknob and twisted...
"You'll just have to be quiet," Derek said. The soft strains of his laughter made her frown. How could he always be so blasé about who caught them?
"Derek, what about your moth-"
He leaned forward and kissed her lips, ripping her question away from her as he plunged deep, sampling the taste of her like a fine pinot noir, rolling his tongue against her. A moan slithered from her throat, but the twist of their movements muffled it until it dissipated on the coattails of their heavy breathing.
"I said you'll just have to be quiet," he murmured, nip, nip, nipping to accent his syllables before diving back in. His kisses felt so good, she didn't have the presence of mind to protest. Me? I'll have to be quiet? What about you, Mr. Loud and Grunty?
She slipped her tongue along the ridges at the roof of her mouth, mingled it with his sliding exploration, gasping at the taste of him, slick and yielding to her guidance. When he pulled out and roamed down the side of her neck, nibbling at the pulse of her jugular, sucking, sliding along her clavicle and onto her shoulder, she felt a senseless sort of loss and leaned forward, moaning for another taste. He pushed her arm back behind the chair, sampling slowly with his lips and teeth and tongue down to her elbow before coming to a stop. She was mindless, breathless, impassioned, and when he encircled her wrist with a tie and looped it closed, she didn't think about the implications until she tried to touch him and couldn't.
"What?" she gasped, twisting to see behind the chair what he'd done. Her lower back and neck whined in complaint as she struggled to see exactly what obstruction held her hand at bay. He'd looped one end of one of his ties around the rear leg of the chair, the other around her wrist. It was a loose knot, comfortable, but no matter how she twisted her fingers, she couldn't quite seem to grasp the edge of the tangle to set herself free. "What is... Derek, what?"
"I'm sharing," he said. "Better late than never."
He pushed her against the back of the chair, rolling over her like a wave until the back of her neck cut against the high ridge of the chair. He devastated her with another kiss, squeezing her jaw between his index finger and thumb in a gesture that explained to her that, while he might be easily tired, he was not weak, not weak at all. The full weight of him settled against her, pinning her back against the chair as he kissed her, kissed her, kissed her again, leaving her with only the option to be crushed and swept away by the bliss of it.
Dryly thrusting against her, he pushed her free left arm backward, down toward the floor like he had with her right arm, but she didn't try to stop him, didn't do anything but let him take her away with another devastating kiss, pained not by the knowledge that she was apparently receiving Derek's payback for their Algonquin adventure, but by the fact that now she couldn't touch the soft carpet of hair on his scalp that hovered so close in the storm, begging to be caressed. She felt the knot slide into place, and she sat there dumbfounded and dazed and wanting as he pulled back, heaving breath after panting breath.
He stared at her, a wanton, desirous darkness overriding his normal, loving gaze as he evaluated his handiwork. Her breasts were on display for him, perky, beckoning, and she was unable to do much more than let him look, wishing he would touch her, or do something other than just watch.
He smirked as his breathing slowed into something permitting speech. "You said I get to tie you up," he said.
"Now?" she squeaked as the weight of the situation sank into her awareness. She remembered what shape he'd been in when she'd finished with him, barely able to move. It sent a throb of lust through her lower body, and she swallowed. "Now, you want to tie me up?" she said, even as something screamed, yes, yes, yes, let him! "When my test is in fourteen hours?"
He nodded. "I'm feeling much better. And I did want to share."
"Share."
"Yes. Share," he said as his expression devolved into a base smirk that stripped off the rest of her clothes with a blink. He started pulling at her pants to bring his daydream to fruition. She put her feet down and shifted her weight, letting him slide the waist under her butt and off without thinking much about it until they puddled at her ankles. He smiled as he tossed them away. "I told you I'd do this when we got home."
"Derek, are you sure?" she said. Yes. Yes, let him, damn it. Let him do it. It feels good. Just... But... "I mean. You're... You're sure? You're absolutely sure?" As wonderful as all of this felt, she had no desire to be stuck tied to a chair naked with only his mother, Izzie, or Alex to intervene if he... If something happened.
"I'm sure," he confirmed. "So, unless you have a strong moral or mood-based objection to me doing this, be quiet."
"But I..."
He flashed an evil grin at her as he slipped his fingers underneath the front piece of her panties. She moaned, kicking slightly with her feet in a spasm of pleasure. "Stop. Talking," he growled, but the command wasn't necessary.
He put light pressure down with his thumb, and she bucked, trying to slide into it in a vain effort to fill the void between her legs. She wanted him. She wanted him now. She wanted him right now. Inside. A gasp tore from her lips as he nudged her panties down and tossed them away. He leaned forward and grabbed the book stuck against her side. It landed with a thunk on the thin carpet, forgotten and unimportant in the whirl.
He resettled on the floor, his body hitching as though it were a difficult task to keep himself away, a task which he failed when he slanted toward her, cupping her breasts, winding a hot, warm trail down her sides, to the dip of her waist and the swell of her hips. He hooked his hands under her knees and pulled her forward, inch by inch. It wasn't uncomfortable. The pillow slid down with her, and the chair back kept her head forward, looking. Looking at him and nowhere else. Not that anything in the room mattered beyond the barest detail. Nothing mattered except him and all the features she'd endlessly catalogued.
She pulled at the ties, wishing she could lean forward and participate, but they went taut as he inched her closer, and her whole torso sloped away from him like a waiting canvas. Waiting to be touched. Waiting to be loved and desired. He was so close, so close and hot and strong, and she was at his mercy. She breathed, short, tight, clipped, as he nudged her in the small of her knees until the only comfortable way for her to sit was to hook her legs over his shoulders, offering him her most private gift.
He wrapped his arms over her legs, splayed his warm palms against her inner thighs, and spread her wide before his eyes. His fingers ran along her skin, stroking the lines of her femoral arteries, and then he blew softly on the cleft between. She tilted her head back, moaning as he stripped her of her senses.
"You're so beautiful," he said, his tone low and shivery as he rested his cheek on the inner bend of her thigh and inhaled the scent of her. "You're beautiful, Mere," he said, the barest whisper of vibration. He stared up at her along the line of her belly, nose resting a bare inch from the nest of curls below her navel. He stroked an index finger against the side of her leg, and she couldn't help but twitch. A dark lust hooded his eyes with the movement.
"Derek," she moaned.
He blinked, long and slow, his eyes torn with a desperation that betrayed the calm, suave, haughty look plastered across his face. Their eyes met for a moment, time seemed to rip to shreds, and she hovered in the silence, breathing, watching his plans unfold one by one across his face. Naughty, mischievous plans. His eyes narrowed, and he gave her a wanting, needing look that peeled away every last inch of her skin as though he were making his own catalogue of her and her flaws for later recall.
This was going to be...
"Time for me to share," he growled.
His fingers sliced into the skin that connected her legs to her torso, and his face disappeared from view. "Crap!" she hissed when she felt his tongue bisect her, only to have her breath fall away as he laved her with slippery, sliding, wandering attention. She jerked, only to still in the vice of his iron grip around her thighs. He groaned as she bent her knees and pulled, helpless to do anything but try to find an outlet, an outlet for the pleasure winding through her lower body. She thrust forward, trying to put pressure where there was only touch, but instead of responding to her desperate pleas, he leaned back and laughed, deep and throaty, as though this were something truly amusing.
He smirked as she stilled against him. "Impatient woman," he growled, lowering to renew his attentions. He kissed her with all the severity of a butterfly, tormenting, teasing, giving her soft hints of his mastery without revealing his full hand. She yanked at the ties, wishing she could tumble onto the bed with him. This was... He was...
"Oh," she moaned as he spun her tension like a spider web. The web sprawled slowly as he moved from strand to strand, extending, rearranging. His fingers flexed against her skin. The tip of his tongue slipped deep into her folds, and she gasped. "Ohhh, please. Please, Derek."
A deep, rumbling sound tore through him. "You're mine," he said.
She squeezed her thighs helplessly as she reached the beginning of a peak. Tension coiled in her gut, and she couldn't help but present herself more eagerly, opening herself, pushing into him until her wrists were aching and her fingers started to tingle with numbness. She was lost to it, lost to everything but the moaning, "Oh please, please, please," that she hoped would bring her to the explosion at the end of it. He licked her until every muscle shivered with it, and she thought she would die if something didn't happen soon. Anything. "Oh, please," she continued, a mantra, unable to stop the tension winding up like a pitcher getting ready to...
He pulled away, grunting softly as he caught his breath.
"No," she whined, jerking helplessly against her bonds. She tightened her legs and tried to drive him back into her, but she had no leverage, and he was prepared for her protests.
He smirked at her, and somewhere in the roar, she heard a plastic crinkle, the same one she'd heard before when he'd first sat down. "So, I found something rather interesting in your sock drawer," he commented, his tone matter-of-fact as he toyed with something below her field of view. She strained, strained against him to see, but it was useless. What did she have in her sock drawer? Socks. Socks and...
"What?" she gasped, trying to focus. Focus on anything except the fact that Derek had left her bereft and unfinished.
He showed her the bag first. A generic, unlabelled plastic bag that he'd found in her sock drawer... Oh, god.
A low hum began to supplement the roar in her ears. She swallowed. Something cotton-candy pink appeared briefly between her legs before he cupped his hands over it, over her, and pressed it against her. Vibrations tore through her, sending her winding toward the top in moments, flailing, clawing.
"Derek!" she hissed, almost pushed over the edge, but then it all stopped when he lifted it millimeters away. She moaned, trying to make sense of what he was doing, and why he was doing it to her. Why couldn't he just let her finish? Why, why, why.
So it's better at the end, a tiny voice of reason snarled through her mind. You did it to him. You did it until he was nonsensical and begging and helpless, and now you're paying for it. You're so, so paying for it. Her eyes watered. She'd really just settle for a bunch of little ones at this point. No need for a big, firework-y finish. Right? God.
"Don't stop," she whined, but her imploring words caressed the air between them far too late to do anything but make him smirk.
An eyebrow quirked in inquiry, he pulled the device away from her. It was shaped sort of like an oblong boomerang, fatter and wider at one end, thinner and more cylindrical at the other. It was perhaps four inches long. His index finger lingered over the circular minus button until the hum faded to silence. He tilted the object in his hand, peering at the screw cap that housed the batteries.
"Fun Factory?" he said, haughty, not-quite-laughter stuttering his tone. "Not that I'm knocking your brand choice. Sex is fun. But pink?"
"My... You found my..." she babbled helplessly. "They were out of black. How did you find..."
He shrugged. "You're the one who wanted me to do laundry while I was healing."