It Happens, Chapter Two
Title: It Happens, Chapter Two
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Paul Kellerman and Sara Scofield
Category: Multi-chapter (*facepalm*) I think it will be short though, three chapters tops, hopefully.
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Summary: Where there’s sparks, there could be fire, you know.
Author’s Notes: I just had a thought. No disrespect to Michael’s memory, it’s been six years by the timeline I use. Sara is only human. This story picks up with the inference that Michael and Sara married before he died, but does not take into account any of the *leaked* storyline for the straight-to-DVD movie. I don't intend to ever watch that, thus it will never be part of my canon. Chapter One
Paul had already removed his sunglasses-under duress-so he didn't need to do so as they entered Sara's house. He stuffed them into the gaping pocket covering his left pectoral, and then stood in the doorway uncertainly. He'd been invited in, but it had not suddenly become comfortable. Tension radiated from both of them now, because if anything, Sara understood perfectly why he had come there. The comprehension in her deep brown eyes had scared him more than the actual feelings had to begin with.
Somewhere along the way his ability to poker his way through a situation had slipped away. Or perhaps it was just her effect on him. Either way, it left him open and vulnerable, a position he had not been in very many times in his adult life.
"Have a seat," Sara said, slinging her bag down on the kitchen table. Paul then stepped forward into the room, taking in the dimensions and aspects of it. The kitchen/dining area/living room were all open, and he could see a few dirty dishes in the sink and a box of cereal sitting on the table top next to her discarded bag. The living room was mostly clean, except for a few cars and trucks that obviously belonged to a child.
The place was tidy. People lived here, but there was also a housekeeper at work.
"Where is your son?" he asked, knowing that to say 'Michael' aloud might bring something up he didn't necessarily want to talk about. Or hear her talk about.
"He's at Linc's," she answered. The ease with which she said Burrows's name hit Paul in a funny way. He watched as she walked over to her phone and hit the play button for her messages. It had been six years. Six years, and her life had become something unlikely for a politician's daughter who had been the chief medical officer at a maximum security prison by the time she was 29.
She had three messages, and Paul caught the differences amongst them, one about a prescription for a patient that had been lost, another about a school meeting, and the third from a sing-songy childish voice belting out You Are My Sunshine, with a few back up singers. That message ended with, “I love you, Mommy! See you Sunday!”
Sara chuckled quietly to herself and then gestured at the sofa. “Please, have a seat. Would you like something to drink?” she asked as she picked up the phone and wedged it between her shoulder and ear.
“No, I’m all right,” Paul said, and his voice sounded rusty, like he hadn’t spoken aloud in a while. He cleared his throat, and shuffled closer to the sectional.
“I just need to return this phone call, see if I can get it taken care of tonight. I’ll be a minute.”
“No problem,” he said, before dropping down on the couch. No problem was right. He was in her house, by her invitation, and he could wait all damn night if he had to. He could feel the triumph fighting its way into his expression and he made an effort not to look at her, just in case she saw it and revoked his privileges.
“Jackie? It’s Sara. Yes, I got the message…” she spoke quickly into the phone and then disappeared into a short hallway that must have led to her bedroom. He could still hear her voice, though the words were indistinguishable, and so he just sat, looking around at the modest little home.
Little was the most significant thing about it. For two people, he supposed it was more than sufficient, but he wondered if this was all she could afford, or if she liked it here.
When she returned to the outer room several minutes later, she had finished her phone call, and she had changed from the pants and shirt she’d had on to shorts and a tank top. She was still mostly covered, but Paul could feel his saliva glands start working over time.
This was the biggest problem in all of this equation: her ridiculous beauty. The woman was statuesque to begin with, and in the intervening years she had put on a little weight, but it was the kind of weight that gave her substance. It meant when (if) she pressed her frame full-length to his, he’d be able to feel every part that made her a woman, the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her belly, the indentation where her thighs came together. Basically, everything that made him want her to begin with.
He could feel the reaction in his gut and he willed himself to not get overexcited or anticipate something that had no guarantee. Looking at her, being near her, speaking to her was reward in itself. The idea of touching her, of holding her, could very well send him into cardiac arrest and make it enjoyable for no one.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Sure you don’t want something to drink?” she asked again, and his eyes flew open. She was scooping her hair up into a messy ponytail at the back of her head and the glimpse he got of her underarms further spiked his blood pressure for some unknown reason.
“Beer,” he said, the word popping out before he could think better of it, and certainly not in the form of a question, which would have been better. Do you have any beer? Why did you invite me in? What the hell am I doing here?
A small smile lit her features again and she walked over to the refrigerator. “You’re in luck,” she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I think there’s one in here from the last time LJ was up.” He found his eyes lingering on the exposed length of her legs as she reached into the depths of the fridge and pulled a long neck bottle from it.
Walking back into the living room, she handed him the bottle after she’d twisted the top off with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t drink,” she reminded him.
He blinked, and hesitated in reaching for the bottle as shame filled him. “Right,” he said.
She wiggled the bottle in front of his face when he didn’t take it. “Water under the bridge, right, Paul?”
His fingers wrapped around hers on the base of the bottle and he waited a beat before responding. “Thank you.” He moved his fingers over hers infinitesimally, holding her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he could have shared a monologue then about all the things he was sorry about, but it would only have sounded like he was making excuses.
Sara moved her hand out from under his and nodded. “I know. I knew when you came back, when you made things right. And Michael told me-everything. I wanted to thank you that day, but I just didn’t get a chance to say anything, so much happened so fast.”
She sat down on the sectional next to him, though far away from where he’d chosen. In the corner of the right angle, she folded her long, beautiful legs up under her and pulled one of the throw pillows into her arms.
Suddenly her gesture registered with him; he recognized it as the same protective move she’d made outside, crossing her arms in front of her. He’d spent his life studying these types of things, decoding the actions of every kind of person under the sun. But it figured that today of all days, he wasn’t even paying attention to it with regard to her.
He looked away from her and drank deeply from the bottle. “Yeah, well. I guess I’ve wanted to say something to you for years too, but...” he trailed off. There was no way to explain it adequately.
“You’re here now,” she said and he slid his eyes over, capturing her in his peripheral vision.
“I’m here now,” he agreed.
“Why are you here, now?” she pressed, and Paul had to turn his head to face her fully. He really just wanted to gulp his beer and then run out for more. Tugging on the leg of his shorts, he dropped his eyes away from her face only to have them become fixated on her cleavage. The tank top wasn’t particularly low cut, he just had access to the slight shadow in the center of her chest, the one that hinted at the swells at the top of her bra.
So close, but so far. “How did Michael die?”
An escape and evade tactic of poor taste, Paul. Poor taste, but effective.
Sara took a deep breath. “He had a brain tumor. One surgery didn’t remove the entire mass, and nothing could be done when it started to grow again. He went quickly, he hardly had time to suffer, and I was thankful for that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it.
“I’m sorry, too, every day, for Mikey. He will only know his father through the very distorted window of his uncle and his mother. He’ll think his father was practically a saint, and he’ll never be able to live up to the memory.”
“What about you? How’re you living up to the memory?”
Her low, throaty laugh kicked his libido up into an Orange Alert. Which was fitting because of his ridiculous shirt. “I can’t believe you’re not better at this,” she said.
He laughed too, because if he didn’t, he might cry. “I can’t either,” he confessed, and with that, he finished his beer. Scrambling to his feet, he moved towards the kitchen. “You recycle?”
“Just put it on the counter,” she said.
He followed her instructions and then, once again at a loss, clenched his fists and jammed them onto his hips as he blew out a heavy breath.
“Paul, did you really want this much conversation to interfere with what you came here for?”
*
In her bedroom, Sara had stripped her work clothes and sensible undergarments off, fumbling through the crap on her dresser looking for the container of babywipes. Mikey had been out of diapers for years, but babywipes had become stock around their house because you could mop up just about any sticky substance in a heartbeat with them. She quickly ran one over her armpits and between her legs, because a shower might be in order, but it wasn’t going to happen.
She explained to Jackie how to reissue the missing prescription, directing her to where her secret stash of signed scripts were hidden in her desk. “Fax it over to the drugstore, and then call Senora Contreras back. Tell her she’ll be able to pick up the script tomorrow.”
Hanging up the phone, she pulled out her sexiest bra and panties, which meant they were off white, not white, and threw on a pair of shorts and a ribbed tank that looked casual enough. For all Paul knew, she just wanted to put on cooler clothes. It was August after all, and very warm at almost 8 o’clock in the evening.
Once she was back in the living room, and observing his complete discombobulation, she found that her own discomfort slowly faded. She’d had a long time to come to terms with things. Not just that her husband had been taken from her when he’d barely been her husband at all, but that everything that had happened during those crazy months were like something from a very bizarre dream.
Paul Kellerman had tried to kill her, and she had tried to kill him. Then he’d saved her life in the courtroom, and again when he came and helped Michael put Scylla in the right hands. She might have room to harbor anger and hate, but she’d found that losing Michael was absolutely the worst thing that could happen to her. Everything else faded in comparison.
She didn’t want to talk to Paul about those few short months she’d spent with Michael, or how the only way he’d ever held his child was by putting his hands over her 7-month round belly. She didn't want to talk about how close she'd come in the months after the birth of her son of following his father to wherever he'd gone. The despair had been suffocating and overwhelming, and it was only the constant need her child had had of her that had kept her in this world.
She didn't want to talk about how standing in the setting sunlight on her front porch, feeling the foreign and long dormant pulse of sexual arousal had made her feel both exhilarated and traitorous.
She just wanted him to take her. She wanted him to do what he'd come for. She wanted him to be ruthless, like he once had been, and uncaring of her emotional needs.
When he responded to her demand with "I don't think the conversation interferes with anything," it became clear that he had either lost his ruthlessness altogether or he actually thought talking about it would be good foreplay.
So she tried another tactic. Memory lane could work, as long as they were the right memories. "You tried to kill me. You want to talk about that? I mean, as long as we're rehashing everything?"
He smiled then, the cherubic blossom that had sucked her in over blueberry pie so long ago reminding her forcefully of every moment she'd spent with him, and the almost-hope that she could forget an inmate she'd crossed a line with by crossing the same line with a self-professed homosexual. She remembers a crazy notion of getting them both very drunk, because she was so unsteady during those days, and she'd imagined it would require a whole bottle of tequila to make him straight enough for one night.
"I didn't try to kill you," he murmured, dragging her back to the here and now, even while speaking of the there and then. "If I'd really wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I was a coward then, and I'm a coward now."
She got off the couch when he continued to stand in her kitchen like a lost dog. "I wanted you dead," she said. "And you'd be dead, if it weren't for Michael." The house was so small that it only took five or six steps for her to be within touching distance of him.
"God bless him," he muttered, and she finally found what she was looking for.
"You say you're a coward, but you sure as hell have nerve coming here. Looking at me like that. Expecting."
"I don't expect anything," he bit off.
"Liar," she hissed.
"Throw me out, then, Sara!" He threw an arm up towards the front door. "I walked away. I'd be gone now if you didn't want me here, too."
"Why did you come here?" she demanded. It took all her control not to shout the words.
"I told you. I came to see you."
"And I look great," she mocked.
He nodded. "Good enough to eat."
"You're a bastard."
"Yes."
"But you're still waiting for an engraved invitation, aren't you?"
Color rose in his face, and his body trembled, but she couldn't tell if it was because he wouldn't let himself move or if she'd finally hit the nerve that would cause the most damage.
"I didn't come here to take something you're not willing to give," he said after a long silence.
She scoffed. "Do I seem unwilling?"
He laughed then, but there was nothing in his face to indicate joy. He shook his head and then dropped his chin to his chest. The wheels cranked, she could see him formulating something, and at the last moment the desperation that he would do nothing clawed at her.
She stepped closer to him, and again he didn't back down. If she took a deep breath, her breasts would have brushed his tent-like shirt. She reached up, gripped the collar so that palm trees crumpled in her fists and asked, "Why are you wearing this crazy shirt?"
His gaze lifted to hers, the turbulance radiating in mirrored complexity from his blue eyes. "It's a long story," he said.
"Paul," she whispered, every moment of loneliness over six years vibrating in her throat.
He finally moved then, his hands hovering just over her hips before clamping on them possessively. Sara couldn't contain the whimper in her throat. It wasn't just that she hadn't been touched with sexual intent in so long--it was that she hadn't even missed it. Now the loss roared through her, and she felt like she had to make up for every moment a hundred times over, but she couldn't breach the barrier.
If he needed an engraved invitation, she needed an approval that could never reach her ears or her heart. "Please." She never knew if she said it or he did.
When his tongue parted her lips, she knew that summer had arrived, and it was a heatwave.
Author: domfangirl
Starring: Paul Kellerman and Sara Scofield
Category: Multi-chapter (*facepalm*) I think it will be short though, three chapters tops, hopefully.
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Summary: Where there’s sparks, there could be fire, you know.
Author’s Notes: I just had a thought. No disrespect to Michael’s memory, it’s been six years by the timeline I use. Sara is only human. This story picks up with the inference that Michael and Sara married before he died, but does not take into account any of the *leaked* storyline for the straight-to-DVD movie. I don't intend to ever watch that, thus it will never be part of my canon. Chapter One
Paul had already removed his sunglasses-under duress-so he didn't need to do so as they entered Sara's house. He stuffed them into the gaping pocket covering his left pectoral, and then stood in the doorway uncertainly. He'd been invited in, but it had not suddenly become comfortable. Tension radiated from both of them now, because if anything, Sara understood perfectly why he had come there. The comprehension in her deep brown eyes had scared him more than the actual feelings had to begin with.
Somewhere along the way his ability to poker his way through a situation had slipped away. Or perhaps it was just her effect on him. Either way, it left him open and vulnerable, a position he had not been in very many times in his adult life.
"Have a seat," Sara said, slinging her bag down on the kitchen table. Paul then stepped forward into the room, taking in the dimensions and aspects of it. The kitchen/dining area/living room were all open, and he could see a few dirty dishes in the sink and a box of cereal sitting on the table top next to her discarded bag. The living room was mostly clean, except for a few cars and trucks that obviously belonged to a child.
The place was tidy. People lived here, but there was also a housekeeper at work.
"Where is your son?" he asked, knowing that to say 'Michael' aloud might bring something up he didn't necessarily want to talk about. Or hear her talk about.
"He's at Linc's," she answered. The ease with which she said Burrows's name hit Paul in a funny way. He watched as she walked over to her phone and hit the play button for her messages. It had been six years. Six years, and her life had become something unlikely for a politician's daughter who had been the chief medical officer at a maximum security prison by the time she was 29.
She had three messages, and Paul caught the differences amongst them, one about a prescription for a patient that had been lost, another about a school meeting, and the third from a sing-songy childish voice belting out You Are My Sunshine, with a few back up singers. That message ended with, “I love you, Mommy! See you Sunday!”
Sara chuckled quietly to herself and then gestured at the sofa. “Please, have a seat. Would you like something to drink?” she asked as she picked up the phone and wedged it between her shoulder and ear.
“No, I’m all right,” Paul said, and his voice sounded rusty, like he hadn’t spoken aloud in a while. He cleared his throat, and shuffled closer to the sectional.
“I just need to return this phone call, see if I can get it taken care of tonight. I’ll be a minute.”
“No problem,” he said, before dropping down on the couch. No problem was right. He was in her house, by her invitation, and he could wait all damn night if he had to. He could feel the triumph fighting its way into his expression and he made an effort not to look at her, just in case she saw it and revoked his privileges.
“Jackie? It’s Sara. Yes, I got the message…” she spoke quickly into the phone and then disappeared into a short hallway that must have led to her bedroom. He could still hear her voice, though the words were indistinguishable, and so he just sat, looking around at the modest little home.
Little was the most significant thing about it. For two people, he supposed it was more than sufficient, but he wondered if this was all she could afford, or if she liked it here.
When she returned to the outer room several minutes later, she had finished her phone call, and she had changed from the pants and shirt she’d had on to shorts and a tank top. She was still mostly covered, but Paul could feel his saliva glands start working over time.
This was the biggest problem in all of this equation: her ridiculous beauty. The woman was statuesque to begin with, and in the intervening years she had put on a little weight, but it was the kind of weight that gave her substance. It meant when (if) she pressed her frame full-length to his, he’d be able to feel every part that made her a woman, the fullness of her breasts, the curve of her belly, the indentation where her thighs came together. Basically, everything that made him want her to begin with.
He could feel the reaction in his gut and he willed himself to not get overexcited or anticipate something that had no guarantee. Looking at her, being near her, speaking to her was reward in itself. The idea of touching her, of holding her, could very well send him into cardiac arrest and make it enjoyable for no one.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Sure you don’t want something to drink?” she asked again, and his eyes flew open. She was scooping her hair up into a messy ponytail at the back of her head and the glimpse he got of her underarms further spiked his blood pressure for some unknown reason.
“Beer,” he said, the word popping out before he could think better of it, and certainly not in the form of a question, which would have been better. Do you have any beer? Why did you invite me in? What the hell am I doing here?
A small smile lit her features again and she walked over to the refrigerator. “You’re in luck,” she said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I think there’s one in here from the last time LJ was up.” He found his eyes lingering on the exposed length of her legs as she reached into the depths of the fridge and pulled a long neck bottle from it.
Walking back into the living room, she handed him the bottle after she’d twisted the top off with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t drink,” she reminded him.
He blinked, and hesitated in reaching for the bottle as shame filled him. “Right,” he said.
She wiggled the bottle in front of his face when he didn’t take it. “Water under the bridge, right, Paul?”
His fingers wrapped around hers on the base of the bottle and he waited a beat before responding. “Thank you.” He moved his fingers over hers infinitesimally, holding her gaze. “I’m sorry,” he said, and he could have shared a monologue then about all the things he was sorry about, but it would only have sounded like he was making excuses.
Sara moved her hand out from under his and nodded. “I know. I knew when you came back, when you made things right. And Michael told me-everything. I wanted to thank you that day, but I just didn’t get a chance to say anything, so much happened so fast.”
She sat down on the sectional next to him, though far away from where he’d chosen. In the corner of the right angle, she folded her long, beautiful legs up under her and pulled one of the throw pillows into her arms.
Suddenly her gesture registered with him; he recognized it as the same protective move she’d made outside, crossing her arms in front of her. He’d spent his life studying these types of things, decoding the actions of every kind of person under the sun. But it figured that today of all days, he wasn’t even paying attention to it with regard to her.
He looked away from her and drank deeply from the bottle. “Yeah, well. I guess I’ve wanted to say something to you for years too, but...” he trailed off. There was no way to explain it adequately.
“You’re here now,” she said and he slid his eyes over, capturing her in his peripheral vision.
“I’m here now,” he agreed.
“Why are you here, now?” she pressed, and Paul had to turn his head to face her fully. He really just wanted to gulp his beer and then run out for more. Tugging on the leg of his shorts, he dropped his eyes away from her face only to have them become fixated on her cleavage. The tank top wasn’t particularly low cut, he just had access to the slight shadow in the center of her chest, the one that hinted at the swells at the top of her bra.
So close, but so far. “How did Michael die?”
An escape and evade tactic of poor taste, Paul. Poor taste, but effective.
Sara took a deep breath. “He had a brain tumor. One surgery didn’t remove the entire mass, and nothing could be done when it started to grow again. He went quickly, he hardly had time to suffer, and I was thankful for that.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it.
“I’m sorry, too, every day, for Mikey. He will only know his father through the very distorted window of his uncle and his mother. He’ll think his father was practically a saint, and he’ll never be able to live up to the memory.”
“What about you? How’re you living up to the memory?”
Her low, throaty laugh kicked his libido up into an Orange Alert. Which was fitting because of his ridiculous shirt. “I can’t believe you’re not better at this,” she said.
He laughed too, because if he didn’t, he might cry. “I can’t either,” he confessed, and with that, he finished his beer. Scrambling to his feet, he moved towards the kitchen. “You recycle?”
“Just put it on the counter,” she said.
He followed her instructions and then, once again at a loss, clenched his fists and jammed them onto his hips as he blew out a heavy breath.
“Paul, did you really want this much conversation to interfere with what you came here for?”
*
In her bedroom, Sara had stripped her work clothes and sensible undergarments off, fumbling through the crap on her dresser looking for the container of babywipes. Mikey had been out of diapers for years, but babywipes had become stock around their house because you could mop up just about any sticky substance in a heartbeat with them. She quickly ran one over her armpits and between her legs, because a shower might be in order, but it wasn’t going to happen.
She explained to Jackie how to reissue the missing prescription, directing her to where her secret stash of signed scripts were hidden in her desk. “Fax it over to the drugstore, and then call Senora Contreras back. Tell her she’ll be able to pick up the script tomorrow.”
Hanging up the phone, she pulled out her sexiest bra and panties, which meant they were off white, not white, and threw on a pair of shorts and a ribbed tank that looked casual enough. For all Paul knew, she just wanted to put on cooler clothes. It was August after all, and very warm at almost 8 o’clock in the evening.
Once she was back in the living room, and observing his complete discombobulation, she found that her own discomfort slowly faded. She’d had a long time to come to terms with things. Not just that her husband had been taken from her when he’d barely been her husband at all, but that everything that had happened during those crazy months were like something from a very bizarre dream.
Paul Kellerman had tried to kill her, and she had tried to kill him. Then he’d saved her life in the courtroom, and again when he came and helped Michael put Scylla in the right hands. She might have room to harbor anger and hate, but she’d found that losing Michael was absolutely the worst thing that could happen to her. Everything else faded in comparison.
She didn’t want to talk to Paul about those few short months she’d spent with Michael, or how the only way he’d ever held his child was by putting his hands over her 7-month round belly. She didn't want to talk about how close she'd come in the months after the birth of her son of following his father to wherever he'd gone. The despair had been suffocating and overwhelming, and it was only the constant need her child had had of her that had kept her in this world.
She didn't want to talk about how standing in the setting sunlight on her front porch, feeling the foreign and long dormant pulse of sexual arousal had made her feel both exhilarated and traitorous.
She just wanted him to take her. She wanted him to do what he'd come for. She wanted him to be ruthless, like he once had been, and uncaring of her emotional needs.
When he responded to her demand with "I don't think the conversation interferes with anything," it became clear that he had either lost his ruthlessness altogether or he actually thought talking about it would be good foreplay.
So she tried another tactic. Memory lane could work, as long as they were the right memories. "You tried to kill me. You want to talk about that? I mean, as long as we're rehashing everything?"
He smiled then, the cherubic blossom that had sucked her in over blueberry pie so long ago reminding her forcefully of every moment she'd spent with him, and the almost-hope that she could forget an inmate she'd crossed a line with by crossing the same line with a self-professed homosexual. She remembers a crazy notion of getting them both very drunk, because she was so unsteady during those days, and she'd imagined it would require a whole bottle of tequila to make him straight enough for one night.
"I didn't try to kill you," he murmured, dragging her back to the here and now, even while speaking of the there and then. "If I'd really wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I was a coward then, and I'm a coward now."
She got off the couch when he continued to stand in her kitchen like a lost dog. "I wanted you dead," she said. "And you'd be dead, if it weren't for Michael." The house was so small that it only took five or six steps for her to be within touching distance of him.
"God bless him," he muttered, and she finally found what she was looking for.
"You say you're a coward, but you sure as hell have nerve coming here. Looking at me like that. Expecting."
"I don't expect anything," he bit off.
"Liar," she hissed.
"Throw me out, then, Sara!" He threw an arm up towards the front door. "I walked away. I'd be gone now if you didn't want me here, too."
"Why did you come here?" she demanded. It took all her control not to shout the words.
"I told you. I came to see you."
"And I look great," she mocked.
He nodded. "Good enough to eat."
"You're a bastard."
"Yes."
"But you're still waiting for an engraved invitation, aren't you?"
Color rose in his face, and his body trembled, but she couldn't tell if it was because he wouldn't let himself move or if she'd finally hit the nerve that would cause the most damage.
"I didn't come here to take something you're not willing to give," he said after a long silence.
She scoffed. "Do I seem unwilling?"
He laughed then, but there was nothing in his face to indicate joy. He shook his head and then dropped his chin to his chest. The wheels cranked, she could see him formulating something, and at the last moment the desperation that he would do nothing clawed at her.
She stepped closer to him, and again he didn't back down. If she took a deep breath, her breasts would have brushed his tent-like shirt. She reached up, gripped the collar so that palm trees crumpled in her fists and asked, "Why are you wearing this crazy shirt?"
His gaze lifted to hers, the turbulance radiating in mirrored complexity from his blue eyes. "It's a long story," he said.
"Paul," she whispered, every moment of loneliness over six years vibrating in her throat.
He finally moved then, his hands hovering just over her hips before clamping on them possessively. Sara couldn't contain the whimper in her throat. It wasn't just that she hadn't been touched with sexual intent in so long--it was that she hadn't even missed it. Now the loss roared through her, and she felt like she had to make up for every moment a hundred times over, but she couldn't breach the barrier.
If he needed an engraved invitation, she needed an approval that could never reach her ears or her heart. "Please." She never knew if she said it or he did.
When his tongue parted her lips, she knew that summer had arrived, and it was a heatwave.