Fic: Meeting The Family 1/3, Jess/Becker, NC-17
Title: Meeting The Family
Author: fringedweller
Beta: seren_ccd
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6031/20735
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: None of this is mine, not making any money off this.
Summary: “So, let me get this straight,” Jess said, trying to wrap her brain around the bombshell that had just been dropped. “Your parents are both new age, hippy-type people who founded a commune. You were born in a commune. You have sisters called Rainbow Starborn and Poplar. Your grandmother is the only person in your family that doesn’t live the commune, but she lives in a gatehouse. Becker, are your family posh hippies?”
Notes: Sequel to Not Exactly Wedding Of The Year
“Are you alright?” Jess asked quietly, letting her hand stroke her boyfriend’s hair softly.
They were on the sofa. Jess was sitting curled into the corner, and Becker took up the rest of the space, lying with his head in her lap. They’d just got back from having Sunday lunch in the pub down the road, and had settled down to watch a movie. Jess should have known that there was something the matter because he hadn’t objected to her choice of film. Becker liked classic James Bond films, and films where things blew up on a semi-regular basis. Jess had chosen What’s Up, Doc?, a Barbra Streisand farce from the seventies.
Yet he’d just laid down, put his head in her lap and hadn’t even sighed heavily or tutted at her choice. They were forty five minutes in, she’d lost track of the tartan holdalls and a Chinese dragon was now free-wheeling down the massive hill in San Francisco that was in every film set there and he hadn’t complained once about the lack of heavy weapons fire.
“Is there something the matter?” she pressed. “You’ve been…different this week. Preoccupied.”
Moody, is what she meant, but after six months of careful relationship building she knew better to throw that word at him. Elite members of the SAS, he told her once, frostily and inaccurately, do not get moody.
He shifted so he was looking directly up at her.
“Sorry,” he said, sighing. “I suppose I am a bit.”
Jess waited patiently. Getting Becker to talk about his emotions wasn’t easy. He did it in his own time, or not at all. Now, after six months of practically (but not quite) living together, he was getting a bit better at verbalising his emotions, although she knew that he wasn’t really comfortable with it.
“It’s my sister,” he said eventually, as she gently carded her fingers through his hair. “She’s had another baby, and there’s a family…gathering to celebrate.”
“Hmm,” Jess said, noncommittally.
Becker didn’t talk about his family much. She knew that there was a grandmother, mother, father and two sisters, but that was about it. He hadn’t gone to visit them at all during the last six months, and she hadn’t even seen a picture of any of them. Conversely, Becker willingly went with her to every Sunday afternoon tea at her parents’ house and had been there to witness the spectacle of her sister’s wedding day where the groom’s affairs with two of the bridesmaids had been revealed in front of the entire abbey. Her sister had ended up punching him over the altar rail, cancelling the wedding and getting very drunk in the reception hall.
Despite witnessing Jess’ family at their most insane, Becker seemed to like them. Her father deigned to come out from behind his Sunday Times to talk to him, and her mother clearly saw him as Potential Husband Material and fawned all over him. Her brothers gave their approval as one military man to another, and the rest of the women in her family seemed to be in love with him. Her favourite niece, Izzie, had taken him to one side and told him solemnly that she was going to marry him when she grew up, if she hadn’t built a time machine and gone exploring instead. (Doctor Who was a staple in Izzie’s house on a Saturday night, and Izzie quite fancied being a Time Lord.) Becker had gravely thanked her for the advanced notice, and given her a replica sonic screwdriver from a toyshop that had her squealing with delight.
All that had been done in secret, of course; Jess wasn’t supposed to know about it. But she had overheard Izzie’s declaration, and had been amazed by the way Becker had handled it. She hadn’t even realised that he’d already bought her niece the toy and had brought it with him, tucked into his jacket pocket.
Oh yes, he had a way of making Parker women go head over heels, alright. He seemed to enjoy her family more than she did, although Jess had been putting up with them for the last twenty years and the novelty was wearing thin now.
But his own family was a very different story, and unless she pressed him for details, he wasn’t very forthcoming.
“Was it a girl or a boy?” she asked.
“What?” he said, blinking, dragged from his thoughts.
“The baby,” Jess said patiently. “Is it a girl or a boy?”
“Oh, a boy,” he said. “She’s already got a girl. She’s about three now.”
He lapsed into brooding silence again, and Jess bit her tongue and kept playing with his hair. However, she had only so much patience.
“You’ve been invited to the christening?” she prompted him eventually.
“Yeah,” he said gloomily. “And I thought maybe you could come with me?”
Jess’ lips twitched. That wasn’t exactly the ringing endorsement to their relationship that she had been looking for.
“I take it that you don’t really want to introduce your girlfriend to your family,” she said lightly.
He groaned and turned over, putting his face up close to her body and drawing his legs up into a foetal position. His arms wrapped around any part of her body he could reach.
“It’s more that I don’t want to introduce my family to my girlfriend,” he admitted, his voice muffled by the way he was talking directly to her stomach. “They’re strange.”
Jess couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“They can’t be any stranger than my family!” she exclaimed. “Becker, the first time you met any of them was at my sister’s wedding, and we all know what a disastrous day that was.”
That prompted him to peer up at her.
“That was a brilliant day,” he protested, a small smile playing on his lips. “Or have you forgotten what happened after it?”
Oh no, she hadn’t forgotten. How could she? The manager of the hotel had switched the modest room she’d booked for the honeymoon suite that Jasper had already paid for but was no longer in need of. Before she could open the door, Becker had mischievously swept her up in his arms and plonked his regimental beret rakishly on her head.
She had been carried into the room, giggling, and had spent the next twenty four hours alternately laughing, drinking and making love. The naughty underwear she had packed for the occasion was modelled for about a minute and a half before he had whisked if off her body and onto the floor.
It had been a wonderfully debauched experience and she had loved every second of it.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she told him fondly. “How could I? Nobody had ever licked champagne out of my navel before.”
“Glad to hear it,” Becker said, tightening his grip on her.
She sighed as she felt his lips press slow kisses to her stomach through the cotton of her skirt.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, tugging on his hair. “No distracting me with sex.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice muffled as he began to inch her skirt up her thigh and kiss the skin revealed there.
“Hilary Becker,” she said in her most commanding tone, and then spoiled the moment by moaning as he lightly scraped her inner thigh with his teeth. She shook her head. He was not going to distract her with sex.
She reached out a hand and pinched his nipple viciously. He yelped and retreated.
“Do you want me to come with you to your nephew’s christening?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he sighed. “But I’m scared that my family will scare you away.”
Jess laughed. Really, seriously laughed. But Becker’s face remained troubled.
“Jess, they’re not like me. They’re…odd. I don’t want them to freak you out.”
Jess took pity on the puppy dog eyes in front of her.
“I promise,” she said solemnly, “to leave your nephew’s christening just as much in love with you as I am right now. No matter how weird your family is, I promise that I won’t let them change the way I see you.”
The look on her face must have convinced him, because although he didn’t really look any happier at the thought of Jess meeting his family, he looked more resigned to the prospect.
“Alright then,” he sighed. “I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.”
He looked up at the ceiling of the flat and sighed wearily. After a moment or two, Jess nudged him.
“Hey,” she said, pointedly. “You were in the middle of something there, you know.”
Jess left the topic alone after that; her newly developing girlfriend senses were sending out danger signals. So far, they were proving to have a very high rate of accuracy, so she trusted her instincts and put the subject to the back of her mind.
Work got busy, anyway, and that didn’t leave them much time to do anything but round up rogue prehistoric creatures and close rips in time, the usual daily grind for ARC employees. They’d clock out when the night shift team came on duty, and then bicker amicably on the way home about who’s turn it was to cook, and whether having to single-handedly take down a fully-grown triceratops with only an EMD rifle got you out of doing the washing up. Jess kept a few changes of clothes and more changes of shoes at Becker’s flat, but as hers was bigger, and had a massive television, they usually ended up there.
It was on one of the nights they stayed at Becker’s flat that the subject of the christening was raised again. He was flicking dismissively through his accumulation of mail when one piece of it made him sigh heavily and pull a half-full bottle of whiskey from a cupboard.
“What’s the matter?” Jess asked, busy chopping up chicken. “You don’t usually drink during the week.”
“The invitation came,” he said glumly, splashing a good measure into the glass, looking at the invitation again and pouring more in.
Jess rinsed her hands clean and picked the invitation up.
“You are invited to witness the naming celebration of the new soul, Tiger Fire, at midnight on the first day of the full moon,” she read aloud. “Come and join us at Greenfields to welcome the newest member of our family of love.”
She looked at Becker, who was knocking back the whiskey steadily.
“Tiger Fire?” she said eventually.
“Tiger Fire Edwards, if Lesley’s registered him with his father’s surname,” Becker said, eying the bottle next to his hand. “Tiger Fire Becker if she’s registered him with her legal name. But she may have used something completely different that makes sense to her.”
“Your sister doesn’t use her own name?” Jess asked, puzzled.
“My sister decided to choose her own name when she was thirteen,” Becker said, looking a little green around the gills. “It was part of her womanhood ceremony. It was her right as a woman to choose how she wanted to name herself, so she decided that Lesley Becker was out and Rainbow Starborn was in.”
“You’re kidding me,” Jess said, open-mouthed with shock.
“I wish I was,” he said grimly.
“Are all your family….” She paused, looking for the right word. ‘Hippies’ seemed too dismissive. ‘New agers’ sounded silly. “…like this?” she finished lamely.
“My grandmother isn’t, God bless her,” Becker sighed, pouring himself another stiff drink. “But my mother and father are, and both my sisters, to an extent. Frances is a little less gung-ho about the whole thing, although she did rename herself Poplar after her Celtic astrological tree sign.”
“Celtic astrology…” Jess said, still trying to take in the enormity of what was going on.
“Absolute nonsense,” Becker growled. “All made up by some guy who misread some history and wrote a book that idiots thought was some kind of gospel.”
Jess looked down at the invitation again.
“Where’s Greenfields?” she asked.
“Greenfields is the name of the eco-commune that my parents started on the lawn of my grandmother’s house,” Becker told her. “It’s gotten bigger over the years, and now they run all sorts of workshops and training days there. My grandmother leases the house to the commune to use for guests, and she lives in the old gatehouse on the estate. Mum and Dad oversee the workshops while Poppy - Poplar - runs the business end of things, keeps them all afloat financially.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Jess said, trying to wrap her brain around the bombshell that had just been dropped. “Your parents are both new age, hippy-type people who founded a commune. You were born in a commune. You have sisters called Rainbow Starborn and Poplar. Your grandmother is the only person in your family that doesn’t live the commune, but she lives in a gatehouse. Becker, are your family posh hippies?”
He found another clean glass and poured her a generous measure.
“They prefer alternative lifestyle activists,” he said with complete seriousness.
Jess swallowed her drink, and waved her empty glass at Becker. He dutifully poured her another.
“How does somebody who lived in a commune all his life grow up to join the army?” Jess asked him later, after they had finished eating and were on the sofa. “I would have thought that your parents wouldn’t have been fond of anything establishment-y.”
“Teenage rebellion,” Becker said solemnly, which made Jess snort with laughter.
“I’m serious!” he protested. “When you grow up surrounded by people who give you very little in the way of rules or structure, it’s hard to do anything that will get you into trouble because they’re probably doing it as well.”
“Most kids take up smoking, or get drunk on street corners,” Jess pointed out. “Not join the SAS.”
“I was helping to brew the community’s wine and beer when I was seven,” Becker told her. “There were no cigarettes around because at that time they were going through their ‘no bought goods’ phase, but one of the greenhouses grew some special plants, if you know what I mean. Nobody would have batted an eyelid if I’d lit up.”
“Did you?” Jess asked, intrigued.
“No I bloody well didn’t,” Becker said firmly. “I may have been a child, but I saw exactly what happened when you started smoking their crop. It was so strong that people used to turn into giggling, tuned-out idiots straight away. Whole herds of them,” he said in disgust. “Just sitting there, staring at each other and laughing. Besides,” he finished, “My grandmother kept a pretty close eye on us kids, and would have found out straight away if any of us had tried anything we shouldn’t.”
“You smile when you talk about your grandmother,” Jess said, shifting in his loose embrace to face him.
“She’s amazing, Jess,” he said honestly. “She lost her husband when my mother was only a baby, but she brought her up on her own. And when her only child decided to take up this completely alien lifestyle, she welcomed her and her weird friends into her home. Well, her garden, anyway. Whenever I got upset I could always go to her, and she’d give me spearmint imperials and let me work my anger out. She was the one who fought for me to go away to school instead of being educated at home, like my sisters.”
“You didn’t like the commune?” Jess asked softly.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “As soon as I got old enough to realise that not everybody in the country lived in tents nine months out of twelve, or bathed outside, or did communal naked yoga, I hated it. We were all in the local junior school then - well, I was still in the infant school - but I used to get really upset when the other kids called us weird. When my sisters were eleven Mum and Dad decided to educate them at home. When I was eleven, I wanted to go away to school. They were against it, of course; any kind of educational institution was automatically suspect, in their eyes. They couldn’t understand why I’d want to go, and I couldn’t understand why they were so desperate to make me stay.”
He put his head on her shoulder, and she started to stroke his hair comfortingly.
“But your Gran helped you, right?” she offered.
He nodded, relaxing slightly under her tender touch.
“She called them out for being hypocrites. They were always saying that we had to learn about personal responsibility, and they prided themselves on letting us make our own minds up about things, right from when we were little. She said that if they couldn’t practice what they preached, they were no different from the people whose society they were shunning. It took a little while, but in the end they gave in. I went away to school and only came home for holidays. Then after university I went straight into the army. I’m not sure my dad has ever forgiven me.”
He said it lightly, but she could hear the hurt lurking in his voice.
“I’m sure he has,” Jess told him. “Dads always love their kids too much to hold grudges.”
She picked up the invitation and read it again.
“When’s the next full moon?” she asked, puzzled.
Becker pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the keys for a minute before Google delivered up the correct date.
“Friday,” he said eventually.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for your sister to just put Friday on the card, then?” Jess asked.
Becker snorted.
“Lesley doesn’t live her life according to the modern calendar,” he said dismissively. “Why make life a little bit easier for yourself when you can complicate it instead?”
“Why do you call her Lesley?” Jess said, aware she was prodding at a sore point. “If she wants to be called Rainbow, why don’t you call her that?”
“Because it’s bloody stupid,” Becker said with a finality to his voice that stopped Jess from going any further down that road.
“Right,” she said soothingly, petting his hair again. “So, what are you going to buy your nephew as a christening gift?”
“It’s not going to be a christening, Jess,” he sighed. “You don’t turn up to these things with a silver mug and eat sandwiches afterwards.”
“Naming ceremony then,” Jess amended. “Even if it’s non-traditional, surely it’s expected that you bring the baby a present.”
“I suppose so,” Becker allowed. “But Lesley doesn’t like anything that’s been mass produced, or isn’t ‘an unique expression of the artist’s soul’, direct quote.”
“Not even a little stuffed tiger toy?” Jess said hopefully.
“She’d just be rude and condescending to you about it,” Becker sighed. “And then I’d lose my temper with her. Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jess said firmly. “She invited you, so she obviously wants you to be there. There are four prime shopping days before Friday. I’ll find something that not even your sister could object to.”
He grumbled a little more, but more for the sake of form than anything else. As they lay together on the sofa, idly watching the news, Jess’ mind started to buzz with ideas.
It didn’t even take her a day to find the perfect gift; a quick browse of a few environmental charity websites brought up the name of a foundation that let you sponsor endangered animals. Smugly, Jess sent the link in an email to Becker, who was out supervising the round-up of a small herd of troublesome herbivores that were chomping their way through some of Kew Gardens’ more exotic specimens.
When he got back he had an extra-large bar of chocolate with him, and he broke his own rule about inappropriate touching in the workplace as he swooped in to kiss her as he handed over his black box.
“I would never have thought of it,” he said admiringly. “Practical, for a good cause and very appropriate. You’re brilliant, Jess.”
“It was nothing, really,” Jess said, blushing.
“Enough of that,” Lester called from the top of the stairs. “I don’t pay you to kiss your girlfriend while you’re on duty, Captain. Get back to work.”
Jess blushed and spun her chair away, fully aware that all eyes in the hub were on her now. Becker flashed a grin at her before schooling his features, sending a mock salute to Lester and disappearing into the lift.
Now Jess had solved the problem of the gift for the baby, all she had to do was figure out what one wore to a midnight naming ceremony at a hippy commune in Surrey. And, more importantly, what shoes went with it.
Later that week Jess had narrowed down her options to four or five different ensembles, and was debating which to pack. Becker was late home from the ARC as he had stayed into the night shift to run some drills with the men on duty. Jess had taken the opportunity to break out the face packs and pedicure set, and get thoroughly girly without Becker being around to gently make fun of her.
One day, she promised herself as she pumiced her heels, she was going to tie Becker to the bed. And before anything more mutually enjoyable happened, she was going to paint his toenails with the brightest pink polish she owned.
She was still giggling at the mental image of ten perfectly pink toenails in heavy black combat boots when the door opened.
“I’m home!” he called from the kitchen. She could hear the fridge door open and shut, and the faint tinkle of a metal bottle cap hitting the granite surface of her kitchen island.
“I’m in here,” she called. “Bring me one, would you?”
The fridge door obligingly opened and shut again before Becker appeared at the doorway to her bedroom with two bottles of beer in his hands.
“You’re primping,” he said delightedly, walking over to deliver her beer and kiss her hello. “You never do that when I’m here.”
“You always laugh at my face packs,” Jess pointed out, sipping at the cold liquid.
“That’s because you look like an alien in them,” Becker teased, pulling a bottle of polish out of the large makeup case that usually lived under the bed. “What colour are you using?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said, drinking more. “It depends on what outfit I’m going to wear on Friday night, and what shoes. If it’s the pink dress, then I need the peep-toe sandals, so the colour has to match the dress. If it’s the brown and cream linen trousers then it’ll be the gold wedges which are also peep-toe, but I can’t wear brown polish so I need something more neutral. But if I wear the blue skirt…”
“You’ll probably be best in a pair of wellies,” Becker said, shaking his head. “I doubt that this naming ceremony will be done in their yurt, they’ll probably make everybody go into the forest at the bottom of the estate. You’ll be ankle deep in mud and god knows what else, and your shoes will be ruined.”
“Wellies?” Jess said in disgust. Then, “A yurt?”
“It’s a big, circular tent,” Becker explained, waving his hands in a vaguely circular fashion. “With a wood floor and a hole in the ceiling to let the smoke from the fire out.”
“But what if it’s raining?” Jess asked, horrified.
“Then they’ll put some tarps up in the trees and keep going,” Becker said, with the grimness of tone that suggested he had witnessed this before, and he wasn’t impressed. “Seriously, Jess, it’ll be best to pack jeans, a jumper and pair of wellies.”
“But I don’t have wellies,” Jess said frantically. “And how am I supposed to make a good impression for your grandmother if I turn up to a chris…a naming ceremony wearing jeans?”
“I’ll be wearing jeans,” Becker said, hoping to fend of a clothing-related breakdown. “She won’t mind.”
“I’ll mind,” Jess said sharply. Her face paled, and she gripped his arm tightly.
“Will we be sleeping in a yurt?” she asked.
He laughed and leaned in to kiss her.
“No,” he said fondly. I rang my grandmother a few days ago. She’s putting us up in the gatehouse. It will be separate bedrooms though. She doesn’t quite see things the way my parents do when it comes to sex.”
“That’s alright,” Jess said. “This way I get to keep the duvet to myself for the whole night, without having to steal it from you.”
“You liar!” Becker accused, almost losing the beer he had just sipped. “You’re the duvet-stealer! And your feet are always freezing!”
“Dementia, in one so young,” Jess said, her voice full of fake pity. “It’s so sad.”
An attack on the Becker honour like that could not go unpunished. Pausing only long enough to put the beer bottles somewhere safe, Becker immediately launched a tickle campaign that had Jess shrieking and writhing underneath him. This led, somewhat predictably, to shrieking and writhing of a completely different variety.
“Wear your green dress,” he said eventually, rolling off her and lying at her side. “The one that makes you look like a spearmint imperial.”
“Is that a compliment?” Jess asked, amused, reaching for her beer.
“They’re my favourites,” Becker said, leaning over to kiss along her ribs. “You look edible in it.”
“Then I’ll wear the green dress,” she said, shivering slightly as his lips dragged along her sensitive skin. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find green wellies.”
Luckily, Thursday nights were late-night shopping nights because Jess really didn’t own any footwear that practical. As soon as her relief showed up she practically ran out of the ARC to the nearest shopping centre. She returned home several hours later, laden with bags and boxes and a massive bouquet of flowers.
“I can understand the shoe boxes,” Becker said, shaking his head, now used to the fact that whenever Jess went shopping, for anything, she usually came back with a pair of shoes as well. “I approve of the fact that you bought my grandmother flowers, mainly because I’m an idiot and forget, and the fact that you went to Agent Provocateur makes me want to kiss your feet. But Jess, what the hell are these?”
“These” were a pair of wellington boots, but instead of being plain Hunter green, or a sensible black, they were an eye-poppingly lurid combination of bright colours, all clashing happily with each other.
They were, in fact, the perfect boots for Jess.
“You said I needed wellies, so I bought some,” she shrugged, unloading the Wagamama takeaway box and stealing one of the duck gyoza.
“These aren’t wellies, Jess,” Becker said doubtfully. “They’re…”
“A fashion statement,” Jess said firmly.
“If the statement is ‘I’m colour blind’…” Becker started, but he was stopped by Jess’ palm being raised in his face.
“Do I tell you how best to look after your guns?” she asked, her tone dangerously mild.
“No,” he sighed.
“Do I tell you how to organise and train your men?” she asked.
“No,” he repeated.
“Do I…” she started.
“No,” he pre-empted her.
She smiled at him.
“So don’t you tell me how to dress,” she said, tugging on the belt loops of his jeans and raising her head slightly to kiss him gently on the lips.
“Message received and understood,” he said, kissing her back.
“Excellent,” she beamed, stepping away from him just as he was getting ready to deepen the kiss. “Now put your grandmother’s flowers in water while I dish up. The nice man in the florist’s shop said they’d keep well overnight until we drive down tomorrow.”
Becker did as he was told, wincing slightly at the garish boots as he passed them.
Thankfully Friday was an anomaly-free day, and they were able to get away from the ARC fairly promptly. The motorway was as busy as it ever was during Friday rush-hour but Jess, ever one to think ahead, had loaded her iPod with audiobooks and podcasts so they at least had something relaxing to listen to. The slow pace of the traffic meant that Becker only needed one hand for the wheel, and he reached out and gripped her right hand with his left, keeping it on his thigh.
He was doing his best to hide his nerves, but Jess could feel the tension in his body. The closer they got to the Surrey countryside, the tighter his lips got, and the muscle in his thigh got firmer and firmer.
Something had to be done, or Becker would go straight into meeting his family full of badly concealed nervous energy. She’d never seen him like this before; he’d always been the epitome of the cool headed soldier, calm under pressure.
His family must really be upsetting him, she realised, feeling a wave of protectiveness wash through her. It was up to her to make the situation better.
They had exited the motorway now, and had left the A-roads behind too. They were driving carefully down small country roads, not really big enough to fit two cars on side-by-side.
“Are we far away from Greenfields?” Jess asked.
“About ten minutes,” he said. “Not too late to turn back,” he said weakly.
“Pull into that lay-by,” she said, gesturing to a small area to the side of the road. It was surrounded by tall hedges and abundant brambles, and offered a little privacy. Enough for what she had in mind, anyway.
“Can’t you hold on for another few minutes?” Becker asked, raising an eyebrow. “There’s a pub up the road a bit, if you’re desperate.”
“Just pull over,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “I don’t need to leave the car.”
Obediently, Becker pulled into the lay-by and switched off the engine. He sighed loudly, and pulled a hand through his hair.
“Before we get there, I just want to say…” he began, but he was quietened by Jess, who laid one finger over his lips.
“Sssh,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to say anything, unless it’s my name, okay?”
He looked at her, puzzled, and then his eyes widened when her fingers went to the buttons of her blouse and started to unfasten them slowly. He watched as each little blue pearl button slipped through the hold and revealed a little more of her creamy white skin.
With a delicate shrug of her shoulders the blouse slipped off, revealing one of the new bras she had treated herself to during last night’s spending spree. A delicate blue, like her blouse, the shiny satin cups lifted her breasts slightly, and emphasised their fullness.
Her hands drifted down her body to the hemline of her skirt, which she slowly hiked up. Becker swallowed heavily as inch after inch of her thighs was exposed to him, and his hand instinctively went to his crotch to readjust himself as Jess continued in her slow striptease.
Eventually stocking tops were revealed, held in place by a blue suspender belt, and a matching pair of knickers, just scraps of silk held together by two blue bows, one on either hip.
He reached out a hand to touch her, which she pushed playfully away.
“No,” she reprimanded him. “You get to watch. Push your seat back as far as it will go.”
He obeyed immediately, knowing a good thing when it started to take its clothes off in front of him. Jess reached over and deftly unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, carefully pulling out his semi-erection. He gasped at the touch of her hand, and he looked around wildly.
“What…what if someone sees?” he managed as she began to lazily stroke him to full hardness.
“They’ll think, who’s that handsome bastard, and why does he get all the luck?” Jess said, smiling evilly. “Now, hush. Just my name, remember?”
She played with him a little longer, rolling his sac in her hand and using just enough pressure to get him moaning and throwing his head back against the headrest. His neck was exposed, and she was very tempted to suck a red mark into the skin there, to mark him out as hers before they entered the strange territory of the commune.
Not this time, she decided. Not when there would be grandmothers present.
Instead she shifted in her seat, knelt a bit precariously over the gear stick, and sucked the head of his shaft into her mouth. The position was too awkward for her to be able to do much more than that, and even in more usual surroundings she was never able to fit much of him in her mouth anyway.
He certainly had no complaints, either then or now, especially when she braced herself against the driver’s side door with one hand and used the other in a firm, regular motion around the base of him. She peered up at his face, and was delighted to see it screwed up in a peculiar sort of agonised bliss. She pulled out all the stops, licking into the slit, massaging the bundle of nerves on the underside of the head, humming as she took him as deep as she could.
He had a hand on her back, stroking the skin he could reach as he panted out her name. The other was in her hair, not pushing on her head but just letting the weight of it sit there. She liked that, and it had taken him a little while to understand why. While pushing or trying to control her movements was a no-no, the feeling of his hands there gave her a connection to him that she loved. Becker, grateful that she was willing to do this at all, had no problems with it whatsoever, although he was keen to point out that she seemed to have no problem with grabbing his hair and yanking his head into place when he returned the favour.
Her argument that it was such ‘lovely hair’, combined with a fluttering of her eyelashes was usually enough to win him over. He really didn’t mind that much to begin with, but it was always fun to watch Jess try to be coquettish.
There was nothing of the innocent flirt about her now as she stepped up her movements, dragging him inexorably closer to the peak of his pleasure. He tried to warn her, but she had pretty much robbed him of his power of speech by this point and a quick mischievous flash in her blue eyes had told him that she knew exactly was about to happen anyway.
He groaned out her name as he came, trying not to make too much of a mess of her. He slumped back in his seat as Jess produced a packet of tissues from God only knew where, cleaned him up and tucked him back inside his jeans. By the time he got his breath back enough to pull her over into his lap and kiss her soundly, she had pulled her skirt back down, re-buttoned her blouse and was sucking on a spearmint imperial.
“You’ll be the death of me, Jessica Parker,” he said in admiration.
“Ah, but what a way to go,” she teased, tilting the rear view mirror so she could see her hair in it. Whipping a small brush from her handbag she quickly repaired the damage to her hairstyle, and after a quick dab of lipstick she looked every inch the immaculate young lady again.
“Come on then,” she said imperiously, sliding back into her seat. “Your grandmother’s expecting us in time for dinner.”
“What? Oh, right,” Becker said, fiddling with his seat until he was back in position again
He pulled back onto the road with a hint of a smile on his face, and the hand that held hers was loose and relaxed. His whole body, in fact, lacked the terrible rigidity that had been developing all the way down the motorway.
Jess sighed happily. That was the first hurdle successfully cleared, anyway.
Free Counters
Author: fringedweller
Beta: seren_ccd
Rating: NC-17
Length: 6031/20735
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: None of this is mine, not making any money off this.
Summary: “So, let me get this straight,” Jess said, trying to wrap her brain around the bombshell that had just been dropped. “Your parents are both new age, hippy-type people who founded a commune. You were born in a commune. You have sisters called Rainbow Starborn and Poplar. Your grandmother is the only person in your family that doesn’t live the commune, but she lives in a gatehouse. Becker, are your family posh hippies?”
Notes: Sequel to Not Exactly Wedding Of The Year
“Are you alright?” Jess asked quietly, letting her hand stroke her boyfriend’s hair softly.
They were on the sofa. Jess was sitting curled into the corner, and Becker took up the rest of the space, lying with his head in her lap. They’d just got back from having Sunday lunch in the pub down the road, and had settled down to watch a movie. Jess should have known that there was something the matter because he hadn’t objected to her choice of film. Becker liked classic James Bond films, and films where things blew up on a semi-regular basis. Jess had chosen What’s Up, Doc?, a Barbra Streisand farce from the seventies.
Yet he’d just laid down, put his head in her lap and hadn’t even sighed heavily or tutted at her choice. They were forty five minutes in, she’d lost track of the tartan holdalls and a Chinese dragon was now free-wheeling down the massive hill in San Francisco that was in every film set there and he hadn’t complained once about the lack of heavy weapons fire.
“Is there something the matter?” she pressed. “You’ve been…different this week. Preoccupied.”
Moody, is what she meant, but after six months of careful relationship building she knew better to throw that word at him. Elite members of the SAS, he told her once, frostily and inaccurately, do not get moody.
He shifted so he was looking directly up at her.
“Sorry,” he said, sighing. “I suppose I am a bit.”
Jess waited patiently. Getting Becker to talk about his emotions wasn’t easy. He did it in his own time, or not at all. Now, after six months of practically (but not quite) living together, he was getting a bit better at verbalising his emotions, although she knew that he wasn’t really comfortable with it.
“It’s my sister,” he said eventually, as she gently carded her fingers through his hair. “She’s had another baby, and there’s a family…gathering to celebrate.”
“Hmm,” Jess said, noncommittally.
Becker didn’t talk about his family much. She knew that there was a grandmother, mother, father and two sisters, but that was about it. He hadn’t gone to visit them at all during the last six months, and she hadn’t even seen a picture of any of them. Conversely, Becker willingly went with her to every Sunday afternoon tea at her parents’ house and had been there to witness the spectacle of her sister’s wedding day where the groom’s affairs with two of the bridesmaids had been revealed in front of the entire abbey. Her sister had ended up punching him over the altar rail, cancelling the wedding and getting very drunk in the reception hall.
Despite witnessing Jess’ family at their most insane, Becker seemed to like them. Her father deigned to come out from behind his Sunday Times to talk to him, and her mother clearly saw him as Potential Husband Material and fawned all over him. Her brothers gave their approval as one military man to another, and the rest of the women in her family seemed to be in love with him. Her favourite niece, Izzie, had taken him to one side and told him solemnly that she was going to marry him when she grew up, if she hadn’t built a time machine and gone exploring instead. (Doctor Who was a staple in Izzie’s house on a Saturday night, and Izzie quite fancied being a Time Lord.) Becker had gravely thanked her for the advanced notice, and given her a replica sonic screwdriver from a toyshop that had her squealing with delight.
All that had been done in secret, of course; Jess wasn’t supposed to know about it. But she had overheard Izzie’s declaration, and had been amazed by the way Becker had handled it. She hadn’t even realised that he’d already bought her niece the toy and had brought it with him, tucked into his jacket pocket.
Oh yes, he had a way of making Parker women go head over heels, alright. He seemed to enjoy her family more than she did, although Jess had been putting up with them for the last twenty years and the novelty was wearing thin now.
But his own family was a very different story, and unless she pressed him for details, he wasn’t very forthcoming.
“Was it a girl or a boy?” she asked.
“What?” he said, blinking, dragged from his thoughts.
“The baby,” Jess said patiently. “Is it a girl or a boy?”
“Oh, a boy,” he said. “She’s already got a girl. She’s about three now.”
He lapsed into brooding silence again, and Jess bit her tongue and kept playing with his hair. However, she had only so much patience.
“You’ve been invited to the christening?” she prompted him eventually.
“Yeah,” he said gloomily. “And I thought maybe you could come with me?”
Jess’ lips twitched. That wasn’t exactly the ringing endorsement to their relationship that she had been looking for.
“I take it that you don’t really want to introduce your girlfriend to your family,” she said lightly.
He groaned and turned over, putting his face up close to her body and drawing his legs up into a foetal position. His arms wrapped around any part of her body he could reach.
“It’s more that I don’t want to introduce my family to my girlfriend,” he admitted, his voice muffled by the way he was talking directly to her stomach. “They’re strange.”
Jess couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“They can’t be any stranger than my family!” she exclaimed. “Becker, the first time you met any of them was at my sister’s wedding, and we all know what a disastrous day that was.”
That prompted him to peer up at her.
“That was a brilliant day,” he protested, a small smile playing on his lips. “Or have you forgotten what happened after it?”
Oh no, she hadn’t forgotten. How could she? The manager of the hotel had switched the modest room she’d booked for the honeymoon suite that Jasper had already paid for but was no longer in need of. Before she could open the door, Becker had mischievously swept her up in his arms and plonked his regimental beret rakishly on her head.
She had been carried into the room, giggling, and had spent the next twenty four hours alternately laughing, drinking and making love. The naughty underwear she had packed for the occasion was modelled for about a minute and a half before he had whisked if off her body and onto the floor.
It had been a wonderfully debauched experience and she had loved every second of it.
“I haven’t forgotten,” she told him fondly. “How could I? Nobody had ever licked champagne out of my navel before.”
“Glad to hear it,” Becker said, tightening his grip on her.
She sighed as she felt his lips press slow kisses to her stomach through the cotton of her skirt.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, tugging on his hair. “No distracting me with sex.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, his voice muffled as he began to inch her skirt up her thigh and kiss the skin revealed there.
“Hilary Becker,” she said in her most commanding tone, and then spoiled the moment by moaning as he lightly scraped her inner thigh with his teeth. She shook her head. He was not going to distract her with sex.
She reached out a hand and pinched his nipple viciously. He yelped and retreated.
“Do you want me to come with you to your nephew’s christening?” she demanded.
“Yes,” he sighed. “But I’m scared that my family will scare you away.”
Jess laughed. Really, seriously laughed. But Becker’s face remained troubled.
“Jess, they’re not like me. They’re…odd. I don’t want them to freak you out.”
Jess took pity on the puppy dog eyes in front of her.
“I promise,” she said solemnly, “to leave your nephew’s christening just as much in love with you as I am right now. No matter how weird your family is, I promise that I won’t let them change the way I see you.”
The look on her face must have convinced him, because although he didn’t really look any happier at the thought of Jess meeting his family, he looked more resigned to the prospect.
“Alright then,” he sighed. “I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.”
He looked up at the ceiling of the flat and sighed wearily. After a moment or two, Jess nudged him.
“Hey,” she said, pointedly. “You were in the middle of something there, you know.”
Jess left the topic alone after that; her newly developing girlfriend senses were sending out danger signals. So far, they were proving to have a very high rate of accuracy, so she trusted her instincts and put the subject to the back of her mind.
Work got busy, anyway, and that didn’t leave them much time to do anything but round up rogue prehistoric creatures and close rips in time, the usual daily grind for ARC employees. They’d clock out when the night shift team came on duty, and then bicker amicably on the way home about who’s turn it was to cook, and whether having to single-handedly take down a fully-grown triceratops with only an EMD rifle got you out of doing the washing up. Jess kept a few changes of clothes and more changes of shoes at Becker’s flat, but as hers was bigger, and had a massive television, they usually ended up there.
It was on one of the nights they stayed at Becker’s flat that the subject of the christening was raised again. He was flicking dismissively through his accumulation of mail when one piece of it made him sigh heavily and pull a half-full bottle of whiskey from a cupboard.
“What’s the matter?” Jess asked, busy chopping up chicken. “You don’t usually drink during the week.”
“The invitation came,” he said glumly, splashing a good measure into the glass, looking at the invitation again and pouring more in.
Jess rinsed her hands clean and picked the invitation up.
“You are invited to witness the naming celebration of the new soul, Tiger Fire, at midnight on the first day of the full moon,” she read aloud. “Come and join us at Greenfields to welcome the newest member of our family of love.”
She looked at Becker, who was knocking back the whiskey steadily.
“Tiger Fire?” she said eventually.
“Tiger Fire Edwards, if Lesley’s registered him with his father’s surname,” Becker said, eying the bottle next to his hand. “Tiger Fire Becker if she’s registered him with her legal name. But she may have used something completely different that makes sense to her.”
“Your sister doesn’t use her own name?” Jess asked, puzzled.
“My sister decided to choose her own name when she was thirteen,” Becker said, looking a little green around the gills. “It was part of her womanhood ceremony. It was her right as a woman to choose how she wanted to name herself, so she decided that Lesley Becker was out and Rainbow Starborn was in.”
“You’re kidding me,” Jess said, open-mouthed with shock.
“I wish I was,” he said grimly.
“Are all your family….” She paused, looking for the right word. ‘Hippies’ seemed too dismissive. ‘New agers’ sounded silly. “…like this?” she finished lamely.
“My grandmother isn’t, God bless her,” Becker sighed, pouring himself another stiff drink. “But my mother and father are, and both my sisters, to an extent. Frances is a little less gung-ho about the whole thing, although she did rename herself Poplar after her Celtic astrological tree sign.”
“Celtic astrology…” Jess said, still trying to take in the enormity of what was going on.
“Absolute nonsense,” Becker growled. “All made up by some guy who misread some history and wrote a book that idiots thought was some kind of gospel.”
Jess looked down at the invitation again.
“Where’s Greenfields?” she asked.
“Greenfields is the name of the eco-commune that my parents started on the lawn of my grandmother’s house,” Becker told her. “It’s gotten bigger over the years, and now they run all sorts of workshops and training days there. My grandmother leases the house to the commune to use for guests, and she lives in the old gatehouse on the estate. Mum and Dad oversee the workshops while Poppy - Poplar - runs the business end of things, keeps them all afloat financially.”
“So, let me get this straight,” Jess said, trying to wrap her brain around the bombshell that had just been dropped. “Your parents are both new age, hippy-type people who founded a commune. You were born in a commune. You have sisters called Rainbow Starborn and Poplar. Your grandmother is the only person in your family that doesn’t live the commune, but she lives in a gatehouse. Becker, are your family posh hippies?”
He found another clean glass and poured her a generous measure.
“They prefer alternative lifestyle activists,” he said with complete seriousness.
Jess swallowed her drink, and waved her empty glass at Becker. He dutifully poured her another.
“How does somebody who lived in a commune all his life grow up to join the army?” Jess asked him later, after they had finished eating and were on the sofa. “I would have thought that your parents wouldn’t have been fond of anything establishment-y.”
“Teenage rebellion,” Becker said solemnly, which made Jess snort with laughter.
“I’m serious!” he protested. “When you grow up surrounded by people who give you very little in the way of rules or structure, it’s hard to do anything that will get you into trouble because they’re probably doing it as well.”
“Most kids take up smoking, or get drunk on street corners,” Jess pointed out. “Not join the SAS.”
“I was helping to brew the community’s wine and beer when I was seven,” Becker told her. “There were no cigarettes around because at that time they were going through their ‘no bought goods’ phase, but one of the greenhouses grew some special plants, if you know what I mean. Nobody would have batted an eyelid if I’d lit up.”
“Did you?” Jess asked, intrigued.
“No I bloody well didn’t,” Becker said firmly. “I may have been a child, but I saw exactly what happened when you started smoking their crop. It was so strong that people used to turn into giggling, tuned-out idiots straight away. Whole herds of them,” he said in disgust. “Just sitting there, staring at each other and laughing. Besides,” he finished, “My grandmother kept a pretty close eye on us kids, and would have found out straight away if any of us had tried anything we shouldn’t.”
“You smile when you talk about your grandmother,” Jess said, shifting in his loose embrace to face him.
“She’s amazing, Jess,” he said honestly. “She lost her husband when my mother was only a baby, but she brought her up on her own. And when her only child decided to take up this completely alien lifestyle, she welcomed her and her weird friends into her home. Well, her garden, anyway. Whenever I got upset I could always go to her, and she’d give me spearmint imperials and let me work my anger out. She was the one who fought for me to go away to school instead of being educated at home, like my sisters.”
“You didn’t like the commune?” Jess asked softly.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “As soon as I got old enough to realise that not everybody in the country lived in tents nine months out of twelve, or bathed outside, or did communal naked yoga, I hated it. We were all in the local junior school then - well, I was still in the infant school - but I used to get really upset when the other kids called us weird. When my sisters were eleven Mum and Dad decided to educate them at home. When I was eleven, I wanted to go away to school. They were against it, of course; any kind of educational institution was automatically suspect, in their eyes. They couldn’t understand why I’d want to go, and I couldn’t understand why they were so desperate to make me stay.”
He put his head on her shoulder, and she started to stroke his hair comfortingly.
“But your Gran helped you, right?” she offered.
He nodded, relaxing slightly under her tender touch.
“She called them out for being hypocrites. They were always saying that we had to learn about personal responsibility, and they prided themselves on letting us make our own minds up about things, right from when we were little. She said that if they couldn’t practice what they preached, they were no different from the people whose society they were shunning. It took a little while, but in the end they gave in. I went away to school and only came home for holidays. Then after university I went straight into the army. I’m not sure my dad has ever forgiven me.”
He said it lightly, but she could hear the hurt lurking in his voice.
“I’m sure he has,” Jess told him. “Dads always love their kids too much to hold grudges.”
She picked up the invitation and read it again.
“When’s the next full moon?” she asked, puzzled.
Becker pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the keys for a minute before Google delivered up the correct date.
“Friday,” he said eventually.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for your sister to just put Friday on the card, then?” Jess asked.
Becker snorted.
“Lesley doesn’t live her life according to the modern calendar,” he said dismissively. “Why make life a little bit easier for yourself when you can complicate it instead?”
“Why do you call her Lesley?” Jess said, aware she was prodding at a sore point. “If she wants to be called Rainbow, why don’t you call her that?”
“Because it’s bloody stupid,” Becker said with a finality to his voice that stopped Jess from going any further down that road.
“Right,” she said soothingly, petting his hair again. “So, what are you going to buy your nephew as a christening gift?”
“It’s not going to be a christening, Jess,” he sighed. “You don’t turn up to these things with a silver mug and eat sandwiches afterwards.”
“Naming ceremony then,” Jess amended. “Even if it’s non-traditional, surely it’s expected that you bring the baby a present.”
“I suppose so,” Becker allowed. “But Lesley doesn’t like anything that’s been mass produced, or isn’t ‘an unique expression of the artist’s soul’, direct quote.”
“Not even a little stuffed tiger toy?” Jess said hopefully.
“She’d just be rude and condescending to you about it,” Becker sighed. “And then I’d lose my temper with her. Maybe we shouldn’t go.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jess said firmly. “She invited you, so she obviously wants you to be there. There are four prime shopping days before Friday. I’ll find something that not even your sister could object to.”
He grumbled a little more, but more for the sake of form than anything else. As they lay together on the sofa, idly watching the news, Jess’ mind started to buzz with ideas.
It didn’t even take her a day to find the perfect gift; a quick browse of a few environmental charity websites brought up the name of a foundation that let you sponsor endangered animals. Smugly, Jess sent the link in an email to Becker, who was out supervising the round-up of a small herd of troublesome herbivores that were chomping their way through some of Kew Gardens’ more exotic specimens.
When he got back he had an extra-large bar of chocolate with him, and he broke his own rule about inappropriate touching in the workplace as he swooped in to kiss her as he handed over his black box.
“I would never have thought of it,” he said admiringly. “Practical, for a good cause and very appropriate. You’re brilliant, Jess.”
“It was nothing, really,” Jess said, blushing.
“Enough of that,” Lester called from the top of the stairs. “I don’t pay you to kiss your girlfriend while you’re on duty, Captain. Get back to work.”
Jess blushed and spun her chair away, fully aware that all eyes in the hub were on her now. Becker flashed a grin at her before schooling his features, sending a mock salute to Lester and disappearing into the lift.
Now Jess had solved the problem of the gift for the baby, all she had to do was figure out what one wore to a midnight naming ceremony at a hippy commune in Surrey. And, more importantly, what shoes went with it.
Later that week Jess had narrowed down her options to four or five different ensembles, and was debating which to pack. Becker was late home from the ARC as he had stayed into the night shift to run some drills with the men on duty. Jess had taken the opportunity to break out the face packs and pedicure set, and get thoroughly girly without Becker being around to gently make fun of her.
One day, she promised herself as she pumiced her heels, she was going to tie Becker to the bed. And before anything more mutually enjoyable happened, she was going to paint his toenails with the brightest pink polish she owned.
She was still giggling at the mental image of ten perfectly pink toenails in heavy black combat boots when the door opened.
“I’m home!” he called from the kitchen. She could hear the fridge door open and shut, and the faint tinkle of a metal bottle cap hitting the granite surface of her kitchen island.
“I’m in here,” she called. “Bring me one, would you?”
The fridge door obligingly opened and shut again before Becker appeared at the doorway to her bedroom with two bottles of beer in his hands.
“You’re primping,” he said delightedly, walking over to deliver her beer and kiss her hello. “You never do that when I’m here.”
“You always laugh at my face packs,” Jess pointed out, sipping at the cold liquid.
“That’s because you look like an alien in them,” Becker teased, pulling a bottle of polish out of the large makeup case that usually lived under the bed. “What colour are you using?”
“I haven’t decided,” she said, drinking more. “It depends on what outfit I’m going to wear on Friday night, and what shoes. If it’s the pink dress, then I need the peep-toe sandals, so the colour has to match the dress. If it’s the brown and cream linen trousers then it’ll be the gold wedges which are also peep-toe, but I can’t wear brown polish so I need something more neutral. But if I wear the blue skirt…”
“You’ll probably be best in a pair of wellies,” Becker said, shaking his head. “I doubt that this naming ceremony will be done in their yurt, they’ll probably make everybody go into the forest at the bottom of the estate. You’ll be ankle deep in mud and god knows what else, and your shoes will be ruined.”
“Wellies?” Jess said in disgust. Then, “A yurt?”
“It’s a big, circular tent,” Becker explained, waving his hands in a vaguely circular fashion. “With a wood floor and a hole in the ceiling to let the smoke from the fire out.”
“But what if it’s raining?” Jess asked, horrified.
“Then they’ll put some tarps up in the trees and keep going,” Becker said, with the grimness of tone that suggested he had witnessed this before, and he wasn’t impressed. “Seriously, Jess, it’ll be best to pack jeans, a jumper and pair of wellies.”
“But I don’t have wellies,” Jess said frantically. “And how am I supposed to make a good impression for your grandmother if I turn up to a chris…a naming ceremony wearing jeans?”
“I’ll be wearing jeans,” Becker said, hoping to fend of a clothing-related breakdown. “She won’t mind.”
“I’ll mind,” Jess said sharply. Her face paled, and she gripped his arm tightly.
“Will we be sleeping in a yurt?” she asked.
He laughed and leaned in to kiss her.
“No,” he said fondly. I rang my grandmother a few days ago. She’s putting us up in the gatehouse. It will be separate bedrooms though. She doesn’t quite see things the way my parents do when it comes to sex.”
“That’s alright,” Jess said. “This way I get to keep the duvet to myself for the whole night, without having to steal it from you.”
“You liar!” Becker accused, almost losing the beer he had just sipped. “You’re the duvet-stealer! And your feet are always freezing!”
“Dementia, in one so young,” Jess said, her voice full of fake pity. “It’s so sad.”
An attack on the Becker honour like that could not go unpunished. Pausing only long enough to put the beer bottles somewhere safe, Becker immediately launched a tickle campaign that had Jess shrieking and writhing underneath him. This led, somewhat predictably, to shrieking and writhing of a completely different variety.
“Wear your green dress,” he said eventually, rolling off her and lying at her side. “The one that makes you look like a spearmint imperial.”
“Is that a compliment?” Jess asked, amused, reaching for her beer.
“They’re my favourites,” Becker said, leaning over to kiss along her ribs. “You look edible in it.”
“Then I’ll wear the green dress,” she said, shivering slightly as his lips dragged along her sensitive skin. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find green wellies.”
Luckily, Thursday nights were late-night shopping nights because Jess really didn’t own any footwear that practical. As soon as her relief showed up she practically ran out of the ARC to the nearest shopping centre. She returned home several hours later, laden with bags and boxes and a massive bouquet of flowers.
“I can understand the shoe boxes,” Becker said, shaking his head, now used to the fact that whenever Jess went shopping, for anything, she usually came back with a pair of shoes as well. “I approve of the fact that you bought my grandmother flowers, mainly because I’m an idiot and forget, and the fact that you went to Agent Provocateur makes me want to kiss your feet. But Jess, what the hell are these?”
“These” were a pair of wellington boots, but instead of being plain Hunter green, or a sensible black, they were an eye-poppingly lurid combination of bright colours, all clashing happily with each other.
They were, in fact, the perfect boots for Jess.
“You said I needed wellies, so I bought some,” she shrugged, unloading the Wagamama takeaway box and stealing one of the duck gyoza.
“These aren’t wellies, Jess,” Becker said doubtfully. “They’re…”
“A fashion statement,” Jess said firmly.
“If the statement is ‘I’m colour blind’…” Becker started, but he was stopped by Jess’ palm being raised in his face.
“Do I tell you how best to look after your guns?” she asked, her tone dangerously mild.
“No,” he sighed.
“Do I tell you how to organise and train your men?” she asked.
“No,” he repeated.
“Do I…” she started.
“No,” he pre-empted her.
She smiled at him.
“So don’t you tell me how to dress,” she said, tugging on the belt loops of his jeans and raising her head slightly to kiss him gently on the lips.
“Message received and understood,” he said, kissing her back.
“Excellent,” she beamed, stepping away from him just as he was getting ready to deepen the kiss. “Now put your grandmother’s flowers in water while I dish up. The nice man in the florist’s shop said they’d keep well overnight until we drive down tomorrow.”
Becker did as he was told, wincing slightly at the garish boots as he passed them.
Thankfully Friday was an anomaly-free day, and they were able to get away from the ARC fairly promptly. The motorway was as busy as it ever was during Friday rush-hour but Jess, ever one to think ahead, had loaded her iPod with audiobooks and podcasts so they at least had something relaxing to listen to. The slow pace of the traffic meant that Becker only needed one hand for the wheel, and he reached out and gripped her right hand with his left, keeping it on his thigh.
He was doing his best to hide his nerves, but Jess could feel the tension in his body. The closer they got to the Surrey countryside, the tighter his lips got, and the muscle in his thigh got firmer and firmer.
Something had to be done, or Becker would go straight into meeting his family full of badly concealed nervous energy. She’d never seen him like this before; he’d always been the epitome of the cool headed soldier, calm under pressure.
His family must really be upsetting him, she realised, feeling a wave of protectiveness wash through her. It was up to her to make the situation better.
They had exited the motorway now, and had left the A-roads behind too. They were driving carefully down small country roads, not really big enough to fit two cars on side-by-side.
“Are we far away from Greenfields?” Jess asked.
“About ten minutes,” he said. “Not too late to turn back,” he said weakly.
“Pull into that lay-by,” she said, gesturing to a small area to the side of the road. It was surrounded by tall hedges and abundant brambles, and offered a little privacy. Enough for what she had in mind, anyway.
“Can’t you hold on for another few minutes?” Becker asked, raising an eyebrow. “There’s a pub up the road a bit, if you’re desperate.”
“Just pull over,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “I don’t need to leave the car.”
Obediently, Becker pulled into the lay-by and switched off the engine. He sighed loudly, and pulled a hand through his hair.
“Before we get there, I just want to say…” he began, but he was quietened by Jess, who laid one finger over his lips.
“Sssh,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to say anything, unless it’s my name, okay?”
He looked at her, puzzled, and then his eyes widened when her fingers went to the buttons of her blouse and started to unfasten them slowly. He watched as each little blue pearl button slipped through the hold and revealed a little more of her creamy white skin.
With a delicate shrug of her shoulders the blouse slipped off, revealing one of the new bras she had treated herself to during last night’s spending spree. A delicate blue, like her blouse, the shiny satin cups lifted her breasts slightly, and emphasised their fullness.
Her hands drifted down her body to the hemline of her skirt, which she slowly hiked up. Becker swallowed heavily as inch after inch of her thighs was exposed to him, and his hand instinctively went to his crotch to readjust himself as Jess continued in her slow striptease.
Eventually stocking tops were revealed, held in place by a blue suspender belt, and a matching pair of knickers, just scraps of silk held together by two blue bows, one on either hip.
He reached out a hand to touch her, which she pushed playfully away.
“No,” she reprimanded him. “You get to watch. Push your seat back as far as it will go.”
He obeyed immediately, knowing a good thing when it started to take its clothes off in front of him. Jess reached over and deftly unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans, carefully pulling out his semi-erection. He gasped at the touch of her hand, and he looked around wildly.
“What…what if someone sees?” he managed as she began to lazily stroke him to full hardness.
“They’ll think, who’s that handsome bastard, and why does he get all the luck?” Jess said, smiling evilly. “Now, hush. Just my name, remember?”
She played with him a little longer, rolling his sac in her hand and using just enough pressure to get him moaning and throwing his head back against the headrest. His neck was exposed, and she was very tempted to suck a red mark into the skin there, to mark him out as hers before they entered the strange territory of the commune.
Not this time, she decided. Not when there would be grandmothers present.
Instead she shifted in her seat, knelt a bit precariously over the gear stick, and sucked the head of his shaft into her mouth. The position was too awkward for her to be able to do much more than that, and even in more usual surroundings she was never able to fit much of him in her mouth anyway.
He certainly had no complaints, either then or now, especially when she braced herself against the driver’s side door with one hand and used the other in a firm, regular motion around the base of him. She peered up at his face, and was delighted to see it screwed up in a peculiar sort of agonised bliss. She pulled out all the stops, licking into the slit, massaging the bundle of nerves on the underside of the head, humming as she took him as deep as she could.
He had a hand on her back, stroking the skin he could reach as he panted out her name. The other was in her hair, not pushing on her head but just letting the weight of it sit there. She liked that, and it had taken him a little while to understand why. While pushing or trying to control her movements was a no-no, the feeling of his hands there gave her a connection to him that she loved. Becker, grateful that she was willing to do this at all, had no problems with it whatsoever, although he was keen to point out that she seemed to have no problem with grabbing his hair and yanking his head into place when he returned the favour.
Her argument that it was such ‘lovely hair’, combined with a fluttering of her eyelashes was usually enough to win him over. He really didn’t mind that much to begin with, but it was always fun to watch Jess try to be coquettish.
There was nothing of the innocent flirt about her now as she stepped up her movements, dragging him inexorably closer to the peak of his pleasure. He tried to warn her, but she had pretty much robbed him of his power of speech by this point and a quick mischievous flash in her blue eyes had told him that she knew exactly was about to happen anyway.
He groaned out her name as he came, trying not to make too much of a mess of her. He slumped back in his seat as Jess produced a packet of tissues from God only knew where, cleaned him up and tucked him back inside his jeans. By the time he got his breath back enough to pull her over into his lap and kiss her soundly, she had pulled her skirt back down, re-buttoned her blouse and was sucking on a spearmint imperial.
“You’ll be the death of me, Jessica Parker,” he said in admiration.
“Ah, but what a way to go,” she teased, tilting the rear view mirror so she could see her hair in it. Whipping a small brush from her handbag she quickly repaired the damage to her hairstyle, and after a quick dab of lipstick she looked every inch the immaculate young lady again.
“Come on then,” she said imperiously, sliding back into her seat. “Your grandmother’s expecting us in time for dinner.”
“What? Oh, right,” Becker said, fiddling with his seat until he was back in position again
He pulled back onto the road with a hint of a smile on his face, and the hand that held hers was loose and relaxed. His whole body, in fact, lacked the terrible rigidity that had been developing all the way down the motorway.
Jess sighed happily. That was the first hurdle successfully cleared, anyway.
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