Kathleen Creighton - The Top Gun's Return

"You sure you're ready to have me inside you?" he murmured into her mouth.

Languid and dizzy she murmured back into his, "Yes, please."

He left her to finish his undressing and she lay naked under his avid eyes and stretched like a cat, too drunk with desire to be self-conscious. Back again, naked himself now, he knelt astride her legs, rising tall above her, his angular body mysterious to her in that gentle light. She gasped when he gripped her thighs and thrust them apart, but that was his only roughness. He lowered himself into the place he'd made and entered her with exquisite care, easing into her already swollen and lubricated body slowly, and as he filled her she arched into him and exhaled with a long, replete sigh.

"That about do it?" he asked, his voice thick and broken, trying to tease, anyway.

"Oh, yes," she whispered.

"Better be…that's 'bout all I've got…"

Breathless, she couldn't answer, except to laugh. It felt good to laugh with him inside her, and to feel him laughing, too. She felt his arms quiver with the strain of holding his weight away from her and writhed upward to nudge him with her body. "You don't need to do that."

"Don't want…to crush you."

"Pshaw. I'm not exactly a fragile flower of Southern womanhood, and you're not about to crush anybody. Come here to me." She looped her arms around his neck and, laughing, he lowered his body onto hers, then quickly rolled them both so that she was on top of him instead. "Oh," she moaned, "now I'm gonna crush you. "

But when she would have risen to straddle him, he wouldn't let her. Holding her tightly around her hips, he brought his knees up between hers so that his thighs caressed her buttocks, and they were touching in every possible way. Then, as deeply seated inside her as he could be, he began to rock her, and all the while looked intently into her eyes. Without breath, he whispered, "Jessie…love…you feel so good."

Light-headed, sinking deeper and deeper into arousal, she wanted-needed-to close her eyes. But in a guttural rasping voice he cried out, "No…no. Look at me, Jessie…love… look at me. "

She moaned, but obeyed…and in all too short a time felt her body spiral once more out of control and sobs burst from her throat and tears jump from her eyes. "I can't…I… can't, " she wailed, and as her eyes refused to obey her a second longer and drifted closed at last, she felt his arms tighten and his body surge and shudder, then surge again.

Lying spent and sated on Tris's chest, Jessie tried to hold the world at bay. Like a child singing loudly with her eyes shut tight and her hands over her ears to keep from hearing what she doesn't want to hear, she closed her mind to all but loud and happy thoughts about staying right where she was forever. The world came in, anyway.

Tris was stirring purposefully beneath her. "Hate to do this, love," he mumbled. "Better let me up before I fall asleep right here."

"Sounds good to me," she murmured, knowing even as she said it that it wouldn't make any difference.

He kissed her forehead and separated from her gently. He eased her to one side and himself to the other and sat up. "Wish I could. But I think it's best if I sleep on the couch tonight."

With her elbow planted and her head propped on her hand, Jessie watched the scars on his back stretch over the bumps of his spine as he leaned to reach for his pants. Her throat ached. Stubbornly she said, "Why? You've been sleeping fine. Stay here. Hold me for a little while…"

"Sorry…" He rose and turned, thin as a wraith, his smile dark and wry. "Nothing I'd like to do more than stay and hold you. I'd like to spend the whole damn night holding you…sleeping with you in my arms. But…" and his eyes were soft with regret as he leaned down to kiss her, "I haven't had enough beer to calm my nightmares. So I'm gonna sleep out there…and you're gonna stay in here…and behave yourself…" The kisses he inserted into each pause grew progressively deeper and more arousing. Jessie's heart had begun to thump and her head to spin by the time he drew back with a wicked chuckle. "That oughta do you till morning, anyway."

She didn't agree with him, but knew it was pointless to argue. Playing along, she slapped at him, pretending outrage, then snuggled back into the pillows with a Scarlett O'Hara pout. " Well. I feel like Ah have been serviced. "

Grinning, Tris leaned down to drop a last kiss on her forehead. "So you have been-and very well, too."

"Nothin' wrong with your ego, that's for sure," Jessie said with a sniff, but she was secretly delighted with his arrogance.

He chuckled. "G'night-sleep tight." In the doorway he paused. "Oh-and remember, if you hear anything-"

"-don't touch you. I know." She blew him a kiss and snuggled back into the pillows with a quivering, throat-easing sigh. It's going to be all right. He's going to be okay… And for the first time, for that moment, she believed it.

Tristan walked with an unhurried stride, winding casually among families of tourists sunning themselves or picnicking on the mall, testing the spring in his knee and in the new grass, quietly appreciating the miracles of dandelions and laughing children and Jessie beside him and kites dancing in a pale-blue sky. And freedom. Yes, the biggest miracle of all, and he still wasn't sure it had sunk in completely. It would hit him every once in a while, though-come upon him unexpectedly, like now-and he'd feel kind of a kick in his chest, and there'd be a catch in his breathing, and the sting of tears would come into his eyes. I'm free. And I'm home.

Home. That was something else he had to keep telling himself. Because he still didn't believe that, either. Maybe because he didn't feel as if he was home. Maybe because he didn't know where home was, anymore.

One thing that had surprised him, though, was how he'd felt this morning, walking around Washington, D.C., with Jess. It had been her idea to spend some time seeing the sights before catching their flight to Atlanta, since it was something neither one of them had ever done before. Max and Sammi June had planned to visit the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum, which had rather appealed to Tristan, too. But Jess had wanted to see the monuments, and he hadn't been in a frame of mind to disappoint her. Now he was glad he hadn't. It was a perfect day to be outdoors, not too warm, with a breeze that carried the scent of fresh-cut grass. The monuments were pristine white against that soft-blue sky, making him think of that line in "America the Beautiful" about alabaster cities, undimmed by human tears. But he'd expected beautiful. He'd even expected to be touched by it all…the history, the symbolism. What he hadn't expected was to feel proud. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty…"

His eyes stung and, uneasy with that, he laughed out loud. Jessie gave him a questioning look, and he said, "Nothing-just glad to be here, is all," and reached for her hand. It gave him a little pang in his heart to realize she hadn't asked him to tell her why he'd laughed or how he felt. And that she'd probably stopped asking right after he'd snapped at her that day on the plane.

Ah hell, he thought, as familiar clouds drifted into his day. Just as well. That only meant he didn't have to try so hard to protect her from his thoughts…his feelings.

They paused to crane at the Washington Monument, hands lifted to shade their eyes from the morning sun but didn't join the line of tourists waiting to go inside. They were short of time, and Tristan's newly developed claustrophobia was a compelling enough reason all by itself to skip that experience.

"Feel like going all the way to the Lincoln?" Jess asked it lightly, and he knew she thought he'd be impatient with her "mothering."