Waking II

Laura slipped on her robe and belted it as she exited the lavatory and returned to the bedroom, where her lover sat propped against the headboard in the glow of her bedside lamps. He was looking at the book that had been on her night stand, the one that she’d been reading a little in each night before bed.

“Any good?” he asked, holding up the book as she moved around the bed.

“Decent,” she replied, glancing toward the window as a clap of thunder sounded. She paused beside it, reached over and parted the blinds, looked out into the night. The trees and bushes were swaying, rain falling heavy enough she couldn’t see her neighbor’s second car out in the drive. It wasn’t a big storm, just a steady one, the kind that she found more comforting than alarming.

“How bad is it?”

Laura smiled, released the blinds and continued on to the bed. “It’s not. I actually like these sorts of storms,” she confessed as she settled atop the covers beside him. He had redonned his boxers, she noted, and his dog tags were back around his neck. “There’s an underlying energy that I find both invigorating and soothing,” she continued, reached out to touch the two pieces of metal that rested in the center of his chest. She picked one up, tilted it and read it.

“W … William … Adama,” she said softly, her gaze flicking up to his.

“Yes,” he replied.

She smiled and hummed as she set the tag back against his skin. She then ran her hand down over his belly, finding herself mesmerized by the firm roundness. He wasn’t too thick around the middle yet, but age was beginning to have its way with him. From what she could feel beneath, though, she’d wager he once had rock-hard abs.

Her gaze returned to his when she felt his fingers brush at her hair, guiding a strand that had fallen against her cheek back and tucking it behind her ear.

“Why blonde?” he asked, a smile flirting with the corners of his mouth.

She smiled coyly, shrugged. “Something different.”

“Hmmm,” was his response, followed by a question, asked so softly she knew he was afraid of treading into territory that would shatter the tranquility they’d felt since meeting, “Not for your lover?”

He didn’t need to worry, though. She wasn’t about to let anything disturb the cocoon they’d found themselves in, especially not by the likes of Richard Adar.

In response to Bill’s query, she shook her head. Richard had grown so self-absorbed in the last year that he’d hadn’t even noticed the difference until she pointed it out. Then he’d acted as if he didn’t care what color it was so long as she’d still open her legs for him. She should have left him then, she realized, which made her all the happier that she’d walked away from him tonight.

And she had walked away from him and their relationship, for good, though she hadn’t comprehended the finality of it at the time. Only in the hours that followed, spent with the man currently in her bed, had she recognized that it was over with Richard and had been for some time.

Smiling at Bill, she confessed, “I’d never been a blonde before and thought I’d try it.“

“Like it?” he asked, wrapping a strand around his index finger.

She shrugged again, in evidence of the ambivalence she’d felt about the color since changing it. “it’s okay.”

“Going to keep it?”

She shook her head, smiled when his gaze flickered down her body in response. She giggled when his other hand gently parted the tails of her robe then tugged at the waist of her panties so he could peer at the curls that covered her sex.

“I have pictures, you know?” she told him.

He flashed her a grin but looked right back down to where his hand was … slipping into her panties and playing with her curls.

“Yeah, but I can’t do this to a picture,” he said quite needlessly, making her giggle in spite of what he was doing.

He chuckled in response, laughing eyes meeting hers, and making her infinitely glad she’d asked him to stay. Gods, she was really enjoying him.

Touching the side of his face, she leaned in and kissed him gently through her laughter and his, lingering even after his fingers stilled and their laughter faded to soft exhalations.

When they finally parted, he looked at her with a heat she recognized but was tempered by reality. He gave her a gentle smile, said softly, “Show me your pictures.”

Laura eased away from him, missing the warmth and gentle weight of his hand as soon as it slipped from her, and out of the bed. She went into the living room, where she kept her photos, and retrieved one from the mantle. It was taken the summer before at a beach party at a friend’s house. Said friend had caught her gazing out at the sea and snapped the shot, and later presented to her. It seemed a little vain, she supposed, to have a picture of herself like that on display, but it was really a good shot. She took it to Bill then crawled back into the bed beside him.

His reaction to the picture made her smile and blush a little.

“Frak, Laura, why would you ever change this?” he asked, studying the picture then looking over at her.

She shrugged once more. “I just wanted to change things for a while. Be different.”

He nodded in acknowledgment, seeming to understand what she was saying. It was the truth. She had wanted a change, to be different for a while. She hadn’t been entirely sure why she’d wanted that other than she’d just felt a need for change, and changing her hair color was less permanent and dangerous than anything else she’d been able to think of.

Laura watched him study the picture a few moments more then set it on the bedside table, atop the book he’d been looking at earlier. He then wrapped his arm around her shoulder and murmured, “Come here,” gently urging her closer, astride his lap.

She went without a qualm, settling across his thighs as he opened her robe and pushed it down and off her shoulders. He leaned back against the headboard then and just looked at her, eyes moving from her face down to her breasts, which were peaking in the room air. His gaze moved on, down to the juncture of her thighs, fixed there.

“Show me,” he rumbled and she did, bold but trembling fingers pushing down her panties just enough to give him a glimpse of what he wanted to see.

“You don’t need to change anything,” he breathed in response, then wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.

Laura lay her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, sighing as he caressed the back of her neck and the curve of her spine, content in the quiet acceptance he offered, of how she was, how she was supposed to be.

When he began kissing her neck, she hummed low, tilted her head back to give him access to anywhere he desired. He covered the column of her throat with warm caresses of his lips, nuzzled lower, across the rise of her breasts.

Dipping lower, he murmured, “Let me,” and she eased back and lifted one of her breasts to his mouth, whispered his name when he encased it in his wet heat, gently chewing, licking and sucking at her nipple.

Her eyes fell shut and then she was falling backwards, back, back across the mattress and bedding and he was moving over her, head bowed reverently over her chest, lips, teeth and tongue blistering the skin of her breasts, plucking at her nipples until she was writhing under him.

Fingers locked tight in his hair, she guided him from one mound to the other, never wanting him to stop, wishing to the gods he could be hard again and fill her right now. She settled for his fingers, though, clenching around them as they eased under the material of her panties and slid into her.

She panted, mewled, cried, gasped, and moaned. She begged and pleaded for completion, for him to never stop.

Her cumming was gentle, washed through her in a ripple on a pond, bounding and rebounding until she lay quivering and panting.

“Bill,” she breathed when he kissed her in the aftermath, almost chastely.

She forced her eyes open and found him hovering over her, a gentle smile on his face. “Ready to sleep?” he asked. She nodded then sighed when he left her just long enough to grab a couple pillows, and draw the corner of the bedspread down and over her legs.

He snuggled against her side then and draped an arm around her. They slept.

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