Knots

Hey, the usual disclaimers still apply, I don't own 'em. But I sure know how to have fun with them while they're "on loan"!

BTW, I would really enjoy feedback if anyone is actually reading this. It only takes a second and it makes it much easier to write when the muses are fickle.

Chapter 2: Need

Sara sagged against the closed bathroom door for a moment. It had been a hard couple months. Captain Dante was becoming increasingly difficult. He’d intentionally given her the ugliest, complicated, draining cases he could find. He was waiting for her to let down her guard, make a mistake tip him off, prove his suspicions correct. Until the blade started playing head-games Sara had been holding under the pressure. But the half heard, half seen, half felt, things in her head over the course of the past week had been slowly wearing her down. She might not have made a mistake yet in front of Dante, but she had made mistakes. Like coming to Gabriel’s tonight for help. One of these days, you're going to do something that tips off Nottingham and Irons to how deeply you care for Gabriel. Get your shit together, Pezzini.

She put the towel beside the sink, adjusted the water to a nice warm rain, unknotted the halter and skirt, and stepped into the shower. Her hand steadied her against the tiles as she reached for the shampoo. Suddenly the world shifted dizzily and something alien filled her mind. Gabriel's shoulder resting against the wall of the shower his head thrown back in the shower’s spray. Fire spreading across his nerves (her nerves?) as his hands slid tightly down the length of his hardened penis. He gasped, a word buried somewhere among the shallow breaths as he came closer to his climax. The intensity of the sensation burned as Sara’s body shared the pleasure. Her hand reached out blindly grabbing at the plastic shower curtain and twisting as the sensations overwhelmed her. Gabriel's shoulders slid down the wall as the first spasm pulled his body taught. The curtain and its rod spun free of their tension-mount at the top of the wall. Sara floundered, her foot sliding on the wet plastic curtain in the basin of the tub. Her head crashed into the rim of the tub as Gabriel’s orgasm took over. As she fell into the darkness she heard a word leave his lips prayerfully, “Sara”.

**********

Gabriel’s thin fingers slid across the keyboard making small adjustments to the searching web he’d created in his computer. Sproig, pop. His head snapped up and his weight shifted in the chair. A dull thud and clatter heard from the other end of the hall sent him bolting out of his chair.

He rapped his knuckles lightly against the hollow wood door, “Sara?”

She’s gonna kill me for sneaking a peek of her in the shower, he thought briefly, hand twisting the doorknob. He had a momentary unbidden mental image of Sara in his shower. Wow, aren't you way past teen-age hormones? Stop thinking about it, Bowman.

“Sara, are you okay? I thought I heard something.”

Steam billowed through the open door as he waited for her usual snappy reply. A tangle of plastic, metal curtain rod, leg, arm, blood.

Gabriel’s heart skipped.

The floor was soaked as the shower’s spray reached beyond the confines of the tub. Sara lay in the tub half wrapped in curtain her head lolling against the tiles. A steady trickle of blood flowed from somewhere in her hair. Her eyes were closed and her facial features slack.

Gabriel tore at the curtain around Sara’s limp form. Okay, take stock of the situation, Bowman. She’s obviously bleeding and out cold. Check for a pulse and breathing, then figure out if she’s hurt anywhere else. His cheek fell to her chest and he ignored the view down her lean stomach as he listened. Heart. Breath. Good. Now the rest. He started at her legs working his hands quickly across and around every inch of her body. Legs, arms, hips, ribs, chest, back,shoulders, neck. His long fingers cradled the base of her skull, rotating to get a better view. Fingers probed through her hair finding a growing lump where her head had been resting against the edge of the tub. He snagged the towel blindly off the counter, placed it in the crook of his elbow, and laid her head over his arm. His other arm went under her legs as he pulled Sara’s still body against his chest. Lifting her, he noted that she had been almost completely stretched out across the tub, making her a bit shorter than himself. Why did I think she was so much taller than this? Always such a bad ass. Makes her a bit larger-than-life, doesn't it?

He hefted her more securely into his grasp and made his was down the hall to the bedroom. The ironic part of his mind couldn’t let go of the grim parody of his romantic fantasies when he’d dreamt about carrying her off to his bed. Sitting carefully on the end of the bed, Gabriel leaned Sara's limp torso across his forearm to get a good look at the back of her head. He brushed the hair away from the injury and checked it to make sure the bleeding was stopped and it didn’t need stitches. Thank god head injuries usually bleed worse than they actually are. Sara shifted and groaned. Her head lifted, eyes not quite focusing.

“Take it easy,” he soothed. “You hit your head, Pez, you might have a concussion. I want you to follow my finger with your eyes, Sara.” Her eyes tracked the point of his finger as it waved back and forth, up and down. When her gaze settled back on his face, his chest contracted hard; her pupils weren’t quite the same size.

“Sara? Are you listening to me?”

“I’m here,” she croaked out, pink tinged droplets of water still dribbling down her face and body.

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“Saw you coming,” she mumbled.

“You knew I was coming down the hall before you fell?”

“No no no,” her head jogged unevenly as it shook in negation, “saw you in the shower, body tight, hands-”

Gabriel's mouth opened but no sound would come out. The sentence hung unfinished in the air between them. What the hell was the witchblade doing?
He looked away. //SHE NEEDS YOU//