In this Moment

/N:Thanks to belismakr for her majorly fantastic beta skills, she fixes my grammar and punctuation and tolerates my neurotic whining with a minimum of eye rolling.

This is for elialys. I hope you like it Ambre.

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The quick flick of water hit her in the face causing her to blink in surprise, then look at the flicker of said water incredulously. He smirked.

Giving him a warning, albeit ersatz, glare, Sara went to the refrigerator and retrieved the parmesan cheese.

Grissom threw her a puckish smile and continued rinsing the romaine while she moved back and forth from pantry to counter, assembling ingredients for their meal, contributing what little she could with her heavily casted arm.

He was lighter since the desert. She doubted he would ever be the slightly goofy, nearly manic man she had met nine years previous but he was lighter after the first day in the hospital.

He smiled at her constantly, gentle smiles, happy smiles, relieved smiles, smiles after saying “I love you,” bigger smiles after hearing “I love you, too.” He treated her with gentle care, duly noted all of the doctor’s instructions, got her prescriptions filled, took her home, bathed her, teased her, held her, fed her. He smiled and when he wasn’t smiling, he laughed.

He was lighter since the desert.

And as the full assault from the sprayer hit her backside, she determined he was also going to be a dead man.

“Grissom!” She yelped and grabbed a dishtowel, ineffectually blotting the seat of her pants with it.

He laughed. “Sorry, sorry.” He laughed again. “It just was too tempting.” He took the towel from her hand and took over the job of trying to dry her jeans with the cotton towel.

Attempting to wither him with a look over her shoulder proved not only difficult but with the weight of the cast, it was also uncomfortable bordering on painful. And when she heard another suppressed and mischievous chortle coming from the vicinity of her derriere, she couldn’t help the lift of her own lips in answer.

She snorted, “You’re certainly full of yourself this evening.”

He put his hands on her hips and playfully wiggled her body back and forth, “Play your cards right and you could be full of me, too.”

Feeling the sudden lightening strike of desire hit her center at his words, she flushed and answered, “Really?”

His breath was warm on her lower back as he answered in a still light-hearted tone, “Yes, really.”

She had been home from the hospital a week and he had held her while she slept and kissed her with reverent tenderness, but the topic of resuming their sex life had not been broached. Oh, she knew him well enough to know he had both talked to her doctor and done research, but the truth was until this moment, she had been too tired and too sore to contemplate anything more strenuous than holding his hand. But today she had awakened feeling less groggy, less sore and altogether more human. The feel of his large gentle hands on her hips and his warm breath softly caressing her through her clothes suddenly shifted her from sexually ambivalent to energetically aroused. She deliberately slowed and deepened her voice, using what he called her “bedroom vixen voice.” “And what, exactly, would playing my cards right entail?”

“Well,” his hand slid under the material of her blouse, lightly sliding over the smooth skin of her stomach, “probably the first thing we need to do is get you out of these wet clothes.” He pressed a kiss to her lower back and stood, keeping one hand on her hip and the other on her stomach.

Giving a husky laugh, Sara turned in his arms and kissed the cleft of his chin. “That sounds good, but considering you dressed me, you’ll have to undress me.”

“Always a pleasure, Sara…always,” he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. A light touch of lips at first, when he pulled her hips into his body and she felt the unmistakable ridge of his erection she moaned and he deepened the kiss, his tongue moving into her mouth with gentle insistence. Sighing at the contact, she opened her mouth wider, receiving him in this first of lovers’ communion. Grateful for the feel of him, intoxicated by the taste of him, she closed her eyes at let herself float with the sensation of being kissed by the man she loved.

Less than two weeks ago, she had thought she would never see his face again, never get to hear “I love you,” never be held by him or make love with him again. She remembered wishing then, staggering around the desert, with the sun and the sand and the pain, that she had paid more attention the last time he had kissed her, the last time he had held her, the last time he had moved over her, inside her.

Now, she fell--completely--into his touch, into the kiss, into this moment. The press of their lower bodies feeling the heat even through their clothes, the feel of his lips on hers, his hands connecting with skin, the frustration of not being able to be completely pressed against him because of the cast, the feel of his thrumming pulse under her hand, knowing hers was beating out a matching rhythm.

Reluctantly, he drew back from her, and taking her hand, abandoned their half prepared meal and led her to the bedroom.

Gently, he removed her top, taking tender care as he moved it over her cast and cast it aside. Even though he had been dressing, bathing and undressing her since the first day in the hospital she had not seen the look of desire resting on his features until now. He looked hot and hungry and awed as he stared at her naked breasts; she watched his tongue move out to wet his lips as both of his hands came up to hold them in his hands, brushing against her cast as he cupped the weighted flesh in his palms bringing her nipples to sudden peaks. Slowly, almost painfully, he raised his eyes to her face. “God, Sara, you’re beautiful.”

Clumsily, she began working on the buttons of his shirt and shook her head. “My face looks like raw hamburger and I haven’t been able to do anything with my hair in weeks and…”

The flow of words was stopped by the press of his lips. “So beautiful.” Lightly he kissed the abraded skin of her chin and the tip of her nose as his hands continued to caress her breasts. His lips moved to her cheek and he reverently kissed every healing scrape and cut. He shrugged out of the shirt she had successfully unbuttoned for him and moved his hands to her jeans, unfastening them and tugging them, along with her panties, down her body. “So beautiful,” he repeated, like a mantra, like a prayer.

He eased her down onto the bed and quickly divested himself of the remainder of his clothes, his hard length bobbing free, and then lay down beside her, pulsing with life and desire. He rested his head on the palm of his hand as he studied her beside him, his hands gentling up and down the length of her body, softly touching, gliding, sliding over her skin, still red and raw in some places but healing and whole, alive.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he breathed. “If I hurt you or you’re uncomfortable or in pain, tell me and I’ll..”

Sara cupped his jaw with her good hand. “Love me, Gil. Just love me.” She pulled his face down to hers into a soulful kiss, begging him to be there in that moment with her. She felt herself sink into the moment, floating on and drowning in his kiss and the feel of his hands, one on her breast, the other descending her body smoothing over her hip, across her belly and down further to the juncture between her thighs. Lightly, he traced over her mound, barely touching her cleft, smiling as her legs fell open to him. His fingers stroked over her, once, twice, three times and then one finger dipped into her briefly mimicking the movement of his tongue in her mouth and then slipped out of her again, trailing up to dance around her clit. He brushed against the bud and she arched up, bucking into his hand, breaking the kiss. “Gris, please…”

“Please, what?” He circled her clit again, moving it under his thick digit, listening to her moan. He was kissing his way down her neck, intent on finding the sweet spot where her neck met her shoulder and the hollow created by her collarbone. He found his destination and began nibbling and sucking on his favorite patch of skin as he dipped his fingers back into her; she was wet and ready for him.

“Please…be inside of me.” Her voice was full of raw longing and a need he had never heard before.

He looked at her face, still scraped and tender, and her eyes, burning with dark intensity. Placing a brief but searing kiss against her lips, he growled. “Yes.”

Moving quickly, he reached towards the head of the bed and pulled down the wedge shaped pillow she had been sleeping on since her return home; the doctor had said it would make her more comfortable while her ribs were healing and keep her from bumping her arm. He pulled the pillow to the edge of the bed in the opposite position she used it to sleep and picked her up, placing her tenderly on it, with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. She looked startled at first, then, grinned at his ingenuity. It was perfect…it raised her pelvis and allowed her to lie back on the bed without worrying about his weight pressing onto her broken arm.

He stood and pulled her forward slightly, stroking himself with one hand and sinking two fingers of his other hand into her, sliding them in and out in a wet rhythm. Looking into her eyes he spoke, “I love you. I knew it before she took you, but I don’t think I ever let you know how much. But I love you and it’s really important to me you know that…you are the love of my life…no, Sara…you are my life.”

She felt her eyes burn with the intensity of his words and flutter of love she felt in the middle of her chest. “Come inside me, Gil.” Reaching down, she took the hard heft of him in her hand and guided him into her opening. “Make us both whole.”

He pushed into her slowly, feeling her wet heat surround him, slick rings of muscle closing over his engorged penis and they both groaned at the perfectly perfect feel of the other’s body, the moment of completion real and right. She felt her chest tighten at the look of ecstasy and desire on his face and knew the same look was on her face. Slowly, he moved his hips back, almost sliding completely out and she arched her pelvis up, pulling him back in. Their groans filled the air as they moved, together, meeting and matching in slow deliberate thrusts.

He repeated her name each time she rose to meet him, in gratitude or admonition she wasn’t sure and didn’t really care, because he was inside her and she was alive and she would die someday but she was never ever going to forget again the feel of his calloused hands on her hips, the wet rasp of his tongue in the valley between her breast, the sound of “Sara, I love you” bursting from his lips as his cock filled her in a thrusting, thrumming rhythm and she hitched her hips again and he quickened his pace.

She wrapped her legs around him and his knees hit the edge of the bed as he drove into her deeper and harder. She watched him watch her breasts bounce, watched himself as he fucked her, moving in and out of her, his prick nearly purple and shining with her juices as he thrust in and pulled out. She felt the beginnings of her orgasm tightening within her and he must have seen it too; he reached out and pulled her good hand to her cleft, guiding her fingers almost as if he knew what would feel the best to her, his fingers stroking her fingers as she stroked herself.

The heavy musk of sex hung in the air and there was the sound of flesh smacking against flesh; his cock filled her body and his soul filled her soul and she was nothing but love right in that moment and she looked at his face and saw the same thing reflected in his azure gaze as he gritted out, “Come with me, Sara.” He arched into her hard and she could feel the pulsing of his orgasm within her walls and she used her muscles to clench around him, to feel the spasming heat of him coming inside her. Then, there was no turning back, there was only this fall, this headlong tumble into bright light and nothingness and nothing but being and being in love.

After a few minutes, after he softened and slipped from her, he threw himself down on the bed and pulled her off the wedge and into his arms. They were both breathing hard, sweat soaked and completely sated. “Are you okay?” his voice was tired, but still held concern.

Smiling feebly, she found herself fighting sleep. “Never better.”

“Good.” A pause. “I meant that, you know, you are my life. If…” he swallowed hard and she snuggled into him harder. “…If you had died, I would have had no life left in me.”

She kissed his chest, a tender, soothing caress. “I’m still here. And I love you.”

“Good,” he sighed. “I love you, too.”

Tomorrow there would be the kitchen to clean, bills to pay, more doctor’s visits, Ecklie to deal with and all the inconsequential minutiae that was a part of life. But in that moment there was only life and light and she drifted off to sleep, safe and happy and loved.