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The two of us lay entwined long after the last shuddering aftershocks of pleasure gave way to a sleepy, satiated thrum. Belly to belly and forehead to forehead, we breathed our way down from our shared high and rested, dozing, drifting; afraid to fall too deeply asleep, only to wake and find it had all been a dream. The pads of our fingers stroked lazily at random, tracing the supple flesh of trapezius and deltoid, the curves of neck and cheek, the ridges of vertebrae and winged slopes of collarbones.
Relearning. Memorizing.
A new scar here; a familiar one there. The texture of his stubble beneath my palm. The little whorl of hair behind his left ear. The shape and tone of his muscles — impossibly bigger, stronger than I remembered (whereas I’d grown softer, rounder, looser with age, he’d somehow managed to ascend from a Viking to a bloody cut-from-marble god).
I tensed instinctively when his hand drifted lower, as if following my train of thought. His fingertips embarked on a slow, deliberate exploration of the area I was most self-conscious of, seeking the puckered, jagged silver scars that littered my hips and abdomen. I battled hard against the urge to flinch away from his inspection, reminding myself that he’d have to acclimate himself to the more undesirable parts of me eventually.
Still, I couldn’t look at him while he did it.
Eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted, I stayed very still and reluctantly let him explore.
After a moment, Jamie nuzzled his nose along the length of mine, releasing his breath in a soft, wistful sigh. I had just enough time to begin to panic — for my chest to tighten with the fear that he was disappointed by what he’d found — before he quieted the maelstrom with a whisper against my lips.
“I tried to picture ye when I knew yer time was near.” As the pad of his thumb traced each craggy imperfection across my belly, his brow furrowed a bit against mine, as if deep in concentration. “There was still so much time that should have been left, wi’ Faith. But you were… sae bonny when ye were round wi’ child, Claire.” I blinked against a sudden film of tears, and sniffed quietly as I rubbed my forehead against his. “That’s how I tried to remember ye, when I was in the cave. Tried tae... imagine how this bairn would fill ye out even more as it grew.” He smiled, letting out a breath of a laugh. “She,” he corrected, then whispered experimentally, “Bree anah.”
Relief and heartbreak had knotted themselves into a painful lump in my throat, and I swallowed twice before trying to speak around it. “She was a big baby,” I told him, voice wavering just a little, while he continued to chart his way across my lower belly. “Almost nine pounds.”
Jamie jerked in surprise. “Nine?” He let out a delighted huff, his smile curving against my mouth as he kissed me. “Christ. Jenny’s biggest was no more’n seven.”
“I felt like a whale by the end. God, I was so swollen.”
He made a throaty hum of recognition. “Aye, ye swelled up the first time, too,” he recalled, sobering at the memory. “Yer hands and feet. I used tae rub them for ye when they ached.” His blunt fingers finally abandoned their exploration to clasp the fine bones of my hand, massaging them gently; an echo of those long-ago nights in Paris.
“I remember,” I whispered.
I could sense his hesitation, his internal battle, long before the words tumbled falteringly out of his mouth. “Did… did Frank…?”
I shook my head and kissed him silently, fiercely. There would be plenty of time for that later; for talking about Frank, about the lovers I was certain that Jamie had taken over the course of twenty years.
But not tonight. For God’s sake, not tonight, I thought, praying Jamie had retained the uncanny ability to read my mind.
He had, thank Christ.
He swept a broad hand into my curls to grasp the back of my neck, while the other pressed to my spine, drawing me tightly — possessively — against him. He kissed me hard, and flipped me onto my back, his body turning with me so that we didn’t part for a moment. The weight of him pinned me to the mattress, crushing the air out of me, his hungry mouth stealing what little oxygen I had left.
I thought he would take me again; he was certainly ready, and so was I. Instead, when our mouths broke apart, gasping for air, he tucked his face into the curve of my neck, each panting exhale lifting my curls. He made no move to enter me, but neither did he shift away. He simply laid there, flush against me; covering me, pinning me, protecting me.
The powerful muscles of his arms trembled almost imperceptibly, and I managed, with some difficulty, to wriggle my own arms out from under his crushing weight and bring them up to cradle him; soothing, stroking. After a time, he stopped shaking, and muscle by muscle I felt him settle and relax against me, his breathing slowing and steadying in my hair as he drifted off to sleep.
Though my body was well-sated — my joints loosened and bones tired — I found myself unable to follow Jamie into slumber. I stared at the ceiling, listening to the various promiscuous noises from the adjoining rooms while my fingers stroked idly through his curls. My mind reeled, worrying, wondering; lamenting what had been lost, dreaming of what might still be.
I had no real sense of how much time had passed, but I guessed it was nearly an hour before the pressure of Jamie’s hipbone against my full bladder finally caused me to ease out from underneath him and seek relief in a chamber pot. He was awake as soon as I moved, and rubbed his eyes sleepily as I conducted my business. When I was done, he got up to do likewise. I slipped back into bed, naturally taking up residence under the sheets on the left side of the bed. I thought nothing of it when Jamie returned to the opposite side of the mattress and took me in his arms. I settled comfortably on his chest with my cheek pressed over his heart, letting out a contented sigh.
“Do ye sleep on that side of the bed now?” he murmured against the crown of my head, taking me aback.
I tipped my face up and blinked at him, then pursed my lips in consideration. “I... suppose I do, yes. I hadn’t thought about it before.” I kissed his chest, then laid my head back down. “You’re right. I used to sleep on the right side, didn’t I?”
“Mmphm.”
“Huh.” I frowned a little, thinking. “No, I… I’ve slept on this side for… years now. I’m trying to think if I…” I trailed off, unwilling to say slept on this side with Frank. I hadn’t, actually; come to think of it, I’d still slept on the right in the year and a half that Frank and I had shared a bed, too. Then we’d split into twin beds (too small for a “side” at all), and finally our own separate bedrooms. It was then, I supposed, that I must have started sleeping on the left?
Not that I felt particularly inclined to share any of that with Jamie.
Shrugging, I nuzzled the soft hairs in the center of his chest. “It doesn’t matter to me either way. I can switch back, if you’d like.”
He smiled, kissing across the top of my head and then resting his lips against my hairline. “Nah. I only ask because I’ve started sleeping on this side myself.”
“Have you?” I hummed curiously. “Well that’s fortuitous, I suppose.”
He hummed in return, then lay quietly for so long that I began to drift off. His fingers ran languidly up and down my back, not stopping even when he finally broke the silence, speaking in a hushed tone that he knew wouldn’t wake me if I’d managed to fall asleep in his arms.
“I didna linger at Lallybroch for long. Once the Redcoat search parties started comin’ through, I found the cave and settled there.” My grip on his waist tightened, letting him know that I was awake and listening. “But for the week or so that I stayed for Jenny to tend my wounds, she put me up in the laird’s room.” He buried his nose in my hair and breathed me in. His voice was hoarse and ragged when he spoke again. “Yer pillow still smelled like you.”
I let out a wavering breath and pressed parted lips to his skin in an unbroken kiss, not trusting myself to speak.
“I’d reach for ye, when I slept,” he whispered. “Try to find ye and curl around ye. Every night, I’d go to sleep on my side of the bed and wake up on yours.”
I nodded, but had to swallow several times before I managed to croak out, “I think that’s… I think that’s what happened with me, too.” I swallowed again, wiping my burning eyes against his skin. “I don’t remember ever consciously moving to your side of the bed, it was just… where I woke up in the morning.”
Jamie’s voice was so deep, so hoarse it was barely recognizable. “Did ye dream of me, Sassenach?”
I closed my eyes, nodding. “Constantly,” I breathed. “Whether I wanted to or not. You haunted me, James Fraser.”
“And you me, ban-druidh.” His lips pressed to my temple. “But in twenty years, none of my dreams came close to this.”
“No,” I agreed, propping myself up on an elbow to look at him. Rubbing my thumb over the stubbled cleft of his chin, I whispered, “They didn’t.”
He stared into my eyes for a long moment before leaning down to capture my lips with his. We kissed softly, unhurriedly, mouths and torsos and limbs molding to one another until we’d naturally slipped together again. We made love languidly as I rocked my hips against his, taking him deep and slow until the rising swell of pleasure crested with one last hitching gasp. I fell shuddering onto Jamie’s chest, and took him with me over the edge as he groaned my name.
I shifted my left hip down to curl along his side once we’d both caught our breath, tugging the sheet up to cover us as the sweat of exertion cooled on my skin. Jamie smiled at me knowingly and pushed the sheet down to his hips; of course, my own personal bloody radiator was warm as toast. I pressed myself against him, shaking my head with a scoff of a laugh, and he hummed contentedly, trailing his fingertips along my shoulder as we settled into a comfortable silence.
He was half asleep when he bent his left knee absently, shifting his weight to get comfortable. The sheet dropped away from his leg as he did so, revealing a long, angry-looking pucker of scar tissue that ran from mid-thigh nearly to his groin. I stared at it mutely for a long moment before my fingers skimmed down to trace it with the same pensive, quiet tenderness he’d shown me earlier.
“How?”