Allegro
Epilogue
Rated NC-17 . Really.
Characters belong to Lloyd, Moore and DC, among others
Dominic heard footsteps in the hall and opened his eyes. He slept lightly now that there was a baby in the house. He lifted an ear from his pillow. Sometimes in the night the Inspector wandered about and needed to be guided back to his bed. But these footsteps were not Finch's and the baby was quiet. He turned his head so he could see through his open door into the well-lit hallway.
Eve. She was tiptoeing now that she was approaching his room. He expected her to go past his door to the stair, but she paused there in the doorway in her long nightgown, her hand on the frame. He frowned. Something must be wrong. "Evey?" He whispered, sitting up and pushing the blankets off his chest.
"Oh, Dominic!" There were tears in her voice. She came in and climbed in beside him, lifting the blankets and sliding between the sheets. She lay her head on his other pillow and reached for him. He slid back down under the blankets and scooted closer to her so she could put her arms around his neck. They lay their on their sides, face to face.
"What's wrong, Eve?" He asked her.
"Oh...I had a dream...again."
"The same one?"
She nodded and pulled herself closer until she was pressed against him. He wished he had worn his pajamas to bed. He smoothed her hair away from her cheek. "The dreams will go away after a while. They always do."
"I don't want them to go away. He comes to me. I can hold him. Then I wake up and he is gone. It's the waking up that hurts...not the dream."
"I understand." And he did. "After my Da died, I dreamed about him too. I couldn't tell Mum, though, she would cry for hours if I even mentioned him." He kissed her forehead. "It hurts. I know."
"Yes." He heard her sniff, "I hope for the dreams and I dread them at the same time."
"Right." He pulled her to him so he could hug her. She curled her arms across her breasts and cuddled close to him, tucked under his chin. "I remember that too," he murmured.
"What...what did you do?" She brought her knees up and put her cold feet between his calves.
"Nothing," He rubbed her back. "I slept, I dreamed. I kept quiet when I heard my Mum crying in her bed."
"Did she cry a long time?"
"Almost a year."
"And then what happened?"
"She smiled one day when I came home from school."
"And?"
"It had been a long time since she smiled at me, I was shocked, frankly. But she smiled more after that." He nestled his face into her hair. Violets. Evey smells of violets.
Evey wiggled closer to him. "Edmond makes me smile. You make me smile. And the Inspector."
"It helps to have loved ones around."
"Yes." Her voice sounded thoughtful. She was calm now. He pressed more of her hair to his face and inhaled, closing his eyes. This is the scent that lingers after she is gone. She moved again beside him and he felt her little hand on his side, stroking him from his shoulders to his hip. "You are around."
"Yes. I am."
"Thank you so much."
"You don't have to thank me for loving you, Eve." He squeezed her gently to emphasize his point. He smiled to himself in the dark. "It's a thankless job," he teased.
She laughed softly and pinched him below his ribs. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't make light of what I have done to you."
"You have done nothing and everything to me." He lifted himself on one elbow and stared down at her on his pillow. "Before I met you, I was hardly alive, Evey. I was dead and I didn't even know it. I should have suspected, but the work and the time went by day to day and I let it fill me up because I didn't know there was anything else. Even my women were like tasks to me. 'Call her, buy her things, take her to dinner, tell her the dress makes her look thin, listen to her babble on about the telly'. That was my whole life, Evey. I dealt with death and misery at work, I would come home and feel like death. I was miserable, and I thought that was normal. I thought that was life."
"And when you met me? The first time was terrible, Dom. How can you forget that? You were so hurt, so beat up, so much pain. You opened your eyes and saw my face above you. I was your tormentor. You don't remember the look in your eyes. I do." Her voice thickened again with the memory and he was sorry he made her think of that day.
"Don't cry, Evey, don't cry." He bent over her face and kissed her cheek, tugged at her hair. "You were not my tormentor. Please. Don't cry about that. That's over. I am healed, and a better man than I was then."
She did smile, then, through the tears. "You are a good man. Someone once told me that. But now I know it first-hand." She sighed.
He kissed her head, breathing in the violets. "You are everything to me, Eve. You and Edmond."
She sniffed, her voice heavy with tears. "I do love you, Dominic. Will you believe me?" She moved her hand behind his head, tangling her fingers in his hair and pressed her lips to his jaw.
He didn't answer. She had never kissed him before. He blinked. She reached under the blankets and brought out his right hand. She pulled his knuckles to her lips and kissed them too. He whispered to her, "Eve. What are you doing?" He felt himself stiffen beneath the sheets and moved his hips away so she would not feel his response to her lips on his body.
"I love you."
"No. You don't. You are just sad. You are vulnerable, Eve. Please. Stop." He rolled away, tried to get out of the bed before it became impossible to hide his erection.
She rose up and pinned him, her hands on his shoulders, driving him into the pillows and leaned over him. "Don't get up. I want you to stay."
"I can't," he tried to say more, but one hand strayed from his chest, moved lower and collected him in her fingers.
"Your body says you can," she smiled. Dominic glanced through the open door into the hall. Evey caught his meaning for she said, "I checked on Eric. He is fast asleep. So is Edmond." She squeezed him gently and he responded with a soft groan and pulled his knees up.
"Oh, God, Evey. Are you sure you want to do this?"
She answered him by bending low and bringing her lips to his, her hand stroking him gently under the covers with the same rhythm she used on his mouth. He responded. He moved his mouth on hers; his hands encircled her small body and dragged her down harder on his lips. He kissed her all the kisses he had been imagining, all the kisses he had wanted for a year. He kissed her with all of his love, and then when her lips could no longer contain the magnitude of his love he kissed her jaw and her throat and moved to her neck and her ear until she was breathing hard and low. Her hand had stopped touching him, she took her face away from his lips and climbed over him, straddled his waist, hiking her nightgown up over her thighs.
He could barely speak. "Oh, no. I don't have anything. There was no need...I..."
"We don't need anything." She wiggled a little, getting comfortable, giving him a moment to get used to the change in position and her imminent intent. "I am under orders to provide a sibling or two for Edmond." She raised herself up just high enough to bring herself down on him slowly.
Dominic closed his eyes, breathing one last lungful of air before all thoughts centered on the warmth she was generating in the middle of his body. "Oh..." he sighed, moving his back and hips against the soft sheets, feeling their bond tighten. He swelled larger inside her as his body responded to the pleasure of her touch. She moved just a little, testing him, and the motion sent waves of electric pleasures from his erection to his toes. He lifted his hips to meet her, to feel that wave again, but she stopped him by squeezing her knees together against his ribs.
"Not so fast. I've just gotten here..." She bent over his chest and kissed him, circling one of his nipples with a slender finger. "I am loving you, Dom. You lie there."
"Ahh..." he had trouble speaking, "It's been a while since I...I last longer the second time..." Her hand had stroked him to this point, and now her velvety wetness threatened to make it end too soon.
"The second time? The same night?" She licked a finger and brushed the moistened tip over his nipple until he groaned and lifted himself against her again. "Hmm...I very much like that idea...then perhaps I shall have mercy." There was nothing merciful in her position. Her warm folds stroked him inside her until the tip of his erection, which pressed firmly against the inner confines of her body, hardened further and tortured him with the need to rock her back and forth.
"Eve..." His hips thrust up against her, again and again. He reached for her thighs, held her tightly as he lifted her with powerful spasms of pleasure, each forceful thrust brought him incrementally closer to release. He heard himself panting, he felt the familiar cresting that signaled a climax. Then she stopped him, squeezing her legs together, gripping him again, leaning forward and grasping his shoulders. He moaned long and loud enough for her to say, "Shhhhh...Not yet, not yet." His hips reached up for her, but she rose up with them, denying him the stroke. "I am feeling you, Dom. I haven't really felt you until now. Go slowly...let me experience this closeness, this intimacy. Breathe."
He pressed his head back into the pillow trying to obey her. His long breaths were uneven and loud. He closed his eyes to remove the silhouette of her breasts and shoulders from his sight. He gripped her thighs with the effort. She praised him, "Good, good, calm down..." she soothed, though the center of his body was anything but quiet. He remained poised on the edge of climax, inside he was pulsing with raw need to crush her against him and feel that stab of delight as he shot frothy fluids into her welcoming body. He grit his teeth, imagining it. He had been imagining it for months, the images were full and ripe. Closing his eyes did nothing to ease the fierce need to grind her to him. She leaned over him slowly, again, and moved just enough to keep him there on the edge. He felt her breath on his cheek as she nibbled softy at the corner of his mouth. "It's okay... soon, soon," she murmured, pressing her hips down once to prime him.
"Evey..." he breathed, "You are killing me...let me go..." he punctuated his words with another thrust upward, which she anticipated again by following him. He groaned again, pulled his knees up, ready. The next thrust she would not be able to negate. Two...three more and he would feel it. He could almost taste the searing pleasure. Anticipating it was too much.
He moved his hands from her thighs to her hips and ground her into him, she put her hands on his wrists. "Very well, then. Come. You will owe me a 'second time'"
He did not answer her but arched his back, planted his feet on the sheets and thrust up into her once, twice, three times, rocking her hips on his until with one great gasping spasm he felt himself burst. His shoulders pressed into the pillow and he could not stay quiet. "Uhhnnghh..." he breathed as he felt hot spurts fill her.
"Ahh...I love that noise men make." Her light laughter was almost lost among the sound of his rasping breaths,
"Eve...be still...ah..." He held her bum firmly against him, tried to keep her from moving.
"One minute ago you were begging me to move," she beamed.
"That's how...it...works...ah...stop..." he begged as she teased him by rolling her hips. "Stop..." She held still while he caught his breath.
Evey smiled down on him, watching his face contort and relax from a grimace to a sweet sleepy smile. I have not seen a man's face as he made love to me. Not for a very very long time. She leaned forward carefully. "Can I move now?"
"Yes...yes...sorry, Evey. You were about to send me through the roof." He smiled the most beautiful smile, his teeth were even and white. She had never noticed what a delightful smile he had. He has not smiled enough.
She laughed again, separating herself slowly, gently allowing him to fall away from the slick wetness inside her. She pulled the blankets up to cover him and lay beside him, watching his face in the light from the hallway as he recovered. "I wanted to make love to you last week," she said. "I thought about it for days."
He turned on his side to face her, still grinning, his eyes shining with love. Eve smiled back at him. He asked her, "What made you decide?"
"Oh. I was feeling a little, well...for the first time in a long time, I was feeling," she lowered her eyes shyly. She didn't know how to express that longing for a touch, a caress. Every day she held her baby, every day she touched Eric's hands, his face. But she never touched Dominic. And he never touched her. Last week she had thought about that in a sudden flash while washing her teacups. The one person in her life ready and willing to give her that comfort was deliberately keeping himself distant. Evey remembered leaning against the counter, thinking of it. He had not touched her since that afternoon in the shower. Months ago. How to answer? She smiled at him again. "I woke up one day and wanted you. It is just that simple."
"Oh Eve," he shifted on his pillow and gathered her to his chest, his arms around her shoulders. "I waited for you."
"You did. I can't tell you how important that is to me."
"I knew. I knew I would have to wait." He touched his lips to her hair. "I love you so much, Evey."
She brought her hands up to cup his face, feeling the rough bristles of his stubble, so strange to her fingers. "I didn't know I could love you, Dom."
"And can you?"
She nodded and stretched on her pillow to kiss him. "I can, and I have for a long time, please believe me."
He nodded. "I hoped."
"We need each other," she agreed, "and Eric, too."
"He lost a son. I lost a father," Dominic murmured.
"Yes, and I lost everyone," she whispered, thinking of her father, and her mother. Her brother. V.
"Oh, Evey. I didn't mean to remind you. I'm sorry." He hugged her closer.
"No, no. Don't be sorry." She rose on her elbows and leaned over him so she could kiss him on his eyelids, one then the other. She hovered, poised over his face, looking into his eyes. "I only mean that makes you so valuable to me. You and Edmond and Eric."