The scar on Deacon's stomach was healing nicely, less ugly than it had been when he'd gotten out of the hospital. There was no need now to re-dress it every day, thankfully, as far as Rayna was concerned. She hadn't enjoyed the constant reminder about how close he'd come, but she'd also found, curiously, that it had been just as reassuring as it was scary. He was one of the lucky ones, and the scar was testament to it.

And then there was the other effect. Every day Rayna helped him to peel off his clothes to take off the bandages, popped the buttons on his flannel and unwound the old one. She let her eyes look over his smooth skin, her hands linger on his biceps, trail down his chest. She hadn't meant to have the thoughts she had, but she couldn't help herself. Even bruised and wincing, Deacon was hot.

Eight weeks they'd said, a little knowingly. Eight weeks of recovery time: no heavy lifting, no extreme exercise...no sex.

It had been three weeks so far, and neither of them were doing too well with the sex part.

During all of the periods they'd been together, no matter how long or short, Rayna and Deacon hadn't been very good at keeping their clothes on around each other. Not in the beginning, when their teenage hormones had been responsible for more than a few abandoned songwriting sessions, and not in the weeks before his surgery. Even in the darkest of times when they'd both felt hopeless about the future, they could turn each other on and forget about everything for a while.

Three weeks was feeling like a hell of a long time. Eight weeks seemed nothing short of impossible.

Rayna, for her part, was taking his recovery very seriously, not letting him so much as lift the orange juice out of the refrigerator and employing endless patience with his griping about it. She was trying her best not to let him know how badly she wanted him, even in the moments when she felt like she would go up like a bunch of dry leaves with the smallest spark. He needed no encouragement; Deacon was a horny guy, always had been, and it had only ever taken a look from her to let him know she was having less than pure thoughts for him to pounce on her.

Deacon wasn't quite so good at hiding his desires. The pain and the discomfort left behind after the surgery was wearing off, and he was starting to feel like his old self again, fixed up good as new. Every day he woke a little brighter, pulled Rayna a little closer, and the words of his doctor seemed further and further away.

Morning sex had always been one of their favorite things, and was maybe the most difficult to abstain from. A sleepy, mussed up Deacon was a hard thing to resist, and a soft Rayna in his arms, warm and sighing as she woke, was like handing him a loaded weapon.

"I know what the doc said Ray, but I never did do too well with rules," he said one morning, sliding his hand up her thigh, his fingertips brushing the edge of her panties. She'd been wearing pajamas to bed since he came home from the hospital, trying not to tempt him, but it was a hot summer, and the pajamas were getting smaller.

"Oh, I know," she replied, trying to stop her toes from curling. His fingers inched under the fabric. "Deacon, what do you think you're doin'?"

"I'm breakin' the rules."

"Babe, you gotta stop that," she said, unable to help the slightly desperate edge to her voice.

"Ain't no reason we should both have to suffer Ray."

It sounded very reasonable to Rayna as one of his thick fingers slid inside her, maddeningly slowly. She thought she might die from how good it felt, and for a few moments she let him pull it out of her and push back in, her eyes screwed shut. She might have listened to him and let him carry on if she hadn't been all too aware of him pressed up against her ass, hard as a rock. He moved his hips just a little, rubbing himself against her, and she knew that if they carried on another minute, she'd be ripping his boxers off if he didn't do it first.

"Deacon, we can't."

He groaned as he pulled his hand from her and straightened up her panties, and she bit her lip in sheer frustration.

"I can't take this," he said, rolling onto his back. "How much longer we gotta do this?"

"Five more weeks," she said miserably.

"Five fuckin' weeks. I'm not gonna be able to control myself when I get my hands on you, baby, and I'm not gonna be able to take 'em off you in a hurry. You might not be able to walk for a few days after we get done re-acquaintin'."

Even the thought of it made Rayna squeeze her legs together. She let out a soft whimper and Deacon turned his face towards her. He reached out for her hand and linked it with his, holding it to his chest. "You realize we've never gone this long without havin' sex?"

"Aside from the Teddy years," she said, with a hint of irony. "But let's not talk about those."

Deacon laughed loudly. "How the hell did we do that?"

"I really don't know, babe, but let's never do it again. Five weeks and we can make up for every minute of this."

/

A week later and Deacon had arranged every record in their music room in alphabetical order. He'd re-strung and meticulously polished all of his guitars, filed all the mail he'd picked up from his old house, and was reading some crap he didn't understand in an old heavy book in the study when Rayna walked in with a pitcher of homemade lemonade.

"I've been lookin' everywhere for you. What're you doin' babe?" she asked. "It's hotter than hell out there and you're holed up here in the air-con?"

He looked up from his book and immediately wished he hadn't. She was in frayed denim shorts and a bikini bra, a sheer shirt thrown over the top. She'd been outside, and her skin looked hot and sweaty, her hair sticking to her neck.

His brain went immediately to the place he'd been trying to avoid. She looked exactly that way underneath him after he made her come, and he closed his eyes for a moment, hoping when he opened them she'd have put on a turtleneck and some pants.

When he did open them, she was leaning over him setting the glass down on a side table.

"Kinda outfit is that Ray?" he said into her cleavage, and she straightened quickly.

"It's...hot out there," she said, tugging her shirt down.

"Pretty hot in here too now." He couldn't take his eyes from her, and he licked his lips, wishing he could run his tongue between her breasts and taste the salty sweat there.

"Sorry Deacon. Really though, what are you doin' in here?"

"I'm readin'. Figured this was the least sexy room in the house. It's dark and it's cold and there's all these old books in here. Kinda smells like a library, and no-one thinks about sex in a library, do they?"

Rayna reached out and tilted the book in his hands. "You're readin' an Encyclopedia Deacon?' she asked, eyebrows raised in amusement.

"I'm learnin' some shit. Got a lotta time on my hands, I figured what better use of it than to educate myself on all there is to know about..." - he checked the page he had open - "Hieroglyphics."

"Right. And there's nothin' sexy about Hieroglyphics, I suppose."

"There wasn't, 'til you walked in wearin' those." He dropped the book on his knee and trailed his hands lightly up the backs of Rayna's legs, stopping at the edge of her shorts. He played with a loose thread right below her left ass cheek.

"Deacon," she warned, but she steadied herself with her hands on his strong shoulders.

He held her gaze as he tugged harder, and they both heard the rip as the thread unravelled. He smirked. "Oops. I broke your shorts baby. Should probably take 'em off." He pushed his hands up under them and gripped her ass, massaging it, and Rayna's breathing grew heavier.

"You are so incorrigible Deacon."

His nose was level with her breasts, his own personal heaven, and he used it to move aside her shirt, snagging her nipple with his teeth through her bikini and sucking generously.

"Ah," she breathed, pushing her breast further into his mouth, unable to help herself.

"I know you baby," he said, his tongue flicking out between words. "You're just as horny as I am."

He bit down and she moaned, loudly, the sound echoing around the otherwise silent room. He didn't need any further confirmation.

"C'mon Ray, the doc'll never know."

He slid down the zipper on her shorts, and before she could come to her senses, his hand was inside her panties, rubbing her. He grit his teeth when he felt how wet she was.

"You have stitches," she struggled to say, "the doctor'll know if you burst them, and it'll be my fault." He pushed two fingers inside her. "I'm not...gonna be responsible for...oh shit."

"What's that baby?" he teased, pulling aside her bra with his other hand and blowing on her nipple. "Responsible for what now?"

She seemed to have forgotten her point, and her hand went to the bulge in his khakis.

"Fuck, Deacon," she gasped out, pulling his head back a little roughly by his hair and kissing him hard. His fingers pumped into her faster, and she rotated her hips against his movements, reaching for his zipper. He felt her pull the front of his boxers down and bit her lip, desperate to feel her fingers on him.

"Rayna?" a voice called down the hallway.

"Shit," she said, pulling back abruptly from Deacon, who looked up at her in a daze, his tongue still peeping out of his mouth. "It's Bucky."

"Bucky?"

Rayna stepped back, pulling up her shorts. "Deacon, put that away," she said, pointing to his crotch, and he looked down, silently saying a little commiseration to his unsatisfied penis.

"You here Rayna?"

"I'm here," she called, running her fingers through her hair to compose herself and heading quickly towards the door. "I'm sorry babe," she told him, throwing him an apologetic, pained look that said she was just a pissed at her manager's timing as he was. "Probably for the best though, that was not headin' anywhere sensible."

He watched her disappear through the door, her cheeks still flushed, and dropped his head back on the leather chair. "Sorry buddy," he said, patting his pants. "Guess we got another month of this."

/

Sex, when you were trying not to think about it, was everywhere.

Rayna sat in the waiting room at the hospital flicking through a Medical Monthly journal, but most of it was a foreign language to her and she turned the pages without seeing them, until a double page spread caught her attention. Sex Positions to Help Conception, it read. Well, she wasn't interested in the conception part (two months of no sex was bad enough - any longer, voluntarily?), but the diagrams were hard not to look at. Surprisingly graphic illustrations of a couple, the woman on top, another with the man behind her, both on their sides. Rayna tipped the magazine sideways to get a better angle, imagining her and Deacon doing no.4, the one with the woman on the edge of a bed on all fours with and the man inside her from behind.

"What's that Ray?" Deacon asked, leaning over to get a look, and she snapped the pages shut.

"Nothing. Just boring medical stuff."

She took his hand and smiled. They were headed in for his one month check-up, and he'd been doing well, getting fitter, healthier. Sexier.

She tapped her foot and looked around.

The plastic plants were ugly, she thought. Were people supposed to think they were real?

There were posters on the walls informing people to get checked out for various ailments, pamphlets about outpatient support groups on the coffee table. A book on penis health on a shelf to her left. She missed Deacon's penis. She knew it was fit and strong too and she was getting embarrassingly desperate to have him show her just how much so.

"Deacon Claybourne?" a nurse called, and they stood and followed her, Rayna wiping a sweaty palm on her jeans.

"All doing ok?" Doctor Rand asked when they sat down in his office.

He asked a lot of questions, checked Deacon over, asked some more questions, and eventually declared that he was making great progress.

"You're recovering better than we could have expected," he said, pleased, and Deacon beamed at Rayna, who breathed out a sigh of relief.

"So," she spoke up, clearing her throat, "does that mean he's able to do all the things he could do before? I mean I know you said eight weeks, but..." She shot Deacon a look and he knew exactly what she was getting at.

"I'm afraid not just yet. Deacon you still need to take it easy. We don't want your progress to slow because you're getting ahead of yourself and not being careful."

Rayna looked at Deacon. Deacon looked at Doctor Rand. His hand twitched in hers.

"Right. So no...heavy lifting."

"That's right."

"What about things that aren't, you know, all that heavy?" He shouldn't have looked at Rayna then, and he knew he'd given himself away, but he couldn't help his eyes raking over her slender body.

The doctor put down his pen. "No lifting of any kind. Not for another month. You need to control any urges you may have to...lift things."

"Easy for you to say," Deacon muttered under his breath.

They left his office a half hour later, after Deacon had dressed and the doctor had talked them through next steps, Rayna driving them home.

They were both thrilled he was doing so well, but there was a little air of disappointment that he still wasn't quite up to speed.

He stared at her hand where it rested on his knee while they drove. "I been thinkin' Ray," he said. "I think you're gonna have to not touch me at all this next month or I'm gonna lose it and start humpin' your leg someplace real inappropriate. I mean it, no touchin', no kissin', no any of it."

Rayna pulled her hand back, gripping the wheel. "Wanna stop and pick up some ice cream?" she tried, steering into the lane for Trader Joe's without waiting for his answer. If it worked for Daphne when she was sulking...

/

The 'no touching' rule lasted an hour. They managed to go a whole three hours without kissing, but the more Rayna tried not to think about his lips, the more he stared at hers, and in the end he grabbed her in the kitchen and pinned her against the refrigerator, kissing her so good her knees almost gave out.

"Screw whatever I said, it was a crock of shit," he said, moving to her neck and kissing her there too for good measure. "That doc is messin' with us Ray. I swear, how can it be so bad to just make a little love..."

She lifted up his shirt and peeled back the tape securing his bandage, wincing.

"He said you could have your stitches out in a week babe, I guess he's just bein' cautious."

A week later and Deacon was stitch-free, proudly so. He took any opportunity he could to stare at his healing wound, proclaiming it his battle-scar. Rayna took any opportunity she could to touch it, marvelling at his survival and at how soft his skin was there.

"It feels funny when you do that," he told her one night when they were laid on top of the sheets in their bedroom, holding each other and swapping soft observations about nothing much at all.

"Good-funny or bad-funny?" she asked, tracing her finger back and forth over it.

"Good-funny. Kinda like when I touch you on the backs of your knees and you get all squirmy." He did so to prove his point, and Rayna shivered.

When he moved his hands back up to her waist, she eased him carefully onto his back. "How does it feel when I do this?"

She straddled him and moved down his shirtless body until she reached his abdomen, and flicked out her tongue, licking all the way along his scar. It tasted sweet, surprisingly so, and she couldn't help but give it the gentlest of sucks. Deacon gasped in a breath.

"Feel funny now?"

He shook his head, unable to get words out, and she grinned up at him. He couldn't help but get hard, and quickly. She was in his favorite silk camisole, the one with the matching panties, her ass poking up into the air and her full breasts dangerously close to spilling over the top. The look she was giving him was one he knew well: Rayna was feeling naughty.

"Baby," he said, not sure if he was warning or pleading, but she was too busy staring at the sizeable outline in his boxers to listen either way. She bit her lip and looked up at him, her face twisted in conflict.

"Oh God, Deacon," she moaned, and they were both well aware there was no turning back. She scraped her fingernails over his sides and pulled his boxers down, freeing him and lowering her head. He felt her lips touch his tip for a glorious fraction of a second before she stopped. "This is ok, right? I mean, this isn't sex, not technically."

"Nope," he said, his chest heaving in anticipation, "just ask Monica Lewinsky."

"You gotta promise not to move, Deacon, I mean it. Just lie still. Swear?"

Deacon, who would have committed a felony, anything she asked, just to get her lips on him at that point, was panting too hard to do anything but nod his head, but it was all Rayna needed. She took him in her mouth, tentatively at first, testing his ability to keep his end of the bargain, and when he stayed right where he was on the bed, she sucked the rest of his length in as far as she could.

"Fuck, baby," he hissed, balling the comforter up in his fists and hanging on for dear life.

Rayna moaned with her mouth full, the sexiest sound he could have wished for, and he watched her breasts bounce as she moved up and down. She'd always given him incredible head, but going without anything like this for the past few weeks had him thinking he might go blind. The effort not to move was an almighty one, but anything to keep her doing what she was doing to him.

She gripped his thighs tightly, her nails digging into him, and seemed to realize she was getting carried away when he flinched. "I'm sorry," she said breathlessly, releasing him with a pop and sitting up. "Are you ok?"

"I'm, yeah, I'm perfect Ray, Jesus Christ that feels so good. Don't stop baby."

"Oh I'm not gonna stop," she said in a purr, and as an extra treat, she slipped the straps of her camisole down and let the fabric fall to her waist.

"Rayna," he rasped out, crazy with the need to get his hands on her, but when he lifted them towards her she held them down on the bed and moved back up to his mouth, knotting their fingers together.

"Ah ah Deacon, remember what I said. You move and I stop."

He nodded, and she kissed him, nipping at his lip and clearly enjoying herself. She slithered down his body again, this time dragging her nipples up and down his shaft before she went back to her task.

He couldn't hold out long, as much as he wanted her to never stop, and his warning cry that he was about to come only encouraged her. She sucked him hard as he exploded in her mouth, and he was pretty sure he would cry with the absolute relief of it.

"Do not tell Doctor Rand about that," she said, moving back up to lie beside him, and he threw a bone-heavy arm around her and pulled her close, certain he was the luckiest bastard alive for having her.

/

They managed six weeks before they cracked.

Rayna had been away on business for a couple days, her first trip anywhere since the surgery, and she'd been reluctant to leave Deacon at all. He'd reassured her he was fine, the girls were with him and they were experts in keeping an eye on him, and she relented, allowing Bucky to book her flights.

Deacon spent the next 24 hours pining for her, naturally.

When she got back it was late, and he was waiting for her in the kitchen, the house dark. She dropped her overnight bag by the door and he led her straight up the stairs to bed, stripping off her clothes as they went.

"I missed the hell out of you," he confessed, kissing her like he would never get enough.

"I missed the hell out of you too," she whispered, and she climbed into bed with him, no second thought for the layer of safety-pajamas. She wanted his skin on her skin, no substitute.

They told themselves they would stop when it got too heavy, but somehow her leg ended up wrapped around his waist and his tongue ended up inside her not long after, and it was a lost cause from there on in.

Rayna hummed when he bit her neck and licked her skin where his teeth marked her. He moved up to her ear and sucked right below it in exactly the spot that made her lose all control. She ground her hips into his and slipped her hand down the back of his shorts.

"I shoulda done that weeks ago," Deacon said as she rubbed herself against his erection. "That's the magic spot right there." He moved his hand down her naked stomach and between her legs, inserting a finger inside her and curling it in just the way she liked, and she arched her back into him, her eyes closing. "Course it ain't the only magic spot..."

Nobody made the decision, but before either of them quite realized, his shorts were on the floor and he was between her spread legs, his tongue in her mouth and his tip easing inside her.

"Wait, Deacon, stop," she said breathily, a hand on his hip, and he paused, half inside her while she throbbed around him. He looked down at her, sure she was about to tell him they still had another two weeks of this torture.

"On your back," she said, and he frowned in confusion, too far gone to understand what she meant. "Lie on your back," she instructed him. "Less chance of you rupturing somethin'."

He obliged eagerly, watching her as she climbed on top of him and reached down between them to wrap her hand around him. She leaned forward, kissing him, and guided him inside her in the same moment, groaning as he stretched her.

"I know it's only been a few weeks Deacon," she said, her voice thick with lust, "but I forgot how big you are. So...good."

She sunk down on him until he thought he might come there and then, and it took all his willpower - and hers - to hold out. He did as he was told and let her take control, and she was careful with him, the movements of her hips slow and deep, her breasts pushed up against his chest.

"Never again," he said, winding his hand into her hair and pulling her head down to kiss her wetly, "are we goin' so long without this."

"Got yourself a deal," she said around a moan, as she swallowed his entire length inside her and pulsed around him, milking him until he came harder than he had in all his life.

When they saw Doctor Rand again for Deacon's two month check-up, he took one look at them and shook his head. Rayna, at least, had the decency to blush, but Deacon patted his battle-scar and wondered if he could get her to pull over for a quickie on the way home.

"Hey Ray," he said quietly, leaning over to her while the doctor rifled through his drawers for the discharge papers. "Fancy trying diagram no.4 later?"