She suddenly realizes he was right, a little too late to argue and lacking the energy to do so anyhow. So, yes, she is in the mood to just snug in beside him and let him control everything in her life. He seems so very capable suddenly, so assuredly in control and maybe... maybe she should have just always left her entire body and brain and will to his assurances. Maybe she should have let them get here before all of this and so many thats had broken between them.

"Stop thinkin' so loud, Foster," the way his accent juts up the end of her married name always hitches her attention, always makes her lips quirk toward a smile despite herself. "You're distracting me."

Instead of fighting she just lifts her head higher into how slowly he's tracing a singular line down her throat with the tip of his finger. He seems entranced and taken by the movement, keeps it slow and intentionally tantalizing as he silently studies the reaction she can't help from flushing up on her skin. Gill lets her eyes dip closed, humming a lulled agreement as she stretches out more comfortably into her own couch cushions and then grins reflexively into how fast his mouth swoops in along her throat to follow the same line he'd drawn. The arm he'd looped on her shoulders cradles tighter, crowding her up into his leaning even as she puddles looser under the feeling of his lips and tongue against her throat and then neck.

A grating sound of appreciation rumbles up his chest as he rasps his stubbled jaw up against her cheek, "Gettin' warmer, darling?"

She laughs up a breathy noise, wedged somewhere between bemused and (not really all that) annoyed as her fingers find his rib cage. "You just... you idle at 'smug limey bastard'."

"It's a legitimate question," he chuckles through the response, jaw lifting proudly into the accusation as his eyes brighten up and he studies her mouth. "I'm bein' a gentleman. You like gentlemen."

"Cal - "

"M'taking care of you," he whispers with a stripped and swaying honesty, one that clears his eyes of anything but bare affection as he wipes two knuckles down her throat and lower, watches the movement of his own hand as he disregards her interruption. "In my own egregiously charmin' way, yeah?"

Her body stretches and as her lips purse up in a blissfully playful tease and he looks as though he's prepared to get on his knees and pray gratitude to every deity he can think of just to see happiness on her. "You just wanna get in my pants."

"Aye, aye." Cal makes a purposefully leering look over her as he passes his hand down her front and presses a flat palm against her stomach. "Yours look much more comfortable."

"Cal."

"Little bit ago was you nearly had me straddled against your kitchen counter, Foster. Don't accuse me of takin' advantage here. Who was it had his head on straight then, eh?"

She isn't necessarily fooled by the seriousness of his voice, though it is primarily sincere. There's enough of a smile flirting on his lips that she can't help rolling her eyes at him.

"For once in the History of Ever."

"Take minor offense at the 'limey' bit, by the way," he juts back at her while his fingertips take a swipe at her hair, brush it off her face in an echo of that same gentleness he's been using for most of the night. That terrifically terrifying gentleness that tells her... maybe this is real, maybe this is right and maybe, just maybe... this is exactly how Claire's case was supposed to end.

With him saving her somehow. With him being her first phone call, her last 'good night'.

She smiles at how adorably charming he's being because it actually is sincere. And she knows it. "But 'smug bastard' was acceptable?"

"Am what I am, darling," he shrugs off as he brushes his fingertips on her throat, a flinching frown drawing his brows together as he watches her swallow hard beneath the touch. "Relax, Gill. S'just me, remember?"

"Exactly," she murmurs it like lazy kisses on his jaw, exhales and avoids his eyes as her fingers rise to press the opposite cheek. "It's you, Cal."

"What is?" Bless him for how sweetly concerned he sounds, for how worried his voice goes.

"All of it." She smiles, simply and cleanly, as she says it. "Everything."

She routinely makes it impossible for him to deny loving her, even in her silence.

Especially when she looks so simply trusting in his arms and laxed-back beautiful, no, stunning actually.

Lately he's had plenty of practice at imagining one proper Doctor Gillian Foster ditching demure and sinking straight into sin but not a one of his idiotic little fantasies compares to how deliriously enraptured he is by watching her. And she's barely undressed, actually. She's even still got her shirt on – though, straps down drawn on winsome shoulders and the hem rucked up from where his fingers had uncovered the smooth skin of her stomach. The silken fabric of her pants had been easily shifted off her hips but he's left her lacy little knickers on just for the delightful (and previously only imaginable) sight of his hand working inside them.

Her hips press up into the teasing way he keeps stretching his fingers near where she wants them before taunting back up her hip bone, across her pelvis, to her waist and digging back down. He's got the other arm curled securely behind her and she's managed to rest the back of her skull into his palm, letting him feel the dry warmth and light softness of her hair in his palm.

She's well warm now as she flushes and smiles at him – and even with her eyes shut and head sunken back he knows it's a smile made for him.

"Cal." Got his name on it, it does.

But he's got a better angel telling him to get his hands to his damn self and let her alone and apologize profusely for being a cad and a rake and a rogue and, yes, one aptly accused 'smug limey bastard'.

Better angels be damned, though.

"Please, Cal." Because the whimper she lets out as her lungs stumble is just as prying as her fingers catching up the front of his shirt and jerking him down into a kiss made completely of desperation.

He buries his fingers between her thighs with the same fervor as his tongue driving between her lips and he feels her entire body flex up into him and the stretch of his touch. The hand in her hair has her stilled tightly and he ignores every second guess and question, every concern, when he feels how slick wet she is, tastes how sure she is in her kissing.

He cannot deny, much as he may try, that he is maddeningly in love with her.

Not when he finally fits a finger inside her and feels the appreciative moan that shivers through her entire body, feels tight warmth clamp against him and her staggered breath against his temple.

Beauty of her being Her (yeah, with the capital 'H', she is)...

She's not gonna ask him (because she already knows), so he doesn't necessarily need to deny it.

"Please," she shushes along his jaw and he can't continue to tease her – not when he already knows he's going to enjoy making her come all over his hand, in his mouth, far more than just teasing.

"You're a very polite woman, beggin' 'please'." His voice isn't as sure as he means it to be, not as confidently swaggering as it would be if she were any other woman. If she were a Clara or Sharon. But she's not. And his voice, despite his efforts to sound impish and confident, it completely betrays him, goes softly concerned. "Not sure you're safe with me, Foster."

She sighs hard as her body stretches gracefully, a smile making a happy home on her lips as her hips rise into how intently he's circling his thumb along her clit. "If I wanted safe I wouldn't have eaten anything you learned to cook in New Guinea."

"Oi," Cal laughs as he tweaks her clit, draws his finger from inside her and just teases touches to counter her unhappy noise of loss, "cheeky wench. Try that mouth again."

Her eyes flicker open at him and he's floored suddenly by their mischievous brightness, just as warmly sinful as the heat of her smile. "Promise."

Jesus... She's bloody heart-stopping sometimes.

(Sure, and yeah, he's got two fingers where he'd never imagined he'd even... well, but thing is, she coulda said it across the conference table at work while wearing tweed head-to-toe and it'd still wrench his gut and halt his pulse.)

"You're a dangerous proposition, you are," he accuses, watches her jaw slack as he continues to slowly taunt his fingers around her clit, inside her, out of her, tickling down her thighs and back.

"You've never been one for being precautionary, Lightman." She says it breathlessly and he thinks maybe that's why he's a little dizzy all the sudden – maybe they're losing a combined reserve of oxygen – cause he can't fuckin' breathe and it seems she's having the same spot of trouble. "Maybe you should put your money where your mouth is."

He brushes his lips on her jaw, groans up the line of it to her ear while he drives two fingers inside her and lowers his voice to the same timbre as her whimpering. "You got plans for where I put my mouth, do ya?"

She's so deliciously wet to his touch and, for the life of him, he cannot fathom how that's happened - how in the bloody hell he's managed to trick her into wanting him and moaning as he pinches at her clit. It's unexplainable to his brain. He'll never completely understand it.

"That's not at all what I said." But it's damn well everything she meant, that much he can tell just by the smugly low dropping of her lashes and the charming tease in the way she lifts her jaw. By how she rakes her nails insistently against his forearm while the other hand is doing surprisingly wonderful things to the hair at the back of his head.

"Oh, really?" His head turns so he can breath the accusation near perfectly pinkened lips. "Cause s'what your face said, darling."

"Then, for once, try to just shut the hell up and listen."

For once, he's all ears, he is. That's the truth.

"Can practically hear you plottin' over the phone, love."

She loves just living amid the implicitly adoring change that takes over his tone of voice whenever he's telling his daughter how much he loves her, despite not actually saying the words.

So she stretches out farther on the couch cushions and presses her head harder into his leg, drives the break of her skull into the muscle of his thigh until his empty hand clutches into her hair and stills her movements while he chuckles out the air from his lungs. "You're broadcasting criminal thoughts, Em. I'm hearin' 'em from here."

"Leave her alone." Gill murmurs lazily as she rubs her head into the stretching his fingers make through her hair. "She'll be fine."

She ignores the paused and pained look he's no doubt shooting her in trade for closing her eyes and enjoying how tightly, desperately, he grips at her hair.

He hasn't actually let go of her, hasn't let them become completely separated, since she got him to come for her with his hands both tangled up in her hair and his face buried desperately in her throat. A leftover shaking in his shoulders and hips that had been entirely uncontrolled as she'd leaned forward in his lap and let him drive roughly up into her one last time while vicing his arms around her. Since he'd groaned such a sound of appreciative longing along her lips before kissing her with a fierceness that was damn near violent. Since his soothing hands and apologetic suggestion of sharing a warm shower had been interrupted by his pants ringing from the floor and Emily's concern for the fact he hadn't checked in after the funeral.

Her muscles ache a little and she feels worked over weak, but still somehow utterly relaxed.

There's a heat in her gut that shows no sign of burning off any time soon and she feeds it more emotional energy just by cuddling closer to him.

This is what she needs. She knows that. He's what she needs – despite everything that could wreck them sideways.

He is, has been, all she really actually needs.

"Yeah, she's a'right," he hums off gently before loosening his touch and teasing his fingers through strands of hair just so he can take teasing tugs at the ends. "Nothin' a meal and some rest won't help along."

Her smile pans affectionately wider at the realization that Emily's obviously asked about her and she curls up into him, shifting farther onto her side so that she can lean up into him instead of across him. There's a surprising softness to the lift of his hand and jaw as she cradles herself into his chest and relaxes against the flushed skin of him. He's bare chested but he's managed to tug unbuckled pants back up his hips and he smells like sweat, sex and just entirely himself (of her) and she closes her eyes again into the unexpected perfection that mix makes.

"Know where I am if there's a problem, huh? You call."

She listens to his voice as he says his goodbye, head pressed along his clavicle as his empty left hand curves her throat and closes gently around it, the pad of his thumb rubbing deep into the now loosened muscles at the nape of her neck.

"Love you." It's so easy for him to say it to Emily and she bites back against jealousy, leans closer to him rather than away because, at the very least, there's still a simple sort of truth in the way he's murmuring it along her forehead even as he's saying it to his daughter.

She shakes off the envy and just lifts her head a little in admonition, "You have to trust her."

"Trust her just fine. It's the male counterparts, ya know?" He seems to pout a little as he plucks his fingers on the fabric of her underwear, frowning on the fact she's pulled them back on. "I know exactly how they think."

"Yeah?" she teases on a whisper.

"Definitely." A half a smile swings her way just before he shrugs and takes an obvious and intentionally salacious glancing down the front of her. "For example, y'know I can see directly down this pathetic excuse for a shirt, yeah?"

Gill just snorts a near laugh through her nose as she watches his smile reach its full potential. "I'm surprised you left it on."

"Well, I've only just started, darling." He's always been a ridiculous tease to her, always innuendo and taunting and it's no different as he tugs on her nipple through fabric, his face entirely taken over by a haughty happiness and a devilish grin. "One thing at a time, yeah?"

"You're incorrigible," Gill accuses with whispering, letting his hand palm around her breast so that he can keep teasing with his thumb as he smiles down into kissing her. She accepts the slow playfulness of his lips and tongue, his nips and nibbles along her bottom lip before he chuckles into her mouth and blinks unabashed surprise, stripped down adoration, over how comfortably she's curled into him.

"Y'seemed to especially enjoy my 'incorrigible' bit, Foster." His finger makes a line down the bridge of her nose and she scrunches her eyes closed against how endearingly sweet it's meant with how nearly patronizing it seems. The fact he follows it with a rub of his lips on her forehead and groans from what seems like the very bottom of his lungs makes it seem entirely intimate and, surprisingly, loving instead.

So she shrugs honestly, lifts her head into kissing him sharply. "I really, really, did."

"Plenty more where that came from, love." His fingers squeeze against her ribs and he nods as he cradles her up, thrusting his hips to get her up. "Trust me on that."

She realizes, as he shifts her up from the couch and presses her silently toward her bedroom with sure hands and hard kisses, that she already does.

She has, always has, trusted him.

And now certainly isn't the time to question that.