"Oh, god, Jack," Claire whispers, back arched as she straddles him, rocking slowly. She lets her head fall forward and shoots him a sly look through the hair that has fallen over her eyes, well aware of the effect she has on him. He grasps her hips, thrusting against her, unable to wait, and she cries out eagerly, tightening around him, cries out 'yes' and 'please' and 'now' and –

Jack woke gasping, desire blazing through him. The dream of Claire lingered in the room and his hips lifted involuntarily from the bed. As always, dreaming about her had left him achingly hard.

Did memory trigger desire, or desire make memory vivid? Jack didn't know, nor did he really care. All he knew was that as the heat within him built and built Claire grew more and more real, leaning over him, whispering to him, touching him -

He jerked off furiously, disgusted with himself, masturbating over the memory of a woman rotting in her grave. Sick bastard. It was not enough to banish the fantasy of Claire throwing her head back in abandon, moving against him with increasing urgency, wanting, wanting him, begging him, there with him …

God, Jack, yes, please, god ...

Because she never could be there with him. Claire was gone.

He could never have her back. The closest he could come to her was this. And repugnant as it was, he could not give it up.

They hadn't only been about the sex, but it was undeniable that they had always been about the sex. Celebratory we-won-the-case sex; commiserating we-lost-the-case-feel-better sex; angry about-to-break-up sex … Jack missed Claire in the office, he missed her in court, he missed her just walking along the street, but it was in his bed that her absence was so glaringly apparent it transmuted into a haunting so vivid Jack sometimes wondered he truly did share his bed with a ghost.

When he drank enough he could sleep without dreams and sometimes that was a blessing, letting him wake in the morning with a pounding head and churning stomach but no sick sense of self-loathing. But in dreams was the only time he had to hold her, to brush back that smooth fall of hair and trace the line of her cheek, to touch her and listen to her soft cries as she responded so eagerly to his touch, to hear her say his name with that slow drawl, to hear her say "yes" and "please" …

To hear her say "I won't ever leave you, Jack. I won't ever leave."

"Goddamn!" he gasped, released from her ghost, at least for now. He lay still a moment, turned his head to look at the clock. Four in the morning. He wouldn't sleep again tonight. On the other hand, he couldn't really get up and go to work yet without Adam raising his eyebrows and maybe calling him in for a 'talk'. If there was one thing Jack knew he really couldn't bear, it was one of Adam's 'talks'. One thing – what a joke. As if there's only one thing.

"I won't ever leave you, Jack. I won't ever leave."

Which would have been a lie, if she had said it, even if she hadn't come to pick him up that goddamn night, because she had been already leaving him. They had been leaving each other. That was why he'd been drinking. That was why she'd taken so long to come to get him. That was why he'd left without waiting for her.

That was why she'd been in that car, at that time, at that place, at that moment.

Why she'd finally, irrevocably, unalterably left him.

"I won't ever leave you, Jack. I won't ever leave."

"Liar," he told her, startling himself with the force and fury of his voice. "Liar."

"I won't ever leave you, Jack. I won't ever leave."

For just a moment he could smell her perfume.

fin