Title: Jump

Author: Kytten

Pairing: Jeb/Azkadelia

Rating: hell if I know

Disclaimer: I do not own anything.

Summary: DG is tired of watching Jeb mooning after her sister. She decides to do something about it, failing to realize that something has already been done.

Author's Note: This little plot bunny went and hit me dead between the eyes just as I was going to bed last night. Hope you like it. XD

"Will you just jump her already and spare us all the puppy-dog eyes?"

DG watched with no small amount of satisfaction as Jeb startled out of his daydream, the tips of his ears going red.

"What?"

"You're staring at her again," she told him, tucking her hands behind her back and trying with every ounce of willpower she possessed not to smirk and ruin the Innocent DG look.

Jeb glared and squared his shoulders, one hand twitching towards his gun. It was a nervous habit—one most Resistance fighters shared—and one DG fully intended to take advantage of.

"I've been assigned to her protection detail, Princess," he said, staring straight ahead. "It's my job to stare."

"Do you realize," DG asked, the epitome of innocence, "that you only call me Princess when you're flustered?"

Jeb shot her the look he and his father managed so well.

"I've faced down an entire battalion of Long Coats before, sweetheart. I don't get flustered."

DG couldn't help it. He looked and sounded so much like Wyatt in that instant—right down to his oh-so carefully crafted denial—that she couldn't stop herself from laughing. Across the orchard, Az looked up from where she sat on the swing with her book with a look of vague amusement.

"Are you harassing my hero again, little sister?" she called, and DG snickered watching Jeb's flush creep into his face. No matter how many times he tried to convince her that anyone could have saved her from mad Lord Decon at the last ball, Az insisted on calling him a hero.

"Anyone," she had told him, "willing to brave that dirty old man deserves a medal of honor. You certainly didn't see anyone else hastening to my rescue, did you?"

And Jeb had flushed red to the roots of his hair and muttered something along the lines of, "Not right to grope people like that—'specially not a princess" before attempting to disappear into her mother's hideous wallpaper. It had made DG's evening.

That and seeing the wonderful things the seamstresses had done for his father. Just thinking about it made her hormones go insane.

"Have you ever considered the question that maybe your hero needs harassing?" DG answered innocently, watching as her sister laughed and made her way across the yard towards them.

"Tell her you're madly in love with her or I will," DG hissed, hiding the sentence behind a bright grin.

But Jeb only smiled, looking down at her with an affectionate grin and mischief in his eyes.

"Go ahead," he said cheerfully. "I'll just stop by Ahamo's office later on my way to the shooting range and tell him just what you and Dad get up to when no one's looking."

DG spun, blushing brighter than a megawatt Christmas tree.

"You wouldn't dare," she hissed.

But Jeb only grinned, the picture of innocence as the older princess came to a vaguely bewildered halt in front of them.

"Something wrong?" she asked, looking between the two of them.

"I'm being blackmailed," she growled, glaring at Jeb who appeared to have suddenly discovered something of incredible interest in the tree canopy.

Azkadelia only laughed and took her sister's arm.

"And I'm sure you had absolutely nothing to do with any of it."

DG grinned.

"You know me so well," she said pleasantly, shooting a look at Jeb that screamed this isn't over. The man in question only shrugged, glanced ever so casually to the lake where Ahamo was sitting next to his wife and smiled.

As far as he was concerned, it was.

"You're what?" Cain asked her later, staring at DG as she crept secret agent style around another corner.

"Look, if you're not going to go away, could you at least shut up?" she hissed and threw herself onto her stomach to crawl unseen around a bookshelf. "I can't possibly set Jeb up if you keep blathering back there."

Cain smothered a laugh, watching this crazy, beautiful woman as she floundered through dust towards where his son sat red as a tanga fruit next to the oldest princess.

"You do realize you're about as quite as a heard of griffons, right?"

"And whose fault is that?" she snapped back at him, leaping to her feet to duck behind another bookshelf as her sister chose an inopportune moment to look up. Cain only chuckled and shrugged at her before DG reached out and hauled him behind the nearest shelf.

"Look," she told him, standing far too close for Cain to pay attention to a word she was saying. "As much as I love him, Jeb is an idiot. And while I strongly suspect this sort of thing runs in the family, he's going to need help if he ever expects to win Az over. I mean, it's so obvious they're infatuated with each other and they still haven't seen it. How do you not see something like that? It would be a crime not to help them."

Hands on her hips, DG narrowed her eyes up at Cain who was grinning, mischief glinting in his eyes.

"Are you listening to anything I just said?"

"Not a word, princess," he growled and pressed her back into the nearest shelf, silencing any protests she might have had with a soul searing kiss that made her weak in the knees.

Suddenly, fixing her sister up wasn't nearly as important as it had been a moment ago…

"You know, I really wish they wouldn't do that everywhere," Az whispered as she and Jeb crept for the door. "One of these days they're going to get caught and Daddy is not going to be happy."

Jeb chuckled, one hand curling comfortably around her waist.

"From what I've seen, discretion hasn't ever been one of DG's strong suits."

Azkadelia giggled, leaning into him.

"Well, you think they'd know better than the library, for Ozma's sake."

"They haven't gotten caught yet," he said, grinning as he backed her towards a sturdy looking table. "We haven't gotten caught yet."

"Jeb," she laughed, but her voice had gone husky. "What if somebody walks in?"

"Let them," he murmured, kissing his way down her neck, groaning as her long fingers brushed against his thigh. "They won't believe it."

Az arched her neck, trying to hold onto both his shoulder and coherent thought.

"What about Deeg?" But then important buttons were undone and wonderful things were happening, and neither one could really work up the motivation to care enough to form a reply.

Especially not when Jeb lifted her up onto the table and did that beautiful, maddening trick with his tongue.

And definitely not when Az broke a number of crucial buttons getting at him.

And certainly not when the door on the far end of the room opened and a furious, "WHAT THE HELL?" split the heavy silence.

In a flash Jeb was on his feet and trying to do up buttons that could no longer be done up, Az trying furiously to smooth down her dress and her frazzled hair in the same second.

"Hello, Daddy," came DG's meek, vaguely amused voice from the other side of the library.

"Oh, damn," Az swore, dragging a furiously blushing Jeb after her. "Damage control now."

"Az, wait! You broke my—"

He never had time to finish the sentence before she slammed him hard into a bookshelf, those long, beautiful hands roaming his body. And despite the fact that Jeb was fairly sure Certain Death was turning a dangerous shade of purple in the next aisle, he couldn't help himself when it came to her.

"AZKADELIA JAYLERI GALE!"

Az flew away from Jeb as if she'd been burned, her lips kiss swollen and slightly stubble burned, looking anything but contrite.

"Oh hello, Daddy."

Behind Ahamo's seething figure she could see the same look of shock mirrored on Cain and DG's face—both of them taking in their rumpled clothes, missing buttons and matted hair in roughly the same instant.

"All of you, my office, now," Ahamo growled before spinning around and storming off the way he'd come, leaving the four of them to look at each other in varying states of embarrassment.

Azkadelia was the first to start laughing, the oldest Cain joining in shortly after as DG and Jeb eyed each other, torn between shock and amusement.

"It definitely runs in the family," Jeb muttered, trying to get his shirt down low enough to cover the missing button. "Damned if you women won't kill us both."

Twenty minutes and one detour into a convenient side chamber later, the four of them sat side by side in Ahamo's office, trying to pretend they weren't holding hands under the table while Ahamo lectured them on propriety, on keeping your damn paws off my daughters, and on just how many grandchildren he better not be meeting before I'm old and gray, damn it.

And brilliant, wonderful Az had only smiled that wide, innocent, blue-eyed grin that got her whatever she wanted and said, "Daddy, don't be silly. We're getting married in the spring."