First of all, I have to apologize to all of you who left reviews for Age of Innocence, reviews that I haven't had the time to reply to. I am very sorry for that. It would have been the polite thing to do, but life just got a little too hectic that week and I didn't get around to it. So I am thanking you here for all of your reviews and very inspiring words. (Also, an apology for the lack of update for that particular story. I hit a bit of a roadblock with the second chapter, and I am still waiting for inspiration to finish it. Don't worry; it won't be abandoned.)

Meanwhile, I finally managed to finish the second chapter for Possession and I am labeling this story complete. It is, as a reviewer asked back when I posted the first part, a more leisurely second round for Scarlett and Rhett. I hope they are grateful for that, and that you find the result gratifying too. A heartfelt thank you to the persons who lent a helping hand.

For T. because she listens.

Time had stilled. Somewhere, outside the confines of this bedroom, things went on as usual; people snored in the vapid safety of their beds and insipid moments came and passed one after another in rhythmic silence, bringing dawn's light closer and closer. Somewhere, but not here, not for them.

For them time had taken a step back on the landing, and there had been nothing for a while; nothing but the sweet, secluded patience of the dark into which even their most impatient movements dissolved. And then it had returned; it had risen with urgent, unexpected force—time, a crestless wave elevating and washing through their joined bodies again and again, from Rhett to her and back to Rhett, until the one glorious moment when she couldn't say anymore where her own body had its limits and his began, and she had cried his name that was now her name as well; the name of everything surrounding and comprising her.

For there was nothing else left, neither inside her, nor in the world at large; he had conquered it all and made it his, and Scarlett had cried her surrender with an intensity that scared her out of her trance. And the wave had ebbed and died, leaving them breathless and uneasy against her bedroom door, and then, from the minute Rhett had laid her down on the bed and collapsed beside her, time had simply been abolished.

She was staring at the ceiling, sated and tired, yet unyielding to sleep, for sleep was oblivion, and sleep was branding of this night in her memory—and Scarlett was ready for neither. She didn't know how long they had been lying that way, she on her back, Rhett on his abdomen, with one heavy arm resting across her chest and his breath searing the sweet slope of her neck through her hair. She didn't know and it didn't matter, for this—this was eternal. They would always be here together, in this warm limbo, and there would never be morning again.

Before falling asleep, her mind had always taken reassuring joy in gliding over the few things that had remained constant, unaltered in her world from girlhood. She could no longer find them; they had been obliterated by recent memories of flesh and soul. Even the events of the horrible afternoon that she had been certain would haunt her till death seemed distant and indifferent now, because they mingled with vivid flashes of Rhett's face as she was moving her lips across it, of his dark head down on her breast, and somehow those images, that her brain couldn't banish fast enough, seared everything in their trail, burning away the disgrace she had endured earlier that day.

Through the torpid veil of darkness, her mind could only follow disparate trains of thought and few of them were related to the collection of random, senseless moments she had called life so far. The others, the thrilling, disquieting majority, gravitated around the man at her side, the accomplice into whose soothing warmth she lay wrapped.

Because that's what they were now—accomplices. Rhett had crossed the lines of decency like a savage, her own body his prey and trophy, and she hadn't as much as thought of stopping him. On the contrary, she had urged him on and reveled in his fierceness. What did that make her?

A nagging light began to flicker painfully somewhere in her brain, but she ignored it. She wouldn't think of that now. Maybe she and Rhett were worse than the worst reprobates, but for now she was safe and warm in his shirt, with his solid body next to her and his arm over her, and that was all that mattered; the rest could wait till morning. Yes, she would think of it tomorrow, she decided, engulfed by the same cynical peace that came upon her every time her morals were on the brink of losing a battle.

She sighed softly, stretching her limbs in lazy preparation for sleep. She had forgotten how good it could feel when tiredness spreads to every muscle in one's body not from torturous work, but from some form of pleasant activity, like dancing till dawn, or riding or…or this other thing. She had forgotten how it was like to fall asleep with Rhett next to her, his breath brushing on her temple like that.

Her temple… She realized with a small start that at some point he must have inched closer to her; his body was pressing against her arm, and there was something in the tenseness of his position that told her he didn't have sleep in mind, like she had naively assumed when he'd brought her to bed.

And then it was suddenly over. Time had started anew, and her husband had ceased to be the comfortable warm background of her musings; he was the overwhelming heat again, charring everything in its path. He was at her side, silent and unmoving like he had been for the last countless minutes, only that now it emanated from him—the tense, controlled power of a predator preparing to strike, subjugating his victim not by brute force, but with the dangerous, hypnotic smell of waiting. She knew what was coming; his lips were close—too close to her skin, and her heart engaged in an almost painfully fast rhythm.

Would he kiss her now? She knew that if she moved her head just half of an inch in his direction, she would touch his mouth. Did she want to do that? She didn't have time to decide, because Rhett's hand that had lain at her side shifted stealthily to rest over her upturned palm, his fingers lightly entwining with hers. She gulped self-consciously, taken aback by the disarming innocence of his gesture, and she knew Rhett had heard it, for he exhaled amusedly above her ear.

The heat rose in her cheeks and Scarlett began to silently berate herself. She was being more than ridiculous; she had allowed him to take her against a door without as much as blinking an eye, and now holding hands made her fluster like some silly young girl? No, she wanted him to kiss her; she would squeeze his hand and tilt her head towards him until her skin found his lips.

But it was too late for such brave decisions. When her fingers finally closed, Rhett's hand had already left hers and was moving firmly up her arm. And she was frozen in place, overwhelmed by the intensity of her own reactions as the slightly rough fabric of the sleeve rubbed against the sensitive skin of her arm, and trying her best not to gulp again. And then his large hand cupped her shoulder and he pulled her even closer, the heat of his chest now radiating over part of her body.

Scarlett closed her eyes and moved her head to allow him better access, recalling the feelings of before, waiting for them to ignite again… Yes, he would kiss her like he had earlier, in fiery, impatient worship over her cheekbone and down the soft, dimpled curve to her lips, that his insistence would part and ...

He refused her that. His lips didn't touch her; they continued to linger near her temple, taunting. Frustration began to mix with heady anticipation as Rhett traced the contour of her collarbone over the shirt that was wrapped tightly around her slim form, and then, at an excruciatingly slow pace, moved lower. He paused for a second on the rise of her chest, feeling the wild heartbeat underneath, before his hand finally found her left breast, which he suddenly squeezed to fullness.

She bit her lip not to cry out. Her flesh was still tender from his previous handling; this unexpected rough caress sent pleasure darting painfully through it, and she whimpered Rhett's name in almost frightened urgency. He only whispered "Shh…" against her temple before his lips finally made contact with her skin.

She didn't know exactly what to do; she felt awkward lying there passive, her body trembling under Rhett's touch, her mind still wavering in indecision. It had been easier to let go before, because she had been possessed by that strange, painful hunger, and Rhett seemed too crazy to notice or mock her gestures anyway. But now… Now they were in this bed that they had shared before, in this bed from which she had banished him, and it felt like they were slipping into their old routine, and along with it the old, bashful Scarlett began to resurface too.

His hand resumed its briefly interrupted work on her breast, but he seemed to have felt her discomfort, for his motions were lighter, cupping the underside and gently edging up until he brushed the nipple, purposely rubbing the fabric of the shirt over it. And then, as unexpectedly as before, he was rolling it between less patient fingers, making little incandescent particles dance madly in her stomach. Her breath caught in her throat but before she had any time to protest, Rhett soothed her again, raining kisses over the little spot on her temple that pulsated wildly, in rhythm with her heart.

And for a second she thought it was too much for her to take—the soft, hot touch of his lips, his hand firm on her breast, the strained wait for more—it froze her in place and stopped the air from filling her lungs. It was foolish; these were only small kisses to her temple, not the fervid touches she had been waiting for. But she couldn't stop the blood from rushing to her face, and she knew Rhett could feel her pulse racing against his lips too, before he broke contact. And what she had been waiting for all of a sudden seemed quite irrelevant …

Old feelings and reluctances were mixing with newfound sensations, in a succession so rapid her mind threatened to burst and shatter violently with it. But then Rhett lowered his mouth to her ear, and she could feel his tongue lazily tracing down the outer shell that his teeth grazed. And before she knew it, her body had taken its own decisions, cutting the Gordian knot of her conscience; her breast was pressed harder into Rhett's palm and her left hand was tentatively caressing his jaw.

It seemed the right thing to do, for her husband made some muffled sound from deep in his throat, and moved down to her earlobe that his lips and teeth caressed more roughly. His hand's ministrations had changed their tempo too. One second he was lightly grazing her breast with his palm, tracing circular paths over the tight peak which his thumb merely flicked, the other he was treading it firmly, eliciting noises from her that she was positive she had never produced in her life. She withdrew her hand from Rhett's cheek, with the vague intention of placing the fist in her mouth, but his hand instantaneously flew from her breast to press her palm back against his jaw, hard.

And Scarlett was acutely embarrassed for a moment because he had caught her in that childish gesture; she felt that she had made a faux pas in a world with odd, intricate rules and the heat of shame began to rise in her again, overshadowing all other sensations. But then Rhett made his own blunder, exhaling in her ear as his lips let go of the lobe, and she squirmed a little, giggling involuntarily at the insanely ticklish sensation.

Unlike her, he didn't seem to be mortified by his lapse. He raised his upper body on his elbow, looked down at her and laughed, and with that merry, careless light dancing in his eyes and his hand still holding hers captive against his cheek, he looked younger than she had ever seen him, and she could do nothing but smile back at him. Her eyes strayed to his lips, and she wondered if it wouldn't be a good time to raise her head and kiss him. Playful, she could make it look playful.

But before she could act upon that impulse, Rhett had already pressed her hand to his lips—lightly, briefly—and then placed it on her neglected breast, his own large hand covering it. The awkward moment had passed, sweeping along her last traces of uneasiness and her heart began to flutter in sweet anticipation. He would lower his head and kiss her now; she was certain of it.

Rhett didn't kiss her. He remained impassive above her, studying her features with a strange pensive expression, searching, waiting for something. But for what? She was sure he had seen the silent invitation in her eyes; she was sure he had stared briefly at her parted lips, but then his eyes had determinedly avoided her mouth. It was as if he didn't want to be kissed; she thought for a second, her daring mood dispelled by vague disappointment.

And then, suddenly, his hand was moving on top of hers, directing it, using it to caress and knead the soft flesh underneath, and Scarlett gasped in shock. Her eyes widened and shone with an odd mixture of feelings upon which uncertainty prevailed, but she was somehow unable to avert her gaze and break away from Rhett's scrutiny. And then the thought slyly insinuated itself into her brain—that her flesh was now yielding to their entwined fingers commanded by him—and it started to send small forbidden thrills to her stomach.

It was more than the mere wickedness of this situation, though she knew it had to be wrong, very wrong. It was the delicate position it put her into. Because no matter how intricate assertion of control was the rest of the time, when it came to the bedroom, it was fair and simple. She was the object and the man was the subject; she was to be weak during his brief moment of power and that was the price paid for the advantages of marriage. And one was to accept it without welcoming it, because they had no alternative.

Only that she had now. She could pull away and Rhett wouldn't stop her; it was clearly written in his face and the lightness of his grip. And suddenly she had her answer; she knew what he was waiting for. Her reaction. She could stop this. She ought to stop this. But if she didn't, then they were accomplices again in something even shadier than before, when Rhett had taken her against the door.

Because earlier she had been taken, swept along by something more powerful than her, something she could not control and could not have stopped even if she hadn't been eager and mad with want herself. Her pleasure then had been merely adjacent to quenching Rhett's need; it was a spark that had leaped from his all-consuming fire and had no life of its own. And that, in a strange, twisted way, made it more acceptable and diminished her responsibility for it.

But the pleasure burning in her body now was hers. It was independent of satisfying her husband's needs and, even more, it was maintained by her own will. Because, she realized, she had not pulled away; she had arched quite wantonly into their combined touch, and her fingers had twitched on their own beneath Rhett's hand to stroke the places that he deliberately ignored.

And they were now confederates in this small crime of the flesh, at the mere thought of which she should have died of shame. Only that she had not, and instead shame itself was dying, sealing the bond between them. It was dying here under Rhett's unwavering gaze, that had briefly darkened and flickered in triumph, and in its wake all that was left was a roaring heat, spreading through her mind and body alike. She knew what she wanted. And it wasn't this.

Rhett was about to withdraw his hand and wander to other paths, certain now that she would continue on her own, when she suddenly jerked free from his grasp. She heard him draw a sharp disappointed breath, and then her small hand was at the back of his neck, pulling him down, urgently, roughly, until his lips touched hers.

She was kissing him now, and it wasn't playfully seductive, like she had imagined it would be. For the brief second before he responded to her lips' rather shy demand, it had been awkward and she was briefly disconcerted and almost wishing she hadn't initiated this. But then he had opened his mouth and returned her kiss with a force that seemed to dare her to back down. So she hadn't; she had pressed on hungrily, her hand roaming down his shoulders and neck, with little sense of gentleness, and she was vaguely aware that she had bit into his bottom lip more than once when trying to stop and draw breath in the midst of this impossibly fast rhythm. A small flame was suddenly licking its way down her abdomen, followed by Rhett's hand that moved slowly, maddeningly so, to settle between her legs, over the shirt's folds.

He had returned to his ways despite her advance, and Scarlett groaned lightly into his mouth, the intensity of her kiss dropping for a second under the mental and bodily strain his teasing had induced. And then her hand cupped the side of his face and she tore her lips away from his. Her eyes were shining in frenzied longing as she whispered his name, inches from his mouth. And it broke his resolve.

He raised her upper body from the bed as he kissed her again, hard and possessively, one of his hands settling between her shoulders blades, the other roaming urgently over her back, her arms, her ribcage, everywhere he could touch. In this elevated position, Scarlett's right arm was free and she embraced him tightly, unwilling to let any distance between their bodies, unwilling to separate even when Rhett had started to tug impatiently at the shirt, trying to push it down her shoulders.

One failed attempt after another and then he finally groaned in annoyance and broke the kiss, moving to disengage her arms from their desperate clutch around his neck. Somewhere in Scarlett's dazed mind, his intentions finally made sense and she tried to aid him in removing the shirt, her fumbling hands only further impeding his efforts. Their motions were blind and frantic, spurred by sheer need and entirely ineffective as every time their fingers met over the fabric, they entwined, and every time Rhett felt her flesh temptingly soft underneath, he abandoned his purpose and settled for gripping it instead. Finally, he stopped with a throaty groan, scowling down at the unvanquished garment.

"We're not thinking clearly," he muttered, and, before she knew it, his hands had spanned her waist and he rolled them over, bringing her on top.

Scarlett drew a sharp breath, startled by this rapid change. She was on top of him, astride. She was—Mother of God!—straddling her husband. She could feel the hard muscles of his abdomen and the waistband of his trousers pressing against her naked thighs, against that place between her legs that was throbbing wetly, shamefully. She looked down at Rhett, worrying that he might have felt it too, wondering what he expected from her now, but his face was unrevealing in the dark, and after only a brief hesitation she simply surrendered to instinct and leaned down to resume their interrupted kiss.

As she cradled his face between slim hands, her hair slipped heavy from her shoulders and rained over them—a black, fragrant veil, darker than the dark itself. They were enveloped and secluded again, hidden from the world, and from that she drew courage. Her husband had parted his lips to talk or laugh, she couldn't say, but it was too late, for her mouth tentatively closed over his, and she had, for once in her life, reduced Rhett Butler to silence.

It started with the softest pressure of her lips at the entrance of his mouth, moist and shy like before, but this time he didn't meet her advances with similar ones of his own, so it was Scarlett again who had to take it further, to delve deeper beyond his lips, beyond the tangible barrier of his teeth that she would have never considered crossing prior to this night. Rhett had kissed her like this before, but not even overwhelmed and intoxicated by his passion, had she ever abandoned her reluctance and taken the lead. At first she was simply content to sample and explore the recesses of his mouth, to taste him more deeply than she ever had, but gradually she grew bolder; she began to caress his tongue with light, fugitive touches, as one would a sleeping beast. She found that it was quite intoxicating to kiss him like this, to both taunt him and test the limits of her power.

And when he was finally aroused to this smooth, warm duel and responding to her challenge, she felt something rising inside her, something she had never felt before. It was the control she had over this situation and the wild thrill it brought, but more than that—it was a sort of odd satisfaction at being here, at living this moment and never wanting it to end. She was, for the first time in her life, not only completely engrossed by this man beneath her, but also willing to act upon it. She was the conductor of this and she had to decide when to take and when to give, when to retreat demurely and when to attack. Rhett was only sweetly compliant under her lead and that served to spur her further.

She could feel herself going out of air and yet she couldn't find the force to break the kiss, not for long. She tried to stray, to kiss his cheeks, his chin in her quest for more, but every time she had to return to his mouth, as if it was her only source of air under the dark water that was covering this world. She was pressing down on him harder and harder, her nails branding his collarbones, her breasts crushed to his chest almost to the point of pain. She felt that she couldn't get close enough, that if his skin opened to let her meld with his flesh and blood, if his body engulfed her whole so that she'd move solely at the beat of his heart, only then this ache of separation would be quenched.

But for that Rhett needed to do something; she was not sure what, but he had to act. Unconsciously, her hips started to rock back and forth on his abdomen in rhythm with their tongues' fiery dance. He didn't object. On the contrary, he seemed to understand this better than she, and his hands came to cup her bottom and grind her against him as she moved. This added friction seemed to provide a little release, but at the same time it increased her urgency. She needed more; there had to be more. She started arching back against his grip, tighter and tighter, instinctively trying to shift closer to his center.

"No, not like this," he suddenly groaned near her mouth, stilling her motions. His hands slid to her armpits and aided her up so that he could remove the shirt, which had been the main purpose of that trip on top of him. And then, as unexpectedly as before, the roles were reversed. Without warning, Rhett flipped her over and hovered above her once more.

He lifted her head to gently spread her hair on the pillow. For a second, he only appraised her in silence, as his fingers grazed the contours of her face, shining ethereally in contrast with the wide, black halo around it. Then he whispered something rough, unintelligible under his breath and bent down to claim with his lips the path his fingers had followed, and move lower yet to her neck and shoulders. Scarlett, brought to the brink only moments before, was not ready for this new intermezzo. She felt that she was losing her mind under his slow, undisturbed ministrations; that none of this was real, that he couldn't possibly be forcing a fire that had been roaring and blazing only minutes ago to smolder helplessly again. Her fingers clenched into the bed linen, and it was all she could do not to whimper and plead with him in shameless need.

His mouth descended between her breasts, following the secret, tender trail his shirt's buttons had imprinted like Braille upon her skin. Wherever his lips and tongue touched, her flesh seemed to come to life beneath them, to melt and surrender, while the places he had not yet reached were quivering in anticipation of his caress. If only he moved lower. If only he never moved. To her conflicted longings he seemed impervious—he didn't hasten his rhythm once; he never returned to skin he left behind tingling with the want, the ache of having that pleasure coursing through it again.

It was Scarlett's own fingers that came to timidly brush over the spots that missed him already, to soothe them and retain that deliciously warm feeling in the fading wake of his kisses. He didn't seem to notice her actions. The urgency of before, the hunger that had driven him to her body almost as a ravisher were gone, swallowed by a different kind of crave. He was now an explorer of places long lost, oblivious to his surroundings, completely enthralled by the contours of her flesh as he discovered them again, inch by inch.

It was when his lips followed the rise of her breast only to find her hand already there that Rhett seemed to come to his senses. He stopped his ministrations entirely and gazed at it silently as if it was a thing of great fascination. Scarlett shivered but didn't dare to retreat, for that would have surely been admitting to the crime. And so, for what seemed like an eternity, they were both motionless, frozen. Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore—she needed it now, whatever it was. She whispered his name fiercely, trying to convey with that single syllable all the things she couldn't possibly voice otherwise.

He bent his head again at the sound of her plea. His lips met her fingertips and then followed the delicate lines of her hand to her palm and wrist, kissing and nipping as they went. "Guide me," he breathed against her skin.

Scarlett opened her mouth to protest, but the battle of objections in her head was brief in front of this bodily yearning and she closed it again, swallowing hard around the sudden lump in her throat. As Rhett's mouth hovered inches from her skin, she bit her lip, unsure of how to go about what he'd asked. Her hand tentatively moved to mimic his earlier actions and cup the underside of her breast. Her cheeks were on fire; her eyes almost burning with unshed tears themselves, as Rhett finally touched the flesh she had guided towards his mouth.

His warm breath gave way to hot lips wrapping around the offered peak. Then came the teeth grazing gently in a caress so tender it had Scarlett almost whimpering for more. Her body felt acutely responsive, alive, as if she was in the middle of a fast flowing river, with water wildly embracing her body and a release she couldn't quite touch floating nearby. Without thought, she wrapped her fingers in his hair trying like before to hasten his actions and drive him to taste her deeper. But this time he did not respond to her fingers' command. His hand came to grasp hers and gently pry it away from his head. He only kept her wrist pinned to the bedcover for a few moments before releasing it, but it was enough for Scarlett to understand that control had been taken away from her entirely and buck resentfully against him in response.

Rhett chuckled softly as his hands settled on her hips to halt her motion. He had raised himself to kneel beside her and he peered at her closely—her shining eyes, her heaving chest—as his game started anew. His palms brushed the outside of her thighs with slow, steady strokes, his thumbs sliding along the front, then moving inward as he changed direction, coming closer and closer to her center and then retreating again. She waited breathlessly for what was to come next. It could only be one thing and, when his hands motioned her to it, she willingly parted her legs.

But then, instead of that, unexpectedly and scandalously, he bent down and his tongue flicked out to taste her. And for a few seconds what went on was a matter of physical dominance. Scarlett cried in shock and futilely tried to close her legs against his hands' grip. She bucked and she writhed wildly and for a short while it was her body fighting against his body in strained, rustling silence. Rhett was stronger. He finally managed to still her motions and then, when he tasted her again, it was suddenly her own body fighting against her mind. And winning.

There was no doubt in her mind that this—what Rhett was doing to her now—was dark and shameful, something in which no lady, and indeed no woman with an ounce of decency, should ever partake. But then it was just as certain a fact that she couldn't stop it. She clutched the sheets and released them as Rhett's mouth deliberately explored, and then crumpled them in her hands once more as his fingers came to aid that foreign torture of the senses. She hissed and shuddered and pleaded with him in a high wailing voice. And then, when all else failed, she gripped his hair with both hands, roughly, trying at the same time to pull him away and press him closer. Her grasp was so desperate that she could feel the pain shooting through her knuckles, yet no thoughts of how her husband must be feeling entered her hazy, darkened mind.

Not pausing his ministrations, Rhett took his left hand off her hip to blindly search for something on the bed. When he finally found it—the discarded, rumpled shirt they had fought so hard to get rid of only minutes before—he pried Scarlett's fingers from his hair once more and, raising his head to look at her, closed her fists around the shirt instead. Above him, her face was strikingly pale, her eyes seemingly carved out from the same darkness as that surrounding them, and it took all his will power not to abandon it all and simply spring to kiss her eyelids as he sunk into her body.

"Hold on to this. Promise me you will," he rasped. Scarlett nodded meekly, not entirely understanding what was happening. She simply gathered the shirt to her chest with trembling, unsure fingers, and waited.

It was when Rhett pressed his lips to that secret place again, in a kiss even more intimate than before, that her hands suddenly strained on the fabric, pulling frantically at it as a tremor swept through her body and her teeth clenched. She tried to close her legs again, this time not out of any concerns for decency, but because she was certain she couldn't take any more of this warm agony. But Rhett had imprisoned her thighs in his hands, preventing any movement, and at her spasm he spread them even wider apart. He seemed bent on giving her all she could take and more.

Scarlett was powerless against him and could only gasp in shock when his tongue entered her to thrust in a rhythm so familiar that she felt her entire body burning with the heat of shame—and something else. The fire that had been throbbing low inside her had started to coil its way higher and higher, as he increased the intensity of his torment. This was the threshold to insanity and she was passing it now, as she found she could no longer control herself and started to move her hips against him, matching his ardor and enhancing the pleasure.

As she bit down on his shirt to muffle shameless moans, Rhett kept going faster and deeper, pushing her beyond the limits of her resistance. His hands that had caressed her hips and traveled up to cover her breasts, had now returned to keep the pressure building between her legs as his mouth had slightly shifted its focus. Her body started arching up from the bed, caught in the tension of this intimate torture, her eyes tightly shut and air coming out in rapid pants in rhythm with her heart's desperate pounding. There was one thing in the world that she could cling to, and cling she did, with all her strength; her fingers going white as she pulled at the fabric as if it was a lifeline.

And then at last it happened. A wild groan that could be neither repressed, nor stifled escaped her throat and her body almost described a full arch on the covers as the pressure coiled impossibly tight, the strain of it going through her every muscle until something gave way. The dam inside her finally broke and, with a sudden ripping sound, so did Rhett's shirt.

It would have been a good time to expire of shame, and it would undoubtedly make her cheeks burn in the morning, but for now Scarlett had no time, and no inclination either, to muse about this incident, as wave upon wave of indescribable, almost painful pleasure rolled through her to finally dissolve in the calm sweet waters of aftermath. She let her quivering body relax into the pillows, weak, sated and completely incapable to move, as much as she would have wanted to. She wanted to reach for Rhett.

When she saw him disrobing himself fully, she extended her hands towards him in silence. But by this time his desire was too strong—fueled by the endless minutes of slow torment—and he swiftly pushed her back into the pillows as he slid inside her with one powerful thrust. Scarlett gave a soft strangled sob and he stilled at once to control his urgency. He was completely encased in her and for one brief moment, they simply lay motionless against each other basking in the fullness of their union.

Rhett gave her a small smile, one she answered tremulously, as he dipped down to scatter kisses over her face and lower to the soft curves of her neck and shoulders. He removed the shirt that was still haphazardly covering the rise of her breast, and, to his wife's acute embarrassment, stared closely at the torn, rumpled fabric for a moment. He seemed amused, though there was something else flickering in his eyes too, something Scarlett couldn't quite follow. She needed to do or say something to break the awkward silence, but nothing came to mind. As she appraised the effects of her passion herself, a furious blush crept to her cheeks. The garment and its sleeve lay almost entirely separated from each other—a testament to a deed so shameful that her mind felt the urge to turn away from it even now, immediately after it had unfolded.

"I—I think your shirt is ruined," she finally offered, squirming a little under him.

"I can see that," he replied in a warm teasing voice, as he bent to nuzzle her neck and ascend to her earlobe that his lips and teeth caressed once more. "It's a pity, I was so very fond of it. We'll have to think of a way for you to repay me." Scarlett shivered at his words, as his warm breath slowly grazed her cheekbone and followed the soft, dimpled curve to her lips.

"But for now," he whispered close to her mouth, "care to rip the other sleeve?"

She didn't have time to reply for he swiftly covered her parted lips with his. In the hungry warmth of his kiss she could taste herself and she hesitated a little before allowing him to go deeper. It was when his hips started moving against her that she opened her mouth in earnest with a shuddering sigh of satisfaction. Wrapping her legs around his waist, she clung to him, as the intensity of his thrusts inexorably grew. She had thought that she couldn't possibly need anything more, that her body, entirely sated and imbued with that foreign sense of completion and tiredness, could only use to grant Rhett's his own pleasure before they finally went to sleep. And now she found that she had been wrong.

There were still places that cried for his touch and trembled under his rough kneading; there was still skin that welcomed the slight tickle of his moustache and burned under his lips' fiery caress. Inside her flesh, the ache was growing again, churning outside of control in its need to be quenched. This is what she had longed for earlier, this—having him inside her, his weight pressing her down into the bed as he traveled deeper into her with each thrust, making her feel small and conquered, but at the same time one with his body, a part of him, like she had never been before.

For a fleeting moment, she regretted that Rhett hadn't really left the shirt within her grasp. She only had him to cling to now, and her nails sunk into his shoulders savagely, branding him, pressing him down on her harder. Something was building inside of her, something more intense and more exquisitely painful than anything else she ever remembered living. Not even the pressure and subsequent pleasure of release she had already experienced with him twice during this wild night matched the consuming sensation burning in her now, threatening to shatter and dissolve her body.

"Rhett, I am—I am going to—" she whimpered in helpless alarm, even while arching up to meet the slamming of his body against hers.

The answer Rhett choked, his lips buried in her hair, never reached her. Its general meaning though would not elude her for long, as their mutual need blazed and melded and seemed to reach completion at the same time. Their bodies strained and froze united in pleasure, and Scarlett cried out as his desire filled her, sating her flesh and for a moment seemingly binding her to him entirely, mind and soul.

Once that flame was spent, he collapsed against her and she held him in her arms tightly, his breath brushing hot and heavy against her temple. She wondered silently if they couldn't simply go to sleep like this, though the weight of his body, now that the urgency was gone, made breathing almost impossible. Finally, Rhett rolled to his side, gathering her to him, and moving his hands soothingly along her back until a sweet, warm oblivion started to descend upon her.

As she moved even closer to him, resting her forehead against his chest, a little nagging thought at the back of her mind opposed sleep for a moment. There was something she needed to tell him. There were so many things she needed to tell him, but now she was so tired, so very tired. They could wait till morning. Yes, she would tell him in the morning. There was no hurry; they had all the time in the world. She knew this to be forever.

Thanks for reading. G