"You have to concentrate."

"God's teeth."

"I'm stopping."

"No!"

Sweat. Running from him.

"Give in."

"Never in life."

"You haven't even begun to suffer."

"For all love ..."

Tears. Running from me.

"If you force me, I will make you pay."

"I trust you."

"You shouldn't. You never should have."

"I always will."

Knowing then that it was over. That a hold was broken.

Blinking in the face of blackness. And seeing Jack before me and knowing where I was and not being scared. Sometimes, you get what you wish for. Other times ... most times ... you get something else.

"What were you dreaming?" he asked me as he shifted against me in the bed and I let him gather me in close.

"You don't want to know," I told him and he let me kiss him deep.

"What if I did, amorata? What if I asked you to tell me even if you wanted to keep it away from me? What choice would you make then?" He spoke the words clearly. He spoke them with a specific purpose.

"Do you trust me?" I asked him that and I knew the answer. But I also knew I was being unfair because he would have to say 'yes' and then drop this.

"No. Not always," he said.

"You don't?" I sat up and looked down at him in genuine surprise.

Jack turned on his back and looking up at me. His hair was wild around him on the pillow. His eyes were on me and then he was reaching for me, to force me back down toward him.

"Tell me what you were dreaming, Ann." Saying it right in my face. His mouth so close to mine. His tongue reaching out to lick as he pulled my lips to his.

"Will you protect me?" My fingers trembled down his body until my hand touched his.

"Always." He told me this with deep purpose and while he was moving his hand so I could wrap mine around his hard cock. And somehow there was such enticingly erotic comfort in the feel of that hand of his coming atop mine to move it in a rhythm and pressure he most wanted at that time.

This part of Jack that would not so much ask for what he wanted from me but would make me give it to him as though he never doubted I wouldn't want to if I only knew his desire. This was a part of him that made me tremble when he showed him to me.

Saying it over and over ... "Always" ... as if repeating it would make me believe.

"I was dreaming of you," I whispered to him finally, my breath catching as he shoved his mouth into my neck and sucked hard. "Only I don't think it was really you. And it wasn't this world; it was the other one."

"Ah. And why would it not be this one?" He said it rough.

"Because I wouldn't do that with you here." I caught his scent in this flickering second as his body shoved mine on its back and the allure of him went straight to my head. Oh. God.

"What was I doing to you?" His eyes flashed at me and his hands grabbed around my ankles.

I still had him in my hand. He was pumping into my grip. Trusting me, despite it all. But despite being breathless with anticipation, I was getting scared to go too deep with this man, in this place. Did I really trust him that much?

Strong hands moved my legs rudely apart. He was feeding off my intensity. Knowing with some instinct this was a dream that counted ...

... And making me wonder what he'd heard me mumbling in my sleep. Making me wonder if my dreams were betraying me again.

"Tell me." He let go of my ankles as he nudged into me. Then he was thrusting inside me as if this would break through the wall around my inner core. How could he have guessed it was always as much about protecting him as about protecting me? How much I believed he would never like what he found? "What was I doing to you?"

In some ways, what he was doing just now was so unstoppable in its intensity, that even if I couldn't close my eyes, he was making me slip beneath the seductive layers of the remnants of the night's dream. A dream that must have scared him for the strength of my reaction during the time it had claimed me full on.

"It wasn't ... you. It was ... me. I was ... It was what I was doing to you." Panting it out to him ... giving up this dark secret the hard way but still not giving it all.

Not at first.

But then I did.

I really did, Diary.

But only to Jack. Not to you.

I'm beginning to think you're a man, Diary. You want too much of me. I strike out at you when you get too close. I close off when you mean too much. The more you care for me, the more I don't deserve it.

The next night found Jack even more unwilling to bend to my will.

"You taste so good, Jack," I muttered against his neck. "You drive me wild."

"Then it must be here we face this, Ann." Saying it firm and healthy against my hair; his arms wrapped around me as if he could protect me from a memory that shackled me.

"I should never have let you talk me into this, Jack."

"All I want, amorata, is for you to show me. Just one time."

"You won't like it," I whispered and tried to slide away from his body, which was spooned around mine. "Just remember this: I only went into Perve World for the sex."

His hand slid along my belly ... up ... down; an involuntary movement of a man who knows he possesses what he's touching. "We both know the truth about that."

"That was the truth."

"Not for one moment do I believe that." And now his mouth gave me a soft kiss along my shoulder. His voice dropped into seduction mode and it made me quiver most unbecomingly. "Amorata ... Please. I want to have this experience with you. Surely you know that such things were not unheard of in my time. I am not shocked but I am curious."

His fingers melted into me below, stroking along my folds, roughly teasing me... and there I laid in his arms, surrounded by the sensual experience of Jack in full arousal and full sexual desire. And there Jack was, affected as I was by the overpowering impact on our senses ... by the carnal scents and obscenely delicious tastes of each other.

I started whispering to him in some measure of desperation. "We weren't supposed to be coming here for this. We were supposed to just be coming here so you could understand me and why I just can't ... God, Jack. Oh ..."

"Mmm. That is just the thing, is it not, my little dear? You like the way that makes you feel?" 

This was not why we were there. We were supposed to be there to find a way for me to take back control of a past time in my life that spun way too far out of control. I should have known better than to come back with Jack. When had the portal ever not affected us? The longer we stayed, the stronger the affect.

I'd never done these things with someone I cared about, much less someone I loved. I had only done them with men who let me stop feeling one kind of degradation in order to bury it in another kind.

For all the feints I'd made in Perve World, I'd never allowed anyone to begin to push me too far in this direction of walking within sexual darkness. With the men of our group, the furthest I'd gone was light bondage. But I had always known the difference; it was as much them as it had been anything. They kept it safe.

And I had absolutely reveled in doing those little things with them and the way it had made me feel without ever once wanting to take it into black shadows.

I'd only come close with Sid and even with him, there was never the same risk because I was not pummeled by the same force. I had changed.

How would it feel with Jack to go into the shadows? Was this about trust or was this a reversal of fortune?

"Are you really willing to take such a risk with me?" I asked it dark; he responded in a way that felt like he was gripped by ravenous hunger for a part of me I'd never given him.

Games.

He wanted a game with me. A darker version of something we'd only tiptoed around with him in control. But here? I wonder if either of us were anywhere near as in control as we wanted to believe we were.

But what happened between us, Diary, was a revelation to me. That when I freely made the choice to explore, it didn't necessitate losing myself. And that when I was with Jack, even here, we never would lose sight of the other. We always seemed to know ... and instead of being about control, it was about trust. It was never degrading but that's as much because of how we reacted as the specifics of what he wanted. It was a lesson from Jack to me about whom to trust in.

It's the difference. No, Diary, I know you don't have a clue as to what I mean. And I know that, even as I write these words that may only be clear to me and Jack, I am giving you the whole truth but not giving you all the facts. I only write them because I want some record of what I learned with Jack in this time.

It was how we got diverted from our mission. And the diversion was a good thing in another way ... it was that final key to the puzzle that made me realize ... it was not granting Jack the chance to understand my past that I had found. It was giving myself permission to take a second look at my past from the safety of time and surrounded by the security blanket of a trusted lover.

Diary, I was able to look at the moment my fate was set. My moment. The one I'd always wondered about. And as I looked at it again, I knew then what power really was. And I knew how I would wrest power for my future from my past.

At home with Jack, we hunkered down and there were so many times in the days that followed that we both seemed lost in thought. But I think this is our way and it doesn't bother either of us anymore. We know it's not in either of our natures to tell all. We know that isn't necessary.

Jack was lying stretched out on the couch, his head in my lap, his nose in a book, one of his hands absent-mindedly stroking along the rise of my breasts. I looked down at him from where I was reading my own book and couldn't help smiling at him.

This man who'd come blasting into my life like he knew it was his and he never doubted that if he but convinced me he wanted me, that I would give myself to him. Never taking me by force, never forcing anything really. Just coming at me and breaching every defense I set up.

"Jack, do you remember your visit to England with Uma?" He gave me a sly smile but avoided my eyes. "You said something that always grabbed at my heart. You told her you'd put your ghosts to rest when you spent the night with her at Ashgrove. What did that feel like, Jack?"

And only then did his sharp eyes latch onto mine. His hand left my breast and tangled into my hair. His smile left and in its place was a look of steadfast belief. "Ah, what a question, amorata. Should a better one not be 'how does it feel to have faced your ghosts?' But then, you would know that feeling now, would you not, my little dear?"

"Thanks to you, beloved."

"It is the hardest step. Of that, my love, you may be assured," he whispered to me.

Yes, Diary. You do smoke it, eh? Jack had taught me -- facing my ghosts was the only way I could vanquish them. He thought it was over but I knew better. The next step was up to me. And even in that moment, I was taking it.