December 20, 2003

"Is it always this way when he's in a place like this?" I asked Stephen as we edged our way from the dartboard where Stephen had just soundly whupped me. The din of enjoyed conversation and laughter around us made it difficult to hear so I had to repeat my question a bit louder the second time.

"There are times, my dear, when it is best to keep uppermost in one's mind that Jack has never been one to be in control of his own vices. Why, when I think of the times that ..." Stephen began.

But just as he was launching into a spiel about Jack and his appetites for wine, women and revelry, we heard this loud roar from the other side of the pub. I think we both knew that whatever had just happened, a resolutely drinking Jack was somehow involved.

I didn't really think I could fight my way back through the elbows and bodies to get to the source of the mayhem. Stephen gently deposited me on a barstool and went off on the hunt for our wayward companion.

Closing my eyes and sipping my ale, I did this mental inventory of my fatigue. Jack had walked me into the ground that day. Well, perhaps it had been Stephen? I mean, Stephen had pretty much set the pace in the early going but then Jack got snippy when Stephen accused him of not being in good enough shape to be able to keep up with him and after that, I swear, they seemed to set about to test each other's ability to walk London.

My feet were killing me. My ears were, too. I mean to tell ya, Stephen and Jack can talk a mean blue streak when they're together. I'd been immersed for three days in all things ancient history ... or rather, naval history from about 1800. Er. Not really just naval history. Their history.

It had been fascinating.

It had been better than anything I could have imagined.

London. Courtesy of Captain Jack Aubrey. Capped off by rounds with Dr. Stephen Maturin for the last day and a half. It absolutely could not get better, I thought.

The man next to me leaned in and asked me the source of my grin as I opened my eyes and just breathed in this warm, contented feeling of finding myself a part of something I had never thought I'd be.

So in this noisy boisterous pub, I was chatting up a total stranger with a delicious British accent and telling him about what a great time I was having in London. I told him about all these places we'd seen, from the Admiralty House to the Houses of Parliament to gentlemen's clubs to Trafalgar Square to the docks ...

But there was no way I could tell him the stories I'd heard from Jack and Stephen that had made those travels something over and above an ordinary tour of London's sights and sounds.

And then he asked me, why here? And I just looked around and thought about how he'd take it if he knew the reason we'd ended up this evening in this particular pub. I was just leaning into his ear to make sure he heard me above the noise of people laughing and talking in this place, to say, "This pub holds a special place in the hearts of my companions," except I never got the chance.

This body was just suddenly there. Between us. I looked up in alarm as the body in question forced me upright on the stool ... and I was looking into the rather red-tinged eyes of one Lucky Jack.

"Is this lubber bothering you, Ann?" he asked me and I detected a slight slur. Not much of one. Jack didn't so much slur when he had too much in him; he talked more like he had a few marbles in his mouth. I cannot describe it better than that but he was definitely maneuvering his tongue around some marbles just then. "Perhaps it would be best for your own sake, my dear, if you were to stick closer to the gentleman who may be most apt to assure your safety in these surroundings."

Uh oh. 

"We were just chatting, Jack." Why then was I sounding defensive? Well, crap. Why does any woman sound defensive when accused of being a flirt?

"As it were," he pronounced and gave a deep glare to the man whose only crime had been to talk to a woman sitting by herself in a pub. Then turning to me with the remnant of a disapproving scowl on his face and offering his arm. "Come join me and some new friends, my dear. If you would be so kind as to allow me to escort you away from the bar and to the table?"

So there I sat for the next hour. And it wasn't that it wasn't fun, because it was. Jack was in high form but he was also high as a kite. He told jokes, he made silly puns, he screwed up sayings ... and everyone in the place adored the fun he made sure we had. I watched him and wondered if this was how he made his officers feel during dinners in his cabin aboard the Surprise. Because he made me feel like I was sitting there getting this glimpse of a totally loose as a goose Captain Jack.

Stephen rolled his eyes each time Jack launched into one of his jokes. But he still couldn't hide the grin and the enjoyment he took just to be with Jack, even if he might have preferred being someplace where he could be dissecting some disgusting beetle. It was an element of their friendship that always seemed poignant to me -- that in such social settings, it was Jack who made Stephen take part in life. Just as in political issues, it was Stephen who guided Jack with a thoughtful and often unobtrusive manner.

But that hour stretched to another. And then Jack wanted dinner. And then he wanted another drink at the pub. And then more people joined in the merriment that was Jack.

And before I realized what all was happening, Stephen was pulling me away to tell me that Jack was way past his limit. I looked over at Jack and ... he was showing the effects of a long day capped by a lot to drink.

"Ann, understand my plight. Do not think me a coward. I simply have never been one capable of physically managing Jack Aubrey when he is in his cups so freely," Stephen said as we stood near the entry. "Even if we have the assistance of able bodied men here to deposit his ... bulk ... into a transport vehicle, once we arrive at our hotel, there will be little to help. We dare not attempt it, do you see?"

"Are you saying we leave him here? No way."

"Most certainly not, my dear! I would never leave Jack at the mercy of circumstance when he has so deeply indulged in the vine's glorious treats." Stephen puffed his chest out and looked at me like I'd just accused him of the vilest of crimes. "No, I have another suggestion altogether, as it were."

A half hour later, we were stumbling up a narrow staircase on the way to a third floor room. Between the bartender and one of Jack's new friends, Jack was being assisted to trail along behind me. Stephen led the way.

"Is that not an inviting piece of womanly flesh before us, gentlemen? A good rogering would be just the thing, if you smoke my meaning, sirs."

I heard Jack's hushed words and couldn't believe it! I whipped around and found his delighted eyes were latched on my ass! "Excuse me?" I thundered out.

His eyes came up to mine and he focused ... then he realized it was me he was just talking about to two strangers. His apology was mumbled out of his contrite mouth while the men on either side of him could barely hide their enjoyment of Jack being taken to task for a crude comment about my anatomy.

But by the time we reached our room, I was giggling to myself. I couldn't wait to tell him in the morning what he'd said. And then I also realized ... in his own inimitable fashion, Jack had given me a rather tasty compliment. Maybe a bit of rogering would be a suitable reward, I thought.

Inside the room we'd taken for the night, the men deposited Jack on the little couch in the sitting area. He was still trying to apologize to me and somehow he began to dig the hole deeper as he made a joke about the various parts of a woman's body and what they were good for ... when I realized we were alone. I'd been deserted even by Stephen.

And before me, I had a drunk Jack. In a very silly mood that was turning to naughty if I caught the gleam in his shining eyes correctly.

"Great," I muttered as he weaved just a bit where he sat. "Just perfect."

I went into the other room where I found the bed and from there, I found the bathroom. I returned to Jack with a soapy washcloth and a hand towel and a glass of water. I didn't quite know what else to do. So I pulled off his shoes and socks, yanked his heavy sweater over his head, loosened the buttons of his Henley shirt he was wearing underneath, washed his face, listened to his silliness, fought off his advances that I knew he'd never be able to follow through on, made him drink the water, pushed him to lie down on the couch, covered him with a blanket and told him to sleep it off.

Okay, so here were my thought processes. I figured little old me wasn't really quite up to hoisting Jack's body up from the couch and getting him tucked in bed. So all I felt I could do was leave him there.

Besides ... a silly, drunk Jack? He's a force of nature that I was a bit too tired to deal with just then.

All I wanted to do was sleep. With his constitution, I knew that in the morning, Jack would be barely worse the wear for tying one on that night while I would probably be exhausted still from a day like we'd had.

I knelt on the carpet before the couch and watched as his eyes slid shut. God. I loved him. I whispered a good night in his ear then leaned over to kiss that sweet smile on his face. Sweet besotted smile, I must say. God, but he is adorable this way.

But before I could rise, his arms grabbed around me and wrestled me atop him. He was kissing me so hard and so deep that I could barely breathe. At first I let him and enjoyed the way it felt to have him seem as intoxicated with wanting to kiss me as he was with the booze he'd put away.

Only ... well, Jack blew it.

"Ooof," he moaned when I squirmed about to get into the action ... and then he moved me off his chest. "Perhaps that is not just quite the thing."

I landed with a plop on the carpet. Bruised my ego but not my temper. "Oh, well, screw you, then, buster."

"Come back, amorata, that was not what I meant to say," he mumbled.

"Just go to sleep," I tossed over my shoulder as I left him there.

Inside the bathroom, I scrounged through the toiletry supplies they'd left us and washed myself up as best I could. In the bedroom, I stood there looking around as I prepared for bed and ... it was when it hit me.

Where I was.

God.

This was where Jack and Stephen had always roomed when they were in London. This was The Grapes. What had once been a boarding house had been preserved and was now a popular pub with rooms to let above it. And Stephen had been the one to figure out that this was a good place for us to stay the night. I had only figured that he might have wanted to stay here to save him the trouble of getting Jack back to the hotel. But in this moment of clarity, I saw that Stephen might have also wanted to stay here just one night for the memories this place held for him and his particular friend.

It was like being on hallowed ground for me. Had this been a room where Jack might have stayed once? Were the ghosts around to tell the tales of Jack's times here? Had he ever entertained a wench here?

Don't quite know where that thought came from! But come into my brain, it did. Then again, I am a perve so perhaps I came by the pervy thought honestly.

And just as I thought it, and just as I pictured him here with some brazen bosomed wench or Molly Harte or ... well, one of those many women you just knew were happy to see Lucky Jack back in London ... just then, I heard him clear his throat and I turned back toward the doorway to find him standing there.

All I could do was take him in.

One big hand was pressed in over the doorframe, fingers flexed, elbow locked, as he leaned into the lintel. One foot was cocked over the other, knee bent, toe down. His other hand was on his hip, elbow bent at a right angle, fingers jutting toward his groin. His hips were cocked slightly as he leaned with confidence and swagger. There was a bulge there at the front of his jeans that made me lick my lips involuntarily. His unbuttoned Henley showed his upper chest and his incredible, shadowed neck. His chin was tucked; his hair was mussed but still mostly bound into the tie at the nape of his neck. His eyes were steady and focused on me with a solemn intensity. His mouth was a straight line in a face that was set in firm virility under its dark evidence that he hadn't shaved since early that morning.

His thoughts as he looked at me were so transparent that he might as well just have said to me, "There is no escape. I will have you."

I swallowed hard and might have even gulped out loud. Was that a whimper?

"As you were," he said in this husky voice. "Finish what you were engaged in."

I looked down at myself and realized what he meant. I'd been undressing. My sweater was off and I was unbuttoning the simple white cotton shirt I wore under it. But I just couldn't move. I was too taken with Jack.

Jack. Unlike I might have ever really seen him. This guard in him stripped away in this night when he'd perhaps had enough to drink to let himself go but not enough to pass out like I'd thought he would.

"Strip," he said in this hard voice.

Startled by the tone, I did as he said. My fingers seemed to work on their own, flying down the front of my shirt and sliding it open. He just stood there, watching me. His expression never changed except to glare a bit harder at me when I took my bra off. He took this deep breath that seemed to telegraph impatience to me. And I was fumbling with my jeans and jerking them off me as quickly as I could but I was never taking my eyes off him.

When I kicked them away from me and stood there in only my panties, he gave me this quick chin tilt as he motioned with his fingers. "Off."

My mouth opened to say something but his eyes narrowed and instead, I just slid my panties down and kicked them in the general direction of where my jeans had landed.

He moved toward me with such purpose and such bald intent that I trembled and stepped away from him. I don't know what it was. But something in this moment shook my confidence. It was like he had his eyes on the prize and the prize was unsure she wanted to be conquered even though she knew surrender was the only wise option.

The back of my knees hit the bed's high mattress just as he got within reach and my hands went up to ward him off ... it didn't even slow him down.

His hand swept behind my back and the other grabbed behind my head and he was locked down into a kiss of my mouth that bent me over his arm and left me struggling against a rock solid man intent on having me.

My struggles seemed to inflame him and I heard this deep, serious growl from him as his mouth left my lips and he shoved his face in my neck ...

"No! Jack!" It was this instinctive yelp as he bit into me ... a definite bite into my shoulder but it didn't hurt so much as the animalistic grunt that accompanied this action took me by surprise. And then he was sucking hard, moving into my throat like he'd become unable to be gentle. His hand pawed at my breast like he hadn't touched a woman in months.

His manhandling and marking of my body calmed me. It was the oddest thing. Like somehow the way he was so totally in control left me no option but to get into what he was up to. I felt myself sag in his hold. His hand left my breast and he turned my lower body slightly so his fingers could search for my wetness ... I felt this flood of moisture and I started whispering to him ... sounds he would have known signaled my desire for him.

And then his fingers went roughly into me and even as I whimpered, I still responded with an open mouthed, full-tongued kiss to his invasive search of my mouth. He pulled my body back into his, his hand captured between his own hardness and his fingers moving inside me. But then his hand left where it had been masturbating me and both his hands were on my ass and he was lifting me off my toes, grinding me against his hardness even as he continued to kiss me obscenely.

I was hanging on around his neck and I was so close to coming ... the way he was rubbing me against him, the roughness of the jeans, the occasional glancing crunch of the zipper's edge into my tenderness ... when he stopped kissing me, I bit into his neck without even realizing it.

It seemed to startle him. Not in a good way. He was suddenly shoving me down, forcing me to my knees, grunting out to me to take him. Suck me, he said, showing me in his crudeness that he had a desire for me that he was unable to keep within boundaries that night.

Even as I was unzipping him, he was tearing off his shirt and then his hands were on my head and he was just trying to keep me where he could fuck my mouth. But he was inpatient and he had other things he wanted to do. He pulled me off, lifting me under the arms even as he stepped from his jeans and moved me into the mattress.

He didn't really throw me on the bed. It was more haphazard than that but I found myself on my back and before I could move, he had my legs apart and he was diving in. It left me panting with the feeling of being swept up into his desire. He brought me instantly snapping back to his awareness when he rubbed his stubbled chin against my wetness. I let out this choking gasp of tiny pain. Then looked down at him and caught his eyes focused on me. Very deliberately, he did it again and I moved to lessen the abrasion but then his hands held me too tight to him and he did it again, ending by scraping those bristly whiskers across the sensitive insides of my thighs.

A long, loud whimper of supplication from me and he slowly smiled at me.

I shook hard in his hands at that; and his eyes dropped from me to observe my sex. I wondered what he saw ... did he see how delicate it was in that moment? Did he see that one perfect touch from him and I'd be coming with a scream I wouldn't be able to hold in?

"Oh, God, Jack. Be careful with me," I whispered suddenly. "Don't hurt me."

Darkened eyes at me. I couldn't read him well enough. He let me see his tongue come out and then he held eye contact with me as his mouth covered my clit and I felt his tongue go inside me. My head jerked back as he began to gently suck and I felt tears welling up.

"Look at me," he demanded. 

I rasped in a breath and looked back down. And never took my eyes off his as he went at me with deliberation. Not until I was coming with a force I couldn't control. I know I must have felt the bed shift and felt him coming up into my arms. But I was mostly out of it until I felt his cock nudging into me and then I was focused on him again.

He hovered there above me and just entered me. One big hand under my ass moving me into a position he wanted as he hilted and then paused to jostle inside me. And something in my eyes must have given him pause because he suddenly gentled and his hand came up to my face and his knuckles smoothed along my cheek as he smiled into me.

"I can't believe you have this in you," I whispered to him and his eyebrows rose as he began a slow, steady, relentless pumping into me that made me grunt with each hilt. "Would have sworn you were too drunk to even get it up."

"Now you'll see how you have perhaps misjudged me, amorata," he responded with this growling, edgy voice that I hadn't seen coming. And as quickly as that, the cuddly Jack I'd thought was emerging slipped away to be replaced by the forceful, not-quite-in-control Jack who'd first walked into that bedroom and begun boarding me.

His lips were on my throat and he began driving into me ... I was arching under the onslaught and my voice rose as I came ... and he held onto me as I shuddered and came harder.

"You look so beautiful and wild when you come like that," he whispered against my skin as he began to ease back into a steady rhythm, seeking his own release. "Let me see it again, Ann."

"God, Jack!" Whispering back to him in a voice heavy with sex and greed. "I love you so. The way you take me ... God. You're so good to me."

"Show me. Let me see."

Such urgency and need in his voice underneath all the steely command of his words spoken in an iron tone.

And all I was really able to do was focus on the feel of him inside me ... of the way his pelvic hair seemed to rub against my clit with each thrust up ... of the way he'd take this extra measure of shoving at the end just to emphasize his power ... of the way it felt when his slippery cock would glide back and leave my greedy cunt hungry and bereft ... of the way his thighs would tense between mine and his elbows would lock as his hips prepared to deliver another thrust ... of the way the air would chuff from him, uneven and harsh, as he jutted up into me ... of how his teeth nibbled on my chin as his lips sucked ... of how his chest would rise from me as he slid back out and how this seemed to prime his body to retaliate back into mine ... of how his arms felt as my hands clung to his biceps ... of how his mouth felt as it left my chin and his tongue shoved inside my lips and he sucked my own tongue down in rhythm with his fucking of me ... of how it felt to be kissing him when he finally came shuddering with intensity into my body ... of how it felt to receive the force of his coming.

And how it felt to then come right on the tail end of it, as his head hung down and tendrils of his hair clung to his neck's sweaty rivulets and my mouth was latched on to his neck and I was trying so hard not to scream but I wasn't stopping the jerky sobs forced out of me by the intensity of this coming.

We couldn't seem to move, either of us, even as aftershocks kept making me whimper and convulse around his cock. And then he was flopping to the mattress beside me and pulling me into his body.

But something happened in this night. I don't know what came over Jack. But I've since come to believe that he was not really drunk, just intoxicated. I have since come to believe that he drank with a purpose that night ... and the purpose was to lose a bit of the iron control he'd been holding on to in this time in London.

Whatever it was, this night was a full on reminder of who Jack and I had always been when it came to being insatiable for the other. He made love with me several more times that night and there was an abandoned quality to the wildness of what we did together in that time. Not that Jack has ever seemed reluctant to do anything with me, it's just that ... well, there was a difference in tone, perhaps. Like he wanted to play but he was deadly serious.

By the time morning was with us, I could barely move. Jack snored next to me, his arm heavy across my belly and his face buried in the pillow. I nestled in closer and kissed at his stubbly neck. As he mumbled in his sleep, I gave in to the urge to just kiss on him. I gently rolled him to his back and listened to him snort once before he settled back down into slumber. I bit back on a groan as I moved to sit up next to him, discovering that I was achy and sore from the night's activities.

But then my eyes caught his nude form next to me. Jack! My fingers traced scars along his chest and arms. His head turned toward me and he shifted onto his side even as I was dipping down to lave his nipples. I saw this lazy smile flit onto his face as he reached for me, pulling me into his embrace.

His eyes slid open and his hand stroked my hip. Ah, Jack. Even after a night tying one on, he is so much more easily roused than other men I've known. My hand slipped between his legs to see what else about him was waking up. His scrotum felt warm and heavy and comforting. Why is that? I am never sure, but it does. His prick was not yet importunate but it was getting there.

I turned him on his back, climbed above him and wiggled so slowly over the prick in question until it began to exert its dominance over me. Without more than a few senseless whispers, we made slow deliberate love that morning. Our eyes never left each other. Our lips hovered, just out of reach, not slating our thirst for the kiss that seemed all the better for being forbidden the other.

And when he came, thrusting up into me, his eyes hooded, his power again leashed ... just the look of him and the reminder of who he was to me ... I was moaning out unbidden sentiments of my abiding love and desire for him as I came around his cock and felt his semen flowing into me as he grunted and cursed.

We dozed again, wrapped together. I woke first and slipped from his hold to go tend to my own needs in the bathroom. In the mirror, washing my hands ... seeing evidence of a rowdy night with Jack ... reddened skin in appropriate places; a few marks of his mouth at my neck and above my breasts.

In the shower, I washed between my legs and winced. Looking down, I saw bruises where his fingers had gripped in on my thighs. But I was also sore from the force of his body slamming into mine there. It was a welcome kind of sore, one I had seldom minded after a night with Jack. But for some reason, in that morning, I wondered ... was it just that he'd drunk enough that some barrier was down that was normally keeping him from rutting at me quite like that? Or was something else going on with Jack that I wasn't reading well?

But then the curtain parted and Jack came into the shower behind me and I felt his hands soft and comforting on me ... and all I could remember was that I was with Jack. This man who loved me like no other. This man I trusted like no other. I sighed and leaned back into him and put my faith in Jack.