Authors: Marianna Roberg
"Well, uh, yeah. Me. Which is why I was so flustered the day we met. I'd just found that I was going to be working on a day-to-day basis with my fantasy woman."
Jaina grinned at that. "Fantasy woman, huh?"
"Ohh, yeah."
"You're amazingly good at resisting temptation," she said suddenly. "I threw myself at you last night and you said no."
Colin fixed her with a look. "Do you know how hard that was, Jaina?" he asked. "Here I was celibate for a few years, and one look at you and all that self-control goes right now the drain."
"You
were
celibate?" she exclaimed, disbelieving. "I thought you were joking about that.
Why
?!"
Colin looked sheepish. "All the women I would have asked out thought I was gay. I couldn't get a date. I mean, with anyone interested in me as more than a celebrity."
Jaina looped her arms around his neck. "Well, I don't give a monkey on a rock if you're a celebrity. Admittedly, when I first met you, I had a moment of, 'It's Colin Pierce!', but after that..."
Propped on his elbows, he gazed down at her. "Is this going to change us? Make us just about sex?"
"Shouldn't I be the one to worry about that?" Jaina asked. "Well, if you're going to, then I don't have to."
He lifted a raven brow.
"Okay, okay. No, I don't think it will," she said, sobering. "I mean... Okay, so we've added sex to our, uh, routine. We got along fine without it, right?"
"Yeah. But now
, if we stop, I think I'll die."
"Wuss. I went almost 22 years without it." Jaina pushed him off and sat up. "Let's get going. Faster we distract ourselves, faster it'll be evening..."
He grinned
.
♥♥♥
After declining to shower with him--knowing Colin wouldn't be able to keep his hands to himself
then
--Jaina fixed them breakfast in the now-familiar kitchen in Colin's house. They ate sitting at the counter.
Jaina was washing the dishes when she said a word that made Colin jump and drop one of the mugs.
"What's wrong?" he asked, as he stooped to pick up the large shards.
"I forgot to take my medicine. We'll have to go back."
"Maybe the power will be back on," he suggested, as he threw the pottery in the trash. "So much for that mug."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"
He laughed. "It's fine. I've seriously been looking for an excuse to get rid of that for years. My sister gave it to me."
"That's Mary-Jane, right? And your brother is Benjamin?"
He nodded.
"And Benjamin's married, and you've got... how many nieces and/or nephews?"
Colin began drying one of the plates. "I've got two nephews. One is five, the other is three."
"Wow," she said.
"What?"
"Oh, I was just thinking, it's kinda weird..." Jaina shook her head. "We both have an older brother and a younger sister. Both brothers are married. Both brothers have two children."
Colin looked thoughtful. "That's interesting."
Nodding, Jaina looked at her watch. "I'm supposed to take two doses a day, which means I need to get the first one in the next hour, or the timing will be all off."
"Talking from experience?" he asked.
"Yep."
They had the dishes done in a few minutes, then grabbed their coats. As they were headed out, they saw one of Colin's neighbors shoveling the sidewalk. Jaina knew what was going to happen before Colin went over and offered to help the elderly man. Leaning against the car, she watched as he shoveled the snow, not doing much better of a job than the old man, but sparing the neighbor from having to do it.
She smiled, and wondered what had inspired him to take on charity work as a hobby
.
♥♥♥
Back at her brother's house, Jaina took her meds, then, since they didn't have anything else to do, brought out the
Star Wars
Monopoly.
"Oh, this should be fun," Colin said.
"Well, it's this, Scattergories, or Candyland." Jaina set out the pewter figures. "Who do you wanna be?"
"Han Solo," he said immediately.
Jaina grinned and picked Leia. "How about this. Whoever wins this game... gets top."
Colin looked at her for a moment, then said, "I don't know if I want to cheat to win, or purposely lose."
Her smile turned positively wicked. "Or we could save the game for later, and play Strip Monopoly."
"Now that's an idea. Or... we could play this to see who gets top... and later we can play again..." Colin's blue eyes twinkled mischievously.
Jaina looked fromhim, to the dice, and back to him. "You're on.
"
♥♥♥
"I forgot how long it takes to play Monopoly," Colin said as they were clearing up the game around lunchtime. "That took what, four hours?"
Jaina looked at her watch, which depicted Buffy and Angel. "
Yeah, almost."
"Forget what I said about playing two games. That was excruciating."
Jaina tossed R2-D2 at him. "Ha.
I'm
the one who lost."
"What, did you want to be on top? We can always say you won."
She went red to the tips of her ears. "You like making me blush."
"Why are you still blushing?" Colin asked. "Teach me more Gaelic. I want something to call you. Something... unique to us. Something I can say that no one else will understand."
Jaina paused in gathering the X-Wings and Tie Fighters into a bag. "Hmm. I’m rusty on Scots Gaelic. My friend Claire and I both studied Irish Gaelic more recently."
"That’s fine. Teach me how to say... 'I love you'."
"
'Tá grá agam duit
."
"'Do you love me'?"
“I don’t know that one, sorry.”
"Tell me... how do I say 'sweetheart'?"
"There are a couple of ways, endearments that are interchangeable.
A ghra
,
a stor
,
a chuisle
,
a chroí
. Those are ‘my love’, ‘my dear’, ‘my pulse’, and ‘my heart’, respectively."
Colin looked at her hands, which were cradled in his. "Hmm. How would I say, 'I lust for you like Gollum after his precious'?"
Jaina cracked up. "I don't know, I'd have to look it up."
He pouted. Then, snickering, he sat back.
Jaina looked at him for several moments, then said, "By the way, 'kiss me' is ‘
póg mé
'."
A slow, lopsided grin spread across his face. "Is it," he murmured.
Impatiently, she lunged across the game board, scattering game pieces and cards every which way. Colin hit the floor, Jaina on top of him. He couldn't breathe, but really didn't care, with her mouth molded to his and her body pressing him into the cream-colored pile of the carpet.
Jaina found she liked being in control. It was very, very nice indeed. The only problem with it that she could find was that it definitely freed Colin's hands, and while that would normally be a good thing, the fact that he was employing said hands under her shirt was more than a bit distracting.
She sat up, straddling his prone torso, and jerked her shirt back down. "Nuh-uh. Not until later."
Colin winced as he sat up. "Ow!"
"Oh, did I hurt you?" She was instantly alarmed.
"No, wasn't you," Colin said, reaching behind him. Holding up Darth Vader, he said, "This guy was stabbing me in the back.
"
♥♥♥
Rather than eat cold Chinese leftovers, they drove to the restaurant where they'd first lunched together. It was winter now, not fall, so the view outside had changed, but inside, they were able to sit at the very same table where they'd been before.
Back at her brother's house, they spent the afternoon making s'mores over a candle, with marshmallows on toothpicks, and trading bad jokes.
Just before seven, Jaina was in the kitchen, washing dishes by candlelight, when the microwave beeped and the first floor was suddenly flooded with light.
Blinking in the abrupt glare, Jaina looked at Colin, who looked just as startled.
"Power's on," she said.
"Oh, good. I'm not fond of the dark," he said offhandedly.
Jaina stared at him for a moment, then said, "Really. I'm not either."
"You're afraid of the dark?"
"No. I'm afraid of what's
in
the dark."
He chuckled.
Jaina glanced at her watch as she went about setting the clock on the microwave. "Oh, wow."
"What?"
Casting him a sly look, she said, "It's a little after seven."
For a moment, his face blanked, then he grinned. Strange that it was like an almost physical tug on her. Instantly, her heart began beating double time.
Jaina blew out the candle. "The rest of these can wait."
Colin held out his hand. Jaina placed hand in his, and he slowly drew her along behind him as he walked up the stairs.
She felt almost giddy, and strangely hot, nervous and excited at the same time. Her reaction confused her, because they'd done this before. Tightening her grip on his hand, she hurried after him.
As they entered her room, Colin pulled her into his arms. His hands slid up her back and into the loose tangle of her hair. Jaina rose on her toes, wrapping her arms around his neck as she kissed him.
Walking backwards, the backs of Colin's knees hit the mattress and he sank down, pulling Jaina on top of him. She eagerly straddled his hips as they kissed, hands splayed on his chest.
His hands now free, Colin tugged at her shirt. Jaina obligingly took it off, flinging it across the room to land on her computer monitor.
"Shall we?" she purred.
"Please, yes!" he groaned, and threw himself into the fire.
Chapter Twenty-One
For the next twenty or so hours, they didn't stray very far from Jaina's bedroom, venturing out only to get food. Jaina knew she should feel bad about her rather libidinous behavior, but couldn't get herself to care. She was in heaven. She was in love with Colin, he loved her back, and they were having fantastic sex.
Jaina giggled over this as she was making dinner. Colin, wondering what she was laughing about, came up behind her and hugged her, dropping a kiss against her temple. He was wearing his boxers and a t-shirt, not seeing much point to wearing anything else, since they were the only ones there.
"What's funny?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just thinking. I'm happy and it makes me loopy." Jaina intertwined her fingers with his. "I love you."
"I love you, too," he murmured against her ear. He ran his hands down her sides. "How did you tone these muscles?"
"Bellydancing," she replied.
He coughed, spilling orange juice on his shirt. "Wow, really? What's that like?"
"Well... Me and a bunch of fat women in spandex gyrating to tribal music." Jaina laughed. She helped him pull off the shirt, tossing it on the counter. "And my friend Sadie took lessons for a while, but she quit when she got engaged. Spent all her time planning her wedding."
"Mmm."
Jaina turned in his arms. "You wanna see? I've got my costumes with me. I've got two, the tribal and the cabaret."
Colin thought for a moment, then nodded. "Which costume has less to it?" he asked with a leer.
Laughing, Jaina poked him in the stomach. "That'd be my cabaret one. I'll be right back. If you could put on one of the CDs I brought downstairs, that'd be great."
"What do you want me to put on?" he asked as she ran up the stairs.
"The CD marked 'Bellydance'."
Colin went over to the stack of CDs she'd left on the coffee table in the living room and picked up the "Bellydance" CD that was halfway down. Fortunately, Jason McGregor's CD player wasn't that difficult to figure out.
He listened a bit to a couple of the songs, smiling when he recognized, of all things, Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumors" and "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys.
"So? What do you think?"
He turned around and nearly lost his eyeballs.
Jaina was barefoot and bare-armed, dressed in an ankle-length black skirt of some shimmery material that shone vaguely red and gold in the light, trimmed in tiny gold bells. It had slits up both sides, almost to her hips. Gold embroidery and beading traced around the waist, which sat low on her hips, almost as fabric attached to a gold belt. Her top was covered by a black bra decked in gold bead fringe and tiny red jewels. The bra featured a very plunging neckline that only added to her cleavage.