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Shadows of Winter
Part VII
By Jaime Lyn
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* Warning: Here be NC-17.   You should be alright for the first section, but if you're under 18 for the second section, or squeamish, you might want to skip.  You won't miss anything important.  Promise.

---

Mulder sat at the computer, straight-backed, eyes glazed, irises stung, bloodshot. Columns and numbers and stacks of data crisscrossed the screen in a tic-tac-toe board of non-solution. The streaks of information were bars, rusted, scratched, cold steel bars closing in on him, imprisoning him, imprisoning Scully.  

There were places around the globe that once served as MUFON headquarters for former abductees - far off places, where victims could hide and pray that nobody would find them, all the while being fed lies about the child whose existence could destroy the world.  Who knew what cult members still lived in wait, biding their time for the exact right moment.  On one side of the screen: Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Italy - places of mobilization.   In the middle of the screen, names: Theresa Hose, Malcolm Bracket, Jules Dapner, Angela Carridy, Carl Dawson - abductees who disappeared following the raid on Absalom's compound.  It was unclear, still, what had happened to these people, where they had gone, and who - if anyone - was leading them. Any one of those former abductees could be waiting outside the door, conspiring with the last known supersoldiers.  Revenge, redemption, reconstitution of the project - William's death could be motivated by any of those ideals, but would pinpointing the exact reason behind it truly do him any good?    

There were sites upon sites within the FBI mainframe that listed the chemical properties of iron, its electrical and magnetic advantages, its known chemical-molecular properties and uses.  If Mulder was going to beat this thing, he had to first understand how the beast worked, and studying the compound that killed it was his best opportunity. The problem, however, was that The X-Files were no longer a resource at his disposal, and there were no known official sites within any mainframe that instructed visitors on how to kill an alien. After twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Mulder could now properly align fragments of iron in order to magnify them, but that was about all he could do.  He still had no idea how to destroy a supersoldier.  

So on the far left side of the screen, another list of names:  John Doggett, Walter Skinner, Alvin Kersh, Monica Reyes.  People who could dissect the vaccine Marita Covarrubias had given them, and tell him exactly what it could do.  Research the first list and risk exposure.  Research the second list and risk wasting valuable time.  Contact anyone on the third list and risk alerting the entire law enforcement community of his and Scully's whereabouts.

Each list, every choice, was a set of prison bars.   

If Mulder tried to stare past the screen he'd see nothing but a conglomeration of circuits, bunched wires, carefully welded splatters of metal.   Technology could save you or it could kill you, he realized.  It could create a complex contraption capable of breathing for a person unable to breathe for himself. It could connect you to another person halfway around the world, hang you onto the invisible web of the internet by a modem no bigger than your thumb.  It could create life; it could create a human being so advanced that the biology bordered on human, bordered on alien, bordered on medical abomination.  Technology could grab you by the throat and squeeze until every single bone and vertebrae in your neck fractured.  Technology was man's creation, but in the end, man could so easily succumb to his own intelligence.

"Mulder?"

Startled, Mulder turned in his chair.  

Dana Scully braced herself on the doorframe, her arms folded beneath her breasts, clutched tightly, as if she was cold. Mulder knew she wasn't.  Her dark suit had been traded for a nightshirt - his nightshirt, to be specific.  The Knicks logo bunched beneath her arms and crumpled in garnet and blue and gray wrinkles.  Her legs were bare, slender, smooth - careful studies in personified sweet cream.  A flashlight lay on the floor at her feet.  Her amber-kissed hair had been brushed back, pulled into a clip; unruly wisps broke free of bondage, swirled around her pale, freckled cheeks.  Her makeup was scrubbed clean, her lips unpainted; she was naked before him.  Baring herself in this way was an unspoken gesture of truce.

"I thought I'd let you know William's asleep," she said.  "I put some couch pillows on the floor and laid him down in the bedroom.  He should be alright for at least an hour.  He's in the center of the room and I moved... moved everything he might be able to grab."

Mulder nodded.  

"I, um - "  Scully paused.  "I was doing some thinking, about the things Marita Covarrubias said, about William's DNA, about the iron magnetite. I had some ideas."  She cleared her throat.  "Iron is a principal component of a meteorite class known as siderites, and it's a minor constituent of two other meteorite classes. Current scientific data doesn't make clear how many other classes contain iron as a significant chemical compound."

"Did you rehearse that, Scully?"

Her jaw clenched.  "No."  

"Huh."   Mulder leaned back in his chair, lounging.  "So, iron meteors with altered molecular properties."   

 "Something like that, yeah."

"So then, are you suggesting that the substance is derived from outer space?"  Mulder couldn't help but grin.  "Very cool coming from you, Scully."

"That's not what I'm suggesting."  Scully took a breath.  "What I am suggesting, however, is that we know the black oil virus existed deep underground for millions of years, perhaps since the conception of the planet. And the core of the earth is thought to be largely composed of iron and about ten percent occluded hydrogen.  If a meteor were to have crashed here, perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago - a meteor that contained an unknown iron with an unknown makeup of isotopes - the result could have been intense radioactive output.  Or something very similar Over generations, mutated DNA could have sprouted in the numerous alien sects we've come into contact with.  Perhaps - perhaps even mutation of the original molecular structure of iron itself."  

"Interesting approach," said Mulder.  "So you think... That what we classify as iron isn't really iron at all, but rather a kind of molecular mutation?"

She nodded.   

"Okay.  Then that would mean a purer form of iron exists, somewhere."  He frowned.  "Or it could exist, theoretically.  But let's just say it does.  Could that mean William somehow has an un-tampered, un-mutated iron isotope floating around in his system?"

She nodded again.

"But according to Marita Covarrubias, it's acting as a sort of - " He cupped his hands together, "A sort of radioactive poison.  How would that work, exactly?"

Scully's head dropped back against the doorframe, her eyes squinted in thought.  "Iron exists in all of us, in hemoglobin - it assists in the oxidation process."    She cracked her neck.  "But alien hemoglobin is considerably more acidic, and we know it's not carbon based, which means it must oxidize differently than human blood. When I was abducted, a branched strand of DNA was found in my body, and it nearly killed me.  The doctors couldn't pinpoint the exact cause.  If the technology Marita spoke of is accurate, then it's possible a lethal, purer form of iron was poisoning my blood, preventing the normal oxidation process.  Almost like a suffocating type of anemia."  

Mulder scratched his chin, following closely.  "So why doesn't it kill William? If what you're saying is true?"

"I don't know," Scully admitted.  "It could be exactly what it seems - a step up on the evolutionary ladder.  A biology capable of sustaining a different type of chemical makeup.  And if William's body is, in fact, oxidizing a form of iron purer than any other known form, then his respiration could possibly be releasing the compound into the air."

"In the form of a toxin."

Scully nodded.  "Possibly."  She cleared her throat, shrugged.  "Anyway... it's a theory."  

"Killing them softly," Mulder mused, thoughtful.  "That would make William's blood the purest form of human blood in existence."

Her jaw trembled, but her gaze was steady.  "It would mean the truth is in our son."

"I think you might be right," agreed Mulder.  

His gaze drifted southward, rested on the flat of her abdomen.  He'd missed so much of the first pregnancy that the thought left unhealed scrapes on his memories; Scully's pain, her complications, her brushes with the unknown, her fears and hopes.  He'd not been there, and if he were any other man with any other set of priorities, he would have been.  He should have been. Perhaps Paul Selden would have known; Paul Selden was the normal guy, after all. But Fox Mulder couldn't be anything less than Fox Mulder, and he didn't know how to be more than that, either.

"Is that what you came in here to tell me?" he asked.  

"Mostly," she said.  

"Mostly?"

While there wasn't much Mulder remembered from the abduction, at least not much beyond jagged flashes of memories that faded into burns on his retinas, he recalled her absence - the empty spot inside him she would have filled.  Something had been torn away.  He caught glimpses of metal tables, spikes, foul-smelling drills, needles of pain thrusting him into unconsciousness.  Her face was what he remembered most vividly.  Her fingers on his scalp, her laugh, her frown, the gritty, raw edge of her voice when she declared herself to a suspect.  She'd kept him alive; perhaps he hadn't been there with her, but she'd been there with him.  

"I think... that I owe you an apology," she finally said, her head tilted towards her chest, neck bowed - the lily whose stem had finally snapped from lack of sunlight.  When she looked up once more, the pain was raw and open in her expression.  "I let my emotions cloud my judgment and that was a mistake.  I know we risk detection, but we need to contact Skinner.  We need help."  She took a deep breath. "We're ill-equipped here and there's too much at stake now for us to be selfish.  If you want to stay, we can, but we need to... If we can't protect William on our own, or if this unborn child puts us in danger - "  

Mulder rose from the chair.  He felt tethered to his wife like gravity tethered all things to the earth. He'd missed the morning sickness and the mood swings, and he wanted that chance back. He had been forced to endure separation from her - months of wondering, and months of darkness, and then months of never-knowing.  She was a mystery when he returned from the dead, her new body a Rubik's Cube of unanswered questions.  He'd been afraid, and angry, and so utterly confused.  He could never have known the how or the why, because he wasn't yet ready to understand the logistics.  He hadn't been there to process the possibilities of love, of miracles, of Scully's God, of considering more than one option even if he'd never before been able to believe.

But he was here now.  

He knew when it had happened, too, could pinpoint the exact moment of conception.  A late fall blizzard, a shadowed living room.  He'd whispered his devotion into her trembling lips, and pressed her to the carpet, and cradled her when she shuddered, and held her when she slept, and cried with her when she cried, and beyond the pain of their shattered existence and the darkness of what was to come, someplace far inside her body, a part of him and a part of her had fused, united in a biological explosion that made science more like magic.  Right there in front of a warm fire, where it was safe.  

"If this baby is like William," Scully continued.  "If it is happening all over again, I'll have to...."  She paused, gritting her teeth.  "I'll have to do what's right.  For us.  For William.  I'm a doctor. There are ways, methods.  They're not pretty, but they'll work.  And then Skinner could advise us where William would be safest."  She refused to meet his eyes, and her tears were eerily silent.  "Until all of this is over."  

Mulder stopped a foot short of the doorway, unsure of what to say or do.  There was so much anger that snuck up on them, that trickled down their backs like melting ice cubes.  He wanted to touch her, to apologize, to say he understood - even if he didn't truly understand - but he was frustrated and stubborn, and she even moreso.  He wanted to tell her that neither of them needed to apologize, that any remorse was instead owed to them by men who would never give them the satisfaction.

But he found he couldn't speak.  

"It's snowing heavily out there," Scully said.  "I was downstairs, and then in the bedroom.  I sat there for awhile, just watching..."  

She cleared her throat.

"Anyway, ah, I don't know how long it'll be before we lose power, but I left a flashlight by the door of each room, just in case.  When you're done in here, there should be some bottled water by the refrigerator, and there are some batteries in the um - "  

Mulder bent to his knees, and Scully's breathing slowed in ragged puffs.  Her voice cracked. "Batteries in the drawer by my computer.  And some matches, old newspaper, if we want to start a fire.  I don't - "  

His hands crept to her hips, where he curled his fingers around her and tugged. Every nerve ending hummed, crackled with heat.  He wanted to know, wanted to feel for himself.  He pressed his ear to her abdomen, his head nestled beneath her folded arms.  Part of him was inside of her, and he needed to feel it. He needed to know, to make it real, to understand.  

Scully's voice was a creak of unsteadiness.   "I don't - don't know where the butane lighter is - I, ah..."  Her hands dropped to his shoulders, her chest rising and falling with strong, steady rhythm.  She closed her eyes, and just breathed with him.  

"Can I hear its heartbeat?" Mulder whispered, encircling her hips so that he pulled her tight to him.  "If I listened, if I was really quiet - "  He gazed up at her, and willed himself not to cry.  "Do you think I could hear it?"  

A wistful smile tugged at Scully's lips, and when her eyes opened, they were the color of moon-kissed snow.  Her hands drifted into his hair, sifting, searching.  "No, you won't be able to hear it," she said.  "But sometimes you can feel it."  She bent so that his head rested in the darkened furrow left by her forward-tipped spine.  Her cheek pressed atop his head, her arms found his neck - she smelled like warm coconut.  Her lips drifted in wet trails over the crown of his skull.  She was curled over him, molded to him like warm chocolate.

"If you're really quiet," she whispered, sinking slowly to her knees.  "If you're really quiet you can feel it."  And then her breasts were eyelevel, and her shirt rode up between them, and her neck came into view, and finally, her eyes, her wide, deep blue eyes found his, and she was on the floor with him, sitting on her knees.  

"You can feel it," she repeated, sucking in hard lungfuls of air.  "Right here." She took his hand and lowered it to her stomach, where the skin was soft and slightly round beneath her shirt.  "If you're looking for it, if you want to feel it, it's there.   Oh, God, Mulder, what if - "  

"Shh," he mumbled into her, pressing his lips to hers, kissing away her tears.  "I hear it, Scully.  Just listen.  It's there.  I hear it."

--

The lights flickered in blinding abandon, spectral black to radiant yellow; luminescence danced in abrupt flecks on Scully's cool skin.  Mulder kissed a wet line down her jaw, down her neck, his mouth wandering in the lightning insanity between now and tomorrow and utter, pitch darkness.  

He was desperate for her, feverish.  He was positive that if he didn't have her now, he would never have her again. Time would steal her from him; the well of tomorrows slipped from them, minutes running out.  How long before the men following Marita Covarrubias found them, too?  Tried to destroy them?  The intensity was so dark, so sly and quiet, slinking up the base of his spine. He thought the walls would close in and destroy them both.  

In the span of a final, sharpened flicker, the air turned opaque.  The computer whistled itself to sleep, the air vents hushed into the backdrop of darkness.  A thud and a rattle, a click, and a second beam flooded the room - white, pure, halogen.  The light ballooned on the ceiling, rolled forward and back, tented them in gold: a spotlight. Electricity was dead, and the sounds of nature pounded against the house, scratched at the window, begging entrance.  What else was out there, begging entrance, waiting to claim them?

Scully braced her elbows on the floor and arched her back, her neck bared towards the ceiling, her dark lips parted, reticent.  Her chest bobbed with breath.  A black clip dangled from her hair like a blistered leaf from a winter branch, and ruddy waves threatened to break free, spill across her back.  Mulder trailed his nose along her cheek, her chin tilted toward him, asking for more, asking him silently.  Dana Scully was nothing if not resolute; she always knew what she wanted.  

Answering as silently as she'd asked, his mouth found hers, his lower lip tickling, edging her open.  Her tongue dipped past his teeth, did a thorough sweep, a long, complicated waltz, her head slanted into his hands.  When she parted from him, she left him dizzy, disoriented, swollen; her cheek pressed to his in exhaustion, hot, moist, lost in the aftermath of mouths making love.  

Her body trembled, but remained firm beneath him.  If other women melted to boiling puddles of Jell-o in the arms of their lovers, Scully remained firm, bull-headed as ever.  She was all resilience and familiarity and gentle curves mixed in a simple haiku.  She had the intelligence of a trained pathologist, the hard determination of a mercenary, and she was put together in a musical type of asymmetry.  

Mulder nudged apart her legs with his knees, fitted wisps of golden hair behind her ears.  "Mine," he whispered into her mouth, running his hands over her exposed neck. He kissed her again, losing himself in the taste of her, and nearly bent her back to the floor in zealous abandon. Minutes ticking, pounding, running out - or no, that was his pulse, his heartbeat.  He would die without this, without her; it wasn't the sex, but the completion he would die without.   

Their noses brushed, reverent, tender, caressing patterns over glistening skin.  Her mouth found his ear, her tongue smooth and wet.  "Got it wrong," she breathed, licking at his earlobe until he couldn't remember his name.  "Backwards...Got it... You - mine."

As language floated back to him, Mulder chuckled.  "I - yours.  Me Tarzan, you Jane."  His finger trickled down, flicked at the underside of her breast.  "Jane sexy.  Tarzan hard.  Tarzan fuck Jane - "

Scully snorted into his ear.  "Why do you get to be Tarzan?"  she muttered.  "Because you're the big, macho - "

His palms pressed down on either side of her, caging her beneath him, and his tongue slid down, down her chin, marking her neck in circles that left her without words.  She gasped.  

Turning onto his side for leverage, Mulder edged up the cotton shirt, bunching the hem beneath her breasts.   Her underwear was straight-edged and dark beneath flashlight shadows, caressed at each corner with a swath of lace.  Mulder pressed down over the silk, circled with two fingers above a triangle of damp fabric, tested her curves for pliancy.  Scully moaned something unintelligible, her head dipping, falling back, dragging to her shoulder until the clip fell free from her hair.  Tendrils clung to her shoulderblades, trapped in sweat.  

"Oh," she whispered, the word almost an exhale.  "Mulder..."  

The Universe disappeared in an undulation of shadow over Dana Scully's lips, and the arch of her back.  His pulse beat a thready harmony in his neck.  He wanted to see, wanted to watch, wanted to drink her in until he drowned in her.  Now was soon, but now wasn't nearly soon enough.  She needed to be more naked than she was, she needed to be bare, entirely, completely.  

Mulder paused, his fingertips perched atop the wet silk in an upsidedown V.  Pacing himself, he sauntered his fingers in careful measure back over the material and underneath the hem. Warm there.  Much warmer. Incredibly soft. Wet.  Ready.

"You," he murmured into her ear.  "Everything."

Scully was whispering something back, her lips moving without sound.  He wanted to kiss her again, steal the air right out of her mouth.  

Mulder's breathing slowed, bottomed out.  Desire built a rough pit of fire in his belly, pressing down on his cock in a rush of blood between his thighs.  He was thick, hard, drowsy with need.  He would have Scully, and he would have her now. This moment in lethargic darkness was all that existed.  Only here.  Only now.  Nobody could take this from them.

His hand pressed down against the warm, wet folds of Scully's skin - swollen, waiting for him.  Wetter, she kept getting wetter.  Her legs shifted, trembled; she refused to sit still.  In went one finger, and then two - slick, tight, hot.   Scully mewled and pressed a fist into the carpet, trying to pull up fibers.  He could barely breathe.  

Her hips rocked towards him, and the erection he'd been ignoring became painful and obvious.  He needed more, needed to feel her around him, needed it soon; he was sure he'd black out otherwise.  His mouth on her neck, he pushed down with his lips until finally, one elbow gave out on her, and she tilted awkwardly to the floor.  One bare leg dropped to the carpet, the other stable, bent at the knee.

Steady on one side, she grasped his shirt, tugged at it, pulled with shaky fingers.  She was ready, waiting, dangling - she wanted to fall with him.

"Mulder," she whispered, and the arm that had betrayed her flopped to the floor above her head, palm up.  Her skin beaded with sweat.  She breathed: in through her nose, out through her mouth.  "Take... off - "  

He circled inside of her with his fingers, pulling out, pressing back in, sliding until he found her clitoris and she contracted with him. Her pupils darted, rolled up and back into their sockets. Her lids fluttered shut.  "Oh Jesus..."  She pulled again at the shirt.  "Shirt off... Pants... Off... Mulder - "  He slid his index finger up and out, crooking it slightly, and Scully arched back at an impossible angle.  "Fuck," she muttered, making quick mess of his shirt with groping hands until Mulder was positive she'd rip the material into shreds.

Sitting back to comply, Mulder's fingers edged out of her and Scully hissed at the absence.  She was on her back now, one hand pressed over her nude stomach, the other draped above her head, palm to ceiling.  Her eyes were smoky, the color of flint.  She watched him with totality, hunger steeling her expression, asking him without speech - want this, need this - just you, right now.  Mulder smiled; it was rare that they both wanted the same thing.

Mulder crossed his arms at the hem of his shirt, pulled it up over his head in one quick motion.  The shirt sailed over his desk chair, skipped off the edge and hit the floor. He sat on his knees before her, fumbling with the zipper on his jeans, both of them utterly out of breath.  If he didn't free himself soon he was sure he would end up with some sort of permanent dysfunction.  

Silent, Scully pulled herself to a seated position, scooting closer to him on her knees, bracing one arm on the floor and the other on his hip.  She leaned forward and brushed his nose with hers; her tongue darted out, licked his lips, tasted him, her fingertips tickling at the edge of his zipper.  

Into his mouth, she growled, "Stand up," her hands clutching the material on either side of his hips. At this point, she could have asked him to jump off the roof wearing only a sheet as a cape, and he would have complied.  Without question, Mulder stood as Scully held tight and pulled; the jeans dripped to his ankles like liquid.

Stepping out, Mulder pulled off his underwear, and then his socks, never breaking gaze with her.  He sank to his knees like a man starved for prayer, waiting at the temple doors for her to open them and let him in.   Her mouth pursed in suspended whistle, chest expanding, contracting - her temple bell was about to chime the hour.  

Scully gazed at him, her dark blue eyes an aroused black, pupils dilated.  With trembling fingers, she reached down and pulled off her nightshirt, dropping the article behind her with a crooked index finger.  Her breasts rose and fell with each breath, and Mulder pressed his palm to the underside of her flesh, rubbing his thumb alongside her nipple. She was so soft.  God, she was so, so soft.

"You," she whispered, her fingers on his lips.  "Your lips soft... also."  

Mulder swallowed; had he said that out loud?

She watched him as if circling, marking with her eyes what belonged to nobody else.  Nine and a half years together and they'd cornered the market on singular passion - when passion was directed at the work, intensity drowned out ordinary concerns like heat melted pure January.  And when passion was directed at each other, the result was a coupling so absolute that the Earth stopped and dropped them out by the edge of the Universe.  They played their passion in stark black and white - no gray, never gray.  

Mulder touched a hand to her neck, felt her pulse thudding beneath a warm mane of dark, orange ochre.  

"Is this okay?" he asked, a thumb on her cheek.  He wanted her, wanted her so badly that his head hurt from lack of blood flow.  But he remembered the baby, and how sick she'd gotten earlier, and how dizzy she got the night before.

"Huh?"  

Her hand pressed to his chest, palm drawing light circles below his breastbone.  Her expression was almost comical in its total non-comprehension.

"Is this - " Mulder nodded towards her abdomen.  "Is this going to hurt anything? Anyone? I'm not..."  He frowned, trying to find the words behind a haze of powerful want.  "I'm not going to injure you?  Or - or injure hard-head junior?"

"Hard-head junior?"  

She was smiling now, and advancing on him like a cat stalking a can of tuna.  

Jesus - he was the tuna.  

Insanely aroused at the sight of his wife on all fours, and yet slightly terrified that sex might fracture their child, Mulder backed away on his hands and knees until his bare buttocks hit the desk and there was nowhere else to go. He would surely die from an unsatisfied erection, but at least Scully wouldn't get dizzy and pass out on him from overexertion.  And there would be no scarring of his unborn child, which was a plus.  He could just imagine Scully explaining this situation to the paramedics.  

Pausing about a half-foot short of Mulder's worried crouch by the desk, Scully raised an eyebrow and tilted her head.  Mulder forced a nervous smile.  Obviously mistaking concern for a challenge, Scully bent at the knees and pulled herself up until she towered above him; a renaissance statue of stubborn, beautiful imperfection.  

With a quirk of her lips, Scully hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her panties.  Her face was a detailed mix of amusement.  Ever so slowly, she pushed down at the silk garment until Mulder was forced to endure it slinking all the way down her legs like falling mercury inside a thermometer.  When the shiny material finally hit the floor, she kicked it away with the toe of her left foot, standing above him like a self-satisfied Buddah.

"Some macho, jungle hero you are," she muttered, smiling, and then she lowered herself to her knees, spreading his legs and positioning herself between them.  "I say... Me Tarzan."  

The glint in her dark eyes screamed for rebuttal, for him to kiss her, just kiss her good and hard, and the flashlight beam caressed her breasts in shadow until he could have sworn every part of her was laughing at him.  If she kept this up, Mulder was positive he would either drag her down to the floor, fucking her until her eyes flitted back in her sockets, or else his heart would flat line. There would be needles and electric paddles involved.  And not the kinky kind, either.

"Wait.  Scully -  Are you sure I won't -  " He truly, honestly, really needed to know, but his head was foggy and the English language had evaded him.  "I mean, I can't... I don't  want to - " He searched his mental vocabulary.  "Impale anyone. That is, the kid's in there - "  

And this time she did laugh at him, a deep, throaty laugh, hooded with the smoky volume of desire.  Her neck bent, and her head fell forward onto his chest, her hair blanketing the skin above his ribs.  She pressed a palm to his shoulder and her back arched with cracked giggles, so much laughter Mulder seriously thought about strangling her before ravishing her stupid.  Still painfully hard and now a good deal embarrassed, Mulder blew a frustrated stream of air out through his lips.  

"I'm so glad I amuse you, Scully."

Scully raised her head and grinned at him, blue-black eyes sparkling like stained glass beneath a pinprick of sunlight. She pressed closer to him, wriggled her thighs downward until he was poised at the opening between her legs, not inside, but close, too close, so close he could have bit his tongue off. She was good at this game - she was too good at it.  Her hands rested on either shoulder, tickling, head tilted to one side, mischievous.  

"Jane act like big baby," she muttered, brushing her nose over his cheek, tickling him in warm, slow patterns.  She kissed his chin, still smiling, and a giggle escaped.  "Jane not injure anything." Her lips tugged at his.  "Tarzan promises  - Tarzan doctor, knows these things."  

Finally, Scully reached between his body and hers and grasped the head of his cock, and Mulder jerked as if burned, positive there was an explosion of stars and tiny birds floating in packs around his skull.  She squeezed and ran her fingers up around the shaft, pressing, circling, doing something skilled with her fingertips that should have been illegal in forty-eight states.  She was killing him.  Slowly killing him.  

Mulder grasped her face with both hands, gazed into her eyes; she was fading in and out of focus.  

"Keep...keep your eyes open," he managed through his teeth.  "Don't close... your eyes."

Her thumb running the swollen rim of him, she pressed her hips closer, pressed until he was right there, almost inside her.  And suddenly, Mulder was floating, edging out of his body until he was dizzy and surrounded by the scent of his aroused wife.  The head of his cock peeked at her edge, ventured in once, twice.  Scully groaned, her skin thick with perspiration.  She panted in short, tight puffs, nodding at him, guiding him into her, lowering herself until they were joined completely and she sat on his lap, her eyes level with his.  Their noses brushed, tip to tip, their foreheads pressed together; he was a part of her, a part of her, his body so intimately infused with her that nothing could take her from him.  She ran through his veins.  

"Like this?" she whispered.  

His tongue darted out, wet her lips, his eyes wide open.  "Like this," he agreed.  

With a low grunt, Scully began to move, her hips bucking up and down, slowly - she slid up and out, and then back down, and then up, and then faster, and then slower, and then faster again. When she couldn't seem to make up her mind, Mulder reached down between them and flicked at her wet skin, pressing down with his thumb where they joined together, and her body bucked upwards once more.  

She kept her promise - eyes open, wide open.  

Mulder stared into her until he saw past the flecks of sapphire around her irises, until he saw himself again, until he saw what she saw when she looked at him, and he couldn't remember how to breathe properly.  

Harder she went, harder and harder, faster, deeper, and the pressure in Mulder's stomach built, intensified; there was too much heat, boiling, bubbling.  He would explode from the volume, burn to death, melt.  She was so wet, and slick, and tight, and soft, and her arms wound around his neck, slick with sweat, clutching him, begging him without words to keep her bound to him, secured to the earth, keep her from falling off the edge, because then she would float, and he would float, and then they'd float forever, and they'd never find their way back, but maybe floating wasn't so bad when she was there, and she was always there, she was everywhere, and he was falling into her, falling until he couldn't fall any farther, falling until he ended up inside of her eyes, and he was drowning in a sea of them together:

Scully handing him his jacket, her fingers brushing his knuckles, murmuring, "maybe you should ask yourself if your heart's in it, too,"  her voice on his cell phone, "Mulder, it's me," her shampoo soaking the couch from where she'd showered and fallen asleep, her arms folded over her chest in the basement office, "four-hundred-and-forty-six million dollars, I'm in this as deep as you are, and I'm not the one who overreacted," her lips curled around words like "musculature," and "animaceous," and "allosteric proteins," her arms around him, clutching, tears on his collar, "I won't let you go alone," his lips on her ear, watching her sleep, the hospital bed so much bigger than she, he didn't dare say it, but he thought it, "I love you, Scully, I love you, I love you," her stomach rounded with child, she was just joking, not really involved with the pizza man, look at the way she laughs, just like the sun rising -

And he was back in his body again, shuddering, his head buried in the crook of her neck, his eyes tightly shut; he was swirling down the drain.  Her hips held him tight inside of her, her arms around his neck.  She wasn't there yet, but she was close, damn close; she moved erratically, her breaths echoing in short, hard gasps, her mouth working at the skin at his neck.  Up and down, up and down, faster, harder, and gasps became grunts.

His head raised, and he watched her.  Her neck tilted back, her eyes opening and closing, teeth gritted, nostrils flared, her fingernails raked tracks in his upper back.  She was a study in beauty, in what drove men to insanity.  She was everything.  

And then she suddenly pitched forward into his chest, her muscles contracting around him, jerking him upwards.  The spasm was powerful and hard, and Mulder grasped her arms, steeled her to him, biting his lip as wave after wave of contraction rocked them both, forcing him out until he pressed back in.  She moaned, and breathed, and sighed, and he watched her, just watched her.  

 "Oh God, it's okay.  It's okay.  It's okay," she whispered, her face buried in his neck.  "I love you, too."

Too?  Had he said it first?  He couldn't even remember.  There'd been a roaring tide of sensation, a blinding crash of light in her eyes and then -  

His shoulder was wet, dripping, and it took him a minute to realize the moisture wasn't from saliva or sweat.  "I love you," she murmured again. "I love you. We'll be okay, Mulder -  don't let go.  We'll just sit here and not let go."  Her back heaved in heavy sobs, the wake of her orgasm leaving her exposed, raw, vulnerable.  She was more naked now than she'd been in months.  "We'll strike a bargain.  I won't let you go, so you, you won't, either.  Nobody can take us here.  We're safe.  We're safe right here, aren't we?"

Mulder held her tight, and he remained inside of her, joined with her, sobbing with her, breathing with her.  "We're safe here," he promised, rocking her gently, back and forth.  "I'm not letting go."

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Still More.  Can you believe this?  :-)