amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Rose is nervous as she waits for Jonathon to show up in the furniture department on Friday evening. Having made the decision to go on birth control five days after meeting him has made her feel unaccountably uncertain. She’s not one to second guess herself, her decisions, nor is she one to rush headlong into the future without careful planning. But something about this man makes her want to throw caution to the wind, grab his hand and run off into the wild blue yonder as if some crazy adventure was waiting just for them.

She likes to think one is, but she also knows that she needs to keep a firm grip on the upheaval going on in her mind right now because it might be very easy to lose herself in him and that’s one thing she has sworn she will never do. Rose likes her independence, has fought hard to keep it intact as she’s pulling herself up towards a better life. She won’t throw that away for a man, any man, but she will make room for him in her life. She already has.

For a moment doubt grips her middle. Just because she wants something with this man does not mean he does. She has made a decision that he may not have any desire to reciprocate. He is a flirt, a big flirt, but…well, you don’t just fall in love at first sight. That’s not reality. It’s not. Only the way he had looked at her as they lay together on that bed, the way his eyes had been…hungry, yes hungry is the right word, for her own was not something she could have imagined.

It is not hunger in the conventional sense, not in the way a man ordinarily looks at a woman he is attracted to and desires to have. It is more of a longing, a need to fill in and complete a missing piece and she knows it because she feels it in herself. Not that she isn’t complete in and of herself, she is, but this is more than that. This is…well, maybe it’s stupid, but it feels like some kind of destiny. Then again it may just be the blush of riotous hormones and a crush of blinding intensity the like of which she’s never dealt with before. Maybe she just imagines he feels it, too.

“Rose?” His voice is soft in her ear and she feels his hand on her shoulder and a shiver sweeps through her body as his fingers slide down to her elbow.

She turns around and she is so close to him her hip grazes his thigh and his sharp intake of breath tells him that this brief touching has gotten to him as much as it has to her. She steps back, takes in a gulp of air, and raises her eyes to meet his. No, there is no denying this. He feels it, too. She smiles and is greeted by a grin that does odd things to her insides. They are still standing closer than they should be.

“Hello, Jona--.” She stops herself, steps further back and says more formally, “Dr. Smith. It’s lovely to see you again. How can I help you today?” This is work and she is a professional and she absolutely will not push him down on the sofa behind him and do anything that involves straddling or tongues or the removal of clothing, as well as quite possibly scarring children for life and getting arrested for indecent exposure.

He closes the distance again, ignoring her personal space and his accent thickens a bit as he says, “Jonathon. Please. I want you to use my name, Rose Tyler.” His warm brown eyes turn dark and there is something in the way he says her name, something unlike anything she’s ever heard, a timbre within his voice that rocks her to the core.

For a moment her eyes flicker shut and her pulse races violently. “Jonathon,” she says on a rush of air and when she opens her eyes again he has stepped back but not before she is very, very sure that he wants her. His eyes shutter then, as if he’s shown her far too much and his smile changes to one of affability.

“Couches first,” he says. “I’d quite like a love seat, as well.” And his flirting is back but it’s not like yesterday and she is relieved and disappointed at the same time because she doesn’t think she can quite handle that same level of intensity again, much as she wants to.

“Love seats are nice. Very comfy,” she agrees. “Though a sectional might provide better value for the money.”

“I’m not worried about money,” he says. “I can afford what I want. Got a good insurance settlement coming, too. But I’ll look at both.”

“So any particular color of fabric? Do you want a pattern or print or just plain?”

“No prints, I find them chaotic when I’m trying to think. And I quite favor brown,” he tells her.

Rose should have figured that. She’d had to steer him away from choosing almost everything in brown when she’d helped him shop for a wardrobe. Not that he didn’t look great in brown, but she liked him in color, particularly blue, just not that atrocious suit he’d come in wearing that first day. Come to think of it, it was a practical choice for a sofa.

She leads him over to her current favored sectional in that color. It might not be a couch and love seat, but it’s got an intimate slightly widened end perfect for two people snuggling together side by side with their feet up. The back is so dark it is nearly black and made of leather and the seat cushions are a rich mocha. The back cushions vary and are really very large pillows in chocolate brown, beige, mocha and burgundy. Two smaller throw pillows are divided into four squares diagonally symmetric in beige and chocolate brown. It is gorgeous and plush and when Jonathon sinks down onto it he grins in delight.

“Oh, Rose Tyler, you are the most amazing woman I have ever met. This is exactly me. How can you know this in just five days?” She starts because he, too, has been counting the days. He pats the seat next to him and she sits down beside him. “Do you like it, too?” he asks her.

“It’s my favorite, actually. That corner there is perfect for cuddling up in.” She points out the feature.

He glances over at it then back at her and his slow, warm smile graces his face. “Better with two, I imagine.”

“Good as a love seat, I’d think,” she says softly. “If you’re in to snuggling.”

“Oh, I very well could be,” he says huskily, “if the right girl were to join me.”

“Do you have a right girl in your life, Jonathon?” she asks him. He’s edging closer to her.

“I might have my eye on someone,” he tells her. “Are you in to snuggling?” Her mouth is completely dry. All she’d really have to do is tilt her head to the left and lean forward just a few inches. His lips are so close to hers now. He licks them and her stomach does a slow sink down her torso. “Tell, me, Miss Tyler, do you have a right man?”

“Think I may have just met him,” she says daringly, “five days ago.” She can’t believe she just said that out loud.

“Rose!” Her name is called from halfway across the floor over in bedding. She stands up hastily and searches out the body that goes with the voice. “There you are,” calls her fellow employee Sarah Jefferson. It is her first day in furniture. “I can’t find the invoices.”

“I’ll be right back,” she tells Jonathon and rushes off to the counter. Quickly she digs through the drawer beneath the register and finds only the final cardboard piece of the note pad. “We’re out,” she tells Sarah. “You’ll need to go to Brendan’s office and get one out of the green bin.”

“Thanks.” Sarah smiles at her customer and excuses herself and Rose heads back to where she left Jonathon. Her heart sinks when he’s no longer there. She closes her eyes and tries hard to mask her disappointment. She was too forward with him and she’s scared him off and what if she never sees him again? Something clenches hard around her chest and her throat tightens and she curses herself for being so stupid, for allowing herself to get all wrapped up in a man. She should have known better, should have known that letting herself even think of getting distracted this close to graduation was idiotic. She should have--.

“Rose!” Her heart swells at the rich voice calling from off to the left and she sees Jonathon sitting in a recliner with his feet up and his shoes off and she laughs in relief or amazement or perhaps simple joy that he is still there. And she knows in this moment that she is lost, her heart is his and it’s so ridiculous because she doesn’t do this, she doesn’t fall head over heels in a matter of days. Only she has. She has, and it’s the best feeling in the world.

Jonathon wanders over to the arm chairs and recliners and finds one in rich, warm leather that matches the burgundy tones of some of the back cushions on his desired sectional. It’s not like he actually needs that much seating, he doesn’t know anyone here to invite over, but he likes the feel of the soft, buttery material and he slides easily into it after he slips off his shoes. His fingers slip over the leather and he sighs.

It feels good beneath his hands and a half buried memory of him in a dark jacket of like material rises to the surface. He used to wear leather all the time, wonders when it was exactly that he stopped, thinks maybe it was around the time of the accident when everything changed and he’d lost so much of who he was, from his own mind that still felt like a stranger lived in it sometimes to the death of his family. His mind skitters away from that thought. He became a different man that day and it’s taken him years to feel like a full person again. If he looks too hard into those emotions he thinks he still might shatter.

Instead he focuses on the here and now, the good things that have come into his life since moving to London. He has a good job, a nice flat, a quirky, witty, bossy secretary–no, office manager–who makes work about more than just being a genius who invents and modifies and sketches all day long. But mostly there’s Rose Tyler, someone who by her very presence in the room makes him a happier man.

He knows it’s foolish, but he also knows she’s attracted and it pleases him to no end that this young woman, so pretty and so smart and so honest, is reacting to him that way. He’d thought there for a minute that the girl was going to snog him in the middle of the department store and he certainly wouldn’t have protested, had wanted to lean in and meet her lips with his own, but he’d still had enough presence of mind, barely, not to do that in the middle of her job.

Jonathon smiles as she heads back from beds towards the couches and sees her stop, sees her shoulders slump as she gazes in the direction where she’d left him. Does she think he’s left? And it’s bothering her that much? A sudden desperate urge to reassure her rocks him. He calls out her name and the change in her body posture is instantaneous. She whirls around and he offers her a goofy grin and the smile she turns on him takes up half her face and is so beautiful that his jaw goes slack.

She walks over to him and he shuts his mouth quickly. “Did you want the chair, too?” she asks him and he just nods dumbly. “Anything else today?”

“Need a dining set,” he manages to get out and she nods.

“Come along then,” she says and he puts the footrest down and sits up, stands, steps into his shoes and follows her into another section of the store. He is immediately taken with a kitchen table and chairs that are painted deep burgundy and he’s unaccountably happy when she smiles her own approval.

It’s ridiculous how joyful it makes him when he’s the one who has to live with it every day and her opinion should not count for so much. Only thing is, it does and he can see in his mind’s eye this beautiful woman sitting at his table, wrapped in his robe, hair rumpled from sleep, eating a breakfast he’s made her after a night spent…well, his mind dashes away from the details of that.

He is not going to get himself so worked up in public that he springs an erection she’ll notice. No matter how sure he is now of her attraction to him he does not want to make her uncomfortable or scare her. No matter how strongly he wants this woman it has only been five days. He does not want a quick tumble, a few gropes, a few thrusts and it’s over. He wants slow and leisurely and fantastic. But before that, before any of that, he wants to build a relationship with this girl that he will never take for granted. He does not just want Rose Tyler’s body. He wants her. All of her.

She stops suddenly as they reach the cash register counter and he bumps into her, his front rubbing against her back and he practically leaps away from her body as a certain portion of his anatomy tries to convince his mind that waiting for anything is rubbish and he should just pick her up, throw her over his shoulder, haul her back to his cave and shag the daylights out of her. His breathing has gone shallow and she is frozen in place for a long moment.

Finally Rose shakes herself and heads around the counter, but when she faces him her face is flaming red. Without a word she writes up his purchase order and he hands over payment. By the time the transaction is complete her face is back to its normal healthy pink and she is able to meet his eyes again.

“So I’ll meet you at your flat in the morning, then?” she says shyly.

“Yes. You’re sure you don’t mind?” he asks her.

Her eyes flick to his mouth then back up to his eyes again. “Never been more sure of anyone in my life.”

They say their reluctant good-byes and it is only as he walks away that it registers what she actually said to him. Not that she’d never been more sure of anything in her life, but that she’d never been more sure of anyone. He stops dead and closes his eyes as his heart turns a cartwheel in his chest, then turns back for one last look. He laughs when he realizes that he’s just caught her staring at his bum and gives her a cheeky wave. She smiles as her eyes race up to meet his gaze and she gives him a cheery wave in return. He could get used to this unfamiliar happiness. He’s certainly going to try.

Ch. 5: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/120461.html