Betty Jo closed her book and looked out over the garden where vivid greens cradled all the colors in the world and the flowers rushed headlong into a life that could be measured in days and let her mind wander.  Three weeks ago she'd sat on this same terrace terrified out of her mind and humiliated almost beyond recovery every time she looked at the bruises on Ian's face.  Then the garden had been just beginning it's cycle, the early spring crocus and daffodil, the jonquils and tulips and narcissus had just appeared, turning tentative faces towards the sunshine.  Now they jostled each other for a better place in the sun to show off their glowing life.

In the days that had followed she'd taken the first tentative steps into a new life beginning of necessity with dealing with what had happened, both with Collins and in Oman, working with the empaths at the Refuge.  She and Dinah and Doni had talked a lot, about kidnapping and rape, about violence and death, and about being thrust into what turned out to be a cocoon that had changed them and then spit them out again into their lives.  Only those lives weren't the same any more, made no sense in unexpected ways, didn't fit like they had because they weren't the same.

Meaning they'd talked a lot about feeling powerless and helpless, and about fear and terror.  They'd dissected their shared understanding of themselves as strong, independent self-directed women and the ways that broke down and wasn't what they needed to sustain them coming out of the other side of the sorts of experiences they'd known even if those were the things that got through them.  Those strengths they used to pick up the pieces of their lives and go on, not letting the sudden understanding of their own mortality send them skittering to hide under the covers.

But they weren't what they needed emotionally when trying to fit a whole new set of insights into their self-understanding -- insights that were all about vulnerability and fragility and the monsters that prowled in the night; both two legged and those that crawled out of the fault lines of their pasts, filled with symbols of all their guilts and failures and feeding on their newly learned awareness of the the limits of their strength and will.  Some of what they needed they found in each other, in sharing what had happened with someone who knew the words by heart, could sing the counterpoint and do the rift and rill of improvisation on the melody line of tangled thoughts and feelings...of guilt and blame and failure, all the rational and irrational detritus of the place they'd been.  Some they'd found alone, in tapping a well of resources they'd never known they had, in letting the experiences be real and staying in the fire of them until, like tempered steel, they emerged transformed into something stronger and more flexible because they'd allowed the events into the matrix of their lives like tempered steel refitted carbon into its molecules.  The foreign element added to the whole, it didn't subtract.

The other piece, Betty Jo thought, was the love each shared with an unreconstructed male who went in terror of losing them and who, in spite of that, struggled against every instinct and impulse to lock them away somewhere safe where they'd never be taken from them again.  To be loved like that, loved above all else practically, was a sobering thought.  Humbling, she realized.  Ian would without hesitating eat glass if that was what he had to do to keep her safe, to make sure she never got hurt again.  He'd grit his teeth and let her go back to work, if she wanted it. If something would bring her happiness or peace he'd move heaven and earth to find it for her and never count the cost.  He'd, in fact, try equally hard to make sure she never knew the cost.

Without Ian's arms around her in the night, his body warm and living against hers she didn't know if she could have gotten this far.  She knew she'd never have done it this fast.  Without his understanding and love, always there, always available she'd have been lost.  He'd listened when she needed that and been content to sit with her in silence when she'd needed that.  He'd given her all the room she needed and hadn't begrudged it, but had been as willing, as quick, to come as close as she needed or wanted, making love to her or just holding her.

She smiled at the flowers through a mist of tears.  You can't repay that, you daren't even try, she knew.  But she could love him better now, maybe be wiser about it, more understanding and more flexible.  She could give him those things, she thought, as she set the book aside and stood up.  She could love him by allowing him to love her the way he needed to, the way he instinctively felt most right with, the ways that made sense to him.  Oh yes, she could make it easy for him to do those things and it would, she decided, be her pleasure and delight, her joy to do it.

So thinking, a smile hovering, she knocked on the door to his study and went in, closing the door behind her and leaning back against it, letting her eyes caress him.  "Hi."

"You're looking rather smug about something. I'm delighted to see it. What sort of mischief are you planning?"  He laid aside a ledger book, one she recognized. He was trying to get serious about Avery House, figure out all the intricacies of land management as well as the house itself.

"I was wondering if you were the sort of land-owning aristocrat who let women sit on his lap in the middle of the day," she said.

"Only if she's aware of the inevitable consequences of same," he replied, his lips twitching.

She tilted upright off the door and walked a few steps closer, her expression thoughtful.  "And what would those be?" she asked, twining her fingers together behind her back.

"Said landowning aristocrat scooping you up and making off with you toward the nearest love nest."

She took another few steps, veering towards the side of his desk, giving his words due consideration.  "Yes, I can see where those might be inevitable, particularly if the land-owning aristocrat picked the right sort of woman to sit on his lap in the middle of the day."  She paused, her lips almost beyond her control, eying him as if she were measuring him down to the nearest millimeter.  "Doni told me the other day about when she told Stephen she was pregnant.  She said she used the moment to realize a life long fantasy.  It was a moment somewhat like this.  The middle of the day, his office, sitting on his lap.  And he's a land-owner though perhaps not an aristocrat."

"And are you desirous of trying out that fantasy yourself?  One shudders to think what a proper sort of Englishman might think about off-colour sexual fantasies. Or.. not."

"Yes, well there is that, and I have to admit it has me gravely concerned," she said, advancing her casual stroll towards him by a pace or two.  "Still, what's the worst that can happen, I ask myself.  And myself answers that it's possible the proper Englishman has his own off-color fantasies and only needs the right sort of encouraging and understanding woman to realize them."  She was along side of the desk now and leaned a hip against it, running her hand over its polished surface, clearly pondering a great mystery. 

"Well, I've heard, but do not claim to be an expert you understand, that Englishmen are not quite so proper as they pretend. I've even heard it said that they might be convinced to let down their masks and cavort, actually cavort, that was the word used, given the proper incentives not to mention instructions toward same."

She looked at him, her eyes gleaming, alight with speculation.  "And were they specific as to the proper incentives?" she asked while she placed a slender foot on the edge of his chair, the toenails a sparkling red.  She slid it over the top of his thigh and down the other side where she let it rest.  Satisfied with its placement she looked at him again.  "For cavorting?"

"My understanding is that the incentives involved were some combination of physical and verbal with perhaps a soupcon of imagination. Although thinking about it, I suspect they were wrong in their under-emphasis on the imaginative."

"Do you know, I suspect you might be correct.  A fertile field for investigation perhaps?' she suggested, wriggling her other hip onto his desk so she was sitting directly in front of him.  Pleased with her perch she shifted her foot further forward, her toes running along the inside of his thigh.  She let it come to rest and then flexed her big toe, rubbing it gently over a small arc and then back again, never taking her eyes from his.  "I don't think I've ever told you that I do admire your sartorial taste."  She reached out a hand, nails painted the same sparkling red and drew one finger down his chest along side the buttons of his shirt.  "Do you use a tailor?"  She smiled at him and withdrew her foot.

"Indeed I do. From an old and venerable family. Seville Row, of course. He despairs of me, however. He wonders whatever happens to so many of my shirts."

"Does he?" she asked moving from the desk to his lap so she was straddling him, her knees on either side of his thighs.  "What do you tell him?  And can you lock the door from here?"

The lock in the door turned on its own, which was a lucky thing because Ian was unable to get up for more than one reason. "I tell him I'm an adventurer who lives a life of danger.  He laughs at me."

"Hard to imagine," she said, going to work on his buttons.  "But we appear to have drifted from the subject."  She spread the sides wide moving her hands over his chest, something close to a purr vibrating in her throat.   "Fantasies, wasn't it?  Proper English gentlemen, land-owning aristocrats?  Encouraging and understanding women.  And the results of that sort of mixture."  She glanced over her shoulder as she said it.  Then the purr returning she returned her gaze to his chest and pleasuring her hands with his skin.  "But perhaps I should share my new goal with you, inspired by my conversation with Doni?  Before I forget."

"Oh, now that is a way to worry a man, land-owning aristocrat or not. What have you two been discussing?"  His hands had found their way up under her sweater and he was busily undoing her bra.

"Well the fantasy she realized.  It made me realize I needed a goal in life and the perfect one came to me just a little while ago.  Only if you're worried it might be something of a problem since you're an indispensable part of my achieving it."  She bowed her back slightly, her eyes closing as he achieved his own, immediate goal.

His hands hurried round to play with her nipples. "I see. Well, perhaps you'd best instruct me as to your fantasy. I shall, I promise, do my best to assist you achieve this goal."

"Well, I warn you it will take dedication and commitment, a keen eye for architectural possibility and a fair amount of time," she said, fighting for breath. 

He'd leaned forward and was nuzzling her neck. "Do go on."

Her head fell back, giving him better access.  "Well you want to get to know the house and grounds better, so my goal, purely to help you with that, is to find every horizontal or vertical surface inside and outside this house upon or against which it might be possible to make love with you and try them out to see if I'm right or not.  I daresay there will be some I might miss that you might identify...if you were so inclined."

He stopped kissing her and froze for a second. Then he looked up and met her eyes. "I had no idea I was in love with a woman who was so serious about testing the limits of our world. I'm delighted to learn it."  Then he could stand it no more and began laughing. "She devil. Look what you do to me. Rip away all my aplomb."

She smiled at him.  "It's what I live for."

He rested his hands on her hips. "You look so much better. Are you happy?"

Her smile changed, grew luminous.  "Happier than I've ever been.  Are you?"

"I'll reply after we've achieved your fantasy properly."

She frowned.  "That will take days, even weeks or months.  You're going to make me wait that long?"

He laughed. "Can't you tell how happy I am just by looking at me?"

She studied his face for a moment, and the light in his eyes.  "Yes," she said softly, bending to kiss him.  "But, and correct me if I'm wrong, you live in dread of the day I go back to work or even go somewhere where I might not be safe where you aren't."

He reached out and lifted one of her hands to his lips. "Am I that transparent to you?"

"Do you mind?" she asked, caressing his cheek.

"No. But it does rather ruin my image of myself. I'm supposed to be the cold, cool magician whom nothing can touch."

"I promise not to tell anyone, honey."  She looked down at his chest for a moment, making sure and then she met his eyes again.  "Marc got a body guard for Dinah."

"Yes, he did," he replied, going suddenly very serious.

She was equally as serious, though, she thought, more relaxed.  "It's what he needed to take the dread away.  To be comfortable.  What do you need?"

He toyed with her hand. "Don't ask me that, darling. Please."

She traced his jaw with her fingers, measuring the tension, and writing love on his skin as she did.  "Will you tell me why?"

"Because I'm still totally unreasonable where you are concerned. I'm struggling to accept that you are a modern woman and one who has every right to do as she likes. And that it is my lot in life to love you regardless."

"But you forget one thing.  Or maybe two.  If I have that right, and I think it's debatable, to act upon it unilaterally would be to make the love we share a trivial thing.  In this, as in so many things, because of that love, it's not just about me and it never will be again.  The other is I'm not really a modern woman at all, particularly if that's the definition of modernity.  Frankly I hope to god I'm never that self-centered."

He frowned at her. "I don't mean it to sound self-centered. It is just that women are not merely some extension of a man in this world. She's not property either of her father or of her husband. I've no desire to go back to that time. And I've no desire to change you merely to make me worry less. If you change I want it to be your choice."

She was quiet for a long time, looking at him.  Then she said, "I asked Dinah why she puts up with the bodyguard and she told me it was simple.  When Marc hurts, she hurts.  When Marc hurts because of her it's a million times worse.  Having the bodyguard is a small price to pay so he doesn't hurt because of her.  And as time has gone by she doesn't even see that way anymore.  She sees it as one of the ways that she expresses, that she lives tangibly the love she feels for him and not just because by doing it she's accepting him the way he is."  She bent down and kissed him.  "Don't you understand yet?  It's got nothing to do with you trying to change me.  I'm as totally unreasonable about you, about your happiness and safety as you are about mine."

"Darling, what are you trying to tell me?"

"That I'm not going back to work and that I need to know -- need to know -- what you need to take the dread away even if it's bodyguards and locked dungeons."

He sat back into his chair. "Are you giving up the work you love just because you think I'd be terrified all the time?"

"No, though I think that would be reason enough."

"Why then?" he asked her, his face going a bit pale.

"I don't know that I can explain it completely except to say that almost dying has a tendency to shift ones priorities around.  Certainly what happened is a part of it.  There's no way it couldn't be.  And it may be that at some point I'll go back in some other role.  I don't know.  I don't see that far ahead right now.  I don't feel a need to."  She eyed him for a moment.  "Nor," she added, "do I know what I'm going to do instead yet.  Though I do have at least one short term goal."

"Beyond making love in all possible places here?" He was trying to sound light but he wasn't doing that well with it.

"Well no," she admitted.  "But I feel sure that as I apply my mind to the matter others will come to me.  I've a couple of ideas that I'm germinating," she said smiling at him.  Then she said, taking a guess and praying she was right, "I'm not over it yet but I'm fine.  It may take a long time before I can look at you and say I'm over it.  I'll never be able to say it hasn't changed me or my life.  But that isn't a bad thing unless I make it one."

He pulled her into a fierce hug. "You wanted to know what terrifies me?  It terrifies me to think of you afraid and unsure and miserable. And I can't make you happy, just me. I can try, but really, you are the only one who can truly do that. And more than anything else, even having you with me, I want you happy. If I have to give you up, ever, to have that, I would. Gladly. Only to know it was the best for you."

She settled against him, holding on tight, her heart aching for him.  "I know, darling.  I feel the same way about you."  She nestled there for a moment, until she felt his arms relax a bit and then she pulled back to see his face.  "I'm not afraid or unsure or miserable.  I'm making a calculated decision about how I want to organize my life, that's all.  Now, would you please tell me what you need to take the dread away.  Telling me isn't making me do anything."

He nodded, gave himself a minute or two, then said, "I'd like to know you are safe always. A bodyguard would help. Teaching you magic to use to protect yourself would be better. But the last will take time."

She thought about it for a moment, making sure again, testing her decision and then nodded.  "I have no problem with either of those things."  She smiled as she said it and then kissed him.  "But I'm not going to be your apprentice and do everything you say.   Not unless, that is, I'm learning sexual magic."

He smiled into her eyes. "I've been trying to think for weeks how I could ask you to let me protect you. You're a cop, after all, hardly someone who would find that sort of thing comfortable."

"You remember when I made my little confession that night at the Refuge and what we promised each other?" she asked.

"Perhaps you'd best remind me."

"About not censoring, about just saying it unfiltered, unedited, about how you needed to know what I'm thinking, about how the only way you could be you with me is if I was myself with you?"

"Ah, that conversation. I see where it seems to apply."

"Good," she said grinning at him.  "Now in recompense you can make the bodyguard a hunk that will make me the envy of all who see me."

He grinned. "I'll do my best. Too bad Leroy has a job."

"And Laz," she said.

"True.  I wonder if I could talk Lis into it. Does he qualify?"

"Entirely up to you, darling," she said.  Then she looked at his chest, spreading her hands over it.  "I knew there was something I forgot.  Tell your tailor I was thinking of him when I didn't just rip your shirt open."

"I'll be certain to do so. But I don't think I'm qualified to judge if Lis is 'a hunk.'"

"Ah, I see.  Ask Bobbie, she's the only one looking these days." 

His hands were undoing her clothes when he replied, "We do have to help her out.  Not right now though."

She started purring again.  "No, not right now.  I think we should start with the desk as our first horizontal surface, unless you have another preference."

"It works for me." He magicked everything off the desk and found it eminently use-able.