The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Seventy-Seven: Worth The Wait

Mara used to be able to sleep through the night. It was a talent she had developed within her first year of moving to the city when she was a little girl. There was no such thing as quiet in her neighborhood, but that didn't matter. She could sleep through anything. Anything except the knowledge that Bucky was not beside her in bed.

She had fallen into the habit of waking in the strange hours between night and morning and rolling over to check if he was there. Sometimes she even got up and padded through their apartment, wrapped in a blanket and squinting in the dim light in case he was up working or had fallen asleep at the kitchen table. But far more often than not he was gone. Off saving their city and getting into fights he would not tell her the details for fear of giving her nightmares. But she had patched him up far too many times to not know what happened to him when he was not safe within their home. And that knowledge was enough to keep her lying awake and staring up at the ceiling, willing him to come back to her.

So, when she was awake and anxious and afraid, she did the one thing she knew best: she planned. And when she was alone in their bed and missing him like a phantom limb, she planned for their first time. Some nights she focused solely on what he would need. Where she knew she couldn't touch him, or the things she would never say for fear of triggering him. She thought about how best to show her love for him. How to make him feel good. How to give him everything she had.

But then there were the other nights. The nights where her blood rushed in anticipation of him. Of his breath on her skin or his hand on her breast or how he would make her call out his name. On those nights she twisted herself up in their bed, eyes closed tight and body aching for him to come home. And when he finally slipped under the blanket beside her and pulled her to him it took every bit of self-control that she had to not face him and tell him how desperately she needed him. Those nights had been better and worse than any other.

Judging by the last hour he had had nights of his own when he thought of her.

He looked down at her, eyes diving into her very soul, and she met his gaze with what she knew to be matching intensity. She loved him. Oh God, how she loved him.

"You have given me something," she said, amazed at how steady her voice was despite her shaky breathing and pounding heart. "Now I want to give you something. Whether or not you want to receive it tonight is entirely up to you. But I," she guided his hand further under her dress until their fingertips reached the underwire of her bra, "want to give you something."

He grinned and shook his head in amazement.

"Darling," he murmured, and something dull spiked in her lower abdomen at the way his mouth formed the word. "You know I can never say no to you."

In a swift and singular motion, he sat up and lifted her up with him so she was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was standing before her. His hands shook slightly as he worked at the buttons of his shirt and for a moment the charming man was replaced by a poor fool just as in love as she was. Mara smiled and stood, resting her hands on his chest and stilling his fumbling.

"May I?" she asked, keeping her voice light and sweet. He nodded as his hands fell to his sides. "Thank you," she replied, dragging her eyes down from his face to his chest. She could feel his gaze on her as she unbuttoned his shirt, and she warmed beneath it.

He rolled his shoulders to help her pull it down his arms. He took off his undershirt for her, and she inhaled sharply at the expanse of his chest. She had seen him shirtless before, but it looked different this time. Maybe it was the lighting. The scars that covered him seemed to glow against his skin. Or maybe it was the heat. While he normally ran cold, he was radiating warmth like a fire mere inches away. Or maybe it was the way he looked down at her, eyes brilliant and deep like a lake so clear you could see the bottom a hundred feet down.