No Escape

Make Love To Me

A/N: Warning, because the sex in this chapter is more graphic than the last one.

The soonest that she could, Emily begged her therapist to jumpstart her training. She wasn't prescribed her old routine, not when her shoulder was just starting to build the muscles she'd lost from the injury and from the months of immobilization. But she was good as new, just not athlete material quite yet. But when she was given the go signal to start jogging again, because the slight jostling of her shoulder joint wouldn't have any effect on her progress anymore, she took the chance.

It was about a week and a half since her mother was arrested, and she was trying to burn herself out, unintentionally, by running distances that were longer each day.

She would always start in a light jog, but despite it being her third day since she picked up the habit of running again, she was sure she'd forced herself to sprint the quarter mile home. It was her usual routine, but at how unconditioned her muscles were, she was straining. She knew that at the rate she was going, she might injure herself. She'd spent countless training sessions with the swimming coach to know that. But all she really cared about was the pain.

She wanted to feel the burn on her legs, and the tightness on her chest until she had to force herself to focus on her breathing, lest she let herself fall short of her daily routine. She would force past the stiff muscles, the occasionaly cramp until she had to concentrate on correcting how her feet would land to lessen the strain on one or both feet. It was all very mechanical. And it was all a very good distraction.

She came home that day breathing hard, and she had to cool down in the living, just walking around. She barely noticed anything around her, and the only thing to distract her now was the blaring coming from her earphones. She counted while she breathed, making sure to prolong her inhales to normalize her breathing again. She took note of her heart rate, frowned when she noticed it was faster by about fifteen beats than her normal when she was still training. Out-of-shape, she thought to herself.

She must have been on her 20th lap of the living room floor behind the couch before she noticed there was actually someone seated there, blonde hair just barely peaking from the back at how slouched she was. Emily pulled her earphones off, letting them hang off her shoulders, and she didn't bother turning off her iPod. She walked towards the couch, sweat still dripping unbidden by her and she placed a kiss on top of Alison's head in greeting, a belated one since she's been there for a while now, cooling down.

Alison hummed, looking up at her, and without warning, wrapped an arm around Emily's waist to pull her over the back of the couch, so Emily ended up on her back, head perfectly placed on Alison's lap. Despite worrying about all the things she had to push to the back of her mind for the past hour of workout, Emily found it in her to grin up at her girlfriend, who was smiling softly at her, a smile she only ever gave Emily when they were alone. Emily was aware that the only times she smiled genuinely now was around Emily or her father.

"I'm all sweaty, Ali."

Alison hummed again, this time in agreement. "I've never minded you sweaty," she whispered, and the innocent comment didn't sound as innocent as it should have. She placed a kiss to Emily's forehead as if to prove her point. One of Alison's hands settled on Emily's hair, running through the strands damp from sweat, and the other was on Emily's stomach, from where she had pulled the girl over.

"Yeah?" Emily's response came out a little breathless, and she wasn't ignorant to the fact that it wasn't because she'd run five miles about fifteen minutes ago.

Alison bit her bottom lip, and it popped out of her mouth when she saw Emily's eyes drift down from her eyes to watch it stretch into a grin. Her reply was to lean down, and the kiss was so soft, so light, it felt like they didn't even kiss, but the familiarity of that kiss, with Emily on Alison's lap, and with Alison leaning down to press their lips together, was not lost on Emily.