When one has gone without for so long, it can be difficult to remember simple pleasures. Like that of waking up in a bed warmed by two people instead of just one. Or the thrill of pleasure when she could slip from bed unnoticed to find her shift on the chair next to the bed because a man helped her leave it there. Her fingers caressed over the head of her walking stick, carefully propped there for her, and she smiled to herself at the dedication of her household. The dedication that allowed her to wrap her dressing gown- always placed delicately over the back of her chair so as not to disturb her walking stick- around herself as she did on so many mornings.

This morning would not be so different and yet an eternity stretched between it and all those that came before. An eternity she wanted to fathom. An eternity in which she desired to bask now.

Even with the loss of her eyes, there was something irreplaceable about having the warmth of sun on one's face. The early morning let her focus on the sounds of birds, the work in her fields, and the lap of the river that bid her imagine her home. The one buried in the moors and fens of Scotland. The home so different from the one she built here and yet so ingrained in her that when Murtagh returned, bringing all those memories and ideas with him, it was like stepping back into the stone halls of Castle Leoch.

His voice broke her thoughts and she almost turned toward him. An old habit but one that had her wondering if the magic found in early mornings after sleeping in a doubly occupied bed had mended her sight as well. Except that the world still only existed for her in shades of light and dark. With the morning dawning as it was, her eyes were flooded with the brightness to match her mood.

Their voices, soft despite the house's size and the noise of the morning rendering conversation inaudible through the doors, exchanged the requisite invitations and deflections. Etiquette taught to young ladies about how to defer the advances of a man who might seem too keen… no matter how keen she might be herself for the offer. And given the dearth for the both of them in regards to indecent proposals or the chance to follow up on them, they both strummed the tension in the room like a string they could pluck between them until the resonance created a harmony for them.

A harmony reached when she pleaded about breakfast being ready. To which his only reply was, "Let it wait."

It could, she remembered as a her lips curled up in a soft smile. She was the lady of the house and breakfast would be served at her convenience. The rest of the house be damned or fend for themselves for all she cared as she allowed the dressing gown to drop to the floor. Her knees pressed into the bed, depressing the straw-stuffed mattress on the rope-knotted straps holding it above the floor, and she crawled the short space toward him.

He stayed still, waiting for her. His hand at her shoulder gave her the distance to judge how close his head was to hers but her fingers still shook slightly as they found his cheek. She caressed the soft hair of his beard a moment, the tips of her fingers brushing into his equally soft hair, and kissed him gently.

No matter the passion of the night before, or how there were aches in her body that she remembered as if from dreams of another life long before this one, she wanted this to be slow. This would be her interaction to guide. In the dark of the night, wracked with forgotten experience and nerves, he led. Here, in the light of day, she wanted to lead.

Their kiss broke after a moment and his bearded face brushed against her shoulder as he pulled her shift to the side. It slid over her other shoulder as the collar tried to compensate for the movement and she shuffled closer to kiss along the exposed portions of his neck. His hair, loose and hanging down to his shoulders, ran against her face and she sighed a moment at the sensation before pushing her fingers into it so her mouth could move unhindered over his exposed skin again.

He hummed when they matched motions, kissing one another over bare skin at easily accessible shoulders, and ran his tongue into the natural indent of her skin over bone when her hands tugged the sheets out from under her knees to let her be closer. Even with the cooler temperature of morning, the skin of his legs pressed warm against hers and she shuffled to get her legs over his to better straddle him back against the bed.

Her hands touched the headboard, holding them steady so his head did not knock against the wood, and released the tension in her legs to sit on his thighs. Her shift created a thin barrier between them but Murtagh did not allow it to stop him moving his hands over her. When he could he used the fabric to tease her, drawing it over her sensitizing breasts or running it temptingly toward the bundle of nerves he proved adept at managing to her pleasure the night before. But when he settled his hands on her thighs and pushed the material toward her waist, Jocasta allowed her hands to leave the tactile memorization of his skin to remove it.

The chill contrast between the nipping bite of the morning and his warmth next to her forced a shiver. A shiver Murtagh traced when his kisses mapped the trail of gooseflesh that prickled her skin and only worsened under his attentions. For all her desperate pleadings to whatever god cared to listen to allow her to see him, her fingers replaced her eyes in finding his reactions.

One reaction was the jerk in his neck when she sucked at his pulse. Or the shudder that betrayed him when her hands mapped over his chest and her fingers scored his delicate skin between the scars she wanted to trace in chronological order. And even the little buck to his hips when she squeezed at the rise of his ass.

If she could list what she wanted to see on Murtagh, in that sliver of eternity she desired, his eyes would be the first. She had so missed eyes. Missed what they could tell. Missed exploring the depths of the soul through them. And she so wanted to see Murtagh's soul. To watch the ageless evidence of life that belonged uniquely and wholly to him there.

She also wanted to watch his pupils dilate in passion. Wanted to witness the scrunch of them closing in pleasure when she grazed his erection with her nails. Wanted to enjoy the crinkle of skin at the edges of his eyes when he laughed or smiled. Wanted to meet those eyes with her own reactions so he could follow them to their mutual pleasure.

Her hands were not enough for that. It was almost as if she was a second late on every reaction. A second she did not want to lose as she tried to drive him as mad with pleasure as she already was and his fingers had barely touched her. Yet she already quivered with the roil of possibilities at the gentle flick of his fingers against her breasts, or the delicate tweak of her nipples, or the wisp of his touch toward her nerves, or the soft line of kisses he continued to leave over her neck and shoulders.

He waited for her. That much her hands could feel. The tension in his chest and legs vibrated against her to feed her own until she wanted nothing more than to rise up and sink down on him to end their anticipation.

But they were not through yet. It was too soon. She needed more.

She wanted to see his arms. Wanted to trace the callouses on his hands with her eyes the way she tapped them with her fingers. Wanted to track the burns from his work and note how they crisscrossed old scars. Wanted to measure the line of him from his shoulders to his hips and then to his feet. Wanted to appreciate the figure of him in profile to note the definition to his legs and his ass. Wanted to memorize the shape and form of his back to those shoulders. Wanted to finally measure the color of him to see how time had weathered him as it had her.

If she could, she would see herself as well. She herself as he saw her and perhaps a bit more. A chance to thoroughly know herself again the way she had not for such a long time. The way she never would again.

"Jo?" His fingers continued their torturously soft exploration of her skin and she noticed how stiff she grew, sitting immobile on him as she lost herself in a whirlpool of self-pitying thoughts. "Where'd you go?"

"I'm right here." She smiled and tried to kiss him but he avoided her lips so she only brushed his cheek.

"No, you're somewhere far away." His palm, rough with work and labor, pressed to her cheek through her hair. "You're worrying and stewing over something that neither you nor I can change."

"If only we'd come to know of one another sooner than this." She let her fingers curl against his face, her knuckles grazing his cheekbones and into his beard. "Back when I could see you. See myself. Maybe then I wouldn't be so nervous."

"Nervous?"

"Nervous that I'm not what I think myself to be."

"Because ye cannae see?" She could only nod, words inadequate to fully capture her emotions. "You've seen me with your hands."

"I want to see you with my eyes."

"We can't change the past or nature love." His hands skimmed down, taking place at her hips. "What's done is done and, for better or worse, we'll have to be just as we are now."

"Then…" Jocasta worried her lip a moment and swallowed before whispering the end of her question. "Am I still beautiful?"

"What?"

"I was never overly vain. I loved three Camerons for their poetry and their artistic nature but they loved me for so much that I can no longer control. So much about me that I can't even tell is still there." Her hands dropped to his chest, barely holding there when his hands came up to entangle with hers. "Are we here, now, because you find me beautiful or because you found me?"

"I do hope you've not been here so long you forgot that back home you take the blessings and grace the Lord bestows upon you and you don't ask any questions." She laughed with him as he brought her fingers to his lips. "I always found you beautiful. Now I get to do this because I found you."

"How did we ever manage not to see one another before now, Murtagh Fitzgibbons Frazer?"

"We were both too busy looking at people who wouldn't have us." His beard scratched and simultaneously smoothed the skin of her neck again. "I was looking at a woman who wouldn't have me and you were looking for three men who couldn't keep you."

"And now?" She held her breath as his hands dropped hers to hold her breasts.

"Now we're both looking in the right direction at the right person."

Their mouths met, finding one another in a rush and then slowing. Slowing to bask in the sensuous exploration they now sought. Sleep far from their minds, the worries of the morning even farther, and the chill of the morning dissipating for the cicada buzzing heat that promised a swelteringly humid day. They allowed the drugging sensation of gathering heat from the temperature outside to guide the tempo of their interactions and were not disappointed.

Each meeting, breaking, and rejoining was another chance to indulge in the drugging calm of kisses. Kisses that explored deeper with tangling tongues and moving lips guided by their hands delving in one another's hair. Jocasta slipped forward, trying to gain better control of their kiss, and moaned when it gave Murtagh a firmer hold on her ass and her breasts. But he grunted and growled into her as a quest for ever increasing closeness had her pressing and grinding forward on his erection.

They followed one another, fingers and hands winding or playing on the fraying nerves of two people slowly freed from fears as they had been from clothing. And when she could stand it no longer, urged on by the inarticulate sounds from Murtagh, Jocasta rose onto her knees and sought him out with her hand. He groaned when she wrapped around him and then knocked his head against the board behind him as she sank down.

It took them a moment to find a comfortable position, working between the two of them for a rhythm they could sustain and yet enjoy, and then they moved. Steadily, as if cued by the river just beyond the front gate, they allowed an undulating roll to work between them. Between their quick kisses and longer caresses. Between their touches and sighs. Between their touches and moans.

But when they reached the high for the first time that morning, Jocasta wondered if seeing would make it better. Her eyes would shut anyway, overtaken as she was by the pleasure, so there would be nothing to see except the backs of her own eyelids. And her eyes might betray her so she would miss the flutter of Murtagh's heartbeat or the tremor running through his abdomen as his body stilled next to hers.

A knock came at the door and she lifted her head from his shoulder, coughing a moment to clear her throat. "Yes?"

"Breakfast is ready mistress." Murtagh stifled a laugh in her hair at the pause on the other side of the door. "Should I give you a moment or would you like help to dress?"

"I…" Jocasta let a smile ease over her lips, "I'll dress myself this morning and be down shortly. Please tell cook to start serving if Ms. Brianna is already ready for breakfast."

"Yes mistress."

Jocasta let her fingers run in Murtagh's hair. "I'll need your help to dress me."

"Will you now?" He kissed her cheek, "And what makes you think I'd be any good at helping you into your layers of clothes?"

"You helped me out of them." She slid to the side, enjoying the tingle rolling through her body. "I'm sure you can reverse the process."

"It was more fun getting you out of them then it will be getting you back into them."

"I guess you'll just have to find a way to get me out of them again in the future." She found her shift on the bed. "Hungry?"

"Not for food."

His fingers latched over her wrist and drew her back to the bed. She did not even try to fight him. Instead she lay under him until he finished with her… over an hour later.