Title: Promises
Rating: T
Summary: If there was one thing in her life that she could count on to be true, it was a Jack O'Neill promise. Right?
Pairings: Sam/Jack
Spoilers: None. Wait – Maybe a very slight one to 'Divide & Conquer.' Blink and you'll miss it.
Disclaimer: Sam and Jack belong to each other. And a company called Gekko, which apparently isn't a cute li'l lizard. Go figure.
Notes: The things you find on your hard drive when you're cleaning it up… this was written about five years ago and for some reason I never posted it. So here 'tis. Enjoy.

~x~

Later, after everything, she would claim that her hand had slipped.

He wouldn't believe her, but she would say it anyway.

~x~

Sam closed her eyes and gave herself a mental ass-kicking. This could not be happening. Not again. They'd drawn lines. Set up boundaries. Worked out a detailed catalogue of what exactly constituted appropriate and inappropriate touching. She'd even printed it out for crying out loud. In duplicate. One for him, one for her. Besides all that, she'd promised. And then he'd promised. That, more than anything else, had persuaded her that they could put the last time in the room with all the other touches and glances and unfinished conversations that shouldn't have happened, and move on. Because if there was one thing in her life that she could count on to be true, it was a Jack O'Neill promise. Right?

Right. Of course it was. She trusted him with her life, so of course she could believe him when he made her a promise. So. Obviously she was dreaming. A very wrong, very erotic, very sticky dream. But a dream nonetheless. All she had to do was open her eyes and she'd see that she was at home, safely tucked up in her own bed. Fully clothed. Nowhere near her CO or his evil grin. Or his . . . other appendages.

She opened one eye. Oh, not good. Notgoodnotgoodnotgood.

"You promised," she accused, her opened eye glaring at him in a comical half squint.

"I lied," he said calmly, and also a bit smugly, as if lying to her was the most natural thing in the world.

Oh, how her hand itched to smack him. Itched. "But you promised." And she hated, absolutely hated the way her voice sounded; all breathless and petulant and wanting, and so not the tone she needed for this conversation.

"Carter."

"Don't. You don't get to speak."

"Sam."

"Shut up. I have to think."

Think. She. Had. To. Think. Could she really be held accountable? After all, she hadn't started it. All she had done was sit down and try to watch a movie. That was all. The rest . . . that was all him.

She closed her eye, because if he looked at her like that for one more second then she was going to do something even worse than he had done, and that would be bad. Very, very bad. She, at least, fully planned to keep her promise.

But.

It was so very hard to think and panic was starting to set in. Only . . . only she couldn't quite be sure if it was panic, or the aftermath of . . . that thing . . . that had led to her being so breathless and quivery and weightless and heavy all at the same time.

"Stop it," she said, as she heard him pull himself up from the floor.

"Stop what?"

"Stop smirking."

"Sam, your eyes are closed. How do you know what I'm doing with my mouth?"

Bastard. She was so not going there. "I can hear you," she said between gritted teeth.

"You can hear me smirking?"

"Yes."

"Far be it for me to point out the impossibilities of actually hearing someone smirk, but –"

"Jack, I'm warning you."

And he let that one ride, just as he'd let her earlier 'shut up' comment ride, because he'd had his fun and she needed this time to pull herself together and remember that she didn't speak to him like that.

"You lied to me," she whispered.

"Sam, look at me."

"No."

"Sam."

She sighed, because she knew that tone. She opened her eyes and tried not to think about the begging and the whimpering and good God, the intolerable heat that had begun somewhere in the pit of her stomach and spread throughout her entire body, making her roll her hips and arch her back in desperate appeal. And damn him, he hadn't even broke a sweat when, to her eternal shame, she'd started screaming.

Oh God, she'd screamed. He'd touched her, and she'd tried so hard not to, but she'd melted. Then he'd used his mouth, and she'd begged and cajoled and even ordered, 'more, Jack, more,' but that hadn't worked because it was his game and he was in complete control, and she needed to learn that lesson.

So because she wasn't a stupid woman, she'd gone back to begging, because he loved to hear his name on her lips, pleading, caressing, demanding more, always more, and then he'd used his tongue and she'd screamed, and he hadn't cared that she was falling, drowning, dying. He hadn't cared at all.

"I didn't mean to lie. Tonight wasn't about . . . that."

Easy for him to say when she was the one sitting there with her jeans still pooled around ankles, her legs splayed wide and the smell of her arousal still hovering in the air. "Then what was it about?" she asked, pulling her jeans up and refusing to look him in the eye.

"Two friends, a couple of beers, and a movie."

"Friends?" she snorted in disbelief.

"I thought so."

Friends didn't do what they'd . . . what he'd just done. Friends hung out and watched TV and were nice to each other. Okay, so what just happened had been . . . nice . . . while it lasted. But - okay, if she was being honest with herself, it had been better than nice. It had been so unbelievably hot that her body was still humming and she couldn't quite be sure of her own name. But now that it was over, now that she'd had a little time to unclench her hands and catch her breath and realise what had just happened . . . well, now she was definitely panicking.

"Friends don't do . . . that."

"We do."

"But we're not supposed to! This is bad, Jack. We promised."

It was very bad, she was very bad, and he . . . well, he was the worst. Because he didn't look like he'd just done a bad, bad thing. Which he had. He'd done it very well – exceedingly well – but it was still a bad thing. And it could Never. Happen. Again.

"Maybe we had no business making promises we couldn't keep," he said quietly.

She looked at him then, really looked at him for the first time since he'd had his tongue buried inside of her and reduced her to a molten, whimpering mess. "You're not even sorry," she accused.

"Are you?" he countered.

And god help her, she was in so much trouble. Because she wasn't sorry. Not at all.

TBC…