***Warning for sexual content in this chapter. Totally consensual and hopefully romantic, but just thought I'd better give everyone a heads up!***

Jack dived for her hand and missed, dived for her ankle, went skidding down the slope of the roof in an avalanche of snow and moss, and felt a twang of agony across his shoulders as he grabbed the guttering with one arm and took Ellini's weight with the other.

"What the hell did you do that for?" she shouted. Her breath was steaming on the air, coming up in clouds, as if she was hanging above a boiling cauldron.

"I slipped-"

"You did not slip!"

"Mouse, this isn't the time-"

He braced his legs against the guttering and tried to get a better grip with the hand that wasn't holding her. He burrowed his fingers under one of the slates, but it came loose, and the world lurched horribly for a moment. He had a glimpse of Ellini's bare toes dangling over fifty feet of night, and then he lay absolutely still against the gutter until the world stopped churning.

Something was slicing into his arm – the one she was hanging from – but it would have had to be in danger of sawing straight through before he'd consider moving it now. His stomach was screwed up into a tight little ball. He remembered the feeling he'd had at Pandemonium, when she had fallen asleep with one skinny ankle dangling off the edge of the roof. He was not afraid of heights; he was afraid of Ellini and heights. They were fine separately, but together they made his head swim.

He could feel Ellini swaying on the end of his arm, panting with the effort of holding on. 

"Can you lower me down a bit?" she gasped. "I can nearly reach a window-ledge."

Jack knew, without looking, that it was the crumbling ledge of the Oriental Reading Room. He knew there were ornamental figures underneath it that had had their faces eaten away by damp. He wouldn't have trusted them to hold up a pigeon, but there was literally nowhere else to go. After that ledge, it was a sheer drop – devoid of handholds or conveniently-placed shop awnings – all the way to the ground. Besides, the gutter was being prised away from the wall by his weight. If he could just set her down before he fell...

Good God, why had they gone climbing somewhere so high? Why had he wobbled? And why had she stopped him?

He braced his knees against the gutter and groped with his free hand for something stable to grip. The slates were slippery with ice, but one of them hadn't been hammered in properly, and there was a nail sticking out by about two inches. If it took his weight, it would only do so by slicing into him, but that was a small matter now. He gritted his teeth, leaned on the nail, and started to lower her down.

Her feet found the ledge at about the same time the guttering gave way. He just saw her touch down before a metallic screech cut through everything, and the world lurched again. His nail held – although, now that it was the only thing holding his weight, it was slicing into his palm. He could feel the blood seeping down his wrist, making his sleeve wet. 

Ellini was trying to catch hold of his legs, which at least meant she hadn't been scythed off her ledge by the tumbling gutter. But she would never be able to support his weight. Somehow, he would have to climb down to her, and risk the collapse of that mouldering ledge.

It was no mean feat to let go of the nail – it had nestled deep into his flesh and didn't want to let him go – but Ellini pulled him and steadied him until he was on the ledge beside her. 

For a moment, they clung to each other, trying to catch their balance and their breath, not daring to look at each other, but not daring to look anywhere else either, and certainly not daring to let go. Neither of them were twinkly-toed now. They had both been profoundly shaken by that wobble.

"I'm sorry," Jack muttered, his face half-buried in her hair. "I'm sorry." 

And he meant 'for everything', but he couldn't tell if she'd understood that – or even if she'd heard him. She was rigid in his arms, her fingertips tight against his back. 

Jack's window was the easiest to reach. Neither of them felt like scampering from ledge to ledge until they found a neutral entrance point. Danvers, perhaps, would have agonized over the proprieties, but Ellini did not.

She was thoughtful – busy but thoughtful – when they got in. She insisted he take off his shirt and waistcoat so that she could bandage his arm. And of course, they hadn't been able to retrieve her coat, so she was still dressed in her corset and drawers. He watched the goose-bumps on her skin gradually disappear as the warmth from the fire thawed her. And every so often, she would say, in a small voice, half to herself, "I really can't imagine why you did that."

But Jack was in no condition to respond, even if he'd been sure she was really talking to him. He let her have his arm to bandage, but he curled the other one around the slats of the headboard – he tried to tangle it around the slats of the headboard, so that, when his resolution snapped and he finally made a grab for her, he would have to spend a few seconds extricating himself, and she would hopefully be able to get away.

She didn't take her gloves off, but the slight pressure of her fingers against his skin was almost unbearable. Every now and then, she would lean in close to see what she was doing, and her hair would trail against his chest. He tried to close his eyes, but that didn't help, because he kept picturing her. 

He was totally unable to speak. He was terrified he would lay hands on her, and terrified that she would leave. He felt more helpless than he had ever felt in his life. He didn't know what to do. He was afraid of that wobbly moment that had opened up before him on the rooftops, afraid that she was the only thing steadying him now. He thought he would die if she left, but would certainly rather die than force her. He didn't know what to do.

***

Ellini was nervous – not of him, but of her own feelings. She was intensely aware of every sensation. Even her clothes seemed to be brushing and clasping her in a meaningful way.

Jack was breathing hard through his nose. His mouth was clamped shut. He was looking out at her through tinderbox eyes. That was it exactly. There was heat in that gaze. She could feel herself rising under it like dough.

She also got the impression, hot and hungry as those eyes were, that he was completely helpless – that he was a little, wretched, hungry thing. And she realized that, when you wanted a man – and, to a certain extent, trusted a man – it was all different. His appetite wasn't your annihilation. His desire wasn't ugly. You rose under the heat of it like dough.

She bustled about, chattered away, trying to escape all these conclusions. And, every moment, she was flutteringly aware of the bulge in his trousers. Every moment, she was making a conscious effort not to look at it.

She knew she had no-one to fight but herself. He would continue to hold on to the headboard, dying by inches, until she left the room, when he would, perhaps, die all the way at once, but never blaming her.

He wouldn't try to persuade her. He was beyond seduction at this point – which, unfortunately, was the most seductive thing of all. She had the power to end his misery, and it was unspeakably exciting. She had the impression – just like she'd had in Paris when she'd written those letters to him – that he would drink up her kisses like parched desert earth. He even looked like desert earth, with all those scars and stitches. Her heart was fluttering like a little, wounded bird and raging like a dragon. Good Lord, what had happened to her anger?

She was slowly beginning to build up a picture of how much she'd hurt him. All the different accounts were beginning to coalesce to form something wide and vast and horrible. But she wanted to avoid thinking about that too, so she stayed in the minutiae of the moment. She counted the stitches on his chest, and the hairs of his arms – much fairer than the ones on his head, for some reason. They were bending gently as she breathed on them.

If she had any thoughts at all, they were desperately cyclical: You can't do this – oh, this is such a bad idea – it's the worst idea you've ever had in your life, and you're still looking at him! 

Even if it saved him in the short-term, it would end in tears. She couldn't give herself to him for long. She couldn't ever forget about that arrow through her chest. But couldn't she, just for tonight – just to save his life, just because it was so cold outside and they'd both been so frightened, just have something she wanted, just once? 

And then she would go back to You can't do this, and the whole cycle would begin again.

It could have gone either way. She could have walked out of that room to spite herself, or sat there chastely all night, reading to him from a book of sermons – which would have been worse than killing him, probably. 

Only, as he sat there, all wretched and hungry and hunched-up against the headboard, she recognized him – not as her old lover, or the man who had stabbed her through the chest, or the rebel General and biter of virgins, but as a small boy she had seen, just once, in the church of St Michael's in Camden Town.

It toppled her. The astonishment of it – but the rightness of it. She couldn't believe she'd never seen it before. The exact same expression, the same eyes. But he had never allowed himself to look helpless in front of her, had he? How could she have connected her bright, breezy Jack with that poor boy?

She put both her hands on his chest and peered into his eyes, as though she was trying to make out something vague and indistinct at the back of them. Both his hands were clutching the headboard now. He was breathing fast. He was afraid of her.

And, once she had seen the boy, the man made sense in a way he never had before. That moment underpinned everything – and when he had stabbed her through the chest, he hadn't had it. 

That toppled her too. She couldn't resist her feelings anymore. Still, she teetered on the brink of the inevitable, bringing her hands to his shoulders, rubbing his arms as if she was trying to keep him warm, saying "You poor thing, you poor thing."

He would have hated that if he was in any condition to understand her, but he wasn't. He only knew that her hands were on him.

He was still in shock. He couldn't get his hands to let go of the headboard. He made an urgent sound in the back of his throat, as though he was contemplating tearing his fingers off if they didn't co-operate.

And she took pity on him and herself at the same time. She kissed him.

How he managed it, she never knew, but he eventually persuaded his arms to let go of the headboard. And when he clasped her, and pressed his mouth to her – too desperate for kisses – and said things like, "Please, please let this be real – please don't take this away from me", it was pleasure and pain all at once, because she realized now how much he had suffered. It was the furnace that fuelled all his urgency now.

His hands were all over her, but more with desperation than design. He obviously wasn't expecting anything more than kisses, because, when she rubbed his cock through his trousers, he gave a great, shuddering gasp, and said, "Oh yes – oh god, yes – please, please."

She started to unhook the fastenings on the front of her corset, and he dived in before she'd finished, kissing and sucking her breasts with so much hunger that she giggled. He wasn't equal to the task of getting it all the way open, though, so she helped him, and threw her head back as he ran his hands over her torso in that way she remembered so well, over her ribcage, cupping her breasts, passing his thumbs over the nipples.

He was breathing hard now. He wouldn't last much longer, and nor did she feel inclined to make him wait.

She fumbled with the buttons on his trousers, and he helped her, clumsy with need. Good Lord, she had never seen him so big! But it didn't occur to her to be apprehensive. She took off her drawers – naked now except for her long black gloves – and slid onto his cock with the relief of someone sinking into a bath at the end of a trying day. She rocked her hips back and forth, savouring the feel of him inside her.

Jack gave a long, low moan as she sank onto him. His eyes were closed, his fingernails digging into the sheets. He was afraid he wouldn't last long enough, but Ellini knew his body better than he did. She knew how much he could take. 

"Oh Leeny-" 

He brought his hands up to her hips, trying to get her to slow down, but he soon gave up and abandoned himself to the pleasure. His moans were in her chest – deep and loud and desperate. She could feel waves of bliss radiating out from his cock, and they soon brought her to her own, shuddering orgasm. It was more intense than she had expected. She threw her head back and cried out. And even through the red mists of his own pleasure, Jack's eyes snapped open, perhaps afraid that he'd hurt her. 

When he realized what was happening, his moans redoubled, and she realized that they were both feeding off each other's rapture. Again, he pressed his mouth to her neck, her jaw, muttering broken phrases. She brought his hands up to her breasts, rocked back and forth on his cock, and vocalized her pleasure, as much for what it would do to him as because she needed to.

When her moans subsided, he threw her onto the bed and thrust into her with desperation. And she knew in that moment that she loved him – and she knew he knew she loved him – and she marvelled at the kind of communication that could pass wordlessly between two people when one of them, at least, was very much occupied.

She wanted to tell him that she wasn't afraid. He was on top of her, bearing down on her, just like – just like other people had borne down on her. But she wasn't afraid. It was so different with him that she could hardly believe it was the same act. She wrapped her legs around him, welcomed him in, and listened to him moaning and rhapsodizing as his lips moved over her skin. 

Poor Jack, she could already see his misgivings battling with his need. One moment, he would give a deep, rapturous thrust, and the next he would grit his teeth and pull back, afraid of hurting her. No doubt because of this broken action, his orgasm lasted longer than either of them had expected. Ellini was quite surprised to find herself shuddering with pleasure again. She started – she supposed she must have winced – and he pulled back anxiously, but she tightened her legs around him, and guided him back inside her.

"Don't-" she panted. "Don't hold back. It's good – it's good."

Jack made a joyful, incoherent noise and sank deep into her. His moans drowned hers out, but it was a good drowning – it brought her to the crest of a towering wave, and she tumbled down with it. And as she squeezed him with her legs and panted in his ear, he finally came, with a cry that was almost like pain. 

He keened softly – almost plaintively – as the last throbs of pleasure died away, and then he collapsed on her breasts, trembling and panting, utterly fulfilled.

But he couldn't lie still. He was delirious with relief and exhaustion. He kissed her collar-bone, her neck, her jaw, muttering, "Thank you – thank you – you have no idea-"

She hushed him, half-laughing. "Don't thank me. You know I wanted to." She faltered, and probably would have blushed if her entire body hadn't been pink and glowing already. "You know what it was like for me."

Jack's voice hardened. "Give me five minutes. I can do it again."

"You know I always admire your ambition, Jack, but when did you last get some sleep?"

He shook his head, uncomprehending, and she realized he had been awake since Northaven, and he was on the brink of collapse.

"You need to sleep," she said.

"No, no, no, no, no – I know you – you'll leave."

"How am I going to leave with you on top of me?" she said, pressing him back onto her chest, and burying her hands in his hair. "Sleep."

There was a short silence. And then he said, in a voice that was already slurred, "You're so good to me."

"Sleep."

And then he started to snore.