The Long Way Home

Chapter Ninety Three: We've Got Tonight

This is what I thought, I thought you'd need me.
This is what I thought, so think me naive
I'd promised you a heart, you'd promise to keep.
Kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep.

AFI – Prelude 12/21

They were lying naked and entwined together in the tiny single bed. The clean white sheets were tucked up all around them as they nestled even closer to one another. Cassandra was curled up into a ball, her knees tucked up, her slim fingers clutching John's wrist and holding his palm securely against her chest. He could feel the pounding of her heart under his calloused fingertips as he nuzzled the curve of her throat with genuine affection. His athletic frame fit entirely around Cassandra protecting her from the outside world, the rough palm of his hand was gliding over her cool flesh smoothing over her splendid form with slow soothing motions.

"I'm sorry." Cass muttered, her sapphire eyes squeezing shut, trying to keep away the feelings of remorse and helplessness at bay.

Cass was broken inside, parts of her soul were unravelling in his hands and John was barely able to hold the fragments of his wife together. He was nurturing her the best he could but he couldn't cure a disease without knowing what it was. He needed to find the root of the problem before he could even begin to abolish the symptoms.

"Tell me." John breathed in her ear as his fingertip doodled an intricate pattern across the shape of her hip. "Tell me what made you shut down like that."

"Two children died today." Cass whispered as John listened closely, his face buried in her silky dark hair. "They're parents were desperate for help so they traded everything they had for the black market antibiotics but they're not meant for young children..."

Cass clamped her lips shut unable to say any more. The words were lodged in her throat like Lego bricks. It hurt to think about it let alone talk. She was failing everybody here so badly. If she had treated more people quickly maybe they wouldn't have had to buy the drugs in the first place. These deaths were on her head.

"It's not your fault." John told her, gathering his wife up in his arms and cuddling her even closer.

"I should have done something..." Cass uttered with a deep sigh.

"Can you see a way in which you could have changed things?" John prompted, his nose trailing along the delicate shell of her ear.

"No..." she admitted.

"But it weighs on you." John murmured knowingly. "It crushes your chest until you can't breath."

"It makes it worse knowing that this bastard is getting away with it." Cass muttered bitterly. "That they don't care that they are killing children."

"You care." John said, his fingers running over the scars etched into her flat stomach. "That's what's important. Your trying to stop it."

"I'm not trying hard enough." she told him crossly.

"Maybe that's because someone keeps throwing up road blocks." John pointed out wearily.

Cass had been asking herself the same question over the past few weeks. Every time she requested a visit to Atlantis, it was denied for some reason or another. The first had been the chicken pox outbreak and then it had progressed to other less important reasons. She just thought it was busy because it was the first time the camp had a Chief Doctor around. Yet the more she thought about it the more she considered that that wasn't the real reason she was seemingly stranded here.

"You think..." she trailed off, her thoughts converging together as several incidents came back to haunt her.

Drew making it extremely difficult for her to get hold of the medical paper work, the bodies of those two children being whisked away so quickly. The fact he had banned anyone from talking to the parents even though she has expressed how important it was.

"Call it paranoia but he has been making it awfully hard for you to return to Atlantis." John reminded Cassandra, his five o'clock shadow rubbed cross her bare skin.

"God, it sickens me to say that it would make a lot of sense." Cass said with disgust in her voice.

She couldn't see how anyone could do his to another person especially Drew, they had been through wars together. They had seen how the land was ravaged and the people desecrated, they had treated the wounded and cared for the sick. They had dedicated their lives to this cause and she couldn't imagine ever turning a profit from people's suffering. Yet she knew the toll that being around these camps could take on a person and Drew had been at this job a hell of a lot longer than she had been.

"How long can you stay?" Cass asked her husband, switching her focus to more immediate things.

If Drew had been playing both sides than she would find the evidence needed to prove it, if he hadn't then he didn't need to know that he had been a suspect. Right now Drew and everything else that had happened over the past month wasn't important. It was John Sheppard that was, her loving husband was here nuzzling and stroking all over her body with his skilled hands and she could feel herself starting to awaken and respond.

"Tonight." John whispered as he placed short, seductive kisses upon her exposed throat. "I have to leave before before nine am."

Her head tilted back against his shoulder, a low moan escaping her pert lips as John's wandering hands came to cup her modest breasts. His thumbs were already tracing the shape of her nipples bringing them to attention as his teeth grazed that sexy little spot at the nape of her neck. He was hard, and his hot, leaking cock was pressing against Cass's sexy little ass before his hand guided it to just the right place.

"Your so wet." John breathed into her ear. "It turns me on so much knowing that I'm the only person who can do that to you."

Her drawl of pleasure was like a symphony igniting the raging fire in his synapses as he held onto her hips and entered his wife ever so slowly. Cassandra felt like every single one of her dreams were coming true as their connection hummed to life in a sudden burst. She could feel her adoration for John sweeping over the two of them as he drew out before penetrating her all over again with that wickedly sensual technique.

John buried his face into her silky dark hair, his breathing quickening into ragged pants as he began to pick up the pace. God being buried so deep inside of Cass was amazing, her inviting tightness hugged his dick from all sides causing him to drown in the ecstasy that consumed him. She was such an extravagant lover, so beautiful and unrestrained. She did things to him that no other woman could ever compete with. Their skin was slick with sweat as they moved even faster in tandem, Cass's shrill whimpers were getting even louder by the moment and John didn't care who heard them. She was his and he was damn well proving that not just to her but to himself.

Their souls were converging and John could feel the exact moment when the two of them became whole and complete. They were one with each other for the first time in such a long period and John savoured every single second of the joy that resonated through him. Cass was here as his lover and his wife and above everything else his soul mate. She was made for him just as he believed with every single fibre of his being that he had been created for her.

Her hand caught his, her small fingers entwining with his larger ones as she began to quiver and writhe. John's lower back was already tingling with the impending orgasm as Cass's moist core gripped his throbbing cock like a velvet fist. She was coming, he could hear it in the incredible way she said his name, in the way her hand clasped his even harder. He bit down on her naked shoulder, marking her as his own as his climax ripped though his athletic frame like a rip tide causing him to jerk even deeper into her.

Their bond was strong and cathartic as they lay in the haze of euphoria simply listening to the sound of each other's heavy breathing. They stayed connected for the longest time before John finally withdrew and flopped onto his back, his muscular arm stretched out inviting Cassandra further into his embrace. She was already snuggling into the shelter of his arms. Her head came to rest in the crook of his neck, her fingertips idly doodling patterns upon his chest. John placed a butterfly kiss upon her forehead, his own fingers combing though her fine hair as he closed his hazel eyes against the weariness that besieged him.

For one night everything was right in his world and he was determined that it would stay that way.