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It’s only with a groan and a weighty reluctance that Peggy eventually pulls the littlest bit away from Daniel, wary of getting too carried away. She tilts her head towards the hallway and whispers.
“We should go somewhere more appropriate.”
Still on his lap and leaning against his chest, she can feel his breath hitch.
She swings herself off of him and back onto the couch next to him; his expression grows even more pained than ever, and she grabs his hands tightly as they fall away from holding her.
“If you don’t want me to see yet, if you’re not ready, we don’t have to do this now. We really don’t, we can wait.”
She tries to be as reassuring as she can, but she’s not quite sure it works, as she’s feeling rather worried about his being distressed in the first place.
Eventually, Daniel sighs, looking just barely over at her.
“I don’t want to be avoiding this forever, let alone with you, but it’s just…”
His reciprocated grip on her hand grows tighter, and as he leans against the back of the couch he starts to cry some, though he keeps himself restrained.
“It’s not me. I’m not me. And now I’m letting you down because of it, too. I could feel how wet you are, and here I am, worrying about this stupid…”
“I’ll manage, I promise. As you already know, I can take care of myself quite well in that regard.”
He turns his head to look at her, his expression disagreeable and dissatisfied.
“But I mean, you can see the prosthesis already, and you’re right, you’ve seen battle. I shouldn’t be feeling more nervous with you than I did in high school.”
“Well, it’s entirely understandable,” Peggy says, unhappy that her voice comes out too assertive to possibly be comforting.
“Especially considering what you said about how other women have reacted. If I am to be a lover rather than just a coworker then it follows that they would become the frame of reference, yes? Besides, as much as I, too, hate to admit it, anxiety is always reasonable to some degree in these sorts of situations.”
Peggy shrugs, trying to make her manner of conversing fall between lines of seriousness and candor. She reaches to the floor, almost absentmindedly, grabbing the first thing she feels buttons on, assuming it’s her blouse.
“Not to even mention that the only serious relationship I’ve ever had did not exactly end well. And of all times to be thinking about that, this has been absolutely one of the least convenient, but naturally it’s already come up.”
She blushes, realizing as she slings the shirt around her shoulders that she’s grabbed his instead, but as Daniel’s expression comes to have a bit more curiosity than shame, she slips her arms through its sleeves anyway and buttons a few of the buttons. A slight smile comes to Daniel’s face, and he finally meets her eyes again.
“We both have healing to do, Daniel. And if we are indeed deciding that we are to be together, than we will do that…together.”
She squeezes his hand purposefully.
“We are stronger together. These past few months have required us to be each other’s support, and we have continually chosen to remain so. I’m not going to push you to go farther than you’re ready for. But when you are ready, I will still be here, and I won’t be going anywhere afterwards on that account.”
“You can’t guarantee that.”
“Daniel…” she whimpers. There was too much pain in his voice, too much gloss to his eyes as he leans his head downward to relieve himself from having to look her in the eye.
“You can’t,” he asserts again.
“There is nothing right now that is a guarantee for us, not even our lives. So no, I cannot guarantee. But I can promise…I am promising. I am here. We’ve come this far; how could I ever go back?”
There are so many other things to say, but she can’t force herself to say any of them, knowing that she may well begin crying, and while that wouldn’t properly be a bad thing per se, she also knows that the second she’s no longer steadfast is the second that Daniel withdraws again. She inches even closer to him and tucks her left arm underneath his right and around his back, leaning into his shoulder and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. He tilts his head down toward her again, and returns the kiss against her forehead, draping his arm over her lap. She sets her free hand on top of his where it sits on her knee, and nuzzles in closer.
“There are many men out there who could give you much more, Peggy.”
“I beg to differ…but even if that were true, Daniel: I don’t want any of them.”
His smile stays weak at first, until she shuffles a bit closer to the edge of the couch, leans into his chest again, and kisses him; she tries to make her movement soft, but she’s still got such wanting so close to the surface, that she’s sure it doesn’t quite work out that way. Still, the embrace seems to be well-received, until Daniel’s hands move in front of her hips and start to push her away from him. One of his fingers has come to grace her chin reassuringly by the time her brow’s even started to furrow.
“I hope the offer for relocation still stands,” he whispers in her ear, and she smiles.
“As long as you believe you can manage to stand long enough to get there,” she replies carefully, legitimate concern slipping through cracks of what she’d hoped to be some gently teasing titillation.
“I think I have good enough incentive, don’t you?”
Her front teeth reflexively clamp down onto her lower lip, and her smile starts to slink into a smirk; she unwraps herself from around him and pushes herself off the couch. She can’t help but be hit by some disbelief as she watches the lust in Daniel’s eyes ebb and flow as she slips her heels - and, decisively, only her heels - back on before grabbing up the assortment of articles of clothing on the floor in between the couch and the coffee table. She pulls them all into the crook of her right elbow, and steps away from the couch; she turns back and extends her left hand towards him.
He hesitates, but he does take her hand, leaning into his crutch to stand up and then rising up level with her. She twirls a bit as they walk, turning fully a couple times to be walking backwards at the times that they speak; their words don’t come often, but it is far enough from the living room to her own room that she feels the flush creeping across her skin in between each comment, as the sense of nervous uncertainty swells.
Daniel starts to reach for the door to her room when they approach, but she yanks him back and tries to send him an even mildly disapproving glance; he gestures his concession, but she’s sure that she’s still smiling too giddily for such a look to mean much.
“Always the gentleman,” she adds lightly to that slight scolding as she closes the door behind herself.
“I try,” he jests, and takes a seat on the edge of the bed.
“Little harder ‘round you.”
“Yes, I’ve been informed of that already,” Peggy winks as she’s walking into the room. She hangs her clothes up and quickly folds his trousers, leaving them on the seat of an armchair, maintaining their eye contact for all but a couple of seconds.
“Oh, you think you’re so sharp, don’t you?” comes his teasing scoff in reply, with that wide-eyed smile that makes her heart dance around in her chest.
“What, you disagree?” she teases him back as she goes over to the bed, standing in front of him and wrapping her arms around his neck. His only response is to deepen the kiss she initiates and pull her closer, and the smiles continuing to crease their lips make that embrace a bit more difficult; eventually, after she’s pressed herself up against him, relishing the feeling of his thin dress shirt being the only barrier between their bare chests, his arms wrap entirely around her backside, one around her waist and one down at her thighs, and he hoists her up into his lap.
Reflexively she breaks their kiss with a gasp as he’s lifting her, but only lets that time be extended as to make it a bit simpler for her to push them both back farther, to the point where their legs can’t hang off the bed anymore and they have to lay down; Daniel catches on to the excuse she’s making to lay herself prostrate on top of him, and reaches for her hands to hold as he kisses her again. It’s wholly romantic only for a moment, before she thinks to redirect her attention to her body rather than to her sheer, gleeful shock, and the feeling of his erection pressing against her pelvis is a hellish reminder of her own neediness.
Peggy first deepens the kiss, but then she breaks it, rolling off of him and onto her own back and kicking off her heels against the edge of the bed. Daniel’s strength surprises her again as he easily pushes himself up into a seated position. She reaches up to cue him to stay closer, and he leans down over her, and she feels herself craving him more than ever. He’s resting on his left arm, but the hand of his right cups her cheek for a moment, before starting to trail down her side. She wraps her arms around his torso, pulling him as close to taut against her as she can, but with his movements terribly gentle, Peggy finds herself shivering as his fingers traverse and explore her skin, and soon any attempt at stillness is obviously futile. However, it’s not until they’ve finally journeyed to where she’s properly aching and dance down the fabric of her panties to stroke against her that her shiver moves her entire body. She can feel Daniel’s self-satisfied smile through what of their kiss they’ve managed to retain through their ministrations, and it only adds to her wanting.
She groans loudly when he pulls his lips from hers again, in an intentionally rougher way than any of the times before, and moans even louder when he starts trailing kisses across her shoulders and neck; but as much as she does want him - and God, she wants him: him inside her, him in this very bed the next morning, him taking her, having her, knowing her - she forces herself to push away.
“I need to check that there are condoms somewhere before we get completely carried away,” she explains awkwardly, as she’s entirely unsure whether there were any, or where they would be if they were. They aren’t in her bathroom, nor in Angie’s, but she really didn’t care to mortify herself any further by ringing the Jarvis house.
She pushes herself up so that she’s sitting, and though Daniel props himself up a bit further so that they remain at each other’s eye level, he does seem to know better than to touch her or move any closer.
“I certainly didn’t bring any, but, well, being quite frank, this house does belong to Howard Stark.”
She laughs as he tips his head in giving his comment - it’s a remarkably good point.
“It’s also a massive house.”
Daniel nods.
“I’m assuming you don’t want to call…”
“No,” she purses her lips, giving a moment of silence to a mental walk-through of the mansion.
“Wait, what’s that?” Daniel interrupts softly, gesturing towards her bedside table.
More specifically, at the box sitting upon her bedside table.
A box she’s never seen before.
Edwin.
She grumbles, and scoots herself to the head of the bed.
“He’s trying to compensate for the…indiscretions of earlier.”
“He being Mr Jarvis?”
“Of course.”
She picks it up carefully, wondering what on earth he’s thought to give her this time. He and Howard both had a tendency toward either very expensive, very poignant, and very inappropriate gifts - nearly all of which were given in a reasonably respectful manner, particularly those from Jarvis, though that didn’t always resolve the oddness of what was given.
Which is, in this case, among a number of other things, exactly what she’s looking for, and what Jarvis most definitely stepped out of bounds by assuming she would be looking for: condoms. Half a box full.
“I’m going to shoot him, one of these days.”
Daniel laughs, and she playfully grabs a handful and chucks them at him.
“Not today, I hope,” he jokes as he catches a couple before grabbing her by her hips and yanking her closer, his voice low and almost gravelly with the same lust that she’s feeling. Peggy moves willingly with his positioning of them both, happy to stay pressed against him, but is less pleased when he pushes her off, with enough force that she’s almost all the way back at her headboard.
There’s a divide between the disappointment of separation and the sensuality of knowing that there is so much more sheer power within him than his daily, public behavior evinces, but he doesn’t allow her more than a moment to wonder why he’s put that distance between them before he tilts himself over to leave a kiss on one of her knees; one of his hands comes to rest at the other and gently pushes her leg down from its crooked position so that it’s evenly outstretched atop the bed, and she lets herself collapse back down because she realizes.
He spreads her legs a bit less gently then, and his hands sneak up her legs to poise themselves underneath her; a series of small gasps escapes her in time with the trail of featherlight kisses he presses to the insides of her thighs, and Peggy’s heart quickens. Daniel slows his movements before he rolls entirely onto his stomach and pushes his arms under her, her legs resting atop his forearms, and draws from her, with a peck a few inches below her navel, what feels like a moan, but sounds more like a growl.
It takes him an agonizing couple of minutes to return to where she really wants him, his fingers slowly climbing up her sides and slipping under his dress shirt until they can rub against and hold her hardened nipples, and the moment that she finds it necessary to dip her head back as she moans is the moment he takes advantage of her heightened state, slips her arousal-soaked panties to the side, and gives a flick of his tongue at her clit. Her moan turns to a whimper and one of her hands rushes to the crown of his head, stroking and grabbing his hair as his tongue explores and teases and enters her.
A few rapturous minutes later, he finally drags her panties all the way down and off her legs, somehow managing to lift her legs above them without his mouth having to leave her in the process; then, Daniel’s tongue sets itself on its path back up her body - less slowly this time than before, thank God - and as soon as his torso is against hers again, his tantalizingly stiff cock confirms her suspicions as to why.
He kisses her again, and she eagerly wraps an arm around his neck, growing more excited by the surreality of being able to taste herself on his lips. The rest of his body tightens some as she runs her free hand down his chest, flattening it against his lower abdomen with her fingertips slipped under the band of his underwear, waiting for her go-ahead or lack thereof - she's not surprised when his lips leave hers again.
“I should probably take it off now,” he says, his voice still holding that anxiety it had earlier.
“Only if you want to. Whatever you’re most comfortable with,” she says as reassuringly as she can, but her lust does sneak back into her response.
“Whatever keeps you here.”
Daniel’s smile of relief comes with a hint of a chuckle and a peck on her cheek before he sits up again, and she pulls her hand away, resting it on her pillow underneath her head. He leans a bit to his right and pulls up his shorts, and though she watches as closely as she can, she’s still not entirely sure what he’s doing; but it results in the prosthesis being removed and set aside, and she touches his arm to urge him to stay close to her as he proceeds through the motions.
Peggy purses her lips to remind herself not to try to speed him up, and waits the minute or two until he lays himself down and wraps a hand around her hip. She can feel her eyes twinkling while she starts scooting herself down towards the space next to his leg so that she can taste him, but Daniel pulls her back up, contesting that he isn’t going to last particularly long to begin with; she swings a leg over him and straddles his lap again, and oh, this is so close, too close, with all that’s in between them being his shorts.
He grabs her hips again as she presses her knees down into the bed, and she leans back and jerks the underwear off, smiling as she takes him in hand afterwards, momentarily touching his balls but traveling up his shaft to the head; and with the gentle grip of four fingers and a light swirling touch from one, it’s Daniel’s turn for a longing moan, and Peggy gets to be the one with the smirk sneaking across her face. One and then both of his hands leave her hips, grabbing, examining, and slipping on one of the absurdly many condoms at their disposal. When they cup her hips again, she moves a hand to his chest; it clenches at nothing but helps to steady her as her eyes drift closed and she bites her lip and slips him inside and oh-so-slowly lowers herself down until she meets his hips.
A sharp gasp jumps out of her once she’s taken him to the hilt and she opens her eyes again, meeting the loving smile in his. There’s a layer of cautionary concern above his lust - his need to be sure that she’s all right, but it dissipates with the observance of her increasing and unconcealed enjoyment.