"I don't care, allright, I just wanna sleep."

It's the middle of the night. I just worked a double and a half. So has Grissom. I was asleep in the car, slumped against Nicky, until the lack of motion woke me. But it isn't morning, and it isn't L.A.

Things between Grissom and I have been terse and painful, at least painful on my part because God knows what he's thinking. Or maybe not. I've given up trying to guess what Grissom thinks, and I doubt even He knows.

And now we're in a situation as contrived as something a bad writer would manipulate: We're on our way to the Forensic Sciences Conference in L.A., one company Tahoe in the shop, the other with Cath down in Henderson on a long case. Ergo we are now standing impotently around Warrick's Honda, which has broken down in the middle of the desert, in an area with no cell reception. It needs a fanbelt, and is therefore unfixable.

It wouldn't be believable in fiction, but just my luck, it's reality. At the time when I want least to be physically close to Grissom.

"Why do you have a tent in your car, anyway?" Grissom asks, as if resentful of this serendipitious development.

"Because I went camping last weekend. You haven't slept in 24 hours. You guys use it. We'll hang out and play cards, hopefully flag someone down."

I look at Grissom. He looks at me. The moment is lit in the approach of truck headlights. Nick goes out near the side of the road to flag it down.

"What do you care?" I say to him under the enormous bass roar of the truck's horn. "You're tired, I'm tired. It's not as if there's anything between us."

"True," he says tersely, and it shouldn't hurt but it does. He turns his back to me and tells Warrick "We'll take the tent if you don't want it."

See what I mean? Contrived. And I'm too pissed off to appreciate it.

Of course, he and Nicky are freshly rested, nauseatingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and will probably spend the night playing cards in the Honda or bullshitting or something.

So this is how I come to be lying on an air mattress, fully clothed, out in the middle of the desert, with Grissom. It's uncomfortable. I can't sleep with these jeans on.

I open my eyes, and am faced with the impassive wall of Grissom's back. He hasn't spoken to me since we crawled into the tent, migrating to opposite ends of the air mattress. From his breathing, he appears to be asleep. Not as if he is bursting with signs of life when he's awake.

So, fuck him. I will at least be somewhat rested when we get to L.A. Moving as little as possible, I shimmy the jeans down off my hips, kick them into the space between the edge of the tent and the mattress.

Then I close my eyes, and try not to think of scorpions. The white noise of shifting sands is not altogether unpleasant, and slowly I drift off.

.

This is what usually happens when I'm at home in bed: I'll sleep wonderfully for two or three hours, then I'll wake up. Only then does the fight to get back to sleep ensue.

I wonder what it was that woke me. I look over at Grissom. He is lying on his back, mouth slightly open, hand resting on his sternum. Like a different, more accessible man in the moonlight. I feel a fissure of desire divide me and I wish I hadn't looked. I roll over, away from him, thankful we each have our own sheet, and I close my eyes and try deliberately to breathe deep and slow. Sometimes this works.

Then the air below me shifts, and he is fidgeting. Is the faint light the rising sun, I wonder, or is it the moon? I'm not sure. I want it to be the moon because I'm still tired. Dead, bone tired.

He moves again, and finally settles. I close my eyes again. Focus.

I'm jarred from half-sleep when he moves again.

"Dammit, Grissom! Why do you keep fidgeting?"

"Because I'm uncomfortable."

"For Chrissake, I'm not gonna molest you, just go to sleep!" It comes out more sharply than intended, an edge honed by my hurt.

"I'm not uncomfortable with you, I'm uncomfortable because I hurt my back." He says it tersely, but I'm too exhausted to care.

"Roll over," I demand.

"Why?"

"Just do it." I've never dared speak to him like this before. But frustration, anger, and sleep deprivation have made me bossy.

To my shock he doesn't turn around and snap at me. He just rolls fully onto his stomach, the arm closest to me bent above his head, facing away.

Holy crap. I didn't think he'd actually obey me.

I sit up and look at his back, pull down the sheet. He is wearing a gray tee shirt and it looks soft and inviting. I press my hands astride the furrow of his spine. "Where?"

"Lower," he says, in a half-gasp.

I pull the sheet down further. His shirt has lifted several inches above his navy blue dockers and a strip of smooth tan skin is revealed. The very edge of a tan line. I fight the unbearably potent urge to trace it with a finger. Instead I work his shirt up a few inches and put pressure there.

He makes an inadvertent grunt. His skin is so soft and so hot. There is muscle there, not buff muscle, but the natural carriage of big bones. Again desire rushes and eddies inside of me like water.

I close my eyes and begin to knead the muscles. I'm good at this. I picked it up after college, during a brief relationship with a physical therapist. I feel the tension there, under the skin, where his muscles are knotted tight as his heart. The desire to unravel him - does it have anything to do with my own heart?

I shove the question away and focus on the muscles below my fingers. He is making small noises of forced air, not grunts but gentle noises from the direct pressure of my hands. I am leaning, putting all my weight into my palms.

He inhales, a sharp inward hiss, and something like victory spears warmly through me. I continue. If we were on better terms, I'd ask him if this was okay. As it stands, I don't. It's pathetic, but this is the most action I've ever gotten from him. If I asked now he'd just say thank you and end it. Pathetic, also masochistic, but god help me I don't want to stop touching him.

So I move upward, slowly, and find that he is knotted there too. I wonder if Nicky and Warrick are still awake. I picture them cramped into Warrick's little Honda and smile. Well, they don't need sleep, we do.

But of course we aren't sleeping. The wind in the sand seems to sing against the nylon of the tent.

I can watch his face in profile. Eyes open. Every so often he blinks. I can just barely make out the flash of moonlight on his lashes.

Riding an impulse I push my hands under his tee shirt, moving parallel to the curve of his back, and two things feel exquisite: the naked feeling of all that skin against mine, and the hot hiss he emits from his clenched mouth. Both cause embers of lust to throb to life low in my belly. He likes it. Oh yeah, he likes it.

I'm leaning forward awkwardly, the muscles in my own back protesting, but his skin is like a drug and my palms are pressed between his shoulder blades. I'm vividly aware that I'm wearing panties and a sweatshirt and nothing else. He doesn't know this yet. The sheet covers my legs, mostly.

The light has brightened and now I know it is the sun, not the moon propogating its light on a million grains of sand. Soon it will become hot but now the air is cool and pleasant.

Impulse strikes again, and this time I can't resist. I curl my fingers into claws an gently scratch down the whole length of his back, slowly.

The reward is exquisite. I watch his face as he opens his mouth and draws in a sharp breath. His back rises and falls with the agitated breath.

"You like it," I whisper, before the words have even registered in my brain.

He opens his mouth, and nothing comes out for a second but breath. He licks his lips. I am so turned on. My fingers hover at the small of his back, then move up, slowly, not giving him a chance to tell me to stop.

"Of course I like it," he whispers in a hiss. Angry or resigned, I can't tell which and right now in this moment I don't much care.

I scratch again, so gently it is barely perceptible, a single fingernail tracing the furrow of his spine.

He rolls over quickly, and the mattress shifts, and I think of agitated water, but then his hands are on my wrists and his eyes blaze with anger.

Oh, shit.

"What are you doing?" He hisses.

I feel a second of panic but then remember his earlier reaction to my very bossy, very non-Sara tone of voice. His eyes flicker to the edge of my sweatshirt, to the exposed skin there, to the cotton panties I wear.

"Shush! Lie back." The pressure on his chest is gentle, the command is not, but mostly he does so of his own will. He lies back for me, simply beause I commanded him to, and it makes the blood sing in my veins.

His eyes are suddenly very open, very vulnerable. I've discovered the key with which to unlock him, still I know the window of opportunity is small. At any moment he could come to his senses and make me stop.

His tee shirt is bunched up and I push it higher. I pull the edges. "Lift." An order. Miraculously, he behaves, and then he is shirtless. Heavenly expanse of naked, soft skin, not a single hair. I want to touch but the pants have to come off.

My hand moves down, his eyes flutter blue and he whispers "Sara-" but he doesn't stop me as I slide my fingers under the button of his fly and undo him. Zip, and a downward tug. He is a boxer man, which I somehow knew, and the bulge there is impressive.

"Saraaa..." he whines but it is no longer a viable protest. And when I have him in my hand, sweet hot sikly flesh that trembles for me, I know I have him. I actually have him.

I watch him. He feels exquisitely sensitive and vulnerable in my fingers. Wet, already weeping with it.

I was pushing his lower back quite hard into the air mattress. I didn't realize it at the time but he must have been getting more than a massage.

"Why are you doing this?"

Because I want to. Because I can't get enough of your skin, your very skin, Grissom. Because I want you to sleep and stop moving around. Because I want to watch your orgasm like fireworks over a glass-still lake.

I am quiet, and I reach below with my other hand, cupping, and rub my thumb over his tip. His eyes close and he breathes out harshly. Sounds so beautiful. Makes me hot. I'm in control.

My rhythm is slow. "Ohgod," he whispers. "You're killing me." His whisper is like a match to sandpaper inside me, and I smile for the first time, happy like a cat in a pool of sunlight.

"You'll live," I whisper, and quicken just a tiny bit. Sweat is moistening the curls at his temple ever so slightly, and it is slowly getting warmer. He looks befuddled and adorable and so, so hot, then he winces, as if in pain, but I know better, because I am bringing him to heaven in my hand, and that look... it's been the holy grail of my fantasies for years. I want to see him writhe and shake and buck. Have wanted it for so long it's part of the terrain of my sexual psyche. And now it's real, we're really here in the desert in this marvelously improbable situation.

"Oh," he whispers, and he sounds beautifully, exquisitely lost. My own need is raising up inside of me, ignorable for the moment, but ever demanding. He likes it when I press my thumb into the slit that leaks crystal fluid, so I linger there before I quicken my pace. "Sara... Sara! Gonna come!"

I push his shirt and bedclothes to a safe range and continue. "Sara! God you're good. So good..."

I smile as I feel fatigue flare in my forearm. I will remember every contortion of his beautiful face, the feral lust, the impotent fear, the heady orgasm, the way his body tenses the way his breath mingles with mine in the space of the tent, his harsh and wild, mine measured. I will remember the quiver of his thighs and the tension in his belly and the way he explodes forth into my fingers. I remember the way his eyes flutter closed and the way he bucks up one final time, and the slick hot egg-white feel of him sliding between my fingers.

Then I lean back and slip off my panties. His eyes flash upen. He thinks I'm going to fuck him. "Sara..." he pleads, and that patronizing tone has crept into his voice.

Anger flares through me. "Shut up!" I hiss, and roughly mop off his belly with my panties, then toss fold them over and place them on top of my discarded jeans. Like I care if he falls asleep with sticky sheets.

I pull my own sheet and roll over, away from him.

"Sara, I'm sorry..." he trails off in that stupidly impotent I-dont-know-what-to-do-about-this voice of his.

"Shut up!"

\ I am so wet. I feel it seeping down my thigh. So wet for this bastard and he hasn't even touched me. I reach down, lean further away from him, knowing he is watcing me with those stupidly bewildered eyes, not knowing what to say. Hot tears betray me by spilling, but I am so close, and as I press my fingers against my aching sex the result is immediate, and I am right on track, grooving in the slick folds, over the tiny ember of nerves hidden there.

My pressure is tight and fast. I spread my legs a little, bending the knee of one leg. I hear a sharp intake of breath as he realizes what I am doing. As if I could get him off then just go to sleep, unaffected by the sound of his breath, the sight of his orgasm. He doesn't know a thing about me. It makes me more angry.

"Sara."

I flex my brows in irritation and keep moving my fingers. He is fucking with my concentration. I am so close, right on the edge, and I need to come. "Shut! Up!" I hiss, moving and moving my hips, breathing harder.

Then suddenly I am on my back, and his hand is pressing my shoulder down, and everything has changed. His eyes are no longer bewildered, but flinty. His face is bright red as is his upper chest. But he is not embarassed. His gaze flickers to the tears on my face, to the sheet that covers my dirty toilings.

He lifts the sheet, and is rewarded with a view of my naked cunt, my finger pressing there. His eyes widen and I close my own against him. I won't let him in, he will only hurt me. I am so close, keep going. Try to pretend he isn't there.

Then he is moving my hand, and my brows knit in irritation. "Don't-" I begin, but his hand replaces mine, fingers wider and broader, somehow better. I make a sweet gasping sound, breathing out as tears dry, irritating, on my jaw.

He moves in slow circles, too slow. "Faster!" I demand, and he obliges. Oh, the friction there is so good, and he is going to get me off and I don't want this from him, I want to control him, not have him control me, but I am throbbing and rising and barreling toward the end.

He quickens still more, not enough to lose focus on the bright burning bundle of nerves, but enough to send me barreling. I flash my eyes open in the second I begin to fly, and see his face, resolved, tense, beautiful, perhaps angry a little, stubble darkening his jaw, absolutely feral. Then I close my eyes to the joy that echoes in waves through me, throbbing, throbbing, and slowing.

I gasp when his fingers touch my face. The intimacy of it is galling. Still I can't resist opening my eyes. He is aroused and sated all at once. I don't want him touching me. It hurts.

I turn away, fresh tears falling. It hurts, it hurts. I don't know what to do about this... Hurts.

"Don't cry," he whispers, suddenly warm and human behind me, whispering in my ear, and it sends a fresh wave of tears.

Don't touch me, don't care for me, because it will just hurt more. No tenderness. Because I can't bear it.

"Go to sleep, Grissom," I say tiredly, tiny earthquakes moving in a mysterious slowing rhythm inside me.

"This isn't over," he whispers, laying back down.

"Whatever," I whisper, too exhausted to deal with the emotional complexity of his bullshit right now. The soft breath of wind and sand outside our tent is unbearably hypnotic. I close my eyes, and breathe with milky smooth slowness, the heat pooling in my groin spreading out to the rest of my body, carrying with it sleep.