Wordless 'Threads'

by Linda Bindner

A/N: A brief synopsis so far: The 'Threads' Communication Series:

story one - Mark and Carter have a conversation on the phone

story two - Mark and Jack have a conversation on the phone

story three - a Jack and Sam e-mail conversation with very unusual consequences

story four - Carter receives a concussion when she interrupts a meeting between Jack, the VP (Kinsey), et all. She then spends time in ICU while Jack anxiously waits for her to wake up

story five - Carter learns secrets - from Mark and Daniel, and from Jack - and on a side note, someone is trying to kill her - but who?

story six - codes, letters, and more secrets

Now, on with the series....

Carter and I aren't in the same chain of command anymore.

The same words had been running in circles through General Jack O'Neill's mind during his entire drive home from the Pentagon. He tried hard to fight it, and to squash it for good, but the words inevitably ignited a sense of hope inside his heart. It was damned annoying!

As he drove, and in spite of those words that kept running a ceaseless soliloquy through his brain, he also very firmly told himself not to be an ass; that he had about as much chance of working things out now with Carter as he had of spontaneously curing her double vision - in other words, slim to absolutely zilch.

Yet he couldn't help but let the hope flow through his heart, either, even as those words reverberated throughout his mind. Those eleven words were one of the few things that even gave him any reason to hope now that the whole 'Pete debacle' had occurred. The fact that he and Carter seemed to have become closer since that whole 'Pete debacle' was another reason that gave him hope. The coded letters that he and she had been sharing, for months now, had been a good and useful idea of his to encourage her to open up to him without telling her that he wanted her to feel like she could tell him anything.

The words were a double edged sword, however. Though that chain of command that had been the guiding factor in their lives until his transfer to Washington DC, and hers to Area 51, they seemed to have had little effect so far in their private lives, even if their professional lives were definitely changing. Jack felt like he had grown closer to his favorite Lieutenant Colonel, despite the 'Pete debacle' that had nearly torn them apart forever. They had managed to somehow 'weather that storm' and were now in much stronger positions because of it. The way that it had ended - as abruptly as it had begun - indicated that something had changed between Jack and Sam since the 'Pete debacle,' but truth to tell, so little had actually mutated in their personal lives that Jack often felt as if he and Sam had stagnated, had become mired in the routines of lives where they had to maintain a professional distance from each other, lest they be court-martialed. The fact that such a court-martial even occuring was negligible while the two of them had been under Hammond's command was conveniently ignored, especially now, and even by Jack, who admittedly was the only one of the two who seemed to want anything to change between them.

Neither he nor Sam had made any reference to the way they had whispered of their love for each other while Sam had been drugged up a few weeks earlier in the DC hospital, and Jack was now beginning to lose hope that Sam even remembered the event. He couldn't bring himself to mention it because she didn't mention it. Jack had finally grown so worried that she didn't even recall anything about that night in her room and what they had said to each other that he couldn't even bring himself to ask her about it in those coded letters he and she had sent to the other.

If he couldn't mention loving her in a coded letter that was more than likely never going to be seen by anyone other than Carter (and he loved Carter so much that he would easily die for her), then Jack figured that he was a heartless bastard as well as a hopeless romantic, and that he deserved to be as alone as he was now. Even though Carter had planned to stay with him while she was in DC for a follow-up optometry visit, Jack had little hope (though admittedly some - how annoying!) that anything would change... unless he made it change. And he had given that change every opportunity to come about by creating the concept of those coded letters, but then had chickened out and not made that final push to repeat his feelings to her. God, once had been scary enough. There was no way that he could dredge up enough courage to do it twice!

But Jack knew that he was being given another chance to rectify the situation. If everything had gone according to plan, Carter would already be at his house, and for the first time - ever - he would walk into his house to find her...

But Jack was a realist as much as Carter was. He knew that this situation could go either way, be either good or bad at this point. She could be... What? Waiting for him, a dinner of takeout on the table, a cold, refreshing beer already set at his place? Somehow, he rather expected this fantasy of his to pop like the unrealistic bubble that he knew it to be. The idea of someone as kick-butt as Sam Carter playing 'the little woman' to his 'macho man of the house' was just too ridiculous for him to take seriously. No matter how much he liked the idea of Carter waiting for him to arrive home, he simply knew that it wasn't like her to 'wait' on anybody. That's what that cop had gotten wrong - Sam needed to be treasured for who and what she already was, not pressured into becoming someone she was not.

Jack snorted at that thought as he turned his Jeep Grand Cherokee into his driveway, throwing the vehicle into park almost before it had rolled to a stop. He had eshewed the usual car and driver that was offered to a high ranking General, not wanting any motor pool airman to witness what might or might not happen between him and Carter when he arrived home.

As he got out of the car parked in front of that home of his, he shook his head in amusement at himself. The idea that Carter would be doing something so... banal... as waiting for him to return home was as unCarter-like as his fantasies had ever gotten. The picture of that domestic Carter was now so laughable that it practically made him chuckle out loud as he collected his briefcase from his vehicle's back seat and proceeded up the steps and to his front door.

A front door that was locked. How odd - in spite of the fact that he'd sent a house key to Carter, Jack never thought to lock his door. Now he wrinkled his brows. Had he locked his door that morning, though, to let him know when he reached home again if Carter was in his house or not, as the door would be unlocked if she was, and locked if she wasn't? Now, he couldn't remember for certain. Jack grimaced as he groped through his mind - he couldn't help but think of that saying that 'the memory is the first thing to go' with old age.

But even Jack had to admit to himself that it was as if Carter wasn't even at his house yet. Again Jack shook his head at himself in amusement at his own thoughts. Instead of contemplating his advancing years, or trying to remember if he'd locked his door that morning on his way to work or not, he fished in the pocket of his dress blues jacket for his keys. He finally found them amid a plethora of far more interesting paraphernalia (his travel game boy being one of them) and opened his front door. The door swung aside on hinges that needed oil (he'd meant to get to the hinges since his arrival in DC, but other things [usually writing letters to Carter] took precedence) Now the hinges squealed an angry protest as he pushed his way into his cold, dark, empty house.

There was so NO Carter waiting happily for his anticipated return that he had to snort at himself and his earlier thoughts yet a third time as the door swung shut behind him.

He toed off his shoes as he wondered: where was Carter? Obviously not here, in his house. Things were too dark, too... still... Maybe something had held her up at the SGC, and she hadn't made it out to DC. There was certainly no one besides him in this government house that he inhabited - he could practically feel the emptiness in his bones.

Jack tried not to let the pang of disappointment at finding his house empty yet again shoot across his heart. Yet, he ruthlessly stripped off his dress jacket and threw it over a chair in the living room as he entered, then turned on a lamp, bathing the place in a warmth that was wholly artificial.

God, he hated coming home to an empty house, especially when it was dark outside, as it was that day. But he tried not to let that bother him now. It wasn't like he and Carter had exactly been on the best of terms lately, at least, not according to the tone of his and her last letters to each other. Jack found the words of the last coded letter that he had received from her run through his mind as he tossed his briefcase to the same chair as his dress coat. He briefly considered hanging up the hated object his coat had become, but he decided to childishly leave it there for now. Instead, he removed his tie with a yank, then proceeded with a sigh of regret on silent stockinged feet towards his bedroom, where in the private bathroom there he could wash the feel and smell of the Pentagon and duty off his skin, and change clothes into something comfortable and warm. It wasn't like...

And that was when Jack crossed the threshold into his bedroom, and stopped cold in those stockinged feet. His fingers remained frozen on the second to the top button of his dress shirt as he stared in wide-eyed astonishment at his bed. Or, more accurately, stared in astonishment at what was in his bed.

There, just a shadow in his twilight darkened bedroom, her glasses another shadow on the nightstand beside the bed, half shrouded by the covers pulled up to her shoulders... her naked shoulders... was Samantha Carter. Waiting for him. To arrive home. In his bed. Naked. Naked. Naked.

The word 'cliché' came to mind...

Cliché or not, Jack continued to gape at her in astonishment. Or at least at the top half of her, which was... so gloriously... naked to his gaze. If he could judge by her blond head calmly propped up by her seriously unclothed arm, attached to a seriously unclothed neck, which led to a seriously... God, was that her neck? Her shoulders? Her...?

Jack took a moment to clear his throat of the fog that had taken over his vocal chords in the last second. Numbness tried very hard to infiltrate his mind, but he resisted for another moment. He was about to ask her what the hell was going on, when her index finger of her right hand that was laying out on top of his covers slowly beckoned him over.

There was just enough light left in the room with which to see her. Jack wasn't even certain of the expression that was on her face, even if he was fairly certain that total shock registered on his face. Still amazed, and stunned, and too astonished to speak, he let his hands drop from his shirt button to his sides, and found himself following the urging of that hypnotic finger over to his bed and her side. He sank onto the top of the bed as if in a dream, facing her. He was again about to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, when he looked into her eyes.

Utter fear stared back at him. She was so afraid that he could now see that her finger that had beckoned him to 'come hither' was shaking. And she had looked so calm and collected from the door of his bedroom... apparently that was a front to her quivering terror.

What was she so afraid of?

Jack's forehead furrowed, as if he was using it to ask her to explain her emotions. But again her blue eyes made him pause. The expression in them still appeared to be so... scared... and yet now that he looked closer, her gaze also seemed to be so determined at the same time. It was the way that she tentatively raised her hand to his cheek that gave him yet another reason to stop from demanding that she explain herself. His voice was stuck in his throat anyway, and he couldn't have uttered a sound if he was dying and she was the only person who could help him.

Carter's hand was mesmerizing. The skin of that raised hand was so soft... and smelled like her... intoxicating...

Jack closed his eyes, shivering... and not from the cold. He was hard pressed not to just bury his nose into the palm of her hand, and kiss its inviting skin. Her fingers were cool to the touch, not too hot, not too cold. But the shaking was in evidence again, and that more than anything else broke the spell of inaction that had quickly fallen over him.

Jack made as if to jerk back from her hand like she had burned his face, but she pressed her fingers into the skin of his cheek and neck, stopping him. He was forced to once more meet her gaze, and it was as if the universe opened up to him in that one moment. The barriers were gone, the shades were up, the blinds were opened, the shutters were thrown wide... The fear was now gone, or at least, lessened. Her eyes fairly sparkled with the emotion now running rampant across her face.

She was still frightened... of what, he still didn't know... but she swallowed her fear and gazed at him once again in steely determination, as if she were willing herself to go through with whatever she had in mind, as if she were unable at this point to not go through with it.

Then, in the blink of her eyes... her beautiful blue eyes... her fear abruptly disappeared. Just as suddenly love poured over him in soft, previously forbidden waves of unexpressed emotion. She blinked again... once, twice... then her lips curled up into a slow, seductive smile, as if to welcome him home, promising Lord only knew what at the same time.

The sense of seduction that had enveloped Jack from the moment he walked into his bedroom only grew stronger as she continued to gaze at him, a tiny smile lighting her face. It was clear, she was glad to see him, happy at just the sight of him, strangely peaceful now that he was able to study her at close range.

Neither had said anything as of yet. It was if they didn't have to speak, didn't have to rely on something as simple and mundane as the spoken word in order to communicate. All Jack had to do was stare into her startling, piercing eyes...

The next thing he knew, she was kissing him, lightly at first, softly, then more intensely when he didn't draw away from her. Just as he admitted to himself that he wanted more of her, her taste, her feel, she pulled back, and the sides of her eyes crinkled in question, as if she were asking 'Is this okay?' In fact, Jack heard the words echo in his mind, but he wasn't sure if she had spoken them aloud, or if he only thought that she had.

Either way, it was a no-brainer of a question for him. Was this okay? As far as he was concerned, it was more than okay! Was he dreaming? Had he fallen asleep at his desk at the Pentagon again, and nobody had chosen to wake him, and he was in the throes of one hell of a good dream as a result? Should he pinch himself, just to make certain that he wasn't fantasizing yet again?

Jack had to admit that he could never fantasize that particular smell of her skin, the complete softness of her fingers, the velvet of her lips on his, the passion he suddenly saw burning in her gaze. That he could never reproduce himself. He might wish for it, might contemplate it, but the sensation of total... peace... that washed over him as a result of seeing her feelings like this... He would never think to invent that.

His own gaze sought hers again, and inquired back to her the sense of asking if she was all right with this. Her bedroom gaze replied that she was more than all right with this, that she had been more than all right with it for a long time...

She blinked desire soaked eyes once more, her smile growing now as she looked up at him. And in answer to his and her unspoken questions, she reached up, her fingers not tentative now, and carefully released the second button on his dress shirt.

Jack caught his breath. Sam undressing him in his own bedroom - it was the most erotic thing he'd ever witnessed. Breathing was impossible as he stared, mesmerized by her hand.

Jack was still holding his breath, wholly amazed at her action, when her fingers slowly, but deliberately, moved of their own accord to the next button on his shirt, and the next, and the next. Those buttons were also just as slowly pushed through their button holes, leaving his shirt half unbuttoned, and the top half of his chest bare to the world.

Sam then did another thing that thoroughly astonished him. She slowly rose up, the covers falling from where they had rested on her shoulders to pool around her waist in a nonchalant fall of material until she was sitting up right in front of him, her entire top half naked to his suddenly hungry gaze.

Despite not wishing to appear like a horny teenager, Jack wanted to feast his eyes on her abruptly exposed flesh. More desire stared sensuously out at him, and the air again hitched in his throat. He still couldn't breathe at the delectable sight that Sam was presenting to him, a Sam who was completely free of all the inhibitions that had led her over the years.

And still she smiled at him.

Lids now gone heavy with unfulfilled desire - something he admittedly never expected to see aimed from her to him - she once more stroked his cheek with her gentle fingers.

Even such a light touch as hers was enough to send shivers of electricity shooting down his spine. Sam leaned into him, inviting, soft, seductive...

With a snap, Jack's hold on his control broke. The love she was offering washed over him, freeing his own. Emotion poured out of him, as if he now had no choice but to express it. He found himself kissing her back this time, letting his own defenses crumble before the onslaught of this suddenly wholly female siren who used to be his familiar 2IC. Now he realized that she'd only ever been the soldier 'Carter' in disguise. This woman who was soooooo in charge of this situation, and of him by extension, was as unrecognizable to him as the DC street system. But he was a very willing student.

With no more hesitation, Jack threw himself into this unanticipated encounter with the woman of his dreams. He grasped at her shoulders and pulled her close... close... closer yet, her lips gone soft and pliant now that she was certain that she had convinced him... of something unknown, but something definitely profound.

There was no doubt that Samantha Carter - soldier, scientist, kick-butt astrophysicist - was the one in charge of this whole seduction. As she kissed him, she deftly pulled the material of his shirt out of his pants and pushed the rest of the buttons through their respective holes. She had moved her soft kisses to his neck and beside his left ear, her mouth traveling with amazing accuracy to his jugular vein where she felt his pulse with her lips and teeth.

The sensations now coursing through Jack at such a primal action was enough to wring a groan from him. But with an iron will, he held back from attacking her as he wanted to. In fact, the passive role that he was being thrust into was almost as alluring as she was.

Soft pants of air flowed over the bare skin of his chest as she moved further down his body. She pushed the white shirt from his shoulders, slowly inching the material to his own waist, freeing his hands as she reached back up to kiss him again.

By now, his groin was so tight against his uniform pants that he was in pain. Sam relieved some of the pressure when she gently shoved him back onto the covers of his bed, then slowly crawled out from under the covers to slide over him.

The momentary release of pressure evaporated. Jack's groin tightened again, this time in pure lust and desire as he watched her. He managed one look, his gaze meeting hers for a final dance around the question of putting a halt to their chosen course of action. He would somehow stop what they were doing if he saw the slightest uneasiness in her gaze.

But there was only a kind of slow, slurred, heavy passion blazing back at him, so set, as if what they were doing was finally the right thing to do, after getting it wrong for eight long years, that Jack found himself again hard pressed not to try to take charge of this admittedly sweet seduction.

If Sam would let him take charge, that is. And it didn't look like she had anything remotely resembling that in mind at the moment.

Her lips slid down his neck to his chest, grazing across the top of his nipple, and he groaned again. He could feel her smile against his skin, but now she had worked her way down to his stomach, where she kissed him in an ever-widening path that led indirectly to the tight area in his pants. They had shared many jokes over the years about his 'side arm' that had begun during their long-ago stay in Antarctica, but there was really no way to misinterpret that swelling of his now. Sam only hesitated a fraction of a second before allowing her wandering circles to stray over the top of his erection, causing another groan to explode from his tightly clenched teeth.

Encouraged by his intense reaction, Sam passed her hand across his erection one more time, and he couldn't control the second groan that burst out of his mouth, a sound that was accompanied this time by obvious twitching towards the warmth of her touch. He ached to feel her fingers sliding across his skin, and mere clothes could no longer disguise that fact.

Desire raged inside him when, in answer to his unhidden bodily movement, she slowly unzipped his pants, relieving the external tightness and pressure in one bold move, but creating a different kind of pressure without knowing it. The sensation swept over and through him with the speed of a runaway train - he wanted, beyond reason, to be inside her, to feel her surrounding him, her soul joining with his. She may have started this seduction, but it was going to end soon, embarrassingly fast, and without her if she chose to ignore the panicked expression that suddenly shot through his eyes, their one mode of communication that had proved necessary so far.

Except that now, Sam definitely had her gaze glued to his eyes, judging, reading him as she removed his pants first, then his underwear and socks, so that he was as wonderfully naked as she was. His skin tingled and quivered with her every touch, so that he was highly attuned to the fact that she was somehow straddling him at just the moment when he was certain that he was going to explode.

In one swift, decisive move, she slid onto him, taking his entire length inside her with a sigh escaping her lips, an expression of pure bliss sliding across her face, as if something that had been meant to happen for years was finally taking place. She squirmed against him for a moment, the sense of bliss deepening. Her eyes fluttered shut as she leaned forward over him, changing the angle of him inside her just slightly so that she gasped a breath, right before she made her first attempt at something resembling a taut rhythm. She slid over him, slowly, desirously, maddeningly, crazily, and kissed him in a deep show of solid affection.

As she kissed, the slow rhythm built steadily into a faster one, and the galaxy coiled tightly, tighter, tighter in Jack's stomach, swirling with delicious tendrils of pleasure. He thought he was surely going to lose it all to her, sooner rather than later, but he managed to hold on to the edge of his passion for just a moment longer. Her hands met his on either side of his head, their fingers twining together on top of the cover on his bed.

Still it wasn't enough. Not until she lay full length on top of him, changing that angle of him inside her did that feeling of 'unity' completely encompass them.

Her skin grazed along his, and the new angle pulled cries of pleasure from them both. She kissed him, he kissed her, she clung to his shoulders, he wanted to caress her breasts once more, but then, there wasn't time. The tightness that had invaded Jack's stomach now gave one last quiver of anticipated excitement. Suddenly, the universe inside him exploded out in one wild burst of burning desire. Pleasure so intense that he ached engulfed him in wave after wave of heat.

An orgasm far stronger than any he had felt in years ripped through him, stripping him bare of any defense against the mindless tide of pure emotion raging through him. He thought he called her name, or the call could only have been a silent echo of his thoughts... he wasn't sure at this point. All he knew was that he was left a shaking mass of numbed muscles and sinew after it was all over.

Sam's own earth shattering release was just a second behind his. The look of bliss on her face transformed into one of singing pleasure that rocked her so hard, it left her gasping on top of him when she remembered to breath at all. Her skin molded to his as she stretched over him, her climax making her arch her neck taut against its ferocity. Her own cry reached Jack's ears, but again he might have only dreamed its echo in his head as he watched her crash into a pleasure so intense that it made her flush a bright red from head to toe at so much emotion.

The after effects of their lovemaking made them both heave in air, a pall of satiation settling over them as Jack disengaged his fingers from her hands to firmly wrap his arms around her, cradling her close. Sam settled her head into the crook of his shoulder, smiling into the skin on his neck as she kissed him one final time. At last, she snuggled down deep into his embrace almost as if she'd been waiting for years to do just that, like she'd been born to do it, to make that move, as if reacting the way she had was the one thing that melded all the planets in all the galaxies in the entire universe together.

Jack fancied that he heard the universe singing in that one... perfect... moment.

To Be Continued in 'Threads' of Whispered Confessions'