Nadia waited patiently as Marshall stuttered through the introduction to his latest tech demonstration. Sydney, Vaughn, and Weiss had been sent on an intelligence gathering assignment in Rome. Everyone else was there, forming a rough semi-circle around Marshall, who was holding something that resembled a small grenade launcher. Her dad was at the far end of the room, watching with barely concealed impatience. Directly to her right was Jack, whose expression she could never read.
"So I was thinking, wouldn't it be great if you could just shoot an explosive charge from a distance, and have it stick to whatever you want? Because you know sometimes you're like running, and you don't have time, or the surface isn't smooth or sometimes even flat, or like remember that time when we needed to-"
"We understand, Marshall," her father interjected gently but firmly.
"Oh, right, ok, yeah." Marshall lifted the launcher to his shoulder. "So, what you do is," he said, turning to aim the device at a concrete slab that he'd clearly erected for the demonstration. "You press this button, and-"
Nadia cried out in surprise as something cold and wet hit her chest with shocking velocity. She watched in horror as the explosive device hurtled towards her. A split second before it hit, Jack tackled her to the ground. It whizzed past her head, grazing her ear. She flinched at the concussion as it detonated somewhere behind her.
"Are you all right?" Marshall shrieked in panic. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I can't believe, I mean, I don't know what happened, the trajectory, I'm so sorry. Nadia, Mr. Bristow, are you-"
"It's all right, Marshall," Nadia said. She didn't want the poor guy to have a heart attack.
Jack tried to get up and Nadia felt an unpleasant tug on her skin. He must have felt it too, because he froze.
"Marshall, what kind of adhesive is this?" Jack asked, his tone frigid enough to bring the temperature in the room down by several degrees.
"Um, it's an epoxy based three dimensional polymeric pressure sensitive adhesive."
"In. English," Jack gritted.
"It's uh, it's superglue, and it's probably soaked through your clothing and onto your skin, and it's uh, permanent," Marshall said sheepishly.
After Marshall had gone back to his lab to work on a solution, Nadia gave her father a pointed look. She wanted to get up, and suspected that it wasn't going to be a particularly dignified process.
"Dad, could you give us some privacy?"
Her father's expression darkened. He looked like he was about to refuse, but then changed his mind.
"Nadia. Jack." Who knew a person could say so much in just one syllable? "I'll be in my office if you need me."
Once they were alone, Jack said,
"Thank you for that."
"I should thank you. I'd rather be stuck to you than stuck to an explosive."
"At least you wouldn't have been stuck to it for very long."
She grinned into his shoulder.
"Put your arms around my neck, and your legs around…" he hesitated, "me. I'm going to try to lift us both up."
She had chosen to wear a knee length pencil skirt that day, which would have to be hiked up practically to her waist in order to get her legs around Jack. But, they couldn't very well lie on the floor all day, she reasoned, so she pulled up her skirt, thanked god that she was wearing a presentable pair of panties today, and slung her legs around Jack's waist.
"Ready," she said.
After a bit of struggling and jostling and trying to figure out how to position their arms and legs, they finally managed to get into a comfortable position. Well, sort of. He was sitting on the floor, she was straddling his lap, and with all the friction between them, she could feel him quite distinctly getting hard through his cotton dress pants and her thin underwear.
"Well, that's an improvement," she announced.
"That's…debatable," Jack said gravely.
Nadia couldn't help but smirk at his discomfiture. She knew it was wrong to think of him the way she did, late at night in bed with her nightgown hitched up to her waist and her hands between her thighs. But she also knew that she wasn't imagining the smoldering looks she received from across the conference table when he thought no one was paying attention. She rocked her hips slightly and was rewarded with a barely audible hitch in his breath.
"I think…we should stand," he said, his voice rougher than usual.
"I think," she said as she ground against his growing erection, "we should stay right here."
"Nadia…"
"I've seen the way you look at me. Tell me that you don't dream of me at night in your bed, alone in the dark. Tell me that you think of me as a daughter. Tell me, Jack, and I'll stop."
He didn't answer, but his hands gripped her waist, hard enough to leave bruises. The thought of finding them on her skin afterwards as she undressed in her bedroom sparked something dark inside her that yearned to be held down and used because that's what she was, just a pretty plaything, and toys that aren't played with get discarded. She rocked against him, her hips finding their own savage rhythm, aware only of her desire and the muscles in his back tensing beneath her questing hands. His fingers twined in her hair and he yanked her head roughly to one side, exposing her neck. He bit down, branding her for his own. She choked back a cry as pure, animal pleasure racked her in waves, seemingly never ending.
She came back to herself slowly. First, his ragged breathing, loud in her ears. Then the smell of him, soap and sex mingled into something intoxicating. Then his hard, warm body, his arms encircling her like a cherished possession, and finally the wetness between them, cooling to a slightly unpleasant clamminess.
She rested her head comfortably in the crook of his neck, feeling the beat of his heart next to hers.
"My father will see the mark," she murmured.
"I know," he said simply.