At least the sex was honest.
Whether he was finding a peace that he didn't otherwise have a cache of elsewhere, or driving the memory of the day into her with the strongest hands that had touched her in years. At least it was brutally fucking clear, crystalline in its clarity. He was whispering some kind of certainty with touches in her hair when he couldn't otherwise give her a wealth of truths. Giving her the only honesty he could afford to drop in the coffer. He told her everything in touches because words were where they got tangled in the liars webs.
Because she knew, in some way, he wanted to be forthright. Because he battled for a balance with her just as much as he battled for it within himself, with his club. And she knew in her skin that she wasn't helping him win the fight. She knew she was bleeding out all over him. She couldn't help it, couldn't stem the flow.
She was infatuated with him. Enthralled and entrapped.
And why not? He was the very type that held center seat in her damning wheelhouse of men. Unabashedly brash and bright but oh-so deliciously charming when his laughter found a home. Taunting and teasing warmth that could flip to a fury like a penny toss. A dangerous confidence without a younger man's swagger and a weariness that she couldn't help but want to wipe off his face. The goddamn scars that he guarded, the straddle of a bike, leather? Hell, the accent alone could have stopped her on the street for a look… And in the end, he was exactly what she couldn't-shouldn't-wouldn't have.
It snared her down like a bear trap, steel teeth hearted. Pinned again, girl.
He was gonna rip her heart out, rougher than the rest.
All with his gloves on, black blood-slick leather.
"You don't have a lot of options, you know?"
His hips shifted up as she spoke, forcing the way she was straddled against him to bring them closer together, weariness lidding the glance he gave her as she traced on one of his tattoos and avoided his eyes.
"In the state of California entrapment is only a viable defense if the officer engages in conduct that would induce an otherwise law abiding citizen to commit a crime that they had no prior intention of committing." Her eyes were layering worlds of darknesses over him, her voice engaging a rhetoric that was somehow ingrained in the set of her shoulders as she arched her bare spine. "You are not a law abiding citizen, Filip. Nor have I induced you to commit any crime that you haven't already added to your long goddamn list of achievements."
His head tipped slowly on her pillow, eyes thinning into the uninflected tone of her voice with his hands bearing down on her thighs. "Brushin' up on your Penal Code, love?"
"Entrapment, 647a. I know the code. I'm just informing you that while you could land a misconduct charge on me, get me dismissed or take my rank… using this for your defense is weak."
"My defense is weak?" He questioned sharply as he lifted his jaw, shoulders rising up from the pillow as he flinched his eyes thinner, "So's your resolve, Lieutenant."
"How so?" she asked cautiously, eyes lightening in questioning as she caught against the way his hands were rising to reach for her, bracing on his wrists and stalling him up.
"Y'keep trying to break us apart," his voice had swathed brooding, "but I still keep finding us right back here."
"That's not because I'm weak, Telford." She leaned a lingering closer, letting him break his wrists down from her hold so that he could dig her farther down into his lap with prying fingers along her ribs. "It's because I'm crazy."
An almost smile twitched his lips before he arched her a dry glance, eyes heavily colored by jaded knowing, "I'm not steppin' into that conversation, Althea. Drop it."
She smiled sheepishly as she lifted a finger to lay on his lips. "Entrapment?"
He tugged her down, letting his face turn into her hair as he forced her to still and hush with a gentled hand down the back of her head. "Guilty."
Sure, maybe she was a little crazy on the frayed up edges of things. Self righteous and dramatic and a lithe little thing of passionate, if unstable, emotions. She was wired up tight but the taut lines of her also leaned into curves that he wasn't shy about enjoying.
Moody as hell and swinging her neuroses like the slap she'd once laid on him.
But, damn him to hell, he found it sorta cute on her - had a weakness for it when it wasn't bloody tiresome. She could be a right pain directly in his ass. But it wasn't a fair game they were playing at, either. She was still tangling up with the ghost of guilt – a fight he'd graciously bowed out of years before. And he wasn't the kind to deal in what ifs or wishing possibilities. He took hands with realities, and reality's whisper told him to take from her what he could while she was still breathing warm against the bend of his shoulder, her hand flattened out on his chest to both guard and hold him in place in her sleep. Her face lay over the Reaper that was etched on his skin, the smell of her hair tweaked with stale weed and whiskeyed comfort. One of her thighs was riding up on his hip and he closed his palm tighter against the muscle of it, leaning into the trap she made around him.
He wasn't ashamed of his wanting her, turning his head to study the precious bit of peace he could savor before daylight rose on her window. He'd take the shit the boys threw his way because watching her sleep weighed more in the balancing game than some ribbing from his brothers. He'd kill the comfort in the daylight, keep turning Jackson's eyes on another prize for as long as he could, just to enjoy the serenity on her face as she slept.
She wasn't gilded innocent, but she wasn't completely tarnished up either.
He liked the burnished gold of her, especially when it was in her eyes at three am.
Because that's when he could pretend it was something that maybe he could keep.
"You're staring, Scotty." Her sleepy whisper rubbed down his skin and he lost sight of her eyes.
"I know." He turned onto his side and pinned her down under the weight of turned hips, hand catching up against her jaw to pry her head back into the pillow, softening the movement with a nod as he drew over her. "You think I've a weak defense?"
He didn't think she was all that wrong in it.
Wasn't all that far off the mark at the moment.
Her eyes thinned in a hazed scrutiny, hands pressing into his chest as he laid her flat. "I couldn't trap you if I tried, Filip. You'd just cut your way out."
"That what you're really afraid of, Althea?"
His lungs caged up when the honesty in her eyes blinked true.
"Me too." He admitted before laying his head gently onto her chest and setting his hips down, locking her beneath him as he curled around her frame.
She wrapped him up back, suddenly wide awake and waiting for the snare pull that hadn't come yet.