Do You Want To… Come Inside?
John was rougher with her than Will had been, but he still looked at her as if she was magic and held her as if she was made of glass.
Pushed up against the door that they had slammed shut behind them, Alicia was breathless and needy and grabbing at him.
He kissed her, desperately, and she fell into it, feeling his tongue delve into her mouth and pushing hers back against his.
Moments earlier, she had been startled but glad to see him outside the elevator on her floor. She had been thinking about him on the way up, in fact, thinking about earlier that day when he had told her, "Go after Peter," in such a laden way, and how it had made her quiver with thrill and excitement.
Now here they were, and she was overwhelmed by him, and how he covered her whole body as he pressed her into the door. He was overwhelmed by her too, by the taste of her tongue, and by her want for him that he had - for so long – tried to convince himself was just in his mind, in his dreams.
But she had wanted him for a while, and she had thought about this moment many times, this moment when they would – inevitably, she hoped – give into one another, submit to what they needed.
She thought about it each time she crossed her legs.
She was turned on every time she instinctively crossed one thigh over the other and his piercing gaze came into her mind. He had made an unconscious habit not only conscious, but sensual and electric. Each time she crossed her legs, at work or anywhere else, she thought about how John had stared hard at her face when he had given her those instructions. He had been too shy to look down at her legs - those legs he loved and longed for – for fear that if he looked down, even for a fleeting gesture, he would not be able to look back up and she would know…
Now his hands roamed with ravenous free reign over her thighs and hips as he pressed his lips into hers. He bit onto her bottom lip and sucked it into his mouth. She moaned into him, making his erection throb harder against her stomach.
He broke the kiss and looked into her eyes with such want and reverence that she blushed. He took off her coat and paused. When she did not stop him, he unzipped her dress and took that off, too. He had her nearly naked against the front door as he stood two steps away, fully clothed. He scanned the length of her with hungry eyes, up and down, his gaze carnal and slow.
Her face flushed even more, and she fought the urge to cover herself with her arms. She felt vulnerable and exposed, but mostly she ached with longing.
For an agonizing few seconds his eyes roved over her, and then with his hands outstretched he walked to her.
"You are… divine, Alicia… I just… my god, you are beautiful."
As he reached her, he brushed back her hair, relishing the feel of it between his fingers and the permission to touch it – to touch her. He held her head to kiss her with such yearning and feeling that her stomach fluttered.
Without breaking the kiss, he undid her bra and pushed down her panties so that they both fell to the floor. He pulled her stark naked body against him, and the fabrics of his clothes felt soft and warm but strange against her bare, bare skin.
She pushed his jacket off his shoulders, but when she reached for his shirt he grabbed one of her wrists with each of his hands, and he held them, tight.
Keeping his grip on her arms, he sank down onto his knees before her, and shuffled her legs apart with his elbows.
Her breath caught as she realized what was happening and her face and chest grew hot and red as he licked over her, just once, his pressure nauseatingly soft and light.
Her groin clenched and she groaned with anticipation and raw, desperate desire. From between her thighs he looked up at her, eyes full of worship, and gratified by the reaction he could elicit with barely a touch.
He shifted himself even closer and went to work with his lips and his tongue, so rhythmic and persistent that she felt like her legs would give way.
As if he felt it too, he pushed one arm across her hipbones to press her into the door, holding still onto her arms. The pressure and control made her head spin. She could do nothing except receive.
"John…" she cried, as he continued his heavenly onslaught. She was so tightly wound that she thought she would come within seconds.
It's been so long, she justified to herself. She hadn't slept with anyone since….
A face flashed suddenly into her mind and she shook her head to clear it, but that didn't work and she couldn't move and she felt claustrophobic and panicked and she pulled her arms free.
"You alright?" John looked up at her.
Alicia swallowed. She pulled up on his collar so that he stood facing her. She looked into John's face – so kind and - god, so handsome, she thought. He scanned her face, and she felt suddenly ok. She felt clarity in her desire for him, and she gave herself permission to embrace it.
"Yes," she purred, kissing John and tasting herself on his lips. "I just… I am slightly troubled by this inequity in states of dress," she said with a sensual mischief that drove him crazy. She kissed him over his laugh, kissed him slowly as she undid his buttons one by one, and thought about what was to come.
She had wanted this for so long, but she had hoped that it wouldn't happen here. She had not had sex in her bed – or anywhere - since she had crawled into it and wept and slept for days, paralyzed with loss and shock and grief.
Not since she had stared at her bedroom walls, as crushing numbness and wrenching pain battled it out inside of her.
Not since she had felt those blankets on her like the weight of the world as she lay mute and empty and broken.
Not since she lay there haunted by the fact that the last man she had been with was not (she dared not think his name)… him, but had instead been her husband. She was sure then that it was all over - that she would never long for a man like she had longed for him.
But now she did want, need, a man – she wanted, needed, John, desperately, and she was relieved, honestly, to feel the passion and the thirst that he roused from within her.
She just wished it wasn't here.
But they were here, she thought, and they were together, and, forever now wary of missed opportunities, she would not let this be one of them.
They were here, and they would spend this night exploring and pleasing and holding one another and she wanted it all so much.
As John felt her fingers work down his shirt, he thought that it was right that this should happen here. Here, after all, was where they first met. Where her spark and snark and "I'm not your superhero, Mr Elfman," had turned him on so much as a campaign manager and as a man.
As she reached his final button, he shrugged off his open shirt. She pulled him against her and his skin on her skin felt so warm and right and good that she wanted more and more and more.
This time she grabbed his wrist, and pulled him into the bedroom where she unzipped his pants and reached into his boxers.
Standing face to face she wrapped a hand tight around his hard length, pulsing with his lust for her, and he threw back his head crying, "Leesh…"
She stroked him up and down, growing only more aroused by how turned on he was by her, and she felt suddenly a pang of burning need from those flames he had stoked moments ago against the door. They met eyes and he knew that she needed him.
They walked back so that he sat on the bed and she – with the sexiest half smile he had ever seen – climbed up over his lap and straddled him. She sunk down slowly over his length. They both moaned; she at the gorgeous feel of his thickness inside her, he at the ecstasy of being buried in her, so warm and wet.
Chest to chest, she wrapped her arms around his hard, tense shoulders. Their tongues moved against one another as she rode him.
She surrendered to all of it – the tingle of his stubble on her cheeks; the depth of his reach into her; the heat of his moistening skin; the taste of his mouth.
Soon she was close again, and this time she pulled her head back to look at him. She opened her mouth to tell him how near she was but she could only inhale sharply. He knew, though, from the pleading in her furrowed brow and the way she was tightening around him that she was almost there.
With his hands he pressed her hips down onto his, deepening their rhythm. As he tipped her over the edge she moaned out, long and loud, and he started at her all the while to burn hard into his memory the exquisite face of Alicia Florrick as she climaxed on top of him.
As she rode out her waves and fought for her breath, she pushed her fingers into his soft hair and kissed him so hard and deep that he felt himself nearing the edge.
Hot with need, he flipped her smoothly onto her back and slammed into her deep and hard.
"Fuck…." she stammered. "Oh Joh- …. Ye- …." she tried to call as he pounded into her beautiful body. He held her still, as still as she had held his head when she kissed him that first time in the parking garage. That image rushed through his mind, as did all of the moments with her that he had thought about over over and over as he had lain with his hand and imagined it was hers.
He gave it to her and she called out his name and he got it all out. All of the glances and the grazes and the pent up mutual need.
When she wrapped her legs – those legs that he loved – around his waist, he could hold on no longer and with a final few thrusts into her depths he lost control and came while he pressed his mouth onto hers and moaned freely into it.
His heartbeat rang in his ears and pounded in his chest as he lay still, lifting slightly his head to kiss her cheeks and neck and lips again, softly this time, so softly.
"My god, Alicia," he breathed.
"I know," she smiled, still rippling with the aftershocks of pleasure.
"Fuck," he sighed, burying a kiss into her damp neck.
"That was… certainly worth the wait," she said.
Although he only grasped part of her meaning – the part to do with the tension that had grown thick and bold between them over months of morning meetings; interview prep; late night drives; and meals shared together along with their stories, feelings, hopes and fears – he completely agreed.
This woman was sensational, he thought, as he lay on top of her, and he stroked her hair, breathing her in. He pulled out of her and they climbed together under the covers. She lay with her head on his firm chest and felt so soothed by the intimacy.
Not everyone deserves you he had told her once, and those words flashed into his mind now as he caught sight of a framed photo on her bedside table of her, smiling, in someone else's arms. He wrapped his own around her, trying to bat back the jealousy and possessiveness that coursed through him as he held her with aching tenderness and adoration.
Alicia luxuriated in the feel of his arms and she smiled to herself, remembering a different set of words. "Do you want to… come inside?" she had asked him, and she had planned those words so carefully even in the split second that she had to choose them. They were words that left it all up to him to interpret – words that could be wholly innocent or wickedly sinful.
She of course had hoped for the latter, hoped for the melee of hands and mouths and moans and pleasure that they had just enjoyed. She was glad that he had chosen that too, glad that he had come in. She was glad that he was there, glad that they were there. She was glad that they had been with one another this way, quenching their long burning thirst and making forever more meaningful this time that they had shared.
No more missed opportunities, she thought, as he leant his face to hers for a soft and earnest kiss. No more missed opportunities.
She lay on his chest and sighed deeply, a calm and satisfied noise. She kissed the skin that she rested her cheek on, smiled up at him, and lay her head back down. She felt his arms tighten around her in response.
His embrace wasn't all that tightened – his chest felt so constricted that he struggled to breathe, and it wasn't because of the weight of Alicia's head. It was the weight of his feelings for her – and the painful ache of knowing they would never, could never be reciprocated or fulfilled. It felt like someone had wrapped a fist tight around his thudding heart, and when he closed his eyes all he could see was the glimmer of a shining stars-and-stripes pin badge, beaming on the proud chest of the greying Governor of Illinois. He had even voted for the man.
John opened his eyes and looked down at Alicia as she readjusted herself, making a little mewing sound that melted him. He fought to reign in his whirring mind that taunted him with images of what they could be, could do, together.
"You comfortable?" he asked, softly.
"Very," she purred, resting on his chest.
"Good." He kissed the top of her head.
"And you?" she looked up at him, hazel eyes wide and glinting.
"Of course," he smiled.
"…Are you sure?" she pushed, and he wondered why she asked, not realizing that his body was tense and rigid under her. Sensing that she'd touched on something he didn't want to think or talk about, she threw him a bone. "You're not… freaking out about this… transference, or whatever?"
He laughed, and pulled her back into his arms.
He was, of course, freaking out, cursing himself for breaching all of the professionalism that he had built over the past decade. He had never slept with a candidate, or a wife – he hadn't even come close – and yet here he was, awestruck and spellbound by this disastrously perfect woman whom he could never have. He had thrown it all away - his code, his pride – and for someone who would never let him love her like he wanted to. It stung. It felt suffocating.
But each time she moved, each time he looked at her curled up on him, the maelstrom of ambivalence, of disapproval and regret, was powerless before his unending desire for her. His pulse quickened as she drew small circles on her chest with her fingers.
He shifted under her.
"Cm'ere" he breathed, easing her up to lie face to face with him.
He looked at her face, looked deeply into her eyes, and he held her gaze until she swallowed and looked down.
With a finger he tilted her chin back up to restore their eye contact, and then he spoke.
"You're really… something, you know that?"
"Something? Oh such flattery," she joked, coy.
"I…" he smiled. "Alicia," he said, serious now, and intent. "You're extraordinary, and extraordinarily special."
She almost joked in deflection; her instinct was to cut back that extraordinary and special were pretty synonymous so using them together was redundant - but when she opened her mouth to talk, she instead lowered her guard just enough to receive his words. They flooded into her, and she closed her mouth. She gave him a small smile, a sad smile, one that he loved and was grateful for, but one that hurt him because it confirmed all that he already knew about what they would never be.
He couldn't stand the silence.
"I just… wondered if people told you that enough, and I wanted to have said that…" he trailed off, biting back the "…if nothing else," that lay on the tip of his tongue.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Then she leaned her head in so that their lips touched. Neither moved for a moment – just feeling the sensation of still mouths touching. Then their lips went to work, moving eagerly against each other as their breathing deepened.
He snaked his hand down to her breast, and with his thumb he rubbed over her nipple, which hardened just as quickly as he did. Feeling it firm under his fingers, and the soft goose pimples that broke out over her flushed chest, he moaned in want.
He rolled her onto her back and lay on his side next to her. He crawled the fingers of his right hand down her chest and stomach and lower until her breath caught and her eyes widened, while he challenged her with his gaze not to look away.
His fingers roamed over the softest part of her, and then inside, and her eyes fell shut at the intensity of the pleasure he was laying into her.
"Look at me," he breathed, firm, and she opened her eyes to look back into his as he curled and rubbed with unshakeable focus.
His erection burned as she started to move her hips, greedily rubbing herself against his confident hand, and he thought that he had never been so turned on as by Alicia, writhing, catlike and grateful, underneath him.
He followed her face and breath to learn just what she liked, and soon she was open mouthed like she wanted to speak or gasp for air, and so he worked deeper and more firmly and told her, "Look at me," again as her eyes started to close when her orgasm approached.
Alicia fought to obey, fought to keep her eyes locked on his; she felt so close to him, so connected, as she stared back at his face while his fingers carried her to a climax that shattered through her. Her body tensed and convulsed and she never looked away as she clamped down onto his hand.
He was so aroused that if there had been any pressure at all on his throbbing erection he would have come together with her.
"God," she squeaked, and it was all that she could get out.
He slowed his hand, satisfied, but continued a slow massage as his fingers moved inside her, gaze piercing hers all the while.
He withdrew his fingers and slipped himself into her, gritting his teeth to keep from falling apart in that instant. She felt so hot, so swollen and so, so wet, that he let out a long and throaty groan, and pushed her head sideways to plant his mouth on her long neck. His teeth nipped at the soft, fine skin, and he sucked at the heat of her throat as he moved inside her.
It was sublime ecstasy to feel his body wrapped inside hers. He was so close to shattering, but there was something in the way that she grabbed at his back, some urgency in it, that made him wonder if he could carry her over the edge once more before he did.
So he steeled himself, and shifted higher, rolling his hips over hers so that his pubic bone lay heavy on her clit. She gasped her approval and felt jolts of pleasure stab through her as he rocked against her, stimulating all parts of her and making her body tremble.
As she lay under him, grabbing him into her, Alicia felt insatiable. She felt like he had reached down and hauled her desire up from the depths into which she had submerged it for a year and a half, and her need had now surfaced, all at once, violently, and gasping for air.
Each thrust struck her like electricity, and she felt like it would never be enough.
The full force of her privation hit her like a punch; she hadn't known how starving she was until he had fed her, and the flames of her appetite raged white hot and needy now, burning only more furiously with the more of him that she had.
She had felt the intensity of this desperate need only a few times before. With Will, that first night in the Presidential Suite, she had worn him out with her unquenchable thirst for him as he had made her come over and over with every tool at his disposal. And the times she would gaze at him through panels of glass and the ferocity of their yearning made them cancel meetings and have each other in crisp white sheets in the middle of the afternoon. She had known it also when she was pregnant with Zach. She would wait, wanton and agitated, for Peter to get home as her hormones raged and she tried to convince herself that she was doing the right thing…
Now it was John pressing into and against her, and he filled both her body and her long neglected need.
As he rolled his hips, he looked at her questioningly for direction, and she threaded one hand into his hair and the other onto his lower back, telling him not to stop.
But he had to stop, because he couldn't wait. He knew he would lose control if he kept it up, and he was unwilling for that to happen. So, rousing each shred of strength in his body, he pulled himself out of her, making her yelp in protest but then in ecstasy as he pressed the flat of his tongue against her core.
He plunged two fingers fast and deep back into her and wrapped his lips around her clit. He sucked her into his mouth, making her hands grab fistfuls of sheets. Intent and relentless, he built her pleasure up and up and up until it she felt the inevitability of a blistering climax swelling within.
"Johnnn" she cried, "Don't stop, please," she begged, voice cracking.
Her whole body tingled and tensed as he manipulated her to unbearable ecstasy once again.
As she came his eyes fell shut too, at the deep satisfaction of hearing her call out for him and at feeling the squeeze of an orgasm around the fingers of his right hand.
Coming down, Alicia moaned, basking in the glorious indulgence of having this appetite so viciously awoken and so generously filled by this man so hot, so wonderful, so eager to please.
What he wouldn't give to do this every day for the rest of his life, he thought.
Fighting for breath she pulled her hips slightly back, letting him know she was done. He swiftly, hungrily buried himself back inside her tight warmth, jaw clenching at the brute need pulsing through him like he had never known.
He wove both of his hands through hers and kissed her hard and deep, wanting connection between every part of him that could join a part of her.
With mouth, hands, and groin he joined her. With the full weight of his body he bucked his hips fast and deep into her, possessed with a lust that was sharp and searing. She lifted her hips to meet his hard, forceful thrusts, and he blindly pushed his tongue into her mouth as his eyelids went black and he shook violently with an orgasm as deep as he could remember.
As his body stilled and he panted on top of her, he took her face in his right hand and kissed her lips, deep first, and then soft.
He was spent. Their bodies were damp and tangled and he was just… satiated. Alicia was also satisfied, deeply, though slightly unnerved by the fury of the burning want that he had stoked.
They lay for a tranquil while, silent and content, each sighing and caressing and smiling.
Sleep fought to claim them, but they lay together, close and connected, drowsy but alert, in each other's arms. Each felt so restored, so soothed, so satisfied.
John kissed Alicia and climbed out of bed and walked to the bathroom. Alicia watched him walk away, eyes lasciviously and appreciatively boring into his back.
He put on his boxers as he came back, and gathered up the rest of his scattered clothes.
He knew that if he got back into bed with her, he would lose all resolve, and so he choked out what he had to say from where he stood at the foot of the bed.
"I… should go."
Alicia sat up and drew her legs into her chest. She pursed her lips, a slight, subtle movement, but he caught it and it killed him.
"It's not because I want… I don't want… I… Look," he said, flustered. "I would love to stay here with you, and wake up with you, Alicia," he said – 'and cradle you and hold you until you fall asleep safe and loved and warm in my arms' he thought.
"But there'll be press outside tomorrow morning," he continued, "and what we don't need on election day is photos of your campaign manager leaving your home in yesterday's clothes…"
Alicia paused. "Couldn't we…" Couldn't we what? She thought. Tell the press that they'd been up all night strategizing? Recording robocalls?
She shrugged. Probably stupid ideas. He knows best. He wants to go, she thought.
She gazed at him, almost forlorn, and that fist squeezed tight around his thumping heart again.
"You can't look at me like that," he said pleadingly, as he pulled on his clothes and slipped into his shoes.
"Like what?"
John sat down on the bed next to her.
"Lie down," he instructed.
"Lie…?" she asked.
"Do you have alarms set for tomorrow?"
"Three," she confirmed.
"And do you want anything, water? A shirt?"
Alicia looked at him, confused.
"Before going to sleep," he clarified.
"I'm not going to sleep."
"Cm'ere," he lulled, as he laid down next to her on top of the blankets that covered her.
He pulled her into him, wrapping his body around the back of hers, and kicking his shoes back off to curl his form around her.
"I'm not tired," she protested, "I have to…"
"Have to what? There's nothing to do except rest, and I know that you won't if I leave, so I'm not going to leave until you do. You're not getting up," he said, placing a soft kiss on her cheek.
She didn't know whether to laugh or fight. She was tired – physically worn out from these frantic few hours, and deeply drained from the past few months, if she was honest. So she smiled in acquiescence and relaxed back against his big spoon.
As she did, she thought again about Will and how they had lain exactly like this, and fallen asleep like this, and woken up like this, and it jarred and hurt her and for just a second she missed him so much she felt winded.
For all the nights she had stayed up late looking through photos and reading texts and emails, for all the times she had played his voicemail on a loop as her silent tears fell in the haunting dark of her room – being touched like this, being held like this, made her feel his absence in a way that she hadn't yet felt.
She ached with his loss, glad her face was turned away from John, and she tried to do what the grief books had told her to do – to feel the feelings and name them. She breathed and felt everything, and was surprised that it somewhat worked. She let the hurt fill her up, pushing out at her edges, and then she felt it recede. She gave Will his moment, she longed for him, and then it pulled back, and she cherished and smiled at the memory.
John kissed her cheek again, in his own way, and she came back to him and back to the room and she said, "Thank you," and he didn't know what for and so he kissed her again.
"You are extraordinary," he whispered. He wanted to have said it, if nothing else.
John lay with her, his weight on the blanket tucking her in tight. He kissed her every little while, waiting for her breathing to slow.
She thought he was extraordinary too, and she felt calmed and comforted and cared for, and a smile curled her lips as she started to doze.
He watched her, and he thought about what he could offer her. He thought about how he would never hurt her, how he would live his life at her service. But maybe she didn't want that, he thought, maybe she thought she didn't deserve it. Whatever, he thought. All he wanted was for her to know how much he cared.
And she did know. That knowledge was what had made her invite him in; that knowledge had made her let him touch her and be with her like no man had since she lost… him; that knowledge was what made her relax into him now and submit to the rest that she had needed for so long.
And as she relaxed into him, he kissed her head, and he cradled her and held her until she fell asleep, safe and loved and warm in his arms.