Thanks for the feedback on my last story! A couple of people asked me if I'd write more M soon, and you gotta give the people what they want, so here ya go!
The hotel is old. It looks as if it once served as a home for a very large family a hundred years ago, and smells of old wood; it's a smell Pepper recognizes but can't tell where from, and for that reason she feels immediately at home and uneasy all at once.
Her ankle is throbbing. She lost her footing on a patch of ice disembarking the jet and didn't go all the way down—thankfully Tony was there to grab her elbow—but her change of shoes is buried deep in her suitcase. It didn't seem practical to unpack it in the back of the taxi they took to get from the local airport they'd been forced to land in to their hotel. Pepper was beginning to feel a bit like she was in one of those increasingly frustrating movies where the characters can never seem to get where they're going. Like Alice in Wonderland.
They should have known not to travel to the East Coast during winter, particularly when bad weather had been forecasted for days now, but Tony was unpersuadable when it came to maintaining his image. He and the company have been splashed across the front page ever since the Expo and he—Pepper, really—is committed to reestablishing a positive public image for the company.
"I need the largest suite you have," Tony says to the guy at the front desk, a tall, skinny black boy who can't be older than eighteen. His nametag reads Marcel.
When Marcel looks at Tony a little skeptically, he elaborates, "Mini bar, Jacuzzi, free HBO, wifi, the works." Then he slides an arm around Pepper's shoulders and hugs her to his body in an awkward side hug. "I'm treating my lady here to a romantic getaway."
Tony's wardrobe change is far less involved than her hypothetical one would have been—add baseball cap, subtract sunglasses, trade out tie for a scarf and boom: instant civilian—so he can make statements like this without the fear of being instantly recognized. Pepper is still not so sure. His face is as famous (or infamous) as his name these days, and she keeps waiting for someone in the empty but somehow ominous front office of the converted building to say the five words she most dreads, "Hey, aren't you Iron Man?"
"Honey, please," she says, feeling a blush sweep down her neck. She can't tell if it's embarrassment or excitement from using the endearment. She can feel Tony's eyes on her, so she amends more forcefully, "Don't be excessive."
Tony sighs, as if she's just asked him to do her the biggest favor in the world. "Okay, fine. The smallest suite you have, no mini bar, the Jacuzzi is still mandatory."
Marcel smiles the polite smile of someone who is about to deliver bad news but is still trying to sell something. "I'm sorry sir, but none of our rooms are equipped with Jacuzzis. There is an original claw-foot bathtub in our honeymoon suite, however."
Tony wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and Pepper rolls her eyes. "What do you think? Too soon? Don't want to tempt fate?"
"We'll just take whatever room you have available," Pepper says to Marcel.
At the same time, Tony says, "We'll take it."
Pepper is quick to correct the mistake. "No we won't," she says to Marcel. "Don't mind him, he's had a long day."
Tony turns to her, slightly affronted, or at least giving a good impression of being so. "Why don't you want to take it? Don't make excuses for me."
She splits her attention between her clingy boss-slash-newfound lover and poor, sweet Marcel who doesn't look like he could be more confused. "I'm sorry about him. Ton—Honey, we don't need that much room, we're only staying for one night."
"You only want to stay one night? Who says we're only staying one night? What if we get snowed in? There's a blizzard coming."
"—Yes, it's only one night, we have appearances—it's not a blizzard, it's just light flurries, I checked the forecast—"
"—Flurries? We had to land the plane because of flurries?—"
Marcel tries to interject. "Oh, were you on the plane from Cincinnati? We've got a few people here on that flight. They were so aggravated—"
"—Where'd you check that forecast, on your phone?—"
"—Yes, of course it was on my phone—"
"—Lemme see that thing—"
"Stop being ridiculous," Pepper snaps, pulling her bag away from his reach. She turns back to Marcel. "We'll just take a regular room, two beds please."
"Now you're just being mean."
"I'm being practical," she says, fishing for the discreetly labeled company credit card in her purse. "One room, two beds, no Jacuzzi," she says as she hands the card to Marcel, who now looks sufficiently intimidated by both of them.
"Coming right up," he says rather hurriedly, probably glad to be rid of them.
"Can you point us to the elevator?" Pepper asks, craning her neck around the lobby.
He gives the smile again, and she knows she's going to dread the answer. "Actually, ma'am, the building was built in 1901 so there is no elevator. But the stairs are right behind you."
Pepper gives a smile that would be a grimace if she hadn't forced her eyes to smile as well. "I see. Thank you for all your help."
Tony pouts as they climb the stairs, banging his suitcase against each step on the way up. Pepper bites her tongue and swallows the remark coming to her lips. When they reach the room she inserts the key—an actual key, not a keycard; that's how old the place is—and finds that Marcel failed to follow her instructions, but in fact, gave them a compromise. One bed, no jacuzzi. She can live with that, she supposes.
As Tony sulks over to the armchair and plops down in it unceremoniously, Pepper sits gingerly on the edge of the bed and pries her high heeled booties off her feet. It feels better on her ankle, but a shiver goes through her body as her nearly bare feet are exposed to the cold air in the room. Tony notices and wordlessly reaches across the armchair and flips on the heat. The radiator rattles to life.
Pepper makes some wordless noises as she swings her legs up onto the bed, taking care of her ankle. It's not discolored, but it is swollen larger than the other one. Hesitantly, she tries to roll it, and a sharp pain shoots up her leg all the way to her calf. She hisses. Not sprained, but definitely twisted very badly.
Tony finally stops feigning disinterest and scoots the armchair closer to the foot of the king-sized bed.
"What are you doing?" Pepper recoils instantly.
"Relax," Tony says in a voice smoother than the silk tie he'd been wearing earlier that morning. "May I?"
She sighs and lowers her legs back down, then hesitates the instant his hand touches her foot. "That tickles!"
"I barely touched you!"
"I'm ticklish."
"You weren't ticklish in the shower this morning, as I recall," Tony grumbles.
"You weren't trying to touch my feet in the shower this morning, as I recall. Many, many other parts, but definitely not my feet."
Tony smiles at the memory, as if it were years ago and he is thinking on it with the fondness of a childhood story. "Ah, yes. The back of your knee. The side of your jaw. The small of your back."
In the few months that they have been involved, this has happened frequently: they're at each other's throats one minute, the next they're groping like teenagers. Not that she minds the groping, or the arguing, even. In all honesty she is just glad that he is alive and well enough to argue with and to grope.
As his voice shifts into that lower, creamy register she feels her limbs grow heavy and her eyes lose focus. She is vaguely aware of him rising out of the chair and crawling over her, his strong, muscled arms planted firmly on either side of her jacketed torso, holding his pelvis just above hers. His smell is overwhelming: musk and citrus and oil and sweat. She feels like a girl, about to make out with a boy for the first time.
His words rumble low in his throat. "And you wanted two beds."
As quickly as he made the moment, he unmakes it with his arrogant comment, and Pepper tsks in annoyance and shoves him to the side. His limbs flail in the air as he struggles to remain upright, but she doesn't feel bad. It's a king-sized bed, he's not going anywhere.
Hopping like a flamingo on one foot, she navigates to her purse and extracts her Blackberry, where she pulls up the agenda for the next couple of days and begins the exhausting process of rescheduling their various appointments and appearances for the next couple of days.
"Okay, we won't be able to make it to St. Louis tomorrow, obviously, so we'll have to push that back, maybe to Thursday before Chicago but after Cleveland?"
"What are you doing." The inflection in Tony's voice is so bored that it doesn't even sound like he's asked her a question.
"Fixing this stupid snowstorm," she mutters, not looking up from her phone.
"That's not your job anymore."
She merely hums in reply.
Tony doesn't miss the faint blue glow the screen casts on her face, not unlike the one emanating from his own chest. He'd watched her that first night while she slept, surrounded by paperwork in the living room of his New York house, her head nestled comfortably into the crook of his shoulder. For only the second or third time he was seeing her that close, close enough to know why she was nicknamed Pepper. Her freckles created constellations across her sternum and he'd stayed up all night connecting the dots.
It wasn't until a few months later that he saw just how many freckles she really had.
"Didn't your mother teach you it's not polite to stare?" Pepper snaps, and instantly regrets the glib remark. They don't, as a rule, talk about either of their parents, not in their professional relationship or their personal one.
But Tony doesn't seem to have noticed. "Take off your coat," he says simply, unbuttoning his own bulky peacoat and tossing it carelessly into the armchair he'd inhabited moments earlier.
"I'm still cold."
"How can you be cold, it's like, a thousand degrees in here," he says petulantly. He unbuttons the collar of his shirt, then gets annoyed and undoes the whole thing, so he is left in an undershirt and dark dress pants.
"Cold." She repeats the single word, as if she's too busy to form even a complete sentence. Tentatively, she places weight on her swollen ankle. The pain doesn't make her vocalize this time, but she does grimace and sink back onto the edge of the bed.
She feels Tony's weight behind her, and then his hands snaking around her front, untying the belt of her Burberry trenchcoat. The arc reactor pulses against her back, a low and steady thrum that she finds is often in sync with her heartbeat. Even bare, Tony's arms emanate warmth and envelop her, and she finds herself leaning back into him despite her annoyance at the turn this day has taken.
Her coat taken care of, he works on the more intimate task of unknotting her scarf, a matching shade of camel-colored wool, striped and crossed with thin black and red lines. Pepper seemed absolutely beside herself with joy that she would get to break out her winter wardrobe—which she rarely used in California—for their press tour, and now Tony sees why. Every morning she dresses herself with the same care and caution he takes in putting together his machines. Her wardrobe is her workshop and she is her own canvas. The whole thing is incredibly erotic.
Pepper feels Tony straining against her lower back as his fingers brush across her neck, feather-light, and remove her scarf. Distantly, she wants to tell him to hang her coat up, that it will wrinkle, but when the rough edge of his goatee makes contact with the sensitive spot behind her ear, it is forgotten. She hums in invitation and arches into him, making him bite her earlobe. She hears his teeth make contact with the gold of her stud earrings and gasps, raising an embarrassed hand to her ear.
Before she can breathe out an apology, she turns and sees that Tony is grinning with the gold of her earring flashing between his teeth. She laughs in pure astonishment.
"I'm not sure whether to be disgusted or aroused," she says truthfully.
Tony leans over and places the earring on the bedside table. "The words every boy longs to hear a pretty girl say," he purrs.
He's pleased with himself, and it annoys her. She takes the other earring out before he can do it himself. She's barely lowered her hands when he pounces, taking her thin wrists in one hand and stretching her out on the bed with the other. Pepper struggles at first and makes a sound of frustration against his mouth, pushing her hips up to his, hard. Tony rakes a merciless hand down the softly-covered curves of her body, reveling in the feel of the expensive fabric, but knowing that's it's nothing compared to what's underneath. The rough pads of his fingers catch on her stockings—which, to his delight, he discovers are thigh-highs—when she tents her legs to give him more access.
"Jesus," he groans, worrying that he'll soon burst some of the seams in his pants.
In a tone eerily reminiscent of his own, Pepper chides, "I told you, Tony, if you want to turn me on, all you have to call me is Miss Potts."
A shiver runs down his spine at the thought of a naked Pepper responding only to "Miss Potts," and he is so lost in the fantasy that he doesn't notice she's sitting upright and working on his fly. She takes great care not to pull down the zipper too quickly—Pepper is pragmatic even in the bedroom, he's learned—but the slow, sensual way in which she does it makes him not mind as much.
Her deep eyes slide up to meet his and they lock, making him shiver again.
"Didn't I tell you it was cold?"
Her tone is gentle, so it doesn't sound like a scolding, but the way her eyes dance tell him that she means it to be.
"When I'm done with you, you're going to be anything but cold, Miss Potts." He hisses the last part in her ear, and now it's her turn to shiver.
"I was only half-kidding about that, you know," she murmurs, standing cautiously and turning her back to him so he can unzip her skirt.
His dexterous fingers slide the fabric down her legs, leaving him with a glorious view of her golden ass. The quip that had risen to his lips falls away and Pepper can feel his sharp intake of breath against the now exposed skin of her rear. Placing a possessive hand on each of Pepper's hips, Tony leans forward and runs his tongue up the back of her thigh, making her squeak in shock and delight. Then he slips a hand between her legs and begins to pet her through the scrap of lace she calls underwear.
Pepper gives a low, sensual groan and bends over, bracing her hands against the nightstand. She'd watched his hands work for ten years before she'd gotten to see what they really could do. While Tony's tendency to show off proved a nightmare as his personal assistant, she finds it decidedly more enjoyable as his… girlfriend? Lover? They have yet to give a name to the way their bodies come together in frantic, passionate embraces and languid lovemaking sessions.
But now Pepper can barely remember her own name as he works her up, rubbing and teasing and then, mercifully, pushing her panties aside and touching skin to skin.
"Oh, yes…" she sighs, grinding into his hand, urging him to enter her. "Tony, please."
"What do you want?" His voice is a soft purr, teasing.
Pepper is normally very explicative in what she wants from him, particularly in situations like these, but it's been a long day and all she can do is shoot him a frustrated look over her shoulder and whimper, "Please."
At that precise moment, Tony slides two fingers up inside her, delighting in the way her mouth falls open soundlessly. He hisses in pleasure at her slick wetness; he will never tire of the way her body feels beneath his hands, or the soaring feeling becoming one with her brings to his chest. Every breath he takes feels like a thousand, making his heart, his capacity to love her larger and larger until—
"Tony," Pepper pants insistently.
She tries to move, but he splays a confident hand across the small of her back, bending her forward at a ninety degree angle and deepening his access.
In the back of her mind, Pepper wonders what it says about her that she thrills at the feeling of Tony's hand on her back controlling her, but she barely has time to process the sensation before she feels his tongue, hot and wet, slide over her folds from behind. When did he take off her panties? Everything is a fog when she's with Tony like this—details don't matter. It only takes a few maneuvers of Tony's highly skilled mouth to bring her to the edge, and she tumbles over quickly, leaning her elbows on the nightstand and calling out in a loud voice that—after the blood stops pounding in her ears—she recognizes as her own.
Tony is quick to reposition himself, swiftly removing his boxers and undershirt and perching himself on the edge of the bed. Still panting, Pepper straddles him and slides down onto his shaft slowly. They groan in unison at the incredible friction.
"Is your foot okay?" he whispers into the silky skin of her neck.
"'S fine, 's not even touching the—oh my God!"
Pepper arches into him, giving a squeal of delight at how incredible he feels inside her, how he knows just where to touch her. Her fingernails dig into his shoulders, grappling for purchase as he thrusts inside her mercilessly, the way she likes it.
"Ready for another one, Miss Potts?" Tony's voice is in her ear and all around her and everywhere at once.
Squeezing herself around him, she answers sultrily, "Come on, Mr. Stark."
With a groan, Tony empties himself inside her and she follows shortly after, shaking and whispering his name like a prayer. Her head falls to his shoulder as both of them summon the energy to move. After a moment, Tony lets out a long, low whistle. Pepper hums, which turns into a laugh. A few pieces of her hair have fallen from the tight bun at the back of her head and hang limply around her face, one sticking to her cheek. Tony brushes it away, kisses her temple, then winds his hands in her hair and gently removes each hairpin one by one.
All the while, neither of them move from their interlocked position.
Finally, when she begins to realize the soreness in her legs, Pepper murmurs something against Tony's cheek and they slide apart and onto the bed together. The sweat on their bodies evaporates as it hits the air, making Pepper shiver, so Tony pulls her close again, hugging her to his chest. The arc reactor thrums low against her sternum.
"Boyfriend of the year award, right here," he says before he can stop himself.
But then the words are out, and maybe they don't sound so bad after all.
Pepper's reaction is a carefully calculated furrow of her brow. "Boyfriend, huh?" she asks softly. She is smiling, Tony notices with joy, smiling.
"Would you prefer 'lover'?" he drawls. "Boy toy? Man candy? Amante clandestino?"
Pepper snorts. "I'd hardly call you my secret lover, Tony. Nothing about our relationship is a secret."
He refrains from humming the chorus of "Secret Lovers," although the urge is incredibly tempting. Instead he says, "Hey, this is a secret. No one knows we're here now. We're supposed to be in St. Louis."
"That's true." Pepper has found his hand with hers and interlaced their fingers. After a moment she says, "So you're my boyfriend."
"And you're that superhero's girlfriend I've always dreamed about."
"Oh, you've dreamed about me?" A grin nearly splits Pepper's face in two.
"On many, many occasions, past and present."
She squirms in glee against him, and then there is a sharp knock at the door.
"Excuse me!" It's the voice of the boy from the front desk. Marcus? Marcel? "It seems our VIP room has been opened. We wondered if you'd be interested in an upgrade?" Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, "There's a Jacuzzi."
Now it is Tony's turn to grin. "What do you say, Miss Potts? Round two?"