The door to the apartment exploded inward, spraying shards of wood all over the floor. He sprang up from where he had been resting on a threadbare couch to see that red-haired woman standing in the settling dust. She wore thigh-high boots and a black trenchcoat that barely covered the tops of her thighs. He opened his mouth to speak, to ask... what? He wasn't sure.
His body had automatically tensed into a fighting stance when she broke in, but the way she stood there, not attacking him, made his muscles relax just a bit.
"You seemed to recognize me on the bridge," the woman said. "When you were trying to kill me? You might not remember my name, but you remember my fighting style. Which made me think muscle memory might be just the trick."
Yes, the woman from the bridge. The one who spoke Russian. The one he had not been able to kill.
The woman stepped closer, and in that step she unbuttoned her trenchcoat and let it fall from her shoulders. Underneath she wore a black leather corset that emphasized her tiny waist. And he realized his body was responding in a much different way.
"Close your mouth," she said, now approaching him. The heat in his loins grew with each step she took. "And I don't want to hear you speak until you remember my name."
Scant inches between them. He looked down at her, at her pale, smooth skin, her full lips, and those eyes looking straight into his. He could smell her. That scent of fresh jasmine and roses brought back other memories, also hazy.
His hands rose to her hips and drew her toward him. Their bodies fit together like they had been created to do so.
She reached up and grabbed his face. Hard. The startling movement had him tense again. "If you remember anything, James," she said. "It should be this."
James.
The man on the bridge had called him Bucky. But this name, James, had a much different feeling associated with it. Especially when coming from her lips.
Her lips that now pressed into his.
He opened his mouth at the same moment she did, he was tasting her, her tongue pushing into his. His hands gripped her, pulled her against his erection. She liked it rough, he remembered that. Then she pulled away, and shoved him down onto the couch.
Straddling him, she went for his neck. Her lips grazed over the days-old stubble, then bit and sucked. He let his head fall back. It had been years. Years since anyone had touched him this way. He had felt pain, over and over and over; the targets always fighting back, and then as a reward, the pain of the memory wipes or the cold of the cryo chamber. This small pain now was warm and tingled through every one of his nerve endings. One of her... what was her name?... one of her hands slid around his neck and pulled on the hair at the base of his skull. Remember... remember...
"Your hair wasn't always long like this," she said into his collarbone. Then she licked him, and kissed the same spot.
He couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed her ass, yanked her hips to meet his, then wrapped his arms around that little waist and pressed her against him. Lips on her jawline had never felt skin so smooth, except that they had. He remembered, and traced the line with his mouth to her ear. Such little ears. Delicate. One finger reached up to push her red curls aside, and he was startled when she flinched.
"Your hand is always so cold." The words came in an exhale from her mouth. She reached back and took his metal hand, the one that couldn't even feel her touch. He struggled to keep his hand from crushing hers. "Relax," she said, and pushed his hand down, down between her legs.
She gasped as the cold metal entered her. He could not feel it. That was disappointing somehow, but when she bit his neck again, rocking with the movements of his hand, he felt something else. He was making her feel this way. She did not see his metal arm as a weapon, or a freakish prosthetic, a terrible secret that needed hiding to go undercover. Tears stung behind his eyes, and he blinked hard, then thrust deeper inside of her until he could feel the quivering of her muscles against his thighs.
Her flexible legs wrapped around his waist. He had to wriggle forward on the couch to allow them and then they were locked like a vice. She worked her hips against him, harder and faster, and while he couldn't feel his hand, he could feel the metal pressing against his cock, which swelled even more. His free hand reached up to grip her shoulders. He could feel her breasts pressed against his pectorals. Then he reached up and he threaded his fingers into her hair from underneath, gripping it in his fist. Her breath caught then, and she came in a great exhale against his neck as he released her hair. For a moment they were still, her head limp against his shoulder, then she reached down and eased herself off of his hand.
With the release, her face had softened from the hard beauty it had possessed before. She kissed him gently on the mouth. Her lips lingered there long enough to share the same air with him for several breaths. God, she was gorgeous. Her hands slid from his neck and trailed over his black sleeveless shirt. Unlike the leather coat that he wore like a layer of armor, the undershirt allowed him to feel every movement of her fingers as they made their way to his belt. She tilted her head away from his and watched him as she unbuckled the belt and yanked it out from the beltloops in one fast motion.
Next she put her thumb on the button, but instead of unbuttoning it, she kept the thumb there and let her fingers move up and down against the flat abdominals below his belly button. The movement untucked his shirt until her fingers touched his bare skin and his cock pulsed with need against the thin silky fabric of her panties.
One side of her beautiful mouth lifted into a smirky smile.
He found the lacing on her corset and pulled. The knot tore free and he grasped the edges of the leather and pulled until her breasts fell out of the corset and against his face. She put her hands on the back of his neck and pulled his face into them. His right hand reached up to cup one of them, but he hesitated with his left until she reached down and guided him. "Not cold anymore, remember?" she whispered, and kissed him again.
Still, he did not want to hurt her, and he focused on making his left hand match the small movements of his right as he squeezed the delicate flesh and pinched the nipple. "That's good," she murmured. "So good, James."
James again. That name. It reminded him that he was a man. Not a weapon. At least, not only a weapon.
When he moved the metal hand away from her chest, she did not protest. He hooked a finger through the narrow strip of fabric across her hip and heard a rip as the fabric tore. Now she clawed at the button on his pants, and the zipper, and then he thrust himself inside her. She gasped with the suddenness. He protected the back of her head as he pushed her down so that he was on top, and though she now looked up at him he knew she had all the control here. She always did. Their hips rocked together in a familiar rhythm, fast then slow, hard and deep.
Her fingernails raked against his back, more of that sweet pain tempered by the kisses she dropped on his neck and shoulders, even on the metal where he could not feel - he felt it somehow. He breathed in her hair and her neck and her breath and at the moment when he could not bear anymore, one word fell from his lips:
"Natalia."
