He stood in front of the basin, and filled it with warm water and a little soap. Take off the cling film, bathe the tattoo, washing away the excess ink. Rinse. Repeat. Simple enough. Pat dry with a towel. Let the air get to it. Smother it in nappy rash cream, re-wrap in cling film. Don't shower.
Simple enough. Although, he really couldn't say exactly why he had done it. Kari Stephens was unusual. He guessed about 28, little sister about 23. How and why Harold Finch should know Kari Stephens was a mystery, one that John felt sure he could solve. He just wasn't sure why he needed to solve it. But it wasn't Kari, or Finch that was in his heart when he sat down. Carter filled his dreams and his waking moments. He needed her. Him who didn't need anybody. Somehow a young woman whom he had never met, and who didn't know Carter either, had read his longing, his need, and had put his heart on his sleeve.
He really shouldn't be doing this clean up here. Carter did not need a damaged ex-CIA agent with the sword of Damocles hanging over him. She needed a decent, solid citizen with minimal baggage to cherish her and appreciate her.
But it broke his tattered heart in two to think of that. He had an almost pathological need for Carter's approval. He wanted… no, needed to win her love. Figuring out why he had these needs was taking more processing time than he believed his brain was capable of.
He could kill a person, he could mount a rescue, and save the day, but he had no idea why or how he could love someone. No holds barred.
Until Finch found him in a police station, and gave him a purpose. Even Jessica, he realized now that he was fond of Jessica, and a little mesmerized by the thought of being in love with her. But if he had truly loved her with an unbreakable bond he would have stayed and been able to protect her. Being unable to protect her filled him with guilt and righteous anger. It exposed the barrenness in his soul.
So John had fallen down several liquor bottles, and tried to think of creative ways to end his suffering.
Finch appeared before he could destroy himself. Straightened him up, quite forcefully, and then gave him an option. John realized that he wanted to live.
Now Carter stirred his heart in ways that he wasn't sure he really understood and never expected. The tattoo, and caring for the tattoo here, in her bathroom, was unwise and he knew it. He was laying his heart out for her to trample on.
A footstep behind him and she was there. Wordlessly, she took the sponge from his hand and dropped it into the mildly soapy water. Her small strong hand slid gently round his elbow, and she peeled back the clingfilm. The touch of her fingers light on his skin, she began to gently bathe the tattoo.
The warm water trickling down his skin, the soft touch of the sponge over the inflamed area, her fingers, light and delicate, cradling his elbow. Even the water itself, flowing over his arm, her hand. Contact. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones.
It was her touching him with gentle hands, the first since Jessica. Jocelyn Carter had bashed down all his defenses. This was several kinds of crazy, but he needed her. He quivered with suppressed emotion then, looking down into her eyes he knew that she understood, and that overwhelmed him.
She finished up, patting the area dry, and he followed obediently as she drew him towards the bedroom.
Taylor was out staying with his grandmother. They wouldn't be interrupted.
Just for tonight, Joss told herself, knowing that it was never going to be just one night.
His touch was gentle, and endearingly unsure, as though he was scared to push too hard. She realized then that he respected her and didn't want to do anything that might upset her, in sharp contrast to his teasing behavior outside where he felt secure. She looked down at the slightly reddened flesh of his right arm, the tigers, realized too what John was saying to her. He might not have intended to say it so blatantly, but the artist had helped him over that last barrier.
Strong, confident, bold, cocky John Reese, hesitant? Her heart melted with love for him.
Her hands wound around his neck and pulled him down to her. His arms slid hesitantly around her body. His forearms resting on her hips. His hands tentative and gentle on her back. But Joss wanted more.
She wanted to possess him, tap the passion that she knew beat strongly in his heart. The only way to do that would be to let him in. All the way.
Skin to skin, nothing between them. Nothing to hide behind. A truce.
Just for tonight.
She took his hand and led him to the bed.
Still holding his hand, she lifted the quilt and slid in, leaving plenty of room, she tugged gently. For the briefest space of time he resisted. She looked up into his face, trying to read his expression. John was so adept at hiding his feelings that was nearly impossible. Gently, she brought his hand to her lips, kissed his fingers, watched something change in those somber grey-blue eyes, an emotion so intense they changed to silver.
It could have been a trick of the light, but then he dropped the towel around his waist, and slid in beside her.
It was the first time she had seen him completely naked, and her eyes drank in his beauty, as her hands pulled the quilt over him, concealing him from prying eyes. A response which she knew to be irrational as they were alone; but came from some primal instinct she hadn't realized that she possessed.
He was everything she now accepted that she had dreamed he would be. Long and lean and elegant, his body honed by experience and training, not the bulked up power of the gym gorilla, but the power invoked by the whole package. John wasn't just an aggressor, his skills went beyond following orders. There was nothing of the grunt about him. He was the weapon.
She had no illusions, in one way Snow was right John was dangerous, he was materially damaged by his experiences, but there was something within him that still beat strong and true. It broke her heart to think of what he had suffered, and the damage that it had done to him. Whatever this was between them, it would never be conventional, but they could have tonight, and every other night that they could steal, and they would be happy. They should take that momentary happiness, because life was a series of moments.
His free hand framed her face, those strong fingers tenderly caressing her cheek. She let his hand go then, winding both arms around his neck, pulling him up close. And very personal.
Her slender knee slid over his hip, her calf muscle curving over his thigh as she pressed herself against him. John's hands lifted her, and he rolled, sweeping her on top of him. His hands curved around her waist. Joss stared down into his eyes as he drew her in slowly.
That sexy confident smirk was back on his face again. She was going to have to tell him off for that sometime later. His fingers were playing her body like a harp as she slid down. He reached up and captured her lips as their rhythm increased.
Joss let go of rational thought, and control. There was only this, skin on skin, and the flight of ecstasy.
When she awoke, somehow she thought he would be gone, but he was still there. Curled around her, completely relaxed in sleep. His right arm curved possessively across her small waist. His right thigh pressing her legs into the mattress. She could feel the warmth of his long leg virtually pinning her against him. He wasn't especially heavy, but he was strong, until either he woke up, or she managed to wake him, she wasn't going anywhere.
It was both mildly irritating, and curiously comforting. John's possessive gesture made her smile. She relaxed against him, reveling in the feel of his skin against hers, the contrast in the warm tones of her flesh and the cool tones of his. She slid her hand over his right forearm, coming to rest at the base of the clingfilm.
She didn't remember re-wrapping the tattoo, guessing he must have at some point in the night. He could have left then, but he hadn't. He had returned to claim her as his own.
Joss's small hand curved around his right elbow then, a possessive display of her own. This was insane, and she had a lot to lose if they were caught, and heaven alone knew what would happen to him in that case, but this was John and he was hers. She really couldn't help herself.
The memory, unbidden, popped into her head of the night John was shot. How she, with the best of her cop training and backed up by the vows she had made as serving officer, had ignored every single instinct that was screaming in her head and betrayed this man to the people who she knew had no intention of helping him.
It felt like a knife in her own gut, when she had seen him go down from a shot to his gut. Then he shot the car lights out, was hit a second time in the thigh, how he managed to get to his feet and make his escape she would never know. He wanted to live, his instinct was to survive, he could have shot and killed her. If he was the paranoid killer that Snow described, he would have done it without blinking. Snow had lied, and Joss had betrayed him. She followed his trail of blood down the stairs, dying a little inside at each fresh splash. Opening the door at the bottom of the stairs and seeing the little guy from the lock up robbery nearly sent her over the edge.
But she obeyed her instinct then. Helped John into the car. She had done him enough damage and if he was killed then by the men that she had brought down on him she knew she wouldn't recover from the guilt.
She laid a gentle hand over the clingfilm again. He had done that for her. Her only real experience of tattoos was the gang markings which spelled only trouble. The artist here had read John like a book and then illustrated what was in his heart for her. The skin was cooler to the touch beneath the wrapping, the whole area less inflamed, the clingfilm was neatly stretched over his bicep, so she could see more detail. There was a look in the male tiger's eyes. A look she had seen in John's when he was looking into hers.
He was hers.
Carter's grip tightened around his arm. "Mine." She whispered.
His head was resting against hers, his lips close to her ear, she felt the smirk. "No, mine." The gravelly voice teasing her senses.
He swung himself over her in a swift move, catching his weight on his elbows, his body skimming hers. Joss Carter was having none of that, she wanted him, as up close and personal as it was possible to get.
"uh-uh." Her legs were free, she wrapped them around his waist then, her arms around his neck and she pulled hard. Taken by surprise, he collapsed against her. Joss's arms wrapped themselves tightly around him, "Mine." She couldn't quite keep the triumph out of her voice.
His face was buried in her neck, his whole body locked to hers, his weight pushing her into the mattress. Joss's body was enjoying the sensations of his lean frame pressed against her. "I think someone once said that possession was nine tenths of the law." She whispered in his ear, and nibbled a little on his earlobe.
"Feels like the whole ten tenths," that sexy, lazy, gravelly, seductive voice coursed through her, and Joss's thighs tightened over his hips.
He was strong, but even in the throes of passion his self-control was remarkable. He would not use that power against her. She understood then that he would have died for her on top of that parking garage. That no word of condemnation would have passed his lips. That for all the damage done, John Reese was still a good and decent man, trying to do his best in a world long since gone mad.
She pressed her cheek to his, wrapped her arms more tightly around him, and closed her eyes. Silently promising him that she would protect him. And Harold Finch too, for that matter.
Harold Finch escorted Kari Stephens through the Member's Dining Room. Not that he would ever have admitted it openly, but lunch with Kari at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was one of Harold Finch's greatest pleasures. Kari was a woman who did as she pleased, and he was well aware that beneath her relatively conservative clothing the many designs on Kari's body would certainly raise eyebrows in this well to do establishment.
Today the black jeans were Versace, and the long-sleeve, round-neck black sweater was cashmere, a world away from Kari's usual uniform of non-descript and baggy layers over ripped jeans. When they first dined out, Harold had been in a fever of nervousness over what she might turn up wearing. Something that Kari had accurately divined. The light in her gray eyes made Harold shift a little uncomfortably in his seat.
They lingered over salmon and a glass of crisp wine, he watched her toy with a square inch of salmon on her plate. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, she looked up "Harold, you know I never discuss my clients." He smiled at that, knowing that he would never ask, just as he was sure that John wouldn't ask that question of Kari.
"You really are a witch, aren't you?"
"I told you that when we first met." She smiled. "But then you pointed me towards something that I had been blind to. I would say there's something of the wizard about you, Harold."
He laughed at that.
"One day, you will let me read your cards."
He shrugged. "One day."