In which Clint and Natasha get up close and personal and the story earns its rating.
Thank you so much to the reviewers and followers on this story! You guys make writing all of this worth it! Love you!
He didn't really give Natasha enough credit for her acting skills, not by a long shot. If he hadn't known better, if he hadn't planned it all out with her in advance, even he would have been taken by her act. This was the side of her that he rarely got to see (up close anyway) because he was all too often relegated to the rafters and the rooftops, watching her from afar and never quite appreciating just how good she was at what she did.
Up close, she was breathtaking.
She clung to his side throughout the little meet and greet, not quite letting Clint take the lead, but nevertheless giving the impression that he was the one who called the shots (she'd obviously made the same mental note he had earlier, had picked up on the not-so-subtle misogyny of this crew). She did it, though, deferred to him without ever implying that she couldn't (or wouldn't) slit the throat of anybody who crossed her.
He was envious of the way Natasha balanced on the razor's edge between carefree and dangerous all evening, easily giving everyone present the impression that she was damn good at her job and very, very much in lust with her husband. He'd be hard pressed to match it on his best day, if he ever could, and as time passed he was more and more grateful that that she managed to keep most of the attention on her, distracting their new teammates with a subtle show of skin and her wide, toothy grin all through dinner.
Around midnight, he caught Lindfors looking at them appraisingly, and Clint got the impression that they were being sized up, that they'd done something, however unconsciously to draw the man's attentions. For a short, but very, very tense amount of time, he worried that they'd been found out, that they'd (who was he kidding, that he'd) done something wrong, let something slip or one of the other men in the room had recognized them, that they'd aroused deadly suspicion.
Natasha was pouring herself another drink at the bar when he found out just what else had been aroused.
"Your wife is a very attractive woman, Mr. Crane," Lindfors said without preamble, sipping his drink slowly.
Clint wondered where this was heading, though he had an idea based on the file he'd read back at headquarters. Fury had even taken the time to warn him about this, about Lindfors' . . . tendencies, but he'd dismissed it at the time.
"She is," he agreed carefully, subtly shifting his body so that he stood between Lindfors and Natasha. "And it's just Ben," he added, forcing himself not to clench his jaw.
Lindfors dragged his eyes away from Natasha long enough to meet Clint's gaze when he asked, "Well, then, Ben, I don't suppose the two of you share? She seems like the type who wouldn't mind spreading her attentions around."
He made an idle motion around the room as he spoke, and Clint got the immediate impression that he'd better head Lindfors off before he outright suggested what Clint thought he was suggesting because there was no way in hell that he was going to let that happen. The words "over his dead body" might have come to mind, except that he didn't want to tempt fate.
Clint swallowed, hard, then as calmly as he could manage, he said, "I'm kind of . . . selfish when it comes to Fiona."
Lindfors only looked disappointed for a moment, the emotion flickering across his sharp features. He opened his mouth to reply, but Clint never learned what he'd intended to say because Natasha chose that moment to walk back from the bar, swaying her hips and giggling as if she were drunk.
(Clint knew better. She could drink everyone in this room under the table and still pilot the Quinjet through a hurricane with one hand tied behind her back.)
"Hey, baby," she said, twining her arms around Clint's neck and grinning at him. "Did you miss me?"
Instead of replying, he grabbed her head and kissed her roughly, possessively, shoving his tongue down her throat and staking his claim on her in case anyone else got any bright ideas. She rolled with it, barely even stiffened in his arms, and fuck, he hoped she didn't cut balls off for it.
When he pulled back, though, she looked at him quizzically rather than angrily, her confused expression so slight that anyone who didn't know her as well as he did wouldn't even notice it. He rubbed his thumb against the small of her back by way of apology.
She shocked him then, leaning back in to kiss him again. She arched into him, pressed the length of her body flush against his, her tits flattened against his chest, and she swept her tongue thoroughly over his mouth. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything other than kiss her back and when she broke away this time, they were both gasping for air.
She moved away first, downing the remainder of her drink and sticking it on a nearby side table. Feeling playful (and not at all possessive because they were just pretending and she wasn't really his), he grabbed her when she stepped too close to Lindfors, tugged her back against him and nipped the back of her neck.
He felt rather than heard her gasp, and when she turned back to him, the arousal in her eyes and the accompanying flush high on her cheeks looked real.
As in real.
Really real, like she was actually getting hot under the collar because of him, like she wanted to drag him off somewhere and do unspeakable things to him, not at all the sort of interest he'd seen on her face before, the play-acted kind, but the kind he'd dreamt about in idle moments on countless ops. Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, her mouth dropped open as she panted, and fuck, she was going to be the death of him.
He caught Lindfors' spark of interest in his peripheral vision, and even though they should be sticking around, gathering more intelligence on the other people in this room, he wanted to get out of there before their hand was forced.
Scrambling to come up with something he could say without tipping their audience off, he went for bluntness, lacing his words with as much of a warning as he dared.
"You want to get out of here?"
She curled into him, met his eyes for less than a second, and then, just loudly enough so that Lindfors' could hear, she said, "Take me to bed, baby."
The man in question was looking at them appraisingly when Clint turned back to him. The older man sipped from his glass again before he asked, "I see you're having a good evening, Fiona."
Her alias dripped out Lindfors' mouth as if he were hissing her name, the syllables rolling across his tongue suggestively, and Clint found that he once more needed to restrain himself. He knew Natasha could handle herself, knew that she had faced down and taken care of bigger problems than an overtly lustful criminal, but that didn't register through the fog of his anger, not with every eye in the room fixed on them, staring at her like she was a piece of meat to be divided up amongst them.
He didn't know how she could stand it.
She licked her lips, unfazed, pretended like she didn't really understand the undercurrents of the situation (she was too well trained, too observant for that, though). She giggled, a throaty, raspy noise, and then she said to Lindfors, "Hopefully, it's about to get a good bit better. Right, Benji?"
Natasha turned her heated gaze on Clint then, all the while still leaning bodily against him, spreading herself across him, and he felt the jealous gaze of all those in the room.
"I wanna fuck," she said petulantly, using the same tone she used to lure marks off into private rooms.
He couldn't stop himself from reacting to her voice, the way the words slipped out her mouth and glided over him, into him like a punch to the gut. She didn't mean it, couldn't mean it, would never mean it, but goddamn it all, it sure sounded like she did.
She blinked at him when he didn't say anything, and to cover for his shocked speechlessness, she said, "Please, Ben?"
He coughed into his closed fist to cover the wave of arousal that washed over him. Acting far less than he would like, he leered down at Natasha, smirked at her with what he hoped was a knowing smile. She clung to his side, breathing hotly against his skin, and she started worrying his neck with her teeth. She dropped the arm she had around his waist to the curve of his ass, and god, he really wished the circumstances were different.
"Well, gentlemen," he said, nodding toward the people in various states of drunkenness hanging around the room. "I believe that is my cue."
Lindfors raised his glass, thankfully not repeating his earlier proposition. "Far be it from me to stop you." He waved them off with a flip of his fingers. "See you both at 6 am."
Clint thought they were getting off too easily, like there was something they weren't being told, but he was just happy to get out of the room, happy to get away from the tension.
Natasha giggled as they walked down the out of the room and into the long hallway, leaning heavily on him and clutching at his arm. She was so close he could feel her breath in his ear, and he forgot himself for a moment, let himself believe that Natasha was really aroused by this, that she wanted him.
She killed that notion the moment they were out of sight.
"I dropped a bug in the room. I can hear everything they're saying right now," she said, discretely tapping the ear where he knew she had placed a receiver.
Keenly feeling the ever present scrutiny of the security cameras, he whirled her in his arms, pressed her into the wall and kissed her greedily, working over her neck, licking all the places he'd been fantasizing about for years. He might never get another chance at this, and, to a degree, he wasn't above taking advantage of the situation.
"What are they saying?" he muttered, dragging his tongue up the smooth length of her throat. He sucked on the skin then, hard, knowing it would leave a mark and feeling gratified when she started breathing more heavily in response.
"Lindfors is watching us right now. He's going to put the security feed from our room on the main screen by the bar," she said, and he finally parsed the look the man had shot him before they'd excused themselves. When he hadn't been willing to go along with his first plan, Lindfors just found another way to get what he wanted.
He rolled his eyes in annoyance, but then continued for a completely different reason as she hitched a leg up over his hip and ground her core against him. He felt himself grow immediately hard from her movement, all the blood rushed out of his head, and he gritted his teeth to stop himself from bucking against her and revealing too much.
He had to remember this was all for show.
"You got a plan?" he asked roughly, shifting his pelvis away from hers so she wasn't grinding on him quite so provocatively. He wanted this, so, so badly, of course he did, but not like this. Never like this.
Natasha had no such qualms. She grabbed the top of his shirt, pulled down on it until she exposed his throat, clearly intent on leaving her own marks on him.
"We put on a show," she said. She nuzzled the underside of his chin softly, almost tenderly, and then added, "Carry me. Make it look good."
It wasn't a hard order to carry out. He lifted her up into his arms, and her legs twined high around his waist. Her skirt had ridden up when she jumped around him, and instead of resting on the relative safety of her dress, his hands were directly on her skin, her underwear, touching the smooth skin of her upper thighs. Her mouth working hot on his neck and the mellow buzz of alcohol in his system combined to take all of his concentration just to keep carrying her along the corridor and not pin her against the nearest surface.
No, he would need to do very little to make this look good.
They made it back to their room by sheer force of will, and he set her back onto her feet to open the door. She let him tug her inside, and she shrugged off her sweater as the door clicked shut behind them.
"Alone at last," she said loudly, grinning, and then she leapt for him, kissing him sloppily, all teeth and tongue.
He stumbled blindly backward from the force of her assault, and he sat down heavily on the overstuffed arm chair tucked into one corner of the room. She went with him, climbed into his lap like he knew she would, and just like that, he was living out one of his oldest fantasies. She was wild against him, kissing him, sucking on his lips and tongue, moving around until he couldn't think about anything other than her.
Par for the course, really.
He was so wrapped up in it, absorbed in her that it took longer than it should have for their situation to really sink back in.
It had been on the edge of his mind right from the beginning, of course, that they were being watched, but then she kissed him and his dick took over his higher brain functions and he really should know better. He knew full well that there was surveillance in the room and that their host was watching them back in the living room, that the entire team was watching and waiting for them to do something.
Despite that, it didn't even occur to him that she was just acting until she leaned in close, rubbed her tits against his chest (fuck, she could go ahead and do that forever) and said, "Pretty sure the primary camera's in the corner behind us."
He froze for a moment. It felt like a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his head, and for the first time all night he was thinking clearly.
Camera.
Right.
This was a job, nothing more. It was obvious, now that he thought about it. No matter how good their partnership was, no matter how good of a friend she was, the only reason a woman like Natasha Romanoff would ever want him would be because she was carrying out an assignment (he refused to contemplate the other thing, the worse thing, that she was so willing because she still somehow thought that she owed him for saving her life).
He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her in close and bit her earlobe to cover what he was saying. "I didn't want it to be like this."
Fuck. That came out wrong. She wasn't supposed to know, he didn't want her to know that he'd lusted after her, wanted her, couldn't get her out of his mind since the day she dropped into his sorry life. He knew she could count the number of friends she'd ever had on one hand, just like he knew he was the only one of them still alive. Every time he'd thought about her this way, every time he'd brought himself off with the thought of her at the forefront of his mind had only made him more and more determined to keep it a secret. She didn't need another besotted, idiot male in her life. She needed stability. Someone she could trust to have her back. Someone who wasn't too busy staring at her tits to stitch her up after a mission went south.
And shit, that wasn't even relevant right now because he'd just as good as told her he had planned out how he wanted to sleep with her. He just prayed she either misheard him or misinterpreted what he said because there was no way in hell that she would still want to go through with this if she understood what his slip meant. Love, as she so often reminded him, was for children.
She didn't comment though, just tilted her head toward his ear and murmured, "It's okay. I don't mind."
Which, of course, was the crux of the matter – she didn't mind fucking him, when he would have cut out his eyes just for the chance to touch her.
She started running her hands under his shirt then, dipping lower to the waistband of his pants, skimming her palms over his muscles of his abdomen, and he knew that he had to stop her now, before this went any further. God, he wanted her, though, he had wanted her for longer than he could remember, and screwed up as it was, it was the best moment of his entire life.
But, fuck, he had to do a better job at reminding himself that he didn't want her like this. He didn't want it to happen just because she had to sleep with him. He wanted her to want him as keenly as he wanted her. Because as much as he'd fantasized about having her panting on top of his body, he wanted that reaction to be genuine. He wanted her to be hot and wet and sighing for him, because of him, not because the mission parameters demanded it.
He wouldn't compromise their partnership, not like this.
He grabbed her hands, forced her to stop undoing the fastenings at his waist. Holding her still, he held his lips to her ear.
"We don't have to do this. We can figure out another way," he told her, trying to state his point more clearly this time. This wasn't what they'd been sent here to do; Fury would never sanction two of his agents actually sleeping together to get the job done, no matter the price. Despite their occasional willingness to bend the law, SHIELD was not the Red Room.
Natasha frowned at him, though, obviously confused, and she was so fucking beautiful that he wanted nothing more than to kiss her again. What he wanted didn't matter, though. He couldn't live with himself if she only slept with him because she was under the impression that she had to.
"We could just pretend, make it look real," he said in her ear. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do."
She stared at him for a long moment before her expression cleared, and then she smiled at him, amused. She even chuckled a little.
He'd remember the next bit for the rest of his life because instead of sliding out of his lap or dragging him off to the bed to simulate sex underneath the blankets, she slowly and firmly ground down on him, rubbing her center against his painfully hard cock. Her mouth opened as she circled her hips, and unbelievably, it actually looked like she really wanted this.
He shook his head, tried to move his hips away from hers, and it was embarrassing that he was this aroused. He couldn't let her do this, fuck the consequences.
Then she grabbed his chin, held his face between her warm palms and said, "I want you." She kissed him, slowly, thoroughly, like she meant it, and he let himself start to believe her.
"We can work around this, sweetheart," he murmured. "You know that, right?"
She continued to smile inscrutably at him, and she took one of his hands in hers. She dragged it over her body, along her waist, brought it all the way down to her bare thighs. She tugged his fingers upward then, up underneath her skirt, between her legs, right up to where they joined. His fingers brushed against her panties, and . . .
She was wet. Oh, god, was she wet. So wet, in fact, that she'd drenched her panties, soaked right through them. She sucked in one shaky breath through parted lips as she stared at him.
He stared right back at her in open-mouthed amazement, unsure how to proceed now that she'd managed to blow all of his preconceived notions out of the water.
Like always, though, Natasha fixed things, got them moving again. She rocked her hips against his still palm, rubbed herself on his fingers, and just as suddenly as he'd stopped, he was moving again.
He pressed firmly on her clit through her underwear, finding the engorged flesh easily because of the extent of her arousal. She moaned throatily when he rubbed her, and she was leaning so close to him that he actually saw her pupils dilate.
He lost his control at that, lost all semblance of caring that they were on a mission, that they shouldn't be doing this, that every movement they made was being watched because she was so fucking hot and she wanted him and he couldn't fathom any of it.
He shoved the thin fabric of her panties aside, desperate to feel her, desperate to make her come over and over. He grabbed the back of her head with his free hand, brought her mouth to his even as he slid his first two fingers inside of her, and he couldn't believe how hot and wet she was around his fingers.
"Oh, yes," she breathed, writhing against him as he pumped, thrusting her barely clad tits in his face and encouraging him with her motions to play with them.
Never let it be said that he denied her anything.
Keeping up the movement of his right hand, his used his left to pull the front of her dress down. He skimmed his fingertips along the edge of her bra, fiddling with the lace until she tugged on the short hairs at the back of neck in frustration.
He laughed, full of mirth and unmitigated joy that he was really here, that she was really on his lap, that he had one of his hands inside of her and she was wet, so very, very wet, all because of him.
He mouthed her through the lace, bit gently on her nipple and felt her purr.
"Oh, god," she moaned, biting her lip and looking like a goddess come down from on high to torment him.
She pushed back from him a little, pulled her dress off over head, tossing it carelessly behind her. Then she reached back up behind herself, twisted her arms around until her bra slackened, came loose, and then her rosy tips were free and swaying gently in front of his face as tentatively bounced on his hand. She was slick and hot and tight and everything he'd ever wanted, and he was so absorbed in her that all he could manage to do was stare.
"Put your mouth on me," she said, no, ordered, her voice rough with want.
He bent down to her breasts, caught one pebbled peak up between his lips, and he swirled his tongue over the tip in time to the thrusting of his hand. She cried out again and again, tightening up, and he felt the first delicate tremors of her impending orgasm start to ripple around his fingertips.
"Like that!" she sobbed as he twisted his hand, her hands digging into his shoulders. "Oh, please, like that!"
He swallowed hard, steeling himself, and said, "You're so fucking wet for me. Jesus, you feel good."
He picked up the speed of his fingers when he spoke, and she clutched at him in response, pulling on his hair almost to the point of pain. He added another digit then, slipping it inside of her with the others and massaging her clit with the heel of his hand.
"Come for me, baby," he said, dropping his face back down to her chest and sucking once more at her reddened flesh. She stiffened in his arms as she neared her release, and he felt her breath catch in her lungs. And then, far too soon, she was moving again, coming hard around his hand, shouting out her pleasure and writhing like a wild animal.
She clung to him as she came down, kissed his face all over while she caught her breath, and he tried to commit this perfect moment to memory. He tried to convince himself that he could live with the fact that he'd only driven Natasha to this state because of the situation, that maybe she'd only wanted him because they'd been at each other all night, teasing and caressing, and acting the part of a recently married couple. He thought he could learn to deal with all of it (probably) because she truly wanted him in this moment, because she'd come apart in his arms and kissed him like he was the air she breathed, and the fact of that alone would carry him through a thousand lonely nights.
He pulled his hand out of her then, intent on gathering her up and making his way over to the bed to put on a less explicit show for the cameras. They could slide under the blankets now with none the wiser. He knew from past experience that his erection would eventually fade away even sleeping in the same bed with her, so he stood up, adeptly picking her up with him, and she was so slack and pliant against him that he couldn't really believe that it was entirely an act. He felt a surge of pride at that, that he'd made her come so hard she actually relaxed. He couldn't believe his luck, that he was getting to play out so many of his fantasies right now, that he got to see her like this when he knew for a fact that no one else ever had.
It was enough.
But when he'd laid her carefully on the bed, pulled the covers up over her and slipped in next to her, she didn't relent, didn't fall asleep or sit astride him and go through the motions of sex. She didn't do anything that he'd intended. Instead, she wrapped herself around him, and he could feel every inch of her pressed up against him - the strong muscles of her arms around his waist, the heat at the juncture of her thighs, the smoothness of her forehead against his cheek. Her body was bared to him, and he could feel the dampness below her waist through her panties, now even wetter following her orgasm.
"We should probably . . ." he started, and then the hand at his waist went lower, slipped into his pants, and wrapped itself around his cock. He grabbed her wrist, a repeat of his earlier action, even if she'd gotten further this time.
"You don't . . ." he started, but she cut him off with a glare.
"Don't tell me what I want, Barton," she whispered in his ear. He knew she would never use that name, not here, not where someone could hear unless she really meant it, unless she wanted him to know that she was sure about this, that she wanted to do this.
He loosened his grip on her wrist and saw stars behind his eyes as she started to pump. She worried the skin at his neck as she worked him, nipped at the flesh under his ear and sucked the lobe into her mouth. He'd imagined this scenario a thousand times, a thousand different ways, but even in his wildest dreams, it had never been as good as this.
She slowed her motions right when he was at the edge, right when he was worried that he was going to come all over her hands, and he marveled at how well she could read him.
"I want to fuck you," she breathed into his ear, her voice shaky, uncontrolled, and he was lost. "Please let me."
She straddled him the moment he nodded, and he must have been really out of it because her panties were somehow gone, when he was sure they'd still been on her when they'd gotten in bed. He didn't worry about it, though, because she was naked and her slick opening was pressed against his dick and her eyes were fathomless black pools as she stared down at him.
She held his gaze as she sunk slowly onto him, and by the time her ass met his upper thighs, they were both gasping for air. She was tight (so deliciously fucking tight) around his cock even after he'd used his fingers on her and he gasped from the onslaught of sensation. He could feel her slowly stretch to accommodate his size, feel her flutter gently around him as she whimpered from taking him. He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood just to stop himself from coming too soon, before this even got started.
He thought he was doing a reasonable job, given the circumstances. He'd never been with anyone like this, without a single barrier separating them, and it was her, it was Natasha sitting on his cock, cradling him between her legs, her slick heat that was enveloping him. He prided himself on keeping it together so well.
And then she started moving.
He cursed then, loudly and violently, because he hadn't expected it to feel this way, hadn't expected to feel so raw, so exposed, so . . . connected. He hadn't felt like this since he was a virgin, stumbling through his first time, fumbling and nervous about fucking it all up. Maybe he hadn't felt this way even then because he was pretty sure that nothing had ever been as good as this, that he had never felt so close to anyone before. He was melding with her, becoming part of the same person, two halves of a whole seeking mutual release.
"Shit," he muttered again, perilously close to the edge, but wanting to draw this out for as long as he could. She kept moving, clenching her inner muscles tightly around him and running her hands all over his chest and shoulders, and it warmed him to think that she couldn't stop herself from touching him, that she wanted to touch him, that she was this hot and bothered because she was sitting on him, riding him, feeling him inside and outside of her.
She pinched his nipples lightly, curved down over him and chased her fingers with her tongue. "So fucking good, C . . . Ben," she said, covering her slip neatly. All the same, he grinned at her loss of control, at the way she almost messed up everything.
He put his hands on her then, gripped her waist, pressed his palm to her belly and pushed gently on her until she was sitting upright on top of him. He pumped up harder into her, bracing his feet flat on the bed for purchase, and he watched with rapt interest the way her breasts bounced as he fucked her. He still didn't quite believe that this was happening, not just a figment of his overactive imagination, and he didn't want to close his eyes for a second, didn't want to blink for the fear that he might miss something.
He couldn't stop himself, but then, he didn't have to, and he reached up, grabbed one full breast, pinching her and enjoying the weight of her in his palm. He couldn't get enough of it, touching her, looking at her, feeling her around him, and he knew he wasn't going to last much longer from the dull ache low in his belly, the warmth that was spreading up along his spine. He dropped his other hand low, down to where their bodies joined, and he used his thumb to increase the stimulation against her clit, to heighten her pleasure.
Heighten it he did, because the moment he laid his hand on her, she threw her head back and moaned in the most sinful voice he'd ever hear, "Oh, fuck." He bucked up into her, felt his cock jerk inside of her as her reaction made him break his rhythm. She didn't mind though, just kept crying out, begging, "Don't stop, baby, please don't stop!"
God, she was so fucking hot and he should have a better way to express his attraction, even if it was just in his mind, because he really should be able to describe the base lust and devotion he felt, should be able to elaborate on all the emotions that were so inextricably knotted up in his gut when he thought about her. He would do anything to hear her moan like that again, to watch her chest heave and skin flush as he pushed up inside of her.
The flush that had begun on her cheeks had spread down her body, coloring her chest the most delightful shade of scarlet, and his hands stood out against her skin where he gripped her. She was raving as she approached her own release, without a thought or a care in her body except that one goal, and he wanted nothing more than to make sure she achieved it first, even if that meant he had to think about puppies and baseball caps (shit, Barton, don't think about her wearing your baseball caps, oh god, no) to stave off his rapidly approaching orgasm.
He felt her tremble as she did before, when he'd only been using his hand on her, and he circled his thumb once, twice, and then she was coming, arching so far back that he felt the ends of her hair tickling his knees. He followed on her heels, came apart just after she did, and the aftershocks wracked his body so completely that he was sure he would never recover.
She collapsed on top of him, still quaking, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, desperate to be closer to her. She kissed him languidly then, drawing her tongue over his teeth and sucking gently on his lower lip.
"I've wanted to do that for a long time," she said at last, still speaking lowly, softly enough that the bugs wouldn't be able to pick it up, but he thought that even if it did he wouldn't care. He could die happy right now from that admission alone.
She slid off him, but she didn't pull away from him. She put her arm back around him, threw one leg up over his hip, and she whispered into his ear, "Go ahead and sleep. I'll take first watch."
He supposed he shouldn't be contemplating it, but she was warm and soft next to him, and he was exhausted. Holding her close to his side, he fell asleep.
