"I know you killed him."

Her voice is empty and matter-of-fact and her words scatters against his neck where her lips are catching up with all the skin she hasn't tasted in months.

"What…?"

Her confession is an afterthought because his tongue is busy retracing its old stomping grounds and there's this particular patch at the junction between her collarbone and her neck where suction triggers a reaction which usually ends in an undignified grunt. He wants to hear that sound again.

"Henry… my stalker. He didn't kill himself."

He doesn't miss a beat in sliding her jeans down her thighs and can't help but feel a swell of pride because neither does she and her hands are doing a fantastic job of sneaking bellow his belt. And also because she's right. She steps out of her jeans which are now in a pile on the floor with most of the rest of her clothes and nudges his hips towards the bed. She'd never felt the need to turn the lights off with him, his hands and his mouth and his hard on that she's pressing her belly against right now and many more like it leave no room for any insecurities and no doubt about what he wants and how he wants it. The lights have to stay out this time because she's in her aunt's guest bedroom and even though she's not an ingenue teenager and he's not even technically breaking any rules anymore, not that she knows of, keeping quiet after too many nights away from him is going to be challenging enough without having to worry about visibility too.

"I talked to his parents..."

If she has no problem hungrily sucking on his tongue while discussing the subject, he's not going to be the one to blink first. His big hands slide to her bottom and he grabs two handfulls, kneading the soft flesh in his outstretched palms until she hisses and unlatches her mouth from his neck.

"I love your ass," he whispers in his best naughty boy voice although the fact that he's running one finger along the crease of her bottom and follows just the right trajectory down below to where her panties are soaked is one of the more tame things he's done in that particular neighborhood. She dutifully follows his lead and lets him hoist her up on his waist, legs wrapped tightly against him, but she's not done and she will not be distracted, not even when he swerves and presses her into the wall. She's waited too long for this, both for the feeling of his taste on her tongue and the opportunity to tell him she knows just who he is. She's fairly confident she can multitask.

"I talked to his parents... I wanted them to know... I didn't hate him..." Her voice is subdued and gravely and although he's never actually told her, her older-than-her-years inflexions make him just as painfully aroused as her round ass.

She catches the reflection of his smile in the dark and knows by the look in his eyes that she's even more naked than the situation would indicate. She won't let him shame her about irrational guilt, even as his own rational one she didn't really expect is completely absent.

"They're blaming themselves, just so you know... They make my own father look like a slacker when it comes to putting pressure on the offsprings."

She wants to hurt him, wants to see him broken and bleeding. She doesn't really know what cuts him and it infuriates her more than anything. Granted, rhytmically pushing her wetness against him with the wall as leverage and rubbing her swollen breasts against his chest might not be the Geneva Convention's definition of torture, but she wants him to feel as asphyxiated and powerless as she'd felt and this is the only way she knows how to. She's never really hated anybody, but his smile triggers something that's dangerously close to loathing because she knows he's... charmed by her weakness and her guilt. He can smell it on her in the same breath in which he can smell her swollen cunt. He knows her reasoning, knows that to her it hardly seemed fair that what she'd got out of some kid's disturbed fantasy that she hadn't even allowed to sink in was wonderfully filthy, all-consumming sex while they got a dead son in a wooden box. It amuses him apparently.

"By all means... tell me more..." he cavalierly asks, not missing a beat in maneouvering her back to the ground so he can take his dick out of his pants and compensate for the height difference by grabbing one of legs and anchoring it around his hips. She realizes as long as she's not talking, as long as she's not assaulting him, he's content to just slowly swipe his thumb against the flushed dark red head of his penis she can barely make out in the darkness between their bodies and watch her pant for it. She wants to give in to the memory of its salty taste, take him by surprise and suck him off until he's aching from thrusting into her mouth. Maybe that's how she could hurt him. She won't be touched, save for the air that tickles her wet flesh bared by her awkward position.

"You missed a detail... Very unlike you."

He pushes his hips just a fraction of an inch closer and she can feel the weight of his warm cock resting in the crease of her exposed thigh.

"Plenty of regular church goers kill themselves. You want the statistics of suicides among the clergy at national level?"

What she gets instead is her nipple painfully twisted between his fingers just as he rubs his cock against her slit dragging a raw, aching trail against her sensitive flesh and he jams it up into her way too roughly, even though she's too snug against his thickness in this position, knowing she wouldn't move for the world. Since she'd rather not see her uncle barging in through the door with a baseball bat, ready to protect her, her head snaps forward and she muffles her moans in his arm, her teeth leaving angry red crescents in contrast with the green splashes of his tattooed skin.

"Did I miss anything now?"

Bastard.

He hisses and flexes the muscle underneath the skin she almost breaks, pushing her head back against the wall and his fingers curl around her throat, not menacingly but firmly. She feels his breath coming in short, rhythmic bursts down her chest as he fucks her slowly, too slowly, and without ever taking his eyes off her face.

"He would have hurt you. He wanted to do this to you," he illustrates by thrusting into her forcefully, pushing her so hard into the wall that her eyes sting with oncoming tears. "And this..." his hand lowers from her throat to her breasts and down her belly towards the junction where their bodies are united "all of it... is mine! And if any man ever hurt it... I'd kill him and fuck you on his grave."

She closes her eyes and lets her tears burn beneath her eyelids as she arches against his touch, feeling slightly disgusted with herself for needing and loving his fingers so much.

"So you strung him up from a rafter in the lab building? Did you make him climb that high ladder? Threaten him with a gun? I guess the fact that he was terrified of heights... and would rather slit his wrists than climb that high... never made it in any of your... files..."

In reality, she imagines he's far more professional than that, his victim had probably been unconscious long before he'd tied the sturdy sailor's knot. He leaves nothing to chance, there's no reason to imagine he kills any differently from the way he fucks.

She growls a desperate little pant of disappointment when he stops rubbing her clit and untangles her leg from around his waist. She's going to be sore in all sorts of places tomorrow. He takes her hand and wraps it around his cock, heat radiating from it into her palm.

"You still want me." There's no uncertainty in his voice, no question mark lingering and his eyes are as liquid and clear as ever. Even in the dark, he's still the most beautiful man she's ever seen.

She squeezes him gently, running her fingers along his flesh that's drenched in her juices, exhibit A to back up his claim.

"I'll always want you."

He grabs her hips and swiftly turns her around. He doesn't crush her face first against the wall like she'd expected, but carefully spreads her arms against it, showing her where to put her hands and her elbows for the best pressure points with mathematical precision. His palms rest against hers for a second then trail down her outstretched arms and on her back, making her skin feel too tight for her body. He caresses her bottom over the red skin he'd bruised earlier and draws her closer so he can enter her again, the new angle making her thrust impatiently against him with the renewed tension that clenches her muscles threatening to spill over any second. She feels his hairy forearm tickling the underside of her breasts as he wraps it around them in search for one of her nipples while his other hand lifts up her hair so he can lick a droplet of sweat on her neck right below her hairline. She can't see him, but she feels him on every inch of her skin and feels him thick and strong inside her and knows that is where he belongs and that she couldn't belong to anybody else. That nobody has ever wanted her enough to claim ownership of her so fully and thoroughly.

He thrusts hard into her and she pushes against him even harder, his voice ringing in her ear with his hot breath

"How does it feel? Now that you know... Accepting that you want me anyway?"

"It feels... like I'm lighter. It's... a relief," she manages to push the words against her dry throat.

Despite the wave of physical pleasure invading her body and numbing her brain to anything else, she thinks she hears the rumble of his low whisper in her ear:

"I want to remember what that's like..."

She doesn't know what happens next, doesn't remember him cleaning her up with her pyjama top and putting her to bed, but when she's woken up by his hand tickling her stomach, every sensation stored in her memory hits her at once.

"I have to go," he says, making no apologies. "I brought you something."

She turns around and realizes he's fully dressed, which means he's either good at stealth morning rituals or she was really passed out, laying on the bed next to her with a red marker and a folded piece of paper she doesn't recognize at first.

"This is going to be my last mission in the Secret Service and... what I'm going to do needs to be done."

She doesn't ask for an explanation, doesn't want to know.

"I want you to pick a point on your map..."

The rustling paper starts to become familiar and the beginning of a thought that secretly thrills her creeps into her mind.

"Then you're going to pack your bags and ask Agent Ryan to arrange a late flight to Washington tomorrow night..."

"What about..."

"You can't come with me. You're going to find instructions in your apartment when you get there."

She quietly circles around a dot on the map and hands it over to him without any further elaboration. He smirks a little and carefully folds it back, leaning over her on the bed.

"Good choice," he says, kissing her languidly.

Her palm covers his stubble (her bathroom is not exactly equipped with what he needs) and she swipes her thumb down his long nose and across his lips.

"Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this?"

"I've never stopped being at war. I couldn't, not even when I thought I did. I'm ending it now."

Agent Ryan will not answer her questions, too busy to whisk her out the backdoor of the VIP airport lounge and all she can spot are the few orderlies huddled around a CNN livefeed. By the time he parks the armoured car in front of her apartment she has no more questions left and wants no more answers. The grizzled old soldier who is there to die for her if he has too gives her a reassuring shoulder squeeze, his eyes softening when he tells her her father is fine, he's safe and will be returning home shortly with the entire nation coalesced around him after surviving a heinous terrorist conspiracy abroad. She forces a smile and nods away, thankful numbness can be interpreted as happiness and relief when all she wants to do is sit in a corner until she dies.

She reassures him one more time that she's fine and will be ready in time to wait for her father and the new national hero on the White House lounge tomorrow.

"G'night, Miss Ashton!"

"Goodnight, Agent Ryan..."

Her memory doesn't register him leaving the apartment, her eyes fixed on the map that's hanging in the kitchen where it's always been pinned, same route markers in some of the most isolated places in the world and one with a bright red circle around it.

A one way ticket waits for her on the counter under a plump orange used as a paperweight, her name and seat number etched next to the words: "Goa, India." and a small note on plain white paper underneath:

"If "always" is still always..."