I didn't need thirty minutes to take a shower, even a decadent session of self-love and cleansing would take a little over twenty. The time window was tight, but I could do it. I put my money on MacTavish giving it slightly beyond the half-hour mark before he turned up, probably with an excuse about forgetting something important. I had given him hints, but nothing that could be overtly pinned down as a sexual invitation, just enough to warrant follow up with a polite tete-a-tete in the kitchen, whilst he worked out if he could make a move.
Euphemistically, I would say MacTavish lived a bachelor lifestyle: a level of slobbishness deemed socially acceptable only if you were male. I opened the door to the lingering odour of stale takeaways, damp clothes and curiously juxtaposed expensive cologne. The remains of a cooked breakfast lay abandoned by the sink, crumbs and flecks of grease scattered across the worktop; the contents of the overflowing bin confirmed my nose's suspicion about last night's dinner. Bugs placed, I left a tiny flash drive fighting for control of his sticky laptop abandoned conveniently next to the microwave.
In the bedroom, I found an unmade single bed, with rumpled army blankets but surprisingly clean sheets. Amongst the personal detritus of day-to-day living was a selection of trashy action movements, cheap paperback thrillers and a large stack of unsorted, but clean laundry that sent his approval rating with me skyrocketing. I rifled through it as best I could, trying to leave it looking undisturbed, but there was nothing much of interest.
Entering this space, his inner sanctum had given me the thrill I'd been waiting for. I had a good excuse as to why I was in the rest of his flat, but here I was genuinely invading his privacy, breaking social codes and the rule of law. The feeling melded with the faint excitement I'd been feeling since I had arrived at the base: MacTavish's feelings about me hadn't changed, and I certainly found him attractive. I didn't know when it was going to happen, but at some point soon, we were going to fuck, and the prospect delighted me.
The excited palpitations peaked when I touched the tabernacle of his sanctum: the bedside drawer. As I pulled it open, I felt genuinely guilty, and a little bit turned on. I paused when I saw what lay within: three passports. Either two were fakes, or John-Paul MacTavish was the eldest of a set of identical triplets. I snapped the data pages of all three for HQ. The pleasant feelings of excitement turned cooler: this was suspicious. Beneath this, a plastic sachet of white, crystalline powder gave me a genuine cold feeling. I would take a sample later for my support team to analyse, but I knew that it was either cocaine or ketamine, and the presence of neither was reassuring: if MacTavish had a habit, it was a vulnerability, a point where the enemy could blackmail or bribe him. Shit. I thought. As I went to start rummaging through the cupboard beneath a beep from my watch started me: ten minutes left. With an angry sigh I pushed the drawer shut and headed for the shower.
At the thirty-seventh minute, I heard the knock at the door. I had pushed the drugs and the passports out of my mind, and tried instead, as the warm, cleansing water ran over me, to think about his arse instead, and after five minutes of imaging kneading his flesh under my fingers, I made it into the zone, When I heard him coming up the stairs, I was sitting on a chair in the kitchen, my right leg bent and my foot twisted under the opposite cheek of my bottom, so that the heel put just enough pressure between my legs to be pleasantly arousing.
It took me a minute to pretend to compose myself, before I Ioosened my dressing gown to show a decent eyeful of cleavage and a little flash of black lace. I had saved me best and least practical bra exactly for this scenario.
"Can I help you?" I said as I opened the door. Leaning forward, I lounged against the frame, my forearm flush with wood, I attempted to emulate every shitty porno stereotype I knew. I really needed a sheer black gown trimmed with ostrich feathers to complete the look, but I did my best with the faded chintz of John Lewis instead.
"Um…" He looked me up and down, and the effort he put into keeping his gaze level with my face was commendable. I almost felt sorry for him. "Sorry. I… er... forgot my laptop."
"Right." I replied, with what I hoped was just a hint of incredulity."I'll just get my things." I said, and headed back to the bathroom.
"Do you want a cup of tea?" He shouted from the kitchen.
"Ooh! I'd kill for a cup a tea. I'm parched!" I called back. Actually, I wanted champagne, and tiny but extortionately expensive chocolates, but I could make do. I strolled back into the kitchen, unwrapping the towel I'd twisted round my hair and shaking it loose, hoping the effect was more tousled ingenue, and less drowning victim, to find him setting out his best china: an obvious freebie from Heckler and Koch and a mug that had probably been stolen from Dumfries and Galloway Sexual Health Services, festooned with cartoon personifications of venereal diseases. Chlamydia stared back at me with a worryingly sensual expression. I let this pass without comment, feeling it was better just not to know some things, and we sat in an awkward silence until he spoke.
"What do you think so far?" he said.
I shrugged. "Nice enough part of the world. Fresh air." I stretched out under the table, resting my calves on the seat of the chair beside him "I guess there's some perks." I said the last part with a raised eyebrow, and looked at him over the rim of my mug.
The muscles of his left arm twitched, as if he wanted to reach down and slide his hand across my naked skin up beyond my knees. Mentally, I willed him on, but there was nothing more than shift of his posture and a wincing expression, hopefully because I was causing something to happen between his legs.
"I don't get you." He said, shaking his head. "I always thought you were a bit icy, back in the day…" he trailed off "And when you got here…"
I mentally rolled my eyes. "Interrogation 101: do not fuck the interviewee, do not pass go, do not collect £200. It affects the quality of the data. It's a breach of at least five departmental procedures and frankly, it… just doesn't feel right"
He opened his mouth to speak, but I continued "Secondly, I arrived here after several hours of public transport and two hours in a car with His Nerdship. Tell me if that would put you in a good mood?"
"But which one is the real you?" He interrupted, grinning.
"All of them." I replied. "But if you carry on providing me with appropriate levels of caffeine, the grumpy bitch can have a rest."
He gave me a sly grin. "And what if I liked the grumpy bitch?"
"Down, boy." I said, the admonishment diluted by my snorting laugh into my mug.
"Seriously though." He said "Have you reconsidered my offer."
I rolled my eyes. I wasn't sure if he was just devoid of guiding ethical principles, or just stupid. "I didn't turn down your offer of getting off my tits in the Pudding Club because I didn't want to fuck you. I did it because I'm a professional and that situation was governed by obligations to other people, not me. This…" I circled my hand in the air to indicate our surroundings, "is different."
"Yeah, but-"
"Christ!" I drained the dregs, and got up. "Do you want to know what hole to put it in as well?" I snapped, slamming the mug down by the sink.
As I rummaged for something to wash up with, I heard his chair scrape across the linoleum, his presence suddenly behind me, and I paused. He wasn't close enough that I could feel his breath, but he was close enough that the skin between my shoulder blades prickled. I waited, my hands on the countertop edge, closed my eyes and exhaled slowly over a count of eight, letting the tension in my shoulders drop away. When I opened my eyes, he had taken a step closer, enough that the spectre of his reflection loomed behind me in the glass of the the kitchen window.
When his hand brushed the side of my dressing gown, I was expecting it, but that didn't mean it thrilled me any less. I gave a little start, an involuntary movement that I just couldn't help. I could feel his breath now, warm and damp over the skin of my neck, slowly and inorexably moving closer. Warm air danced over my skin as he exhaled softly, and a shiver rippled through me, leaving tingles in its wake. I was holding my breath until the moment his lips brushed the downy hair at the nape of my neck and then I let out a long, shivering exhalation as the tension discharged a sizzling trail over shoulders ploughed on down through my belly and grounded between my thighs like a bolt of electrical charge.
I arched my back, letting my head loll against him, the closely shaven hair on his temples scraping across my ear with a delicious roughness as he gnawed playfully at my neck, riding the dividing line between pleasure and pain. He took the lobe of my ear between his teeth, pulling, teasing gently and I was appalled to hear myself purr with delight.
His thumb slid inside one of the belt loops in my gown and he used the extra grip to push me round to face him, all the uncertainty in his expression gone, and I just rolled with it, losing myself in the wild moment. His kiss was the sudden pounch of a tiger, a powerful thrust forward that drove his lips onto mine as he pressed me to his body. My mouth was filled with his hot breath, and then his tongue slid over mine.
I kissed him back, unable to match him for force, but a twist of my leg knocked his balance, so he had no base to push from. As he stepped back, I pressed forward, my hands tugging his t-shirt free from the waistband of his trousers. For a moment he let go of me and we parted enough for me to see his wry smile as he pulled the shirt over his head and threw it into the corner.
I saw his magnificent body for only a second and then he was on me again. My hands clawed at the bare skin of his back, the thick muscles ripping below my fingers as he pulled the gown down over my shoulder. I let go of my to wriggle my arm free and it hung around my waist, caught by the knotted belt.
MacTavish did not appear to have gentle in his vocabulary. He pressed himself against me until my back was against the wall, worrying my neck like an animal. For a careful, methodical woman like myself, this was wild, thrilling deviance and I found that I loved it. I grabbed his face and answered like for like, ravenous. His stubble grated under my fingers, abrasive across his face and then a gentle fuzz at the back of his head until I grabbed the longer strands that formed the mohawk and pulled hard until he yelped.
In the small remaining part of my mind left to work the logic circuits, I suspected that he wanted to get at me, to assert himself and his dominance over me for turning him down all those years ago, but I wasn't having that. If I was here to professionally fuck over MacTavish, that's what I was going to do. I wasn't going to be his plaything. He was going to be mine and to hell with any fragile ego trying to get in my way.
I circled my fingers into his hair and clenched my fist, pulling his head back and exposing his neck. His eyes were wide as I lunged at him, wildly disinhibited. We were matched for height, so although he had more weight in his favour, I could use the power in my legs to press him backwards, twisting him round so that he fell back heavily against the fridge.
"Holy fuck!" He exclaimed, as I landed on him, passionately working my way down from jaw into the cleft of his collar bone. His pulse bounded beneath my lips, but the bulge between his legs had already told me his blood was up. Good. I thought, smiling to myself. I was having tremendous fun.
His hand slid behind my back, working to unhook the clasp of my bra as I trailed my lips over his skin, the dark, thick hair of his chest brushing my face. He had a salty taste of old exertion mixing with new, and a sweet aftertaste of lingering gunsmoke that I'd never found arousing until that precise moment it was on my tongue.
The pressure around my chest evaporated as he unclasped my bra. I had to let go of him to let him pull it off and fling it away.
"Fuck me, you're gorgeous!" He muttered as he bent his head to trail kisses over my chest and I bit back a squeal when he slid his tongue over my peaking nipple. His hands slid down my back, the hard calluses of his fingertips delicious on my bare skin and then he slid his hands over my backside and lifted me bodily. I had no choice but to grab his thick waist with my legs or risk collapsing backwards until he dropped me on the table and started to fumble with the knot of my dressing gown. It came free and the whole thing slid away as I grabbed at the belt of his trousers, and then there was some awkward tussling as he stripped the rest of his clothes.
I just watched this, keeping my best detached expression on my face as I surveyed his naked form, but truth be told the man was perfection. During his long stint in the colder Scottish climate, he had reverted to type: hard, flat muscles covered in a cold-cheating layer of fat that left his stomach flat and his shoulders thick: a kilt short of a porridge packet cover model. Except that naked, nothing was left to the imagination..
He saw my expression of nervous excitement and rushed at me. I hadn't a moment to draw breath as he worked his way from my lips, to my breast and down between my legs where he applied the same hot vigour he'd displayed before. I dropped back of the table, the blood rushing to my head as it dropped back over the edge and after that, it was pretty fuzzy.
I remembered sensations, like the delicious brush of soft bristle as his head worked between my legs, and how I bit my lip to keep from screaming when his hands and his lips started to work frenziedly so that the powerful headlong dive into my climax was mixed with the taste of blood. He came himself what felt like a few moments later, thrusting himself between my legs, the whole table shuddering with each frenzied jerk until finally he collapsed on top of me, drenched in sweat.
