Semi-explicit smut ahead! You've been warned! ;)
Also reviews are like...really good coffees, and I need more, please!
Chapter 9
Sophie had done some investigating and found that a dress she would find suitable for a mob event was probably quite expensive, and because the populous tended to get crazy around the holidays, there were plenty of extra shifts to pick up. Victor was gone more often than not lately, so her absences weren't missed. Sophie decorated her apartment with little decoration, a fake, four foot christmas tree on her unused dining table, pre-lit and decorated with small red ornaments.
One night after leaving the hospital, she found herself in a familiar predicament, with a black sedan sliding up to the curb in front of her just east of the hospital.
The door opened and out he came, beautiful and dangerous in his sharp suit. He tended to favor all black ensembles these days, she noted.
Sophie grasped the collar of her winter coat with her gloved hands and walked over to him, blinking away snowflakes.
He wore no coat, and although the snow landed in a light blanket on his shoulders, he seemed unfazed by the cold.
"Hey stranger," she said with half a smile.
A group of drunk male passerbys whistled and made some remarks as they stumbled by, hitting on everything with two legs and a somewhat feminine form under a winter coat. Sophie ignored them, but she watched as Victor's eyes narrowed and followed the guys' path.
"So….you haven't been home in a while…" she supplied and slid up closer to him, drinking in the warmth he radiated, especially when mad as hell.
"I need to be at the event early," Victor said instead, "A car will pick you up at three-thirty."
"Will you be in that car?" she asked, but received no reply as Victor whipped out his cell and pressed buttons angrily.
Moments later Dr. Romalotti was stumbling out of the ED, looking tired.
"Listen, Victor, I-" the Doctor began. The man at her side immediately stiffened under his fine suit and Sophie put a gloved hand on his arm, "Maybe, I can just help?" she offered.
Romalotti looked at her with both gratitude and sorrow.
Victor's eyes stared into her soul for a moment, before he stepped aside and guided her into the car.
"Your absence will be reported, and your debt will now include her time," she heard Victor snarl before he folded himself in after her and slammed the door, sending the signal to the driver to go forward.
"What are we stepping into?" Sophie asked, mentally preparing herself for some more chaos.
"The usual," Victor stated, his voice on edge.
"Are you hurt?" she asked worriedly, and placed her hand on his thigh. Victor looked from her hand to the partition, but made no move to remove her hand.
"I am unhurt."
Sophie nodded, but was still frowning, "What?" she pressed.
"If anyone ever doesn't survive, it is easy to blame Romalotti and his often influenced state," Victor answered, his entire form rigid.
"Well no one's died on us yet," Sophie scoffed, feeling a bit offended.
"It better stay that way," stated Victor as they pulled up to the mafiosi clinic.
His obvious anxiety had rubbed off on her, so she was shaky as she pulled off her coat and gloves, then began to retrieve supplies and scrub up.
By now she was beginning to recognize faces, but still couldn't place their names, so the guys just nodded at her in recognition and looked with fear over her shoulder at Zsasz while she sewed them up.
When everyone had been cleaned up nearly four hours later, Victor demanded a car be left for them and ordered everyone back to work.
"See, I didn't kill anyone," Sophie teased, but inside she was saying prayers of thanks.
"Hnn," he rumbled and turned the lights off and moved to the door. Sophie frowned at him again and put on her coat and gloves before they exited and climbed into the awaiting car. Victor closed the passenger door behind her and then moved to climb into the driver's side.
"You're….grumpy," she supplied.
He said nothing, only a jump of a muscle in his neck signaling that he had heard her.
"Stressed?" she continued, "This party is gonna be a big deal for you, isn't it?"
Silence was her companion on the drive, but he surprised her when they parked in the residence's garage and made her way to her apartment together. They entered the apartment and locking the door began their routine of flipping on the light, kicking off their shoes, and taking off jackets.
Victor loosened his tie and walked around the apartment, eyeing her little fake Christmas tree.
"Hungry?" Sophie asked, and he grunted in denial.
They climbed into the shower together, and Sophie decided to take a bit of control for herself. As Victor stood with his back to the shower head, craning his head this way and that to let the warm water pour over his tense neck, Sophie knelt.
His brown eyes snapped open at the feeling of her mouth and hands whispering over him, and very quickly his breathing became ragged.
"Sophie," he moaned with savageness, and she purred happily against him, sending his head back against the tile of the shower. One of his hands was behind him against the tile, and the other was on her head, fingers intermittently clawing into her locks of hair.
Victor let out a strangled gasp as she sucked on him hard, and then very gently let a sharp incisor graze over him. He cursed and she pulled away slightly for a dark, breathless laugh before once again taking him whole into her mouth. He cursed again, and soon was groaning with release.
"Better? " came her soft whisper, and a small hand was on his chest. He felt her lips dance across his jawline, fingers running over his tallies. Frankly, he wanted to devour her whole, take her succulent lips and erase any difference in their beings. Victor loved control, loved power, but this little minx took it all out from under him with so little effort, it infuriated him just as much as it drove him insane with need of her.
Victor turned off the shower and snapped the curtain back, grabbing their towels and handing Sophie her own. As she dried her hair, she would glance at him with that impossibly soft look in her eyes, green eyes that were still dark with desire and mischief.
It was becoming….annoying and tiresome to quell this desire to completely meld his professional world with his personal one. The fact that there were now two parts to his world was an altogether new thing to Victor. There were times when he wanted to demand her to relinquish her position as a hospital nurse and work exclusively for Don Falcone. Her lifestyle could be lavish and comfortable, and she would be above menial things. Yet there was a deep part of him that was resolute despite his efforts that there should always be a degree of separation. This little one just seemed so determined to follow wherever he would lead her, follow him straight into the dark.
With firm force, he took her hand and pulled her into the darkened bedroom. He laid her across the bed, and he let his actions and his body display all the things that he couldn't ever bring himself to say.
His claim on her was resolute, and she was his, heart, body and soul. She had as much of him as he'd given to anyone, that his duty could spare. He sometimes hated her for making him feel burdened by his duty. He liked to kill people, as close to loving it as Victor himself could love something. And yet, even when he was carving vengeance into someone's flesh or blowing them off the surface of the earth with a pull of the trigger, he'd find his mind climbing back under these white covers with her, scaling her walls and climbing into her open window.
Her legs parted for him with familiar ease, as did her lips, with his name there, uttered as if in prayer.
He wasn't satisfied until she was digging her nails into his back, and her body was convulsing under his with a tightness that pushed him over that edge to follow her into star studded darkness.
His phone buzzed on the counter in the bathroom.
Victor rose from her, sitting on his heels, knees between her splayed legs.
Sophie let out a deep sigh, but let out an alluring squeal when his hands turned her over onto her belly and angled her hips up and back to meet his own.
"Oh Victor, OH!" she shrieked in the darkness.
His phone vibrated again in the room behind them. His need for her was painful in its intensity. Victor wrapped her drying blonde hair around his right hand and made a fist, and pounded into her hard.
Sophie contorted against him in pleasure and he snarled and grunted in satisfaction.
She was his Sophie.
When Victor decided that he was finished and Sophie was spent, he removed himself from her and her bed with reluctance and anger in his heart. Her form was sprawled against the bed, breathing ragged and issuing coos of pleasure.
He flipped on the bathroom light and noted his phone messages. He replied with a text and after eyeing his appearance in the mirror, he began to shave per his usual routine. He heard her leave the bed and then she was there in the doorway, one of his long sleeved shirts no longer in the closet but draped over her naked form. Sophie leaned against the doorway, watching his ministrations, and his eyes followed the flutter of the hem over her thighs, noted the slick sheen of the inside of her thighs, and he inhaled deeply breathing the smell of them in. He could go again….but once again his eyes found his phone and with an inward litany of profanity, he continued to shave.
"I have something for you," she said suddenly, and her tousled blonde head disappeared from the doorway.
Her once sleepy eyes were twinkling when he exited the bathroom. He ignored the leather box in her hands and disappeared into the closet to dress. When he emerged, she looked a little perturbed by the set of her lips, but her eyes still twinkled.
She slid up to him and held out the leather box to him, about the size of his hand.
"Merry early Christmas," she said happily.
When he opened the box he stared at its contents.
"They match your ring…" she said after moments of silence and slid up next to him, "They're black diamond, custom crafted."
Pride was evident in her words, but Victor couldn't determine the words that he was supposed to say, or put a name to the mixture of heat and pain in the right side his chest. She raised her hands, and after a moment of hesitation, she secured the black skull tie pin to his tie, and then put the matching black skull cufflinks on.
She closed the box and put it under her arm, before taking his hand and studying the inspiration piece.
"Hmm, matches better than I could have hoped," she said, pleased with herself.
There was more silence as he stared at his hand between hers, and he felt her grip waver.
"Do you not like them?" she asked softly.
Instead, he pulled his hand out of hers, and disappeared back into the living room, and returned a moment later, a box of his own in his hand.
"For you to wear to the event," he mumbled.
The velvet box was shoved into her hands, and Sophie's green eyes grew large with wonder as she opened the lid. Diamond stud earrings the size of her thumbnails were resting in the box, and a white gold necklace with a single round cut diamond.
"Oh Victor, it's beautiful, " Sophie breathed, and ran her fingers reverently over the expensive items.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and she blinked up at him, coming out of a reverie with her eyes glittering.
He made a move to immediately leave, but a hand was on his face, and then she was on her toes and pressing a soft but firm kiss to his lips.
"Thankyou, Victor."
He rumbled in his chest, and let himself linger at her touch for a moment, before pushing away from her.
"I love you," her soft voice came.
"I know," he muttered, and he disappeared.
