I know, I know. I'm all talk...
PART NINE
The details of their unusual and adventurous sex life had come out into the open air between them. Some of the more difficult facts of their rapport had also come to roost; namely, that the Doctor was a thoroughly damaged soul with a recently-awakened and quite powerful sex drive. This made for some potentially frightening prospects, yet Martha never balked. In fact, she undertook her role in his life with gusto, and he more than returned the favour, though her requests were rarely as eccentric. Nor were they fuelled by a long life spent in enforced sexual repression, and in varying stages of mythic grief or euphoria.
"What does this mean to you?" she had asked.
He thought about the question, but for a few moments he did not move. They were both practically breathless with the arousing impact of their conversation, and he was still reeling from seeing Martha touched by someone else. Through it all, the thought of what the Infinity man had almost done had been caught in his throat. Jealousy was boiling inside, and frankly, he had not brought her to this private opera box to talk; it was all he could do to participate in the conversation without exploding with impatience. But he had forced himself to listen and to respond coherently, because he could sense the importance of it. Because she loved him, he knew, and he didn't want to lose her, or what they had.
But the fact remained: with fresh, hot possessiveness running through his veins and desire dripping from every pore, she had asked him, "What does this mean to you?"
"It means," he began suddenly, his breathing quickened, his eyes shifted to hers with bird-like quickness. "It means that we have our own world, a life we enjoy together. And no-one belongs in it except for us."
She was surprised at this statement and the blackness of his eyes, but she tried not to show it. She took two steps back and crossed her arms over her chest, and said, "Good. I was thinking the same thing when I thought you wanted to put me on display and have me over the railing in front of a thousand eyes."
For the first time since coming into this little room, the Doctor moved away from the door. He stepped toward her, and she instinctively backed away from him. He reached forward and took her by the wrist again, yanked her forward, threw his other arm around her waist and drove his tongue into her mouth. She gasped with surprise, but her knees turned to jelly.
He pulled away from the kiss and filled his left hand with her hair, and pulled her head to the side. He buried his mouth in the flesh behind her ear, and she almost fainted.
"I understand," he hissed, between assaulting her flesh with his mouth. "You are on your knees, or on your back, or your side, or bent over things, all for me, because I've asked."
"Mm," she sighed, her head spinning.
"On the bed," he continued, whispering hungrily to her, now working his way down her neck. "On the floor, on tabletops, in chairs, against the wall, on the console... you never refuse me."
"Wouldn't dare," she breathed.
"Did you ever think you'd ever let anyone handle you that way?"
"No, never."
"Would you ever let anyone else do that to you?"
"God, no," she moaned. She did not have to think; it was her truth.
"God, no," he repeated after her. "Just me."
"Just you," she whispered. His voice was beginning to sound faraway, and also to sound like it was coming from inside her own head, somehow all at once.
He continued to talk as he kissed all over her neck and made her melt. "And you. I have never had anyone so insatiable. I've never met anyone who wanted me like this... this badly and this often, this unconditionally, this adventurously, and it's intoxicating. You can turn me into a quivering mess just as easily as I can you. You attack me just as hungrily as I do you. And there is nothing, Martha, nothing that I can do about it once it's started. You are tireless, you're a fiend, I am totally vulnerable to your greed, and I bloody love it."
"Doctor," she moaned.
"Which is why..." he said, then paused, biting her on the neck, causing pain. She yelped a little, but he didn't let up. "Which is why, Martha... when someone else touched you, I had to fight with every fibre of my being not to completely unhinge."
"You told him, just go," she whispered.
"Because I didn't think it would be sporting to kill him with my bare hands."
Intellectually, she wasn't sure how she felt about this comment, but the passion in it made her spiral even further into desire.
He continued, now between ravenous kisses on her mouth, "And it took me completely by surprise, Martha. Feeling it all at once, knowing it all at once."
"Knowing what?"
A pause, while he stopped and stared into her one more time, and his face and body tightened. He moved his hands to grasp both sides of her face, his fingers extending down her neck. "That you're mine," he said to her with an intensity that could have cut diamonds.
"I'm... what?"
"That's right. And no-one one gets to share you."
"I'm... no-one... what...?"
"You heard me," he whispered, again, with such intensity it almost frightened her. "You're mine. No one touches you. No-one's lips, no one's hands - not in the way that mine do. No one's eyes see what I see, no one knows what I know."
"Doctor..."
He interrupted her with another feverish kiss, this time turning her and pushing her toward something. Stumbling backwards, she could feel him guiding her toward the red velvet chairs. Except, they went past, and behind, the chairs. Without missing a beat, he threw open a curtain she hadn't even noticed was there, and kept guiding her backward, until her back hit a soft velvet wall.
He pulled away from her again and she could see that they were in something like a cloakroom, a private little closet for the coats and belongings of those who would patronise this opera box. He threw the curtain closed, and they were left with only a faint light coming over the top of the curtain rod from the empty theatre below. They could hear voices and the pulsations of music coming from the outside, but here in this tiny red velvet world, they were entirely alone.
"No-one gets to be in our world," he said with finality, pressing her against the wall. "No-one gets to know, Martha. No-one's eyes will see what we do. No big open spaces, no balconies, no one below to look up and know."
"Doctor..."
He buried his mouth at the crook of her neck and sucked at her flesh, and she did not try to resist the slippery lust that pooled within her.
But so much still needed to be said.
In the moment, she was too far gone to say to him that she had been telling herself something similar just a few minutes before - that she didn't want anyone else near the little sanctuary of bliss that had grown up around them, but that this wasn't the way to go about keeping the world out. How could she gather the strength to let him know that as badly, desperately as she wanted him inside her right now, she did not want to follow 'rules' provoked by jealousy?
But she was losing her powers of resistance. "Doctor, please," she begged, breathing heavily, her resolve growing exponentially weaker by the moment.
He lulled her. "Shhh. Don't talk, don't worry, just be. Be completely mine," he said as his fingers crept underneath her tulle skirt. They found her knickers soaked and pushed the fabric aside. One skilful digit probed her heat and she nearly fell apart. "And I'll be completely yours."
