Prompt #11: Sweet n' Tart.

Halloween Hookups

Something Wicked This Way Comes

There was going to be hell to pay.

Although he wasn't sure who he was going to make suffer, or how, or even exactly why, the one thing Jason Morgan knew for sure was that someone was going to have to stand by and allow him to take out his aggression on them, otherwise he was going to explode. For days his fury had been stewing. At first, it had started at a slow and steady boil only to increase to the point where his daughter's nanny felt it best for the four year old to spend the weekend away from him, and, now, two days later and expecting the little girl's return the next morning, he was angrier than he had been when she had left. His destroyed apartment could attest to that. In fact, the only room that had been spared his wrath was Ella's bedroom and that was simply because he couldn't add his daughter's disappointment onto everything else he was feeling at the moment.

Panic. Disbelief. Hurt. Rage. Sorrow. They were all swirling around in his chest, suffocating him, and taking a ride or blowing off some steam by playing a game of pool simply wouldn't work to rid the enforcer of the barrage of emotions he had been experiencing since the moment he had seen it.

The announcement.

Perhaps he should have been worried about the fact that he, one of the most feared and respected mob enforcers on the east coast, had been reading the society pages in the first place, but Jason had rationalized his behavior (since when had he started to do that) by telling himself a man in his position needed to know everything about the town he lived in, even inconsequential things such as silver anniversary parties and new births. No, what he found to be truly startling was the fact that one Miss Elizabeth Imogene Webber had gotten engaged.

She had gotten engaged to another man, a man that was not him, and she hadn't even bothered to tell him, to pick up the phone and give him a call. Hell, a freaking warning letter would have been preferable to sitting down Friday morning to drink his strong, black coffee and spend a few quiet minutes reading the paper only to find her being held in some random guy's arms as the headlines boldly proclaimed their upcoming nuptials. Not only had he dropped his mug, the mug his daughter had painted for him for father's day that past June, and scalded himself so badly he had walked funny for several hours afterwards, but he had lost it, swearing and throwing things right in the middle of his living room where Ella could see. And she had – she had seen everything.

So that was why someone was going to pay. He didn't care if it was Elizabeth's fiancé, some guy with a pasty looking face who wore a suit and worked at a bank of all places, because he had taken something Jason felt belonged to him, or the brunette herself for allowing another man besides the enforcer to claim her as his own. Or maybe they both would suffer. As he pushed his bike faster, harder, and more dangerously in the direction he was intent on traveling that night, the blonde realized he liked that idea – making both of them pay. Hell, he might as well add in a few innocents as well, find some petty thief or a coked out drug pusher and deal them a dose of vigilante justice. Sonny wouldn't mind, his daughter's world would be just that much safer, and, when he was finished, he might just feel a little bit better. But, first, he needed to see the woman who was causing all of his turmoil in the first place.

Although he didn't want to believe it, the announcement, coming mere days before Halloween and her birthday, a time of year they always spent together one way or another, felt like a physical blow to his body, like she had slapped him in the face or kneed him in the stomach. Jason knew it wasn't a coincidence. Either the artist was taunting him and everything they had shared and meant to one another, or she was purposing trying to replace the memories she had made over the years with him with those of another man. It didn't matter which option had motivated her into action, because, no matter what, he was going to confront her about it. He was going to confront her, he was going to finally admit how he felt for her, and then he was going to challenge her to deny the fact that she felt something for him as well. While she might not be in love with him like he was with her, after ten years, eleven if you counted the year Jason Quartermaine had known her, he knew the younger woman considered him as someone more than a friend. After all, she had kissed him when she turned seventeen, and two years before she had saved his life and held him as close to her as possible while they spent the night together.

Even if he had to settle for being her more than friend until he could make her fall in love with him, he would. He wanted, no, he needed her in his life that much. Sure, she had told him the year before that she was dating someone and that they were moving in together, but it had taken seeing her in another man's arms to make Jason realize that he could no longer stand by and not fight to be with her. It was almost as if her fiancé, by proposing in the first place, had dared the enforcer to come forward with his feelings, and Jason Morgan did not step down from a challenge. In fact, he was driving to Elizabeth's house that night to accept the other man's challenge, to accept it and beat him at said challenge all in one night. He was determined that, before he went home the next morning to his daughter, not only would the brunette know how he felt about her, but he would also possess her, claim her, take her and make her his own. And he wasn't even going to give her a chance to argue, because she would try, and, if nothing else, Elizabeth was stubborn and she was willful.

But he was just as stubborn and just as willful…if not more so.

And the fact that it was Halloween, a mere two hours from her twenty-third birthday, only made him that much more determined. After all, this was their night. It always had been, and, in Jason's mind, it always would be. The only difference would be, in the future, every night would be their night. Once he had her, there would be no way he would ever let go.

Confidently, almost smugly so, he parked his bike, swung his leg over the hulking chrome machine, and strode purposefully up to the front of the little cottage. He was so intent upon his plan, he never looked towards the garage to see how many cars were parked inside, he didn't look at the house, study it, and see all the little quirks and gentle touches that made it Elizabeth's, and he sure as hell didn't stop and notice the things he and his daughter would love about the home, and, before he knew it, he was standing on her doorstep, pounding his fist against the green wooden door, and waiting, oh so very impatiently, for the artist to answer it.

"What is wrong? Why are you practically trying to break down…"

That was all he allowed her to say. Before Elizabeth could even realize it was him, he had her in his arms, and he was kissing her. It wasn't a tender kiss; it was a commanding, passionate, dominating kiss that drew her in immediately and refused to let go. He watched her as he ravaged her mouth, tasted her again for the first time in six years, and relished in the feeling of her body pressed up so intimately against his. It was like their forms were made to fit together, and that realization made him even hungrier for the brunette.

At first, he had expected her to fight him, to push him off, to deny his advances, but never once did Elizabeth attempt to pull away. Instead, she kissed him back as if she knew exactly whose arms she was in even before her eyes fluttered open and locked with his. Indigo crashed with cobalt, and she melted against him as her arms wrapped around his neck, her tongue dancing with his.

It didn't take long for Jason to remember where they were, and, although he was not against the idea of taking Elizabeth up against the front door of her house, branding it and the home it represented as theirs, he refused to treat her that way. Smoothly, he backed them into the warm and softly illuminated living room, kicking the door shut behind him without ever tearing his lips from her delicious mouth. When she protested, when she moaned deep in her throat and dug her heels into the hardwood floors, a physical plea for him to stop and simply allow her a moment to experience what they were sharing, he denied her; he picked her up, cradled her in his arms, and blindly made his way through the house, searching for the proper place to make love to her for the first time.

As he made his way down the short, back hallway, he noticed her bedroom off to the right, the bedroom she shared with her fiancé, and quickly turned in the opposite direction to enter the guestroom. The man she had promised to marry would not be there that night with them. He wouldn't haunt their first time together, his things wouldn't be surrounding them, reminding them, mocking them, and the guy sure as hell would not have a chance to be with Elizabeth in the same bed Jason was going to lay with her that evening and bury himself inside of her for the first and, if he had his way, certainly not the last time. When the young artist never argued with his choice of rooms, he knew she felt the same way.

Before either of them knew it, their clothes had disappeared and melted off their bodies, falling forgotten to the floor where they would be able to find them the next morning. But, after that, Jason purposely slowed things down. He didn't want their first time together to be rushed; instead, it had to be memorable, mind blowing, and, by the time they both reached their inevitable climax, he was damn well determined to make sure she'd never be able to make love to another man and not think about, remember, and want him instead. Although, it wasn't as if he was going to ever give her that chance anyway.

With a nude and vulnerable Elizabeth underneath him, Jason worshipped her body, savoring it, pleasing it, teasing it to the brink several times only to back off and start again. He loved everything about being with the brunette. He loved tasting her, he loved touching her, and, when they both reached the point where they couldn't take any more tantalizing foreplay, he absolutely adored being inside her. It was the closest thing to feeling complete that he had ever experienced.

They were in tangled in each others arms later as he heard a clock somewhere in her house chime midnight. "It's your birthday," he whispered, saying the very thing they had both just realized. "I'm sorry I didn't think before I came over here tonight. I should have brought you something, a gift or…"

"It's okay, Jason." Snuggling her head against his shoulder, she murmured, "you gave me everything I've ever wanted just now. You gave me yourself…even if it was for just one night."

"No," he argued. Sitting up in bed and startling her, he turned so that she would be forced to look in his eyes. "This wasn't just a one time thing. I want this." Motioning between the two of them, he explained. "I want you, me, and Ella to be a family. I want there to finally be an us."

"You saw the announcement."

It wasn't a question; it was a statement, and they both knew it. But, still, the enforcer felt the need to say something. "You know I love you, don't you?"

"You do?"

He could hear the uncertainty in Elizabeth's voice, and the sheer hope and fear in her eyes made him hate himself in that moment. "I do. I love you. I have for a long time now, but I've always been too afraid to admit it, at first because of who I am, what I do, and then because I didn't think you felt the same way."

"I love you, too, Jason." She laughed then suddenly, throwing up her arms in complete frustration. "I've loved you since I was a teenager."

"So now what?"

"I don't know," she admitted, allowing him to pull her back into his arms.

She was engaged, she had just cheated on her fiancé, and she was in love with another man, a man who lived a dangerous life, a man who had a daughter with another woman, and a man who had finally admitted that he loved her back. "I just…I don't know."