After being home for an hour, Sam found herself still too worked up to be still or productive, so she donned some running gear, strapped her phone to her arm and plugged in the headset, then led Captain through lightening laps around Danny's favorite park closeby the penthouse. Black running shoes hit the pavement so hard she found herself full grimace at one point, conjuring the Flash, bolts at his heels, as she zoomed past two other joggers her fourth time around the track, Captain keeping faithful pace alongside. When her chest burned and her air passage threatened to burst open, she pushed for another lap before slowing to a jog, slowly allowing her breathing to even out, barely turning her head in recognition when someone fell in line next to her.
"Are you running to, or from, whoever you want to kill?"
When there was no response but a slight increase in speed, he hastened the pace to keep up. "It's not me, is it?" Her only answer was to speed up some more, a clear indication that she wasn't interested in conversation…but if he let Sam McCall go everytime she ignored him…
"Hey, slow down, will you? How am I going to win you back if you give me a heart attack before I even pull out my best moves?"
Her sudden halt caught him by surprise, pushing him past before he realized she was stopped and bent over at the waist, panting with her hands braced against her knees, where she looked to be studying the top of her running shoes.
"They say you shouldn't stop abruptly like that - slows your heartbeat too quickly." He was huffing between words, trying desperately to appear cool, while his heart burst from his chest, watching her straighten to walk back in the direction they'd just run. He caught up to her finally, totally relieved she'd slowed to a walk he could now sustain. "Who's got you in this foul mood? Wait - don't tell me - one guess."
She wasn't even going to pretend to entertain his light banter - teasing when she just wanted to run with her dog, the only male she felt like being around at that moment.
"What do you want, Lucky?"
"Well, at least you're talking to me…not quite the welcome I was hoping for, but words…I'll take any!"
"This is not a good time."
"Why? What did that idiot do now?"
"We don't talk about Jason."
"Fair enough. No great loss, if you ask me, and see - we both agree he's an idiot." A cold look wiped the beginning of a grin from his face before it could take form. "Change of subject then…what can I do to see that gorgeous smile?"
"I mean it - it's not a good time."
"Yes, you said that. Trouble is, I'm genetically incapable of leaving a damsel in distress. It's the darnest thing, but if I try to, my throat clamps up, I break out into hives and cold sweats, and my feet, they actually plant to the ground. No lie."
She knew he was trying to make her smile but it was honestly the last thing she felt like doing. "That is literally the dumbest horseshit I've ever heard and if it's meant to be charming, it's not. It's actually making me more annoyed than I already am, so please cut it out."
"Ouch! I admit the material needs work but, ouch!"
Denouncing the faked hurt with no acknowledgment, Sam asked a question serious to her heart. "Don't you get sick of this cesspool we keep taking turns in? I mean, seriously - why do you want me in your bed again? Do you even realize that we have all slept together at this point, and that we just keep passing around one to the other, to rinse and repeat, consistently? Doesn't it make you sick to think about?"
"Sam, what is going on? You really are in a bad mood!"
"Bad mood? Lucky, we switch partners, profess it's this everlasting, undying love, each and every time - like how is that possible? If it's so special, we only get to feel it once, right?" Not waiting for an answer to a question not really needing one, she went on with the fiery rant. "Then we inevitably grow bored or disillusioned and bam - it's switch time again. What the hell is that? I mean, if two people are really meant for each other and they connect in that once in a lifetime way the first time, why doesn't it last? How do we end up swapping out for the next, the minute it gets a little complicated or messy? What the hell kind of soulmate bullshit is that?"
"What happened to you?"
"The same damn thing that always happens - haven't you been listening? I keep having to go round and round with the same people, doing the same dance over the same man, over an over again, and he gives the same excuses and plays the same personal hero each and every time, for each and every one of them. What is that?"
"Okay, I know we're talking about Jason, but who is he defending now?"
"Who is he always defending? No, wait - I take that back. It's not always the same damsel - they do take turns - and he does take a breather between protecting each one to give me five seconds, before the other needs his broad, readily available shoulders again."
Still trying to put her rambling pieces together, Lucky lined up the usual suspects. "Alright - we know he cut Elizabeth off at the knees recently, so this is about Carly? What kind of trouble is my very colorful cousin in this time?"
"You're missing one."
He was just about to ask who, when she shook her head and took off again, the full run telling the vast amount of energy she still had left…more than he obviously had on a full tank, so he held back and had to settle for watching the woman and her dog make the track their own. So, Jason Morgan was at it again…off being the hero to another, while his greatest prize was left feeling vulnerable and unattended. A lesser man would find it the perfect time to strike. As he watched her arms sway in tandem to lightning legs using wide, steady strides to eat up the pavement, her long, dark ponytail swaying with the wind at her back, he started to feel less and less that man. Dare he believe his ears that sounded like she was finally fed up with the whole mess and was ripe for something new? Had Morgan finally outdone his knighthood and lost that irritating shine? Well, well!
She wasn't home. A brisk search of the penthouse revealed it empty of the inhabitants who made it special, leaving Jason acutely aware and feeling their gaping absence. Reaching in his pocket for the phone, he checked once more, knowing there was no missed call or text because he'd done the same thing just minutes before, but hoping anyway. Sam in complete radio silence was good for no-one…not for him - the cause - not for anyone who crossed her path when she was this mad.
Taking a deep breath before walking onto the terrace, he surveyed the harbor as he tried to think of where she might be. He thought of calling Alexis to check, but had a feeling she wouldn't have gone near their son with the kind of anger she'd left with, and not wanting to have to field a million questions when he needed to be searching for her, he decided against that option. With a sigh, he looked down at the peaceful harbor that usually served to calm his heated brain, spinning from it when it failed miserably, to head back inside and up the stairs again. This time he noticed the jeans and tee she'd worn earlier, resting atop the hamper in the bathroom. She been there and gone, but where? Stopping in the doorway, Jason closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Think. She was pumped and angry, geared for a fight, frustrated at not finding one, and now she wasn't home. Opening his eyes after a minute, he moved briskly to the closet to check her running shoes. Her favorite black ones were gone. Of course! She needed to expel that energy!
Quickly changing into workout gear, Jason raced down the stairs two at a time and grabbed the keys from the desk, knowing he'd find her at the gym, beating something silly. He was stopped at the light at the corner when his eyes roved to the left of traffic, falling instantly on the lone figure in navy and red, circling the track, her faithful companion at her heels. Sam! A minute later he'd pulled to a park in the lot and was jogging up to fall inline beside her, earnestly ignoring the man he'd eyed seated in the stands hungrily watching her run. That fucking buzzard!
Silently, Jason fell in jog with his lady love, who didn't even turn her head to acknowledge his appearance, but he cared only that he'd found her at long last. Easily, they jogged the track in silence for the next two laps that gradually increased in speed until they both were at a full run, and still he said nothing, silently taking her every angry stride that screamed her deserved frustration.
Lucky watched them curiously from the bench, mesmerized despite his ire at the sight. Damn Morgan was like a beacon, honing in on her everywhere, foiling yet another chance he'd lined her up prime and ready for the pouncing. As he watched the man take easy, steady strides at a pace that had left him near dead, his hatred edged a notch. Of course he'd be able to keep up with her - big, bounding galoot looked right in place, effortlessly matching her energy for all it was worth, while he sat waiting for her to come down. Of course it would be as easy for him as everything and everyone else! Lord forbid he ever had to work as hard at anything as the rest of them. At least he was also getting the silent treatment…but as he watched them pass him to start another lap, he couldn't help envying the picture they presented, strides aligned, heads held high, elbows flying back and forth in sync as they circled together, even the silence between them seeming to speak a language of its own. Lucky could feel his hatred for the man up a notch and his admiration grow despite it too. He was a plague, whom everything and every woman fell to way too easily, but there was something still very magnetic about the guy that even he could see. Shit! Realizing he was done there for the day, he left them alone and made his way home. A cannon ball couldn't damage what lived between those two, whether they could see it or not.
Finally starting to feel tired, Sam slowed to an easy jog for her last lap, feeling him match her pace yet again. He'd been doing that ever since he fell in line next to her - following her lead to speed up when she did and slow down just the same, silent, not using one word to break the thoughts she'd been pushing around inside her heated head. Every single time she'd gotten mad enough at him to punch him through the hemisphere, he'd pulled something like this…something that proved he knew her like no-one knew her. He'd found her, had fallen in line while she expelled the energy she'd wanted to at Robin's face, and had kept silent while doing it, somehow sensing her need for quiet to work through her thoughts. Nobody else knew her like that. She could talk up a storm and ramble like any weed and he'd always listen, but when she needed quiet, he'd known and given that too.
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"You can't really mean to hire him, Sonny!" They sat in the back of the towncar that whooshed them through town on the way to drop her off at the MetroCourt, Carly still pretty worked up from not being able to take her frustrations out on the deserving little witch. "He tried to take over Jason's life - what makes you think he won't do it again when you give him a ticket on the inside?"
"He's not that guy."
"You have no way of knowing what guy he is or isn't! You don't know the first thing about him - except that he's a con!"
"I know a little bit more than that…he did save my life, Carly." Sonny looked out the tinted window, his mind racing with thoughts along the same line as hers but with a certainty that there was something trustworthy in the man too. "He just needs a chance, like everybody else."
"But why do you have to be the one to give it to him? Our loyalty is to Jason - not some stranger…and definitely not that prissy little bitch!"
Closing his eyes against the venom, Sonny sighed, knowing he had to be careful if he wanted to stay out of a fight of his own now. "I know you'll never like Robin, Carly and you have good reason…but I do…and I have good reason too. Just like I have good reason to trust this guy." He patted her leg and allowed his hand to stroke the fire down where it laid, "Leave business to me. I make those decisions, remember? I know what I'm doing."
"Usually you do, but I'm telling you, Sonny - I have a bad feeling about those two and I think you're making a mistake trusting them. I don't know what you ever saw in that shrew and now that she's shown you she can't be trusted you still place her on a pedestal! Why?"
"She's not herself right now, but she'll come around. She's a good person, Carly."
"Oh, really? That good person sent a stranger to infiltrate your organization to out your best friend and do God knows what else! She wasn't thinking about you or your business when she was plotting revenge, now was she?"
The car pulled up to the lobby entrance and Max walked back to open Carly's door, taking her hand to help her step out, where she straightened the creases in the off-white pencil skirt and faced Sonny, who was watching her keenly. "Mark my words, Sonny - those two are not done, and if you don't do something about them - I will!" She swung from the car and sashayed to the double doors the two doormen swung open for her to enter.
"Carly…" Sonny looked out the rolled down window of the car door Max had just closed, admiring the statuesque beauty that swung to look back at him, angry Carly being as ravishing to him as every other fiery part of her. "Leave it alone…I'll handle it." He watched her huff and turn back to disappear through the doors that were closed at her retreating back, Max standing outside the car doing the same. "She's not leaving it alone."
"No, boss - she's not."
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Jason followed as Sam walked over to his SUV, where he stepped ahead of her to reach the door, opening it for her to step in, then doing the same for Captain in the back. Still no words passed between them, driving back to the penthouse, where he followed her up the stairs and into the shower after filling Captains water bowl and leaving him lapping it up in the kitchen.
Reaching for her shampoo, he waited for her to finish the trail of her hands through wet strands and push her head back from the pounding jets to brace her arms to the wall in front of her. Lathering slowly, he worked gentle hands back to her scalp, feeling her head move beneath in the direction of each slow, deep massage. But he didn't stop there, not until the entire, enticing, voluptuousness before him had been bathed clean of all traces of her run and the events that preceded it. When she'd been loofahed from neck to pinky toe, she made it his turn, moving behind him as the jets beat them from every direction from ceiling and walls, to return the cleaning.
Stepping from the shower, Jason held her favorite Terry robe open, wrapping her tightly in his arms to rock her gently, before cinching the cords at the waste and reaching for his own towel she used to dry him and knot at his hips. He watched her as she wrapped wet tresses in a towel and walked from the bathroom, where still no words had passed between them, yet their ease had returned.
She led the way down the stairs to the kitchen, where he followed and took the bottle she held out from the fridge, the cool water gliding his throat after he'd watched her take the sips he'd fed her first. When she grabbed the fruit from the freezer and turned to the blender, he sidled up behind her, covered her hand to guide it to fall to the counter, and pushed his hardening up against her ass for her to feel him.
Gasping from a thrill that tingled a bolt through her body at the feel of him, hard at all angles against the back of her, Sam gripped the counter and relished in the feel of his fingers unwrapping the towel to free her damp hair and dig into her neck and shoulders, working out kinks that had her knotted all over. When the magic of those fingers kneaded their way to her upper back, she signed and lolled her head forward, pushing her ass back in invitation, then gasped when he spun her to face him. Eyes that were still closed at the pleasure coursing through her, flew open when she was hoisted to the counter and her legs wrangled wide for his body to slide between, both hands sliding in place to grip her neck to hold her to his gaze.
She was so beautiful! Jason's heart throbbed erratically at the sight of her, unassuming and bared to him, her robe falling open to tease at his treasure beneath. She was everything. She had to know that he would die without her, that no world could ever be enough for him without her in it, that no life would ever be worth living without her at his side. She had to know she was it for him. She had to know he could never love any old flame or any mistake, in the complete and ultimately fulfilling way in which he loved only her. When the force of everything he was feeling blazed a lightning through his blood, his fingers gripped at the base of her neck, his head on a level with hers, his breath inches from where it mingled sweetly with the intoxicating her.
"You know, right?" Blue eyes burned a urgent fire through her when his hand gripped desperately to the back of her neck, holding her locked by breath as he sought with everything in him. She knew. Deep in the heart where only he lived, will forever live - she knew he wanted her, craved her, loved her more than any other. Deep in a place where old haunts, old jealousies and rivalries had all died gruesome deaths, she knew his heart was hers and hers alone. She knew.
Trailing his lower lip with a slow moving finger that followed the burn of her eyes locked upon its strength and desire, she bent her head to afford her anxious tongue the taste it desperately craved, following her finger's trail from one corner to the other, to dive between his lips in search of home, finding it at long last at the meeting of his tongue eagerly on its way to her. Grabbing hungry hold, Jason grunted with arms that pulled her in, one at the nape of her neck to deepen the kiss that fed him life, the other at her delicious hip on the counter to pull her fully onto his craving shaft that bored her all the way through. Sweeping her from the counter, he spun towards the place he'd die happy to be holed up with her alone.
But suddenly the bedroom was a mile away. Easing her to glide his body, he knew he felt a surface at his thigh, heard a muffled crash that sounded like a chair being tossed somewhere near them and feeling his hand recoiling from tossing something, but the echo in his brain made all hazy, her body the only thing in acute colors, her hand circling him to stroke softly, then leaving as she turned from him to brace the table and thrust her ass where her hand had just left.
Gasping out loud, his need desperate and humongous, Jason gripped her hips and pushed, grunting again when her walls grated his taut skin that throbbed its way inside her, the sounds emitting from her, stoking the animal taking him over. She was fire and he hungered for her, the warmth of her insides pulling him forward to meet her back, his hands inching forth to fill with the full globes that had nurtured his son, that gave him so much pleasure from the sight and feel of them. Pulling her back into him, he stabbed her pussy and her heart, his lips finding the spot at her nape that tasted like heaven as one hand inched down her front to find her sensitive nub. No, heaven was where he lived inside her, that place that called him to thrust everything into her, again and again, giving more than he took. When her arm reached back to wrap his neck and pull him even closer, Jason died in her depths, finding her right leg to lift it to the table beneath them, angling her to take everything he had to give.
Sam couldn't feel her toes. She knew something kept her planted to the ground, but the only thing she could feel was the big, throbbing rod spreading fire through the walls of her insides that built a lava in her belly, giant hands kneading her flesh and transporting her to the clouds. The explosion that blew through her took her by surprise, wrenching a cry from her gut to wash his ear at her mouth that had been scratching her teeth across its line. She screamed his name when her grip on the table's edges failed to absorb the dynamo blasting through her, the feel of his increased slams into her body driving the mad heat all the way to her brain. When the dam burst again, she clenched her walls so tight he stilled and cried out, his own break drowning her insides awash with his seed, his jerks against her body and his fingers stroking her nub, enough to send her crashing over once again, his grunts mixing with her cries to break the silence throughout their home.
Who needed words, when the beautiful language their symbiotic bodies and like minds spoke to each other was so deliriously, distinctly unique.
