Chapter 16 - Scars Reprised
"Know they're cutting you deep
Feel the scars in your sleep
What didn't kill us made us stronger
Stories left on our skin
Wear them with everything
What didn't kill us made us stronger"
"Scars" by Tove Lo
"There. Should keep us warm for the night." Harm said with a grin, satisfied as the fire roared to life in the small fireplace at the corner of the bedroom.
He turned to see Mac beaming at him, if not rolling her eyes at his obvious pride at starting a fire. It was a guy thing, she knew, a stroke of his ego. "Thank you but, I was hoping you would keep me warm for the night, sailor."
"First thing's first." She was seated at the edge of the bed wrapped in only a bed sheet that served to cover half of her body. Mac's back was exposed, the scars that he couldn't stop thinking about stretched across. "Lay down on your stomach." He commanded, pleased when she complied without question, a sign that she trusted him implicitly. When she did, Harm pulled back the sheet stopping so that it covered her six and legs.
Mac turned her head to face him, watching the concentration in his eyes as Harm scanned her back making her feel a little self conscious as he looked at her scars. "They don't hurt." He had touched them before, tracing them with his fingers as if trying to both memorise and erase them. This time, it wasn't his fingers that moved over her marred skin; it was his lips and her breath caught as he dragged them over the length of one scar and then another. "Harm."
"Let me, please." He nearly begged, his body moving over hers so that his lips could brush against the scar on her shoulder. Harm felt the ridges against his lips and he ran them over the scar only to press a kiss against it. "I wish this hadn't happened to you." Mac's skin was otherwise flawless, beautiful, unique. An olive colour that came alive when he touched her. His lips brought a wave of goosebumps over her flesh and he continued to explore each line of every scar with patient detail. Then, his hands began to move over her as well, following each line that his lips previously moved over, coming to stop at her hip which was covered by the bed sheet.
"Why are you so fixated with the scars?" She wondered out loud, sighing when his hand brushed over her hips and dipped down stroking just above her curls.
"I wish I could take them away... All of them." Especially the emotional ones, the baggage that she carried from the time she was a child through the last few years as a CIA officer. Especially, he wanted to take away the scars he'd inflicted when he'd stupidly tried to ignore his feelings for her. "I want to go back to the beginning, start over with you, make things right."
God, she wanted that too, from the moment they met that the White House rose garden to the time she stepped out of his apartment en route to Paraguay. There were so many memories to pick apart but, the bad ones always bubbled to the surface, each one their own emotional scar.
"Is it because I look like her?" Mac asked suddenly, knowing she didn't have to put a name to the woman she was speaking about. It was the one insecure thought that always doubted how deeply any of his feelings ran for her. Harm loved her, she knew that but, how much was because of the doppelganger that lay somewhere in Arlington?
Harm stilled his ministrations at the reference of his past lover. Diane was an infatuation of a life he thought he wanted but, in the end, he knew he'd have gone to Mac if Diane still lived. He just never felt like this about anyone and knew he never would again. Sighing, he began tracing the scars again, hands moving much more firmly over Mac's back, kneading the muscles that were tight beneath his palms. "No. It's a lot of things."
"We've never really untabled our conversation...Just kinda let it go..." She couldn't help the insecure tone to her voice or how her words caught in her throat when his hands came up to her shoulders, gripping the tighter muscles.
"Does it matter anymore?"
Mac sighed and rolled onto her back, pulling up the bed sheet to cover her nakedness as she did so. "We can't pretend the past didn't happen, Harm."
"You can't pretend those scars don't exist."
"I'm not pretending, I know they're still there. I can feel some of them when I shower. I have to hide them at times. And they do matter, the past does as well... Why are you here? After everything, why?"
"Because, I love you."
Mac stared at him and frowned. Love sometimes didn't last no matter how badly you wanted it to. They had lived through a multitude of difficult situations, the last two years being the worst. She wondered how much more he would continue to take until he tired of her and left like everyone else did. "That isn't an answer enough."
Her words made him shoot out of bed, sighing heavily as he began to pace. In the last few months, Harm purposely steered clear of speaking about their past out of fear of losing her. "What do you want to hear, Mac? That I can't live without you? That I was miserable without you? That I blame myself for how Paraguay went down? That I'm an idiot for not realizing what you wanted back in Australia? It's my fault...all of it has been because I was too scared to tell you how I felt."
"Don't play the martyr, Harm."
"Martyr? Me? You're the one that gave everything up...The one that served yourself up on a platter to the agency and for what exactly?"
"For you! They would have destroyed you, sucked all of the good out of you and I wasn't going to let that happen."
Harm shook his head, exasperated at how simple Mac tried to make that sound. "I didn't ask you to do that! I knew what I was getting myself into when I came after you. I knew it would be Hell and I would do it again if it meant saving you." Only, it pushed her to the CIA, moved her into a World that neither of them belonged to.
With a heavy sigh he sat on the edge of the bed. "I should have told you what I felt not acted like an ass...I should have pulled you off that table and kissed you senseless….I should have…" He stopped when her hand reached out and caressed his bear back, slow and soothing only to be replaced by Mac's lips. Her arms came around him, hugging Harm tightly to her smaller frame. "We can't go back...Only move forward..."
"You're right." She held him for several long minutes until the residual anger left him completely, a catharsis of sorts.
"I don't see her when I look at you... I did once, in the beginning, it was kinda hard not to. But, I never felt for Diane what I feel for you, no one will ever come close."
"Why me?" She asked in a voice so soft he may have missed the questions if he so much as breathed.
He turned into her, moving Mac so that she was straddling his waist and then pulled her head down so that he could kiss her. "You're the other half of me, Sarah... No woman has ever stood equal to me, intrigued me, loved me like you... You're my partner in every way."
Mac looked at him sadly. He bore his soul with those words that she knew left him emotionally vulnerable and naked. He'd grown up and she hated herself for hurting him. "I told you once that there's things you don't know... Things I've done that were not good... I'm not that woman anymore...Sometimes...Sometimes, I don't know who I am."
"Oh, Mac." His fingers traced her cheeks, lips, eyes. He brushed her hair back and tucked a strand behind her ear. "You're good for me...so good for me."
Mac gasped when his hand dropped between them, fingertips moving over the marking on the left side of her pelvic area, her "classified" tattoo. It was faded, the bleeding rose etched onto her skin so long ago. "Why a rose?"
"Chris used to say I was his 'rose'… a teenaged and stupid Sarah MacKenzie got it inked along with his initials." A brand of drunken love that she despised but never got rid of merely took little care to protect that area of skin so that it had faded.
She yelped when Harm moved, tossing her onto the mattress only to kiss his way down her body. He stopped at the tattoo and traced the design with his fingers. Although faded, it was still simple and elegant. "Hmm, I didn't see the initials before."
Mac grinned. "Of course you didn't...You were too busy doing other things to notice… There's a spot that is a little marred." A fingertip dragged over that certain spot, a petal that was darker than the others. "I tried to burn it off after I dried out...Wanted nothing more to do with him and my past… it got infected, not much is left of the letters." And another trip to a tattoo parlor made the colors more vibrant and painted over the marred skin.
"Oh Mac…" He pressed his lips on the tattoo and added it to the long list of scars he wanted to heal. "We met in a rose garden."
"We did." That memory always made her smile - meeting a handsome sailor amongst the beautiful flowers. It was like a fairytale of sorts. "It's what I think about when I see it." She said breathlessly, when he moved lower and his tongue parted her. "Oh, Harm…"
He moved achingly slowly, barely there licks and nibbles and kisses teasing Mac to arousal. One of her hands ran though the short strands of his hair and pressed against his head to guide him where she needed Harm the most. "There...just like that."
With his fingers Harm pulled back the hood, exposing Mac's clit which he swirled his hot, wet tongue over and around. It made her buckle on the bed and her muscles involuntarily spasmed from the oncoming climax that had her digging her heels into the mattress. "Oh God." She propped up on her elbows and watched Harm with his eyes closed as his tongue lapped her juices. "Hmmm...Harm." Her own sounds of pleasure fueled him and she could feel his lips curl into a grin - that sexy, arrogant flyboy grin.
His fingers never slid inside as she'd expected. No, he was enjoying the slow, lapping, the teasing that was turning Mac into a wanton mess. She pressed herself into him, grinding against his mouth when he stopped moving. "Harm...please...don't stop."
His answer was a rough, male chuckle. "Patience, Marine." Harm proceeded with his ministrations, avoiding her most sensitive areas while his tongue explored her folds slipping slightly inside. Mac pushed into him as well trying to encourage him to flick the tip of his tongue over her sensitive bud but a firm grasp kept her pinned in place. Her core clenched, the desire to have him inside was driving her mad as she flirted on the edge of another earth shattering orgasm.
Her moans increased with each path his tongue took and Mac was certain she would die of need if he didn't take her now. But, when his lips surrounded that wonderfully sensitive bundle of nerves, she screamed his name.
Harm took the engorged clitorous into his mouth sucking softly at first and increasing the pressure as she writhed against him. His strong hands held her down, keeping her exposed to him as he made her come on a strangled cry. He kept licking her, sucking, kissing as Mac shook and convulsed only easing when she asked him to as the pleasure was turning to pain.
He too was shaking, holding back his own release because Harm loved to make her come. It gave him a sense of pure male pride to hear her cries and moans, the way she said his name which made his manhood twitch and swell. "I want you… so bad. I have to be inside you."
"Yes."
He took a pillow from the bed, bunched it under her hips and then slid into her without warning when he couldn't taper his desire any longer. Harm barely let Mac catch her breath or accommodate to his thick, hard length before he was thrusting into her. Her nails scored his back and then she hung on as they both exploded together. Damnit, what the man did to her was exhilarating as hell and she wanted more of him - forever.
Clayton Webb was furiously pacing back and forth in his office, his mind trying to gauge just where the hell 'Widow' could have gone. He groaned at the word she'd chosen for her code name but then, he figured it made some sort of sense for a woman who lost so much to the agency. "Lost? Right!" He scoffed knowing she hadn't lost a damned thing merely gave in for the boy scout who only gave a damn about her when it was too late.
"Damn you, Rabb." Of course, she was with him, he'd confirmed it when he'd contacted the base and found Harm to be away for no less than a week. The thought made him cringe and he tried to follow every alias Mac had ever used in order to gauge where exactly they could have gone.
He wasn't stupid, Clay knew he'd lost - there was no way in hell Mac would ever be his given the circumstances but, there was something more on the horizon - chatter that Sadik Fahd had been spotted in France. There was real, concrete evidence in the form of a photo of whomever the Chameleon tuned into including a tinting on the skin to cover the darker tones. At first glance, Clay thought it to be a mistake, no one could blend and hide that flawlessly. And then he saw the eyes that were covered over with the blue tint of contacts. It didn't matter, he knew his tormentor and for the next few nights sleep was nonexistent.
Each time he closed his eyes, Sadik was there tying him down to a table covered with blood and other things he would rather not remember. The pain began, without question or warning and it was as if he were reliving the moment again, each zap of the steel wool, each poking of his exposed skin. It was better not to sleep.
"Mr. Webb?" His secretary called over the intercom and he quickly rushed to the device hitting the button with a little more force than required.
"You better have good news."
"Sir, they found 'Widow' or at least a woman that looked like her taking a flight with a tall, dark haired man from Heathrow to Inverness."
"When do they return?"
"Sunday."
Webb settled into the chair behind his desk and sighed heavily, the want to gave chase ran through this veins but without a concrete itinerary he'd be grasping at straws. "Any hits on Rabb's credit cards?"
"No."
"Damnit." He thought about sending someone to scour Inverness for a hit on Rabb and MacKenzie, he needed her back here, not traipsing through Scotland with the boyscout. Webb already knew that the amount of reprogramming to get her back on track was going to take time and the longer Mac spent with Rabb he feared it would destroy whatever foothold they still had. "Keep me informed."
He pulled open the center drawer of his desk and reached inside to grab a small velvet bag which held three perfectly cut diamonds - the type of currency Sadik was fond of trading. He let them spill onto the blotter and simply stared at them as if they held some sort of answer. "Fuck." From within the same drawer he took out a small burner phone and reluctantly dialed the only number he would ever call from the device. "It's Webb...I need your help… I'll be in London at the end of the week, we'll meet then."
