OK! We're finally hitting the reason why this fic is M-rated! This is a long chapter - I could have cut it down to smaller pieces but it would have been scrappy and horribly short. There's a little bit of angst here as well. Please read and review, it really does help to encourage me to continue writing it!
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Dembe, to his credit, had weaved through some side streets and managed to get them to the apartment within about twenty minutes. But it had been twenty minutes of shuddering determination for Red who refused to let his body betray him in the back seat of a car, despite his partner's best efforts.
He was wound tight and when Dembe pulled in at the apartment, suggesting they get out while he went to park the car, Red's foot was on the ground before the vehicle had stopped moving. He grabbed Sophie's hand and pulled her after him, marching them both to the door while Dembe watched them go inside before driving away.
He managed to park just a few meters down the street but there was no way he was going in there for at least an hour.
Inside, the door had barely latched shut when Red had Sophie pinned against it, his hands grasping her wrists to keep them from touching him.
"And people call me evil," he rasped in her ear, grinding his lower half against hers, "If that's the kind of torture they're teaching in MI5 maybe I should turn myself in..." he groaned when she caught his bottom lip between her teeth. She launched herself off the door, pressing her body against his, pushing him backward and making it clear that she wanted a change in location.
Somehow, they made it up the stairs and into the master bedroom where Red kicked the door shut as his hands struggled with the knot on the halter of her dress. He winced when he suddenly found himself pinned against the door. He looked at her in surprise.
"Well, you did tell the guard I liked to get you against the wall," she said seductively and he exhaled loudly, kissing her again and turning them so that she was against the door. He slid a hand down to just above her knee, bringing it back up the inside of her thighs and finding what felt like a tiny scrap of fabric covering her center. He tapped his finger against the soaked material and she mewled into his mouth at the sensation. Grinning, he twisted his fingers through the material and ripped it, discarding it somewhere behind him before replacing it with his fingers.
"You're so wet," he groaned in her ear, "How long have you been like this?"
He dipped his middle finger just inside her, getting an idea of her tightness and causing his hips to jerk at the sound of her indecently sexy moan. She swallowed a gulp before answering.
"Since the alley," she admitted and he clenched his eyes shut at the thought that she had been wet for him for the entirety of their performance in the night club. He was glad he hadn't known or they'd, again, probably be dead in that alley.
He dipped his finger deeper into her wetness again before drawing it back up her folds to her clit, loving the sound of her whimper as he did. The feel of her hands on his belt buckle tipped him over the edge. He had to have her, right now.
Hurriedly, and clumsily, he unzipped his pants and she helped to push his slacks and boxers down his hips but not before he pulled a condom from his pocket. She was about to tell him that it wasn't necessary but he already had it on and was lifting her leg over his hip to line up with her inviting wetness.
He looked at her, eyebrows raised in a question, are you sure, and she nodded her head, bringing one hand into his hair to pull him in for a bruising kiss. He pushed into her, hard but slower than he would have thought possible given how far gone he was. He paused for a minute, giving her the chance to adjust to his size before starting to move, quickly setting a punishing pace that had her gasping and crying out incoherently. His hand gripped her thigh hard enough to ensure that there would be bruises tomorrow.
It became fast and frantic, any tenderness they might have exercised abandoned to raw, animalistic desire. He lost his rhythm at one point and was quickly corrected by her hand grasping his ass desperate for him to go harder, deeper, faster, instructions that she also whimpered in his ear.
They were like possessed beings, pulling and pushing each other, driving each other on to some inimitable reward.
Red could feel his balls tightening – in truth he was amazed he'd managed to last this long – and he brought his free hand down between them, finding her clit with his thumb and pressing against it lightly. The motion of his thrusts meant his thumb tapped against her each time he withdrew and suddenly he felt her tightening around him, felt her body begin to spasm and her moans in his ear became guttural as she pleaded with him not to stop.
He delivered one final, long and hard thrust that made both of them clench and freeze in each other's arms. Then he withdrew and repeated that move again. On the third pass, his hips jerked of their own doing and he came long and hard while her head fell back against the door as she howled her release, her body shaking in spasm and the one leg that was, miraculously, still holding her up finally faltering and threatening to give way.
He caught her as he withdrew from her and guided them both to the floor, she leaning against the door breathless, him on his knees in front of her in a similar state.
They sat like that for a moment, neither looking at the other, both trying to get their breathing in check.
When Red finally looked up, shifting sideways to spare his knees from locking, he suddenly felt self-conscious, looking at her, breathless, against the door, still dressed except for the scrap of underwear he'd relieved her of in the same way a caveman would have done. He hung his head, then disposing of the condom in the nearby bin, tucked himself back into his boxers and slacks and pulled himself to his feet, buttoning his pants before reaching out a hand and helping her up.
Their eyes didn't meet as they stood opposite each other and he grimaced. He knew regret when he saw it. He took a deep breath, knowing that he'd have to say something.
"Do you want some water?" he eventually hit on, truly at a loss for any other words.
"Please," she said, without looking up. He bit his top lip between his teeth and nodded. He slipped out through the bedroom door, closing it quietly after him.
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Sophie wondered if she could creep out the front door without him noticing but dismissed that as a terrible idea when she considered the neighborhood they were in. She berated herself as she moved to sit at the end of the bed.
She'd wanted him, she wouldn't argue with that. But he'd stood up afterward and buttoned his pants in what she could only construe as a dismissive response. She ran her hands over her face, her fingers pinching the corners of her eyes.
She shook her head. She was an MI5 agent for crying out loud! She was good at her job, she'd shown promise, she was putting in the hard graft, and had a career path lined out ahead of her. And for what?
To let herself down by becoming a notch on a notorious criminal's bedpost? By letting him fuck her against a door...
Groaning in frustration and disappointment, she leaned her elbows on her knees and dropped her head into her hands.
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Red cursed at himself the whole way down the stairs. Thankfully Dembe had either stayed away or was locked tight in his room with zero intention of re-emerging that night.
He walked through to the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of water from the stash that he and Dembe had packed into the fridge a few days earlier. Red closed the fridge door and leaned his forehead against it.
He was a criminal. He'd done some dubious things and he'd dropped everything and run out on people before. But he'd never let his self-control falter in such a way as he had tonight. They'd both climaxed but he felt ashamed of the manner in which it had happened.
He wasn't opposed to a quickie and had had plenty of them in the past but, despite the nature of his life, they weren't his style.
When he'd left her hotel earlier that evening, he'd harbored visions of seducing her as the night had gone on, tentative touches and whispered promises leading to a slow and steady assault on her senses and every inch of her body with his. The incident in the alley had sparked a frenzied chain reaction of events that had lead to this – the aftermath of what should have been an immensely satisfying experience instead giving way to shame and self-deprecation.
He swallowed and turned back towards the door, water in hand. He climbed the stairs wearily and quietly opened the bedroom door.
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She was looking out the window when she heard the door open and close again quietly. She didn't need to look to know that he was just standing, adrift, inside the door, the condensation on the bottles soaking his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "I'm not usually..."
"Neither am I," she cut him off and he took a step closer to her as she turned to face him.
"You don't even know what I was going to say," he said incredulously, reaching out to hand her a bottle of water.
"No. But my point still stands," she said shrugging. He nodded and took a deep breath as she opened the water and took a long gulp from it. His continued to soak his hand. They stood opposite each other, silently, for what felt like forever. An invisible impasse, about a meter wide, lodged between them.
Finally, she sighed, "Do you want me to leave?"
His eyes widened at her choice of question, "Uh, no, I mean...do you want to leave?"
She shrugged, "I don't know, I just...got the impression that you would prefer that I did..."
Red's mouth opened and closed again. Wires had been crossed somewhere and his addled brain was struggling to pinpoint where. He stepped closer and caught one of her hands in his.
"I...impression...what?" he didn't even know how to ask the question, his eyebrows so high that they'd disappeared into his ridiculous hairline.
She sighed and sat on the edge of the bed, glancing back towards the door. She stifled a laugh as she looked up at him where he stood.
"Red, you just fucked me against a door then stood up and buckled your pants like a frat boy going back to a party," she grimaced and he closed his eyes, mouth catching flies, as he finally realized how his actions could be viewed completely the wrong way.
"Oh boy," he muttered, opening his eyes to look at her. He took a deep breath and crouched down in front of her, keeping his balance by placing his hands on the bed on either side of her. He exhaled and looked up at her.
"I felt ashamed. And I thought you would too," he said with a wince, catching the obvious misconception in this sentence, "Not ashamed of being with you – my god, I'm not insane – but ashamed of my lack of self-control, I didn't want that for you, for...us."
She looked perplexed, "So, what... We both wanted it but now we...didn't?"
He shook his head and shifted onto his knees, bringing one hand to rest on her knee.
"I don't regret that it happened. I regret the way it happened. Sophie...my life being what it is, I don't sleep with a lot of women, that's just the way it is. But when I do, I like to do it right. What happened just now..." he pursed his lips in thought, shook his head, "...was not right."
Her eyes locked on his as he considered his next words.
"I think you're an extraordinary woman," he said, bringing his free hand up to brush the hair out of her face, "Smart, determined and devastatingly beautiful, and I wanted, if you were amenable, to spend the whole of tonight worshipping you. Slowly and entirely and, and I mean this in the best way possible, ruining you for any man that comes after me."
She closed her eyes and took a deep, calculated breath. She knew she should leave, knew she'd let this go further than it should have, knew that those blurred boundaries she'd worried about so often in work were nothing compared to the personal dilemma she had created for herself in each and every action she'd taken since arriving in Marrakech.
But she was finding herself inexplicably drawn to this man. This complicated individual who, in spite of the multiple government dossiers, was not as black and white as they made him out to be. There were shades of grey, she chuckled to herself, shades of Red.
She finally looked him in the eye, seeing the vulnerability there and a hint of something else. Loneliness perhaps? That was reasonable to assume...
"You really are a smooth talker," she said warmly and he smiled at her before taking a risk and dropping his head to place a kiss on the inside of her knee. He felt her muscles tense beneath his lips and he smiled. He turned his head, resting his cheek against her skin, and looked up at her.
"I don't want you to leave," he said, shaking his head. He closed his eyes at the feel of her hand sliding through his hair, over his scalp.
"Good," she said, tightening her grip, "Because I quite like the sound of ruination..."
He smirked and she guided his head up to hers, meeting his lips in a soft, tender kiss.
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I know, it's been a slow burn to get to this point and to a certain extent it's still slow burning. This took on a life of its own when I was writing it and, as I finished the first section I kind of hit on the idea of the shame of it being such a frantic, albeit satisfying encounter. Maybe it's stupid = feel free to let me know in the comments :)