Note: Stronger sexual themes than in the last installment.
Her third awakening was much less traumatic. Either the spin weed and morphine cocktail had performed its duty, or Cassidy possessed the legendary Team Rocket resilience. The average Rocket bitch could suffer blows that would cripple an ordinary woman for life, and have her hair back in order in under thirty seconds. The blonde was still dizzy, and her brain was working far too slowly and confusedly, but the pain was only a dim buzz in the background of her senses and she felt nearly herself again.
Cassidy was alert enough, this time, to raise her eyelids cautiously, getting used to the light without exposing her gaze to it too abruptly. She glanced round the room under her lashes, the circuit ending abruptly when it hit a familiar face.
Jesse. She was standing by a window doing nothing, in the spectacular way that both Jesse and James had perfected. They always managed to look as if they were film stars posing for a publicity shot when they were really just considering what to binge-eat next. The red-haired agent had obviously been engaged on one of the attempts at costume play that she and James used as substitutes for actual, well thought-out plans. She wore a long dress, of the frills and laced corset variety, the exact deep blue of the huge, almond-shaped eyes that dominated her heart-shaped face. Her hair, crimson in the dim glow of evening, was pinned up for once, emphasising the pale curve of her throat, and the sweetheart neckline of her gown dipped to reveal the soft swell of creamy breasts. She looked perfect in the soft evening light, an innocent Victorian maiden with the décolletage of a whore.
Jesse… Jesse had saved Cassidy. Had cleaned her and healed her and brought her back, and was now watching over her while she slept. Cassidy felt something dangerously like tenderness for a moment, but it was abruptly overwhelmed by sharp exhilaration. She had bloody known Jesse couldn't just walk out on her and put her out of her mind… The fatal combination of sentimentality and obsessiveness in Jesse was going to drop her right into Cassidy's hands.
The girl standing by the window sighed softly to herself, and shifted position, so that the last rays of the sun lit up her hair like the outer petals of a rose. She really was beautiful… Cassidy's mind, confused by concussion and painkilling drugs, wandered off into a little dream sequence of using Breeding Centre technology to give Jesse and herself a daughter. Talk about magic gene combinations. A girl with Jesse's looks and Cassidy's ruthlessness could rule the world, and all without ruining Cassidy's figure.
Unless little Jessidy ended up with Jesse's brains and Cassidy's hair. The thought, emerging through the jumbled nonsense, was disturbing enough to kick Cassidy into something like full consciousness.
She tried to push herself into a sitting position, but encountered resistance at her wrists. And her ankles. She shrieked, half in amusement and half in rage, causing her captor to turn around.
"You bloody pervert! I wouldn't have thought you'd have it in you," Cassidy gasped, half-laughing with delighted outrage as she tested her bonds. "Where did my dear little virgin dyke go?" She looked more carefully around the room, and was torn between being impressed by the bizarre amount of equipment that Jesse seemed to have amassed for the occasion and the desire to teach the younger girl a lesson for her assumption.
"I don't know what you mean," the girl said stiffly. "And it's not proper to use those kind of names."
There was something wrong with her voice as well as her words, but Cassidy was too caught up with other things to pay much attention. Faintly, to the blonde's horror, and despite her clouded head, she could feel wetness beginning to dew between her legs at the impossible situation. After all, there was a kind of primal response unavoidable when you were almost nude, and held helpless under the gaze of someone who had once caressed every exposed inch of skin… Of course, from Cassidy's point of view, entirely the wrong woman was tied to the bed, but possibly that could be corrected later. The important thing, Cassidy told herself, was that Jesse was for once admitting exactly what she wanted. Cassidy. Smugness vied with her other emotions.
"You don't know what I mean? Darling Jess, I'm tied to your bed in my underwear, why ever would I think you were perverted?" Cassidy stopped struggling and allowed a smirk to creep onto her face instead. "I really am quite proud of you, my dear. No one could accuse you of learning slowly. Almost makes me wonder why you're such a failure - perhaps you're simply in the wrong career."
The redhead crinkled her lovely nose. "Your dress was soiled," she said with distaste. "Not that it was anything to boast of in the first place."
"You never change, do you? Even when you were gutter trash, you always had an opinion on everyone's clothes. You -" Cassidy bit down on the words. Baiting Jesse came naturally to her, but her logic, battling to come out from under the happy fuzz cuddled around her mind, warned her that bitching was not the best way to bring events to the conclusion that she wanted. That her body was telling her she desperately wanted, right now… She looked at Jesse's round little mouth, the red lips now set in a sulky pout, and remembered them wrapping wet warmth around the tip of one breast, touching almost imperceptibly lightly, until Cassidy had begged her to suck, bite, anything to ease the torment…
But anger was beginning to rise in her throat, as well as desire. She might be close to getting Jesse, but that didn't mean Cassidy was prepared to give the younger girl the upper hand. Her need for dignity and control fought against rising need. If only Jesse wasn't so damn gorgeous.
"C'mon, honey," she said, deliberately sugaring her voice. "You have the right idea, but I really prefer not to be the one tied up. Why don't you release me, and then we can get down to business," she added invitingly. There was a dangerous sparkle in her eyes, daring the other girl to set her free.
Jesse looked confused, and somewhat outraged. She lifted a hand to her hair, and Cassidy noticed with a kind of poignant pain that she wasn't wearing any gloves. The last time she had seen Jesse with bare hands as an adult, she had… Cassidy repressed a shiver, the tight tingle at her groin intensifying at the memory. Of course, she herself was only wearing bras and panties, and was far more exposed than Jesse…
"What kind of business?"
Cassidy nearly laughed aloud. This was too perfect. Jesse was playing along just beautifully… The blonde dropped her voice to a purr. "Wouldn't it be better to show than tell? I could demonstrate much better if you untied me, beautiful Jessica."
The other girl stepped closer, and Cassidy, catching the intensity of the blue gaze, was certain she was wavering. Her own stomach convulsed. But after a long, breathless moment, the lovely face hardened. "I don't have time for this nonsense. Tell me where my James is."
"Don't you know? You usually can be relied on to," Cassidy added, disappointment fuelling her bitterness. Her James… "I should be asking you where my partner is."
She shook her head, wishing it would clear. Jesse's voice was definitely wrong. The volume was too soft, the intonations too feminine, the r's less sharp. Very pretty, and identifiably Jesse's voice, but pitched and accented differently. Still, the obsession with James was right in character… For all her apparent strength, Jesse was so dependent on her partner, it was laughable. It had been one of the reasons for the women's nasty breakup, in the final year at Pokémon Tech, that Jesse had put partying with her new little friend above studying with her girlfriend.
For some reason, despite all her experience, it startled her when Jesse's hand crashed down across her face. Not that Jesse had never hit her before. Jesse hit everyone, it was one of her standard methods of expressing anger. Or confusion. Or embarrassment. Or defensiveness. In some ways, Jesse's approach to life was remarkable straightforward.
"You're in Team Rocket uniform," Jesse snapped. Cassidy's purple eyes widened in confusion. "And I've heard… Stop wasting my time, and tell me where to find my fiancée."
"Your what?" Cassidy was caught between derisive laughter and fury. "Oh, spare me. James is as likely to become engaged to a woman as you… are likely to be engaged to a man." Violet eyes blazed with fury. "That's it, is it? You're back in the closet, and taking your fairy girlfriend with you. Fucking hell. Well, it's not going to work, Jessica. For a start, you need to pick better camouflage. You and James could never pass as a married couple. The best you could manage is fag and his hag."
The thought of Jesse and James attempting to get married, James in a virginal white gown and his wife in a tuxedo, cut through her Cassidy's and brought laughter to her lips. Actually… The drug-dazed woman sent her mind back. Hadn't they actually attempted something like that once? In some odd way, Jesse and James really deserved each other… Except that Jesse was hers.
"More importantly," she continued, more softly, "if you 're trying to convince yourself you're straight, stripping me and tying me to a bed was not the best way to go about it. Doesn't it bring back pretty memories?"
She pasted her triumphant smirk back on, but her eyes, raised to meet Jesse's, were still furious, and ever so faintly laced with desperation. Jesse was suffering serious denial, Cassidy knew that, but surely she wouldn't actually go as far as to marry James… She was hers, damnit. Hadn't she proved it? Cassidy could remember her own name on the lips of that rosebud mouth as Jesse convulsed beneath her, could remember the softness of the way she melded drowsily into her arms in the shower afterwards… Jesse might not have ever admitted anything but using her for sex, but Cassidy knew what it meant when you cried out your lover's name.
Fuck it, if she let her temper die down for a moment, she was going to cry. In front of Jesse. Impossible. Especially as she was still aching and wet for her… It was just weakness from being knocked electrocuted and knocked unconscious and stun-spored and drugged and the goddess knew what else in the last few hours.
"Oh, but I assure you, you are mistaken. James and I are going to be married – he is mine." Jesse smiled faintly, staring back down at her. And Cassidy, meeting her gaze, felt a sudden stab of doubt.
The eyes were wrong. Oh, they were still impossibly large and blue, but the expression of frosty, focussed intelligence wasn't that of Jesse. These eyes recalled the stereotypical cold blue eyes of bad romance fiction, while Jesse's eyes had always been a hot blue, and as limpid as her personality was mercurial. Cassidy had seen them swimming with tears, dilated with terror, flashing with anger and passion and laughter… Never iced over with calculation.
These eyes were… simply too intelligent for Jesse. Oh, Jesse was erratically brilliant and had a bizarre creative streak, Cassidy knew. But she had the attention span of a five year old, and was easily distracted from her brilliant plans by any combination of posing, drag, food and temper. Cassidy knew all about that. Jesse and James' regular reports on how they had managed to fail to capture Pikachu that week were the most popular reading in Team Rocket HQ. The account of the plan involving both of them dressing up as Officer Jenny had to be replaced three times, after disintegrating from excessive reading. Giovanni had done them the honour of using it as a centerpiece on his "Wrong ways to go about stealing Pokémon" annual lecture.
She shook her head. Ridiculous. Of course this was Jesse. She knew Jesse, if anyone ever had… Maybe the red head grown up a little in the last few years, been hardened by constant failure.
"Jesse," she whispered, more pleadingly than she meant to. She was aware that her hair had been let out of its tight braids, and was loose around her shoulders. For some reason this made her feel naked. Like Jesse and those bloody black leather gloves… Which she wasn't wearing. "What do you want?"
"James." She sat gracefully down on the edge of the bed.
"No."
Jesse smiled, suddenly, her old brilliant flashing of lust and amusement. "Yes. But, really, what I should be asking is what you want – as if that was not already abundantly clear. If I untied you, what would you like to do?"
Maybe Cassidy had only imagined her voice was wrong, because there was no feminine drawling now, only Jesse's familiar hard tones. Not that it was easy for Cassidy to concentrate on that, with one finger tracing the line of her brassiere, from under her armpits and up over the swell of one breast, dipping into her cleavage and then rounding the other… Take command back now, girl, before you melt… And no matter how much she had caved this touch again, Jesse was not the kind of lover you could show vulnerability to without ending up screwed in more than one way.
Cassidy waited until she had command of the breathlessness, deliberately blocking out physical sensations and emotional turmoil, until she could almost – if not quite – ignore Jesse's fingertip following the same path back. Until her voice was firm and strident, and she could make herself clear, with no detectable quiver in the words, and as sweetly as if she was talking to a small child.
"I want you to untie me so I can rip your clothes off, my Jessica. I want my fingers in you as you scream my name. I want to bruise your arse with my fingers and mark your breasts with my teeth, force your head between my legs and come into your pretty little mouth, and I want you screaming beneath me as I fuck you, core against core. I want, in fact exactly what you want," she continued gently, triumph bubbling up as she saw Jesse flush darkly and moisten dry lips, "but most of all – I want you to cut out this fucking crap about James being your fiancé!"
Her voice rang out too loudly and angrily at the end, and Cassidy realised to her dismay that she had lost control of the sentence somewhere along the way. She bit her lip, realising that she had lost her momentarily advantage, and her ex-lover was looking detached and amused again, if a little breathless.
"But, my dear, you forget which of us is tied down." Jesse's hands were caressing more firmly now. She covered one breast and squeezed hard through the lace, the other hand splayed over the blonde's groin and pressing hard against the fabric, as the redhead's mouth curved in unkind satisfaction at the dampness her fingertips found. "Surely it is I who should be threatening to do these things to you?"
"Fuck it, Jesse!" Not a particularly well-reasoned argument, but Cassidy was beyond coherence.
Jesse laughed, her adorably high, wild giggle, only just on the safe side of the sanity divide. Definitely Jesse. "If you ask nicely." But her expression sobered. "I must admit, I have as much of a dislike of being the one tied down as you seem to. I much prefer to be in control, and if you only were willing to find that out, I think you'd enjoy yourself." Cassidy glared back, willing herself not to relent.
Jesse sighed. "Then I'll bargain with you, if you like." She leaned down to kiss Cassidy's sensitive stomach, dipping her tongue briefly into her navel. Cassidy, helpless, remained lying still and sweating as imagine breaking her bounds, and rolling Jesse over, stopping her irritating mouth with her tongue…
"You help me find James, and leave me alone with him. And I untie you and let you have – anything you like." She sat up and smiled sweetly, brushing perspiration-damp bangs from Cassidy's face. "Deal?" She stooped again, this time to find the other woman's mouth.
Her touch was light and gentle, but her lips parted willingly enough when Cassidy kissed back furiously, raking her teeth over soft lips, thrusting her tongue hard and feeling something inside her give as her lover sucked back at the invading touch.
Jesse lifted her head again, and blue eyes looked questioningly into violet.
I'm not even sure if this really is Jesse, Cassidy realised. She hasn't called me by my own name once. I'm concussed and drugged, and I can't think straight. My best friend may be in trouble, and Butch is going to kill me for having sex with an enemy while he's missing…
"Deal," she said.
TBC…
