AUTHOR'S NOTE: THIS VERSION OF PART 3 CARRIES AN NC-17 RATING. SO IF YOU'RE UNDERAGE OR DON'T CARE TO INDULGE, PLEASE READ THE ALTERNATE PG-13 VERSION OF THIS PART, WHICH WILL FOLLOW IN A SEPARATE POST.
Part 3 -- Sweet Surrender
There's an old saying: "A man only chases a woman until she catches him." Frankly, I wasn't sure anymore who was the fox and who was the hound, but it was definitely turning out to be a hell of a chase. Problem was the finish line was nowhere in sight.
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The lobby of the Shilo Inn was decorated in what Darien could only describe as 'neo-quaint'. Lots of heavy colonial furniture, copper pots and a hearth that looked like it was straight out of Ye Olde Yankee Shoppe. Unfortunately, this was California. Didn't these people know that they were settled by the Spanish?
Lola was looking around, taking it all in beneath raised eyebrows and a barely suppressed smirk. He smirked back, "Think somebody 'round here needs a history lesson?"
Her responding snort greeted the desk clerk full in the face. She tried to speak, lapsed into a giggle fit, tried to speak again.
"Jeez, calm down, would you? Even I didn't think it was that funny," he told her out of the side of his mouth.
"It's just so ... so ... so ... *wrong*," she replied between laughs. "Anachronistically speaking, of course."
"Of course," he repeated, rolling his eyes at her. Darien turned to the desk clerk, who was watching their exchange, his face smoothed by a long-suffering mask of imperturbability. "Ah, we're gonna be needing a couple of rooms for the night, here."
"Certainly, sir," came back the crisp response. "Would you like the side of the building with the view?"
Darien looked at the clerk. As far as he could tell, the inn was bordered by the highway on one side and the parking lot on the other. "OK, I gotta ask. What view?"
"Of the courtyard, sir." The clerk's voice held all the excitement of a laundromat manager extolling the virtues of his newest drier. "We have some lovely rooms overlooking the pool deck and whirlpool."
It was Darien's turn to snort. "Yeah. Fine. Whatever."
"I'll need to take a card imprint for each of the rooms." The clerk busied himself with the registration forms, unruffled by Darien's less than eloquent answer.
Darien fished his card out of his wallet, while Lola began dumping the contents of her purse all over the counter. By the time the clerk had finished swiping Darien's card and given him his room key, she'd started cursing.
"What's wrong?" he asked, returning his credit card to his wallet and putting his key in his back pocket.
"I can't find my wallet. I can't believe this. I can't find my *wallet*!" Her voice held the edge of light hysteria.
"Alright, alright, calm down there," he put a hand on her shoulder. "Just think for a second. Where was the last place you had it?"
"Oh, well, that's just a great question. If I knew where I'd had it last, I wouldn't have ...," she shrugged away from his hand, then gave a quick start. "Oh, wait, the rest stop! That's where I had it! The rest stop! I was fixing my make up and I had to take my wallet out of my bag to get my make-up kit. You're a genius!" She jumped up on tiptoe, pecked him on the cheek, then began throwing her stuff back into her purse. "We'll just have to go back and get it," she added matter-of-factly.
Darien stood, looking at her busily packing, and hopelessly tried to stem the crimson tide flowing over his face and neck. "Ah ... uhm ... well ... gee ... ah, Lola," Darien stammered, "That rest stop's like three hours away."
"Yeah, so? What are you saying, you don't want to drive back and get it? *I'd* go back if it were your wallet." She blinked at him, appalled at his breech of etiquette. "I mean after all, I *did* go back after your *hair gel*, now didn't I? And need I remind you, that if it wasn't for that mop of yours, we wouldn't be in this mess...."
Her apparent cluelessness as to the flaw in her plan helped him regain control of his facial hue. Clearly he was going to have to spell it out for her. "That's not the point. Even if I did think that your wallet would still be in the *public* bathroom, at the *highway* rest stop, *six* hours after you left it there, we'd still need a *car* to get there, no?" He gestured in the general direction of the garage where they'd left the car to be fixed.
Her expression sank like the Titanic. "Oh, crap, that's right." He couldn't help but smile at hearing his catchphrase come out of her mouth; she put the heel of one hand to her forehead. "Well, hell, what am I supposed to do now? All my credit cards and money were in my wallet." She stared down at the floor for a moment, bit her lip, looked up at him with a grimace. "I don't suppose you could lend me the money for a room ...?"
He did a quick bit of mental accounting. Very quick, in fact, since he had the grand sum of $83.67 to his name and one soon-to-be-maxed-out Visa card in his wallet. "Look, Lola, I would love to but I can't. I mean, along with my room, I've still got to pay for the rest of the car repair. Not to mention dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow and gas for the trip home. There's just no way. The best I can offer...," he waved his hands absently at the ceiling, "I mean, the only solution I can think of ...." He trailed off, hoping she would jump in before he would have to actually voice the suggestion. She just stood there looking blankly at him, arms folded, mouth hanging open.
The desk clerk startled them both out of their staring contest by clearing his throat. He blandly held out a second key to Darien's room. Setting her jaw, she walked over and snatched it from his hand.
"Is there a place where we can get dinner?" she managed to grit out.
The clerk pointed across the lobby at the entrance to what appeared to be a glorified charcoal pit. "We have a very good Italian restaurant and lounge. If you dine before six, you can take advantage of their early bird specials."
Lola swung her eyes to the red, white and green striped awning that proclaimed the name of the place as 'Goomba's', then over at Darien. "Tres elegant," was her only comment.
"Hey, don't knock it. At least it's a step above last night's joint, right?" It was actually a couple notches above most of the places he usually frequented, but he was damned if he was going to tell her that Pancho's Taco Bar was his normal dining establishment.
She pulled a wearied scowl, grabbed her briefcase and headed towards the glass doors leading to the courtyard. "Great. My dining standard has just become the burger barn at the Vagabond Inn. Now I can die happy."
Darien sighed and picked up the luggage. As much as he admired her rear view, watching it walking away from him was getting old. He started up the stairs, following her yet again. "Look, let's just get up to the room so I can drop these damn bags and take a shower."
She stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned to face him. "You know, if you didn't want to carry my bag anymore, all you had to do was say so! I told you I'd carry it. I do it all the time." She stomped down the few steps to meet him on his way up.
"No, no, it's fine. I've got it." Under his breath he muttered, "Just like a chick. Offer to do it after you've already got it handled."
"What?" Her tone could have cut diamonds.
"Ah, nothing." He was a bit chagrinned that she'd caught that comment.
"No, you said something. I heard you."
"Well, if you heard me, then why are you asking?" He was tired, more than a little aggravated and at that moment, the last thing he wanted was to have a blow out on the stairs in the middle of some mediocre motel. But if she really wanted a fight, he wasn't going to deny her one.
She narrowed her eyes at him, held out her hand expectantly. "Look, do you want me to carry that duffel or not?"
"Fine." He dropped the strap into her waiting hand, the weight of the duffel almost tipping her over onto the bottom step. He simply climbed past her and remarked, "This particular bell hop's going to take a shower."
"Fine," she called after him. The last thing he heard as he stepped into their room was the sound of her duffel bumping up the stairs one step at a time.
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Darien emerged from the shower his mind and his mood invigorated. He spiked his hair with some fresh gel and threw on a clean pair of pants and a t-shirt. He stepped out of the bathroom with a witty remark on his lips about chicks not being the only ones who took forever in the bath when he caught sight of Lola.
At some point during his shower, she'd managed to drag her duffel into the room and dump it on the floor. Now, she was sketching again, propped on the bed, her pencils softly scratching the paper as they slid over the page. Not wanting to break the concentration plainly evident on her face, he simply leaned back against the wall, folded his arms and watched her for a few moments.
She must have felt his eyes on her because she stopped sketching and put down her things. Rising from the bed, she made a show out of fluffing the pillows against the heavy, dark, ornate headboard of the queen-size bed that dominated the small room. "Wouldn't want you to think I was claiming the bed," she shot at him, "After all, isn't that another thing we 'chicks' do? Always take the bed?"
"Look, Lola, do you think we could maybe call a cease fire here for a while?" He backed up his suggestion with his hurt puppy face, knowing full well the effect it had on most women.
And, like butter, she melted. "Well, I suppose, at least through dinner," she replied sulkily.
"That's a girl," he coached her. "C'mon, go take a quick shower and we'll go get something to eat, OK?"
"OK." She fished in her duffel for some clean clothes and headed for the bathroom.
"And hurry up," he yelled after her, then couldn't help but add, "'Cuz chicks always take too long in the bathroom." He ducked just in time to avoid the travel-size soap that came sailing out of the doorway at him.
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Goomba's as it turned out, actually had quite good food, despite the regrettable 'Lady and the Tramp' décor. He'd eaten a caesar salad, a basket of garlic bread and a healthy slab of the house's special lasagna, before polishing off the remainder of her eggplant parmigiana over linguini.
"What are you? A bottomless pit? I swear, I'm gaining weight just watching you eat." She laughed as he scanned the dessert menu while they waited for their coffee. Apparently half a bottle of red wine had helped smooth her ruffled feathers.
He gave her a mellow smile in return. "What can I say? I like to eat ... among other things." OK, so he wasn't completely unaffected by the wine himself. She pulled a mock scowl and wagged a finger at him. At that moment, she looked like one of those sexy schoolmarm types that were sometimes featured in 'men's' magazines. He was tempted to tell her so, but didn't want to push his luck. They'd finally reached detente again and he was loath to return to open hostilities. Instead, he settled on asking her about her work.
"What, what's it like, what you do? I mean, I was watching you upstairs with your pad and your pencils. You were a million miles away, lost in what you were drawing. What's it like to do that? To see something in your mind and then be able to capture it on paper?"
"Good lord, Ray, I don't know. I can't explain it. Sometimes it just comes to me; it just pops right into my mind. I can see it clear as day and it's just a matter of copying it out onto the paper. Kinda like tracing a picture from a magazine, you know? Then other times, I'm at a loss, I haven't got a clue." She looked away from him, over to the far wall of the restaurant, drew a breath, only to exhale a moment later and close her eyes. "But then I put a line down on the paper and another one just seems to attach itself and then another again and again, and I'm just as surprised as anyone else is by the end result." She opened her eyes again, focused on him. "I think those are my favorites, my best work really. Where there's no conscious thought involved, it just sort of *happens*.
"It's always been like that. I've loved drawing ever since I was a child. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 10. She was dead by the time I was 11. Drawing was a way to escape, I guess. I mean, in real life, I had to watch my mom get sick and wither away. Then, after she died, I had to take care of my dad and Gwen. I took over cooking and cleaning and making sure Gwen got her homework done and stuff, so my dad didn't have to worry about it. Drawing took me away from all that, let me be whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, see whatever I wanted. Do you know what it is to want, to need to escape like that?" She took a drink of water and waited for his answer, looking at him from under her eyelashes.
Her story had a familiar ring for Darien; she wasn't the first female he'd known who'd turned to art to help her through a traumatic childhood experience. Jessica Semplar had been one of his earliest cases with the Agency. The child had become a voluntary mute after witnessing the assassination of a visiting foreign dignitary. When it was discovered the only person she'd speak to was her invisible friend, Ralph, Darien had been ordered to assume Ralph's identity. Jessica had been quite the little artist; she'd even been good enough that Hobbes had used one of her paintings to triangulate the position of the assassin's shot. But like most of the women in Darien's life, Jessica had left him behind. He tried to assuage the pain that still sprang up fresh when he thought of her, rationalizing that it wasn't Darien the man that Jessica had outgrown, but Ralph, her imaginary friend.
Now he pictured Lola as a young girl like Jessica, perhaps with one long, dark braid down her back and wearing a white painter's smock with a little water color palette at the ready. He pictured himself, bangs in his eyes, drill in his hand, leaning over a tricky lock in Liz's apartment. Oh yes, he understood the need to escape all too well. "Yeah. I think I do."
She locked eyes with him then, tilting her head one way, then the other. "How? How do you know?"
"My mom died when I was seven, two years after my dad took off for parts unknown. After that, there wasn't exactly a custody struggle for my older brother, Kevin, and me so we got shipped off to the relatives with the least objections, my Aunt Celia and Uncle Peter. They were an older couple that didn't have any children of their own and they did their best, but they weren't exactly June and Wally Cleaver, you know?
"As we grew up, Kevin got more and more into science. Eventually he earned like three PHDs and a Nobel Prize or something. Me, I got more and more into trouble and wound up with an advanced degree in cat burglary, which earned me a stay or two in assorted state correctional facilities. You know the rest: my brother got me out, I paired up with Hobbes and here I am, sitting with you."
"Jesus, what a detached resume. Tell me, don't you ever regret the choices you've made, the things you've lost?"
Darien thought about it. Yeah, he'd had some tough turns in life, some out of his hands, some of his own making. But he'd learned early on that you just had to play the hand dealt. Besides, did she really expect him to sit there in a room full of strangers and admit between coffee and cheesecake that he still had nightmares about losing those he loved? That all he had to do was close his eyes to hear his mother's laugh or that last horrible time Kevin had called his name? He willed his tone to harden and his face to take on the wise guy exterior he'd cultivated in prison. "Well, let's just say I'm not someone to cry over spilled milk, OK?"
"Where's Kevin now?"
"Huh?"
"Your brother? Is he near you in San Diego? I mean, my sister is back east and I don't get to see her that often ...."
"He's dead." He blurted it out with a sense of fatigued annoyance that came from having had to repeat the same phrase over and over for more than a year. And he'd have to repeat it for the rest of his life, whenever anybody asked about his brother. It was like having a wound that was never allowed to heal, just reopened every so often so it could spill fresh blood.
Her hands flew to her face. "What?"
"He was, ah, murdered, shot ...." His voice trailed off to a whisper as he took a sip of his drink to wet his suddenly arid throat.
"My god. You really are alone, aren't you?" She reached out and touched his cheek. He put his hand over hers and gave a soft, sad smile.
"No, not really. I have Hobbes and other friends where I work." To his surprise, he really meant it. He looked her straight in the eye, held her gaze. "Besides, right now I'm sitting here having dinner with the prettiest girl in the place."
She flushed and pulled her hand away from his. Looking down, she gathered her things. "I'm sorry. You know what? I, uhm, don't feel so hot." She rose from the table and started backing away. "I'm just, ah, gonna head up to the room and lie down, OK? OK. Bye." Before he could respond, she turned and dashed out of the restaurant as unobtrusively as possible.
He sat stunned for a moment, then pulled some bills from his wallet, dropped them on the table and took off after her.
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He caught up with her just as she was crossing the pool area. "Hey, Lola, wait!" He slowed as he neared her, reaching out to grab her shoulder and turn her to him. "Listen, if I said or did anything back there to upset you, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."
"No, Ray, no. It wasn't you -- it was me." She gave a short, brittle laugh that held a twist of irony.
"You?" He shook his head in confusion. As far as he remembered, she'd behaved perfectly. "What did you do?"
"Nothing yet. But I will. I know I shouldn't but I will," she slid her hand up his arm, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder, stopping finally in a light grip at the back of his neck, twining her fingers in the fringe of his curls there. "Especially if you keep looking at me like that."
"And how am I looking at you?" He took a step closer, trapped her again with his eyes.
She backed up a step, on tiptoe, fingers still in his hair. She stopped when she reached the edge of the pool and had nowhere left to run. He followed, his eyes never leaving hers. "Like a starving man looking at a plate of lamb chops," she breathed out.
He tugged at her free arm, wrapped it around his waist. He brought his other hand around to cup the back of her head, pulling her up even more on tiptoe as he dropped his own down to meet it. "Mmm, lambchops, my favorite." His voice was deep, chocolate, velvet.
"Mine too," she murmured right before all conversation ceased. 'Just like a chick,' was the last coherent thought his brain registered, amused at her blatant need to get the last word in. The rest of his mind was lost in her. In her taste: sweet, spicy, wholesome, just like an oatmeal cookie. In her scent: surrounding him in warm, comfortable memories. In the feel of her: his arms surrounding her, his mouth moving on hers.
He leaned in to deepen the kiss, wanting to taste, smell, feel her more fully. To his disappointment, rather than responding in kind, she began to move back, yet without loosening her grip on him. He was confused until he felt her lose her balance all together and realized that in his enthusiasm, he'd inadvertently knocked her backwards. She was falling ... into the pool ... taking him with her.
They landed with a large splash in the heated water, never breaking the kiss until they were both out of breath. He bobbed, sputtering, to the surface. She came up by the pool ladder and nimbly climbed out. She stood by the edge of the pool, all eyes and dripping hair, looking like a bedraggled Mona Lisa.
He climbed out a moment later. "I, ah, guess we should go and, uhm, change out of these wet things." He gestured up the stairs in the direction of their room. Her only response was a quick nod.
He let her go up the stairs first, enjoying the view her soaking clothes afforded him. When he remembered his own pants were clinging to him, he strategically arranged a shirt tail. She waited silently at the room door. He opened it and they went in.
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Under the stairs a portly figure emerged from the shadows. Whistling lightly he made his way to the pay phones in the lobby. Dialing the familiar number from memory, he heard the smooth criminal who was his client and temporary boss answer.
"What do you have for me, Clyde?"
"The sabotage went off without a hitch; car's in the garage. We're stopped for the night near Bakersfield. We'll be leaving for San Diego in the morning," Clyde dutifully reported, "I got to admit, that kid you saddled me with is slick."
"My 'kid,' as you like to call my agent, is actually a mature operative with extensive field experience. You'd do best to remember that," Stark's tone was blasé in its menace. There was no need to detail the unspoken threat. "You're doing quite well for hired help, though, Clyde. Keep it up and perhaps we'll have more jobs for you in the future. In the meantime, I'll send a pick-up squad and we'll make the grab in the morning. Until then, make sure you stick to him."
Clyde gave a dry snigger. "Don't worry, Stark. The only way we could get any closer is if one of us slept with him...."
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Without a word, Lola went straight to the bathroom and shut the door. Darien, figuring the moment lost, stripped off his wet shirt, along with his socks and shoes. He was just pulling out a pair of dry pajama bottoms when he heard the bathroom door open.
Come here," she called. He turned to see her exiting the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her and another spread out across both hands.
He grinned at her, teasing. "Uh, why should I?"
"Because I said so, that's why. Now get your ass over here."
"You are the *bossiest* little thing." He crossed the room to stand in front of the bed, looking down at her face and laughing softly.
"Yeah, well, what's your point? Now give me your head."
"Give you my head?" he repeated with a smirk.
"So I can dry your hair," came the answer, accompanied by a playful pursing of lips and much innocent blinking.
"Ooooh." Grinning, he lowered his head and she wrapped it in the free towel, rubbing briskly to absorb the water. His muffled voice came from under the towel, "You know, the last person I let do this was my mother."
She laughed out loud, then released his head from the towel. "Hmmm, that's really not someone I was hoping to be confused with." She took the towel and began drying his shoulders and chest.
"Really?"
"Really."
"I don't think that's going to be a problem."
"Good. Now is there anywhere else that you'd like ... uhm ... dried?" It was her turn to smirk and she did so, cocking an eyebrow and unsuccessfully suppressing a grin.
"Oh, yeah. Just one thing though." He reached out and tugged away the towel wrapping her body. "I want you to use this one." He grabbed her up into his arms and leaned his face down to hers.
"You got it," she said softly, just before knocking him down onto the bed. Giggling, she climbed up and knelt over him. He caught her arms as she reached for his belt buckle, then rolled them over so he was on top.
"Your pants are soaking," she shrieked.
He slid a hand between their bodies, running it up her thigh. "I'm betting they're not the only things that are." She gasped, then moaned as his fingers found the proof of that statement. Sliding his fingers into her core, he began to stroke her with the delicate touch of a master picking a 12-tumbler lock.
"Oh, god, you have the most fabulous fingers," she bit out as she rose to meet his caresses. Her hands ran through his hair, then raced feather light down his back. Her tongue lapped at his neck, grazed his collar bones.
He worked her with his fingers, watching all the while as the delight of each new sensation chased across her face, shivered through her body. This was what he wanted: the intimacy, the physical contact, the *normalcy*. Not the perverseness he'd shared with Allianora nor the chemically induced madness that had overtaken him with Claire. Sure those experiences had been erotic and hell, he'd be the first to admit he had his share of kinks, but when all was said and done the only thing those two experiences had left him with was the feeling of being more of a freak than ever.
Almost as if he'd jinxed himself by thinking about it, he felt the gland making its presence known. No, dammit, he wouldn't allow it. He wanted this, he wanted her, he wanted the ordinary humanity of it. He craved it like he craved the counteragent when he'd gone too long between shots. He grit his teeth, closed his eyes and called upon all the control he'd learned over the last year and a half.
He twirled his fingers inside her and she shuddered, the intensity of the sensation causing her to laugh out loud, her joy sounding sharp and bright as her inner muscles convulsed around his fingers. The sound of it made him acutely aware of the depth of his own desire. Unable to wait any longer, he removed his fingers from her, leaving her groaning and breathless for more. He stood, shucked off his pants and underclothes, then returned to the bed. With a wanton smile, she spread her legs, took him in her hands and guided him home.
He fell into her as a swimmer might dive into the ocean: warmed by the water, swept away by the current. He looked down at her, grinning greedily, and captured her mouth with his own, drinking her in through lips and skin, seeking her essence. She locked her legs around him and met him stroke for stroke, moan for moan, sigh for sigh.
He could feel the Quicksilver tingling at the base of his skull again, knew he wouldn't be able to control it much longer. In desperation, he grabbed the headboard, willed the liquid chill out of his fingers and allowed it to coat the hideous structure. As the headboard vanished, one small part of his mind noted that it was a vast improvement in the room's décor.
Then she was cumming and calling his name, screaming it out in the most incredibly intimate of voices. The sound of it, her movements under him as she cried out to him, sparked his own orgasm. With her cries ringing in his ears, he spilled his seed into her. The fact that the name she cried out was Ray, that the sound of their union was a complete and utter falsehood, added the bitter to the sweetness of his own completion. Then the sensations overtook him and with his own strangled cry, he was done.
They lay still for a few moments, his tall form tumbled on top of her tiny one, until he felt her lightly pushing against him. "Uh, Ray, I can't breathe."
He raised himself up on his elbows and smiled down at her sheepishly. "Sorry." He rolled onto his back, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her with him. She landed on top, coming to rest her chin on his chest.
"S'okay." She grinned lazily at him through half-lidded eyes.
He chuckled at her satisfied expression. "Well, I guess I finally found a way to get the last word in."
She rolled her head on her shoulders like a cat washing itself, kissed him smack dab in the middle of his chest. "Did not."
"Did too." He quickly grabbed her head in his hands, pulling her up for what he intended to be a gentle kiss, but which surprised them both with the intensity of their mutual need.
"Not fair," she managed to get out breathlessly when he released her.
He grinned at her. "Well, you know the old saying about love and war, don't you?"
"Who said this was either?" She lay on her side, head propped in her hand.
"Frankly, I'm thinking it's a little of both." He leisurely traced her profile with his index finger.
"Doesn't matter." She shook her head, made to bite his finger. "Still not fair. As payment, you owe me one story -- about you. Pay up now and make it a good one."
"A story? About me, huh?" He sighed, thought for a moment about the irony of her request. Sure, he had lots of good stories these days -- ones where he even turned out to be the hero -- but none of which he could tell her. He didn't want to have to lie to her though, not now, not anymore than he had to. In this at least, he wanted to give her the truth, to make a present of his honesty. So he settled on one from his childhood, one he'd never shared with anyone.
He turned his face away from her, focused on a corner of the dark room. "I was 12 the first time I, uhm, got caught, uhm, stealing, you know?" He swallowed, closed his eyes. "It was stupid really, just a bunch of my buddies and me out for some thrills. We were only going to break into the junior high, steal some sports stuff, like basketballs. All we were going to do was take 'em, have a midnight game down at the local hoops court and then leave them there. It was really more of a prank than anything else.
"One of the older kids, Benny, he knew how to pick locks and he got us into the school. Man, I was completely in awe of that guy, of the fact that he seemed to have the power to go anywhere he wanted. Anyway, we got into the gym and grabbed all these basketballs, some bats, baseballs, crap like that. We were just running out of the building when one of the neighborhood cop cars swung around the corner and happened to catch us in their headlights.
"Kids that we were, we took off like our lives depended on it. We just dropped everything and ran like crazy. You'd have thought we'd stolen the frickin' Hope diamond the way we beat it out of there," he rolled his eyes and shook his head at the memory. "So we're climbing the fence to get out of the schoolyard and I get to the top and it's all sharp, right? 'Cuz the chain link at my part was all broken and rusty. But me, I don't notice; I just want to get away. So over the top I go and the fence catches my right leg. Damn thing tore my leg open from the knee to the ankle." He pulled the sheet back, showed her the faint white line of scar tissue that ran down his leg. "I landed at the bottom with this huge gash in my leg, bleeding like a stuck pig and all my friends are gone.
"The cops, they found me, took me to the emergency room and called my Aunt Celia and Uncle Peter. I didn't know what was going on; I thought they were gonna cart me off to jail after they'd finished stitching up my leg. So I'm sitting on this gurney in this emergency room, scared shitless, when I see my Uncle Peter coming down the hall. I watch him sort of scanning the open doorways looking for me and then when he finally sees me, he gets the most amazing look on his face. I see him take in all the blood and the stitches and the pain on my face, but on his face ...," Darien stopped, swallowed hard again, "On his face I could see all the love he had for me, all the fear he had of losing me, all the relief now that he knew I was OK. So he walks into the room, comes right up to me. I look up at him with tears in my eyes because I'm just so damn happy that he's there. He looks down at me, still with all this love in his eyes, and he slaps me, hard, right across the face.
"And that was it. The school and the cops didn't press charges; I guess they figured I'd suffered enough of a punishment with my leg. My uncle never said a word to me about that night, but he never looked at me the same again.
"For the longest time, all the time I was a thief really, all I could remember was that slap: how hard he hit me, how much it hurt. It was a reminder to me of how much I hated him. Now," he closed his eyes again, squeezed them tight, "Now when I think of him, all I remember was that look on his face: how much he loved me, how he never let me see it again. And I think I hate him more."
She looked up at him, put her hand on his cheek. "No, you don't."
"Oh, really. And just what makes you so sure of that, huh?"
"Because if you really did hate him, you wouldn't have told me that story. Not here, not now. Don't make the same mistake he did. Don't hide your love behind your anger. They are not mutually exclusive."
He smiled softly at her, tousled her hair. "How'd you get so smart?"
"Simple. I make lots of mistakes. Frankly, I think you're going to be my favorite one." She winked at him, bit her lip.
He laughed, closed the short distance between them and kissed her, tenderly at first, then harder as their passion renewed itself. He grinned as she began to kiss her way down his body; apparently he was a mistake she was willing to make over and over again.
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They lay curled up together. She was sleeping with her head on his shoulder; he was awake, stroking her hair splayed out on his chest. As he ran his fingers through the dark silk he couldn't stop himself from shaking his head and grinning. She'd taken him by surprise, this one. He hadn't expected to find himself here again. Over the past year and a half, he'd learned not to look for too much in his relationships with women. Oh sure, there'd been plenty of friendships, some flirtatious attractions, lust even once or twice, but nothing deeper, not since Casey.
Casey. She used to tease him, call him a romantic fool for some of his charmingly old-fashioned notions of what love meant. He'd found love with Casey, though, and peace. Of course, in the end, that love and that peace had turned out to be a lie because *he* had been a lie.
He had an alarming déjà vu. Wasn't he a lie here too? Hadn't he lied to Lola about who he was and what he did, just like he had with Casey? 'Whoa, slow down there, bro,' he thought to himself. This was a completely different thing. With Casey, he had lied to protect himself, because he was afraid to let her know that he was a thief. Here, he was lying to protect the Agency, to protect Lola even.
In his head, he could almost hear Hobbes and the 'Fish nodding in agreement. Yup, had to keep the Agency and its damn gland safe from prying eyes. Better that Lola should know nothing about it -- that way the Agency and the 'Fish wouldn't have a reason to distrust her or send her away. Surely the 'Fish wouldn't be able to deny him this most basic of comforts. Hell, even caged zoo animals were allowed to have their mates. He had a right to a normal life, just as much as the next man, right?
Then again, hadn't his father said just that? His father had tried to have a normal life and look at what a disaster that had turned out to be for his family -- destroying not just one life but four. Was he willing to risk it, to take the chance that he might wind up hurting Lola just as deeply as his father had hurt his mother? Hadn't he already done just that with Casey?
He looked at the woman sleeping in his arms. Alright, so his father hadn't been able to make it work. And yes, dammit, he had hurt Casey, deeply, irreparably. But that didn't mean that he couldn't learn from his father's mistakes, from *his* mistakes. He could change, he could make this work; he *would* make this work, somehow. He would cut through all the lies he'd told, he'd been *forced* to tell, and make a new beginning with Lola. Where it would take them, he hadn't the faintest clue. Whether they'd be together for a lifetime or a few weeks, he didn't know, didn't care. It was the journey he wanted, the chance to prove to her, to himself, to everyone, that he deserved this, that happiness and normalcy weren't completely beyond his grasp, his ability.
And tomorrow, he promised silently just before he fell asleep, tomorrow he would find a way to tell her his real name.
TBC
Part 3 -- Sweet Surrender
There's an old saying: "A man only chases a woman until she catches him." Frankly, I wasn't sure anymore who was the fox and who was the hound, but it was definitely turning out to be a hell of a chase. Problem was the finish line was nowhere in sight.
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The lobby of the Shilo Inn was decorated in what Darien could only describe as 'neo-quaint'. Lots of heavy colonial furniture, copper pots and a hearth that looked like it was straight out of Ye Olde Yankee Shoppe. Unfortunately, this was California. Didn't these people know that they were settled by the Spanish?
Lola was looking around, taking it all in beneath raised eyebrows and a barely suppressed smirk. He smirked back, "Think somebody 'round here needs a history lesson?"
Her responding snort greeted the desk clerk full in the face. She tried to speak, lapsed into a giggle fit, tried to speak again.
"Jeez, calm down, would you? Even I didn't think it was that funny," he told her out of the side of his mouth.
"It's just so ... so ... so ... *wrong*," she replied between laughs. "Anachronistically speaking, of course."
"Of course," he repeated, rolling his eyes at her. Darien turned to the desk clerk, who was watching their exchange, his face smoothed by a long-suffering mask of imperturbability. "Ah, we're gonna be needing a couple of rooms for the night, here."
"Certainly, sir," came back the crisp response. "Would you like the side of the building with the view?"
Darien looked at the clerk. As far as he could tell, the inn was bordered by the highway on one side and the parking lot on the other. "OK, I gotta ask. What view?"
"Of the courtyard, sir." The clerk's voice held all the excitement of a laundromat manager extolling the virtues of his newest drier. "We have some lovely rooms overlooking the pool deck and whirlpool."
It was Darien's turn to snort. "Yeah. Fine. Whatever."
"I'll need to take a card imprint for each of the rooms." The clerk busied himself with the registration forms, unruffled by Darien's less than eloquent answer.
Darien fished his card out of his wallet, while Lola began dumping the contents of her purse all over the counter. By the time the clerk had finished swiping Darien's card and given him his room key, she'd started cursing.
"What's wrong?" he asked, returning his credit card to his wallet and putting his key in his back pocket.
"I can't find my wallet. I can't believe this. I can't find my *wallet*!" Her voice held the edge of light hysteria.
"Alright, alright, calm down there," he put a hand on her shoulder. "Just think for a second. Where was the last place you had it?"
"Oh, well, that's just a great question. If I knew where I'd had it last, I wouldn't have ...," she shrugged away from his hand, then gave a quick start. "Oh, wait, the rest stop! That's where I had it! The rest stop! I was fixing my make up and I had to take my wallet out of my bag to get my make-up kit. You're a genius!" She jumped up on tiptoe, pecked him on the cheek, then began throwing her stuff back into her purse. "We'll just have to go back and get it," she added matter-of-factly.
Darien stood, looking at her busily packing, and hopelessly tried to stem the crimson tide flowing over his face and neck. "Ah ... uhm ... well ... gee ... ah, Lola," Darien stammered, "That rest stop's like three hours away."
"Yeah, so? What are you saying, you don't want to drive back and get it? *I'd* go back if it were your wallet." She blinked at him, appalled at his breech of etiquette. "I mean after all, I *did* go back after your *hair gel*, now didn't I? And need I remind you, that if it wasn't for that mop of yours, we wouldn't be in this mess...."
Her apparent cluelessness as to the flaw in her plan helped him regain control of his facial hue. Clearly he was going to have to spell it out for her. "That's not the point. Even if I did think that your wallet would still be in the *public* bathroom, at the *highway* rest stop, *six* hours after you left it there, we'd still need a *car* to get there, no?" He gestured in the general direction of the garage where they'd left the car to be fixed.
Her expression sank like the Titanic. "Oh, crap, that's right." He couldn't help but smile at hearing his catchphrase come out of her mouth; she put the heel of one hand to her forehead. "Well, hell, what am I supposed to do now? All my credit cards and money were in my wallet." She stared down at the floor for a moment, bit her lip, looked up at him with a grimace. "I don't suppose you could lend me the money for a room ...?"
He did a quick bit of mental accounting. Very quick, in fact, since he had the grand sum of $83.67 to his name and one soon-to-be-maxed-out Visa card in his wallet. "Look, Lola, I would love to but I can't. I mean, along with my room, I've still got to pay for the rest of the car repair. Not to mention dinner tonight, breakfast tomorrow and gas for the trip home. There's just no way. The best I can offer...," he waved his hands absently at the ceiling, "I mean, the only solution I can think of ...." He trailed off, hoping she would jump in before he would have to actually voice the suggestion. She just stood there looking blankly at him, arms folded, mouth hanging open.
The desk clerk startled them both out of their staring contest by clearing his throat. He blandly held out a second key to Darien's room. Setting her jaw, she walked over and snatched it from his hand.
"Is there a place where we can get dinner?" she managed to grit out.
The clerk pointed across the lobby at the entrance to what appeared to be a glorified charcoal pit. "We have a very good Italian restaurant and lounge. If you dine before six, you can take advantage of their early bird specials."
Lola swung her eyes to the red, white and green striped awning that proclaimed the name of the place as 'Goomba's', then over at Darien. "Tres elegant," was her only comment.
"Hey, don't knock it. At least it's a step above last night's joint, right?" It was actually a couple notches above most of the places he usually frequented, but he was damned if he was going to tell her that Pancho's Taco Bar was his normal dining establishment.
She pulled a wearied scowl, grabbed her briefcase and headed towards the glass doors leading to the courtyard. "Great. My dining standard has just become the burger barn at the Vagabond Inn. Now I can die happy."
Darien sighed and picked up the luggage. As much as he admired her rear view, watching it walking away from him was getting old. He started up the stairs, following her yet again. "Look, let's just get up to the room so I can drop these damn bags and take a shower."
She stopped in the middle of the stairs and turned to face him. "You know, if you didn't want to carry my bag anymore, all you had to do was say so! I told you I'd carry it. I do it all the time." She stomped down the few steps to meet him on his way up.
"No, no, it's fine. I've got it." Under his breath he muttered, "Just like a chick. Offer to do it after you've already got it handled."
"What?" Her tone could have cut diamonds.
"Ah, nothing." He was a bit chagrinned that she'd caught that comment.
"No, you said something. I heard you."
"Well, if you heard me, then why are you asking?" He was tired, more than a little aggravated and at that moment, the last thing he wanted was to have a blow out on the stairs in the middle of some mediocre motel. But if she really wanted a fight, he wasn't going to deny her one.
She narrowed her eyes at him, held out her hand expectantly. "Look, do you want me to carry that duffel or not?"
"Fine." He dropped the strap into her waiting hand, the weight of the duffel almost tipping her over onto the bottom step. He simply climbed past her and remarked, "This particular bell hop's going to take a shower."
"Fine," she called after him. The last thing he heard as he stepped into their room was the sound of her duffel bumping up the stairs one step at a time.
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Darien emerged from the shower his mind and his mood invigorated. He spiked his hair with some fresh gel and threw on a clean pair of pants and a t-shirt. He stepped out of the bathroom with a witty remark on his lips about chicks not being the only ones who took forever in the bath when he caught sight of Lola.
At some point during his shower, she'd managed to drag her duffel into the room and dump it on the floor. Now, she was sketching again, propped on the bed, her pencils softly scratching the paper as they slid over the page. Not wanting to break the concentration plainly evident on her face, he simply leaned back against the wall, folded his arms and watched her for a few moments.
She must have felt his eyes on her because she stopped sketching and put down her things. Rising from the bed, she made a show out of fluffing the pillows against the heavy, dark, ornate headboard of the queen-size bed that dominated the small room. "Wouldn't want you to think I was claiming the bed," she shot at him, "After all, isn't that another thing we 'chicks' do? Always take the bed?"
"Look, Lola, do you think we could maybe call a cease fire here for a while?" He backed up his suggestion with his hurt puppy face, knowing full well the effect it had on most women.
And, like butter, she melted. "Well, I suppose, at least through dinner," she replied sulkily.
"That's a girl," he coached her. "C'mon, go take a quick shower and we'll go get something to eat, OK?"
"OK." She fished in her duffel for some clean clothes and headed for the bathroom.
"And hurry up," he yelled after her, then couldn't help but add, "'Cuz chicks always take too long in the bathroom." He ducked just in time to avoid the travel-size soap that came sailing out of the doorway at him.
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Goomba's as it turned out, actually had quite good food, despite the regrettable 'Lady and the Tramp' décor. He'd eaten a caesar salad, a basket of garlic bread and a healthy slab of the house's special lasagna, before polishing off the remainder of her eggplant parmigiana over linguini.
"What are you? A bottomless pit? I swear, I'm gaining weight just watching you eat." She laughed as he scanned the dessert menu while they waited for their coffee. Apparently half a bottle of red wine had helped smooth her ruffled feathers.
He gave her a mellow smile in return. "What can I say? I like to eat ... among other things." OK, so he wasn't completely unaffected by the wine himself. She pulled a mock scowl and wagged a finger at him. At that moment, she looked like one of those sexy schoolmarm types that were sometimes featured in 'men's' magazines. He was tempted to tell her so, but didn't want to push his luck. They'd finally reached detente again and he was loath to return to open hostilities. Instead, he settled on asking her about her work.
"What, what's it like, what you do? I mean, I was watching you upstairs with your pad and your pencils. You were a million miles away, lost in what you were drawing. What's it like to do that? To see something in your mind and then be able to capture it on paper?"
"Good lord, Ray, I don't know. I can't explain it. Sometimes it just comes to me; it just pops right into my mind. I can see it clear as day and it's just a matter of copying it out onto the paper. Kinda like tracing a picture from a magazine, you know? Then other times, I'm at a loss, I haven't got a clue." She looked away from him, over to the far wall of the restaurant, drew a breath, only to exhale a moment later and close her eyes. "But then I put a line down on the paper and another one just seems to attach itself and then another again and again, and I'm just as surprised as anyone else is by the end result." She opened her eyes again, focused on him. "I think those are my favorites, my best work really. Where there's no conscious thought involved, it just sort of *happens*.
"It's always been like that. I've loved drawing ever since I was a child. My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 10. She was dead by the time I was 11. Drawing was a way to escape, I guess. I mean, in real life, I had to watch my mom get sick and wither away. Then, after she died, I had to take care of my dad and Gwen. I took over cooking and cleaning and making sure Gwen got her homework done and stuff, so my dad didn't have to worry about it. Drawing took me away from all that, let me be whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted, see whatever I wanted. Do you know what it is to want, to need to escape like that?" She took a drink of water and waited for his answer, looking at him from under her eyelashes.
Her story had a familiar ring for Darien; she wasn't the first female he'd known who'd turned to art to help her through a traumatic childhood experience. Jessica Semplar had been one of his earliest cases with the Agency. The child had become a voluntary mute after witnessing the assassination of a visiting foreign dignitary. When it was discovered the only person she'd speak to was her invisible friend, Ralph, Darien had been ordered to assume Ralph's identity. Jessica had been quite the little artist; she'd even been good enough that Hobbes had used one of her paintings to triangulate the position of the assassin's shot. But like most of the women in Darien's life, Jessica had left him behind. He tried to assuage the pain that still sprang up fresh when he thought of her, rationalizing that it wasn't Darien the man that Jessica had outgrown, but Ralph, her imaginary friend.
Now he pictured Lola as a young girl like Jessica, perhaps with one long, dark braid down her back and wearing a white painter's smock with a little water color palette at the ready. He pictured himself, bangs in his eyes, drill in his hand, leaning over a tricky lock in Liz's apartment. Oh yes, he understood the need to escape all too well. "Yeah. I think I do."
She locked eyes with him then, tilting her head one way, then the other. "How? How do you know?"
"My mom died when I was seven, two years after my dad took off for parts unknown. After that, there wasn't exactly a custody struggle for my older brother, Kevin, and me so we got shipped off to the relatives with the least objections, my Aunt Celia and Uncle Peter. They were an older couple that didn't have any children of their own and they did their best, but they weren't exactly June and Wally Cleaver, you know?
"As we grew up, Kevin got more and more into science. Eventually he earned like three PHDs and a Nobel Prize or something. Me, I got more and more into trouble and wound up with an advanced degree in cat burglary, which earned me a stay or two in assorted state correctional facilities. You know the rest: my brother got me out, I paired up with Hobbes and here I am, sitting with you."
"Jesus, what a detached resume. Tell me, don't you ever regret the choices you've made, the things you've lost?"
Darien thought about it. Yeah, he'd had some tough turns in life, some out of his hands, some of his own making. But he'd learned early on that you just had to play the hand dealt. Besides, did she really expect him to sit there in a room full of strangers and admit between coffee and cheesecake that he still had nightmares about losing those he loved? That all he had to do was close his eyes to hear his mother's laugh or that last horrible time Kevin had called his name? He willed his tone to harden and his face to take on the wise guy exterior he'd cultivated in prison. "Well, let's just say I'm not someone to cry over spilled milk, OK?"
"Where's Kevin now?"
"Huh?"
"Your brother? Is he near you in San Diego? I mean, my sister is back east and I don't get to see her that often ...."
"He's dead." He blurted it out with a sense of fatigued annoyance that came from having had to repeat the same phrase over and over for more than a year. And he'd have to repeat it for the rest of his life, whenever anybody asked about his brother. It was like having a wound that was never allowed to heal, just reopened every so often so it could spill fresh blood.
Her hands flew to her face. "What?"
"He was, ah, murdered, shot ...." His voice trailed off to a whisper as he took a sip of his drink to wet his suddenly arid throat.
"My god. You really are alone, aren't you?" She reached out and touched his cheek. He put his hand over hers and gave a soft, sad smile.
"No, not really. I have Hobbes and other friends where I work." To his surprise, he really meant it. He looked her straight in the eye, held her gaze. "Besides, right now I'm sitting here having dinner with the prettiest girl in the place."
She flushed and pulled her hand away from his. Looking down, she gathered her things. "I'm sorry. You know what? I, uhm, don't feel so hot." She rose from the table and started backing away. "I'm just, ah, gonna head up to the room and lie down, OK? OK. Bye." Before he could respond, she turned and dashed out of the restaurant as unobtrusively as possible.
He sat stunned for a moment, then pulled some bills from his wallet, dropped them on the table and took off after her.
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He caught up with her just as she was crossing the pool area. "Hey, Lola, wait!" He slowed as he neared her, reaching out to grab her shoulder and turn her to him. "Listen, if I said or did anything back there to upset you, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."
"No, Ray, no. It wasn't you -- it was me." She gave a short, brittle laugh that held a twist of irony.
"You?" He shook his head in confusion. As far as he remembered, she'd behaved perfectly. "What did you do?"
"Nothing yet. But I will. I know I shouldn't but I will," she slid her hand up his arm, from wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder, stopping finally in a light grip at the back of his neck, twining her fingers in the fringe of his curls there. "Especially if you keep looking at me like that."
"And how am I looking at you?" He took a step closer, trapped her again with his eyes.
She backed up a step, on tiptoe, fingers still in his hair. She stopped when she reached the edge of the pool and had nowhere left to run. He followed, his eyes never leaving hers. "Like a starving man looking at a plate of lamb chops," she breathed out.
He tugged at her free arm, wrapped it around his waist. He brought his other hand around to cup the back of her head, pulling her up even more on tiptoe as he dropped his own down to meet it. "Mmm, lambchops, my favorite." His voice was deep, chocolate, velvet.
"Mine too," she murmured right before all conversation ceased. 'Just like a chick,' was the last coherent thought his brain registered, amused at her blatant need to get the last word in. The rest of his mind was lost in her. In her taste: sweet, spicy, wholesome, just like an oatmeal cookie. In her scent: surrounding him in warm, comfortable memories. In the feel of her: his arms surrounding her, his mouth moving on hers.
He leaned in to deepen the kiss, wanting to taste, smell, feel her more fully. To his disappointment, rather than responding in kind, she began to move back, yet without loosening her grip on him. He was confused until he felt her lose her balance all together and realized that in his enthusiasm, he'd inadvertently knocked her backwards. She was falling ... into the pool ... taking him with her.
They landed with a large splash in the heated water, never breaking the kiss until they were both out of breath. He bobbed, sputtering, to the surface. She came up by the pool ladder and nimbly climbed out. She stood by the edge of the pool, all eyes and dripping hair, looking like a bedraggled Mona Lisa.
He climbed out a moment later. "I, ah, guess we should go and, uhm, change out of these wet things." He gestured up the stairs in the direction of their room. Her only response was a quick nod.
He let her go up the stairs first, enjoying the view her soaking clothes afforded him. When he remembered his own pants were clinging to him, he strategically arranged a shirt tail. She waited silently at the room door. He opened it and they went in.
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Under the stairs a portly figure emerged from the shadows. Whistling lightly he made his way to the pay phones in the lobby. Dialing the familiar number from memory, he heard the smooth criminal who was his client and temporary boss answer.
"What do you have for me, Clyde?"
"The sabotage went off without a hitch; car's in the garage. We're stopped for the night near Bakersfield. We'll be leaving for San Diego in the morning," Clyde dutifully reported, "I got to admit, that kid you saddled me with is slick."
"My 'kid,' as you like to call my agent, is actually a mature operative with extensive field experience. You'd do best to remember that," Stark's tone was blasé in its menace. There was no need to detail the unspoken threat. "You're doing quite well for hired help, though, Clyde. Keep it up and perhaps we'll have more jobs for you in the future. In the meantime, I'll send a pick-up squad and we'll make the grab in the morning. Until then, make sure you stick to him."
Clyde gave a dry snigger. "Don't worry, Stark. The only way we could get any closer is if one of us slept with him...."
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Without a word, Lola went straight to the bathroom and shut the door. Darien, figuring the moment lost, stripped off his wet shirt, along with his socks and shoes. He was just pulling out a pair of dry pajama bottoms when he heard the bathroom door open.
Come here," she called. He turned to see her exiting the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her and another spread out across both hands.
He grinned at her, teasing. "Uh, why should I?"
"Because I said so, that's why. Now get your ass over here."
"You are the *bossiest* little thing." He crossed the room to stand in front of the bed, looking down at her face and laughing softly.
"Yeah, well, what's your point? Now give me your head."
"Give you my head?" he repeated with a smirk.
"So I can dry your hair," came the answer, accompanied by a playful pursing of lips and much innocent blinking.
"Ooooh." Grinning, he lowered his head and she wrapped it in the free towel, rubbing briskly to absorb the water. His muffled voice came from under the towel, "You know, the last person I let do this was my mother."
She laughed out loud, then released his head from the towel. "Hmmm, that's really not someone I was hoping to be confused with." She took the towel and began drying his shoulders and chest.
"Really?"
"Really."
"I don't think that's going to be a problem."
"Good. Now is there anywhere else that you'd like ... uhm ... dried?" It was her turn to smirk and she did so, cocking an eyebrow and unsuccessfully suppressing a grin.
"Oh, yeah. Just one thing though." He reached out and tugged away the towel wrapping her body. "I want you to use this one." He grabbed her up into his arms and leaned his face down to hers.
"You got it," she said softly, just before knocking him down onto the bed. Giggling, she climbed up and knelt over him. He caught her arms as she reached for his belt buckle, then rolled them over so he was on top.
"Your pants are soaking," she shrieked.
He slid a hand between their bodies, running it up her thigh. "I'm betting they're not the only things that are." She gasped, then moaned as his fingers found the proof of that statement. Sliding his fingers into her core, he began to stroke her with the delicate touch of a master picking a 12-tumbler lock.
"Oh, god, you have the most fabulous fingers," she bit out as she rose to meet his caresses. Her hands ran through his hair, then raced feather light down his back. Her tongue lapped at his neck, grazed his collar bones.
He worked her with his fingers, watching all the while as the delight of each new sensation chased across her face, shivered through her body. This was what he wanted: the intimacy, the physical contact, the *normalcy*. Not the perverseness he'd shared with Allianora nor the chemically induced madness that had overtaken him with Claire. Sure those experiences had been erotic and hell, he'd be the first to admit he had his share of kinks, but when all was said and done the only thing those two experiences had left him with was the feeling of being more of a freak than ever.
Almost as if he'd jinxed himself by thinking about it, he felt the gland making its presence known. No, dammit, he wouldn't allow it. He wanted this, he wanted her, he wanted the ordinary humanity of it. He craved it like he craved the counteragent when he'd gone too long between shots. He grit his teeth, closed his eyes and called upon all the control he'd learned over the last year and a half.
He twirled his fingers inside her and she shuddered, the intensity of the sensation causing her to laugh out loud, her joy sounding sharp and bright as her inner muscles convulsed around his fingers. The sound of it made him acutely aware of the depth of his own desire. Unable to wait any longer, he removed his fingers from her, leaving her groaning and breathless for more. He stood, shucked off his pants and underclothes, then returned to the bed. With a wanton smile, she spread her legs, took him in her hands and guided him home.
He fell into her as a swimmer might dive into the ocean: warmed by the water, swept away by the current. He looked down at her, grinning greedily, and captured her mouth with his own, drinking her in through lips and skin, seeking her essence. She locked her legs around him and met him stroke for stroke, moan for moan, sigh for sigh.
He could feel the Quicksilver tingling at the base of his skull again, knew he wouldn't be able to control it much longer. In desperation, he grabbed the headboard, willed the liquid chill out of his fingers and allowed it to coat the hideous structure. As the headboard vanished, one small part of his mind noted that it was a vast improvement in the room's décor.
Then she was cumming and calling his name, screaming it out in the most incredibly intimate of voices. The sound of it, her movements under him as she cried out to him, sparked his own orgasm. With her cries ringing in his ears, he spilled his seed into her. The fact that the name she cried out was Ray, that the sound of their union was a complete and utter falsehood, added the bitter to the sweetness of his own completion. Then the sensations overtook him and with his own strangled cry, he was done.
They lay still for a few moments, his tall form tumbled on top of her tiny one, until he felt her lightly pushing against him. "Uh, Ray, I can't breathe."
He raised himself up on his elbows and smiled down at her sheepishly. "Sorry." He rolled onto his back, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her with him. She landed on top, coming to rest her chin on his chest.
"S'okay." She grinned lazily at him through half-lidded eyes.
He chuckled at her satisfied expression. "Well, I guess I finally found a way to get the last word in."
She rolled her head on her shoulders like a cat washing itself, kissed him smack dab in the middle of his chest. "Did not."
"Did too." He quickly grabbed her head in his hands, pulling her up for what he intended to be a gentle kiss, but which surprised them both with the intensity of their mutual need.
"Not fair," she managed to get out breathlessly when he released her.
He grinned at her. "Well, you know the old saying about love and war, don't you?"
"Who said this was either?" She lay on her side, head propped in her hand.
"Frankly, I'm thinking it's a little of both." He leisurely traced her profile with his index finger.
"Doesn't matter." She shook her head, made to bite his finger. "Still not fair. As payment, you owe me one story -- about you. Pay up now and make it a good one."
"A story? About me, huh?" He sighed, thought for a moment about the irony of her request. Sure, he had lots of good stories these days -- ones where he even turned out to be the hero -- but none of which he could tell her. He didn't want to have to lie to her though, not now, not anymore than he had to. In this at least, he wanted to give her the truth, to make a present of his honesty. So he settled on one from his childhood, one he'd never shared with anyone.
He turned his face away from her, focused on a corner of the dark room. "I was 12 the first time I, uhm, got caught, uhm, stealing, you know?" He swallowed, closed his eyes. "It was stupid really, just a bunch of my buddies and me out for some thrills. We were only going to break into the junior high, steal some sports stuff, like basketballs. All we were going to do was take 'em, have a midnight game down at the local hoops court and then leave them there. It was really more of a prank than anything else.
"One of the older kids, Benny, he knew how to pick locks and he got us into the school. Man, I was completely in awe of that guy, of the fact that he seemed to have the power to go anywhere he wanted. Anyway, we got into the gym and grabbed all these basketballs, some bats, baseballs, crap like that. We were just running out of the building when one of the neighborhood cop cars swung around the corner and happened to catch us in their headlights.
"Kids that we were, we took off like our lives depended on it. We just dropped everything and ran like crazy. You'd have thought we'd stolen the frickin' Hope diamond the way we beat it out of there," he rolled his eyes and shook his head at the memory. "So we're climbing the fence to get out of the schoolyard and I get to the top and it's all sharp, right? 'Cuz the chain link at my part was all broken and rusty. But me, I don't notice; I just want to get away. So over the top I go and the fence catches my right leg. Damn thing tore my leg open from the knee to the ankle." He pulled the sheet back, showed her the faint white line of scar tissue that ran down his leg. "I landed at the bottom with this huge gash in my leg, bleeding like a stuck pig and all my friends are gone.
"The cops, they found me, took me to the emergency room and called my Aunt Celia and Uncle Peter. I didn't know what was going on; I thought they were gonna cart me off to jail after they'd finished stitching up my leg. So I'm sitting on this gurney in this emergency room, scared shitless, when I see my Uncle Peter coming down the hall. I watch him sort of scanning the open doorways looking for me and then when he finally sees me, he gets the most amazing look on his face. I see him take in all the blood and the stitches and the pain on my face, but on his face ...," Darien stopped, swallowed hard again, "On his face I could see all the love he had for me, all the fear he had of losing me, all the relief now that he knew I was OK. So he walks into the room, comes right up to me. I look up at him with tears in my eyes because I'm just so damn happy that he's there. He looks down at me, still with all this love in his eyes, and he slaps me, hard, right across the face.
"And that was it. The school and the cops didn't press charges; I guess they figured I'd suffered enough of a punishment with my leg. My uncle never said a word to me about that night, but he never looked at me the same again.
"For the longest time, all the time I was a thief really, all I could remember was that slap: how hard he hit me, how much it hurt. It was a reminder to me of how much I hated him. Now," he closed his eyes again, squeezed them tight, "Now when I think of him, all I remember was that look on his face: how much he loved me, how he never let me see it again. And I think I hate him more."
She looked up at him, put her hand on his cheek. "No, you don't."
"Oh, really. And just what makes you so sure of that, huh?"
"Because if you really did hate him, you wouldn't have told me that story. Not here, not now. Don't make the same mistake he did. Don't hide your love behind your anger. They are not mutually exclusive."
He smiled softly at her, tousled her hair. "How'd you get so smart?"
"Simple. I make lots of mistakes. Frankly, I think you're going to be my favorite one." She winked at him, bit her lip.
He laughed, closed the short distance between them and kissed her, tenderly at first, then harder as their passion renewed itself. He grinned as she began to kiss her way down his body; apparently he was a mistake she was willing to make over and over again.
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They lay curled up together. She was sleeping with her head on his shoulder; he was awake, stroking her hair splayed out on his chest. As he ran his fingers through the dark silk he couldn't stop himself from shaking his head and grinning. She'd taken him by surprise, this one. He hadn't expected to find himself here again. Over the past year and a half, he'd learned not to look for too much in his relationships with women. Oh sure, there'd been plenty of friendships, some flirtatious attractions, lust even once or twice, but nothing deeper, not since Casey.
Casey. She used to tease him, call him a romantic fool for some of his charmingly old-fashioned notions of what love meant. He'd found love with Casey, though, and peace. Of course, in the end, that love and that peace had turned out to be a lie because *he* had been a lie.
He had an alarming déjà vu. Wasn't he a lie here too? Hadn't he lied to Lola about who he was and what he did, just like he had with Casey? 'Whoa, slow down there, bro,' he thought to himself. This was a completely different thing. With Casey, he had lied to protect himself, because he was afraid to let her know that he was a thief. Here, he was lying to protect the Agency, to protect Lola even.
In his head, he could almost hear Hobbes and the 'Fish nodding in agreement. Yup, had to keep the Agency and its damn gland safe from prying eyes. Better that Lola should know nothing about it -- that way the Agency and the 'Fish wouldn't have a reason to distrust her or send her away. Surely the 'Fish wouldn't be able to deny him this most basic of comforts. Hell, even caged zoo animals were allowed to have their mates. He had a right to a normal life, just as much as the next man, right?
Then again, hadn't his father said just that? His father had tried to have a normal life and look at what a disaster that had turned out to be for his family -- destroying not just one life but four. Was he willing to risk it, to take the chance that he might wind up hurting Lola just as deeply as his father had hurt his mother? Hadn't he already done just that with Casey?
He looked at the woman sleeping in his arms. Alright, so his father hadn't been able to make it work. And yes, dammit, he had hurt Casey, deeply, irreparably. But that didn't mean that he couldn't learn from his father's mistakes, from *his* mistakes. He could change, he could make this work; he *would* make this work, somehow. He would cut through all the lies he'd told, he'd been *forced* to tell, and make a new beginning with Lola. Where it would take them, he hadn't the faintest clue. Whether they'd be together for a lifetime or a few weeks, he didn't know, didn't care. It was the journey he wanted, the chance to prove to her, to himself, to everyone, that he deserved this, that happiness and normalcy weren't completely beyond his grasp, his ability.
And tomorrow, he promised silently just before he fell asleep, tomorrow he would find a way to tell her his real name.
TBC
