Well well well… Here we are, ready for another story.
I changed the title of this at least 3 times and I am still not convinced, but just yesterday I re-listened to this song (How we operate, by the band Gomez) and the lyrics suddenly seemed rather fitting for LTM. But I guess you don't really care about the title, do you? You just want the story.
So, this one is going to be long and will contain scenes and themes that might not be for everyone. Mostly I will keep my usual posting pace (one every two days) but I highly suggest setting your notifications to get timely alerts because there will be times when I will be posting two days in a row.
This story is different from anything I wrote so far, at least for me, mostly because of the structure: I hope it will work out for you anyway. This story is also going to be my last, but it will be a long farewell, I can tell you that.
If you've been reading my stories you know I am not shy in asking for reviews and feedback: in less than a year I wrote a dozen LTM stories, and as much as it was entertaining for me to do so regardless it's people's feedback once they are published that really make it all worthy. If you are a writer or just tried once or twice to write down your idea, you should know how much a review can mean.
As usual, this all happens after the end of the show, no intended references or connection with any other of my stories. I couldn't fit it in the given categories but you can expect angst, humour and much more.
Right, enough with the rambling and let's get started!
The internal debate was killing him, possibly even more than what was happening to him.
Gillian was on top of him, sitting on his lap and riding him mercilessly with the determination of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted, how to get it and precisely when she was going to get it. Considering she had been the one starting it, pushing him down on the couch and doing quick work of his pants and underwear before making herself comfortable and guiding him inside of her, all of the above perfectly applied with the situation. Cal was at her mercy and couldn't have been happier, lustful pride going through him thinking that his woman knew exactly how to handle him and was no shy in claiming him. The little of rationality he had left, as he felt his climax rapidly approach and with no chance for him to control the outcome, he was using to decide what was more powerful: keep his eyes open and watch Gillian completely losing herself in her pleasure, or close his eyes and let the whole thing hit him like a wave of enhanced sensations and ecstasy.
Then she shifted to take him in at a different angle and Cal groaned, knowing he was fast approaching and no longer able to think straight. He closed his eyes shut and blindly grabbed her hips, forcing them down at his own pace and taking in the way she was saying his name in appreciation. Before he knew it, Cal found her breasts in his face and moaned her name too, as loudly as he could, the sound morphing into a muffled cry when they finally climaxed in perfect unison.
Wanting to prolong the pleasure as long as possible, Gillian crashed on top of him but kept slowly moving for a little bit, her breathing slowing down and her hands grabbing the back of his head as if she needed support despite them being sitting down already. Barely in control of himself, Cal didn't bother resurfacing from between her breasts for a while and instead tried to catch his breath with his mouth pressed on her skin, his hands absently surfing up and down her naked back enjoying the way her paced breathing slowed down in sync with his own. After a while, hard to tell how long, Gillian changed position but didn't go that far, just sitting next to him, her legs resting on his lap and her arms still around his chest, nuzzling his neck with her lips and audibly purring like a kitten as if he had been the one giving her a powerful orgasm and not the other way around.
Cal held her, tight and gently, his fingers surfing on the hot and sweaty skin of her leg, his eyes closed as his mind was still going through the motion of their passionate love making. Eventually, their bodies started to cool down and Cal picked up from the floor the shirt she had gotten rid of when it had all started and placed her on her shoulder, smiling when she snuggled closer and kissed his cheek with a satisfied expression.
"Not that I'm complaining," he muttered then, his lips too wandering around her face, "but that was the fifth time since last night. Are we going for some kind of world record?"
Gillian chuckled and looked up at him, who was surprised to see her with a touch of shy redness on her cheeks. They had been going steady for weeks and they had shown no shyness or reticence of sorts when it came to intimacy, after all she had just shown him just how much she enjoyed it with no restraints, so Cal found that reaction a little surprising. Nothing to worry about still, not at least judging by the way she smiled under those reddened cheeks, mischievous and a little teasingly.
"I'm just stocking up," she confessed then, capturing his lips for a quick kiss. "Emily arrives tomorrow and I figured we won't have much time like this for a few days, at least not until you tell her."
"Are you trying to convince me to tell her about us right of the bat if I want to keep having this wild and hot sex with you?" He wiggled his eyebrows at her. "'Cause if that's the case, I am listening."
This time she laughed, although they both knew he was only partially joking and that he could be easily persuaded with the right kind of…argument. Then Gillian put on the shirt and placed a last kiss on his lips, standing up and heading for the kitchen. They had been in the process of preparing lunch, something light to cope with the surprising warmth of the day, when they had been interrupted. Cal had been moving around his kitchen with the usual grace of a bear who had just woken up from hibernation wearing only his pyjama bottoms, and it hadn't taken long for Gillian to find herself staring at his torso, the way the inked skin of his tattoos seemed to pulse underneath, and soon lunch had dropped at the bottom of her list.
Cal grumbled something when she stood up and walked away, mumbling to himself that he really would reconsider as he put his pants back on and joined her. That really had been their fifth round since the night before, which had started with a night at the movies and ended with them showering together for number three. Round four had come in the morning as they woke up and, Cal realised then, it had been the only time of the lot he had initiated things. Cal really had no qualms with that, their relationship was still fairly new but they both knew there was so much more than sex supporting it, but he also knew that things were indeed bound to change with Emily's arrival.
They had been together for nearly three months, and when it had started, out of fight over work of all possible ways, Emily had actually been around. But the first few days had been too much of a mess to deal with for them to be able to communicate anything meaningful about it. The fight about work had been a big one, the biggest since the firm had gone through financial instability and back: they had taken on a case mostly because Gillian was interested in it and she had been going at it the way he would normally do, working on it incessantly and with little regards to how her obsession was affecting others. Cal had called her out on it, which had prompted Gillian to object that it was rich coming from him. The conversation had escalated, things had been said with immediate regret and long lasting effect, until Cal had heard himself saying something along the lines of "if you don't like my way why are still hanging around?". For a moment, Cal had seen such rage in her eyes that he had braced himself for a slap in the face coming his way, but instead she had relaxed, deflating from the aggressive stance she had been keeping and, incredibly, smiling at him with the most beautiful and said smile he had never seen.
Because I love you, you bloody idiot! She had said then, just before shaking her head and walking out of her own office, leaving him there to process her words. It hadn't taken him long, he had gone after her and grabbed before she could turn the corner, disarmed by the way she had been looking at him as she had swirled her around. She knew he'd come after her, she knew she had his attention and she sure as hell knew that he felt the same way about her. She had had the upper hand, the unquestionable advantage of having been the one making the first move, no matter how unplanned it might have been. As he watched her now, moving about his kitchen with nothing but his shirt on, chewing on a liquorice stick while gathering what she needed for lunch, Cal realised once more what a lucky son of a bitch he was to have met someone like her, someone who wouldn't put up with his crap without fighting back, someone who wouldn't give up on him because she saw all the good in him.
After that yelling match in the office she had gone home, mostly because he had been so flabbergasted by her confession to counter in any way. They had been the last two in the office that night so no witnesses to their fight, and the day after had been awkward to say the least. Twelve hours later and he still didn't know what to say, although it should have been easy enough to say "I love you too", but eventually he had found the right thing to say. It had taken him nearly two days, two days of them pretending everything was normal in front of others while dealing with their internal turmoil in private. First, he had changed his tune about the case and given 110% to help, enabling Gillian in any way that would help her get to the solution; then, with the case and the extra tension brought by it had gone, he had finally gone to her to let her have his own piece of truth. He was in love with her too, but her being in love with him should not have been a good enough reason for her to put up with him if it was too much for her. This time, much to his surprise, Gillian had indeed slapped him, right before saying she stayed because what they did mattered, not to themselves but to others, and because working together brought out the best of each other. After all, he had just put his reservations aside and dived into her case, and she knew he hadn't done it to please her but to help their client.
From then on it had been easier to carry on, with a rather emotional confrontation taking place on her doorstep and ending with their first time in her bedroom. They had been up for hours after that, talking their way out of the argument and through a new beginning, squaring things off and accepting their past might get in the way of their future, but also agreeing that they could make it if they would be able to deal with all of that together. Not knowing how well that proposition would play out, Cal had opted not to tell anything to Emily for the time being: he knew his daughter would have been over the moon about them, and he didn't want her to get her hopes up only to see their relationship blow up in a horrible mess after a few days. Had that been the case, it would have been difficult enough for the grown ups to still work together, and the last thing he wanted was for his daughter to suffer from it.
Gillian, God blessed her, had understood and agreed. Then Emily had gone off to college, Princeton over the much farther Berkeley to Cal's partial relief, which had given them time and space to steady the course. By the time they had done that, Cal had decided that such news should have not been delivered over the phone and had been waiting for Emily to come home for a short break to drop the bomb on her.
Smiling to himself, Cal finally reached Gillian in the kitchen and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her and leaving a light kiss on the back of her neck.
"I can push back my days off, tell Emily and see how it goes."
"No Cal, don't." Gillian turned around, softly serious in her voice and face. "You haven't seen her in weeks, you two need time together and I understand that." She smiled wider and caressed his face. "It's your daughter, I'd never stand in between you two. I was just being silly."
Cal smirked, a teasing grin on his face as he stepped closer to trap her between his body and the fridge.
"Nothing silly about what you said," he whispered, his fingers randomly tracing lines on her skin under the shirt. "You got me used to falling asleep with you next me, I've got no idea how I'm going to get any sleep tonight."
"Well, me too. But I don't want you to rush it." Gillian pulled away, reluctantly, to place on the table the last component of their lunch. "I know Emily is going to be happy about this but we both know that there's a new dynamic for her to adjust to. It took us weeks to get a grasp of that, can't imagine it would be much easier for her. Besides," she sat down and looked at Cal as he joined her, pouring two glasses of wine, "I'm sure she'll have questions and that's a conversation for the two of you to have."
"Meaning you don't want to be there when I tell her we got together because I finally reached maximum jerk level and pissed you off?" Gillian smiled broadly, clinging her glass to his in a toasting gesture, to which Cal smirked. "Chicken!"
Gillian kept smiling and stuck her tongue out to him, but soon he was chuckling and the matter was forgotten. She was right of course, they had talked about it enough already to know they were on the same page. At first, Cal had been surprised to find out that, like him, Gillian didn't foresee any resistance from Emily to them becoming an item: he knew his daughter had been nagging him for a while, confronting him on his feelings for Gillian, but he had no idea that she hadn't been shy in bringing the matter up with her as well.
"So," she asked after a while, as they ate in comfortable silence. "What are your plans for the week?"
"Nothing clear at the moment. I tried to tell her to let me know what she wanted to do, but she kept saying she only wants to spend time with me." Gillian smiled widely, as always amazed at the way his entire being lightened up whenever Emily was involved. Then he seemed to notice she had caught him and gave her a smirk, morphing it into a teasing grin as he pointed his finger at her. "And you. She made me promise we'll have you for dinner as soon as possible." The grin changed again, becoming a warm and peaceful smile. "She misses you too, you know."
That little note made her blush and look away for a brief moment, not surprised when she felt Cal's hand resting on top of hers and gently stroking her skin. He found it astonishing, in a good way: she had no shyness whatsoever about pretty much anything in their romantic relationship, or the professional one for that mattered, yet she couldn't help but show some pleased discomfort when he reminded her that he wasn't the only person Emily was looking forward to spend time with.
"I know you two speak on the phone regularly," Cal went on then. "I'm guessing she's using you to check up on me?"
"She's worried you might be feeling lonely," Gillian responded with a chuckle, both of them finding the predicament hilarious in light of the recent developments. "And of course she tells me all about the boys she meets but that's not for you to know."
"Oi! Not funny there, love!" He grunted, even more annoyed when he saw what great pleasure she took in torturing him about that.
They finished lunch making small talk, then sipped some coffee sitting on the steps by the front door and went through some work stuff as well. He was taking a few days off to spend time with Emily but was going to be around if they needed something off the cuff for urgent matters, but Cal knew Gillian didn't really need him to run the place. The chatting dragged along until late afternoon, when the shadows became longer signalling the time to say goodbye had arrived. They had spent the night together many times, nearly every night really, before going to work in the morning, but with Emily coming they had mutually decided to play it a little safer. They had easily - scarily easily - gotten used to sharing spaces together and they had both left stuff of their own at the other's place, and neither of them wanted Emily to find out about them by stumbling on something feminine around the house.
Cal helped Gillian gather her things after she got changed, smiling satisfied as she packed his shirt she had been wearing all day as a short term souvenir, then gentlemanly carried her bag to the car. He put the bag on the back seat and rolled his eyes when Gillian looked like she was mentally going through a list of her belongings she had to get, then snuck his arm around her and chuckled in her ear.
"I'm sure you got everything, love," he said. "But if it can make you feel any better I'll check again later."
"Thank you," Gillian said, turning toward him and resting her hands on his chest. "See you tomorrow then."
"See ya," he replied, then leaned in for a long and soft kiss. When he pulled back, resting his forehead on hers, he had a very serious but gentle expression on his face. "After Emily, we'll tell everybody, ok?"
"I'd like that, yeah." Gillian smiled and kissed him again, then eventually broke them apart and got in the car. "Good night Cal."
"Night love."
He closed the door for her and stepped away as she drove off, watching the car until it turned the corner of the street and disappeared. He felt ridiculous, watching her go with the gravitas of people saying goodbye for good, then bit at his lip and shook his head, thinking he was in on that even deeper than what he had imagined as he went back inside. Then he started to go around the house, indeed looking for something Gillian might have left behind with the intention of guarding whatever he might find as a holy relic.