A/N: Right. Ummm… Can you tell I have extreme reservations about putting this up:blushes insanely: Firstly, this is a long chapter, because there's one average length scene but I'd be getting "too short!" yells if I just put that one up. Then we have a rather long scene in which Lara and Kurtis have a rather interesting time. :ahem: Alright, alright, it's an R scene like several people have been yelling for, for weeks and weeks. Well, kinda. After about 2000 words we get a literary fade-to-black, which was necessary to stop it becoming too Harlequin Mills & Boon. :grin: So apologies to gutter-minded KTEB members who'll be screaming obscenities at me for cutting off, but I have no confidence in my R scenes.
Revised 01/10/05
Kurtis slept fitfully, certain now that Lara was dead. He and Bryce had watched with leaden hearts as the figure of Karel had appeared in the camera's line of sight – they now realised that Lara's camera was still attached, but that she lay motionless on the ground, waiting for death to claim her. They had witnessed the final exchange between their friend and the Nephilim, able to hear both sides of the conversation because of the close proximity of Karel to the tiny microphone. However, the revelation that someone had been sent to tail them did little to motivate them into changing location. Lara's pained gasps and coughs as her enemy attacked for a final time instilled complete listlessness in them, and although Bryce reached out and severed the connections before she took her last breath, it was obvious that she would not survive the battle.
Perhaps three hours had passed, and Kurtis had fallen into a doze only to shut out the grief and hopelessness that tormented him. Despite his exhaustion, he was quick to wake at the slightest noise.
When the faint rumble of an approaching vehicle roused him, Bryce was already at the tiny window in the rear doors of the van. "Jeep."
Kurtis reached for his R35 and Chirugai, and got up to join him. He had barely taken a step when Bryce sucked in his breath. "Oh, no, please, no."
Kurtis took his turn at the window, and closed his eyes at the intense wave of pain. "Don't be fooled. It has to be Karel." He opened his eyes for a second look. The figure of the woman he loved slid from the passenger side of the Jeep to the ground, and stretched kinks from its muscles wearily. "Sick son of a bitch," Kurtis muttered. "Any plans?" he directed at Bryce.
"Drive like hell?"
"Let's make that one plan B."
"Then what's plan A?" Bryce protested.
Kurtis shrugged. "I'll let you know when I figure it out."
Karel-Lara spotted them at the small window, and smiled. Another skewer of ice wedged itself firmly in Kurtis' heart. "He's seen us. We might as well get out – he could blow up the entire van with one of his fire-balls."
Every muscle tense, Bryce shoved open the door, and they both exited onto the sandy concrete. In any other situation, Kurtis would have found Bryce's overzealous wielding of his Scorpion X humorous, but at that moment, he was too busy levelling the R35 at Karel-Lara's head. The perfectly arched eyebrows shot up, and they heard Lara's voice muttering, "Well, at least they're cautious…"
"What's it doing?" Bryce muttered, as the Lara-thing bent to retrieve a knife from an ankle-holster and severed a strip of leather from the skirt she wore. Using her left hand and her teeth, she tied the strip around her right wrist and waved it at them impatiently.
The significance nagged at Kurtis, but he couldn't quite place it. Bryce, however, dropped the Scorpion in the sand and tore across the distance between the two vehicles before Kurtis could yell a warning. As he watched in utter shock, 'Lara' threw her arms around Bryce's neck and let him lift her off the ground and spin her in dizzy circles.
"I can't believe this!" he cried. "How the hell did you get away?"
Lara grinned. "André did it all. I just ran around like a complete pansy for hours."
As she spoke, the symbolism of the leather strip struck Kurtis. Don't acknowledge that you know me unless I come up to you wearing a bandage tied around my right wrist. I have an evil twin. In the absence of a bandage, she had improvised.
Kurtis put away his weapons, but stayed well back. It just seemed too much to hope for. If he let his dreams be reawakened, and he was wrong, he didn't think he would be able to take it. As much as he longed to approach Lara and take her in his arms, he couldn't bring himself to move. Instead, he leaned against the van and listened to her explain the events of the night. Several times, her eyes skipped to his, but she always glanced away again.
When her tale was done, Lara hushed further questions from Bryce, who seemed to have forgotten the existence of Kurtis, the van, and the rest of the world in his wonderment and relief. She turned towards him and began to approach carefully, wary of attack, aware that he had not yet suspended his disbelief.
"I know it's a huge leap of faith I'm asking you to make," she began, halting a few steps away. His expression was closed to her, and she strove for the same blankness. "I don't expect you to make it immediately. Just… trust me enough to work with me. I don't want to give the bastard any more advantage than he already has."
For a second, she thought she glimpsed a spark of emotion flare to life in his eyes, but when she looked closer, it was gone. The only response she gained was a slight nod, and she understood immediately that it was all she would receive for now. It was as if the three words phrased as a parting shot had never fallen from his lips, and a fresh ache, one not caused by the residues of evil, wormed its way deeper inside her. Let it go for now.
"There's no way I'm staying here all night. I need a shower and a bed. André says there's a town about ten miles down the road, so I don't know about you, but that's where I'm going." Lara caught the keys André tossed her way and slid into the driver's seat of the Jeep. "Bryce," she called out of the window," leave the van. It'll stand out like a sore thumb."
"No way!" Bryce replied vehemently. "It's got all of my best equipment in it!"
"Go with Lara," Kurtis told him, and got into the driver's seat of the battered van. Grinning, Bryce hopped into the passenger seat of the Jeep, and André into the backseat. Everyone sensed Kurtis wanted some time alone. Sighing, Lara started the Jeep's engine and followed André's directions, putting further distance between them and Cappadocia as dawn stole over the horizon.
Guessing the reason for Lara's silence, Bryce shot her a sympathetic glance. "Give him a few hours. We listened to you dying. We were half-way through the mourning period – and, I might add," he continued pointedly, "it's the second time I've been psyching myself up for your memorial service."
Ignoring the comment, Lara frowned. "What do you mean, 'listened to me dying'?"
"Your mic and camera still work fine."
Remembering the tiny devices, Lara winced. "So you know I'm not exaggerating when I said I acted like a complete pansy."
Bryce considered. "We saw you running… then we shut off and packed up… when we reconnected to you, you were lying on the ground… It does rather point to 'pansy' status, doesn't it?"
The brunette glared into the distance and kept her mouth shut. Unexpectedly, André jumped in. "She fought valiantly for as long as her strength would allow. You caught her in strategising and at the end, that's all."
"How do you know?" Lara asked, still feeling a little stung by her friend's evaluation of her.
"I have eyes in the back of my head. Not literally," he added quickly, when Bryce craned his neck to look.
"No!" For the third time that morning, Lara bolted out of bed, weapon in hand. Nothing more threatening than an empty hotel room greeted her, although a sense of dread lingered.
It was futile to try to sleep, she finally admitted to herself. Within the hour she would be roused yet again by the same nightmare. Pushing her exhaustion to the back of her mind, Lara ducked past the heavy drapes that kept out the morning light, and stalked out onto the balcony that the room shared with the adjoining suite where Kurtis, Bryce and André slept. The warm air did nothing to wake her up, or dispel the residue of her nightmare.
Letting out a vocal sigh, she leaned her elbows against the railings and dropped her head into her hands, twining her fingers in her hair and pressing against her eyeballs with her palms as if that would help. In her fatigued state, she neglected to notice the soft click of the other door opening, but gradually the knowledge of footsteps seeped into her mind. She didn't bother to look up, hardly cared who was there. It wasn't until the aroma of cigarette smoke irritated the back of her throat that, with some surprise, she identified her companion as Kurtis. Since their reunion the night before, he had barely looked her way, and only spoken to her when he had to. Sensing he would come around in his own time, and was battling his own thoughts, she had made it easy for him to avoid her by pleading genuine weariness and turning in for the day.
"Can't sleep?" she addressed him now, without looking up.
"Your screaming woke me," he replied dryly.
"I was not screaming." Lara raised her head from her hands long enough to glare at him, and they both felt an inner shock.
He looks terrible, Lara thought, studying him covertly. Well, terrible for Kurtis, anyway. It's a shame he's not wearing those leather pants… She gave herself a mental kick for letting her mind wander. He needs a shave, and at least thirty hours of sleep. She had no doubt that he would not appreciate being told this, however.
Kurtis scrutinised her just as carefully, noting the shadows under her eyes and the pallor of her skin. She appeared exhausted, and almost drawn in on herself. His heart ached at the sight of her, still half-steeped in mourning despite the evidence that she lived and breathed. Her beauty was muted, but still called strongly to him.
Taking his gaze as sceptical silence at her comment, she shook her head and relented. "It was hysterical shouting."
"I don't blame you." Surprised, Lara shot a glance his way. He returned it coolly. "I'm sorry I dragged you into this."
Lara shook her head. "You didn't. Werner did. As I recall, I was halfway to the fifth painting before we even exchanged a word." You don't need words to communicate, a nagging voice reminded her. She blinked to clear the memories of their silent showdown in the Louvre as Kurtis spoke again.
"You had no choice then. You had to clear your name. You can just walk away from this now."
Was he warning her off? In disbelief, Lara scowled at him. "Are you trying to tell me I should walk away from it?" she asked sharply. "Because you can think again."
"You died, Lara. You died for my cause, and it's not fair of me to expect that you keep on with it."
"Whether you like it or not, it's my cause now, too. It's Bryce's cause, it's André's cause. It'd be the entire human race's cause if they knew about it. I don't want Karel to succeed any more than you do," she shot back, her already short temper frayed by overtiredness. "I can handle myself."
"Usually," Kurtis muttered under his breath, stubbing out his spent cigarette viciously.
"Why do men always want to shield me?" Lara asked the empty air derisively. "The more protective they get, the more I'm the one who has to do the protecting." The air around them rumbled as warm spatters of rain began to fall, at first sparsely, but gathering rapidly in number and momentum. It was as good a place as any to end the discussion, Lara thought, and she shouldered past Kurtis and back into her room.
Kurtis, however, had other ideas. "So now I'm the incapable one?" he retorted, following her into her darkened sanctuary and staring at her with eyes that shot daggers.
Lara stepped in closer, caught up in the heat of the argument, which had not risen above speaking volume. "Ha! See? You admit that you were calling me incapable!"
"You weren't too capable last night."
"Bet I lasted longer than you would have." The atmosphere was so charged between them that the words immediately became double entendre.
"Oh, I doubt it."
"Prove it," Lara challenged, face only inches away from his, her eyes flashing cold fire.
Neither of them could remember who initiated the movement – all each knew was that the other was kissing them, deeply and furiously. Lara's anger only fuelled her urgency, and she lost herself in the kiss, revelling in the sensations caused by his hands, his lips, the unique scent she had missed so much. It was hard to believe that the fingers that explored her body were the same ones that had showed so much restraint in Paris, but his rough touch brought similar ripples of delight to her skin.
Kurtis broke the kiss first, intending to speak, but it took him a second to remember how to form words. "It's a bet? What are your stakes?"
Regaining her equilibrium, Lara stepped back and folded her arms across her chest. "Just the pleasure of winning will do for me," she retaliated, throwing a half-taunting, half-seductive look his way. "And yourself?"
"I wait until you've recovered from your numbing exhaustion… and then I get a repeat performance." Kurtis brushed his fingers over the hem of the black tank top she had worn to sleep in, sliding his fingertips beneath the fabric and grazing bare flesh. The touch sent slivers down her spine, but she smiled, shrugged away from it.
"Well, if you're as good as you claim, I'm sure I'll have no problem with that," she replied, backing out of reach. "I shouldn't hold my breath, though. Everyone thinks they can do better, but it's rare that anyone makes the grade."
The anger was fading from their exchange, replaced by heat of a different origin – that of rising desire and anticipation. As if gearing up for a fight, the two slowly circled one another, never breaking eye contact.
"Scared?" Lara threw at him, after a few moments.
"As I recall," he answered dryly, "it's your move. You're the one who keeps moving away." Chicken, his eyes added.
"Fair enough." Lara covered the distance between them swiftly and placed both hands on his chest, taking a moment to savour his warmth against her palms. Her fingertips dragged a little way down the front of his shirt in a gentle scratch before she shoved him backwards, without warning. Taken by surprise, Kurtis landed hard on the bed, and barely had time to look up before she advanced again, to crawl on hands and knees over him. "How's this for a move?" she whispered against his lips.
Kurtis responded by deepening the kiss, at the same time raising himself to a sitting position and reaching around to grab her firm posterior, unbalancing her. By complete coincidence, she was sure – not – she ended up sitting in his lap, thighs straddling his waist and arms about his neck, in an attempt to stop herself from falling sideways, naturally. With a jolt of arousal, she felt him hard against her, and moved slowly, still with restraint, pressing her hips to his and grinding just a little. Though he tried to hide it, she felt rather than heard his shaky intake of breath, and drew back enough to watch his striking azure eyes cloud with need.
"This is just going to be too easy," she whispered in his ear. He seemed to be forgetting their bet. "Maybe I should make a wager after all."
Before she knew it, she was overturned, Kurtis' full weight on top of her. Strangely, she felt more turned on than claustrophobic, and returned his heated gaze with one of her own as he growled, "Name your prize."
"Let me think about it. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to do so when I'm staring at the ceiling and you're tiring yourself out."
Kurtis shrugged, amusement colouring his expression. "It'll be the last thing on your mind, since you'll be out of it the entire time. But I guess it doesn't matter that you don't have anything picked out, since you won't be collecting on it." He kissed her again, forcefully, as if the competitive edge was as much of an aphrodisiac for him as for Lara. Perhaps it was. All she knew was, she wanted him. Two things were getting in her way – one, this infuriating battle of wills, although there was no way she was going to lose it, and two, the fact that she was pinned beneath him. That could be remedied.
She turned her head, breaking the kiss, and let her smile show as she breathed, "You think I'm not going to make you work for that position?" Barely giving the words time to register, she surged upright, brushing her lips against his as she fluidly reversed their situations, leaning with all her weight on his arms to incapacitate him. With a hum of triumph, she grinned at him from her dominant location before kissing him again. Much better.
Kurtis' strong hands moved to her hips and slid upwards, bringing her tank top up with them. Tingling from head to foot, Lara raised her arms and let him slip the garment over her head, leaving her topless above him. In the past she had seen raised eyebrows, eyes that glazed over in heavenly shock. Men who never looked into her eyes at the best of times never looked anywhere but her chest during and afterwards. She had learned to tolerate it. But Kurtis never blinked an eye. Instead, he studied her almost analytically for a few seconds, ran a single fingertip over each nipple, and continued to kiss her lips, sitting up and pulling her against his chest.
After a millisecond of disbelief, a strange tenderness flooded over Lara in a tidal wave, and she reacted warmly, pulling his own shirt away and pushing him back to a horizontal position. As the flesh of their torsos met, an electric spark seemed to jump from one to the other. "You seem a little lost for words all of a sudden," Kurtis teased, watching her face.
"I'm strategising," she replied, and sat up to get a better look at him. Carefully, she played her slender, dextrous fingers over a muscular chest, powerful biceps and the scarred expanse of taut stomach that had no less appeal than the unblemished skin around it. "What's your excuse, warrior-boy?" she asked, before moving her lips into play over the areas where her fingers had lingered.
"Just waiting for my moment." Lara almost smiled, and would have, had her mouth not been otherwise engaged. His voice lacked the cocky tone of his words, and she knew he was distracted by her actions.
"Let me know when it comes. I might not notice." She returned her lips to his, and her fingers to his belt, applying calculated, fleeting pressure where it counted as she stripped him of the remainder of his clothing. Not bad at all, she judged, raising an eyebrow just enough to keep him insecure and moving back to lie at his side, trailing kisses over his neck.
"By my count, I'm just about winning. I've managed to resist completely undressing you, somehow." The sarcasm was mild and barely noticeable, and Lara grinned, thoroughly enjoying herself.
"I don't know," she threw back at him, 'walking' her fingers from his neck downwards. "Maybe your kind of foreplay just bores me."
Most men would have taken it as a criticism. Kurtis was confident enough in his abilities to see the truth through the teasing, and just grinned. Before she knew it, Lara had been seized in powerful arms and pulled onto his lap. Strong hands with trigger-happy fingers at last cupped her sensitive breasts, the left lingering, the right caressing briefly before travelling lower, slipping beneath the waistband of her pants and searching out the tiny spot that could unleash so much feeling. His breath was warm on the back of her neck as he whispered, "Bored?"
The whole thing had happened so suddenly that Lara could do no more than gasp in his arms, at the mercy of his skilled fingertips and the waves of pleasure that grew in momentum as the seconds passed. She swallowed hard, fighting the current without questioning whether or not she should give in. "Bored to death," she agreed, her voice as even as she could make it. Involuntarily, her fingers twisted in the bedspread and tightened into fists. I will not give him the satisfaction, she resolved, the thought hazy and altogether futile. She knew that with each movement Kurtis made, her body shook with the response, and that the moisture that met his fingers gave away her precarious position, balanced between tension and blissful release. She bit her lip hard to keep from crying out as the pressure in her muscles built up to unbearable proportions, and a soft chuckle in her ear frustrated her to even greater magnitude.
If I let him tip me over the edge, he'll have won. As wonderful as it would feel, Lara couldn't give him that. With supreme effort, she wrenched away. "As I said, bored to death. My move."
Kurtis shook his head in admiration as she crawled over him once again. Her silken braid, returned to its usual auburn shade as a result of the shower she had taken earlier, fell over her shoulder to coil against the light down of dark hair that grew on his chest as she contemplated him. "I've just decided on my prize," she informed him coolly. Time to get back in control of this situation. With one hand, she scratched lightly over the bare skin at his shoulders and began to meander downward with calculated lethargy as she waited for his reply.
"Oh? Please, feel free to fantasise," he answered with measured sarcasm. "I'm so confident of winning that I can do this–" he reached for the knife on her bedside cabinet, slit the material of the light sweatpants she had worn to sleep in from hip to ankle and pulled them away, leaving her as naked as himself – "and still come out on top."
"Hmm…" Lara's fingers at last found their target and closed around warm skin, his hardness under her palm sending new shivers through her as she teased him. Kurtis' intense blue eyes flickered with desire at her touch, but he maintained eye contact surprisingly well. "When I win, we have a little discussion about empty, spur-of-the-moment declarations of love." At her words, his eye contact did falter briefly. Lara supposed his plan had been to pretend it had never happened, but there was no way she was going to stand for that. Perhaps in the middle of their first intimate encounter wasn't the best time to bring it up, but if it was going to unsettle him enough to give her back the edge she'd lost… All's fair in love and war.
He met her gaze once more, and the glimmer of amusement that had been present was utterly gone. Lara returned her hand to his shoulder, and watched his face for the truth as he spoke, quietly but with a hard edge to each syllable. "Empty? Don't make judgements about things you know nothing about." He moved to overturn her and leave, but with necessary violence, Lara held him in place, her eyes displaying no malice, but more a yearning for understanding. They stared at each other for long seconds, speaking without words of insecurities, of desires, of love. The fragile balance of control both had been exercising tipped, and iron wills shattered. In one mutual movement, they fell against one another, lips locking once more. The world faded completely from Lara's mind as she felt Kurtis pushing inside her, and she bit back a gasp as what she had longed for since Prague finally came to pass…
:hides: Criticise if you must, but please don't flame. :points at the KTEB delegation, who are all standing nearby: They've been turning me to smut! They made me do it!