"As for your relationship to one another: your competition has been - vicious, destructive and - healthy. We think you keep each other on your toes."
Healthy.
Lilah doubts it.
Two weeks after she first met Lindsey McDonald she tried to get him sacrificed to a dissatisfied client. It didn't work out the way she planned, obviously.
Who knew the bastard could handle a gun?
His way of getting back at her was to bring in an astonishing court victory. Lindsey fights fair. It's one of the things she hates about him.
Healthy.
They've worked together for four years. After the first two they discovered a kind of tentative balance.
Lilah is a ruthless deal maker. She's perfectly willing to slam anyone and everyone to protect a client's interests. Lindsey's getting there: he's good at it, but he doesn't like it.
Lilah thinks he's an overly noble idiot.
Lindsey is an amazingly good court lawyer. He has a way of completely owning a jury. Lilah's good. But she's not that good.
Lindsey thinks she's a heartless bitch.
Healthy. Balance.
Lilah wonders if Mr. Hunt would think this is healthy.
Four years as something akin to partners and they almost never touch.
Except when Lilah has a worse day than usual and she comes into Lindsey's office and locks the door behind her. He looks up from his desk and raises his eyebrows. Just to mess with her: he knows why she's there.
He pushes his chair back as she comes around his desk, and she climbs into his lap, running her fingers through his hair.
"Bad day?" he murmurs just before she silences him with a bite and a kiss.
Lilah almost never speaks during these encounters, except when Lindsey breaks her control and she moans indistinguishable things into whatever they're using for a gag. But Lindsey likes to talk to her, whispering his usual biting sarcasm to her in his rough, husky voice.
Lilah would eat her entire shoe collection before she admitted it, but his southern accent gets her hot. His speeches during client meetings make her want to rip his clothes off with her teeth, even as they make her want to see him in a fatal car accident.
Healthy competition.
She strips his tie off and drops it on the floor. They'll wind up there eventually anyway in case they want to use it as a gag.
Not that Lindsey's twelve thousand dollar desk chair can't support the both of them, but it's a slightly awkward angle.
Sure enough, Lindsey kicks the chair out from under them, dropping them to the floor with Lilah on top.
She reaches for his zipper and he props himself up on his right elbow to kiss her as his good hand works the buttons on her skirt. She wraps a hand around him and his body tightens, every muscle going taut. Lilah tangles the fingers of her free hand in his hair and brings his head up just to watch his eyes smoke over.
She shifts her hand slightly and he flinches. Her tight grip and the lack of lubrication almost painful.
Lilah smiles, having done it on purpose.
Healthy.
Like hell.
She reaches up into his desk drawer, searching for the bottle she knows he keeps there, and Lindsey drops back onto the floor and moans at the first full, smooth, tight stroke.
She doesn't hate him when they're like this. She's not quite sure why; she's fucked men for power or opportunity before, sex doesn't change her opinion of a person, unless it's for the worse. But somehow, lying on the floor with Lindsey like thick, muscled velvet in her hand, she can't hate him.
And she knows that this isn't about power, or an opportunity to screw the other over, because Lindsey doesn't work that way, and she didn't come to him the first time because she had a motive.
Actually, she came to him the first time because she was furious. She can't remember why, some meeting he had completely dominated probably. She showed up outside his door and he let her in and gave her a drink and traded insults with her until she lost it and just screamed at him. And then he pushed her up against the wall and kissed her until she couldn't see straight.
Lindsey's mouth should be outlawed. Or maybe insured.
He manages to get her skirt off eventually, drags her up his body to kiss her and rolls them until they're under his desk and he's on top.
Lilah prefers to be on top with anybody but him. Again, she's not sure why.
Maybe it's got something to do with the physical aspect. Mostly she uses sex as a tool, so the men she sleeps with are gangly, bespeckled business men.
Lindsey is different.
For all that he's only an inch taller than she is (and looks several inches shorter due to her heels) Lindsey makes her feel submissive.
The first time she saw him naked she was stunned.
She knew he was broad shouldered, because you can't hide that in a suit, but a lawyer could easily just have a broad shouldered frame. Lindsey has the muscle to go with it.
He's still mostly clothed, but she slides her hands over his chest, tracing the curves and dips that only come from serious physical labor. She supposes it's from his college basketball days and the fact that he prefers to work on his own cars rather than let a mechanic change the oil, and she knows the muscle tone will fade eventually.
She'd be sorry about that, but odds are one or both of them will be dead by then.
Lindsey slides inside her and he's big enough that it's just this side of pain. Lilah likes pain.
Healthy.
She wonders what Holland Manners would think if he knew Lindsey was nailing her to his office floor on a semi-regular basis. If Holland was alive, that is.
She wonders if maybe Holland did know.
Lindsey shifts the angle of his hips and thrusts into her, slow and deep.
"Am I not holdin' your interest, Lilah?" He drawls into her ear, and she makes a strangled sound that's somewhere between a sigh and a groan.
Bastard. He knows exactly what his voice does to her.
Her body tightens around him and he draws a shaky breath even as he wraps his hand around her throat. A reminder to keep silent.
Lilah arches into the hand, wanting that edge of risk even though the bruises will be almost impossible to hide.
Healthy. Suicidal is more like it.
She wonders if Lindsey's professional deathwish is rubbing off on her.
He dips his head and finds the spot on her collarbone that makes her bite back a scream until his hand around her throat cuts off her air and she's left to try and catch her breath in ragged gasps.
Lindsey clucks his tongue at her. "Really gotta try harder than that, sweetheart."
Bastard.
She starts to call him something uncomplimentary, but he cuts her off by putting his hand over her mouth, and then by doing something with his tongue that makes her grateful for the hand.
She arches backwards and thrashes as much as his body weight on top of her will allow, her hands clawing at his shoulders.
Maybe the fact that she can't hate him during sex has something to do with the equally damning fact that he can do things like this to her.
Lindsey lifts his head and grins down at her.
Smug, self-righteous, arrogant son of a….Oh god. Oh my…oh my god.
If that wasn't the reason she can't hate him, Lilah thinks, it sure as hell is now.
Only having one hand puts Lindsey at a distinct disadvantage, so he does things to free that hand, like stuff his tie in her mouth instead of keeping his hand over it, so that he can use that hand in other places. Like, under her shirt, for example, where he…ohgodyesfuckyes…
She screams ineffectually and she's close, so close.
Lindsey flicks his tongue into her ear and whispers, "Close, darlin'?"
Lilah makes a frantic sound and her hips rock up to meet his increasingly erratic thrusts. He's on the edge.
He slips his hand down between them and brings her right to the teetering precipice…and holds her there.
"Scream. My. Name." he breathes against her throat, and he finds the spot inside her that makes her tighten like a bow and claw at his back and she comes screaming.
Somewhere in the middle she realizes that, yes, she is in fact screaming his name. But he won't be able to understand her through both the gag, and his own shuddering climax.
That's good. If he knew he could get her to do that, she'd have to kill him.
Lindsey pulls his crumpled tie from her mouth and they lie tangled together and panting under his desk.
There are bruises on her hips, throat, and inner thighs, and a sucker bite on one breast.
They crawl out from under the desk and Lindsey twists to reveal that she's clawed rents in the material of his shirt along his back and shoulders.
He smirks at her.
Healthy, balanced competition.
Yeah fucking right.
A/N: Stole a partial line from Dana Woods and a partial (very partial) line from theyxboombang whose stuff I am constantly pimping. Always practice safe sex…Lindsey and Lilah just…forgot.