Several hours later they had spec'ed out transfer protocol for the information he needed. She supposed it was a small price to pay to get him out of her hair. And besides, Marshall could whip up some kind of tracker to imbed in the electronic files so that they could follow his movements from afar. Where she was safe from this insanity.
They moved into the den and sat on the couches, pouring over what little information Sark had pulled together on Wells.
He stood up to retrieve something from the bookcase, from a hollow book, when the idea struck her. He had just turned, and was standing in a shaft of late afternoon sunshine coming through a west window. She should beat him to the punch, take the threat out of his game before he could use it against her. Get close to him and get her rings back.
She rose to her feet, her knees a little weak. "Sark," she breathed, "Come here."
To her surprise, he obeyed without hesitation. He crossed the distance to her in two unhurried strides, so close that they were toe-to-toe. The air between them was electric; how should she approach him? She was pretty sure if he'd respond in kind if she slapped him. Better to catch him off guard…
She raised her hand and placed it on his stomach, just below where she guessed his belly button was. He was very warm through the thin layer of cloth- or was it the heat of her own palm? She could feel sticky wetness between her legs. It's not cheating, she told herself.
Nothing is private, her own words hissed back at her.
What was this, he wondered. This was not a side of Agent Bristow he'd seen. Aside from that biting kiss she'd administered at that club 3 years ago, she'd never laid a hand on him except to hurt him.
Her mouth had been hot on his around the cool pebbled skin of the lime, which she'd sucked out of his lips and clamped her teeth on his lower lip. It had surprised him, but in a good way. He dimly remembered, as the thumb on the hand she'd placed on his gut slipped under the waistband of his trousers, how he'd squeezed her ass as she'd bitten him.
God, that ass. That everything. She was taller than Lauren, harder than Allison. And they expected something from him that he couldn't find in himself—even Lauren, with her exhibitionist tendencies. A lover. Some kind of reliable tenderness in the swirling dark underworld they'd become part of.
That was not his strong suit.
Her thumb fell below the line of where his shirt was tucked in, and their skin met. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as her thumb traced a half-moon shape across his abs. He suspected she was playing with him, but he'd take it as long as he could.
His skin was softer than she'd expected. Someone this calculated didn't seem like they should have tender skin.
His breathing quickened when she moved the pad of her thumb back and forth across his abs, and against her better judgment, so did hers. Her throat closed when she thought of Sark, of fucking him. Was she playing right into his plan?
Finally he raised his hand and put in on her left shoulder, and drew her close to him. She didn't move her feet, but rather leaned her whole body into the space between them. She slid her whole hand under his shirt, then, and he leaned towards the muscle spanning between her neck and her shoulder. For an agonizing second, he paused so close she could feel his moist shallow breath on her skin, then she felt his sharp, even teeth squeezing her skin. Hard.
"Ah!" she yelped, but he didn't pull away. "Don't—"
Don't, what?
"You're going to leave marks," she half whispered, her voice leaving her somewhere midsentence. She knew it to a nanometer how rough she and Michael could be with each other without there being evidence for all to see, but this was… unpredictable. She glanced sideways and saw that he didn't have her necklace around his neck—where was it?
Surprised at her admonishment but unwilling to stop, he kept his mouth there and increased the pressure slightly. "Don't you want a souvenir?" he mumbled against her skin.
It was too far gone to stop now, she realized. She hadn't expected him to acquiesce so soon. And she was aching for someone, anyone, even Sark, to give her a good fuck.
She yanked back from his bite and backhanded him across the face.
He just laughed, rubbing his jaw with his hand, and smiled a slow, amused smile at her. "So it is true then, what they say."
"Shut up," she said, her voice surprisingly low and savage sounding, and she grabbed the sides of his face.
He had been bluffing, his plan to send her rings home and make Vaughn suffer, wondering if she were pregnant by him or by Vaughn, but this was way better, he decided in an instant. Why not go for it? He didn't owe that smug SOB anything. Except perhaps payback for several broken noses and a broken shoulder.
He shoved her down on his bed upstairs, her nails scratching at the back of his neck as he pinned her down with his body. It'd been awhile for him. He was young, though. How much older was she than him? He'd heard that women got really randy in their 30's- biological clock and all that- but he didn't realize it would be so… fierce.
Something steely flashed in her eyes, more like behind her eyes, when he looked at her as he bent to kiss her. She reminded him in that instant of her mother. Irina had the same gaze when she needed you for something. And thinking of Irina at a time like this made him mildly embarrassed and not a little scared for his life.
She was so hot she felt like she was burning-- a horrid cliché, he realized, as it flashed through his mind-- but true. After the initial slap their violence was mostly contained to biting, though he did grab one of her wrists, circling it with his thumb and forefinger and stretching it out above their heads. Her wrists were that small.
Her remaining hand found its way to his fly and unzipped it anyway, as he used his free hand to unclasp her bra under her back. She had nice breasts; he'd seen them in the decontamination room in Paldisky, when he'd bargained Sloane's life in return for the antidote to cure Vaughn.
Ah the tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. Shakespeare.
He knew had to release her arm eventually, so that he could pull off her jeans. First, though, he yanked up her shirt, exposing her stomach to his teeth. He trailed his mouth down, below her belly button to the waistband of her jeans, not so much kissing her stomach as nipping it; then in a rush he let her go, slipped the button from its hole and hooked his hands on the waistband at the sides of her hips. He pulled down her jeans and underwear--fairly boring black cotton bikinis, he noticed with a trace of disappointment--in one movement, and as he drew them from her ankles she sat up and pulled off her shirt.
Magnificent. She lay, propped up on one elbow, her knobby, scarred knees together, terribly demure for someone who was ripping her clothes off.
He was still clothed, a terrible hindrance in the face of what was about to occur. She sprang to her knees in front of where he stood at the edge of the bed, and yanked down his trousers.
He forced himself to unbutton his shirt- he liked this one too much to have it ripped- and to slow down as he felt her teeth and tongue on the tip of his sex. Dear god, this was like back at the academy, a clandestine visit from the girls at the boarding school up the way.
After he drew off his shirt he cupped his hand under her chin, forcing her gaze up at him even as she continued to give him what was, quite possibly, one of the most divinely sweet blow jobs he'd ever experienced.
She brought him to the brink with her mouth, until she could taste that little bit of pre-cum on the back of her tongue. Mostly though, she wanted him to think she was nuts for him.
Well, she was, but not specifically for him. Just a for hard, hot cock in general.
When she knew he was almost there, she pulled back. She wanted some satisfaction from him before he was worthless to her.
Before she could even look up at him, he was on her, pushing her onto her back. She didn't even try to resist- what point would there have been?—and besides, his sex was still slippery with her saliva. Just in case she wasn't very wet.
That was not, however, the case. He was in her in an instant, but then he lay quite still. She realized then that he was trying, desperately, not to just cum in her and leave her blue. How considerate.
"You're wet like a mango," he breathed against her neck. "So… slippery."
Mmmm, mango. It make her think of her honeymoon.
He and Vaughn, she decided, were about the same size, just… different. Their bodies felt different. His torso was slighter somehow, he was a bit taller, or… she wasn't sure. Slowly, so as not to move around too much under him, she drew her legs up around his waist and crossed her ankles over his back.
"Mmpf," he grimaced against her shoulder. "You might be the death of me."
"Just fuck me," she snapped, wanting the sweet release that he was teetering towards. It had been weeks since she'd come.
It seemed to snap him out of his reverie, and he propped himself up on one elbow to look at her.
He had no way of knowing what went on between her and Vaughn, but it didn't seem to be much of anything. Either that, or she was a phenomenal nympho, he thought.
He obeyed her demand, pulling back from where he'd shoved into her in a rush. She was still so hot, and so tight. He wondered if she was deliberately squeezing him or if she was just naturally this…
God, the very thought of it threatened his ability to maintain control.
He'd never been with a woman who was so… brutally forward, he realized. Most girls played it coy, even when they were desperate for a good fucking. Sydney had none of that coquettishness about her. He allowed his mind to wander to what she might've been like as a teenager. She's 6 years older than me, he remembered dimly reading her birth date in a file, she would've been 16 when I was 10.
That didn't make a bit of difference now, though, as they lay tangled together in the afternoon sun. Her legs were around his waist- she didn't even try to resist him- and her arms were around him now. Her teeth, tugging at the lob of his right ear as the nails of her right hand scratched his shoulder blade.
She drew a sharp breath, without letting go of his ear. "Sark," she breathed. She'd always called him by his last name. He wondered, a second or so before he couldn't resist any longer and he let himself come, whether she called her husband by his first or last name when they fucked.
It was a second after she'd whispered his name that he'd come in her, in a hard, wet rush- his body arched over her slightly and the muscles along his spine felt like steel cables under her fingertips. His final thrust was so hard it actually hurt a little, which pushed her over the edge.
She arched back, too, her shoulders almost up off the bed and squeezed her thighs close to his waist in delight. She spasmed around him, uncontrollable with ecstasy.
Her breathing was so ragged that she wasn't sure whether she would pass out or not for a minute. Sweet Jesus, he was a good lay. She knew she'd been desperate, but she usually didn't tremble like this afterwards. Her whole body felt like Jell-o.
The last thing she thought, before she closed her shaking eyelids, was of the song she'd listened to on the plane:
Unwanted uninvited kin it creeps beneath your crawling skin it lives without it lives within you
Feel the fever comin' you're shakin' and twitchin' you can scratch all over but that won't stop you itchin'
Can you feel a little love? Can you feel a little love? Dream on, dream on. . .
Blame on your karmic curse or shame it on the universe it knows its lines it's well rehearsed
It sucked you in it dragged you down to where there is no hallowed ground where holiness is never found
Payin' debt to karma, your body for a living, what you take won't kill you but careful what you're giving
Songs:
1 "Dream On." Exciter, Depeche Mode.