Title: Much Ado About Something 2/3
Summery: The Home Secretary's recently divorced daughter is on the prowl again. She's decided she wants her third husband to have a title and Sir James Lester has no other option than to fight fire with fire.
Spoilers for series 1-3.
Words: 4,946
Rating: T and M in chapter 2.
Disclaimer: I don't own Primeval
A/N: This plot bunny hopped into my brain and I had to get it out.
I'd like to thank the lovely Fredbassett for beta'ing this for me. All remaining mistakes are totally my own.
A/N: This chapter is a mild M. Don't read if that offends you.
O-o-o-o-o-o
James actually ducked out of work a few minutes early to prepare for his visitor's arrival. He cleaned out the diictodon's sandbox. He vacuumed and swept and he couldn't resist spritzing a little air freshener around to cover up the musty smell of reptiles. He was normally a very tidy person anyway so there wasn't all that much to do but he still had to fuss about something. She was coming over.
She didn't even have the courtesy to call him before she turned up on his doorstep. He didn't even bother to ask how she knew where he lived. He probably didn't want to know.
She was smiling at him when he opened the door. "Miss me?" Christine Johnson teased him as she walked inside. "Nice place."
Any other comments she might have made were cut off by Rex swooping into the room and landing on one of the perches James had installed near the ceiling when he'd got tired of Rex landing on him for want of a better landing site. She gawked at him for a moment and James cursed himself for not remembering to lock the dratted lizard up with the other two.
"You kept Rex?" She was at once shocked and delighted as the lizard trilled curiously down at her. "He's beautiful!"
James was surprised. "I never had you pegged for a lizard girl."
"I'm not, really." Christine moved until she was close enough to reach up and scratch Rex's head. For a prehistoric creature he could be quite an attention whore. He chirped happily and jumped down onto her shoulder. She held very still as he investigated her hair, still trilling and chirping. "There's an actual dinosaur sitting on me." The awe in her tone and expression conveyed exactly how gobsmacked she was to have a flying reptile nosing through her hair. James suddenly understood why she wanted into the ARC project so badly. He softened towards her, just a little. Then he remembered how incredibly ruthless she was and he made a concentrated effort to focus on the fact that her cut-throat nature was why she was currently in his home.
He forced himself to relax again.
"Amazing isn't it? He does tend to grow on you."
Loud chuffing and grunting from down the hall interrupted them. Sid and Nancy so hated to be confined when they knew he was home. Christine tossed him a truly inscrutable look and headed down the hallway towards the noises before he could stop her. He groaned loudly and followed her. Rex bobbed his head happily from her shoulder.
"Look at the playroom!" she exclaimed as she reached the source of the noise. Sid and Nancy were headbutting the steel baby-gate he had set up to keep them confined. Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Grunt! Thunk! Whistle! Thunk! He'd got used to ignoring their ploys for attention and had forgotten how noisy they could be.
Christine was leaning over the gate, examining them. "What are these little fellows?"
Rex leapt off her shoulder into the 'playroom' and scampered up the logs and branches were hanging from the ceiling.
"They're Diictodons," he told her gruffly. "My personal annoyance. That one's Sid and the other is Nancy." James reached past her and opened up the baby gate.
They bolted out into the hallway while she knelt down and proceeded to treat them like a couple of puppies. That was exactly how they were used to being treated so they got along. James rolled his eyes and was just happy they weren't bothering him right now.
"How many creatures did you keep away from that corporation?" she asked as she tickled Nancy's back. "And does your management company know that you've grown a small jungle in here?"
"It's not a small jungle," he said crossly. "It was self defense. They're burrowers." It really wasn't a small jungle. He had merely built a wooden frame about four feet high and filled it with dirt. There was just enough room for him to walk around the edge of the bedroom. He had laid thick plastic down to protect the floor and then laid thin sheets of steel flashing on top of that to keep them from going through the floor and giving his downstairs neighbour a heart attack.
He had put some plants in just so it didn't look so very ugly. The ferns were coming along nicely. There were also a few logs and things, just so they had something to play around to stop them bothering him all the time or digging through the walls. He hadn't approved all those purchase orders for toys and things for the creatures without learning that all animals had to be entertained or they would make their own entertainment, usually to his annoyance. Abby had succeeded in teaching him that at least in her brief time in his life.
Christine finally stood up and really checked out his creature room. He had got decorative metal fencing and bolted it up against the walls so they couldn't burrow out of this room. There were special lights installed in the ceiling so that the light in this room was brighter and whiter than in the hallway. It wasn't the reptile house at the zoo but he had managed an approximate equivalent, without the management company finding out.
"I never had you pegged for owning a sentimental side, James." She grinned at him like she had just discovered his deepest, darkest secret, which maybe she had.
He tried to brush it off. "They're pets. I really didn't see that the corporation could have had any particular use for them. They would have been miserable penned up like zoo animals." He gestured to them. "You can see that they're used to people. Connor had spoiled them rotten before I got them."
Nancy had rolled over and Christine started to scratch her belly like a dog.
"So you say," she teased him.
Sid started his usual butting up against his shin for food. That diictodon was a bottomless pit sometimes. James gave up ignoring him and went into the kitchen to feed them, again.
Christine followed him, and Rex flew past them and landed on the counter. Thank heaven Abby had managed to somehow housetrain him before she'd vanished, otherwise he most certainly wouldn't be allowed to fly over everything in the house.
"It's feeding time at the zoo," James joked weakly as he pulled out some fresh fruit and the chopping board. Connor had been very firm on how much better fresh fruit was for them than tinned. His exact words had been, "Abby would kill me if I gave them tinned fruit! You want me to be able to move back in with her someday, yeah?"
Thinking about that was depressing. He drew his attention back to the present. "Do you want to order the takeaway? I haven't yet."
"Sure," she agreed.
He pulled a stack of takeaway menus out of a drawer and set them on the counter. "Take your pick."
She looked at the fairly large stack. There was a menu for every restaurant that delivered in his area. "I see you order in often?"
"All the time. With just me here there's not much point in cooking," he said and then wondered why he'd told her that. It's not like that mattered at all.
Christine didn't answer him. Instead, she flipped through until she had isolated three Chinese menus and picked out the one she liked the best. "Any preferences?"
He looked over from where he was dicing up some fruit. "Get me the number thirty seven, and an extra order of egg rolls."
"Okay." She dialed the number. "Do you have cash?"
He rolled his eyes. "I'm paying again? Yes."
She ignored him while she placed the order.
James roughly chopped up some mangos and apples for Connor's pets. He dumped them in their bowls and added some salad mix and vegetables on top. The two diictodons bolted their food. To watch them eat it was hard to believe that they'd eaten just a few hours ago. Rex picked out all the fruit first, then the carrots, then the celery and then ate the lettuce. It took him four times longer to eat than the other two.
"We have to keep an eye on them," James told Christine while he wiped the counter top. "I can't line my whole house with metal fencing and they'll chew through the walls or floors if they get bored."
"All right. I'll help you keep an eye on your babies."
"They are not my babies," he objected strongly.
She tossed him a look that said otherwise but then elected to change the subject. "What film are we watching?"
"I don't know. I thought you would bring one," he replied as she went into the living room. He could tell just from her stance that by leaving the choice of film up to her, he had managed to annoy her. Didn't women like to pick the film? Apparently not.
"James, what would you have planned if I really was your girlfriend? Seriously, use your imagination."
"I imagine if you were really my girlfriend we could just sit on the sofa and watch TV." Not everything had to be a structured romantic moment! That sort of thinking could possibly be why he'd made a mess of things so often with woman.
"Fine then." She sat in the middle of the sofa and waited for him to sit down.
He thought it was a bit odd that she'd chosen the middle but he obligingly sat on her left and picked up the remote. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye for a moment before moving closer to him.
"What are you doing?" James asked, slightly worried as she started shuffling him around. She had shifted his arm up to the back of the couch and was now lying firmly against his body.
"Getting comfortable. We still have to work on your jumpiness." Christine put her feet up on the couch striking what was presumably meant to be a normal girlfriend pose.
He went as stiff as a board for a second before he forced himself to relax.
"Act normal," she cajoled.
He gave her a highly skeptical look but turned the television on. He flipped to the channel guide and paged down, not seeing anything he wanted to watch.
She did though! "Ohh, go back. A Fish Called Wanda is on."
James thought about protesting, but if truth be told he rather liked that film. He turned to it and they waited for the food to arrive. The Diictodons were barreling around the flat, playing tag with each other. Rex had settled on top of the screen and was flicking his tail in time to the noise from the television.
When the food arrived, he paid the delivery man and they ate in the living room off the coffee table, like normal people that were watching a movie. When she was done, she leaned back against him, ignoring the brief tensing in his body before he relaxed again.
When he was paying attention to the film he relaxed. If she shifted around and he was jolted into remembering that she was leaning against him, he tensed up.
When the film ended he started to get up and she pulled him back down onto the couch. "Hey."
"What? Aren't we finished for tonight? We've watched a film and had dinner." He was confused.
"James! You're still not totally relaxed," she countered. "The play's tomorrow. We have to remedy this!"
"I am relaxed!" he protested. "You've been lying on me for the past two hours. I can fake date you. Easy."
"No, you can't." Obviously intending to prove her point, Christine sat up totally, then leaned back over and rested her head on his shoulder.
He jumped and cursed himself for doing so. "Damn." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "What can we possibly try now?" He meant the question rhetorically since the evening was now over. When he looked at her she was grinning like a Cheshire cat. "What?"
"How familiar are you with grappling?"
Huh? He managed a slightly more articulate, "I beg your pardon?"
"Grappling," she repeated brightly then at his blank look elaborated. "Ground fighting. Self defence. Any of that?"
He thought deeply for a moment. "I got into a fight once at school and got suspended for popping another boy in the face. Does that count?" By her expression it didn't.
"James. Get on the floor."
That was how he found himself lying flat on his back on the living room floor trying to fend off the twin attentions of the diictodons whilst Christine was sitting on his chest trying to explain how this was supposed to go.
She was getting impatient. "Will you stop playing with your babies?"
"I'm not!" he protested while pushing them away again. Sid and Nancy thought that this was a wonderful new game and bounded back against his head, licking him and trilling.
"Oh for fuck's sake," she huffed and got up.
"Where are you going?" he demanded as she stalked into the kitchen.
"Where does it look like? You've obviously not taught them the command 'leave it'. I'm bribing them." Two seconds later she was back with a bunch of grapes in her hand and was obviously at a sudden loss as to what to call them. If they had been dogs or cats she would have known. He could see her groping for the right words. Puppies. Kitties. Dino's? She tried one. "Dinos? Here, babies." They spotted the grapes in her hand and stopped trying to molest James's hair. She lured them back into the kitchen and dropped the grapes into their bowl.
"Now that they're out of the way," she dropped back down to be sitting on his chest. "We can continue. Have you really only been in one fight in your life?"
He was highly insulted. "There's more to life than getting into fights."
"So yes then?" She didn't wait for him to answer before she started lecturing. "Every fight, if it isn't broken up, ends up on the ground and then the person that knows how to fight on the ground is going to win."
James protested, "How am I supposed to fight from flat on my back with you sitting on me? You're not exactly a light weight." The warning glint in her eye kept him from making another crack about her weight while he kept on complaining. "Not really possible."
"It's completely possible. You're in what's called 'under the mount'." She jabbed her finger into his chest with more force than was strictly needed. "I'm 'on the mount' and this -" She wiggled backwards and shoved his legs apart before he could work out what she was up to. A second later, she was sitting between his legs, hiking them up around her waist and watching him blush brighter than a fire engine. "This is 'in the mount'. Got it?"
His eyes widened and he nodded.
She climbed back up his body to sit on his chest again. "You can win the fight from any of those three positions and I actually like being under the mount the best because then your back's protected."
"Right," James responded in a strangled voice.
"Here's what I want you to do. Jab your elbows into my legs." She demonstrated the moves she wanted him to use.
He did, even though he knew it was in a most half-arsed fashion.
"Now do it again." She grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head.
"Hey!" he yelped and tried to ignore the breasts right in front of his face.
"Are you going to let me keep you here?" she asked when she realised he was frozen.
Abruptly, he yanked one hand free and jabbed his elbow right into her leg, pushing her back. She let go of his other hand and tried to keep her balance as he tried to buck her off.
He didn't get her far enough down on his body, but he tried. For a complete beginner, he knew he was a quick learner as she showed him the other ways to fight from under the mount. She got him locked up in an arm bar a couple of times before he worked out how to be quick enough to resist that one and once when he was in the mount she flipped him so fast he didn't have time to think that he was crouched between her legs.
Sid and Nancy thought it was great fun, the grapes long since devoured. They were darting in and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Sid nearly got flattened by James once when Christine was demonstrating pressure points and he spun completely around when he wasn't expecting a wrist lock to feel that painful that fast. It was a very educational lesson and by the end James knew why she hadn't been too worried about walking home from that restaurant the night before.
They only wrestled around for thirty or forty minutes but when she called it quits they were both sweaty and sore.
"I think that's enough for tonight." Christine stood up and offered him a hand up.
He grunted as she pulled him to his feet and winced. "I hope I won't be limping tomorrow."
"Take a nice hot shower, you'll limber up soon enough. We should have stretched first." Christine gathered up her purse and scratched Sid and Nancy one last time on her way to the door. "I had a lovely evening." She laid her hand on his arm and leaned in just a little, probably just to see what he would do.
He stiffened.
He knew what he'd done instantly and cursed.
So did she. "Damn it, James. What else are we going to have to do to get you to relax?"
"I have no idea," he despaired. "I just can't seem to relax totally around you." Now he glared. At her, "I blame you. Years of feuding."
"You blame me? What about you?" she countered as their history together flashed back into her mind, "Who exactly gave that order in Cairo?" Christine stopped herself before taking a trip down memory lane with him. "Wait, we can't fight about this now. We have to fix this or we're both screwed tomorrow." She pressed her hand to her forehead and was obviously trying to think.
He groaned at himself and his nervous reactions. "I'll put the kettle on."
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A cup of tea can fix many things but it can't make a solution appear instantly. So they had another cup of tea. It was halfway through the second cup that he saw the first twinkling of a plan start to percolate through her brain.
"I've got it!" She looked triumphant. "You aren't going to like it, but I know how to fix your jumpiness."
"What?" At that point he would have done anything, except more grappling. His back was still twinging and his elbow was stinging from that pressure point demonstration.
"I notice that when you're occupied with something, you relax. It's only when you're suddenly reminded that I'm here and that I'm me that you tense up."
That was hardly helpful. "Yes? So what am I going to do, take a nice crossword with me to the theatre?" He always enjoyed taking refuge in sarcasm.
"No, James. We're going to sleep together."
He nearly fell off his chair in shock. "Did you just say what I think you just said?"
"I said sleep, not sex," she elaborated. "In the same bed. I think that you just need more time around me and frankly this is the only thing I can think of."
He groaned and remembered how she had cautioned him to do whatever it was he normally did when a girl was coming over. Looks like he should have changed the sheets after all. "Did you plan this?" he demanded irritably.
"No!" She seemed highly insulted. "I didn't know you were this... uncomfortable around women! It's really making me wonder."
He glared.
She smiled.
He glared some more.
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So after that second cup of tea he found himself of standing in his bedroom with her right behind him digging out a pair of pajamas for her to use. She raised an eyebrow when he handed the black silk jacket and trousers but she didn't say anything. He showed her to the second bathroom and for some reason she giggled when she saw the basket full to the brim of hotel toiletries he had collected.
"Towel's in the cupboard, um...right. I'll leave you to it." He fled.
He came back out of his bathroom just as she walked into the bedroom. She didn't know it, but he had only just finished changing the sheets for fresh ones and making the bed back up. She walked over to the far side of the king-sized bed and slid in. She snuggled in and luxuriated in it for a minute. He knew his bed was cozy. He watched as she ran a hand over the sheets. Her own sheets were probably much nicer, but James didn't think his bedroom as too bad.
There was a bookshelf built into the wall on her side of the bed. She looked over the titles and seemed surprised to see several self-help titles. 'Fake your way in Mandarin' caught her eye along with 'The millionaire next door' and 'Seven secrets of highly successful people'. There was also a section of fiction. She seemed surprised by his taste for adventure fiction like the Dirk Pitt series and his fondness for Terry Pratchett. She got out of bed and grabbed a Tom Clancy
"Making yourself at home I see," he commented dourly as he got into the bed, to cover up his embarrassment at having his reading habits laid bare before his old enemy. Like her, he was wearing black silk pajamas that buttoned up the front and covered him from ankles to neck. She was on his side of the bed but he wasn't about to make her move. She didn't do anything except turn the page. He laid back and tried to relax. He couldn't. This was such a stupid idea. "Good night Christine."
"Good night, James." She clicked off the lamp on her side of the bed and snuggled under the covers up to her chin.
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It was the smell that weaved its way into his mind, the faint scent of lavender that had him snuggling in closer to his blanket. Warm and soft. He went further into his dream and started kissing impossibly soft skin. He hadn't had a wet dream this vivid in years.
He felt himself get hard and he rolled on top of his quilt. Instincts took over and he started to slowly rub himself against a warm body. The tantalizing feeling of hands roaming over his body only added to the sensations. He grabbed the one that was clutching his hip and pinned it up on the pillow, still falling into the soft, soft lips of his dream-woman.
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It was the heat of a man that started her sleeping mind going down that path. She reached out and pulled the quilt on top of her and fantasised that he wanted her. The fantasy was working. She opened her mouth and felt a convenient fold in her quilt in just the right place to kiss. It had been so long since she'd kissed a man. She pulled the coverlet close and sent her hands roaming over it.
The sensation of a horny man rubbing against her core had her moaning in her sleep and gripping the quilt. Suddenly her hand was pinned up by her head and another hand slipped under her shirt and cupped her breast. She moaned again and arched her hips against the quilt and didn't wonder how it was possible to have a dream this vivid. Her hand clenched what felt like a man's arse and the faintest thread of curiosity wove itself into her mind while she was in that hazy place between asleep and awake.
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He closed his hand around one perfect breast and rolled his thumb over the jutting, erect nipple. The moan that drew made him do it again, and again. Now the bunched-up quilt was thrusting against him, making his cock throb with desire. He ran his mouth down the neck of his dream-woman and sucked eagerly on her smooth skin. Now that his mouth wasn't muffling her moans they finally started penetrated into his conscience mind.
Quilts didn't moan.
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She was writhing with desire and arching against him when he started nibbling on her throat, little nips and sucks that had her clenching her hands, one against his hand and the other on his arse, pulling him closer. There were only a few thin pieces of silk separating them and she wanted them gone. He kept bumping himself against her and she wrapped her legs around him. Something about that distracted her from her dream-man. A quilt shouldn't be that solid, or that warm or have that spicy male smell.
She opened her eyes.
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He opened his eyes.
It was the sheer shock of what he saw sleepily looking up at him that kept him from moving for a moment. Dark brown eyes, with little light flecks like honey completely mesmerized him. Then he realized his hand was somehow under her shirt holding her breast and her hand was somehow under his pants clutching his bare arse. The fact that her legs were wrapped around him and he was keeping her other hand pinned on the pillow, with their fingers laced together just added to his completely paralysing shock.
It was her lips quirking up in a lazy smile that broke the spell.
James gasped out, "Bloody hell," and rolled off of her and laid flat on his back, trying to ignore the raging hard on in his pajama bottoms. She was going to kill him. He closed his eyes and waited for the fatal blow to fall. She was going to kill him and after the evening before, he knew she could do it with her bare hands.
What she actually said completely confused the hell out of him.
"I'm halfway tempted to tell you to get back over here and finish what you start." She stretched then gave a short laugh. "I imagine if I touch your arm now you won't twitch!"
"You did say to treat you like a girlfriend," he pointed out cautiously, not really believing that she wasn't going to go ballistic on him. "You insisted on sleeping in the same bed." She was probably trying to lull him into a false sense of security.
"I know," she replied ruefully as she scrubbed her face with her hands. "I know."
"Should I keep that up then?" he asked, trying not to sound worried.
"Treating me like a girlfriend? Yes."
He hadn't expected to be fed quite such a perfect opening. He pointed theatrically at the door. "Get in there and make me some breakfast!"
He wasn't at all surprised when her pillow came down on his head.
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She got up after pummeling him with the pillow for a minute, and went to change and presumably to get her hormones under control. James waited until she was gone before hurrying into the loo to take care of the result of his little morning adventure.
When he emerged into the rest of the house, he discovered that she hadn't followed his directions beyond making some coffee, but she had let the diictodons out. Sid was waiting when he came out of his bedroom and started his hopping and headbutting for breakfast.
"You could have fed them if you were going to let them out," he complained as he walked into the kitchen.
She set down the cup of coffee she had been drinking. "Can't, I've got to get home and change before work."
So it seemed she wasn't going to say anything about it. That was probably for the best.
"Tonight then?"
"Yes. Pick me up at six."
She knocked back the last of her coffee. "We'll get something to eat before the show," Christine said decisively.
It seemed like she was going to just pick up her bag and whirl out of his flat but at the last minute she walked over to him and leaned in. He watched her warily, but didn't jump or tense up.
"It seems that was just what you needed." She leaned in and brushed a kiss on his cheek, then smiled when she saw the tiniest hint of a blush appear on his cheeks. "I had a lovely time."
Before he could say anything else she slipped out of the door.
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