1 .
Johanna feels his kiss run through her in an instant and settle between her legs. She knows she was daring him, but somehow it is still unexpected.
He tastes smoky and sweet and infinitely familiar, and when he runs a hand down to her lower back, bringing her even closer to him, her entire body thrills.
They are at his door in what seems like a second, and she slips a hand under the waistband of his pants as he fumbles with his keys.
"You certainly don't get girls because of your decorating skills," she breathes as he basically carries her into his apartment. "It looks like a creepy loner who was recently robbed lives here."
His television sits directly on the ground, across from the one piece of real furniture in the place, a clearly secondhand and very ugly couch. There is a cheap folding table covered in papers by the window, and a cardboard box that is serving the place of a side table sits next to the couch, topped with a half filled glass of water.
"Nope," he says as he pins her against the wall with her legs wrapped around his waist and runs a trail of kisses down her neck.
She sighs, throwing her head back and running her hands through his thick, dark hair. Her fingers brush points of ridged scar tissue as they run down his neck.
"And then you bring some other girl home and fuck her and try to forget everything and everyone and especially her, right?" she whispers softly into the top of his head.
He rears back, his face dark and steely as he looks at her.
"Why do you pretend to be such a bitch?"
"Who says I'm pretending?" she asks, matching his stare even though the look he is giving her scares her a little.
"I know you are," he says as he grips her under her legs and carries her in the direction of his couch.
"Maybe I am just having a little fun."
She runs her tongue along his ear as he dumps her on the arm of the couch.
"Maybe I don't like your type of fun," he whispers back, hiking her shirt up as she fumbles and eventually succeeds with the buttons of his pants.
He rips her pants down, and spins her around so she is bent over the arm of the couch. He runs one hand all the way down her front until it is between her legs, feeling how excited she is with one finger while he uses his other hand to pull her hair, arching her back towards him. She gasps.
"I think," she inhales sharply as she guides him into her, "actually, you do," she lets out in a sigh.
He groans softly as he thrusts into her, powerful and satisfying. Her fingers dig deeply into the rough fabric of his couch.
It feels so good and so right she doesn't want it to stop, but at the same time she wants the sweet release of what is building inside of her. She tightens around him, moaning quietly because she can't stop herself, and takes one hand off the couch to play with herself in time with him.
When she feels his long strokes shudder with something barely being kept in, she can't stop it, and let's herself be overcome with the release of everything that had building up inside of her since before she even knew it. She can't stop the noises she is making, especially as he groans again, rough and guttural in her ear, and his hand presses firmly, involuntarily, into the soft flesh of her breast, marking red indentations in her pale skin.
He collapses a little on top of her as he finishes, pushing her into the hard arm of the couch, but she likes the feeling of his warmth pressed against the length of her, his hair tickling her bare skin. As soon as she catches her breath again, she laughs out loud.
"Nice one Hawthorne," she says as she flips over under him, grabbing his chin and kissing him lightly.
She slips out under his arm and pulls up the pants that were pooled around her ankles. Neither of them had taken off their boots. They both knew the other kept a knife in theirs.
"That was unexpected," Gale says from the couch, where he had basically rolled as she moved out from under him. He has pulled his pants back up, but they are still undone, and his shirt is in a pile by the door.
"What?" She asks from the kitchen, where she is filling a glass of water at the sink.
"All of it," he says, not moving. "You. Your underwear…"
"What?" She looks down at her underwear, which is soft and lacy and a dusty pink. "What the hell are you talking about? What were you expecting? What were you doing thinking about my underwear?"
He looks embarrassed for a second.
"I wasn't. I – just – uh... I guess I was expecting black and spikes and chains or something."
She laughs.
"That's just for when you're bad."
She walks over to pick her jacket up off of the floor, drinking deeply from the glass.
"You aren't staying?" he asks quietly.
She laughs again. "No."
"Let me walk you to your room then," he says as he starts to do up his pants.
"I can handle myself," she says as she walks over to him, handing him the half full glass with a dark smile. "I don't need anyone to protect me."
Right before she opens the door that leads back out to the cold cement hallway of the building, she turns back to him.
"Finish the play structure tomorrow morning?"
He nods with a smile that he manages to hold in until he hears the door close behind her.
She walks back to the boarding house quickly, the insides of her thighs sticky and a humming energy running through her body.
She doesn't realize until she is toweling off her hair in the safety of her own room that she got into the shower quickly, unthinkingly, for the first time since before the arena.