Near the end, Tom's kisses were often placating, a distraction, a means to an end. The day Liz noticed how often his attempts at romance were purposely timed to divert her attention away from something suspect was the day she let herself admit it had always been that way, to some extent. It was little comfort that her tendency to be withdrawn and reserved about her feelings meant he hadn't known her nearly as well as he thought he had. He still played her like a fiddle and embarrassingly well, at that.
It wasn't until Red, with his own calculated moments of physical contact, came into her life that she started to recognize Tom's machinations. It took Red's intentionally casual touches to realize how easy it would be to read Tom's as intentional as well. The biggest difference in her mind between what the two men were doing was that Red never tried to hide it. She was a profiler, well-versed in psychology, and he was a criminal, a highly intelligent one. He knew her guard would be up around him by default and he wasn't foolish enough to think she wouldn't see his touches for what they were.
He needed her to become accustomed to working with him in a very short amount of time, to be in tune with his signals, to be able to read, react, and play off him without a second thought. The contact served as a strange sort of crash course in how to deal with him, teaching her to be comfortable around him, to follow his lead, and it was vital to their success as partners, so she let him do it. It kept them both alive. And if somewhere along the line, his touches started to make her feel things other than a necessary familiarity with him? Well, she did her damnedest to try to ignore it.
She couldn't afford to let herself think there could be anything more to their relationship than what it was on the surface. It was one of many reasons she never considered what it would be like to kiss Red, not up until the moment it happened. A real, proper kiss—she didn't count what she'd done earlier, which was more of a strategic maneuver than a kiss. She also didn't count the odd, fleeting dream now and then, because she always woke up, confused and flustered, before anything really happened, and had trouble meeting his eyes the next day while she tried very hard to not consider it.
His well-timed, well-placed touches did nothing to prepare her for the reality of kissing him, because even if she had given it any thought, she would have expected it to fall in line with every other aspect of the man: deliberate, meticulous, methodical. As it turned out, that expectation couldn't be further from the truth.
Red's kisses were anything but premeditated. The urgent slide of his lips against hers, the way he clutched her to him like he was afraid she might disappear, the little moans and sighs she drew out of him when she nipped here or sucked there—everything felt so spontaneous, so decidedly unplanned, it made her light-headed. This man had offered himself up to her as a punching bag and now he relinquished even more of his vaunted self-control and kissed her not with artifice or ulterior motive, but with passion and yearning, because he wanted to, wanted her. She hadn't been kissed with such obvious desire for years. Perhaps ever.
Again, when compared to Raymond Reddington, Tom Keen came up lacking in the worst possible way.
"I'm sorry," Red said when he pulled back, wiping a smudge of his blood from her chin. His lip looked sore and raw, but he didn't seem to mind. "I didn't think I'd ever get the opportunity to do that. I got a little carried away."
"It's fine. More than fine. If anyone got carried away tonight, it's me."
He cupped her cheek and smiled. "You have my permission to get carried away with my person in that way whenever you like." He had that reverent look in his eye, like she hung the moon and the stars, like if he let her go and turned away at the same time, she might fade away like the wisps of a dream upon waking. She still wasn't ready to accept what it might mean; no one ever looked at her like he did, like she mattered, and she was afraid to put a name to it for fear of being wrong again.
"Come on," she said, uncomfortable both from his attention and the awkward position they were still in on the floor, "we can't stay here all night."
"Mmm. Five more minutes," he said, hooking his chin over her shoulder and occasionally turning to press languid kisses along her neck.
"If you fall asleep on me, you're going to regret it."
She felt his chuckle rumble through his chest. "I don't doubt it."
She wondered if post-orgasmic Red was always this blissful or if it was because of her. The thought that it was possibly—probably—the latter made her stop him when he moved to stand up and press her lips to his in a desperate, needy kiss. She only pulled away far enough to rest her forehead against his, the fingers of one hand tangled in his shirt collar and the other threaded through the hairs at the nape of his neck that were just long enough to grasp. She trailed a hand down to play with the hair at the open v of his shirt as she waited for her breathing to return to normal.
His lips twitched in an amused little smirk. "I thought you wanted to get up."
She tore her gaze away from his chest to search his face. "I don't know why you let me do that to you earlier," she said, running a thumb gently over his split lip.
"Besides the obvious?" She snorted and nodded. "Your world is spinning out of your control. You deserve to have some of it back, if only for a few minutes."
"Thank you," she said.
When he tried to stand again she didn't stop him. He reached a hand down to help her up as well, steadying her when she faltered from rising too quickly. "You OK?" he asked, cradling the back of her head. She nodded and he twitched another smile. "Help yourself to anything in the suite. I won't be more than fifteen minutes."
She watched him disappear into the bedroom without shutting the door behind him and a few moments later, she heard the shower turn on. She took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. Was this where she envisioned the night ending when she decided to come here? Certainly not consciously. She wasn't entirely sure where she stood on the issue subconsciously, but she never would have guessed venting her frustrations would include attacking and essentially seducing the FBI's Most Wanted Number Four on the floor of his hotel suite.
Did she regret what they'd done?
No. Not at all. A little thrill ran through her at the thought of a repeat performance, preferably with more skin and less blood.
She sighed. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she felt drained, emotionally and physically. She stifled a yawn and made her way to his bedroom.
Red's customary blankets lay folded across the foot of the bed. Despite all they'd experienced together over the past few months, whenever she caught a glimpse of them, it felt like she'd been inadvertently made privy to a hidden corner of his psyche, a secret place that people like Ressler, with his disregard for profiling, skipped right over. At night, Raymond Reddington needed the warm comfort of blankets in order to feel safe.
He was so often larger than life. The fact that he could need something as simple as blankets, or someone as ordinary as herself, was very difficult to wrap her mind around. She felt almost embarrassed by the knowledge, because it spoke of a desire for security she herself knew all too well. The humanity—the normality—of it made it hard for her to breath.
To distract herself, she searched through the dresser for something suitable for her to sleep in, all the while fighting the urge to profile the man even further based on the way he organized his underthings. Sometimes she wished the analytical part of her brain came with an off switch. When she was tired, her deductions had a tendency to make less and less sense.
Suddenly, the shower stopped running. She hastily grabbed a pair of boxers and a tank top and changed into them as quickly as her sore limbs would allow, before peeling back the blankets and crawling into bed.
He stopped short when he emerged from the bathroom, a split second of surprise flitting across his face when he noticed her there, but it was swiftly replaced with a pleased smile. "I see you've made yourself at home."
He slid under the covers quickly, as if he was afraid if he hesitated, she would leave. She had a brief flash of what he might have been like as a young man, less sure of himself, more vulnerable. It made her reach out to him, running her hand up and down his arm where his t-shirt sleeve clung snuggly around his bicep. His skin was soft and shower-warm, and he smelled faintly of soap. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against his in a sleepy kiss that he returned in kind.
"I think I should warn you. I'm not a sound sleeper."
"That makes two of us." He pushed her hair back from her temple and let his hand linger there for a few moments. "It's been a long couple weeks. Maybe now you can find some peace, at least for a little while."
She tucked herself into his side and rested her head on his chest, letting the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest lull her to sleep.
Liz woke a few hours later to find herself spooned against Red's back, her fingers toying absently with the hair on his belly where his t-shirt had ridden up in his sleep. She started to pull her hand away but he caught it, bringing it back to his stomach. He laced his fingers with hers briefly, gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, then left it there to seek her bare leg behind him and knead the muscles of her thigh.
Hesitant, she skimmed her fingers under the waistband of his pajamas, testing the waters. His hand stilled for a moment. She held her breath and waited for his reaction. When he moved to loosen the drawstring so his pants fell lower on his hips, allowing her better access, she breathed a sigh of relief and slid her hand further under the fabric. He was already half-hard.
She shifted closer for a better angle, legs tangled with his, breasts pressed against his back. He pushed into her fist when she closed it around him, encouraging her to stroke him, which she did, feeling him stretch and swell against her hand, his skin shockingly hot. She hooked her chin over his shoulder; she could feel the tension in his body, hear his erratic breathing at her ear as she moved.
"Lizzy…" There was an edge to his voice and a raggedness to the movement of his hips that told her he was fast approaching the point of no return. She pulled her hand away and he made a strangled noise in his throat. She tugged at his shoulder and he turned, blindly seeking her lips with his while he settled himself between her thighs. She shoved his pajamas further down his legs while he did the same to the boxers she'd borrowed. Their hands clashed as they both reached to position him; after a few frantic moments of fumbling, he managed to align himself and push forward. They groaned into each other's mouths as he finally slid inside her.
She could feel him trembling against the urge to move and tightened herself around him; he sucked in a breath through his teeth, thrusting reflexively before he could stop himself.
"Careful," he bit out, forcing his hips to still again. A few deliberate, calming breaths later and he rocked his hips, withdrawing almost completely before pressing back in, slow and steady.
A twist of his hips at the end of each thrust ground his pubic bone against her. "Yes," she hissed, cheek pressed against his, as he continued like this, pace increasing a bit more every time she tightened her inner muscles. Still, she needed more of him, needed him closer, needed to forget just for a moment the wreck of her life and just feel. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, dug her fingernails into the skin of his ass, and rocked up to meet his downstrokes.
It didn't take much longer for her to tip over the edge. He followed soon after, groaning hoarsely when she bit him again.
"Always with the teeth," he said, breathless, once he could focus enough to speak. He brought his fingers to his neck to check if she'd broken the skin. She hadn't, but it would likely develop into a nice addition to the collection of bumps, bruises, and scrapes she'd given him tonight. "You and your mouth—you get to have all the fun."
A slow, devious look spread across his face and it was a credit to how well and truly sated she was that she didn't immediately figure out what he was up to when he started to slide down the bed.
"Wait, you don't have to—oh my God."
He was as thorough and as skillful with this as with anything else she'd seen him do. She had half a mind to protest further, but, really, it had been too long since anyone had done this for her with such obvious enthusiasm. Then he curled his fingers just so and conscious thought failed her once again.