Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-05-02 15:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Luke and Wren
What: A visit, in simple terms. (1/2)
Where: Caesar's.
When: After this.
Warnings/Rating: Nothing serious yet.
Wren knew she had to calm herself before Luke arrived. She knew it, but it was easier said than done. The encounter with Alexander had left her a wreck, shaking and adrenaline and the knowledge that she’d come frighteningly close to slashing his face with the rattan cane that she still held between her fingers. She didn’t know how much time had passed, how close it was to Luke’s anticipated arrival time, and she couldn’t calm herself enough to check. She crossed the room, her grip on the cane never loosening, her fingers taking on indents from the ridges in the wood. She poured herself a whiskey, no ice, no water, no soda, and she swallowed it down in one sip, the burn doing nothing to calm her.
She wasn’t crying, and she wasn’t trembling - not with fear - no, she was leftover anger and impotence and the inability to control anything in her life. She’d spent five years carefully burying this feeling in the past, the one that came from being a victim, from waiting for life to dole out whatever punches it wanted to. She had forgotten how to get by, how to wake up each morning with that fear hanging over her head, how to go to sleep without it invading her nightmares. Since the incident with the fear gas, there had been nothing but nightmares, long strings of them, old and new and full of terrors. She was still too pale, and the skin beneath her eyes was still bruised, and she still woke to an orange pill bottle beside her bed. She wanted to hide beneath the blanket forts Gus was so fond of, but she couldn’t, and life just wouldn’t stop and let her catch up. She wanted off the ride, but there was no exit, and she was left trying to cope.
She knew Luke was angry, or that he was off, or that something was wrong; she’d known him too long not to know when he was hiding things, or pushing them away. She knew it was his way of not dealing with the things he didn’t want to deal with; he’d always done that when they were small and attempting to cope with things beyond them. She’d intended to get him up here and make him talk, because sex always made Luke talk, but now she wasn’t thinking clearly enough to plan anything, and that was dangerous, because all she wanted was to get rid of this anger and this adrenaline and the fear that made her gray eyes dark and fathomless.
The door was still ajar, left that way when Alexander left, and she paced in front of the open window like a caged thing. She wore a black corset that bared pink nipples when she moved, almost-nothing black underwear and thigh-highs in the same color. She’d kicked her stilettos off at some point, and her hair had started to slip from the perfect twist she had it in. The room didn’t smell of sex, but it was a mess of unmade sheets, and she was covered in a sheen of sweat. If she’d been thinking, she would have called the cleaning staff, and she would have changed, but she wasn’t thinking; she was pacing, a caged thing, reminiscent of the Gotham cat that prowled in her mind, the cane slicing through the air as she moved.
Luke had found himself growing increasingly restless as the days passed, ever since what had been an emotionally draining conversation with Thomas, and it was only his visits with Gus that encouraged him to keep trying, to keep fighting, rather than flying off the handle completely. Oh, Thomas had agreed to offer his help, however it was needed, which he knew would make all the difference, but it had come with a strict set of conditions. No violent behavior, he’d said, and should Luke disobey he knew the older man would find out and rescind his assistance. He couldn’t allow that to happen, even if it was proving more difficult than expected to curb his less than savory tendencies. It was a struggle to keep from hitting the streets after work, and sleep certainly didn’t come easily, if at all, and his apartment was empty. He attempted to distract himself by either allowing Bruce to cross or continuing his search for a new apartment, and a new job, but it only went so far. On his own, Bruce hadn’t been enough to fully sway him from his path, but in combination with Thomas and Gus there was no justification for him to offer himself in order to continue eliminating the criminals he crossed paths with.
The recent situation with Alex did have him worried, but Luke wasn’t afraid of him. He hadn’t been genuinely scared of anything or anyone in five years, since leaving New York, and a pathetic coward hiding behind drugs and gas wasn’t about to change that. If he followed through on any of his threats, he would pay, simple as that; promise or no promise. Luke was no hired killer, but he knew there were men like that out there, and if he could be careful enough, Thomas might never have to know-- if, of course, it came to that. He wasn’t expecting it to, because the villa had such high security, and Jack was a lethal bodyguard. Alex would find himself in a great deal of trouble if he tried anything.
After yet another shift that seemed to last forever, he clocked out and went to meet Wren without bothering to change. He tugged at his tie, which was a new addition, an attempt at showing upper management that he could be one of them, rather than a replaceable security guard who prowled the casino floors. He was tense, sure, and a little on edge, but he did want to see Wren, and there was no panic until he reached the right floor and saw that the door was ajar. It should have been closed, he knew. Locked. She would never leave it open. Luke approached warily, keeping his steps light, and waited a few seconds after his hand closed around the doorknob before rushing into the room as though expecting an attack or something similar.
There was none, he saw, just the sight of Wren pacing back and forth in the sort of outfit he’d never, ever seen her in. He stared first, unable to help it, before managing to tear his gaze away to the cane in her hand, then the unmade bed, and back to her. “What happened?”
She didn’t hear him push open the door, and she didn’t hear him rush into the room, which was telling. It was his voice that captured her attention, and she turned to look at him without dropping the cane. There was something in her eyes that was nothing like the calm, careful facade she’d cultivated in the past five years. Something that was nothing like the little girl she’d been, the one with her heart on her sleeve and ready affection. No, it was darker than that; it was the same thing that had made her cut into men and like it, and it was the same thing that had made it okay to throw a knife at a woman’s throat in a Seattle prison. It wasn’t new, cultivated at the age of 13 with her mother dead on the couch, but he’d likely never seen it. It hinted at just how close to the edge all of this was pushing her, despite how calm and accepting she pretended to be.
What happened? She didn’t answer at first. She just stopped pacing, stopped snapping the cane through the air, and she stared at him. The tie was new, and why that registered amid everything else was a mystery. She tried to figure out how to tell him, but she was too worked up for words. Or, maybe, his presence there just changed everything, tilted it and made it sway. She crossed the room, the cane at her hip, and her fingers closed on the tie. She yanked, lightly once, then with increasing tension, and she wrapped the narrow bit of fabric around her fist until she felt confident in the grip, in the fact that he wouldn’t turn around and leave her through that still-cracked door. There was something in the touch, in her hand wound in the tie, that felt like fear and, this close, it was obvious that she was shaking with adrenaline and nothing like tears. The cane was clutched so tightly that it made her fingers go white, and she just looked up at him, as if she would keep him there and never let him go.
She wasn’t touching him, not in any way beyond the tie wound around her hand, and her breathing was rushed and shallow enough that the corset did little to hide anything at all. This close, she was bared skin at the belly, hip, and thigh, and the dark colors made her look impossibly pale. Her lips were swollen from her teeth, and she licked at them as the cane snapped against her own thigh, the sound sharp and distinct in the quiet of the open room, followed by a hiss of pain on her part. “Alexander came,” she finally managed, voice husky and hoarse. “I hurt him,” she added in an unapologetic whisper. There was no blood in the room, so the man obviously wasn’t dead, but she wasn’t exaggerating, and it was evident in the tone of her words. “Not as much as I wanted to.” She snapped the cane again with the confession, and this time the rattan landed across his upper thigh and her hip, the movement too close to her side to avoid catching him as well.
The darkness in her eyes was familiar, but only because he’d seen it in himself. In her eyes, it was foreign, something he’d never noticed before. Luke wondered if it had always been there, and he’d just missed it. His heart dropped, because despite what she might think he’d always thought she was better than him, that she’d never ventured down the same paths he had. Maybe it was still true, but he didn’t like seeing the potential for it in someone he cared about.
“Wren,” he began, intending on repeating his question after a long stretch of no response, but the words died on his lips when she wrapped his tie around her hand and tugged. The first time he was too surprised to react, but then she did it again, and his gaze became questioning as he looked down at her. The state of the room spoke for itself, as did what she was wearing, and his first assumption was a client; but she was shaking, as though full of pent-up energy that had nowhere to go, and he put the pieces together even before she had a chance to confirm his suspicions. It would have been easy ily for Luke to disentangle her hold on his tie if he’d wanted to, but he allowed it to remain, sensing that pulling away was the very worst thing he could do right now.
His concern was evident, and while it didn’t quite fade, exactly, it did begin to become overshadowed by something else. Realization came slowly, from how little the corset covered to the bared expanse of skin between where the corset ended and her barely-there underwear began, and while he didn’t move to touch her, he certainly wanted to. The closeness made his breath quicken, becoming heavier and less steady, and it was a struggle to focus on his concern and coaxing out the truth as opposed to other things. It became a little easier when she said Alexander’s name, confirming what he’d began to suspect, and he took an aborted step forward out of sheer, blinding anger before managing to get himself under control. The first snap of the cane made him flinch, only because the sound was sharp and he hadn’t been expecting it, but the second, even with the impact against his thigh, was met only with a sharp inhale of breath and a flash of something like surprise in his gaze; surprise, mixed with something else, something which didn’t often make an appearance. “Did he hurt you?” His voice was low, rough, as his fingers brushed against her thigh, where the cane had made impact moments before.
It was something feral, the darkness, something born of the need to survive in a world that was too big and too mean and too cruel, and his voice almost chased it away, but there was too much tension there, too much anger and fear combined to make something that clawed and scraped. His voice, her name on his lips, it soothed, but it didn’t make it go away, and she tightened her grip on the tie, liking the illusion of control it gave her. She knew, on some level, that he could get free. It was something she knew on the same level that she realized whatever he’d been up to for the past five years was a dark line she’d never crossed. Not conscious knowledge, but there somewhere buried and far away, but there all the same. She was capable, but he was strength and scars and you didn’t survive any of that if you couldn’t get away from a girl gripping a tie.
She watched realization dawn in his eyes, and if it had been anyone else she would have lashed out at them. That reality of that was printed all over her features, in the way her darkened gray eyes widened, in the flinch of her shoulders. Alexander hadn’t touched her, but he’d brought something back, something that made her feel small and helpless, and it was evident in the reaction. But it was him, and she didn’t lash out, and she didn’t pull back. His quickening breath made her move a little closer, made her grip on his tie tightened, and it became a leash somehow, something she could pull and make him come closer, or hold firm and make him stay where he was was. His aborted step forward brought him flush against her, and she was pretty sure she’d never seen whatever was in his eyes as the cane landed against skin. His fingers traced an already-rising welt on her thigh, proof of how much damage the cane could do against bare skin.
She shook her head. No, Alexander hadn’t hurt her. “He said one of the girls had agreed to sacrifice themselves so he wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, and there was so much guilt and anger in the words that they were hard to understand. Unconsciously unthinking, she pulled harder on the tie, let the cane fall again, harder, lower this time on her bare skin and his work pants. A hiss, and more shaking anger, and she crowded him back with her body, all soft curves and unforgiving ink. “He wouldn’t even tell me that unless I gave up the crop I was holding.” Pause, another yank on the tie. “I hate it, the way I feel when he comes toward me while taking his clothing off.” No, he hadn’t hurt her, but Alexander was very good at not hurting, while hurting all the same.
For a brief, sharply clear moment, Luke actually believed she might lash out at him with the cane. Even so, there was no fear, and not only because he was certain of his ability to defend himself against whatever attack she might unleash. Any damage the cane could possibly do was manageable. It wasn’t a gun, after all, or even a blade, and if he could handle those, he could handle this. He made no attempt to pull back or even prevent her from wielding the cane at all; his preparation was in the way his muscles tensed and his eyes narrowed, just slightly, an instinctive reaction he had no control over. In the past he may have allowed some blows to meet their mark, but his instinct was still to survive.
As quickly as it had come, the moment passed, but part of him was still wary. It was in conflict with the part of him that was strangely thrilled by this, what she was now, a far cry from the young girl he remembered and even the woman he was relearning now. He wasn’t afraid of her, not even a little, but the boy he’d once been, he might have. Maybe not of her, exactly, but what was in her eyes. When she tugged on his tie, he let her, and he allowed her the illusion of control she wielded through her tight grip. “No one’s going to sacrifice themselves,” he said, and he’d barely managed to get the words out when the cane fell again, harder, and he inhaled sharply, but he never told her to stop, nor did he move to stop her himself. The pressure against his neck as she crowded him back, that he didn’t like; unlike the cane, it brought back memories better left buried, but as he moved he tried to tell himself that it was just Wren, and she wouldn’t hurt him. Not really.
“He’s nothing,” he said, and there was clear disgust there; his opinion of Alexander was very, very low. “What... What else did he do?” Maybe he shouldn’t have asked, especially since he was trying to reform, and killing had become like a drug to him, but he couldn’t keep the words back. One day Alex would get what he deserved, either at his hand or someone else’s, and he wanted to ensure he remembered every detail of what he’d done when that day came.
If she was thinking she clearly, she would remember the way he’d been dragged around like a dog on a leash, but clear was thinking was left somewhere before the fear gas, before the certainty that Luke would leave her once he found out about Gus, before the certainty that she was going back to jail, before the certainty that someone would fall to Alexander. Bravado or not, Alexander Pierce terrified her. Just having him in her space made her feel like that woman from two years earlier, the one who’d woken up the morning after and listened to his slurs. No, she didn’t notice his reaction to her hand on the tie, and she continued to hold onto it until she had him against the wall, until she didn’t need it anymore. “Someone already promised,” she said of someone sacrificing themselves, her panic about that growing. She had his body against the wall now, her own body pinning him there, and she wasn’t paying attention to the welts the now-near constant swinging of the cane was leaving against skin. “And you know I won’t be able to stop whoever it is. You know that. The only way to stop him is to let him have me instead, and I can’t,” she said, and there was endless anguish in that admission. Anger too, and she pushed away from him and sliced at the bed with the cane in her hand. She’d never thought anyone deserved to suffer for her, and time hadn’t changed that.
If there was any doubt that she could wield a weapon with force, the snap of the cane hitting the bed should have erased them entirely. Her knee came to rest on the edge of the mattress, and Wren’s chest heaved with the force of breathing, and there was no delicate little girl in the swing of her arm, despite the fact that there was shatter written all over her features. “He insulted, like he always does,” she said, and there was so much wrapped up in that, that it was easy to imagine the things Alexander had said. “He took off his shirt, and he let me see the bruises you’d put there, and it was a threat.” She let the cane fall again, this time with an almost-sob, and it wasn’t any good, hitting someone that wasn’t there. “He said he wanted to get under my skin, but that I wouldn’t let him.” She left the bed behind, and she began pacing again. “I told him he didn’t pay to talk to me, and he had to leave. He stayed, he always stays. He said I wanted to hit him, that I wanted to make him hurt, and then he said things that make me want it more, insults and threats until I lost control. Dammit.” Because she knew it was a test with Alexander, everything was a test with Alexander, and she knew she failed everytime he walked out covered in bruises. “He pushes until it’s personal,” she finally admitted, and she was barely under control now, talking making it worse. Nothing was ever personal for her as a girl, nothing was personal now except the man against the wall; and she just tried to keep herself from crossing the room to him as she stood there, how badly she needed him printed starkly on her pale features.
“It doesn’t matter,” he insisted, relieved that the pressure against his neck was gone and fighting the urge to feel his skin, to ensure there were no marks aside from the long-faded, barely visible scars from years ago. It might have been MK, the one who’d agreed to sacrifice themselves, and he didn’t know Alice well enough to make a guess as to whether or not it could be her. As for Brielle, from what he knew of her, he thought she very well might be willing to exchange herself for her cousin. “There are other ways to stop him, Wren. You know that. Sacrifice isn’t the only way.” She may have been angry, but he had his own brand of anger rising, and he refused to treat Alexander Pierce as some sort of all-powerful god incapable of being stopped. No one was invincible, and if there was one thing he’d learned it was that everyone could be killed. That was the one definite way to put a stop to someone’s actions. Thomas had been right, all those years ago, when he’d told him that death was permanent and irreversible. He would have gone on, would have continued, but then she was pushing away from him, and he didn’t even attempt to reach for her. Not when she was swinging the cane like she was.
The bruises he’d put there. Luke swallowed heavily, ashamed of the part he’d played in making things worse, and he didn’t deny it. He should have either killed Alex or left it alone, and he had done neither. The sound of the cane hitting the mattress didn’t make him flinch, not even slightly, and he watched without interfering. “He’s nothing,” he repeated. “Just a coward, hiding behind his words and his drugs. He’s pathetic.” It was clear that he believed what he was saying, the certainty ringing through in each word, though he knew convincing her wouldn’t be as easy. It never had been. He could have told her that nothing Alexander said mattered, because he didn’t matter, but then he looked at her and decided that maybe words weren’t the best choice right now. He’d never been very good with them anyway.
Had her expression not been so painfully easy to read, he might have held himself back, but it was, and so he didn’t. He crossed the room slowly, part of him still wary that she might lash out, and, once he was close enough, reached out to close his fingers around her wrist. There was no real force behind it, not in his hold or when he tugged, just once, like both a silent question and wordless assent. He would be whatever she needed him to be, and he would give whatever she wanted.
Wren knew there were ways to stop Alexander, but they all hinged on the people she cared about not being sacrificial lambs. Even angry, MK would do it. And Brielle, Brielle had that same stupid self-worth problem that all the Maheus had. Alice was her only safe bet; she thought Alice would resist, look for legal recourse, tell her at the very least. But not the other two, and she couldn’t handle it if MK ended up being tortured because of her again. That had already happened once, and it was still etched in Wren’s memory. At the end of the day, she could take whatever Alexander dished out and still come out mostly sane; she wasn’t so sure about the others.
She looked up at him when he said Alexander was pathetic. He was right, and she knew it, but that pathetic man had still managed to do all of this. “He’s pathetic,” she echoed. “He’s pathetic, but he still managed to rape me, and he still managed to almost kill us, and he still managed to end up with a sex slave somehow, and he’s still here, and we can’t get rid of him, and it’s only a matter of time until he wins,” she said, voice climbing with frustration. And she didn’t blame Luke for any of it, because she didn’t think he would even consider killing Alexander. It left them just like they’d been in Seattle, victims at the whim of someone crueler than them; it was Jude all over, and she was afraid she would ultimately be as willing to sacrifice herself as he had been all those years ago. She had so much more to lose now.
She didn’t move when he crossed the room, and she let him close his fingers around her wrist. It was intentional, allowing him, not lashing out when he reached her. When he tugged, there was a heartbeat of pause, a second when she almost didn’t let go, but she dropped the cane after that heartbeat. She took in a shuddering breath, and then she was shoving at him with her free hand. She shoved against his chest, and then she was tugging him back with her fingers, buttons popping off his work shirt with the force of her grip on the fabric. She wanted to hit him, and she wanted him close and, somewhere in her mind, she recognized the brief glimpses of anger he’d shown since walking through the door; knew he’d bring that if she pushed him hard enough.
Despite having known what Alex had done, the world went a little fuzzy around the edges and a strange sort of buzzing overlapped her voice when Wren used the word rape. This sort of anger was blinding, which made it dangerous, and being forced to keep it all inside with no way to let it out, not here, hardly made things better. “He’s not going to win,” he snapped, too wound up with everything to keep himself in check now. “We’re not kids anymore, Wren. We don’t have to put up with this bullshit. I’ve--” His stop was abrupt, almost painfully so; he’d meant to say I’ve killed worse men, but that was meant to be a secret. Even if he’d wanted to confess, which he most certainly did not, now wasn’t the time for such revelations. He couldn’t come up with a way to finish his sentence, so he left it there, without explanation. “Alexander Pierce is just a man,” he said, the struggle for calm evident in his tone. “Don’t make him sound like more than one.”
He thought she might react badly, or at least refuse to drop the cane, but even when she did neither of those things, he still wasn’t sure what to do. This wasn’t a young boy’s uncertainty, but rather a result of never having seen her like this before, or any other woman for that matter. First she was shoving him back, and then she was pulling him forward, and he didn’t know what she wanted, but he assumed she would make it clear enough. He released her wrist to make short work of the rest of his buttons, the ones that hadn’t come off, before reaching for her again, fingers finding bare skin and welts she’d just inflicted upon herself.
She jerked her head up when he snapped, the sound foreign to her ears, even after having memorized the cadence of his anger all those years ago. She caught it- That almost sentence. She didn’t know where it would have led, but she caught it, and it sent chills along her spine. I’ve, and she wanted to know what would have come after, but then he was declaring Alexander to be just a man, and that made her own anger spike and glitter in the fathomless depths of her darkened eyes. “He’s not a man, Luke. He’s a monster. He’s the kind of monster that doesn’t fear anything, that doesn’t stop. He’s a nightmare, and he won’t ever stop being one. If you don’t want to give him things, he drugs you until you have no choice. Do you have any idea what it’s like not to be able to control your own body?” she asked, anger and all that adrenaline rushing back with the question, with the memory.
His uncertainty registered, but only for a moment before he released her wrist, and the frustrated sound died in her throat when he finished with the buttons, she yanked off the tie he wore, and she tossed it aside, and then she shoved the shirt off his shoulders with impatient hands. Her mouth found one of those shoulders, teeth and lips and bite, and she pressed against him with a hiss of pain when his fingers found the angry, raised welts that now lined her thigh. Her fingers itched to pick the cane back up, obvious in the glance to the ground, to where it rested against his shoe, and she glanced back up at him, a question in her gaze. “And you,” she said, a very obvious, very intentional shift in topic, a safer one, one that wasn’t nightmares, though it did come wound up with more feeling than anything Alexander could do to her, “are you ever going to tell me how angry you are, or are you going to keep pretending you aren’t?” There was a hint of the woman she normally was in the question - a bite of her lower lip, a moment of fidgeting with the top of the thigh-high. And then she shoved at him, not as hard as before, but a definite shove. “Tell me,” she insisted, not breaking his gaze as she slid her hands beneath the open shirt at his hips, fingers insatiable against bare skin as she tugged him close again. “Tell me.”
Maybe he should have backed down in the face of her anger, but instead he did the exact opposite. Luke rose to meet what he saw in her eyes, despite not knowing what it was like to lose control, not in the way she meant; there were times when he’d done things that he recalled as a blur afterward, but that wasn’t the same. “No,” he admitted. “I don’t know what it’s like, Wren, but I’m not going to stand here and say Alexander is some unstoppable monster and we’re all screwed. That’s what he wants. Jude was a monster, remember? Briggs too, and they’re both dead. He can be stopped, and trust me... everyone is afraid of something.” He’d lost count of the number of men who’d begged and pleaded for their lives in the end, after their threats and slurs fell on empty ears, and they were afraid. Oh, some weren’t, and those were the ones he could never bring himself to regret killing, but he had a feeling that Alexander Pierce wouldn’t laugh in the face of his own death. He was too arrogant and self-absorbed for that. His life mattered to him.
His breath turned into a heavy gasp when her mouth found his shoulder, and he almost forgot to keep the touch of his fingers light and careful against the welts that lined her thigh. Her hiss of pain made his hands slide up, to the unmarked skin of her belly, and around her hips to the small of her back, where he tugged on her corset. He noticed the way she looked down at the cane, and as much as he wanted to kick it away, out of reach, he left it where it was. Her question was an adequate distraction, and he leaned in to kiss her with a rough sound of irritation, not wanting to go that route, but then she was shoving at him again and his frustration at being shoved away and pulled back began to spill over.
“Fine,” he hissed, even as he worked to pull his shirt off completely and let it drop carelessly to the floor. “I’m angry, okay? I’m angry at you for leaving, and being too afraid to tell me you were pregnant, and I’m angry at you for lying to me about it.” His fingers worked at her corset while he spoke, and impatience made him rough, pulling and tugging ruthlessly at the fabric in order to get it off and out of the way. “I’m angry at myself for not doing more, for not being able to keep you from running, and I’m angry at the Johnsons for what they did to you, and I’m so fucking angry at Alexander for everything he’s done,” he snapped, his anger becoming something desperate, almost hysterical, and the words spilled out unchecked. “And Thomas, I’m angry at him and his stupid conditions, and his judgement, and I can’t cope with it like I used to anymore, and I can’t stay numb either.”
He was so sure that Alexander could be stopped, and that was such a change from how he had been when they were young and scared. It made her gray eyes sharpen with something beyond curiosity, because no one was that certain about things, especially not them. They knew the justice system was a joke, a fraud, something to be bought and paid for. They knew the bad guys could win, if they just had enough pull. They knew that. They’d lived it. Briggs and Jude were dead, but at what cost? And Jude, she could still remember how he looked bent over her body, bloody shard in his hand. She remembered...
But then he was gasping, and his fingers were moving to her belly and hips and back. The tug at the corset, the first tug, made her press into him with a kind of grown-up abandon, something sure of what it wanted, and she watched his gaze follow hers to the cane. She had never itched to have something in her hands like she did just then, like she did that. She knew he would take it away from her, and that was part of it. She was pent up energy and things she couldn’t untangle, and she wanted the strength she knew was inside him, that had developed sometime between New York and now, when she wasn’t there to see. The rough kiss only made her want it more, and she didn’t pull back from it, didn’t soften it, didn’t demure; she met it with teeth and a hiss as she stretched against him, his belt sliding rough against those welts. And then he hissed, and he was pulling his shirt off, and her fingers left trails of scratch and fingertips along his torso. He didn’t like hearing he was beautiful, but he was, and it almost took her breath away, the effect heightened by his anger. She looked up at his face, caught his gaze as her fingers impatiently yanked his belt free. The rough, ruthless tug of his fingers on the corset stays made it hard for her not to sway, and she used his body as an anchor until the corset gave way and joined his shirt on the floor. She shoved at his work pants, fingers bruise-hard on his hips, harder than her grip had any right to be, and then she slid her hands up and cupped his jaw, his cheeks, holding him still as she slid a pain-welted thigh to meet his hip. She found his mouth with her own, even as he was talking about Thomas. Not being able to stay numb; she could understand that. And the question on her lips was why, why did Thomas have conditions, but she had trouble thinking when he was like this, and forced a step back to try wrap her mind around it.
She was breathing hard and fast, chest heaving and nipples hard, and she bit her lip as she looked at him. She started to talk, to say something that made sense, to try to talk him down. She started to, but she didn’t want that, didn’t want him to pretend everything was okay and let everything eat him up from the inside. In the end, she picked up the cane, and she closed the space between them in a heartbeat. She didn’t talk him down, not at all. She just slid a demanding hand around the nape of his neck, fingers tight and desperate as she pulled him down to her, all that fear and adrenaline wound up in the touch. “Show me,” she said, mouthing his jaw, biting, and letting the cane snap over the same welts, no care to avoid his hip.
Normally he would have noticed the way her eyes sharpened, and he would have realized he was saying too much, but he was too caught up in the way she pressed against him and the roughness of the kiss she allowed him to take from her. Anger mixed with a desperate sort of want, and beyond that nothing else mattered. Once her corset was out of the way he wasted no time in taking what he wanted, greedy hands sliding up her ribcage and over her breasts, touching, teasing, warm and supple beneath his fingers. He stretched against her, wanting more of her touch, not caring if her nails stung or she left marks; if anything, he wanted that too, and her bruise-tight grip on his hips made him groan helplessly against her mouth. His pants rode low on his hips, but he couldn’t stop touching her long enough to pull them all the way down, and when her thigh met his hip he rocked against her, even as his angry words became muffled into the kiss.
He let out a low whine of protest when she stepped back, too wound up to be denied, but he didn’t step forward to pursue her. Instead he stood, breaths coming short and heavy, watching, waiting, until she closed the distance between them. He worked at yanking down his work pants as her hand wound around his nape, discarding them along with his shoes, which he kicked off with careless impatience. Show me, she said, and he made a low noise of agreement, which became a sharp, pleased hiss at the bite. The snap of the cane made him jerk against her, though not from the pain or even the sound, and one hand rose to grasp her jaw, to turn her head towards him so he could claim her mouth with his. He shoved her back as he kissed her, but his body moved with hers, allowing no space to open up between the two. It was all rough, desperate demand, and the fingers of his free hand slid beneath the band of her underwear as they moved.
Had it been anyone else touching her, she would have fought them, and that fact was in every tensing of muscles, every almost-shove that became a grab instead. The girl she had been would never have fought, would never have resisted, but she wasn’t that girl anymore, and there was the truth of it in the way she marked him with her nails, the way she gave wordless permission for him to touch her, rather than just accepting it. There were glimmers of the softness beneath, but they were quick and almost-nothing right then, when she burned too hot for anything but this, but him.
The whine of protest was like fire in her veins, pushing her, encouraging, and she watched him as he watched her, letting her heavy-lidded gaze drop to watch the pants come off his hips. The thought came, again, that he’d been a beautiful boy, and he’d grown into a beautiful man, and by then her hands were on him and the cane was singing again and making her gasp. When he jerked, she expected him to take it from her, to pry it from her fingers and throw it aside, but he didn’t, and she moaned when he grasped her jaw, fighting the grip just enough to see if it would hold, something in her darkened eyes saying she wanted it to hold. She fought against his claim, fought to make the kiss her own, even as she dragged the cane against his bare hip. She was so accustomed to having something in her hand that it was thoughtless, a caress with the back of her fingers along his hip, soothing where her nails had clawed, even as she pulled it back and let it fall again once he shoved her back, an intentional sting of protest at the prospect of being denied. But no, there was no new space, and his fingers were beneath flimsy fabric, and she whimpered and pled and demanded into his mouth, fingers of her free hand shoving at his boxers with impatience, before slipping beneath the waistband and sliding down to close fingers around him. There was no gentleness in the grip, in the demanding stroke that came with it, and she pushed him away a moment later, putting just enough distance between them to force his hand out of her underwear. She dragged the end of the cane below his navel, and she watched him with pupils blown wide and dark with need, and she stared - blatantly, expectantly.