Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-04-02 03:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Luke and Wren
What: Post-masquerade visits. (PART ONE)
Where: Luke's apartment.
When: Backdated to the day after the masquerade.
Warnings/Rating: None yet.
Finch met him at the door as soon as he arrived home, barking like mad, which caused his overhead neighbor to bang on the floor and yell for that damn racket to stop immediately. Luke rolled his eyes at the ceiling and made a beeline for the fridge, relieved to find that he still had some leftover beer. He didn’t drink often, and it wasn’t something he fell back on as a coping mechanism, but right now he just wanted a little something to take the edge off. He might not have been in denial about what he was, but that didn’t mean he liked being forced to come face-to-face with it, and his thoughts were headed down a road he usually kept them far away from. Bruce always asked if he wanted to spend the rest of his life as he was now, wasting his potential and engaging in self-destructive behavior, and while Luke preferred to either ignore him or advise him to fuck off, he had to admit the man had a point. He could pretend his life had purpose, but it was a far cry from what he’d dreamed of as a teenager.
He’d wanted to be a hero once, to save the world. For so long Luke had pretended that was what he was doing, albeit in a more extreme way, but he was starting to wonder just how much longer he could keep pretending.
With a frustrated curse, Luke kicked the fridge shut hard enough to send bottles rattling and took his beer to the bed, off in a little alcove-like space to the right of the main room; his apartment was one big space divided into littler spaces, like a kitchen and a bathroom and a couple of closets. He wasn’t expecting Wren until later, so he saw no need to change out of his casual sleep attire, and he swallowed a mouthful of cold beer in one deep gulp. Maybe with enough of these he’d be able to manage some sleep.
The drive to Luke’s apartment involved a bevy of journal replies and messages, and it was probably a good thing, because it kept Wren from worrying or panicking until his apartment building came into view. She’d been there twice the previous week - both times to collect Finch - but this was different, and it made her stomach over in a way that had nothing to do with the experiences of the previous night. That didn’t mean that the previous night wasn’t effecting her, because it was, but the nervousness would have been there regardless. The car stopped, and she paid the driver, then she crossed the parking lot with the same thought she’d had the previous two visits - the place was terrible. It reminded her of the building she’d called home in Seattle, the one Luke had constantly been trying to move her out of, and she hadn’t even seen the inside of his apartment yet.
She was dressed in thousands of dollars worth of Alexander McQueen, which she’d been wearing to meet her client the night before, and it certainly wasn’t what she would have chosen if she’d been meeting Luke later in the day, as intended. The dress made her look cool, distant, pale and untouchable. It was an intentional choice for work; not for coming to see Luke. But she didn’t stop to worry about the expensiveness of her dress when she’d given the driver directions, and the thought didn’t cross her mind now. Her heels clicked along the threadbare hallway, and she ignored the men who catcalled and whistled through an open door along the way. Despite appearances, she knew this life. She’d always known it better than Luke had, and she really wished it would have remained that way.
When she reached his door, she tried the knob without knocking. It was habit, after two days of collecting Petti, and it was nerves and anxiousness and the need to make sure he was okay. Possibly, she should have been worried about herself, about almost throwing herself off a roof the night before, about her own state of mind; she didn’t care about any of those things. She wanted to see him, and that’s the only thought she had just then, as she turned the knob with diamonds glittering along her wrist. The dog barked, and she smiled just a touch through her worry. “Luke?” she called out.
Luke had lived in the run-down excuse for an apartment building long enough to know which noises to ignore and which ones to pay attention to, and the catcalls fell into the former category. A lot of things happened within these walls, some he cared about and some he didn’t, but tonight he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn if there were prostitutes and pimps wandering the halls-- as long as they stayed away from his apartment, that is. He’d finished his first beer rather quickly and wasted no time in starting on the second, with Finch curled up at his side, ears alert for any sign that the sounds beyond the door might grow louder.
The doorknob being turned startled him enough that he almost spilled his beer, and Finch was off the bed in an instant, barking in warning as he raced towards the door. Luke was more annoyed than worried, since the door was locked, and he assumed it was some stupid drunk who couldn’t remember which apartment was his again. He rose from the bed and set the beer down on the kitchen counter as he approached the door, prepared to tell whatever idiot was outside exactly where to go, but the voice calling his name from the other side stopped him in his tracks.
He didn’t need any time to think. The voice was instantly recognized as Wren’s, and he stood in dismay for a long moment before looking around the apartment. Shit. Shit. Okay, at least it was clean, and he couldn’t do anything about the lack of decor. “One minute,” he called back, shoving the beer safely in the fridge and scrambling to put on a different pair of clothes. Sweatpants were replaced with slacks, his feet left bare, and he tugged on a black polo shirt over his wifebeater. She could have been wearing a nightgown for all he knew, but what the hell, he wanted to at least look half decent.
“Hey,” he said, pulling open the door simultaneously. “I--” Luke stopped when he saw her, diamonds glittering on her wrist and wearing a dress that he knew had cost more than anyone living in this sorry place would ever have in their lifetime. It was a reminder of the distance between them, and he became a little more guarded once he managed to lift his gaze back up to her face. “You look nice.” A beat. “Come in,” he added, stepping back as a sudden thought occurred to him. “You weren’t at that weird party tonight, were you?”
She could hear movement as soon as Finch started barking, and she could tell when the footfalls were coming close. She tensed, because she was having a really hard time keeping her nerves under control, but then the footfalls stopped, and she worried that he was going to send her away. After all, she didn’t know what had happened the night before. Maybe, like MK, he’d met someone at the party. Maybe he was hurt (that thought made her heart start racing for an entirely different reason). She lifted her hand to knock, intending to beg him to tell her that he was okay, at least, but then he told her to wait, and she took a deep breath. She needed to calm down, because she was just going to react impulsively when the door opened if she didn’t. She worried her lip, and she tried to breathe normally, and she listened to the sounds from inside and tried to place them. The refrigerator door, maybe? A closet? Finch padding back and forth, then feet coming toward the door again.
Even knowing that he was approaching, she wasn’t actually ready for him to open the door. She hadn’t seen him since the casino, and she’d been drunk enough then that she couldn’t remember very much, not beyond the fact that he was there. The hotel and the car had been dark, and when he pulled open the door she couldn’t help but stare at him. She was completely sober, but she could smell the beer on him; she didn’t care. She stared at his face for a moment, and then she swept her pale gaze over him as she searched for injuries. She knew people had been hurt the night before, but she didn’t see blood anywhere, and she relaxed a little as she looked back at his face again. It had only taken seconds, all that looking, and she smiled when he told her she looked nice, but it was a worried smile. She knew when Luke was being honest, and he didn’t completely mean that. She was so accustomed to her clothing, to the facade she slipped over herself for the world, that she didn’t immediately assume his reaction had anything to do with what she was wearing. She read a thousand other things into it, none of them good, and she was shaken up enough from the night before that she almost turned and left. But then he issued the invitation, and she was moving forward without even thinking to refuse.
“I know I’m early,” she began, but his question about the party made her stop in mid-apology. She nodded, stopping in the middle of the room without really seeing it. The space didn’t matter right then. What mattered was the man with his hand on the door, and she tipped her head and worried her lip in that old, familiar way as she looked at him. Despite the expensive dress and the glittering stones, she looked young just then, and she sighed a second later and nodded again. “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she added, still forcing herself to remain glued to the spot, to not cross the space and touch him to make sure he really was okay. But she wanted to; it was in her eyes when she looked him over again, and it was in the almost move forward of her feet, and it was in the slow sweep of her lashed as her gaze lingered in places. “I was worried. I should have called first,” she added apologetically. “I didn’t think of warning you before I showed up at your door in a panic.” It was the word panic that gave away the fact that the night before might have been less than good, and it was just a hint of something, a chink in the armor that she kept on around everyone else.
After his initial surprise, Luke’s inspection of her was more subtle, a mix of concern for potential injuries and appreciation for how the dress looked on her; it may have exuded the sort of wealth he would never have, but he couldn’t deny that it looked good. He shut the door once she entered and turned, his hand still on the doorknob, watching as she crossed the floor and stopped in the middle of the room. Part of him was apprehensive about what she might think, since his apartment was a far cry from a swanky suite in Caesar’s Palace, but when she turned to look at him he realized what the place looked like was probably the last thing on her mind. While the night before hadn’t been as terrible as it could have been for him, he was aware of the sorts of things that happened; the thing he was didn’t care, not enough to intervene, but it noticed. Wren didn’t appear to be hurt, but something could have happened to her without leaving telltale marks behind. “You didn’t have to warn me first,” he said, worry entering his expression. “I just wasn’t expecting you this early, that’s all.” Finch had settled into a corner, onto a worn oversized pillow, once he decided Wren was no threat, and as a result the space between them stood out glaringly, remaining uncrossed despite his suspicion that she wanted to do just that.
He looked at her for another few moments before actually locking the door and pulling his hand away, but instead of staying where he was Luke went to her, closing the distance in a few easy strides and taking hold of her shoulders when he was close enough. “I’m okay,” he told her, and it was true. There were no injuries, nothing that would scar him physically or metaphorically. “Are you?”
All it took, really, was for him to be the one that crossed the room. Any attempt she might have made at maintaining even a polite distance was lost when he moved and, by the time his hands closed on her shoulders, she had already taken a few steps forward of her own. She looked at him, close now, at his face, trying to ascertain if he was telling her the truth about being okay. She stared into his eyes wordlessly for a moment and then, having seen nothing that terrified her, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and destroyed even the tiny bit of space that pretended to remain between them.
She smelled of cigarettes and very expensive whiskey and, beneath that, of honey and vanilla. Her fingers tangled in his hair, and they had none of the gentle care of a caress. Instead, it was a greedy tug and the need to prove to herself that he was real, and that he was there. The white dress fit like a glove and, this close, it hinted at something insignificantly flimsy and delicate beneath. Tendrils of her upswept hair brushed against his cheek as she clung to him, and she pressed a line of open-mouthed not-kisses against the side of his throat, heated with worry. Her heartbeat, now that she was sure he was safe and there and in one piece, finally raced as it had wanted to do since she climbed into the car, and it was impossible for her to hide the fact that the night had left her shaken, if unharmed. Because there wasn’t a bruise on her, not a scratch, not even a hint of dust, or the memory of the terror she’d dragged with her everywhere.
“I’m okay,” she said against his skin, and she knew she should pull back, that she should give him space, but she didn’t. Her only concession to that realization was to stop running her lips along his skin, but the fingers in his hair remained impossibly tight, hinting at the amount of feeling she was attempting to keep from brimming over just then. She took a very deep breath, and she pulled back a little more, just enough to see his eyes once more. “Hi,” she whispered.
Luke wanted nothing more than to have her close, his reaction to the way she was dressed already forgotten. For days Wren was all he’d been able to think about, and the thought of her was nothing compared to the real thing, warm and solid against him, even if the shadow of whatever had occurred during the previous night hung over them. He didn’t mind the tug to his hair, quite the opposite, and his arms went around her waist without even a whisper of hesitation. Much like the reaper, he often found himself at a loss when it came to offering comfort and reassurance, but he did realize that this, just holding her, was probably a fair start. Whatever she might claim, he knew she wasn’t okay. Something had gone wrong, something that left her shaken and, perhaps, scared, but it was hard to focus on what that might be when the feel of her lips on his neck provided a distraction that was near impossible to ignore. His fingers traced along her spine, the touch light through the fabric of her dress, stilling when she pulled back to look at him.
“Hi,” he breathed, a flicker of a smile visible in his expression before it vanished. “I know you’re not okay. You don’t have to pretend with me.” Luke dragged his hands down to her hips, firm and sure, all without breaking her gaze. It was a frustration he knew all too well, being unable to prevent something bad from happening to her, and he didn’t want her holding back. Not here, not with him.
The breathed greeting, that flicker of a smile, it took her back so many years, and she just stared like the lovestruck girl she’d been then. It was his hands dragging along her hips that drew her out of it, because the touch was much more sure than the touches her memory associated with him. It was probably a good thing, how distracting his hands were, because she was entirely sober, and she really was out of practice at being honest. She wasn’t that girl she’d been, the one that would spill all her troubles to him in the hopes that he would fix them. She knew now, years later, that she’d put too much on him, expected too much, and she’d lost the ability to be open and unguarded somewhere along the line. There was an exception, of course, and that was being drunk, but he’d been pretty vocal about his disapproval there and, anyway, there hadn’t been time to drink anything before sunrise and now.
But his hands were better than any liquor, distracting in their sureness, and his direct gaze did the rest. The Luke she’d known would look down, look away, but this time it was her that ducked her head and bit her lip, the previous evening having brought the girl back in a way that hadn’t happened in years, along with desperation and fear and need in her wake. She looked up after a moment, lip red and raw from her teeth. “It was all the bad things, all at once,” she said truthfully, “everything I’ve ever been scared of, all at once.” Her fingers in his hair tightened, tugged with added sharpness, and she let her gaze skim his face in a way that all mature, all grown up. “Et vous?” she asked, wondering how much of her spattered French he recalled from way back then.
There was a time when Luke never would have been able to touch her, look at her, and manage to say anything that made sense all at the same time, but he was no longer the boy he’d once been. Certain influences still lingered, yet for the most part he’d come a long way from his teenage years. He realized that his hands served as a distraction, a way to coax out the truth and satisfy his own urge to touch simultaneously, and he intentionally continued a path from her hips lower, along her thighs, before reversing back along her abdomen and up. Her dress frustrated him; he would have preferred something loose and short, making it easier to find bare skin, but he could make do with what he had. His expression became pained on her behalf when she spoke, since he knew all about the things she feared, though there were likely new ones he hadn’t been around for. “Was it like that all night?” His voice was quiet, and for the first time there wasn’t a hint of anger anywhere to be found.
The sharp tug to his hair caused something to spark in his eyes, something that hadn’t been there when he was a boy, and Luke’s breath hitched before he managed to recover, and the slow, heavy rhythm resumed. It took a few seconds for him to decipher her question, the result of an echo of familiarity from years ago and high school french classes tucked in the back of his mind. “Death,” he admitted, though he could have (and should have, maybe) lied. “Fear. I forced people to face their sins and tore them apart for it. I dragged them down. I--” He cut himself off with a sigh, and ran his thumb along her red, raw lip instead of continuing. When he’d been with women in the past it was nothing like this; it was always fast, rough, and desperate, where names weren’t required and feelings didn’t belong.
There was a thrill in the newness of it, so unlike the boy he’d been, but with echoes of him just the same, and she had trouble concentrating on anything but the path his hands traveled. She wasn’t used to this, to the man with the hands that wandered, and she found that she couldn’t predict him like she’d been able to predict all the men that had come before him, after him. She held her breath whenever his touch changed direction, waiting to see where his fingers would skirt next, and her breathing became faster, heavier with each pass of fingers on white fabric. She looked up when his hands reached her stomach, his voice different than she had grown accustomed to in the past month. His expression, too, reminded her of times long past, and if his hand hadn’t wandered higher just then, she would have likely gone quiet. “Oui,” she said of the evening. “Everyone I went near felt it too. It was- It was so real,” was all she could manage about the sounds, the rush of the past, but her expression filled in what her words could not - it had been excruciating.
Whatever sparked in his eyes when she unthinkingly tugged on his hair didn’t escape her notice, and the way his breath hitched made her stretch and press into him wantonly, without any of the shyness of youth. One of her hands slid down over his shoulder, over his chest, and her fingers splayed and settled there, over black fabric, a silent acknowledgement of the way his breathing needed to settle again. His voice, however dark his words, captivated her, because that too was new, that tone, and she looked up and stared into eyes that were so similar, and yet so different. Something chased along her spine, something like knowledge just out of reach. “Was it terrible?” she asked, because she couldn’t tell from his voice, and there were so many times in her life that she’d wanted to do precisely what he had just described. In her mind, it had always set them apart, that desire that existed in her to hurt things that had hurt her. It had led her to mark men years ago, but she’d never heard any understanding of that in his voice until just now. His thumb against her mouth served to completely derail her thoughts, though, and she parted her lips and tugged his thumb between her teeth without looking away from him. The hand that was on his chest crumpled the black fabric of his shirt between her fingers, and she tugged on it as sharply as she tugged on his hair a second later. She sucked his thumb beneath her lips, and still she didn’t look away. Whatever she was now, it wasn’t the girl she had been, the one afraid to sully him with her desires.
The effect his hands had on her didn’t go unnoticed, and it served as encouragement for him to continue. Nothing Luke said could take away the horror of the night before, but maybe this might help, and at the very least it would distract Wren from dwelling on what she’d experienced. “Just because it felt real doesn’t mean it was,” he told her, his hands high enough for fingers to brush against skin, even if the touch was ridiculously chaste considering what her neckline exposed. “Whatever you were, it wasn’t you, even if the fears were yours.” He probably wasn’t doing very well in terms of reassurance, at least in the verbal sense, and the expression on her face made his hands still before he pulled her into an impulsive hug, his exploration of her dress-clad body momentarily set aside.
Despite his changes during the intervening years, Luke had his limits, and his gaze darkened when she pressed against him without even a flicker of the shyness he remembered. He tugged at her dress, not caring how much it cost by this point; he’d tear it off if he had to, but one way or another he would see her out of it sooner rather than later. The way she looked at him drew his thoughts away from her and back to the previous night, of things better kept secret, and he looked down at her with a hint of apprehension, as though she might somehow see past his guarded walls to discover his secrets. Fortunately, there was nothing in her gaze that suggested suspicion or newfound knowledge, and he shrugged at her question. “Yes and no,” he answered, deliberately evasive, and when she tugged his thumb between her teeth Luke seized the chance to veer away from dangerous topics and back to what he ached for, which was not conversation. He didn’t pull his hand back, and while the tug to his shirt tempted him to remove it, he didn’t do that either.
Luke let a low groan of pleasure slip as she sucked on his thumb, and his free hand moved along her sides to feel for the zipper he knew was at her back, which he managed to find after a few long moments of careful maneuvering. Meeting her gaze all the while, he finally (and with a fair bit of reluctance) slid his thumb free from between her lips, and with deliberate slowness pulled the zipper down with one hand while his other hand followed the path of newly bared skin. He was close enough to kiss her, and oh, how he wanted to, but instead he refrained, choosing to tease her instead with a few feigned starts and parted lips so close to her own while keeping that little bit of distance.
“It was real,” she said, tipping her chin down to watch his fingers on her skin, just above the neckline of the dress. “All those things, I just try not to feel them, to fear them. I pretend. I’d gotten pretty good at it,” she said with unintentional honesty, looking up again just as he pulled her into the unexpected hug. It was a reversal of roles. When they were teenagers, she had always been the one that was quick to hug, to touch, to cling. She actually froze for a moment, because whatever she expected from him, it wasn’t comfort, and she hadn’t had that in so very long that it tripped her up, made her breath catch as she tried to figure out what to make of that kind of an embrace after all these years. But then he was tugging at the dress, and her focus shifted entirely to his hands, and his cryptic response about the night before was temporarily passed over in favor of that groan of pleasure that escaped his lips.
It was confusing, what she expected of him and what he actually did, and his fingers on the dress’ zipper was more of that, more of the same. He didn’t ask, and he didn’t fumble, and when his hand chased the zipper it became immediately evident that there was nothing covering warm, bare skin above the waist. The dress was skin tight and unforgiving, and the only thing beneath it was the flimsiest bit of underwear low on her hips, string and lace, pale white and mostly sheer. His hands were calloused warmth on impossibly soft and delicate skin, and a whimper escaped her lips before she could manage to keep it in check. She was too raw from the evening before to rein herself in, and she pressed against him as if there was nothing in the world she needed but to be closer, because (right then) it was true.
The dress was expensive enough that it didn’t sag at the shoulders, even when the zipper stopped just past that flimsy underwear, and she unfisted her hand from his shirt and hair and slid them beneath his shirt. Any bit of control she was attempting to maintain was whisked away by his touch, and her fingertips beneath the white of the wifebeater were desperate and sharp, just like the tugging to his hair had been. Nails scratched, marked as they raked over his stomach, and she made another sound of pleasure at how those muscled planes felt beneath her palm. When he teased her with the feigned start to the kisses it broke that last bit of distance she was managing to maintain, and she whispered a determined “no,” before freeing one of her hands to wind around his nape, to him him there, even as she pressed herself up against him and claimed his mouth in a kiss that had lost any potential for shyness in the intervening minutes. She made a keening sound against his lips, and she bit and licked and demanded things she would have never demanded when they were kids in Seattle. “No,” she repeated into the kiss. No denying her. No teasing. No.
Luke could have pursued the subject, coaxing out the truth about what she feared and why, but he’d wanted this for too long to be capable of pushing it aside. His touches went from curious to greedy once he realized there was nothing but warm skin beneath the dress, as her flimsy underwear would be laughably easy to get out of the way, and her whimper elicited a low, encouraging sound of pleasure. He wanted her control to slip, to drive her to the point where she would be unable to hold herself back. There was no denying that this meant something to him beyond satisfying a deep, years-old need, and he wanted to know the same was true for her.
The feel of her nails against his skin were all sharpness and sting, which he liked, an unexplainable reaction he’d developed over the years which had less to do with pain and more to do with feeling whatever he could. He was expecting a reaction, of course, to his teasing, but it wasn’t this; he couldn’t remember her ever telling him no, and the change it marked in her thrilled him. Luke only had a moment to look at her, all surprise and approval for the way her voice sounded, before she pulled him into a kiss, one she controlled and he did not. The demand in the way she kissed him was so unlike the girl he’d known, and he gave her a few minutes of it, teeth and lips and a near overwhelming desire to beg for more, before his self-control finally reached its breaking point. His fingers curled around the fabric of her dress and pulled it down over her shoulders and lower, all hard determination and a refusal to wait any longer. He took the kiss, which had been hers, and made it his own, the intensity of five years of frustration and raw want behind it with an edge of desperation thrown in.
She was so lost in the kiss, in the warmth of his nape beneath her fingers, in the fact that she was holding him there, that she didn’t notice the signs that he was about to turn the tables on her. Any thought of discussing fears or reapers was gone for the moment, chased away by this. Like him, this was about more than just sex for her. It was five long years, and it was someone she had never stopped wanting, and it was so much hope that it made her desperate and greedy to have him. The nails raking against his skin hadn’t been an intentional marking, but they might as well have been a clawed mine against his skin.
She didn’t notice his fingers curling around the dress until it began to slip past her shoulders, and she made no move to stop the white fabric from pooling around the heels she wore. When he took the kiss for his own, she moaned against his mouth. She could feel the anger, the ranting, the need there, in the press of his lips, and she didn’t bother trying to hide her reaction to it. She was beyond that, beyond hiding, and she bit his lower lip sharply enough to draw blood. Her bare thigh hitched around his hip, bare and soft against the cheap-rough fabric of his pants, and she rocked against him with a wanton demand, even as a hand fisted low in the fabric of his shirt, near his stomach, tugging him closer. The hand at his nape still held him where he was, not letting him pull away, even though it was all pretense. Even with the clothing he wore, she could tell he hadn’t gotten any weaker over the years, and there was no real doubt of him overpowering her if he wanted to, but that strength just thrilled her more, the power he contained that she couldn’t actually see yet.
She broke the kiss, and she shoved him back when she did. She didn’t put much space between them, just enough so that he would need to take a few steps to reach her again. Her pale skin was flushed with want, and her breathing was fast and shallow, and there was no doubt that it was desire that had blown her pupils wide and black in their circle of gray. Her body had changed in the intervening years, but she didn’t expect him to notice anything beyond her being a little older, which could likely account for the changes (even if they actually didn’t.) She was curvier than before, more roundness in her hips, in her breasts, and the look suited her much more than the hungry, waifish girl’s body had. She breathed in a shuddering breath, and she took another step back, challenge in her gaze.
Once her dress was in a heap at her feet, the only remaining obstacle between them was his clothes, but Luke had a hard time managing to pull away long enough to rid himself of them. He couldn’t stop touching her, greedy fingers tracing over warm skin and curves that hadn’t been his to feel since they were teenagers. While he was no longer the boy who’d treated her like she was made of glass, he might never be capable of leaving marks; she could scratch him all she liked, even make him bleed, but for him to claim her in such a way was something he wasn’t yet sure he could do. He ran his tongue over his lip when she bit down, tasting copper, but then his mouth was on hers again and the bitterness was lost in the taste of her and the way she rocked against him. It brought back memories, the friction of her hips against his, and he would have pressed closer even if it hadn’t been for her grip on his shirt and her hand at the nape of his neck. She wasn’t nearly strong enough to keep him in place should he decide otherwise.
He only stumbled backward when she shoved him because he wasn’t expecting it, and the suddenness elicited a low sound of frustration, similar to a growl, as well as being temporarily denied what he wanted. Luke straightened easily, rolling his shoulders back, and took the opportunity to look his fill, gaze dark and appraising as it slid over her body. She’d changed from the girl he remembered, but while he’d thought her beautiful then it was also very clear that he liked what he saw now. He assumed that the roundness and added curves came from her new lifestyle, going from having little to having more than she knew what to do with; he had no reason to think otherwise.
Luke met her challenging gaze with one of his own, despite the way his chest rose and fell too quickly to pretend that he was perfectly composed. He took one step towards her, tugging off his shirt and the wifebeater beneath as he did so, and stopped. Like her, his body had changed as well; he was taller, all hard strength in corded muscles beneath skin, and while he’d never had Thomas’ bulk, he didn’t need it. The scars that marked him were worn proudly, like a soldier might bear wounds from battle. They weren’t reminders of failures, but rather of how far he’d come from the boy who flinched at gunshots and sharp blades. Now, he feared neither. He’d taught himself how to take a bullet without faltering, how to ignore the sting of a knife sinking into his skin, and all those lessons were scars, most faded memories by this point. He waited a few seconds before taking another step forward, this time discarding his pants, and after the third step he stopped, leaving a maddeningly small amount of distance left between them.
The frustrated growl made it hard for her to stay where she was, to keep from making up the small space she had put between them, to draw another sound like that from him again, but his perusal kept her frozen where she was. His gaze was appraising, and once upon a time she might have been embarrassed by it. But, then, once upon a time he wouldn’t have been so blatant about it, and she almost reached for him when his gaze turned all dark promises, but the challenging look that he met hers with kept her there, accepting the challenge.
She didn’t move back when he took that first step, and her attention fell to the hand that was tugging off the wifebeater and shirt. She didn’t actually look at his skin until the shirt was entirely out of the way, and it wasn’t the menagerie of scars she noticed first. No, it was how he’d filled out. She’d be lying if she tried to pretend she hadn’t wanted to see him like this since that very first night in the darkened hotel hallway, to see how time had changed him. He was taller, harder, and there was so much more strength and definition than there had been in the boy she’d known. The drag of her gaze was slow, slow, heated, and she didn’t expect him to fidget under it like he might have once. Her fingers itched to touch him, but she forced herself to stay where she was, and when he took that next step forward she forced herself to acknowledge the scars. So many more than there had been, so many that were dangerous. She’d known the really dangerous scars by name when they were kids, now there were too many of them to name, and she knew none of them, and she couldn’t keep from moving once the realization set in.
She met him on that third step forward, and she was all greedy hands on muscled skin and her mouth on a particularly deep, dangerous scar on his shoulder. She had discarded her heeled pumps during the movement, and she had to stretch up to get her mouth on the skin at his shoulder - first a kiss there, then a press of open lips and desperation at what the scar stood for, then teeth and anger against his skin. Her hands were shoving his boxers aside then, nails scraping and fingertips rough with the reality of how many times he could have died between the time she left and this moment. There was demand in all of, in the insistent tug of fingers and the scrape of teeth.
Some deep, near-forgotten part of him might have blushed under her gaze, but on the surface Luke withstood her perusal without fidgeting or displaying even a hint of uncertainty at the heat in her eyes. It was the same way he looked at her, like he could have every inch of her and it still wouldn’t be enough, which was something he hadn’t felt in five years. He knew she wouldn’t see the scars as he did; to her, they would be reminders of countless brushes with death, but there was no way to hide them from her and he didn’t want to. This was what he was now, and if she wanted him, she deserved to know exactly what she was getting.
His hands found her hips, and he sighed in pleasure at the feel of her mouth on his shoulder. It became a sharp kiss when lips were replaced by teeth, and his fingers pressed into her skin hard enough to leave marks as he tugged her closer. He was just as demanding as she was, responding to her mouth on his skin with touches that were all take and no give, at least until she shoved at his boxers, which was when his hands joined hers and he pulled them down and out of the way. The motion of stepping out of them and leaving them discarded pressed him against her, but instead of staying still he crowded her back, towards the bed, one arm wound firmly around her waist to support her weight as added leverage to get her where he wanted her.