Colt Byron // Colin Craven (cravened) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2010-09-18 19:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | colin craven, mary lennox |
Who: Colt and Erin
What: Talking, kissing, touching, falling
Where: Aubade
When: The morning after the ball
Warnings: Sexual situations. Nothing too graphic.
Colt had woken early the morning after the dance. He was, in point of fact, in a very good mood. He’d showered, made coffee and contacted his physical therapist (the one he’d thrown his cane at a good three months earlier) and scheduled an appointment. Then, he’d left a message for that Creations paper, and he’d announced the school would be opening in two weeks’ time - he was feeling ambitious. By the time Erin’s anticipated arrival time rolled around, he was sitting at his desk in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, hat lazily set atop his head, and he was going through the morning news. He’d taken enough pain pills to keep the pain and withdrawal crankiness at bay, but he hadn’t had anything to drink other than the coffee, and he was feeling downright chipper.
Erin, on the other hand, felt as if she was going into battle, and she’d outfitted herself with suitable armor made up of lavender & cream business wear in Chanel and Dior. The battered old briefcase looked abashed in such illustrious company, but Erin had it firmly in grip in case she needed to thump Colt with it if he planned on being especially cantankerous. As usual, she swept through his locks and his door like they were meant for lesser people than she, and the sensible leather flats picked their way through the accumulated clutter until she arrived at the door of his study.
She had never seen him in a hat before, and he looked more alert than she’d ever seen him, so she naturally looked around for the dead body.
He tipped the hat at her. “Morning, ma’am,” he said, even as his gaze started at her legs and moved up, before making another very obvious (slower) perusal on the way down. He didn’t bother hiding his approval, because a woman liked to be admired. Instead, he sat back in the chair, so he could look at the picture she painted in all that purple and cream. “There’s fresh coffee on.”
Erin did not remember ever being admired before, and she straightened up a little in natural defense, but about halfway through she realized he wasn’t mocking her at all, and that left her rather confused and more nervous than she liked to admit. She gave him a rather regal, quelling look, and then she put her briefcase down to go get some of that coffee, which she didn’t remember him ever making before.
Returning with a mug and renewed determination that he wasn’t going to be able to rattle her with another look like that, she sat down in one of the chairs across his desk and looked down at the newspaper. Cipher’s article was flat on the desk, and she raised her eyebrows. She’d already read it. “I feel like I’ve been scolded, do you?” she asked, referring to it with a nod of her head and looking up into his face again.
He shook his head. “I think it just proves we’ve got to do what we set out to do. I contacted that information number Cipher’s got, and I let him know we’d be opening the school in two weeks,” he told her. He stopped after that bit of information, because he fully expected her to have herself a fit over that bit of news. He took the hat off and rested it on the globe, and he took a sip of his coffee. “You can go on and yell at me now.”
It was enough that she wasn’t entirely derailed by the hat, which looked very silly sitting on the puffed up blue face of the globe. “You what? What in God’s name makes you think we’re going to be ready in two weeks?”
“Because we’ve got to be. This city’s going off its rocker, and no one’s doing a thing about it,” he said, picking up the paper and letting it fall on the desk for emphasis. “We may not be one hundred percent, but we’ll be better than nothing, Erin,” he said, and it was obvious he was completely serious about this thing, motivated even. “Look at what happened to you. And that boy that saved you, he wasn’t anything but a kid playing grown-up in face paint. He didn’t know me from Peter and he went right in that bathroom and washed off the only thing keeping him from getting killed day-in, day-out.”
Erin was startled. “He did? Why?”
“Because I told him to,” he said, and he didn’t think he needed to say a damn thing more to explain how stupid it was. He sighed. “These kids playing at being grown, it’s dangerous, Erin.” Colt was, at the end of the day, military through and through. His mind turned to defenses, solutions and training. He’d spent the better part of his career training kids to stay alive in holes and on front lines, and that passion hadn’t faded with his desire to leave the cold and retire in reclusive solitude, it seemed.
That took much of the wind out of Erin’s sails. Colt was a commanding person and he tended to underestimate his effect on other people. Erin didn’t know the Corbinian that well, so she hadn’t known that he was all that young. She chewed on the information with dull eyes, and she said, “They’re dying already. You read about the ones... in front of the building...?” She glanced sideways at him, aware of all the papers all over his desk. “The ones in masks seem to be doing a little better,” she added, a bit hopelessly. “You can’t expect all these people to show up at the Academy, Colt.”
He chuckled at that, and it was a warm and rusty sound, old from disuse and thickened by fondness at her use of his given name. “I expect a few kids to show up, and then I expect we’ll do a better job than anyone planned at getting them on board with using what they’ve got to help this town, and we’ll do it in a way that keeps them safe and from washing off their damn face paint in front of random strangers. And word’ll spread, and we’ll get more. You have to start someplace, honey. You can’t just throw it away because you might fail.” The determination in his voice said failure was not on the agenda.
“We need more teachers,” she said, bluntly. “Unless you expect the two of us to be able to get in front of blackboards.”
“If we have to,” he said, and it was the first time he’d really considered getting out of the damn apartment for something other than that ball in as long as he could remember. “I can tell them what they can do, and I think that’s a mighty powerful incentive to get them in the door. You just have to captivate them once they’re there. Think you can do that, ma’am?” he asked, giving her a slow and languid look-over as he asked the question.
She gritted her teeth against the look and tried to stay afloat in the waves of information. He had never been this communicative before. “I am not captivating,” she said, sounding as if it was a stinging insult. “I plan things, I do not... host. Or teach, for that matter. You were supposed to give me time to recruit!”
“In a war, you have to be willing to make adjustments to the operation as you go,” he said, not hiding the very masculine smile that touched his lips at her outrage and denial. Mornings were, she would learn, better than afternoons and evenings for his pain level, and mornings without alcohol, after successfully winning an attractive woman over were even better. Now, once physical therapy started up again, that would be harder pill to swallow, but he couldn’t get up in front of a classroom for an hour without it.
She gave him a scalding look, and it would be wise not to tell her that she was "won over." It didn't look as if she would take the news well. "Since when do you make 'adjustments' to anything," she snapped, annoyed at him for making her job that much more difficult, though she was already digging through papers and punching a number into her little red blackberry.
“You think you know me so well after a month?” he asked. “You put that down and come on over here, woman,” he said with a gentle tone of command.
"You're the one that moved up the timeline," she said angrily, scrolling through numbers to find the right one.
“Erin.”
"What."
“Come here, please,” he said in the most agreeable tone of voice he had used in her presence yet. “Ma’am.”
She stopped scrolling and eyed him as if she found him a very untrustworthy person indeed. He hadn’t ever spoken like that to her (or to anyone, in her knowledge) and she thought this might be some precursor to a volcanic eruption or perhaps an impending lecture on privacy. (She thought this last thought as she was standing up and she noticed the absence of the locked box that used to hold all the pills. It was now on her dresser at home and he was not getting it back, no matter what kind of fit he threw.) She put the papers on her side of his desk and, standing with some trepidation, came around the edge to his side, looking again at the desk to see what was so important.
When she was close enough to manage it, he reached for her wrist and tugged her to him. His fingers spanned her wrist with room to spare, and his expression was damnably determined. He was in a fine mood, and she looked in need of rumpling in all that purple. Plus, she was flustered and getting her to quit fretting had to be a good thing. “That’s it,” he said as he tugged her, as if he was talking to a skittish mare.
She was unresisting, but clearly surprised at the shift from business to personal, so much so that she still eyed him, waiting for the punchline. The flowers and the gifts, however, were not the presents that an employer gives an employee, and she wasn’t so much skittish as wary about the repercussions of whatever it was he was doing. She doubted very much he thought it through. Then again, she was having an unusually difficult time thinking anything through herself.
Once she was close enough, he added just a touch of pressure and tugged her onto his lap.
It would have been hard to deny that was where she wanted to be, but it was awkward nonetheless and she didn’t have much squirming room in that pencil skirt. She took one of his shoulders to steady herself and looked up at him with cloudy confusion. “What are you doing?” She meant it, of course, in the broader way, in the long-term planning way, in the way that she should have known Colt would not subscribe to. Feeling indecorous with her knees up past her waist, she tried to wriggle off again, leaving faint hints of that sweet cocoa scent that she wore sometimes when she wanted to have a good day.
He chuckled, and he had none of that fussing to get off his lap. “Where you in such a hurry to get to?” he asked her, even if his hand slid behind the nape of her neck with callous, weapon worn fingers and no small amount of masculine confidence. She wasn’t towering over him, and he had her in his arms, and that brought out more Colt than he’d been in years. He pulled her down, closer, and he grinned an exceptionally entitled male smile. “Nothing you were fussing over can’t wait a minute or five.”
She was just thinking about alien abductions and replacements of previously cantankerous people with handsome grinning ones when his fingers tickled the line of her hair and then the sensitive curve of her spine. About a hundred muscles--some of which she hadn’t known she possessed--went immediately (and quite obviously to him, no doubt) tense. He smelled nice, she realized. Not like sour whiskey at all. Like soap, and like... like him. She put both hands against his chest, and in the end it wasn’t as much of a barrier as she thought it might be. “Colt, have you thought about this? I work for you, you know...”
“Hush, woman,” was his reply, and the hand at her nape kept her still as he ducked his head to brush his lips against hers. He was out of practice, but there were some things a man never forgot how to do and kissing a pretty woman was one of them. His arm slipped around her waist, pulling her closer to his chest, her hands on the fabric of his shirt no real deterrent to him. His mouth slanted over hers in a wordless demand comprised entirely of breath and rugged softness; he wanted in.
She hushed. Well, near enough to hushing, which was a very soft sound of surprised pleasure, and as her palms slid up his chest her mouth parted for his. Business suits and severe opinions aside, Erin was oddly giving when it came to this particular area of social interaction, and she was entirely pliable without being passive. She curled her arms around the back of his neck and let him cradle her closer with no complaint.
He was surprised at her entirely giving reaction, or he would be later, when he could actually think. For now, he just took what she offered like a man who hadn’t sipped water in days. He licked into her mouth, tasted and claimed and took. His hand on her nape tightened, fingertips sliding into that contained mass of dark hair, and his hand on the small of her pressed against her spine, flat and fingers outstretched, coaxing her to give him more friction and more contact with steady pressure that didn’t ask permission.
Coffee. Coffee, and heat, and a taste that was like the scent coming off of his skin. She tipped her head and her lips were soft and giving while the kiss acquired a hint of hunger and desperation. The muscles under his hand contracted as she pressed closer to him, safe, for some reason, and no longer awkward. Her hair was starting to come loose over his fingers, and her breath came quicker against his mouth.
The beginning capitulation of her hair made him bury his hand in it, tugging it entirely free and letting the dark silk cascade over his fingers. He hadn’t felt a woman soft and supple for him in years and, admittedly, she felt nothing like his Anana. She was all long, waifish too pale limbs, ethereal in a way that made her feel delicate under his hands and mouth. That delicateness, however, didn’t dampen his desire for her; if anything, it pushed him further. It was a battle to keep that hand at her spine from tugging on the creamy shirt, for slipping under fabric to touch delicate skin. All of this, all of the sensation was poured into the kiss, imbued with want and protect and desire until it was heady and thick and all there was between them, despite clothing and air.
The skirt was not particularly forgiving of excessive movement, but she ignored it as she pulled her knees down to turn toward him, the hem climbing a little dangerously as her fingers swept over the base of his neck and her palms caught the rough line of his jaw. This was not a one-sided kiss of idle exploring affection, and absolutely without thinking, she brought her hips into his in an absolutely unquestionable answer to something he had only just started to ask.
The movement, the offer, the exposed bit of skin at the hem of the skirt, it all pulled a growl from him, and in that instant he did tug the cream fabric free, both of his hands moving to the small of her back and under that innocuous fabric. Her spine under his fingers felt as delicate as the rest of her did above her clothes, and he sucked her lower lip between his teeth as his hands splayed out, all possessive callouses on that skin he couldn’t see, that skin he was rapidly imagining laid out for his pleasure. He slid one of his hands down a moment later, over the curve of her hip and down her thigh, down where that hem was wracking havoc on his control. He broke the kiss, his breathing hard and raced, and he watched his hand slide under the edge of that hem and push it higher.
The kiss’ soft little sounds of wordless want strangled in a gasp, and her grip transferred from his neck to the collar of his shirt. She didn’t want to pull away from that contact, the rough skin that felt so good against hers, but reason was interfering, and she rocked back with yet another gasp of realization. What am I doing?! She caught his exploring hand with her own and, eyes glassy, tried to get her hormones under control. She had no practice with hormones, and she wasn’t very good at it. “Colt, wait.”
He raised his gaze to hers, and he stilled his hand under hers, but did not withdraw it. His thumb and fingertips pressed into pale, delicate skin at her thigh, and his eyes cleared as much as they could when he had a tumble of clearly interested woman on his lap. “You’re going to say something impossible, aren’t you?” he asked, his gaze dropping to her lips for a second, just before his mouth captured hers again, this time in a quick press of lips at the corner of her mouth, then on the bow of her upper lip. “You don’t always have to throw up that wall, you know.”
She looked younger, softer, more pale with her hair down around her cheeks, and her eyes looked wider and chocolate soft as she looked down into his. Leaning carefully, she kissed him very lightly too, brief and wondering in the cool touch of her lips. “It’s complicated. This isn’t what you hired me for, is it?” The fringe of lash lowered to give him a look of both anxiety and faint reproach.
“I hire a middle aged man with a beer belly and no mind to open my blinds when I want them closed,” he told her, rubbing his thumb along her jaw as he spoke. She did look softer like this, but she also looked all the more desirable for it, with all the softness a man likes to find in a woman who’s smart and sharp on the outside.
An impatient little huff of air, tangible. “I do not mess with your blinds anyway. I am overqualified for that job.” She sighed and slid her arms off his shoulders, touching his chin again, before curling against his chest exactly like she dreamed she could. Colt had a very broad chest that moved in the most interesting ways when he was breathing. She tucked her head into his neck and shoulder.
“You mess with the blinds, woman,” he said, but there was only a thick smile in the words, no venom or anger at her appropriation of his light control devices. He stiffened a little when she curled against him, unaccustomed to the affection, body and muscles no longer having easy access to memories of a body so softly folded against his own. The stiffening only lasted a moment, though, and his acceptance of the affection was a gruff thing. He wrapped her in a hug that was more bear than finesse, and he held on a little too tight for fear of her pulling away. “Don’t go moving,” he warned her, his voice as gruff as the embrace. “A man’s got to get used to do these things again after awhile of going without.”
“I don’t know why you’re so stubborn about making people go away,” she said softly. She hadn’t perceived the stiffening to be anything directed at her, satisfied in his interest for her only because of the way he was holding her when she wasn’t kissing him, and not the flowers or the passion of the moment. “Why are you stuck here, then, with your silly blinds shut?” Erin decided she was going to have to remove herself from Colt’s employ. She just hadn’t told him that yet.
“One thing at a time,” he told her, and yes, he was stalling. He slid his hand along her jaw, his fingers stretched out to fan against cheek and ear, and he shifted beneath her, very obviously not unaffected by her perch on his lap. “Where’d you come from before here?” he asked, because turning the tables and asking about her would seem a) caring and would b) take the pressure of him to talk about himself. He’d never yet met a woman who didn’t like to chatter on about herself. And even if a voice in the back of his mind told him Erin wouldn’t be so easy to waylay, he still figured it was worth a try.
She shifted too, and very probably blushed, but as there was no change in color (as there was when she was angry) there wasn’t any visible sign of it. “Colt,” she said warningly, without actually referring to what she was talking about. Then a moment later she relented: “My father is in L.A.” As if he cared. She reached out away from him, toward the desk, and put her hand over the lock in his desk. When her palm came away, she showed him the key, and waited.
There was something about having a woman on his lap for the first time in years that made it hard for Colt to concentrate on this conversation, and it showed in his wandering attention and his wandering hands - one of which was currently on that climbing hem again, and the other which had settle on her shoulder, his thumb petting the side of her neck and slipping (with regularity) beneath her collar. “Your father being in LA answers precisely nothing. When’d you come over?” he asked, and then he looked down at the key in hand. “You’ve already been nosing around in there. Are you asking me for permission now?”
“No,” she said, gracefully avoiding the question with the sort of neatness that came from being a business woman in the professional sense, when the great majority of people wanted to talk about what you are doing in a place like this, rather than the business at hand. “I just thought you might want to talk about it.” She knew he didn’t want to talk about it, but talking about anything at all was an improvement on the alternative, which didn’t involve a lot of talking at all. Erin was trying to be sensible.
“When’d you come over?” he repeated.
Sigh. “A while ago. I was ten.” Happy?
She couldn’t be much more than mid twenties, which meant she’d been in the human word around 15 years by his count. “And you came over with your father?” He didn’t ask about a mother, because she hadn’t mentioned one. In fairness, because he was asking her questions, he took the key from her hand and turned it in the lock.
“Yes. My mother stayed.” She didn’t seem particularly bitter, but Erin’s tempers tended to have depths she didn’t always immediately reveal. She turned to look at the mess of indecipherable papers on the table.
He pulled open the drawer, and then he settled his hands back onto her hips. His fingers tugged at that cream fabric under the jacket again, fingers sliding beneath it, his gaze locked with hers. It was a challenge, a wordless one, and his hands cupped her bare sides beneath the fabric as if they owned the skin they touched. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Her voice went soft, but it was more of a moan than a whisper. “You first.” She could think of all manner of things she wasn’t telling him, and he wasn’t specific enough to make her feel even the slightest bit guilt prying into the life he was trying so hard to avoid out here. God, that felt good. Definitely quitting. She brushed her soft lips against his throat.
“Difference is,” he said, his voice going low and gravelly when she brushed her lips against his throat, “you already nosed through everything I’m hiding. I don’t know anything you’ve got in your closet,” he said, his hands sliding up over her ribs and under her arms, enough to lift her and settle her closer to him, that damn skirt and its limitations be damned. It made the fabric hike more, which he didn’t have any issue with whatsoever, and he glanced down at the tempting expanse of thigh with eyes that did not hide their interest and appreciation. The looking lasted all of thirty seconds, and then he freed one of his hand and cupped the back of her head and dragged her to him for a kiss, this one all possession and control and badly restrained reaction.
Her skin was down soft but cool to the touch, and he hardly needed to exert the pressure to move her closer, as she responded not to strength but to mere contact. She’d been about to say ‘I didn’t read your letters’ (because that was something she could get away with saying because she didn’t know the language they were written in) but he cut it off with a kiss, and a few moments later she lost the thread of conversation entirely. “Byron,” she said against his mouth, lips bruised, pulse pounding.
“Colt,” he corrected, but he didn’t give her a chance to actually rectify the error. He was shoving the skirt up to her thighs, and pulling her so she was straddling his hips, and it was all done in a movement of arms that still had enough strength left in them to move her around with ease. In a few hours, he’d probably be tired enough that it wouldn’t be an option, but now wasn’t a few hours from now. His hands slid up her outer thighs, and his mouth slanted over hers as he deepened the kiss, the pace more a erratic, more desperate. His fingers found the sides of her underwear, and they slid under the nothing-tease of fabric, and he moaned against her lips.
They could talk about employment later. Bare white knees pressed hard against his hips as she fought for balance, and she rose up at his touch, loose shirt buttons catching against his chest and her mouth finding purchase on his. Her fingers curved under his collar and found the dips at the base of his neck, and she broke the kiss to take a breath against his skin there. Under his fingers, silk, small lines of white lace, and indulgences that were entirely personal under those serious suits.
He tugged at those delicate lines of lace and sensuality, and he wanted to see the damn things. The fact that whatever was under the suit seemed to be as soft and pliable as the woman in his arms brought him no end of agony, and he practically growled against her mouth. The medicines he took affected his libido, but not so much that he had any ability to resist this, nor did he have any desire to. The buttons, catching against his chest as they did, caught his attention, and he wondered if what was beneath them would prove as interesting as whatever was under the skirt. The thought had barely formed, and he was already tugging at buttons with large fingers turned impatient.
She was faintly amused at all his characteristic grouching and pulling, and while she was as delicate and easily-bruised as he surmised, it certainly didn’t stop her from enjoying the closeness. It had been quite a long time for Erin, too, and she wasn’t as much of an ice queen as people tended to think. The thin silk shirt slid over more silk edged with the rough netting of fine lace, and not being a woman with an excess of curves, Erin liked pretty things close to her skin where she thought no one else likely to see.
She blushed, now visible in the little tip of her chin and hitch of her breath, but she let him take the shirt. It felt very odd and vulnerable sitting on his lap without much in the way of clothes while he was still fully dressed, and she wasn’t as overtly demonstrative of her body as he wanted. She didn’t have quite the opinion of it that he did, and she would have preferred being under a thick coverlet somewhere just in case his expression changed into disappointment. Erin hadn’t been so lucky in her lovers as he with his.
The buttons gave, and once they did he pushed the jacket and the shirt off her shoulders with fingers that tugged a little too hard with impatience. She might not like to be looked at, but Colt would be damned if he was going to deny himself this. He cupped her breasts through the revealing silk and lace, so different than the sedate suit jacket and shirt, and he fondled with the touch of a man long denied such intimacies. The reaction of his body was, in turn, undeniable, especially given the way she was straddling his lap, and he slipped one hand to the small of her back and rocked her against him as he found her mouth again.
The rough urgency was like getting swept up in something that she didn’t see coming, and though her skin may have been cool to his touch, she was burning, and needed very little beyond even a faint, encouraging touch. What he gave her was much more, and her breathing when his hands moved over her almost stopped entirely as she forgot to do anything, even pant. She was soft where he was hard, and already empty and aching, she took a gasp from his mouth and moaned with entirely uncalculated urgency, shifting her hips again and scraping against his lap for more of that intimate contact. The chair tipped dangerously.
The shifting of her hips made him moan without even a modicum of control, and it caused him to miss the dangerous tipping of the chair. By the time he sensed his center of balance was off, the chair was too far gone to right, even as he grabbed for the desk. In the end, the only thing he could do was guard her fall, which he did. The chair hit the floor loudly, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, effectively trapping her on top of him for the impact and absorbing it himself. That was going to make for an unbearable tomorrow.
Erin detected the change even later than he did, and she too made a grab for the desk, but he’d already caught her up and wrapped her close. She let out a little squeak of surprise and reactionary fear of falling, but then they had gone over and landed among the discarded papers with a crash. The impact knocked the breath out of her and she waited a moment to recover before looking anxiously up into his face. “Are you alright?”
The pain showed on his face, something he couldn’t hide even if he wanted to, and he let her go, even as he groaned around the jarring force of the impact. A moment later, he dragged a hand through her hair, and he gave her a smile that was nowhere near the ones from minutes earlier. “I’m fine,” he said. “You alright?” he asked, though he knew she was. He was trying to think of something to send her to do, to get her out of the room while he found his footing, and he settled on the most immediate thing he could. “Go on into the kitchen and bring me the pill bottle that’s sitting out on the counter, along with some water.” The pills in question were low-grade pain pills that the doctor had left for her, nothing strong enough for his own use, but it would get her out for a few minutes, and that’s all he needed.
She sat up and rolled her weight off of him to catch herself on the carpet so she wasn’t lying on top of him. Sitting up, she put her weight on one knee and worked her skirt back down her thighs. “Are you alright?” she repeated, clearly not believing him, curving an arm under his neck and pulling to attempt to sit him up. She forgot for a moment that she wasn’t even wearing a shirt, and she looked, for some reason, stronger with her arms bare.
As soon as she curved her arm under his neck, he tensed. “Erin,” he said, something entirely raw, vulnerable and dangerous in the pronunciation of her name just then. “No. Now, unless you want me screaming mad, you’ll go do what I ask, and you’ll let me salvage my damned pride.” It was said through gritted teeth, his gaze registering the unexpected strength in her arms, but not commenting on it.
Alarmed, she pulled back, but not enough to leave him. “But I want to help,” she said. There was something vulnerable in her voice, too, but it was without any of the control that he had, earnest and caring. Her fingers slid over his shoulders.
“You can help in five minutes. Now, go on,” he said, trying to keep himself from his normal reaction of barking at her. She was worried, and he could tell she was worried, and he didn’t want her running off like she had the night of the ball. He took her hand, and he looked in her worried eyes. “I don’t want to yell at you and scare you the hell away. Give me the five minutes, woman.”
“Don’t call me woman.” She did not want to go, but she did not want him to yell at her either, and she did not want to betray the small trust he had given her. “Five minutes. I’m counting.” She moved away, gently, brushing at her skirt. Her jacket was on the other side of the chair, and it was obvious she didn’t want to go searching for it while she was... well, without it. She picked up the first garment she saw and left the room.
He waited until she was gone to start the arduous process of getting to his feet. His bad leg couldn’t support any weight on its own, and his knee could only bend and straighten with time and effort and once it was bent, it stayed that way for awhile. It meant he had to largely use his upper arms to pull himself up, and he mentally cursed every damn doctor that had insisted amputation was the way to go over the past five years. It took the full five minutes, but he got the chair righted, and he sat down in it with a groan, his skin clammy and damp from the effort and exertion. He opened the drawer he’d shoved the pills into when he’d sent her the box, and he pulled out two significantly strong painkillers. He’d get through today, and play at a cold tomorrow.
She brought them tea. Both of them. He got exactly six minutes, but only because she was standing outside for a full minute, worrying. He looked terrible once she got back into the room, and rather than feeling pity, she felt guilty for putting him out of his element. She put the mug down after joining him at his elbow, looking contrite and out of her element herself in one of his t-shirts. The little unlabeled bottle of pills was next to it.
The t-shirt engulfed her in a way that made her seem even more delicate and otherworldly than she normally did. He took a sip of the tea, and he reached up and touched her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “Not your fault,” he said, very much wanting to just drag her back to him. He might need a bed at this rate, he realized, and it made him chuckle, even looking like shit.
“Except it was,” she said, at the end of a breath. “Sorry. I got carried away.” She bent down and touched her lips to his, an affectionate kiss rather than a passionate one. “I can go home,” she suggested, gently, pulling at the t-shirt. “Do you want to lie down before I go or after?”
He let her have the affectionate kiss, and then he tugged her back to him for a kiss that was deeper, slower. It was not as frenetic as the kisses that had come before it, but there was something more intimate to it, something about confessions and giving up pride. “You don’t apologize for being sexy, woman,” he told her, running his thumb over her temple. “You go on, and I’ll get some rest once you’ve gone.” He paused, and he thought a moment. “Going to need to look into furnishing this place. How about dinner tonight, and we can do some Internet shopping?”
She blushed the colorless little head-tip of a blush, and then she picked up her clothing. Smiling, she bent down for another kiss, one of the smoldering ones that was all offers and contact, and then she said, “I’ll bring my resignation letter.” Then she patted his cheek and moved around the edge of the desk before he could grab her again.
Oh, he tried to grab her. He cursed, and he reached for her, and when he came up empty he cursed again. “I’m not taking any resignation letter from you, Erin. We have stuff needs to be done, and I am not hiring someone else to do it, and that’s the last we’re discussing that.”
She smiled seraphically, all assurance. “I don’t sleep with my employers, Colt.” She used his first name on purpose, and she was looking at him in a way that said it was deliciously intentional. “So you’re going to have to decide whether you want me in the suit or out of it.” She seemed fairly certain which one he’d choose, for some reason. She started shuffling her papers. “I’ll help you in an advisory capacity, but I’m not taking a paycheck. I’ll bring dinner when I come, too.” And if he was mean to her, he was getting vegetarian.
The fact that she was planning on sleeping with him was almost enough to make everything else that had just come out of her mouth not matter. “We’ll talk about it over dinner,” he said, feeling suddenly very magnanimous. “And you better not be bringing me any pasta salad with salad and soup.”
She just smiled, picked up her briefcase, shrugged on her Dior jacket over the borrowed t-shirt, and left.