THIRTEEN

He was withdrawn when he came home.  Moody.  Nearly silent throughout dinner as they passed the red and white take out cartons back and forth across the coffee table.  He even picked out and ate all the spicy red pepper pods without a shred of guilt although he knew they were her favorite.  Afterwards, they reclined back on pillows before the fire.... still barely talking.  The room smelled strongly of pungent Szechwan beef and spring rolls.  She sipped the last dregs of her tea.  His mouth was still tingling from the lingering heat of the peppers.  Neither of them touched their fortune cookies.  It was so quiet he could hear her breathe. 

In.  Out.  In.  Out.

The rhythm was too slow for his racing mind to want to follow as it turned over the day's events... and that unpleasant little powwow he'd had with Terry.  Unsettled and on the edge of losing the war raging inside him, he fought harder to quiet all of the wild feelings stirring within him, aware he'd been out of control too long but unable now to overcome the rising tide welling up in him.  Despite his excitable nature, he was rarely out of control.  He didn't like the feeling.  It made him want to dominate something, to ride it hard and spend himself in the mastery of it.... conversely, it also sharpened his need into an intense longing for a soft place to fall; to curl up and hide someplace safe from the world.

He reached for her, still struggling to control what he was feeling.  She tasted sweet, like sesame and plums when he kissed her.  When he broke the kiss she touched her lips, flushing as her fingertips moved from her mouth to his. 

The peppers.   

"Tingles," she whispered.

"Good."  

He kissed her again, shoving the floor pillows out of the way as he rolled her under him and moved to cover her.  It wasn't soft or sweet or nice.  It was intense and excruciatingly tender.  He swept his tongue into her mouth, kissing and sucking and biting until she pulled away, gasping at the fiery heat.  Too hot.  If he hadn't been so focused.... and so guilty, he might have smiled against her throat as his mouth slipped down her neck and into her hair.  She liked a little heat- but he'd been eating five stars since she was in diapers.   

Nipping at that spot behind her ear that he knew drove her wild, he fought down a surge of an entirely different kind of heat.  It didn't stay down long, however, as their legs entwined and she rubbed her warm crotch against his thick erection.  The heat returned, wilder than before, rising up to engulf him.  He drove her passion before him, wanting her to make her come again and again until she was boneless; his way of atoning for what he really wanted from her in the end.  He knew it was almost not right.... it was too indulgent... too.... selfish.  And yet despite the guilt, he still didn't stop.

He wasn't particularly gentle.  There was too much heat swirling in him for that and too much of his strength was going to holding himself back to make it romantic for her.  But it was intense.  And when he was finished and she lay there with her skirt flipped up, still fluttering around the thick, hard penis buried deep inside her as she fought for breath and consciousness... he hoped what he'd just given her would be enough.

She knew what he was doing.  They might be on different wavelengths more often than not these days, but he only ever pushed her like that when he wanted something particular from her when it was over.  Something he felt guilty about no matter how many times she'd tried to reassure him.  It wasn't her favorite sex act.... but it was excruciatingly intimate, and with the way things had been between them lately, she craved the intimacy and closeness she knew it would bring.

He always began the same way... like he was trying to make up for it by giving her more pleasure than she could stand first, and he was skilled enough to manipulate her body into it even when she resisted.  Only she hadn't resisted tonight.  Maybe she sensed the need in him.  Maybe it was her own selfish desire to reclaim their lost intimacy that drove her.  She wasn't really sure.  It was hard to think.  He'd played her body like the finest instrument, drawing pleasure from her when she thought she was incapable of climaxing again and even forcing it on her when she was beyond resisting.  She'd lost count of the times he'd made her come... with his fingers... his voice... his mouth... his cock. 

Sweaty and dazed, she stared up at his flushed face.  His jaw was tense and his lips had thinned to a grimace with the effort of holding back the tide of his own passion.  He hadn't yet come.  He withdrew slowly, so far gone that he was unable to enjoy the way her small hands clutched at him as they tried to keep him from pulling out too fast.  As he moved back to a crouch before her, she saw the damp matted hair of his groin and the rudely erotic jut of his heavy cock as it shone wetly in the firelight. 

For half a moment she wondered if he was purposefully going out of his way to keep from coming inside her.  Not that they wanted children right away, but was he trying to tell her something subconsciously?  He hated condoms and rarely used them with her anymore... but in the last few months it seemed like he'd been going out of his way to make sure he spent himself anywhere but the one place his seed might take root. 

That fleetingly disturbing thought was gone in the next moment as he sat back into his leather armchair and opened his legs.  A thick column of distended flesh rose crudely from between his legs, visibly throbbing with every beat of his strong heart.  His fist was wrapped around the tip, squeezing roughly.  His whole body shook with the need for stimulation now that he'd left the warm damp haven of her body.  She moved closer, on her knees before him and he brushed the weeping tip across her bottom lip.     

"Please...."  It was the first coherent word he'd uttered in more than an hour.   

And it still wasn't what he really wanted... but it would come in time, after he'd tortured himself long enough with this atonement.  Dropping his hands, he let her take control, panting through the strong urge to come as she kissed and sucked.  He liked the affection in the way she touched him, but aroused as he was, he also wanted the hardcore images now that passion had burned away the last shreds of propriety.  She gave it to him, sucking lewdly, rubbing him against her cheeks and chin and lips in a graphic display.  She rooted at his groin, breathing in the heavy musk and mouthing his scrotum before rolling it gently in her long fingers.  Fluttering her tongue on his tip, she teased his perineum and the sensitive ring of muscle beyond with her fingers until he was shuddering and weeping a steady stream over her tongue.

And then, finally, he took what he wanted at last....

He rose swiftly, roughly enough to make her lose her balance and fall back before him.  She scrambled back to her knees as quickly as her exhausted, pleasure-soaked body could go, acutely aware of exactly what he wanted.  Her hands dropped away and his came up to twine in her long dark hair as he held her still - passive - and then he began to move, pumping his hips as his hands cradled the back of her head, holding her exactly where he wanted.  He tried as he always did to control the wildness as he watched his wet length slip between her red lips again and again... but it was more intense tonight than ever before.  Sweat trickled down his spine.  Her eyes watered.  Now and again she could feel the soft rasp of his hair against her lips.  Her throat felt raw.  His raspy pants became low deep grunts, rude and animalistic for all their softness.

That part never lasted long.  Just a few agonizing moments and then he was coming, curling over her and cradling her head into him as he shuddered through those one or two wild bruising thrusts that he was helpless to control.  That was the worst part... but she imagined it was no more uncomfortable for her than what he'd experienced earlier, denying himself while she came on his tender throbbing flesh again and again. 

He pulsed.  She swallowed.  It was rude and messy and achingly intimate.  There were tears in his eyes when he was finished.

Wiping away the stray splatters of semen from her face with his thumb, he brought it to his own mouth before blindly searching for hers as they crumpled to the carpet in a sweaty tangled heap.  The needy kiss ended and they collapsed into each other's arms where he hid his face in her neck they way he always did afterwards.  His breathing slowed and that tense distance that had been between them since he walked in the door seemed to have melted away... and that was what she'd really been after all along.  The rough pad of his thumb gently caressed her cheek.  Her hand rubbed up and down his back soothingly as they lay there, and for the first time that night she smiled.

"Bad day at the office?"

It was different than their usual ending, which as of late had been to bury themselves in sex and not talk.

He chuckled softly.  "Well, it beats using Thorne as a punching bag."

She just grinned and her hand slipped between his legs to give his soft plump cock a gentle squeeze.  "So you just use me, huh? Good thing I like a bit of rough." 

Dino winced at that.  He never liked that he used her that way, though it still didn't stop him from doing it.  He tried for a bit of lightness he didn't really feel.  "You better hope he doesn't really annoy me...."

They both had a bit of a laugh over that, but the passage of time and the addition of a blanket that made a safe cozy nest for them soon had them talking slowly, but in earnest.  It had been a long time since he'd opened up about anything.  He told her about his day and about the argument with Terry.  It felt so good that he'd let her back into his life... and his head.

And she couldn't help but wonder if they were finally, finally turning some sort of corner....

But isn't that always when life decides to through you the rudest kind of curveball?

FOURTEEN

She was making dinner a romantic dinner for them in Dino's apartment when the door rang.  Hoping it wasn't her lover sending flowers and a note to make up for having to work late, she didn't even think to look through the peephole before she pulled the front door open wide.  She wasn't entirely sure who was more astonished, her or Cullen Murphy. 

He seemed surprised by her appearance.  Gone was the sexual sophisticate he remembered and in her place was what looked to be a hardly more than a girl dressed in low rise jeans and a thin white tank.  God, she even had a faint smattering of freckles over the bridge of her nose.  He swaggered his way inside, more smitten than ever but confident his smooth charm masked the slight flutter she'd given him.   

"Dino home?"  He brandished an eclectic bouquet of gorgeous yellow flowers; orchids, lilies.... and jasmine by the scent of it.

"No, he's working...." she hesitated, "but I expect him home any time now."  He caught her nervousness.  He could read a lie a mile off and she wouldn't have announced that unless Dino wasn't due home for a while. 

So, his presence affected her that much, did it?  Good.

"No problem then, sweetheart.... I just wanted to drop these flowers off for the Boss' wife... you know, as a thank you for helping me score the job."  He'd scored the job all on his own and they both knew it, but it was a plausible excuse.  He'd never forgive himself if he didn't make a play.  He could get a job anywhere.  Women like her were far more rare.  He might have fucked himself through several women after she and Dino had left the club that night, but she was the one who had been in his mind when he woke up.      

Flowers for the Boss' wife?  He made her uncomfortable.  Any attention from a man did, really.  Well, except for Dino.  She'd known him long before that dynamic had ever entered their relationship.  "So, Gaia got some flowers too....?  And Dino and I are not married."  He could tell by her halting answer that he'd flustered her. 

"Gaia, who's she?"  His smile seemed to grow more predatory but he backed off when he saw her stiffen.  He moved away to wander through the lounge, mentally cataloguing what he saw for later.  He might be interested in her, but he was also interested in what this private palace could tell him about his very secretive new boss.

Not married, huh?  "Really?  So it's not a committed thing, huh?"  He fingered a small exotic carving that Dino had brought back from Asia on one of his trips.  "Just good friends then?"  His tone implied 'friends with benefits of the hot-sex-with-no-strings variety'.

"....."

"Hey, you never know...."

Her mouth open and shut.  She really wasn't sure what to tell him and she resented his intrusion into their apartment and her private life.  She didn't like the kind of uncertainty he stirred in her.  He was handsome, but he didn't tempt her.  Not really.  What she didn't like was the way he made her face all the doubts that had been swirling around the nature of her relationship with Dino.  Hell, she couldn't even define it to herself, much less put it into words someone else would understand. 

She might not have answered him, but he could read her body language well enough.  He didn't really think he'd had a chance, but it hadn't kept him from trying.  Nobody ever won anything sitting on the sidelines.  He just shrugged and walked back to the door, pleased that she followed him.  From a distance.

"Well, see you around, sweetheart....." he turned and faced her.  She froze in her tracks and he stopped just short of touching her cheek.  He pushed her with words instead as he leaned against the doorjamb.  "You ever thought about a toy boy rather than being the toy girl?"  

Her eyes widened and color rose in her face.  To his delight, it traveled her slender throat to the tops of her breasts.  

"Just a thought, sweetheart...."

Smiling one last time, he winked at her and swaggered out the door, satisfied he'd at least given her something to think about.

FIFTEEN

Dino had bounded in with his usual wit and charm, but her lackluster greeting had him scratching his head.  Women.  He'd never understood how they could go from being giddy and love struck one moment to morose and apathetic the next.  "What's the matter with you?"  He really didn't feel like talking her out of one of her moods.... 

"She's gone."

He still wasn't really listening; he was rummaging around in one of her drawers for the wine opener that she never put back.  It made him mental.  And he'd brought a fancy bottle to celebrate their.... well, just to celebrate.  Period.  Things between them had been so good lately.  "Who's gone?"  

"Uma."

"What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"Gone.  Left.  As in sold her share to Chili and just up and left."  Her lower lip was trembling and her eyes were wet and shining.  "She didn't even say anything to me...."  The first tear fell.  "She didn't even leave a note..... I didn't even know until she'd come back..."

"What?  Honey, slow down.  You're not making any sense."

It had felt like the worst betrayal.  All this time she'd been sticking it out, resisting Dino's repeated requests to move to New York with him because she was afraid of letting Uma down... and then she goes and runs off after Andy without even a word.  It was a deep cut.  Worse still, she hadn't even known what had happened until Uma and returned with Andy in tow, glowing and radiant.  Unable to face her and unsure of what she might say or do, Heather had hidden away and listened while the pair of lovebirds had shared their future plans.  It was like a blow to the stomach.  They were really leaving. 

There was pain, sure, but jealousy too.  How come Uma got to have everything she always wanted with the man she wanted while she'd been the good girl, the responsible girl... and she'd gotten nothing?  It wasn't fair. 

Dino held her - her tears always ripped at his guts - but as the whole story came out in pathetic, hiccupy bursts, he thought if she was looking for sympathy, she'd definitely come to the wrong person.  He didn't feel sorry for her.  He felt.... vindicated.

She was looking at him, limpid-eyed and sniffly as she clutched at his shirt.  He had a strong urge to knock her hands off him.  Christ Jesus.  She expected him to feel sorry for her?  Over this? 

Well sorry, princess, I'm not quite that big of a man....

"Say something, Dean."

He was always so controlled... especially with her.  It was the first time he'd ever blown.  Really blown.  In that moment, he was so not above gloating and telling her 'I told you so'.

He did exactly that.

And just like that, their imagined intimacy from only a few nights before vanished like warm breath in a cold wind.