Chapter Text
This is not how she expected her Saturday night to go.
University professors in the humanities are rarely of interest to the CIA unless they end up in the unlikely scenario of a bad Dan Brown novel, where their particular expertise is suddenly relevant to codebreaking or fighting terrorism.
Which is what’s happened to her and why the CIA is suddenly offering her protection. Because apparently her work on a certain authoritarian regime is very important to national interests, and the CIA is very invested in protecting the world from that particular authoritarian regime. In the name of democracy, of course.
She wonders if her life starting to resemble a bad airport novel indicates that she’s made bad choices or good ones.
That night, she’d been approached by several stony-faced men in suits and an older man who introduces himself as Fitz and asks her to come with them. He has a soothing voice and a kind face, which makes her distrust him. He has her escorted to a safe house by an expressionless man in a gray suit, who, she’s informed, will be her protector for the foreseeable future.
“His name is Six. He’ll take care of you,” Fitz says. “You can trust him with your life.”
Not that she has a choice in the matter.
“Six? Is that your real name?”
He gives her a look.
“Of course not,” Fitz says. “Merely his designation.”
Faceless, nameless government types, then.
After a stop at her house (she had insisted; she needs her laptop, her books, and her things), she’s whisked away to a safe house that’s more luxurious than she expected. For one thing, it’s a house, not an apartment, with floor-to-ceiling windows.
“Aren’t those a security risk?” she asks.
“They’re bulletproof and tinted. No one can see in to know where to aim for,” Six says. “And there’s a wall around the perimeter, with surveillance.”
His tone is expressionless.
She looks him over. He has the unremarkable appearance of a bodyguard: tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, wearing a non-descript but well-fitting gray suit.
“Right. Well, does this safe house also have any whiskey? That seems like it might also be essential, and I’ve had quite the evening.”
“Probably.” Then he softens a little and steps towards her. “I know this is frightening, but I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”
She wants to point out that she doesn’t know him, or who he is, or whether she can trust him, or how skilled he is. In fact, she’s about to be stuck alone for an indeterminate amount of time with a man who is stronger and more skilled at fighting than she is. For all she knows, he could be the danger.
But she takes the tactful route of thanking him and going to look for the whiskey instead.
She starts to get an inkling that he’s not a typical bodyguard quite quickly, however. When he’s not walking the perimeter or checking surveillance footage, he spends much of his time reading. The safehouse has a somewhat well-stocked library (for the sanity of its inmates, she supposes), and he’s been making his way through them.
“I spend a lot of time on planes. Can’t spend all that time sleeping,” he’d explained when she’d asked about his reading habits. Today, she’d found him absorbed a paperback of Rendezvous with Rama.
Which is not to say that she found him lost in the book. In fact, no matter how attentively he seemed to be reading, he’d always been able to sense her approaching. She had yet to startle him, even when walking up from behind him.
On the one hand, it reassures her that he’s well-qualified for the job of a bodyguard, unlikely to be caught by surprise. On the other, it makes her deeply sad that he can never allow himself the luxury of being so thoroughly immersed in a story that the outside world disappears.
Meanwhile, she spends her days working – the slow, laborious work of chipping away at getting another article published, which, thankfully, can be done from anywhere. The benefits of academia and a discipline that doesn’t require a lab: she’s portable.
The result is that they’ve easily fallen into a comforting routine: he with his books, her with her laptop and articles. He’s generally unobtrusive, like someone who’s used to blending into the background, slipping through the cracks, and going unnoticed. Always present, but never close, never in her space. And it makes her very sad for him, even as she finds his continued presence somehow reassuring. A pleasant alternative to nights spent alone in her apartment, nothing but teetering piles of books for company.
Several days in, she dresses to venture outside, which, of course, doesn’t go unnoticed either.
“Where are you going?”
“Out. I need a walk. I need to think.”
“It’s not safe.”
“I thought we had walls, a perimeter, all that?”
“We do, but it’s best you stay inside.”
“I need my exercise. Trust me, if I stay in here, I’ll be more of a danger to myself than anyone who might hypothetically find this place.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
He follows her silently, just as unobtrusive as he is the rest of the time. She gets lost in her thoughts – she’s working out a thorny argument in part of her paper – and barely notices him behind her.
But she does start noticing him more, generally. Perhaps it’s because she’s cooped up and there’s no alternative, or maybe because, once she looks closer, he intrigues her.
But notice she does. That after the first few days of non-descript grey suits, he begins to shed the suit jacket, and the black T-shirt underneath reveals a glimpse of absolutely bulging biceps and tattooed arms.
Not that she stares. Just because there’s a whole subgenre of fiction about women falling for their bodyguards doesn’t mean she needs to become a trope.
But one of the tattoos is, well, as unique and surprising as the existence of his reading habits, and she’s an academic. She notices these sorts of things.
“Sisyphus?” she asks, reading off his forearm.
“You read Greek?” he asks, surprised.
“I have a PhD. Yes, I read Greek. And Cyrillic. Why do you have it tattooed on your arm?”
He shrugs. “Prison tattoo.”
If there was an answer she was expecting, it’s not that.
Technically, it probably means she’s alone in a secluded house with a felon. Though the CIA must know. Don’t they run background checks on that sort of thing?
Unless that’s why they recruited him? For a minute, she entertains the idea that perhaps he got involved in all this the way spies in blockbuster movies usually do: reluctantly, as an alternative to prison.
But no, that would be utterly ridiculous. This is the real world.
“I guess 17-year-old me related to a guy endlessly pushing a rock up a hill,” Six adds, and she has a million more questions, starting with why he was in prison at seventeen.
She asks none of them.
But, she realizes with surprise as she gets ready for bed that night, knowing this about him doesn’t make her feel any less safe.
She sighs, dropping her head into her arms and running a hand through her hair. Of course, Six notices and raises his eyebrows inquisitively.
“You’d think, being a respected academic who’s also under CIA protection, I wouldn’t have to deal with emails from students complaining I failed them for AI-generated papers, and yet here we are,” she complains. “It’s exhausting.” She’s perched at the kitchen counter, and wondering how many cups of coffee she can have before she starts getting caffeine poisoning.
“I’m sorry,” he offers. “That sounds stressful.”
“And they always insist they can get it past me! They always insist they wrote it themselves, or they only used AI to “organize” the paper or to “spellcheck” like I can’t tell that ChatGPT spat out those astounding nothingburgers!” she goes on.
He just sits there, looking – charmed, and suddenly she feels self-conscious and ridiculous, because his version of stressful probably involves bullets.
“What?” she asks. “Why are you smiling at me?”
“Nothing, it’s just nice to see someone be so passionate about something.”
She wonders what he’s passionate about. Whether he gets the chance to be. His job doesn’t seem like it would allow for it.
He is, as usual, accompanying her on her don’t-go-stir-crazy walk. And, as always, he’s silent unless she initiates a conversation.
“Have you been doing this long?” she asks this time.
“I don’t usually do – this. I’m not a bodyguard.”
“Special assignment?” she asks, wondering if she should feel flattered. “What do you usually do?”
“You know the line, I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you?”
She snorts. “Okay then, James Bond. I think killing me would get you fired from your job of protecting me.”
“James Bond? I’m offended. I always thought Ethan Hunt was the superior spy.”
She turns to face him excitedly. “Wait, really? You like Mission Impossible?” She loved that franchise. So sue her. “I thought you’d find unrealistic or something.”
“Oh, it is. But I enjoy the escapism.”
“What part of it is escapist, for you?” she asks, genuinely curious. How often does she get to interrogate an actual spy?
“Mostly the part where the good guys live and the bad guys go down,” he says. And while she could argue that that’s not always true (Ilsa Faust deserved better, dammit, she will die on this hill), she understands the point he’s making and suddenly feels very sad for him.
His life must be very lonely.
“Does that mean you’ve dangled off of an airplane before?” she asks instead.
“No, but I’ve jumped out of plenty,” he says. Casually. Not even the fake casualness of someone who’s bragging. Just someone mentioning that they stopped to get gas on the way to work.
“HALO jumps or regular ones?”
He turns an interested expression towards her. “Both.”
“What does it feel like, up there? When you jump out of a plane so far up that there’s no oxygen?”
She doesn’t expect him to say something like terrifying, of course. But she also doesn’t expect him to say “humbling. And lonely. There’s just you, and the sky, and the clouds, and you realize how small human beings really are and what hubris most of our acts are.”
Oh. She hadn’t expected philosophy, and she’s charmed by yet another side of him. He wonders if he might’ve been a poet, or a writer, if he hadn’t had to live this life that – had he chosen it? Or had it chosen him?
In all the spy movies she’s watched, the life usually chooses the spy, but maybe that’s another one of those fictions. Maybe he wanted to be doing this.
But something told her he merely accepted it.
“I’ve always wanted to skydive,” she offers instead of following that train of thought.
“Why haven’t you?” he asks.
“I don’t know, I just… “ and as she tries to articulate it, she finds she has no good excuse. “Because it’s dangerous, maybe, or I haven’t had anyone to do it with, or it seemed like one of those crazy things that’s out of reach, not something normal people do.” And as she says each one she realizes that, yeah, none of these is a good excuse.
“Well, after this, maybe I can take you one day,” he offers.
“Wait, really? You’d do that?” She tries to keep her excitement at bay, to remain professional, but an actual spy has offered to jump out of an airplane with her.
That evening, they rewatch Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and she drinks up every bit of his opinionated commentary on it.
A hard-earned truth from academia is that any meaningful productivity requires breaks, so she ventures into what doubles as the safe house’s living room and library and browses the bookshelves. The selection is vast, but she’s still surprised to find several shelves of ratty paperback romance novels. The kind whose content is rarely of any quality (she knows to go looking for actually good romance and porn on Archive of Our Own) but their premises are always annoyingly intriguing. So, intrigued against her better judgment by a tale about a noblewoman who falls in love with (and, presumably, gets delightfully fucked by) the pirate she’s kidnapped by for a ransom, she settles onto the couch and goes looking for the good bits. Or at least the spicy bits.
She’s immersed enough that she doesn’t hear Six come in. Unlike him, she doesn’t have preternatural senses in the back of her head, and he startles her. He’s carrying a much more respectable book – Dumas’ Lady with the Camellias – and when he sees what she’s reading, he raises his eyebrows but makes no remark, merely settles himself in the vacant armchair.
“What was that look?” she asks, because she might be reading utter crap, but somehow a man’s judgment that it’s utter crap grates.
“Nothing, I’ve just never really understood why women find novels like that so appealing.”
She puts the book down and gives him a pointed look. “Because they like the porn, I imagine, just like men.” Which isn’t the full explanation, of course, but she feels like being contrary about it.
“No, I know that,” he says, looking so adorably flustered that her ire dissipates. “I’ve just never understood why it’s always – pirates, and rakes, and outlaws, that sort of thing.”
She sets the book down and sits up, smiling. This she knows how to explain.
“it’s the fantasy of a frightening, lethal, and incredibly skilled man, and of being the one special person for whom he’s the safest person in the world to be around because he cares about you. He’s terrifying, except to you, because he’d never harm a hair on your head.”
“If he’s terrifying, how do you know you’re safe with him?” Six asks.
“Because it’s a fantasy. And in a fantasy, you decide what’s true.”
He nods, but says nothing else. And is it her imagination, or does he look a little sad?
The next morning, she comes into the living room to find him doing pull-ups with a chain and weights around his waist.
She stares openmouthed as her body simply reacts to his impossible strength. She feels it to her core, an unquenchable excitement, as she wonders what he could do to her.
He notices her and lowers himself down smoothly.
“Good morning,” he offers, as if he hadn’t just caught her staring.
“Oh my god. You’re so strong,” she says rather pointlessly. She’s been determined not to become the cliché woman who falls for her strong, sexy bodyguard, but somehow neither a doctorate degree nor a thorough awareness of literary tropes makes her impervious to them.
Or any better at hiding her reactions.
He grins as he removes the chain from around his waist (her eyes fixate on his flexing biceps). “Kind of a job requirement,” he says.
“I know, but still.” He’s set the weights down now and she picks one up – barely. “Holy shit,” she says. Her body once again offers her a visceral reminder of just what he could do to her with all that strength.
She’s sure he’s noticed her reactions, but he tactfully allows them to go unremarked, merely pouring them both coffee and adding cream to hers, just how she likes it.
Hot and considerate. She’s thoroughly fucked.
And then three men break in and attempt to –
Well, she assumes they’re attempting to kill her, though Six doesn’t let them. He’s a whirlwind, a gray-and-silver shadow in his suit, dodging blows, throwing punches, twisting arms. There’s a glint of a knife that has her breathless, but she doesn’t get to finish that thought, because apparently there’s four of them, and the fourth one has just tried to grab her from behind.
She has no skill with this. She doesn’t flatter herself that she could hold her own in a fight. All she has is fast reflexes and sheer terror. It’s this which allows her to dart away before his hold has closed around her, spin around, and drive a knee into his stomach, the way she’s been shown in that one Krav Maga class she took. Over and over, because if she stops, she’s dead. And, for good measure, she draws on all the other tidbits she’s picked up over the years, driving a palm into his throat and a kick to his crotch that sends him staggering.
Two feet away, Six has swiftly dispatched the other men, and she distances herself from this last one so that Six – the professional – can take over. Which he does, and with an easy, swift movement he –
She hears the crunch of a broken neck and squeezes her eyes shut.
She understands, distantly and objectively, that the reason she’s currently having no emotional reaction to any of this is because she’s in shock. But it sure is strange to have no emotional reaction to the four dead bodies littering the floor, and the man who put them there. Shouldn’t the four dead bodies on the floor make her want to cry or something? Instead, she just feels numb.
“Are you alright?” he asks.
She nods. “Physically? Yes.” Then her eyes fall to his arm, which is bleeding.
“You’re hurt, though,” she says.
He looks down, surprised. Like the bloody gash in his arm is news to him.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine,” he reassures her. “I have to take care of these bodies and call Fitz. Do you need anything? You’re probably in shock, we should get you wrapped in a blanket, your body temperature is about to get all dysregulated – “
“Hey,” she interrupts. “They’re not going anywhere, and I’m fine for now. Let me take care of you.”
He looks at her with his eyebrows knotted together slightly in confusion. “You don’t have to.”
“I know, but I doubt it’s comfortable taking care of it one-handed, and I’m offering. Seems like the least I can do for someone who just saved my life.”
The knot in his eyebrows doesn’t go away as he guardedly says “okay. There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom. But are you sure you don’t need that blanket?”
She wonders how often he’s had to patch himself up on his own. Surely the CIA provided medical assistance? She wonders. Surely they don’t want their agents bleeding out and incapacitated?
In the bathroom, he sits on the edge of the bathtub and rolls up the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the deep bloody gash he’d received protecting her and –
She tries to be diplomatic about it. Tries not to freeze and stare, but when she turns around, first-aid kit in hand, the arm he’s bared (the very muscular arm, her brain helpfully points out) looks like it’s been mangled and put back together, an immense lightning-like scar covering his skin from the shoulder to the forearm.
By comparison, the gash on his arm looks like a scratch, and several things about Six’s attitude to his own body suddenly become much clearer.
Six, meanwhile, has been watching her the entire time, and, judging by the way he turns away and refuses to look at her, he obviously didn’t miss her reaction.
“Six,” she says gently, sitting down across from him. Doing her best to act like any of this is normal.
He looks back at her silently. He’s been holding a towel to the injury, and at the very least it’s stopped bleeding. He drops it to the floor, and she washes the blood off his skin as gently as she can.
He doesn’t make a sound.
She takes up the disinfectant next. “Sorry, this’ll sting,” she says, though she knows he knows, but it’s all she can offer right now. He just nods.
He doesn’t move as she disinfects the cut. He doesn’t wince, doesn’t twitch, doesn’t make a sound, and she feels like she learns more about him in that moment than she has in weeks.
It makes her heart ache.
“Do you think this’ll leave a scar?” she asks. “I hear chicks dig guys with scars.” She’s going for levity, but also to break the silence that’s starting to feel stifling.
“Do they?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious.
“So I’ve heard,” she says. “From multiple sources.”
“Hmm.” He holds his arm out obediently so she can tie the linen bandage around it. “Well, this one isn’t deep enough to scar, but I’ve got plenty of others if that’s what the ladies are looking for.”
“I’ll make sure to let them know.”
He gives her the smallest of smiles, and to her relief, the air feels lighter between them.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Thank you. You saved my life.”
“Anytime,” he says, and she laughs. Maybe a little hysterically. Maybe the shock is wearing off and the reality of the situation is sinking in.
Six goes to dispose of the bodies while she pours herself a drink. He finds her in the kitchen, nursing a generously-sized whiskey. He’s careful not to startle her, movements slow and choreographed, and she wants to tell him not to treat her like some broken thing, but she’s glad for it.
“Hey,” he says softly. He steps close, takes her hand in his. “Listen to me. You’re safe. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’ll make sure of it.”
This time, she believes him.
And if there was any chance of her holding on to her sanity around this man, after this, it’s utterly gone. She’s hyper-aware of his presence the second he enters a room, of his height, of the way his muscles ripple beneath his shirt every time he moves. Any thoughts she has scatter like pearls from a broken necklace when he stands near her. Her breath quickens every time he steps close. She’s so far past pretending she’s not a walking cliché and deep into embarrassment about it.
She’s sure he notices, but continues to act as if he hasn’t. That is, until she turns around too fast in the kitchen and loses her balance slightly. She’d miscalculated how close he was, too, and ends up with his hand on her arm, balancing her, and her face practically in his chest.
Breathing suddenly becomes very difficult.
He doesn’t wear cologne (an operational risk, she’s sure), but he still has a particular scent to him. Sweat and whatever unscented deodorant he uses and [perhaps just some natural manly musk]. Heat radiates off him, and she has an up-close view of his his collarbone and chest rising and falling with his breathing.
She likes to think she hasn’t fallen as far as actually licking her lips, but she knows her reaction to his presence is obvious. She knows he notices.
“We shouldn’t,” he says. Which isn’t the same as We can’t or I don’t want to, and it makes unruly, disobedient hope bubble inside her.
“Why?” she presses.
“I’m your bodyguard. You depend on me for your safety, I don’t want to take advantage – “
And that – annoys her. Possibly more than it otherwise would, because she’s already annoyed by the attractiveness of his immovable body in front of her.
“So you think I’m a terrified little thing that’s going to sleep with you out of fear so that you’ll keep protecting me?”
It comes out almost condescending, but he’s unfazed. “You’re not terrified?” he challenges.
“Of course I am, but you’ve done just fine protecting me so far without me sleeping with you, so somehow I don’t think that’s an issue. So if that’s your only objection – “
“It’s not,” he says.
She raises her eyebrows.
“I’m not – what you want.”
She almost laughs. Not this. This tortured, brooding schtick. She’d thought him above that.
He must be able to read her expression because he adds, “The kind of things I want, it’s not what you want.”
“You don’t know that,” she says, though it’s with a sinking feeling. Because it’s very likely the man she wants him to be is not what he’s actually like, and she’s just projecting her very particular preferences onto someone who looks like he might be the type.
“I do.” He looks weary, resigned. “You imagine I’m going to be – gentle. You’ve seen me protect you and take care of you and you think I’ll be sweet and soft and loving. You think I’m the terrifying man that you’re safe with. But I’m not. The things I like – the only things I like, they aren’t soft.” He puts so much emphasis on the last word that it exudes desperation.
“I see.” She puts her glass down much more calmly than she feels, tries to quell her rising excitement that they might actually want the same thing.
She stands up and walks over to him. “Give me your hand,” she says.
He obeys, offering a calloused hand, still bruised from the fight. It’s much larger than hers, and it takes one both of her hands to hold one of his. He gazes down at it, unable to meet her eyes.
“I saw you kill with these hands,” she says. Six flinches slightly. “I’ve seen what they’re capable of. And my first thought was – well, to be horrified. I mean, those men died because of me. Of course that’s horrifying.”
His eyes are still lowered, and his features are painted with resignation.
“But my second thought was to wonder what this hand would feel like around my throat.”
She sees the moment the words land, as he raises his eyes to hers. He stares at her intently for several seconds, and she meets the stare unflinchingly.
He’s so fast that he’s pushed her against a wall before her mind has even processed that he was moving. He towers over her, one hand around her throat while the second rests on the wall, caging her in.
A wave of arousal crashes through her the second her mind catches up with her body; she barely bites back an obscene, embarrassing moan as her body seeks contact with his.
Even he looks surprised. His intent gaze is on her for only a second before he brings their lips together. His hand is still around her throat, and though he doesn’t press down, it’s a reminder that at any second, he could. She wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.
She melts. She lets her lips part for him and drowns in the taste of him (mint, probably from all the gum he chews). His body presses against hers, but she thinks she feels like she’s burning up from another reason entirely. His tongue is forceful in her mouth, seeking, taking, like he wants to devour her, and she wishes he would.
When he pulls away, she’s breathless, and he gives her several seconds before the hand around her throat begins to squeeze.
Her eyes flutter closed. She forgets everything except his hand on her, and the gentle disembodied feeling that comes from a lack of oxygen. Her legs turn to water, until she’s held up only by his body pressed up against hers, and when his lips find hers again, she parts hers without resistance.
When it stops, it takes her several seconds to remember where she is, blinking blearily up at him. His gaze is still so, so intent, but now it’s also alight. There’s a fire in his eyes she hasn’t seen before, full of new intention, and she wants to be set alight by it, to melt with it, to dissolve under the force of his desires and the willpower behind them.
He scoops her up easily and carries her into the bedroom like the weighs nothing. But for all his earlier intensity, there’s gentleness in the way he deposits her on the bed before straddling her. She blinks stupidly up at him, still unbelieving that this is really happening, that her incredibly hot and deadly bodyguard is going to fuck her, and then he pulls his shirt off.
“Holy shit,” she gasps. She sits up, hands seeking out his skin. She’d gotten a glimpse of his upper arm and the scar there when she’d tended to his injury, but nothing compares to seeing the entire thing. He’s muscular, of course, strength lurking in every inch of him, ready to be unleashed, and she roves her hands over the planes of his stomach, his chest, his shoulders. But there’s also tattoos and scars, so many scars, so many stories written into his skin.
He lets her explore, watching, bemused. Her mouth practically waters. She wants to taste every inch of that skin just as much as she wants to be annihilated by all that strength.
“That’s enough,” he insists after a minute of this, and again he moves faster than she can blink, until she’s pinned with her arms above her head. The helplessness sends another wave of arousal through her, and instinctively, her body arches off the bed to seek contact with his.
He looks a little awe-struck as he gazes down at her.
“You want me to stop, you tell me to stop,” he says firmly, and waits until she agrees to devour her with another kiss while his other hand roves around her body in the same exploration she’d subjected him to. His calloused hand moves over her hips, then her breast, baring it from her top, and then his mouth finds it and lavishes biting attention on it.
This time, she can’t hold back her moan. She needs more, more of his touch; there’s a fire between her legs that can’t be quenched, and his leg is between hers, and she seeks contact with it, not caring if she comes off like a cat in heat.
“Six,” she says, and her voice comes out wrecked. Was it from the choking or the arousal? “Six,” she repeats, as his mouth finds her other nipple. “Come on, please.” She pushes against his grip (unyielding) to make a point.
He grins down at her. The hand that’s been at her waist moves down to her legs, pulling off her panties from beneath her skirt, and then, finally, blessedly, his finger finds its way inside her. She’s wet and ready and so turned on that she doesn’t have a cell inside her willing to be embarrassed by just how wet she is.
The relief lasts for only a second, and then she almost roars in frustration. “Come on,” she urges him on. She doesn’t need to say more; suddenly, there’s two fingers, thrusting unceremoniously into her. His thumb, meanwhile, finds her clit. He massages it gently, at odds with the way his two – now three – fingers spear her open. It’s on the edge of painful, being ruthlessly spread open by his calloused hand, and it sends arousal coursing through her. She wants more, more, more.
He has to release her to get his own pants off, and though he’s quick about it, the seconds seem interminable. She rushes to divest herself of the remains of her own clothes. And then he’s naked before her and –
She likes to think she doesn’t do anything as obvious as gasp, but, well. There are strong, muscular thighs, more tattoos, more scars, and a sizeable, hard, leaking cock that is utterly mouthwatering.
She wants.
“Protection?” he asks.
“If you’re clean, we don’t need it.”
He nods. Hands on her hips, he pulls her closer and lines himself up. She bites her lip with anticipation.
He slides in agonizingly slowly, jaw set and teeth gritted with the effort of holding himself back. Still, now amount of preparation could have prepared her for how big he is inside her. Her body struggles to accommodate him, and he pauses for only a second to allow her to adjust, and then he starts fucking into her at a punishing pace, and she feels like she might be torn apart. His fingers dig into her hips, holding her in place like a vise, leaving her nowhere to go from the onslaught. She clings to him, nails digging into the vast expense of his back and leaving yet more marks alongside the numerous scars already on his body. She wraps her legs around him, adjusting the angle, and is rewarded by the first moan she’s heard out of him, a strangled thing that falls from his lips, and then he fucks into her with the desperation of a dying man. Heat builds inside her from the knowledge that she can do that to him.
“Oh my god, Six, fuck.” All she can do is cling to him; she feels like she might come apart from the force of his thrusts if she doesn’t anchor herself. She knows she’s not going to last long; all the desire that’s been accumulating within her for weeks has reached its breaking point.
And then he puts a hand around her throat, and that’s it, it’s over, she’s done for. Her climax crashes over her, leaves her shaking until all she can do is cling to him still lest she be swept away. He doesn’t take long to follow her, stilling with a grunt and burying his head in her neck.
After several seconds of sticky, sweaty stillness and harsh breathing, he disentangles himself and moves to lie beside her. His eyes are soft where they’d been ruthless minutes ago, and there’s some kind of awe there, too. She feels like she’s blinding to his gaze.
“You alright?” he asks, as his hand brushes a stray hair from her face.
“Yes.” She smiles happily, lazily, and his answering smile is soft, too. He pulls her closer, and she latches herself on to his side. For several minutes, they simply lie there and breathe, and she basks in contentment as she watches the rise and fall of his muscular chest. Thinks how similar this man in her bed is to the one who’d easily dealt out violence and death, and yet how different. His calloused hand traces over the skin of her back and she feels deliciously small next to him, soft where he’s unyielding, the harsh planes of his body like an impassable wall next to her softness. She hopes one day he’ll let her explore every inch of that body, scars and all.
“You know, after everything you said, I thought you’d be rougher with me,” she says.
He looks at her and can it really be that after all this, he’s still surprised?
“I was holding back,” he says, and she’s touched, really, she is, that he cares about her wellbeing, but she’s also annoyed.
“Well, next time, don’t,” she says.
“Next time?” he asks, a hopeful note in his voice.
“Yes. Assuming you haven’t gotten me out of your system.”
“I can’t imagine that happening after having you just once,” he says, and she melts against him yet again. He kisses her, as soft and sweet as he’d been rough earlier, then sits up, and she follows suit reluctantly. But he makes no move to leave the bed, and she rests her head against his torso. His heart beats beneath her ear, a steady reminder that there is something human beneath the honed weapon of his body.
“Tell me what you like,” he says, and she’s glad she doesn’t have to meet his eyes. Not that she’s embarrassed about her wants, but she’s never gotten the hang of talking about them.
“I like to be forced,” she says. “Whatever you do to me, you need to hold me down while you do it. If you want me on my knees, you need to make me. Hit me, choke me, use me. Use your belt. Though maybe not the buckle? It’d be nice if I could fight back, though you’d probably find that ridiculous.”
She looks up to find him looking at her with a mix of surprise and utter delight.
“I think that can be arranged,” he says. “How do you feel about restraints?”
“Theoretically amenable to it, but I’m not going to just hold my hands out obediently for you.”
His smile is even more delighted now. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. “What’s your safeword?”
“Red.” Which is thoroughly uninventive, but it does the job. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t need one,” he says, and she stares.
“Yes, you do,” she insists.
“I’m not the one getting smacked around,” he points out.
“That’s irrelevant,” she says, getting heated now. “You get to have one too.”
“Fine,” he sighs. “Red. But I don’t need it.”
She’s definitely going to argue with him about that at some point, but not right now.
After that, he gives her another soft kiss and gets up to check the perimeter again. She reluctantly lets him go and falls back onto the rumpled sheets with a smile. She stretches, relishing the soreness in her limbs as she replays the scene in her mind, trying to burn every detail into her memory.
She aches for more.