At Bay
Sam never asks himself why he climbed into bed with Fi that night. But on some elemental level, some unconscious plane of existence, he knew she needed someone to hold onto when they didn't have anyone else and the darkness stretched out like a bloodthirsty panther at the window.
But he knows - knew even that night - why she had turned toward him and pressed herself to his chest, as if he were a teddy bear and she a lost child, wrapping her arms around the thick bulk of his upper body like a branch of ivy searching for water. Then Sam was flat on his back and Fiona was hovering over his prone body, her face a mask of agony.
"Damn it!" she shouted, and her fist collided with a pillow propped under Sam's head, inches from his left ear. Wide-eyed, Sam's gaze darted from her hand to her face, and he remembered her vicious proficiency with the most banal of weapons. Even then, he knew he'd let her hit him, to purge herself of her anger. But she didn't take pleasure in his reaction, seemed not to be aware of it as she continued on. "He. Should. Be. Here." Every word punctuated by a blow, until the pillow had been jabbed flat.
Instead, both of his arms came up and around her slim waist to surround her. "I know," Sam said gruffly, sharing her anger, her loss.
She didn't affirm or deny his words. Sam, who anticipated anything and everything when it came to dealing with Fiona Glennane, wasn't ready for the kiss that pinned him to their borrowed mattress. The futile anger remained in her touch - in the sharp suction that made his bottom lip sting. When she raised her head, Fi's hair was a silky, disarrayed mess, surrounding her face like a lion's mane. That hair was in his mouth, tickling his tongue as she lunged downward, raining kisses over his face, smothering Sam in the scent of exotic spices, biting and sucking at his nipples, then lapping droplets of sweat from his torso as she slithered like a cat down to her main objective.
Fiona straddled his knees, pulling his half-hard cock from the confines of his boxers and stroking it firmly, insistently, watching his face through the curtain of her hair, a feral expression sharpening her features. Sam brushed back the long red strands obscuring her vision, the sudden gesture of affection making Fi's lips turn up at the corner in a crooked smile.
Sam's head tossed backward, the slowfastslow of her hand over him sending him into spasms of temporary madness. He reached down suddenly, roughly grabbing her around the wrist, making Fi squeeze his cock and drawing an involuntary gasp from his lungs. Sam knew he couldn't take another minute of it, and decided to distract her as thoroughly as possible.
In one quick motion, he rolled Fi onto her back, kissing her face desperately, making her grunt every time he bit her lip. He roughly stripped the straps of her black nightgown down her arms, revealing two sweet breasts and a smooth, flat stomach.
Sam fell onto her like a starving man, trying to down himself in the feeling of silky skin and that overwhelming scent of spice that seemed to permeate from her every pore. He rushed her toward oblivion with quick nips of his teeth and hard, deep sucks - her nipples stuck out, red as her lips, as the roses that stood forlorn in a vase at the side of the bed.
"More, Sam." It was a demand he couldn't have refused even if her thighs hadn't been holding him prisoner, scissored around his midsection, sharp nails stuck fast to his back.
He rucked up her nightgown, paused over her sex, inhaling the scent of her briefly. He should not have been surprised that she smelled like spice here, too.
Sam buried his face between her thighs without a further thought.
Her strongly feminine flavor took possession of his tastebuds with authority. Sam, who had spent his life breathing the salt of the ocean, tasted the sea in her, too, bedaubing his fingers with it, filling his mind with the richness of her, gorging on it.
He knew she was coming when she tightened around his fingers. "Sam? SamSamSAM!" All fireworks, all explosion, then a moment of weak submission, and Sam could taste nothing but the salted rain of her.
Fiona grabbed him by a handful of hair, dragging Sam up her body before he rolled her over and reached down between them to push himself within her. She used the small amount of leverage she had to roll him onto his back and push away his defensive hands. Her right hand came up to balance herself against his chest, her left positioning him at the mouth of her sex.
She looked into his eyes before impaling herself on him with one quick gesture.
Sam bucked up from the bed, involuntarily crowding himself into her further, making Fi gasp. They locked eyes again and he wrapped his left hand around her waist. They were partners in this, and whatever pleasure they had would be shared.
Fi's hips created a teasing pattern, up downupdown, taking two inches of Sam into her before coming all the way up off of him. By the sixth stroke she was riding him, taking his full length, her breasts jiggling slightly. He couldn't resist cupping them, stroking them as he began to buck up into her
She grabbed his hips. "Not yet."
Sam froze underneath her, holding himself still, feeling the rapid beat of her heart under his hand. She shoved his hands away from her chest before beginning a possessive rhythm, her eyes pressed shut, her fingers curled into his chest hair.
Sam stared at her breasts until he could no more resist sucking on her nipples than he could resist the lure to move in pattern with her. They were mating like tigers, biting and snarling, expelling their frustration.
"Not yet!" she cried out when his hips came up, but he was beyond hearing her pleas, beyond the limits of his own experience and the artifice of control. He needed her, this moment, though he couldn't articulate why.
She let out a shout of dismay when he rolled her onto her back and took a thigh in each hand, ramming her onto his hard-on, pulling her legs back and pulling her knees up to his shoulder. Sam leaned over and began slamming his hips into hers, covering her in his sweat as Fi shoved a hand between her own legs and began to rub her clit vigorously.
"Now!" she demanded, trying to coax Sam to orgasm, squeezing him as she lost control and began to ripple around his cock.
Sam resisted her, needing to succeed after failing so harshly, wanting to disappear into the pleasure as badly as she did. He made Fi thrash beneath him, claw his ass through his boxer shorts, mark his back with her red nails. She tried to crush his bulk to her with her hands but it was no use - it was Sam's show now, and he was the predator. He covered her mouth with his and pounded himself to a hard, violent climax, Fi's hands and thighs and inner muscles coaxing him on. In the depths of his fading grief he heard her voice, and a soft, bemused laugh.
He lay heavily on her for what felt like hours. "Sam," she breathed when he rolled away. At least, he thought to himself as he gathered the covers, she knew who she was with.
She rolled over and draped an arm across his midsection, resting her face in the crook of his shoulder. Sam pulled her closer and rested his forehead against the top of hers. "We'll get the bastards who killed Michael tomorrow," he told her, sure, calm, ready.
She nodded - it felt like a nod, the silky brush of her hair against his shoulder. It was settled, as quickly and easily at that, and Sam felt relief and weariness seep into his bones as he fell to sleep.
Later, he would wonder what he had gotten himself into - the effect, not the cause. But for the rest of the night, the monsters were at bay.