"Mmhm." It's a playfully skeptical noise, low and in the back of his throat, that sounds more like something Allison herself would say — he's picked up tics from her over the years, just as she has from him. This inevitable development from so much close association over the past decade, like two trees with their roots grown entangled, inseparable. His hand's still splayed against her bare skin, and it's a comforting anchor, a contrast to the distraction as he moves to kiss her jaw, the shell of her ear. The back of the couch is still between them. He's gonna have to solve that in a moment.
"Or," Luther continues, still sounding mock-thoughtful, as if the idea's only just occurred to him: "Even if it did happen and we got called in. We're pretty quick to suit up, even if we're... otherwise occupied."
They'd drilled for it, after all. Mornings and mornings and mornings, the Monocle standing squinting down at a stopwatch, that inexorable click as the timer went on and there was the thunder of shoes down the hallways and click as it went off, until the Academy could beat their records again and again for how quickly they could stop what they were doing and deploy for a mission. They've still got those instincts, even today.
Luther hums speculatively, taking his time with thinking, even though he isn't, as he doesn't move any closer, doesn't kiss her, doesn't shift his hand even, and sometimes she's sure he does it to drive her mad. (Even if she started that.) She always was the more impulsive of them, the two of them, and all of them when there was once, so long ago, an all of them to be the most impulsively disrespectful one of.
Allison already wants him to move. Can feel it sparking in her veins. Wants the feel of his fingers sliding over her skin, soft and hungry, like it's been too long; hard, like a testament to knowing she'll never break, she'll never stop wanting to push harder, take more; so familiar, so dovetailed to her body, it's like he knows her skin better than she ever could, like they were born to fit together into one piece in every way possible anyone ever could.
"Luther." There's a snap to her voice -- a remonstration that she is the only person, not The Monocle or Gabriel, who was ever allowed to talk down to him, even in public, even with an audience -- that takes her expression, the sharp rise of her eyebrows and the line press of her lips, but never douses the light in her eyes. Never even tries.
Sparkling light, right through the edged derision. "You're talking too much."
It's a lie, but it's the best kind of lie, that's momentarily true and doesn't set off the alarm. Allison could listen to him talk all day, but she wants more than just his words, and true patience has only ever truly belonged to one of them, which is why she's pushing up to standing. Right there. On the couch. Making her hilariously taller than him, making it so she has to look down at him, all messy blonde morning hair and those lightning blue eyes, even as she's tugging at his shoulders.
She doesn't think about the couch, with him behind it, or more because it's just replaceable item, even for all its good memories. Not when her mind is set, and she really, really would have just slipped in right beside him and made him wake up at four in the morning for a do-over of re-starting her day like this, too.
Allison stands up on the sofa until she's towering over him and Luther has to tip his head backwards to look up at her and meet her eye; an angle he's not accustomed to, since it's usually him looking down on everyone. Allison's hands braced against his shoulders, a smirk on his mouth that nobody else in the world gets to see. When Luther rises to his feet, his hands slide up the back of Allison's calves, her thighs, to settle on her hips. They're of a height now, and so it's easy for him to just reach over and pluck her off her feet, whisking her off the sofa and into his arms like a newlywed. He barely seems to notice; it's like lifting a feather.
"Less talk, more action. Got it," he says, as if she's just critiqued his mission style. Luther's usually patient enough, but when she gets demanding like this — needy like this — it's like she's flared a match to life, stoking it higher, and he can feel that heat and urgency simmering hotter as Allison's hand fists in the neck of his loose t-shirt.
And so. Too impatient to carry her all the way back to that sleepy bedroom, Luther just crosses around the couch instead, drops Allison back on it with an ungraceful oomph; except that now he's on the right side of it and his body's pressing over her, easier to reach all of her, easier to drag at the edge of her shirt.
Even if she was baiting it, she still gives a peel of a laugh when Luther scoops her right off her feet and into his arms. The momentary weightlessness and spin of it never worries her, never has, if there is one place that she's safest in all of time and space and whatever happens to exist, it's right here, in his arms.
Which is a hilarious thought, when the very next moment she's unceremoniously dropped right back down on the couch, and maybe she'd care more if he wasn't following right down after her, on top of her, perfect and forever too tall, dwarfing her almost instantly. A thing she'd never even known how much she'd come to love. Crave. No matter how often or how many ways it could happen.
"Is it my imagination--" Allison says, even as the corners of her mouth won't play along. One leg shifting, between the couch and him, to curl over one leg, and her hands already reaching down between them, for the bottom of her shirt, to go about helping him with pulling it off already. "--or wasn't I right here like ten seconds ago?"
"I was on the wrong side. It was a problem. This angle's better." He says it so simply, like it was a question of geometry, and not the fact that he'd wanted to keep his hands on her, couldn't detach and let go of her just for the few seconds it would've taken to walk around by himself. They have a problem with letting go, these two.
"And sorry to say, but: we missed our shot at staying in bed."
If she'd crept back under the covers with him, it would have been a sleepier way to wake up, a more sedate morning waking all tangled in each other — not this hungrier, more urgent thing, both their hands catching on the hem of Allison's shirt and dragging it up and off, over her head. She's dressed properly while Luther's still barefoot and rumpled, in flannel pants and a mismatched threadbare t-shirt (it had taken a while to kick the habit of perfectly-coordinated pyjama sets, a few years before he'd been able to set those childish things aside and accept a bit of mismatching chaos in his wardrobe). With her midriff bared, Luther works his way down: pressing his lips to the dip of her collarbone, the arch of her ribs, her belly-button, relishing the expanse of bare skin, the weight of her leg hooking around his.
They don't often have the morning off like this; Luther intends to make full use of it.
She loves him like this. She loves everything about Luther, but she loves the million things that are just hers the best. Nothing like the impeccable suits at Gabriel's side. Or his costume, when or if it's ever needed. This side of him, never seen, never shared. Soft cotton and terrible-yet-perfect timing and sassy words pressed into her skin.
Her shirts goes god knows where once her arms and hair are free, leaving her in her light peach bra, even as he skips to below her chest, his mouth leaving a warm trail against her ribs, her stomach. Well toned muscles tightening and releasing in fast, little flutters under the skin that never stops being sensitive to his touch no matter what all she's put it through, or the scars it's collected over the years.
"He says as if it's not just a room away, hasn't been for years, " Allison chides, but her voice stretches, words injected with more air and so much less focus. Her thigh and calf tightening against his body, ankle pressing in his muscles, as it's sliding up his back while he moves downward, no question to the opposing message that anywhere else is the very last thing she wants to be.
Her hand on his shoulder -- and she already wants this cotton shirt she liked only a second ago and finds in her way this next one, to go, too; wants the vast expanse of his skin under her fingers, against hers -- has to slip up, against his neck, the side of his face. Each new touch of his mouth on her skin, causing her shoulders and hips to press a little harder into the couch while pushing up the rest of her against his mouth.
Each touch of it a tick slowly tightening in the base of her stomach, steadily kicking up the throbbing already begun her between her legs, warm and undoubtedly already getting wet with the want for Luther that she's never once felt any shame over.
Meanwhile, Allison is grasping at whatever she can reach, fingers against his neck, then curling in the neck of his shirt. And there's a smirking twist to his mouth, as he can quickly guess what she wants; not like she's ever particularly shy about it. "Guess we can even the playing field," Luther says, half-musing, and props himself up on a hand before reaching back and trying to tug his shirt off one-handed. It gets predictably caught on his head, but there's a laugh from Allison and she's able to unwind the fabric, pull it free and toss it somewhere to join hers.
And. It's better. It means he's able to press bare skin against bare skin as he catches her mouth in another kiss, some banishing (or stoking) of that unbearable heat lodging inside his body, pooling low in his abdomen, but at least there's something he can do about it. Luther eventually breaks away from the kiss and moves back down, his hands against the incredibly expensive slacks she's wearing — careful, delicate with his strength, mindful not to rip any of this particular wardrobe — before he's dragging the trousers down her hips, around the crook of a knee, tugging them free as she obligingly squirms to help him get the clothes off. He presses another kiss to her now-bared hip, before his fingers hook into the edge of her underwear (peach, matching the bra, of course). The couch is thankfully long enough that they can both fit, Allison sprawled against one end of it while Luther works his way down her body to where he actually wants to be.
"If your phone rings now, I'm destroying it," he promises.
If she'd thought, earlier in the morning, beyond the annoyance of being too awake to go back to sleep, that anything like this was coming shortly, she probably would have changed. She thinks of it only as Luther's grip on her clothes run that careful line of dedicated and delicate all at once.
All of the pieces like the one he's carefully extricating from her, as she curls her knees up briefly toward her chest, pushing them past there while Luther's is pulling her pants off from further down. Pieces meticulously collected and crafted for particular looks, particular purposes. Long lines, and specific shaping. The way even this specific bra only has lace at the furthest edges, while the cups are smooth tight fabric designed not to let a wrinkle or shape ever be betrayed by the clothing over it.
There's an irrational fondness for seconds like this. The care; and the way it cracks open right after.
When Luther's coming back up, kissing her hungrily while her hands find his skin, pulling him close, reveling in the heat and heaviness of him of, of the next second snap, less carefulness with her. That it extends to learned habit, but not this ever ravaging thing between them, that has taken out any number of pieces of her regular wardrobe, without grace or regret on either of their parts, along the way at times, past and present.
Things learned and carried in all they've become here, and support each other in. But no part of her doesn't thrill at the intensity of his hands. The insistence of his mouth, drowning out anything so paltry as fondness with to replace it only with fire, following it by the smooth circuit of finding her skin, threatening anyone taking her from in the next second.
Her smirk is crooked as it is uncaring -- her body a live wire caught on the prolonged second of warning, for the possessiveness under the threat, refusing to share her with the world another second, to be interrupted now; the way it and everything about all of her laid open and bare before him, betrays her, in the way her hips keep tilting slightly under his hands, seeking any part of the contact both promise and so far denied -- while she retorts,
"It's fine. We'll just kill them. Gabriel's got more people."
Luther laughs against her thigh when she promises that violence in return, a low rumble of amusement that he can't bite back — and more importantly, he doesn't even have to censor himself around her, doesn't have to turn himself stoic and implacable. It reminds him all over again who she is: this sharp, deadly weapon in his bed, beneath his body, his hands. That carelessness sends another bolt of desire through him, every part of his body sharpening and tightening. They can be ruthless to others, they can be dangerous, and yet she trusts in him to not break her; he trusts in her to not ever whisper the wrong thing to him.
He might be the leader, but Allison has the advantage between them. Always had. He'd be putty in her hands, as if he isn't already.
"A woman after my own heart," he says (and isn't she just, in so many ways), and finally peels her underwear off, while she slides a knee over his shoulder in the same movement, and he lowers his mouth to her.
And Number One has always been a perfectionist.
He's had years to devote himself to this, to fixating on her alone and on what, specifically, makes Allison Hargreeves' toes curl and a gasp catch in her throat. So he devotes himself to eating her out with the same single-minded perfectionism he turns to every aspect of his professional life, as if he's going to be graded on it: as her back arches against the sofa and she presses her hips up into him, he's alternately licking and sucking, her leg trembling on the other side of his head — his forearm moves to her hips, gently holds her in place, as he dives in all tongue and hot mouth.
Allison had been about to snort, amused and unashamed and arrogant, before the whole thing evaporated, became a moan that ripped straight from her spine, slicing through her bones, and out her mouth at the same second Luther finally stopped talking. A momentary wild blinding delight, like lightning, like his mouth, his lips, his tongue suddenly connected with her skin, and every part of her nervous system gave a shuddering side-ways jerk.
Reoriented not on sanity, but on the friction of a night's unshaved stubble against the softest, most sensitive folds of her skin, and his lips sucking on her clip, tongue laving against her everywhere else, a maddening and direct assault that didn't hesitate for anything foolish like leadup. It started with the same determined headlong force as Luther running straight through a brick wall did.
And she fucking loved him for it, even as her back arched, her breath knocking out of her lungs instantly, and her nails dug uncontrollably into her own thigh she hadn't even realized it was resting on her body, all of it more in control of itself, than her. Hips pushing into him, shoulder digging hard into the couch, like her spine, didn't need to stay connected, it just needed to push the rest of her body into him— into that hot, hard, sucking void of his mouth.
The maddening, dizzying crackle of heat and pleasure. The maddeningly familiar ease with which he could hold her.
Luther's head buried at the apex of her legs. Only his forehead and his hair, and the riot of fluctuating muscles down his back left to see. While every part of her body begged and pushed for more, and he held her hips, her ass, down to the couch, like it was as simple as pressing a fingertip to a piece of paper—the one person who could.
When one word from her lips and no one else in the universe could. One word from her lips, and everyone, everything, was the slave to her demand.
But he could, did. Letting her squirm enough not to be held rigid, but almost a touch too much, too, in the best way, making her try even harder to batter against the ease of his hold, the ruthlessness of his one-man army focus, heightening the want for more of him, of the impulse, bone deep trained from earlier than any childhood memory, never to be captured or held or kept. His mouth, his hands, the spikes, and waves of delicious heat shuddering through her, playing her skin like a puppet on pullable strings, as his name fell off her lips.
She's usually the one to lose patience with their foreplay first, yanking him closer and snapping them both to the next stage. And so Luther has learned how to roll with it and give as good as he gets, how to seize their limited time once there's that particular glint and hunger in Allison's eye, a certain demanding edge to her kisses that promises and asks for, demands, more.
She is, of course, the one person in the world most able to shut him up — and this is one of the most enjoyable ways to do it, with Luther's mouth entirely preoccupied and her hand eventually winding into his short blond hair, pressing him even closer to that bundle of nerves as he works her over, slowly, steadily, patiently. Hanging onto him for solid foundation, even as he pins her beneath him where she can't squirm away from the stimulation. Where all she can do is ride it out, cresting each relentless wave of pleasure.
He takes exquisite pride in this, as he always does: in her coming undone beneath him, in knowing that he did this, his teeth and tongue lapping at her and stubble scraping against her inner thighs did this. And his name, his name in that moan in Allison's voice, has an electrifying effect on him as it always does — the sound ripples through him and makes his own breath catch, and now he's almost painfully hard himself, erection pressing into the sofa where he's neglecting it. But he remains disciplined, focused, easily able to shoulder aside that distraction when there's the beauty of Allison spread out before him, her body starting to buck with each expert flick of his tongue, and even more once he adds a finger, two. Playing her like an instrument he's been learning and mastering for years, listening for and following those small sounds wrenched out of her throat, or when her fingers tighten in his hair: a sign that yes, that, do that more.
It's not always like this, is the thing. For as much as it is like this, there are the mornings, like he said, leisurely, in bed, languid and sleep thick and slow, until it isn't, to the speed of the sun just starting to brighten and warm the bedroom, and bed, around them. Like it's each other, not the sun, that turns time from light to dark, that gives life and reason to wake up to the world.
And there are even rarer mornings she wakes up to Luther whispering poetry into her shoulder, the side of her neck, the dip of her spine, lips barely brushing her skin, except to etch the words of old master's on her bones like prayers. Mornings where he can get her nearly to the edge of orgasm just by the soft, feather-light trace of his fingertips over all of her skin, for an hour, for longer, even once she's trembling and whimpering, before he even considers touching her any of the places he's thrown himself like a battering ram at currently, just on the slow, steady compromise of her (im)patience turned disastrously rewarding over-sensitization of all her nerve endings.
As though somehow, every single part of her, no matter how violent and vital in the daytime, was thinner than glass, more precious than his stars.
The way this one is a testament to the fact she can't break, in two or out from his grasp. That he can willfully take everything he knows she likes best, and rip her wide open with it.
The way her hips start grinding into a quick snap that's just rising to meet his mouth, to meet the thrust that isn't happening, isn't enough when it's just the tease of his tongue slipping inside her, until it finally is something more, and he's pushing those long fingers into her. Curling them into the spots that drive her mad, even as he's working her looser and looser, against the wild, desperate fire in her already wanting it to be Luther's cock, to have him deep inside, holding on to the shattered snap of his control, too, when he's finally fucking her hard enough it's like he's forgotten entirely that he could crumple her like tissue paper, that he lets himself go, with her, lets himself dissolve into only this mad, never truly sated or sane, need and want, with her, for her, that matches and mirrors hers for him.
There are always bruises from mornings like this, and she never cares. She wants them. She wants the way his fingers dig into her bucking hips while holding her down, and the sharpness of the teeth that worry her clit along with his tongue. She craves this, too. The way she craves blood on her knuckles, on her lips, sucker-punching someone in the face even though she could just order them to stop existing before getting within fifteen feet of her. The way madness is crowding out her mouth, her throat too dry, her body a constant stretch and snap of muscles in her abdomen, up her constantly arching rib cage, of an inability of figuring out where to rest her hands longer than ten seconds, how to keep them still, how to hold on tight enough, long enough, push-pull hard enough.
In his hair, holding on like barely grippable reins, sliding down his shoulder, up his neck. The audible sound they make, nails-biting in, dragging down the couch fabric when it isn't his skin she's furrowing. Her legs trembling, shifting, thighs pressing desperately inward, hard, against the sides of his head, heels digging into his shoulder blades, the back of his ribcage. Never having to worry about how hard, ever once to have needed to worry about holding back, with his durability. All of it building, wire tight in the muscles at the small of her back, the pit of her stomach, the speeding, shaking gasps, that are the desperate plea or breathy demand of his name, getting faster, interposed with longer jags when it's starting to crest, and she forgets to remember her body needs air, needs anything but the searing roar in her head, in her blood.
Getting closer and closer as everything gets higher, hotter, tighter, desperate want blotting out everything except him, his mouth, the fingers sliding in and out of her, her own hand, slipped into her bra, pinching her nipple hard, as her whole body becomes a wreck of faster and faster movement against his face, his mouth, his fingers, chasing the sizzling, searing, burning promise right at the edge of all of it, coming so close it demands every muscle in her body obey it over anything else.
It had been a purposeful challenge, the very first time he'd gone down on her: a dare issued to himself out of keenly competitive and pleasurable curiosity, to see if he could tip Allison over the edge with mouth and hands alone, without using his cock.
He has to work for it, and he does. He's able to drag her closer and closer, until finally he pulls away just an inch, murmurs her name into the crook of her thigh ("C'mon, Allison—"). It isn't dirty talk, Luther's mouth might be wicked but he rarely uses it to speak filth, but even that little utterance has a similar effect, a hammering on that throbbing desire. Because. It's them. The names they have now, on each others' lips. Who they are now. People, not numbers.
And the bowstring of her body's run taut and she's finally coming, all her muscles tightening at once, and there's that sharp kick of satisfaction in his chest as he licks her through the orgasm until she sinks down to the cushions, boneless and ragged with pleasure. Job done, Luther relents and moves away, wipes his mouth with a grin, and looks up the long languid-sprawled length of her; the curve of Allison's stomach and dip of her hip and still-peach-covered breasts, heaving, her hair already mussed. It's the best sight.
He crawls back up her half-naked body, the expanse of his broad chest and taut stomach furnace-hot beneath her hands, the hard line jutting in his pyjama pants pressing into her leg, as he kisses her jaw. Quieter now, his voice a rumble against her throat:
"Good morning, Allison Hargreeves."
He never uses nicknames; her full name is the equivalent for Luther, something worshipful on his tongue, a marvel, something he only uses when he's feeling coy, flirtatious, playful. And even crammed together on this couch, they fit together so well; legs slipping between each other and winding into each other, his elbow propped beside her head, his hand splayed against the bare skin of her stomach. He still can't stop touching her. Even today, even after all this time, it feels like a miracle that he's allowed to touch her like this, bring her to pleasure like this.
It's a violent snap, the perfection of which punches out from the epicenter of her, and his mouth still sucking and lick when every new touch, new brush, becomes almost unbearably electric. All of her reduced to the waves of hot, fast pleasure rolling over her, through her, shuddering her whole body as it ramrods through every cell, between the involuntary pull of all her muscles in her abdomen pulling her inward to that one spot on her, and the way every other muscle falls limp, strings cut, white-out blind with the force of release, feeling like the final drop of the last continued arch of her body to the couch is from a dozen feet up and not two to three inches.
He climbs up her, and this isn't done, but for a second, her eyes are half-lidded, and all she focuses on is moving the cement of one arm until it's over his shoulder, and her fingertips, still tingling like she's the full aftereffect of sticking your finger in a socket. Curling the back of his neck, into the hair at the nape of his neck, all slick under her fingers, arm across the back of his shoulder, all the way to her elbow, face pressing into the side of his face and the side of his neck.
The rumble of his voice, vibrating her second favorite of his words, her name, against her cheek, even as it finds her ears, while her lips curve against his skin. He tastes like sweat, and everything smells like her, will taste like her when she gets back to his mouth in a second. But relishes the broken open limpness of her whole body, of the sheer larger, heavier mass of him dwarfing her entirely, pushing her into the couch, like a blanket made of sun-warmed steel-bricks, surrounding every part of her. Luther the only world all around her, all that exists, as they easily jostle and shift parts of themselves, each other, like interlocking pieces that know, without thought or focus, where to go.
He props himself above her, all smug satisfaction and the unguarded crinkle of wonder that still sends a shot through her heart all these years later. Making her have to pull back her arm, hand finding the still damp side of his face, fingers the curve of his jaw and pushing herself up, in ruthless, easy command for her muscles to listen (the way they will, do, even through broken bones), because she has to kiss that mouth, his, him.
"Mmmm." Rumbles against his mouth, half-sound and half-sigh, as she squirms, tossed and torn, like a small buoy, between the touch-sensitive fading echoes and the trailing electric sparks that light her skin, already, again, under his fingers, with the heavy promise of more, of that impossible, well-proven, even better to come. "It is now."
Her arm drapes over him and she's slung over him like a ragdoll, all of her relaxed in a way she isn't often; they're both high-strung people, often on the move, with emergencies to answer and riots to quell. So this is an indulgence. An indulgence he'd raze the entire city for, if it ever tried to take her away from him. Allison reaches for his face, rising slightly off the sofa to get back to his jaw, his mouth; and he kisses her back messily, hungrily, tasting of her, the two of them crashing together with tongue and grabbing hands running over whatever they can reach. He reaches up, palms a handful of a breast even through the bra.
He drowns in it, for a while. All of his body pressed against all of her, Allison wrapping her arms around him until she's practically hanging off his neck, with little else to focus on but the movement of her mouth and the timing of their gasping breath.
When they finally break for air and Luther remembers what she said, he laughs. "Glad to be of assistance. Doing my best to fix some of that awful disappointment."
Because it's clear something's gone awry in her schedule, although he never actually stopped to find out what. Events get postponed, rescheduled, shuffled around. He doesn't actually care about the nitty-gritty and logistics of her tamer job, besides the part where she gets to stay home with him. Like this. His thumb's running along the curve of her stomach, the crest of her ribs, so soft and gentle now that it's almost ticklish.
It's easy to forget her words when Luther kisses her, and it's the taste of herself, and him. It's the clash of not caring at all about anything except kissing him back, about the tide of his body crashing in against her. The tick, tick, tick in the back of her skull that has a blurred out tally, but no forgetfulness on how much she couldn't touch him, kiss him, reach him, for the last however long.
She loves it. God, does she. It's a decadent way to start. The day. All of this. But it's something she has to relinquish for. Control and contact. Things she would never consider leaving in someone else's hands for seconds, but that she never has to question, consider, doubt in Luther. Especially when it's briefly so, so worth it to be wrecked on giving up even that to him.
Luther's voice is warm, pleased, and laughing when he finally gets back to words—laughing at her. The words she'd chosen as much on purpose as on not caring how, on the nose, of shameless they were while coming down. But the other side of the haze of kissing him, of her hands finally being able to run uncheck over his skin, her mind is back far more acutely aware and in control of itself, again.
"Are you, though?" Allison's eyebrows peaked, her tone sideways-imperious. Not attempting to make it look anything like real, but still somehow managing to look down her nose at him. Even from flat under him. As her nails drug down the last of his lower ribs and the muscles in his back. "Because there are definitely some rules about the clothing you're breaking at this point."
"Namely--" Still lofty, as her hands flattened, fingers pushing, at the same time, both at and under the offending edge of his pajama bottoms as her hands curled his sides, and the rise of his hips under the cloth against her palms, her fingers tucking under, only barely between the press of their bodies. "--that you have any still."
"That's--" is where her mouth starts to curve a little sharper at the edge, taking his own words to throw back at him. "--awfully disappointing, too."
"So bossy," Luther says, still smirking. As if she hasn't already been bossy and domineering, every minute of her entire life; when Allison says jump, Rumor or no, then his only question is how high. He'd do it anyway. He'd lay the world at her feet anyway. The nails digging into his back makes his spine arch into the touch, that light delicious scrape of contact and almost-pain, and she can feel the muscles shifting under her hand.
"I guess I've—" He breathes in sharply as her fingers dip beneath his trousers and run along the waistband, sliding along the bare skin of his lower abdomen that is so, so close and yet not close enough. He presses forward, closer, instinctively trying to shrink all the available distance between them, but with her hand still floating tantalisingly distant it just means grinding against her leg. "No choice, then."
And he obliges: one heavy hand settling on hers where she can help to drag the pyjama bottoms off together, down the straight angle of his hips and thighs. Luther's tall enough and his legs long enough that it goes less gracefully than when he'd tugged off her slacks; he has to rest his weight against an elbow for a moment, face buried in her neck, until he eventually manages to kick the pjs loose and he's finally fully naked and sprawled over her, hard and aching. No boxers. She already knows he sleeps commando.
And then Luther gives her an assessing look like he's sizing her up for dress code violations; appraising the mismatched clothing, Allison still half-naked as well. "You're breaking the rules, too. Get rid of the bra," he says, and there's a touch of that steel in his voice, the whipcrack of orders he uses in the field and, sometimes, here. There's a glint in his blue eyes, a devouring hunger and an impishness that only comes out here, with her, with this way they easily trade off the reins between each other and nudge at each other. It's a game. It's always been a game.
For all that the broken bodies in left in the street, thrown in jails, and tied to inquisition chairs would never believe it, there is an edge to them, for all their sharpness, all their push and pull, demand and destruction, that is almost childish. Swapping power, challenging each other at each next rung, ordering each other, with shameless exuberance, to the edge.
The part of them that never changed on coming here, never had another voice to give an opinion to it, because no one mattered anymore who could. Tear any of it apart with the crack of disdain, with a countermand from on high. Never been anyone else, new and flawed and other, to change or taint any of the sheer ease of being everything they've always been, were raised to be, even in moments like this.
Luther relents with almost no argument. There's a fierce kind of delight in watching his whole body stutter mid-sentence, the floundered rut against her thigh, that shows in his expression is nowhere near enough, definitely not what he wanted, what his body strained toward, as she watched him, smile pertly aware and tauntingly unhelpful for that single moment in waiting to be obeyed in action, not just words.
There was no question that she wanted him, and to have her hands all over him, and she would, very soon, but it was the all part she relished demanding, and getting as he tried to bend all of himself, over her, and at the wrong angle, for how tall he was and where gravity was. But he did it anyway, pushing his bottoms off once they were past the point of his thighs and her ability to pretend to be helpful.
He came back down, warmer. Lean muscled legs slotting back between hers, hot and just a little coarse with hair, and it's all so much better than the well-washed softness of the pants. Even with her attention easily clipped toward the place where his erection lay on her skin, pressing in harder against her, like a brand, she wrinkled her nose and gave a scoff at his words flipping it right back on her.
She looked down at her chest, maybe she'd only remembered, maybe like she was toying with being hypocritical for the sake of it.
The curve of the peach cloth contrast against the dark of her skin. The rise of her breasts overflowing the top, caused by the angle's disregard for gravity and by them, their hands, when she would never wear anything that would make her appear derogare for work. Which was why it wasn't any of her more exciting pieces. Work rarely was. But that was why it was work.
"Fine." In any other context, that one single word would be clear enough warning for half of Gabriel's guard to step several feet back from her and whatever she was about to do to the person in front of her, but here Allison's voice has a peel of something like laughter buried in the high clear note of it. Amused at delayed, demanded, ordered. As though she'd surveyed the land and deigned to give him what he wanted, like the steel clip of his voice didn't bite into her blood, making it race faster.
The angle is still crap, but when would either of them let anything so paltry as that matter. Allison arched her back, with a little contortion, just enough to get her hand in under her back, without actually shifting him, or herself, or sitting up to make it easier. Taking a moment to find which way the hooks were facing, so she could tug it right. Letting her backdrop again as she pulled it down her shoulders.
Tossing it without looking, toward the every direction their clothes must be now, before reaching up to tug him back closer to her. "Better?"
Her smile, a curve that dared, openly, to imply he, and his demand, had started this pause. Not her at all.
Fine, Allison huffs as if she's been properly chided, a play at insolence and grudging obedience, dragging her heels as she complies, and he almost laughs at the act. Because it's a a familiar and familiarly maddening move: dragging her heels only because even these few added languorous seconds is its own kind of torture, testing Luther's vaunted patience, chipping away at it, seeing exactly how far she can push him. How long before his whole body's like a vibrating bowstring, desperate for more touch, for her hands on him, his cock straining.
Once she's finally naked and teasingly pulled him back to her, Luther's own mouth curves in a smile as he says, "Much," — and as if to to prove his point, he sinks lower and catches a nipple lightly between his teeth before starting to suckle. Making up for lost time, and making up for the part of her that had been clothed until now.
It's not the single-minded, almost-competitive performance of earlier; he's slower now, as if reacquainting and mapping her body all over again, nevermind that he memorised it long ago. Her soft curves and lean muscle, the angle where he has to prop a knee between hers, the small sound she makes when his tongue swirls around her nipple. How far he has to reach downwards to slide his fingers between her legs; confirming that she's still wet and slick from his earlier efforts, her earlier orgasm.
"Allison," he says, and though he doesn't say anything else, there's still a question packed into that one word, her name, a rising lilt and a tightness in his voice, an unspoken please—
Luther's touch is slower this time. Nothing like languid, but he takes his time. His mouth softer on her breast, fingers dipping in to stroke against her again, and her body gives several small jerks in an abortively searching reflex of her hips rolling up in his fingers, her body up into his mouth. Stopping only for that one word against her skin. Her name, and everything he knows it does to her.
Luther doesn't plead for anything, and Space would be dead before considering giving that much footing away in a fight, so there is an unmitigated high that comes with getting to hear the solid, firmness of his voice deteriorating at the edges. With just wanting her. Needing her. Like it's a crack down every veneer that he has, every part of who he is, no matter how public or private it is, with her name on it. The one exception that breaks all the rules of every steadfast, unshakable part of him.
"Hmm?" Is a question of a sound, purred somewhere between the back of her mouth and throat, something too aware to be innocent and yet tipped as though to question what his question could possibly be. Perhaps, even as if she was openly toying with whether she could force him to use his words. More words than just her name, before relenting.
But she doesn't expect him to hear it, or answer. None of that matters. Not when at the same second as that sound comes from her, very much on purpose, her fingertips ghost down the length of his cock against her, before looping into a cuff around him, hot and solid and silky all at once, and tightening as she pulls the curl of those fingers on him up much faster the opposite direction.
Finally and finally she's touching him, and it immediately wrenches a low moan out of his throat, his hips pressing forward closer into her hand as she starts stroking. Luther's teeth accidentally nip sharper against her breast, and then he pulls away slightly in order to bury his face more safely into her shoulder. That first touch is always the most sensitive, the one that sends his body trembling, bucking like an earthquake above her. There had been accidents, before: teethmarks bruised into her shoulder, or outright breaking furniture, or his whole body jerking like he's touched a live-wire and unintentionally knocking her right off the bed, both of them laughing, mortified, before smoothing it over by having her climb on top of him instead.
By now, they've gotten about as used to it as they can get. As her hand rolls over his cock, it's a test of willpower as it always is for him: Luther consciously pressing his hands into the sofa rather than her skin, his muscles visibly flexing and tightening as his body goes rigid above her. A ragged moan pressed into the skin of Allison's shoulder as her pace quickens. He'd gotten distracted and fallen completely motionless, just weathering the sensation as everything narrowed down to that friction and that pleasure, Number Three effortlessly shattering Number One's focus and concentration with just a few pumps of her hand; he's almost always so high-strung that he's easy to take apart like this, dismantle, unravel.
But after a moment he seems to suddenly remember that he was in the middle of something, too, wasn't he; and so Luther reaches down again to slide his fingers between her legs again, even as his breathing turns rougher and shallower.
Luther shifts not like a tide but like an earthquake. A second of seizure, that cracks the air with sound, before it slams forward. His whole body sudden caught up in the single force movement to push him harder, further into the cuff of her fingers, her body, his teeth biting sharper, harder against her breast, slamming a secondary, but impossible to ignore slash of electric pain into her system, eliciting a quick gasp, even as her body jerked into his paused hand.
Caustic already-blown nerves one second unexpecting and the next several miles into desperate for more, more, more, fuck that too more of that, getting her even wetter, as Luther pulled desperately away from it, the next second, on instinct learned more than given into. As though his forehead pressing into her shoulder, the line of his nose digging into the ridge of her shoulder bone, doesn't have some of the same force. As he stops himself from one thing, by burying into her with the same force elsewhere.
Her hands don't slow down, once started. Dragging sounds out of his mouth, that bury into her skin, as the fabric of the couch cushion under her goes taut with his grip on it around her, and she wants it to be her. Her skin. Her body. Under those hands. Feeling the full force of this. She's well aware of what Luther's capable of, but she's never turned away from it. Knows that he is capable of broken bones and bodies with something as small as a carelessly throw hand, but she's never feared that.
Relishes this. The pressure digging into her shoulder, his thighs pushing in against hers, the hands threatening to press through the cushion, the desperate shove of his body into her hands, seeking more contact, more friction, more tightness, faster, harder, now. This. The edge between all of the control that the world missed seeing in him every day that she can't, and stripping every shred of it away from him. Because he lets her, because she knows, even without the words, that beyond every learned impulse to protect (her at least), that he wants it, too.
To put it all down. To forget. To be pushed past that line hammered into his head. Careful control carried like a mountain of weight, awareness, never forgetting in every movement of himself he's ever making. She knows how hard he's worked for that, perfected that, but she doesn't want it or need it here. Here, where he's a shuddering collapse of pistoning muscles, and she wants to feel all of it.
The bite of his teeth, the bruising grip of his hands, the bucking of his body.
She's never been afraid of knowing precisely what Luther is, was, always will be. She's just as much reckless abandon as he is steadfast control, and her fingers tighten on him, quicken the pump of them, already riding the high of wanting and taking, the blurring line of a demand for more, more, more of him.
A fixation so briefly, staunchly lost in, she gives a jack-knife of a moan, caught up in her lungs, decked into her teeth, ragged surprise and sharp heat, when his fingers remember what they'd forgotten. Sliding in the slick of her body, the bundle of nerves that makes her body jerk, makes her aware of her own cracking, crackling blurring edges, and how it would, will, take so little to be coming on his fingers all over again after the first time, getting off on the sheer rush of doing all of this to him, of what is still coming, on his touching her while she does this to him.
Almost like a challenge, even when it's not, it makes her turn her cheek, seeking for, moving her arm caught between her body, the couch side, and his own grip on it on that side. But she's nothing if not versatile on the fly when she wants something. Pushing at his shoulder, and tucking her head that way, chin pushing between his head and her skin, saying his name, in a rough whisper, all demand, even when her voice is shattering, breathlessly rushed, "Kiss me. Luther, kiss me."
There's the hazy shade of her own control sliding back from her reach, the one that keeps her own wants, her own ability, in check, has to always be careful, not with her hands, but her words, her emotions, her intentions, when it's becoming all she is. A want, a tumult of nerves, to drag him all the way out with her, where she always is, with him, about him, because of him.
She wants his mouth, wants the focus he's clinging to, wants him not buried half-hidden in her skin, wants all of him here, and he so rarely doesn't give her what she wants, especially when all she wants, has ever really, deeply, mostly wanted -- is him; and all he really wants, deeply most, beyond his perfect burning blurring line -- is her.
And so he does, and it's the quickest compliance of Luther's life: one strong arm still propping him up like he's in the middle of a push-up, Allison's legs starting to wind around his, their hands on each other, her arm draped around his neck and half-hanging off him, and he catches her mouth in another kiss. The line between obedience and compulsion has been blurry for years, and for anyone else, it would skitter and skip right across those boundaries, with the question of how much of it is real and how much of it is Allison just taking what she wants, because she's always been a needy girl grown into an even more imperious woman—
But Luther's belief in her is unshakable, and that feeds right back into the loop that makes her cherish it more, value it more. Because this is him. This is him wanting because he wants, not because she told him to. His teeth nipping at her lip, his tongue licking into her mouth, his fingers plunging into her, her own hand between them and steadily eroding his self-control like walls crumbling down, bricks tumbling with each uncoordinated tremble of his body. They kiss until they have to remember to stop and breathe, gasping for breath, and then just gasping, period.
Finally, Luther's hand settles over hers to tug her away; even a minute pressure is enough to still her movement, loosen her grip at a touch. She's too good at it; after years of experience and practice she knows exactly the angle and speed to get him off, but they've other plans this morning. "If you keep at it, I'm gonna," he starts, but then even now, sprawled naked over her in the middle of their living room sofa, Space can't say it outright. Instead, he settles for: "I need to feel you. Now. All of you."
And there's that unspooling desperation and steel in his voice again, the landslide of need crashing through him, both of them demanding and starving for each other. Because it can't be enough. It can't be enough until he's buried inside her and coming undone and forgetting everything about himself, his strength, forgetting to be careful, leaving his mark on her hips and thighs and anywhere the cameras won't notice.
There's nothing patient or coy about this kiss when Luther obeys.
It's like an attack, from both sides, and she doesn't even know how little time it takes, between the assault of his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, and his hand, the both of them so familiar with all the things they like, what their bodies most crave and respond to best, before she is coming again. A little less overwhelmed by it than the first time, but moaning into his mouth, fingernails digging into his skin, desperation and delight all tangled up in the force of him, taste of him, the lingering taste of herself still there, in his mouth, on his tongue.
Her vision is only a little dazed when he shifts and his forehead is pushing into hers, words spilling out, and she loves that little thing, too. The way he still can't say it, even years later, when they can count the number of years they've been doing this better than the countless times they have done it. So many times it's not even a question of whether, or how, or if. Her mouth doesn't even try to fight that stupid endearing hook that takes to that one part of it. The word he just skipped over entirely.
That it's there, even in the gasping breaths. In among the strength, and the steel.
Every part of him, seen. Wanted. Possessively kept. Only hers.
It's not like she was ever going to do anything but agree (this morning, at least), but she's nodding, even as he's saying it, flickers of warmth still making the world a little languid even as it's fading fast for as even better release. For the thought of him, buried deep in her, making that part of her body clutch, all the muscles tightening, in search of the phantom image, remembrance, the not there yet stretching fullness.
Her hand between them, loose and complainant, as fast he'd been at her demand, at the touch of his hand over it, shifts, even as the rest of her is, too. Finding the right spot. Where her body needs to be shifted for them to line up right. Eyes half-lidded caught up on the feeling more than any ability to see, the way his dick slides slick and slippery, fast, against the wetness of her folds on contact.
Her lungs forgetting to breathe, even as she pushes him down to the right stop, her hips already giving into a small instinctive jut forward, pushing the top of his head further into her than her attempt to just line them up right.
She gets them at just the right angle for Luther to push forward, plunging himself inside her, lost in the sensation of wet heat and pressure and her knee tightening on his hip as she pulls him even closer; until he's bottoming out and kissing her again, his mouth turning sloppy and desperate. A helpless moan ripples out from him, swallowed up by the kiss. The man coming increasingly untethered, all awareness narrowing down to this, just this, the slick warmth of Allison around him and clenching harder, pulling him closer. It's his whole world. This sofa, this living room, her naked heaving body spread out underneath him, this new-found land. Right now, she's the only thing that matters.
They'd been separated for so many years, before — a literal brick wall between them, windows, curfews, rules, the long expanse of the breakfast table. Living in their own little world, lost in each other and in whatever they could have of each other. Living off scraps. Every small innocent touch doled out with delicacy and subtlety, something carved out between the lines.
Nowadays, they get to shatter all those lines and boundaries. They can finally be as close as it's possible to get, methodically taking each other apart in the privacy of their shared home: Luther filling her up, Allison's nails sinking into the meat of his shoulder as she hangs on, as he starts to settle back into a rolling rhythm, fucking her into the couch cushions with each snap of his hips. His mouth is still on hers, a hand catching her thigh to drag her against him and drive himself deeper. His fingers dig in too hard into her skin; there'll be bruises on her thigh come tomorrow, the imprint of Luther's hands all over her.
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"Or," Luther continues, still sounding mock-thoughtful, as if the idea's only just occurred to him: "Even if it did happen and we got called in. We're pretty quick to suit up, even if we're... otherwise occupied."
They'd drilled for it, after all. Mornings and mornings and mornings, the Monocle standing squinting down at a stopwatch, that inexorable click as the timer went on and there was the thunder of shoes down the hallways and click as it went off, until the Academy could beat their records again and again for how quickly they could stop what they were doing and deploy for a mission. They've still got those instincts, even today.
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Allison already wants him to move. Can feel it sparking in her veins. Wants the feel of his fingers sliding over her skin, soft and hungry, like it's been too long; hard, like a testament to knowing she'll never break, she'll never stop wanting to push harder, take more; so familiar, so dovetailed to her body, it's like he knows her skin better than she ever could, like they were born to fit together into one piece in every way possible anyone ever could.
"Luther." There's a snap to her voice -- a remonstration that she is the only person, not The Monocle or Gabriel, who was ever allowed to talk down to him, even in public, even with an audience -- that takes her expression, the sharp rise of her eyebrows and the line press of her lips, but never douses the light in her eyes. Never even tries.
Sparkling light, right through the edged derision. "You're talking too much."
It's a lie, but it's the best kind of lie, that's momentarily true and doesn't set off the alarm. Allison could listen to him talk all day, but she wants more than just his words, and true patience has only ever truly belonged to one of them, which is why she's pushing up to standing. Right there. On the couch. Making her hilariously taller than him, making it so she has to look down at him, all messy blonde morning hair and those lightning blue eyes, even as she's tugging at his shoulders.
She doesn't think about the couch, with him behind it, or more because it's just replaceable item, even for all its good memories. Not when her mind is set, and she really, really would have just slipped in right beside him and made him wake up at four in the morning for a do-over of re-starting her day like this, too.
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"Less talk, more action. Got it," he says, as if she's just critiqued his mission style. Luther's usually patient enough, but when she gets demanding like this — needy like this — it's like she's flared a match to life, stoking it higher, and he can feel that heat and urgency simmering hotter as Allison's hand fists in the neck of his loose t-shirt.
And so. Too impatient to carry her all the way back to that sleepy bedroom, Luther just crosses around the couch instead, drops Allison back on it with an ungraceful oomph; except that now he's on the right side of it and his body's pressing over her, easier to reach all of her, easier to drag at the edge of her shirt.
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Which is a hilarious thought, when the very next moment she's unceremoniously dropped right back down on the couch, and maybe she'd care more if he wasn't following right down after her, on top of her, perfect and forever too tall, dwarfing her almost instantly. A thing she'd never even known how much she'd come to love. Crave. No matter how often or how many ways it could happen.
"Is it my imagination--" Allison says, even as the corners of her mouth won't play along. One leg shifting, between the couch and him, to curl over one leg, and her hands already reaching down between them, for the bottom of her shirt, to go about helping him with pulling it off already. "--or wasn't I right here like ten seconds ago?"
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"And sorry to say, but: we missed our shot at staying in bed."
If she'd crept back under the covers with him, it would have been a sleepier way to wake up, a more sedate morning waking all tangled in each other — not this hungrier, more urgent thing, both their hands catching on the hem of Allison's shirt and dragging it up and off, over her head. She's dressed properly while Luther's still barefoot and rumpled, in flannel pants and a mismatched threadbare t-shirt (it had taken a while to kick the habit of perfectly-coordinated pyjama sets, a few years before he'd been able to set those childish things aside and accept a bit of mismatching chaos in his wardrobe). With her midriff bared, Luther works his way down: pressing his lips to the dip of her collarbone, the arch of her ribs, her belly-button, relishing the expanse of bare skin, the weight of her leg hooking around his.
They don't often have the morning off like this; Luther intends to make full use of it.
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Her shirts goes god knows where once her arms and hair are free, leaving her in her light peach bra, even as he skips to below her chest, his mouth leaving a warm trail against her ribs, her stomach. Well toned muscles tightening and releasing in fast, little flutters under the skin that never stops being sensitive to his touch no matter what all she's put it through, or the scars it's collected over the years.
"He says as if it's not just a room away, hasn't been for years, " Allison chides, but her voice stretches, words injected with more air and so much less focus. Her thigh and calf tightening against his body, ankle pressing in his muscles, as it's sliding up his back while he moves downward, no question to the opposing message that anywhere else is the very last thing she wants to be.
Her hand on his shoulder -- and she already wants this cotton shirt she liked only a second ago and finds in her way this next one, to go, too; wants the vast expanse of his skin under her fingers, against hers -- has to slip up, against his neck, the side of his face. Each new touch of his mouth on her skin, causing her shoulders and hips to press a little harder into the couch while pushing up the rest of her against his mouth.
Each touch of it a tick slowly tightening in the base of her stomach, steadily kicking up the throbbing already begun her between her legs, warm and undoubtedly already getting wet with the want for Luther that she's never once felt any shame over.
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Meanwhile, Allison is grasping at whatever she can reach, fingers against his neck, then curling in the neck of his shirt. And there's a smirking twist to his mouth, as he can quickly guess what she wants; not like she's ever particularly shy about it. "Guess we can even the playing field," Luther says, half-musing, and props himself up on a hand before reaching back and trying to tug his shirt off one-handed. It gets predictably caught on his head, but there's a laugh from Allison and she's able to unwind the fabric, pull it free and toss it somewhere to join hers.
And. It's better. It means he's able to press bare skin against bare skin as he catches her mouth in another kiss, some banishing (or stoking) of that unbearable heat lodging inside his body, pooling low in his abdomen, but at least there's something he can do about it. Luther eventually breaks away from the kiss and moves back down, his hands against the incredibly expensive slacks she's wearing — careful, delicate with his strength, mindful not to rip any of this particular wardrobe — before he's dragging the trousers down her hips, around the crook of a knee, tugging them free as she obligingly squirms to help him get the clothes off. He presses another kiss to her now-bared hip, before his fingers hook into the edge of her underwear (peach, matching the bra, of course). The couch is thankfully long enough that they can both fit, Allison sprawled against one end of it while Luther works his way down her body to where he actually wants to be.
"If your phone rings now, I'm destroying it," he promises.
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All of the pieces like the one he's carefully extricating from her, as she curls her knees up briefly toward her chest, pushing them past there while Luther's is pulling her pants off from further down. Pieces meticulously collected and crafted for particular looks, particular purposes. Long lines, and specific shaping. The way even this specific bra only has lace at the furthest edges, while the cups are smooth tight fabric designed not to let a wrinkle or shape ever be betrayed by the clothing over it.
There's an irrational fondness for seconds like this.
The care; and the way it cracks open right after.
When Luther's coming back up, kissing her hungrily while her hands find his skin, pulling him close, reveling in the heat and heaviness of him of, of the next second snap, less carefulness with her. That it extends to learned habit, but not this ever ravaging thing between them, that has taken out any number of pieces of her regular wardrobe, without grace or regret on either of their parts, along the way at times, past and present.
Things learned and carried in all they've become here, and support each other in. But no part of her doesn't thrill at the intensity of his hands. The insistence of his mouth, drowning out anything so paltry as fondness with to replace it only with fire, following it by the smooth circuit of finding her skin, threatening anyone taking her from in the next second.
Her smirk is crooked as it is uncaring -- her body a live wire caught on the prolonged second of warning, for the possessiveness under the threat, refusing to share her with the world another second, to be interrupted now; the way it and everything about all of her laid open and bare before him, betrays her, in the way her hips keep tilting slightly under his hands, seeking any part of the contact both promise and so far denied -- while she retorts,
"It's fine. We'll just kill them. Gabriel's got more people."
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He might be the leader, but Allison has the advantage between them. Always had. He'd be putty in her hands, as if he isn't already.
"A woman after my own heart," he says (and isn't she just, in so many ways), and finally peels her underwear off, while she slides a knee over his shoulder in the same movement, and he lowers his mouth to her.
And Number One has always been a perfectionist.
He's had years to devote himself to this, to fixating on her alone and on what, specifically, makes Allison Hargreeves' toes curl and a gasp catch in her throat. So he devotes himself to eating her out with the same single-minded perfectionism he turns to every aspect of his professional life, as if he's going to be graded on it: as her back arches against the sofa and she presses her hips up into him, he's alternately licking and sucking, her leg trembling on the other side of his head — his forearm moves to her hips, gently holds her in place, as he dives in all tongue and hot mouth.
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Reoriented not on sanity, but on the friction of a night's unshaved stubble against the softest, most sensitive folds of her skin, and his lips sucking on her clip, tongue laving against her everywhere else, a maddening and direct assault that didn't hesitate for anything foolish like leadup. It started with the same determined headlong force as Luther running straight through a brick wall did.
And she fucking loved him for it, even as her back arched, her breath knocking out of her lungs instantly, and her nails dug uncontrollably into her own thigh she hadn't even realized it was resting on her body, all of it more in control of itself, than her. Hips pushing into him, shoulder digging hard into the couch, like her spine, didn't need to stay connected, it just needed to push the rest of her body into him— into that hot, hard, sucking void of his mouth.
The maddening, dizzying crackle of heat and pleasure.
The maddeningly familiar ease with which he could hold her.
Luther's head buried at the apex of her legs. Only his forehead and his hair, and the riot of fluctuating muscles down his back left to see. While every part of her body begged and pushed for more, and he held her hips, her ass, down to the couch, like it was as simple as pressing a fingertip to a piece of paper—the one person who could.
When one word from her lips and no one else in the universe could.
One word from her lips, and everyone, everything, was the slave to her demand.
But he could, did. Letting her squirm enough not to be held rigid, but almost a touch too much, too, in the best way, making her try even harder to batter against the ease of his hold, the ruthlessness of his one-man army focus, heightening the want for more of him, of the impulse, bone deep trained from earlier than any childhood memory, never to be captured or held or kept. His mouth, his hands, the spikes, and waves of delicious heat shuddering through her, playing her skin like a puppet on pullable strings, as his name fell off her lips.
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She is, of course, the one person in the world most able to shut him up — and this is one of the most enjoyable ways to do it, with Luther's mouth entirely preoccupied and her hand eventually winding into his short blond hair, pressing him even closer to that bundle of nerves as he works her over, slowly, steadily, patiently. Hanging onto him for solid foundation, even as he pins her beneath him where she can't squirm away from the stimulation. Where all she can do is ride it out, cresting each relentless wave of pleasure.
He takes exquisite pride in this, as he always does: in her coming undone beneath him, in knowing that he did this, his teeth and tongue lapping at her and stubble scraping against her inner thighs did this. And his name, his name in that moan in Allison's voice, has an electrifying effect on him as it always does — the sound ripples through him and makes his own breath catch, and now he's almost painfully hard himself, erection pressing into the sofa where he's neglecting it. But he remains disciplined, focused, easily able to shoulder aside that distraction when there's the beauty of Allison spread out before him, her body starting to buck with each expert flick of his tongue, and even more once he adds a finger, two. Playing her like an instrument he's been learning and mastering for years, listening for and following those small sounds wrenched out of her throat, or when her fingers tighten in his hair: a sign that yes, that, do that more.
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And there are even rarer mornings she wakes up to Luther whispering poetry into her shoulder, the side of her neck, the dip of her spine, lips barely brushing her skin, except to etch the words of old master's on her bones like prayers. Mornings where he can get her nearly to the edge of orgasm just by the soft, feather-light trace of his fingertips over all of her skin, for an hour, for longer, even once she's trembling and whimpering, before he even considers touching her any of the places he's thrown himself like a battering ram at currently, just on the slow, steady compromise of her (im)patience turned disastrously rewarding over-sensitization of all her nerve endings.
As though somehow, every single part of her,
no matter how violent and vital in the daytime,
was thinner than glass, more precious than his stars.
The way this one is a testament to the fact she can't break, in two or out from his grasp.
That he can willfully take everything he knows she likes best, and rip her wide open with it.
The way her hips start grinding into a quick snap that's just rising to meet his mouth, to meet the thrust that isn't happening, isn't enough when it's just the tease of his tongue slipping inside her, until it finally is something more, and he's pushing those long fingers into her. Curling them into the spots that drive her mad, even as he's working her looser and looser, against the wild, desperate fire in her already wanting it to be Luther's cock, to have him deep inside, holding on to the shattered snap of his control, too, when he's finally fucking her hard enough it's like he's forgotten entirely that he could crumple her like tissue paper, that he lets himself go, with her, lets himself dissolve into only this mad, never truly sated or sane, need and want, with her, for her, that matches and mirrors hers for him.
There are always bruises from mornings like this, and she never cares. She wants them. She wants the way his fingers dig into her bucking hips while holding her down, and the sharpness of the teeth that worry her clit along with his tongue. She craves this, too. The way she craves blood on her knuckles, on her lips, sucker-punching someone in the face even though she could just order them to stop existing before getting within fifteen feet of her. The way madness is crowding out her mouth, her throat too dry, her body a constant stretch and snap of muscles in her abdomen, up her constantly arching rib cage, of an inability of figuring out where to rest her hands longer than ten seconds, how to keep them still, how to hold on tight enough, long enough, push-pull hard enough.
In his hair, holding on like barely grippable reins, sliding down his shoulder, up his neck. The audible sound they make, nails-biting in, dragging down the couch fabric when it isn't his skin she's furrowing. Her legs trembling, shifting, thighs pressing desperately inward, hard, against the sides of his head, heels digging into his shoulder blades, the back of his ribcage. Never having to worry about how hard, ever once to have needed to worry about holding back, with his durability. All of it building, wire tight in the muscles at the small of her back, the pit of her stomach, the speeding, shaking gasps, that are the desperate plea or breathy demand of his name, getting faster, interposed with longer jags when it's starting to crest, and she forgets to remember her body needs air, needs anything but the searing roar in her head, in her blood.
Getting closer and closer as everything gets higher, hotter, tighter, desperate want blotting out everything except him, his mouth, the fingers sliding in and out of her, her own hand, slipped into her bra, pinching her nipple hard, as her whole body becomes a wreck of faster and faster movement against his face, his mouth, his fingers, chasing the sizzling, searing, burning promise right at the edge of all of it, coming so close it demands every muscle in her body obey it over anything else.
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He has to work for it, and he does. He's able to drag her closer and closer, until finally he pulls away just an inch, murmurs her name into the crook of her thigh ("C'mon, Allison—"). It isn't dirty talk, Luther's mouth might be wicked but he rarely uses it to speak filth, but even that little utterance has a similar effect, a hammering on that throbbing desire. Because. It's them. The names they have now, on each others' lips. Who they are now. People, not numbers.
And the bowstring of her body's run taut and she's finally coming, all her muscles tightening at once, and there's that sharp kick of satisfaction in his chest as he licks her through the orgasm until she sinks down to the cushions, boneless and ragged with pleasure. Job done, Luther relents and moves away, wipes his mouth with a grin, and looks up the long languid-sprawled length of her; the curve of Allison's stomach and dip of her hip and still-peach-covered breasts, heaving, her hair already mussed. It's the best sight.
He crawls back up her half-naked body, the expanse of his broad chest and taut stomach furnace-hot beneath her hands, the hard line jutting in his pyjama pants pressing into her leg, as he kisses her jaw. Quieter now, his voice a rumble against her throat:
"Good morning, Allison Hargreeves."
He never uses nicknames; her full name is the equivalent for Luther, something worshipful on his tongue, a marvel, something he only uses when he's feeling coy, flirtatious, playful. And even crammed together on this couch, they fit together so well; legs slipping between each other and winding into each other, his elbow propped beside her head, his hand splayed against the bare skin of her stomach. He still can't stop touching her. Even today, even after all this time, it feels like a miracle that he's allowed to touch her like this, bring her to pleasure like this.
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He climbs up her, and this isn't done, but for a second, her eyes are half-lidded, and all she focuses on is moving the cement of one arm until it's over his shoulder, and her fingertips, still tingling like she's the full aftereffect of sticking your finger in a socket. Curling the back of his neck, into the hair at the nape of his neck, all slick under her fingers, arm across the back of his shoulder, all the way to her elbow, face pressing into the side of his face and the side of his neck.
The rumble of his voice, vibrating her second favorite of his words, her name, against her cheek, even as it finds her ears, while her lips curve against his skin. He tastes like sweat, and everything smells like her, will taste like her when she gets back to his mouth in a second. But relishes the broken open limpness of her whole body, of the sheer larger, heavier mass of him dwarfing her entirely, pushing her into the couch, like a blanket made of sun-warmed steel-bricks, surrounding every part of her. Luther the only world all around her, all that exists, as they easily jostle and shift parts of themselves, each other, like interlocking pieces that know, without thought or focus, where to go.
He props himself above her, all smug satisfaction and the unguarded crinkle of wonder that still sends a shot through her heart all these years later. Making her have to pull back her arm, hand finding the still damp side of his face, fingers the curve of his jaw and pushing herself up, in ruthless, easy command for her muscles to listen (the way they will, do, even through broken bones), because she has to kiss that mouth, his, him.
"Mmmm." Rumbles against his mouth, half-sound and half-sigh, as she squirms, tossed and torn, like a small buoy, between the touch-sensitive fading echoes and the trailing electric sparks that light her skin, already, again, under his fingers, with the heavy promise of more, of that impossible, well-proven, even better to come. "It is now."
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He drowns in it, for a while. All of his body pressed against all of her, Allison wrapping her arms around him until she's practically hanging off his neck, with little else to focus on but the movement of her mouth and the timing of their gasping breath.
When they finally break for air and Luther remembers what she said, he laughs. "Glad to be of assistance. Doing my best to fix some of that awful disappointment."
Because it's clear something's gone awry in her schedule, although he never actually stopped to find out what. Events get postponed, rescheduled, shuffled around. He doesn't actually care about the nitty-gritty and logistics of her tamer job, besides the part where she gets to stay home with him. Like this. His thumb's running along the curve of her stomach, the crest of her ribs, so soft and gentle now that it's almost ticklish.
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She loves it. God, does she. It's a decadent way to start. The day. All of this. But it's something she has to relinquish for. Control and contact. Things she would never consider leaving in someone else's hands for seconds, but that she never has to question, consider, doubt in Luther. Especially when it's briefly so, so worth it to be wrecked on giving up even that to him.
Luther's voice is warm, pleased, and laughing when he finally gets back to words—laughing at her. The words she'd chosen as much on purpose as on not caring how, on the nose, of shameless they were while coming down. But the other side of the haze of kissing him, of her hands finally being able to run uncheck over his skin, her mind is back far more acutely aware and in control of itself, again.
"Are you, though?" Allison's eyebrows peaked, her tone sideways-imperious. Not attempting to make it look anything like real, but still somehow managing to look down her nose at him. Even from flat under him. As her nails drug down the last of his lower ribs and the muscles in his back. "Because there are definitely some rules about the clothing you're breaking at this point."
"Namely--" Still lofty, as her hands flattened, fingers pushing, at the same time, both at and under the offending edge of his pajama bottoms as her hands curled his sides, and the rise of his hips under the cloth against her palms, her fingers tucking under, only barely between the press of their bodies. "--that you have any still."
"That's--" is where her mouth starts to curve a little sharper at the edge,
taking his own words to throw back at him. "--awfully disappointing, too."
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"I guess I've—" He breathes in sharply as her fingers dip beneath his trousers and run along the waistband, sliding along the bare skin of his lower abdomen that is so, so close and yet not close enough. He presses forward, closer, instinctively trying to shrink all the available distance between them, but with her hand still floating tantalisingly distant it just means grinding against her leg. "No choice, then."
And he obliges: one heavy hand settling on hers where she can help to drag the pyjama bottoms off together, down the straight angle of his hips and thighs. Luther's tall enough and his legs long enough that it goes less gracefully than when he'd tugged off her slacks; he has to rest his weight against an elbow for a moment, face buried in her neck, until he eventually manages to kick the pjs loose and he's finally fully naked and sprawled over her, hard and aching. No boxers. She already knows he sleeps commando.
And then Luther gives her an assessing look like he's sizing her up for dress code violations; appraising the mismatched clothing, Allison still half-naked as well. "You're breaking the rules, too. Get rid of the bra," he says, and there's a touch of that steel in his voice, the whipcrack of orders he uses in the field and, sometimes, here. There's a glint in his blue eyes, a devouring hunger and an impishness that only comes out here, with her, with this way they easily trade off the reins between each other and nudge at each other. It's a game. It's always been a game.
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The part of them that never changed on coming here, never had another voice to give an opinion to it, because no one mattered anymore who could. Tear any of it apart with the crack of disdain, with a countermand from on high. Never been anyone else, new and flawed and other, to change or taint any of the sheer ease of being everything they've always been, were raised to be, even in moments like this.
Luther relents with almost no argument. There's a fierce kind of delight in watching his whole body stutter mid-sentence, the floundered rut against her thigh, that shows in his expression is nowhere near enough, definitely not what he wanted, what his body strained toward, as she watched him, smile pertly aware and tauntingly unhelpful for that single moment in waiting to be obeyed in action, not just words.
There was no question that she wanted him, and to have her hands all over him, and she would, very soon, but it was the all part she relished demanding, and getting as he tried to bend all of himself, over her, and at the wrong angle, for how tall he was and where gravity was. But he did it anyway, pushing his bottoms off once they were past the point of his thighs and her ability to pretend to be helpful.
He came back down, warmer. Lean muscled legs slotting back between hers, hot and just a little coarse with hair, and it's all so much better than the well-washed softness of the pants. Even with her attention easily clipped toward the place where his erection lay on her skin, pressing in harder against her, like a brand, she wrinkled her nose and gave a scoff at his words flipping it right back on her.
She looked down at her chest, maybe she'd only remembered,
maybe like she was toying with being hypocritical for the sake of it.
The curve of the peach cloth contrast against the dark of her skin. The rise of her breasts overflowing the top, caused by the angle's disregard for gravity and by them, their hands, when she would never wear anything that would make her appear derogare for work. Which was why it wasn't any of her more exciting pieces. Work rarely was. But that was why it was work.
"Fine." In any other context, that one single word would be clear enough warning for half of Gabriel's guard to step several feet back from her and whatever she was about to do to the person in front of her, but here Allison's voice has a peel of something like laughter buried in the high clear note of it. Amused at delayed, demanded, ordered. As though she'd surveyed the land and deigned to give him what he wanted, like the steel clip of his voice didn't bite into her blood, making it race faster.
The angle is still crap, but when would either of them let anything so paltry as that matter. Allison arched her back, with a little contortion, just enough to get her hand in under her back, without actually shifting him, or herself, or sitting up to make it easier. Taking a moment to find which way the hooks were facing, so she could tug it right. Letting her backdrop again as she pulled it down her shoulders.
Tossing it without looking, toward the every direction their clothes must be now, before reaching up to tug him back closer to her. "Better?"
Her smile, a curve that dared, openly, to imply he, and his demand, had started this pause. Not her at all.
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Once she's finally naked and teasingly pulled him back to her, Luther's own mouth curves in a smile as he says, "Much," — and as if to to prove his point, he sinks lower and catches a nipple lightly between his teeth before starting to suckle. Making up for lost time, and making up for the part of her that had been clothed until now.
It's not the single-minded, almost-competitive performance of earlier; he's slower now, as if reacquainting and mapping her body all over again, nevermind that he memorised it long ago. Her soft curves and lean muscle, the angle where he has to prop a knee between hers, the small sound she makes when his tongue swirls around her nipple. How far he has to reach downwards to slide his fingers between her legs; confirming that she's still wet and slick from his earlier efforts, her earlier orgasm.
"Allison," he says, and though he doesn't say anything else, there's still a question packed into that one word, her name, a rising lilt and a tightness in his voice, an unspoken please—
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Luther doesn't plead for anything, and Space would be dead before considering giving that much footing away in a fight, so there is an unmitigated high that comes with getting to hear the solid, firmness of his voice deteriorating at the edges. With just wanting her. Needing her. Like it's a crack down every veneer that he has, every part of who he is, no matter how public or private it is, with her name on it. The one exception that breaks all the rules of every steadfast, unshakable part of him.
"Hmm?" Is a question of a sound, purred somewhere between the back of her mouth and throat, something too aware to be innocent and yet tipped as though to question what his question could possibly be. Perhaps, even as if she was openly toying with whether she could force him to use his words. More words than just her name, before relenting.
But she doesn't expect him to hear it, or answer. None of that matters. Not when at the same second as that sound comes from her, very much on purpose, her fingertips ghost down the length of his cock against her, before looping into a cuff around him, hot and solid and silky all at once, and tightening as she pulls the curl of those fingers on him up much faster the opposite direction.
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By now, they've gotten about as used to it as they can get. As her hand rolls over his cock, it's a test of willpower as it always is for him: Luther consciously pressing his hands into the sofa rather than her skin, his muscles visibly flexing and tightening as his body goes rigid above her. A ragged moan pressed into the skin of Allison's shoulder as her pace quickens. He'd gotten distracted and fallen completely motionless, just weathering the sensation as everything narrowed down to that friction and that pleasure, Number Three effortlessly shattering Number One's focus and concentration with just a few pumps of her hand; he's almost always so high-strung that he's easy to take apart like this, dismantle, unravel.
But after a moment he seems to suddenly remember that he was in the middle of something, too, wasn't he; and so Luther reaches down again to slide his fingers between her legs again, even as his breathing turns rougher and shallower.
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Caustic already-blown nerves one second unexpecting and the next several miles into desperate for more, more, more, fuck that too more of that, getting her even wetter, as Luther pulled desperately away from it, the next second, on instinct learned more than given into. As though his forehead pressing into her shoulder, the line of his nose digging into the ridge of her shoulder bone, doesn't have some of the same force. As he stops himself from one thing, by burying into her with the same force elsewhere.
Her hands don't slow down, once started. Dragging sounds out of his mouth, that bury into her skin, as the fabric of the couch cushion under her goes taut with his grip on it around her, and she wants it to be her. Her skin. Her body. Under those hands. Feeling the full force of this. She's well aware of what Luther's capable of, but she's never turned away from it. Knows that he is capable of broken bones and bodies with something as small as a carelessly throw hand, but she's never feared that.
Relishes this. The pressure digging into her shoulder, his thighs pushing in against hers, the hands threatening to press through the cushion, the desperate shove of his body into her hands, seeking more contact, more friction, more tightness, faster, harder, now. This. The edge between all of the control that the world missed seeing in him every day that she can't, and stripping every shred of it away from him. Because he lets her, because she knows, even without the words, that beyond every learned impulse to protect (her at least), that he wants it, too.
To put it all down. To forget. To be pushed past that line hammered into his head. Careful control carried like a mountain of weight, awareness, never forgetting in every movement of himself he's ever making. She knows how hard he's worked for that, perfected that, but she doesn't want it or need it here. Here, where he's a shuddering collapse of pistoning muscles, and she wants to feel all of it.
The bite of his teeth, the bruising grip of his hands, the bucking of his body.
She's never been afraid of knowing precisely what Luther is, was, always will be. She's just as much reckless abandon as he is steadfast control, and her fingers tighten on him, quicken the pump of them, already riding the high of wanting and taking, the blurring line of a demand for more, more, more of him.
A fixation so briefly, staunchly lost in, she gives a jack-knife of a moan, caught up in her lungs, decked into her teeth, ragged surprise and sharp heat, when his fingers remember what they'd forgotten. Sliding in the slick of her body, the bundle of nerves that makes her body jerk, makes her aware of her own cracking, crackling blurring edges, and how it would, will, take so little to be coming on his fingers all over again after the first time, getting off on the sheer rush of doing all of this to him, of what is still coming, on his touching her while she does this to him.
Almost like a challenge, even when it's not, it makes her turn her cheek, seeking for, moving her arm caught between her body, the couch side, and his own grip on it on that side. But she's nothing if not versatile on the fly when she wants something. Pushing at his shoulder, and tucking her head that way, chin pushing between his head and her skin, saying his name, in a rough whisper, all demand, even when her voice is shattering, breathlessly rushed, "Kiss me. Luther, kiss me."
There's the hazy shade of her own control sliding back from her reach, the one that keeps her own wants, her own ability, in check, has to always be careful, not with her hands, but her words, her emotions, her intentions, when it's becoming all she is. A want, a tumult of nerves, to drag him all the way out with her, where she always is, with him, about him, because of him.
She wants his mouth, wants the focus he's clinging to, wants him not buried half-hidden in her skin, wants all of him here, and he so rarely doesn't give her what she wants, especially when all she wants, has ever really, deeply, mostly wanted -- is him; and all he really wants, deeply most, beyond his perfect burning blurring line -- is her.
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But Luther's belief in her is unshakable, and that feeds right back into the loop that makes her cherish it more, value it more. Because this is him. This is him wanting because he wants, not because she told him to. His teeth nipping at her lip, his tongue licking into her mouth, his fingers plunging into her, her own hand between them and steadily eroding his self-control like walls crumbling down, bricks tumbling with each uncoordinated tremble of his body. They kiss until they have to remember to stop and breathe, gasping for breath, and then just gasping, period.
Finally, Luther's hand settles over hers to tug her away; even a minute pressure is enough to still her movement, loosen her grip at a touch. She's too good at it; after years of experience and practice she knows exactly the angle and speed to get him off, but they've other plans this morning. "If you keep at it, I'm gonna," he starts, but then even now, sprawled naked over her in the middle of their living room sofa, Space can't say it outright. Instead, he settles for: "I need to feel you. Now. All of you."
And there's that unspooling desperation and steel in his voice again, the landslide of need crashing through him, both of them demanding and starving for each other. Because it can't be enough. It can't be enough until he's buried inside her and coming undone and forgetting everything about himself, his strength, forgetting to be careful, leaving his mark on her hips and thighs and anywhere the cameras won't notice.
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It's like an attack, from both sides, and she doesn't even know how little time it takes, between the assault of his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, and his hand, the both of them so familiar with all the things they like, what their bodies most crave and respond to best, before she is coming again. A little less overwhelmed by it than the first time, but moaning into his mouth, fingernails digging into his skin, desperation and delight all tangled up in the force of him, taste of him, the lingering taste of herself still there, in his mouth, on his tongue.
Her vision is only a little dazed when he shifts and his forehead is pushing into hers, words spilling out, and she loves that little thing, too. The way he still can't say it, even years later, when they can count the number of years they've been doing this better than the countless times they have done it. So many times it's not even a question of whether, or how, or if. Her mouth doesn't even try to fight that stupid endearing hook that takes to that one part of it. The word he just skipped over entirely.
That it's there, even in the gasping breaths.
In among the strength, and the steel.
Every part of him, seen. Wanted.
Possessively kept. Only hers.
It's not like she was ever going to do anything but agree (this morning, at least), but she's nodding, even as he's saying it, flickers of warmth still making the world a little languid even as it's fading fast for as even better release. For the thought of him, buried deep in her, making that part of her body clutch, all the muscles tightening, in search of the phantom image, remembrance, the not there yet stretching fullness.
Her hand between them, loose and complainant, as fast he'd been at her demand, at the touch of his hand over it, shifts, even as the rest of her is, too. Finding the right spot. Where her body needs to be shifted for them to line up right. Eyes half-lidded caught up on the feeling more than any ability to see, the way his dick slides slick and slippery, fast, against the wetness of her folds on contact.
Her lungs forgetting to breathe, even as she pushes him down to the right stop, her hips already giving into a small instinctive jut forward, pushing the top of his head further into her than her attempt to just line them up right.
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They'd been separated for so many years, before — a literal brick wall between them, windows, curfews, rules, the long expanse of the breakfast table. Living in their own little world, lost in each other and in whatever they could have of each other. Living off scraps. Every small innocent touch doled out with delicacy and subtlety, something carved out between the lines.
Nowadays, they get to shatter all those lines and boundaries. They can finally be as close as it's possible to get, methodically taking each other apart in the privacy of their shared home: Luther filling her up, Allison's nails sinking into the meat of his shoulder as she hangs on, as he starts to settle back into a rolling rhythm, fucking her into the couch cushions with each snap of his hips. His mouth is still on hers, a hand catching her thigh to drag her against him and drive himself deeper. His fingers dig in too hard into her skin; there'll be bruises on her thigh come tomorrow, the imprint of Luther's hands all over her.
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