Laying Claim: A Castle One-Shot

[pollylynn]

Title: Laying Claim

WC: ~1800

Summary: He's definitely up to something and he thinks he's getting away with it.

Spoilers: Extraordinarily glancing references to Cuffed and Close Encounters, but this is pretty firmly PWP.

A/N: Cora Clavia made me do it. With her sinister powers of telling me about her potentially traumatic meeting, she made me do it.



He's up to something.

Well. He's up to a couple of somethings. She confirms that with strategic shift of her left thigh that manufactures this high-pitched, desperate sound from him. High pitched, desperate, and a little annoyed. Annoyed.

He's definitely up to something and he thinks he's getting away with it. He's sending his words out over her skin. Lips, his teeth and tongue. They're all here and there and everywhere, but he's never too far from her ear. One or the other. He never goes too far for too long and he still thinks he's getting away with it-whatever it is-even though she scattered his concentration for a good long while there.

Thirty seconds of silence at least. After the desperate sound. Thirty seconds is forever for him. Forever for him when he's like this. When his voice drops to a rumble and she feels it more than she hears it. When it's energy-fire seeping into her skin at a single point. Teeth and fingerprints and words collapsing to a wave form and he's coaxing her shoulder down and away, tipping her head to the side and it's a sharp, single point that's almost pain and nothing like pain and he thinks he's getting away with it.

Her forearm comes up. Knocks his away and she flips him to his back and he's so annoying. Grinning at her like that. Grinning under her messy, pissed off counterattack. Her knees are sharp at his sides and her hands tug none too gently at his hair. At the bunched muscles of his shoulders that warn her that he's not finished. Whatever he's up to, he's not finished and he's not of a mind to be distracted. Not in the long run.

Not a of a mind, is he? She smirks down at him and that may be her mistake. Telegraphing her move before she straightens her arms and drags herself down his chest. He lets her go and it works at first. Her plan works and his spine peels off the bed and there's a groan. Deep this time, but still annoyed, and then he has her wrists. Somehow he's quicker than her and he has her wrists and she can't quite believe it.

She can't quite believe he's laughing at her and fending her off. He closes one hand around both her wrists and steadies the other palm against her ribcage and she can't help thinking that all went wrong. Her master plan went terribly wrong and he's nipping at the underside of one breast, then the other. His cheek drags against her skin and it's late-in-the-day rough and he knows. He knows what that does to her. Knows she's balanced on another kind of edge and any minute she might laugh or she might scream or she might beg him to just kill her and get it over with.

She might have done that already. She must have done something. Said something stupid and let him think he's winning, because his chin is traveling up her spine and he's whispering in her ear. Not yet. Not yet, Kate. And he's grinning again. She's on her stomach with her face buried in the pillow and she has no idea when that happened but she knows he's grinning.

He still has her wrists. Pinned at her sides now, though he lets go every so often. He lets go to emphasize a point that his lips or his tongue or his teeth have recently made on the skin of her back. Her sides. Every so often he lets one wrist or the other go, but never both. So whatever she said he's wary enough.

He's drifting lower. Still grinning and she thinks about swatting him. Waiting for him to let down his guard and swatting him, but her limbs are traitors. They don't care about the grinning. The insubordination and the lies. The tall tales he's spinning.

His voice is soft now and he's careless with his words. He knows she's listening. He knows he has her and he doesn't bother with the trip upward any more. He whispers against curve of her lowest rib. Exposition and character development and maybe even plot. Something about what this all means. Whatever he's up to and he doesn't care so much whether she hears anymore or not. He has her.

He lets both wrists go now. Flicks his tongue over one, then the other and sets them gently at her sides. Her fingers curl into fists. It starts in defiance and ends in a sigh. A long, languid stretch overhead as she lays open the long expanse of her back to him. He has her.

He's drifting still. Lower and lower and she does laugh. Her hands twitch to grab at him, but she wills herself still. She's just this side of ticklish there. One spot on her lower back and he knows that. He knows that, and if that's what this is about, she won't give him the satisfaction.

But it's not. It's about something else, because his palm is there. The heel of his hand is there, heavy and still and calming. Damn him. It's calming and this is supposed to be a war, isn't it?

But he slows his pace and the words are spilling over her again and she's past it. Over the keen edge and into something that burns low and long and hot. Something that might drag a purr out of a lesser woman. But she is not a lesser woman and it turns into a particularly colorful string of curses that have him laughing. Burying his nose in the dimple to one side of her spine and laughing and egging her on. Making suggestions and Damn him.

His hands are on her hips now. His fingers splayed all the way around them. Heavy like a cage, and she wants to move just to spite him. She tries to move. She calls up that much will and he warns her. A sharp word and his teeth find a bit of skin and it's more than a warning. It's a demonstration. His chest is a solid wall against the backs of her thighs and she's not going anywhere.

And that might have been a purr. She's not prepared to stipulate. And she might have stipulated that out loud-she definitely wishes she'd remembered what it does to him when she uses words like stipulate earlier-because there is a sudden, concentrated attack on a very specific spot at the small of her back. Very specific and she may or may not have purred, but he definitely growled and Dear God . . .

She pushes up to her elbows. Snaps them straight and her spine is curving back and back and it bothers him not at all. His fingers tighten at her waist, but it has nothing to do with her and everything to do with whatever the hell has brought every ounce of focus he has to one square inch of skin just East of her spine.

It seems like it goes on forever. Forever and then he pulls back, satisfied and grinning again. He's grinning again and she knows it before she pushes herself down the bed. Before she twists her hips and hooks his calf with hers and has him on his back. She knows it in the instant before she makes it disappear.

Before his eyes go wide and the grin falls right off his face because she's reaching down between their bodies and shimmying backward just as his hips come up. Teasing and making him wait and turning the tables and . . . Oh, fuck it.

She drops back to her knees and drags herself back up his thighs. Presses her hips down and pulls her own name from somewhere deep inside him as she slows just before the good part. He doesn't sound annoyed anymore. Not annoyed exactly.

His hands slide down her shoulders and make a break for her hips, but she's faster this time. She's faster and she has his wrists pinned above his head. She falls over him and slides home. All the way down the length of him in one emphatic motion and it stops his words absolutely.

She loves this part. She loves all the parts. His annoying, cocky chatter and the things he says that make her burn. But she loves this a little more. That she can do this. Take them both beyond speech.

The silence doesn't last. She wouldn't want it to, but there's not chance tonight anyway. It's too good right now. It's too good and the aftershocks of whatever he's been up to loosen her hands and have her fingers skating over his cheekbones. His arms come around her and they move slowly. Slowly, and he's whispering again. Whispering at long intervals between kisses and sighs and stretches of wordless urgency.

Those get longer and longer still and the words come. For her at least, they come and she can't stop them. Her eyes fly open and he's watching her so intently-so intently-that she doesn't think he minds too much.

At least he's not grinning she thinks as she goes limp against him. He's murmuring and silly, but at least he's not grinning as he eases her off to one side. As he teases the ticklish bit of her lower back until she lets him slip an arm under her waist and twine them together.

He's nuzzling her neck and his fingers are stroking her lower back and there's something-something-buzzing. Not quite pain. Sharpness. Focus. Intent. And . . . he's kind of grinning again. She knows without looking that he is. He is.

She pushes back away from him. He arranges his face in an innocent look a second too late. She narrows her eyes and waits. She waits, but not for long.

"What?"

She raises an eyebrow and he's powerless. His eyes dart to her neck and his fingers skip guiltily upward on her back.

"I . . .just . . ."

She waits.

"Aliens!" His thumb presses against the hollow where her neck flows into her shoulder and she knows-she knows-there's a mark blooming there.

"Not aliens," she snaps, though the contrite look on his face makes it almost impossible. Almost.

Her head twists away and he makes a discontented noise as he chases. His fingers skate over her back. Returning to the scene of the crime.

"Yes," he says testily. "There, too."

She waits again.

"Tigers!"

"A tiger. One tiger. And it wasn't the tiger," she shakes her head. She can't believe she's arguing with him. She can't believe he won. Because he won, didn't he?

He's shimmying down and pressing his cheek to her shoulder. Turning his lips against her breast with a look of utter contentment. He certainly thinks he's won.

"I just wanted things to be clear," he says as his drift close.

"Clear?" She gives in. Her fingers tangle in his hair and she gives in.

"What's mine is mine," he mumbles. Like it's obvious.

It's pretty obvious. Damn him.