Saving Grace Part II
Because I'm almost positive I didn't receive one reply/comment to Saving Grace that didn't somehow encompass a request for a follow up.
Congratulations, you all run my life. ;) I won't be posting this on FFN like the first part, due to the adult content.
Author: BlueSuede
Title: Saving Grace Part II
Rating: M/NC17
Genre: Tragedy/Hurt&Comfort/Romance
Pairings: Chloe/Oliver
Summary: how Chloe survives her captivity
Warnings: violence and sexual content
banner by the lovely miss_morrygan
Six months.
Three weeks.
Two days.
And counting.
But this was it. He was ending it now. He’d finally found her. He was getting his life back. He zipped up his tunic and donned his shades, a dark expression in his eyes, when a strong hand gripped his bicep.
“Where are you going half-cocked?” asked a familiar--currently infuriating--voice.
He attempted to wrench his arm free from Clark’s, but there was no point. Clark was there to keep him there. So instead, Oliver rounded on him.
“I’m busting her out. What the hell are you doing?”
Clark looked into Oliver’s face. The last half a year had been awful. To both of them. He knew that his own pain was nothing to Oliver’s, especially looking into that broken face, but he too had suffered. She was his best friend--one that he had been nowhere near good enough to recently, and he had near killed himself trying to find Chloe, too.
“Oliver,” he said, trying to rationalize with his half-mad friend. “Give us one hour. That’s all. One hour to round up the troups and go in there with a reasonable plan. The last thing we need is to lose you, too.”
Oliver already had the argument on his lips, but the next words Clark spoke caused him to choke on them.
“What would she tell you to do?”
Clark didn’t dare speak her name. None of them had dared to since the day she’d traded herself for Oliver.
Oliver turned his head away at Clark’s statement, and Clark took that as his submission. “One hour,” Oliver conceded, his voice harsh with grief. “One hour and I leave you all in the dust whether you’re ready or not.”
Clark nodded, knowing that was the best he could ask, all he could ask of the man in front of him. He vanished instantly, presumably to find first Hawkman and then the others, Oliver acknowledged in the recesses of his conscious thoughts.
He crossed the room to his workout equipment and threw a kick at the punching bag. And another. And another.
God, Chloe, why’d you have to go and be a hero? he thought desperately. He would gladly have suffered for the rest of his life knowing that he was preserving hers.
But then, she would say the same thing, and so here they were.
__________________________________________
She was lying on her face when he found her. He hadn’t been able to wait for the others any longer.
If he needed backup, they would be there shortly. It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was the man in front of him, landing a ruthless kick to Chloe’s side and her failure to respond.
Was she unconscious? Dead? The horrifying thought coursed through his brain as the man sailed another kick into her.
Oliver.
Saw.
Red.
He raised his bow, and spoke quietly, the sound chilling through his voice modulator as it echoed in the room. “Don’t move.”
Chloe registered the sound of his voice, and without giving any sign of life to either of them, promptly blacked out.
The man stilled, clearly not having recognized that he had company--which was exactly the way Oliver had intended it. He was damn pleased with the fact that even with the current stakes, he’d still managed to infiltrate the facility entirely undetected.
The man slowly burned his eyes up to Oliver and the smirk on his face was prominent. “Well look who it is, my old friend. How nice to see you.”
Oliver recognized the voice of the same man who had tortured him. He looked despicably at ease. “I told you I’d hunt you down,” Oliver remided him venomously. His fingers were itching to pull the trigger as he debated his target options. Heart, lungs, eyes, brain...so many choices.
“So you did.” The man circled slowly around Chloe’s body, looking down at her lifeless form. “You know I have to admit,” he said tauntingly, “I thought you were a pain in the ass, but you were nothing to her. Not that it took long to break her of course. She’s been a veritable fountain of information since the first week.” He glanced up at Oliver with a malevolent glint in his eyes. “Not the most trustworthy person to put in charge of all your little secrets, was she?”
Oliver didn’t react to what he knew was lies, but watched the man with murderous eyes.
Give me a reason, damn it. One reason.
And he did.
Thinking to punctuate his little speech, the sick bastard started to throw a kick toward the unconscious Chloe’s side.
He barely had time to register the pain of an arrow gliding straight through his knee before one buried itself in his chest. He fell forward on top of Chloe, shoving the arrow deeper into his body and splintering it.
The last thing he ever felt was his body being launched off of her and hitting a wall.
The last thing he ever heard was the demonic sound of that distorted voice.
“You will never touch her again.”
____________________________________________
Clark and the others had shown up within seconds after Oliver had killed her assailant, not bothering to admonish him or question the dead man in the room. None of them cared, and all of them understood. Instead they had set to work taking down and tearing apart the entire facility, finally getting the answers they’d been searching for for months. Oliver didn’t stick around.
He had lifted Chloe’s broken body into his arms like a bird with a broken wing and gotten her the hell out of there, not trusting her to anyone else’s care. It didn’t matter that Clark or Bart would have gotten her to Emil faster.
He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
And now he stared at her on the medical table Emil had set up in the middle of Watchtower. He had watched as the doctor assessed every inch of her body, every bruise, scratch, and broken bone.
Now she lay there, cleaned, bandaged, and hooked up to an IV while Oliver stared unblinkingly at her.
His eyes traveled over her emaciated body, the bruises on her now bandaged ribcage, her swollen lip and eyes covered with ice packs. Her arm was in a sling, and her shoulder had swelled to the size of a small grapefruit. They had washed every bit of dried blood off of her that they could, even going at her hair with shampoo and a bowl of hot water.
As he looked her over for the millionth time he suddenly regretting killing her captor.
Death was too good for him.
He didn’t sleep, didn’t move from her side, but sat there and waited. The sound of the blips representing her heartbeats comforting in the otherwise silent room.
It was hours before she woke, the bags of ice sliding from her face as she shifted her head.
“Stay still,” he croaked and her entire body lurched in response to the sound of his voice.
Tears started rolling down her cheeks in a heavy stream and she began breathing heavily; the only coherent words Oliver could catch were “not a dream.”
Her sobs grew louder and he pulled her to him, helping her sit up so he could cradle her, still careful of the IV and her cracked ribs. He ran his hands over her back and through her hair, soothing her quaking body and hushing her gently. Chloe buried her face in his chest and her tears began to soak through the black under-armor he wore under his suit.
“Oh god,” she sobbed, her voice hoarse and barely recognizable, “oh God.” Fragile hands fisted themselves in his too tight shirt in spite of the difficulty.
“Shhh,” he said gently. “I”m here. I’m here. It’s okay.” He rained kisses down on the top of her head, clutching it to his heart. “You should lay back down,” he added without conviction.
She didn’t listen, and he was secretly glad.
They remained like that for what must have been an hour before her body finally stilled, calm again. Slowly he tilted her head up to his and gently kissed her bruised lips. Thanks to the ice, the swelling had gone down, but they were still dark with discoloration and slightly mangled.
Oliver could barely stand to look at her and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her at the same time.
Chloe was convinced that nothing had ever looked as good as Oliver Queen in that moment, and nothing had ever tasted as good as his lips.
“I love you,” she whispered shakily.
“I love you, too.”
________________________________________
Chloe’s recovery was long and drawn out, with Oliver finally insisting to Emil that she be moved to Oliver’s apartment.
Lois had nearly broken to pieces all over the floor when Clark brought her from Africa to see her cousin. She hadn’t let anyone break her vice-like grip on Chloe for at least three hours.
Not that Oliver tried. They hadn’t been able to pull him off of her for forty-eight. He wasn’t about to interfere with Lois.
Clark, too, had quietly held her and pressed brotherly kisses to her temple, muttering affectionately about how stupid she was.
But more than anyone Chloe just wanted Oliver, and it was a relief to be removed to the Clocktower where things were quieter.
Now, with two months having passed, Chloe was mostly doing better. Her cracked ribs were healing properly for the first time, the swelling was entirely gone, and most of the bruises had faded to a sickly green or else vanished entirely.
Back on solid food she had managed to regain some weight, and she looked relatively healthy again.
Fed up with her tangled, matted hair, she’d persuaded Oliver to let her go out to get it cut a couple of days ago.
Now, she was lying awake in his bed, woken only by the sun shining in through the window.
Through slitted eyes she stared around at the flowers overflowing in his room.
Clark had sent a bouquet, as had Hawkman, “on behalf of the JSA.” She grinned at the older man’s excuse. There was a bunch of sunflowers in the corner from Victor, Dinah, and AC. Now at least a month old, they were starting to look rather ragged, but Chloe refused to have any of them thrown out.
Every day a new large bouquet of tulips appeared, presumably left by Bart, and they were taking up the majority of the floor of Oliver’s room.
Oliver hadn’t gotten her flowers. He simply had refused to let go of her for so much as a minute since her return.
Perhaps that was an exaggeration, Chloe admitted to herself, but either way she wasn’t complaining. After six months with only memories of him, she wanted to feast her eyes on him every second of the day.
She did so now, turning in his arms to study his face. She smiled softly as her movement automatically caused his arms to tighten around her, even when he was asleep. She would have tried to get up to close the curtains in his room, but she didn’t want to wake him.
She traced her eyes over the hard planes of his chest up his thick, muscular neck and to the dimple in his chin. There she paused, mouth curving upward as she brought her hand up and lightly brushed her hand along his jaw, from the dimple up to his ear. The back of her fingers grazed back down over his cheek and then she ran her thumb over his bottom lip with a feather-light touch.
The corner of his mouth twitched, signaling that she had woken him and he pressed a kiss to her thumb. Chloe quickly replaced her fingers with her lips, moving hers over his persuasively, tongue darting into his mouth.
And yet he pulled back. His self-control never failed to amaze her. “How are you feeling?”
She gave a quiet laugh. The same question every morning.
“Hot and bothered,” she answered bluntly, sliding her leg up and over his.
Oliver chuckled, too.
He’d been holding back for her, making sure she had time to heal, and it was maddening. He’d never had a case of blue balls like this in his life.
Chloe was more fed up than he was. Her foot glazed over the back of his calf seductively, and Oliver had to give her a careful warning.
“Emil said--”
“Not until I’m fully recovered,” she supplied. “He said at least a month and a half for my ribs. It’s been two. We’re golden.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he reminded her quietly, even as his hands slid down to the small of her back. “The last thing I need is to have your recovery process backtracked,” he grinned at her, pressing his nose to hers.
“Ollie, I’m fine.” She pushed him over onto his back as though to demonstrate her point, the sheets and blanket sliding off her back as she did. She straddled his hips wantonly and then twisted slowly to her right and then left. “See. They should put me in the circus, I’m so bendy.” She carefully kept any trace of pain from her face. She was healed, yes. She wasn’t lying, but she was still tender.
He chuckled, sitting up to kiss her while she stayed in his lap, his hands gripping her waist possessively and wrenching her closer. “They should put you in a circus, all right,” he teased against her lips. “Craziest woman alive. Step right up.”
She bit his lip in playful punishment. She had high hopes from the bulge pressing against her heat that she was going to get her way.
He still made one last attempt to distract her, though. “Aren’t you hungry? Coffee?” he offered, smirking slightly into her kiss as he threw her weakness on the playing field.
Chloe just groaned into his mouth and deliberately rolled her hips down on his. “Cheater,” she accused.
He shrugged arrogantly. “A guy’s gotta try.”
“No,” she corrected, slowly removing his shirt and working her lips up his chest as soon as it was bare to her. “A guy’s gotta make love to his girlfriend. That’s what a guy’s gotta do.”
He smirked and in a movement she missed, he was suddenly hovering over her as she laid beneath him on the bed, his body pressed between her open thighs. “Is that so?” he asked.
Her hands traced the planes of his chest, memorizing each muscle for the millionth time since her return and she nodded, eyes on his. “You know,” she told him quite seriously, her right hand slipping around his neck and toying with the short hairs at its nape. “I had hoped when I got back that you’d...lock me away in here,” she raised an eyebrow, “but I had things in mind that were very different from chicken soup.”
He almost didn’t notice that her other hand was slipping down to the waistband of his pajama pants as she distracted him. “Oh?” he questioned, his stomach tightening.
Again she nodded.
His hands took hers, stopping their progress so he could pin them above her head. “And what did you have in mind?” he ground his hips down on her core and she shuddered.
“A lot less clothing,” she managed in a low voice. “And a lot less talking.”
“Thinking of making me your sex slave, huh?” he teased, bumping their noses together.
“Mmm,” she moaned as his lips traveled across her throat. “More like the other way around.”
An electric pulse coursed down to Oliver’s lower regions at the image of Chloe naked as he had his way with her. Over. And over. And over again. Any way he wanted.
“Now that’s a difficult offer to turn down,” he said as smoothly as he could, trying to ignore the desire to just rip the clothes from her body and take her hard and fast.
Instead he released her wrists and slowly skimmed his hands down the length of her arms and along her sides, passing dangerously close to her breasts, which had her back arching off the bed needfully, and down to the hem of her tank top, where a thin stretch of skin now lay exposed, hinting promisingly of what else awaited him beneath the garment. He pulled it up and over her body gently, lifting her off the bed with one hand, using the other to remove it.
Chloe’s arms were around his neck and she pressed her bared breasts against his naked chest, silently asking him to touch her, to give her everything she so desperately needed.
But Oliver had other plans, instead moving to the hem of her shorts, shifting to the side so he could slide them down her body. Then, as a man mesmerized, he drew a large, calloused hand slowly, lightly over her ankle, up her calf, beneath her knee and down her thigh.
Chloe whimpered as his hand edged closer to her panties and stilled, bucking her hips involuntarily.
He smiled softly at the sound, and barely allowed his hand to flit of her damp panties, causing another wild buck of her hips. His fingers slid under the garment but instead of going where Chloe hoped, they moved upward along the elastic until he reached the side, where he hooked his fingers and dragged those down as well. He made a show of smelling them, smelling the wetness they were saturated with in front of her, his eyes closing as he took in her arousing scent.
Chloe watched him with growing lust, half crazy she wanted him to touch her so badly, but still fascinated by his actions.
He opened his eyes to meet hers. “I missed that smell,” he told her and she actually shivered at the huskiness in his voice. He spread her thighs apart again and resituated himself between them. He pressed a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to the crook of her knee and felt the entire leg twitch beneath his lips. He moved dangerously closer to her core and whispered against it, his hot breath almost enough to make her orgasm right there. “I missed the way you taste, too.”
And he drew his tongue long and lingeringly across her pussy.
Chloe moaned loudly in ecstasy.
“Oh God!”
“I’m sorry,” he paused. “Who?” He kissed her clit torturously, sucking it as he pulled his head back again.
“Oliver!” she cried.
He smirked. “That’s what I thought.” And his head came down again, tongue torturing her magnificently. He sucked and kissed and licked and thrust his tongue in and out of her over and over again as his strong hands gripped her thighs wide open, battling her instincts to clamp them shut.
Chloe writhed, a mixture of groans and cries bubbling forth from her lips as he brought her higher and higher.
“Oh! Oh! Aaaaah!” she cried. “Ollie!” the sound of his name had his cock turning rock-hard, painful with desire to be inside her.
Her hands slid up her stomach to her neglected breasts, and she began to tease her hardened nipples. But Oliver was having none of it. His head pulled away and she moaned loudly at the loss.
“Let go,” he instructed. Her hands had already removed themselves to grip the sides of her head in frustration. But he didn’t want her touching herself at all. He had to be the one to satisfy every need she had. “Let go,” he repeated, and her hands drew shakily away before fisting in the sheets on either side of her body.
He nodded. “Next time,” he teased lightly, moving up her body and keeping eye contact with her, “just tell me you need something.”
His mouth latched onto her left breast and he carefully teased it, gentle but firm as he suckled it, his other hand attending to the right one, the callouses on his fingers driving her wild.
“Ollie!” she half-whined, bucking her hips. “Ollie, please!” she begged him.
He removed his mouth, but didn’t respond before trailing a long, teasing lick across her bud. “Yes?”
“Ollie, please. I need...” she trailed into a groan as he pinched her breast.
He hadn’t meant to torture her too much; he planned to give her everything she wanted for as long as she wanted, but he hadn’t been able to resist toying with her slightly, just slightly, enough to get her worked up so she would come that much harder for him. “Need what?” he asked, his hand sliding down to her pussy where he flicked her clit. “This?” His finger moved further south and he buried it inside her. “Or this?”
Chloe threw her head back. “Please!”
“Please what?”
“I need to come!” she practically screamed. “I need you to help me come!”
Before she had time to register his movements, Oliver’s pants had been discarded and he was positioned at her entrance. He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “I love you,” then placed a tender, worshipping kiss over her lips before slowly, tenderly sliding into her.
She whimpered into his mouth, the feeling of him so huge inside of her unfamiliar after all this time. His hands stroked her sides lovingly while he waited for her to adjust. She was so tight. He could barely stand it. It was a miracle he hadn’t come all over her before this, and now he was almost certain he was going to lose it.
Somehow his hand found hers and he laced their fingers together, planting them at the side of her face. He kissed her more deeply, coaxing her mouth open to his so he could slide his tongue in and out suggestively.
Chloe whimpered again and squeezed his hand while bucking her hips slightly, indicating for him to continue.
With aching slowness, Oliver pulled nearly all the way out of her, before driving back in at the same pace. Chloe’s hips bucked again, encouraging him to pick up the pace, but he didn’t. He wanted this to last for ever, the feel of her hot, soaked walls closing around him with each stroke, and it was not going to last forever if he went hard and fast.
His hands moved under her back, lifting her body slightly to angle her better, his lips never leaving hers.
With each stroke he ground his body against her clit, eliciting a deep, unrestrained moan from her every time...a moan that got swallowed by his mouth.
Slowly, the pace began to pick up as her insistent hips demanded of him. Her lips tore from his.
“Please,” she reminded him. “I need it.”
Oliver nodded, suddenly grabbing her ass in his large hands and slamming into her more forcefully.
She screamed with pleasure.
He did it again.
The speed began to pick up as he thrust into her harder and harder, not sure he could hold on much longer when she suddenly let out the cry he had been waiting for, her walls clamping desperately around his cock as she shuddered with orgasm, coming around him.
It was the last trigger for him, initiating his own release as he spilled inside of her.
He nearly collapsed on top of her after pulling out, but keeping her newly mended body in mind, he managed to hold himself up. He kissed her mouth gently, softly and realized he tasted salt on them. He pulled back to see silent tears rolling down her face, her eyes closed.
He stroked the side of her face, brushing away the hair now clinging to her face.
“Hey,” he whispered soothingly. “Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. He kissed the two tears on either side of her face to banish them. “I’m here,” he told her, “Open your eyes.” She didn’t until she felt his thumb brush another tear from his cheek.
His heart ached at the agony behind those glassy green eyes. “I’m sorry,” she laughed breathily, admonishing herself. “I just...” her voice caught. “I missed you,” she managed lamely, not doing justice to how she felt at all.
Oliver cupped her face in his hand and kissed her softly. “Chloe,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against hers, his own eyes closing now, “you can’t imagine. You can’t possibly imagine,” was all he could say. He pulled her into his arms and rolled them over so that she burrowed into his chest while he stroked her hair lovingly. “But I’m here,” he promised her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nodded her head silently and his free hand grappled to find the sheet and pull it around them.
“So,” he told her, forcing lightheartedness into his voice. “How long do I get to keep you as my love slave again? Cuz I was thinking forever would be good.”
The corner of her lips twitched, pleased. “I could do forever. But only for you.”
Congratulations, you all run my life. ;) I won't be posting this on FFN like the first part, due to the adult content.
Author: BlueSuede
Title: Saving Grace Part II
Rating: M/NC17
Genre: Tragedy/Hurt&Comfort/Romance
Pairings: Chloe/Oliver
Summary: how Chloe survives her captivity
Warnings: violence and sexual content
banner by the lovely miss_morrygan
Six months.
Three weeks.
Two days.
And counting.
But this was it. He was ending it now. He’d finally found her. He was getting his life back. He zipped up his tunic and donned his shades, a dark expression in his eyes, when a strong hand gripped his bicep.
“Where are you going half-cocked?” asked a familiar--currently infuriating--voice.
He attempted to wrench his arm free from Clark’s, but there was no point. Clark was there to keep him there. So instead, Oliver rounded on him.
“I’m busting her out. What the hell are you doing?”
Clark looked into Oliver’s face. The last half a year had been awful. To both of them. He knew that his own pain was nothing to Oliver’s, especially looking into that broken face, but he too had suffered. She was his best friend--one that he had been nowhere near good enough to recently, and he had near killed himself trying to find Chloe, too.
“Oliver,” he said, trying to rationalize with his half-mad friend. “Give us one hour. That’s all. One hour to round up the troups and go in there with a reasonable plan. The last thing we need is to lose you, too.”
Oliver already had the argument on his lips, but the next words Clark spoke caused him to choke on them.
“What would she tell you to do?”
Clark didn’t dare speak her name. None of them had dared to since the day she’d traded herself for Oliver.
Oliver turned his head away at Clark’s statement, and Clark took that as his submission. “One hour,” Oliver conceded, his voice harsh with grief. “One hour and I leave you all in the dust whether you’re ready or not.”
Clark nodded, knowing that was the best he could ask, all he could ask of the man in front of him. He vanished instantly, presumably to find first Hawkman and then the others, Oliver acknowledged in the recesses of his conscious thoughts.
He crossed the room to his workout equipment and threw a kick at the punching bag. And another. And another.
God, Chloe, why’d you have to go and be a hero? he thought desperately. He would gladly have suffered for the rest of his life knowing that he was preserving hers.
But then, she would say the same thing, and so here they were.
__________________________________________
She was lying on her face when he found her. He hadn’t been able to wait for the others any longer.
If he needed backup, they would be there shortly. It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was the man in front of him, landing a ruthless kick to Chloe’s side and her failure to respond.
Was she unconscious? Dead? The horrifying thought coursed through his brain as the man sailed another kick into her.
Oliver.
Saw.
Red.
He raised his bow, and spoke quietly, the sound chilling through his voice modulator as it echoed in the room. “Don’t move.”
Chloe registered the sound of his voice, and without giving any sign of life to either of them, promptly blacked out.
The man stilled, clearly not having recognized that he had company--which was exactly the way Oliver had intended it. He was damn pleased with the fact that even with the current stakes, he’d still managed to infiltrate the facility entirely undetected.
The man slowly burned his eyes up to Oliver and the smirk on his face was prominent. “Well look who it is, my old friend. How nice to see you.”
Oliver recognized the voice of the same man who had tortured him. He looked despicably at ease. “I told you I’d hunt you down,” Oliver remided him venomously. His fingers were itching to pull the trigger as he debated his target options. Heart, lungs, eyes, brain...so many choices.
“So you did.” The man circled slowly around Chloe’s body, looking down at her lifeless form. “You know I have to admit,” he said tauntingly, “I thought you were a pain in the ass, but you were nothing to her. Not that it took long to break her of course. She’s been a veritable fountain of information since the first week.” He glanced up at Oliver with a malevolent glint in his eyes. “Not the most trustworthy person to put in charge of all your little secrets, was she?”
Oliver didn’t react to what he knew was lies, but watched the man with murderous eyes.
Give me a reason, damn it. One reason.
And he did.
Thinking to punctuate his little speech, the sick bastard started to throw a kick toward the unconscious Chloe’s side.
He barely had time to register the pain of an arrow gliding straight through his knee before one buried itself in his chest. He fell forward on top of Chloe, shoving the arrow deeper into his body and splintering it.
The last thing he ever felt was his body being launched off of her and hitting a wall.
The last thing he ever heard was the demonic sound of that distorted voice.
“You will never touch her again.”
____________________________________________
Clark and the others had shown up within seconds after Oliver had killed her assailant, not bothering to admonish him or question the dead man in the room. None of them cared, and all of them understood. Instead they had set to work taking down and tearing apart the entire facility, finally getting the answers they’d been searching for for months. Oliver didn’t stick around.
He had lifted Chloe’s broken body into his arms like a bird with a broken wing and gotten her the hell out of there, not trusting her to anyone else’s care. It didn’t matter that Clark or Bart would have gotten her to Emil faster.
He wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
And now he stared at her on the medical table Emil had set up in the middle of Watchtower. He had watched as the doctor assessed every inch of her body, every bruise, scratch, and broken bone.
Now she lay there, cleaned, bandaged, and hooked up to an IV while Oliver stared unblinkingly at her.
His eyes traveled over her emaciated body, the bruises on her now bandaged ribcage, her swollen lip and eyes covered with ice packs. Her arm was in a sling, and her shoulder had swelled to the size of a small grapefruit. They had washed every bit of dried blood off of her that they could, even going at her hair with shampoo and a bowl of hot water.
As he looked her over for the millionth time he suddenly regretting killing her captor.
Death was too good for him.
He didn’t sleep, didn’t move from her side, but sat there and waited. The sound of the blips representing her heartbeats comforting in the otherwise silent room.
It was hours before she woke, the bags of ice sliding from her face as she shifted her head.
“Stay still,” he croaked and her entire body lurched in response to the sound of his voice.
Tears started rolling down her cheeks in a heavy stream and she began breathing heavily; the only coherent words Oliver could catch were “not a dream.”
Her sobs grew louder and he pulled her to him, helping her sit up so he could cradle her, still careful of the IV and her cracked ribs. He ran his hands over her back and through her hair, soothing her quaking body and hushing her gently. Chloe buried her face in his chest and her tears began to soak through the black under-armor he wore under his suit.
“Oh god,” she sobbed, her voice hoarse and barely recognizable, “oh God.” Fragile hands fisted themselves in his too tight shirt in spite of the difficulty.
“Shhh,” he said gently. “I”m here. I’m here. It’s okay.” He rained kisses down on the top of her head, clutching it to his heart. “You should lay back down,” he added without conviction.
She didn’t listen, and he was secretly glad.
They remained like that for what must have been an hour before her body finally stilled, calm again. Slowly he tilted her head up to his and gently kissed her bruised lips. Thanks to the ice, the swelling had gone down, but they were still dark with discoloration and slightly mangled.
Oliver could barely stand to look at her and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her at the same time.
Chloe was convinced that nothing had ever looked as good as Oliver Queen in that moment, and nothing had ever tasted as good as his lips.
“I love you,” she whispered shakily.
“I love you, too.”
________________________________________
Chloe’s recovery was long and drawn out, with Oliver finally insisting to Emil that she be moved to Oliver’s apartment.
Lois had nearly broken to pieces all over the floor when Clark brought her from Africa to see her cousin. She hadn’t let anyone break her vice-like grip on Chloe for at least three hours.
Not that Oliver tried. They hadn’t been able to pull him off of her for forty-eight. He wasn’t about to interfere with Lois.
Clark, too, had quietly held her and pressed brotherly kisses to her temple, muttering affectionately about how stupid she was.
But more than anyone Chloe just wanted Oliver, and it was a relief to be removed to the Clocktower where things were quieter.
Now, with two months having passed, Chloe was mostly doing better. Her cracked ribs were healing properly for the first time, the swelling was entirely gone, and most of the bruises had faded to a sickly green or else vanished entirely.
Back on solid food she had managed to regain some weight, and she looked relatively healthy again.
Fed up with her tangled, matted hair, she’d persuaded Oliver to let her go out to get it cut a couple of days ago.
Now, she was lying awake in his bed, woken only by the sun shining in through the window.
Through slitted eyes she stared around at the flowers overflowing in his room.
Clark had sent a bouquet, as had Hawkman, “on behalf of the JSA.” She grinned at the older man’s excuse. There was a bunch of sunflowers in the corner from Victor, Dinah, and AC. Now at least a month old, they were starting to look rather ragged, but Chloe refused to have any of them thrown out.
Every day a new large bouquet of tulips appeared, presumably left by Bart, and they were taking up the majority of the floor of Oliver’s room.
Oliver hadn’t gotten her flowers. He simply had refused to let go of her for so much as a minute since her return.
Perhaps that was an exaggeration, Chloe admitted to herself, but either way she wasn’t complaining. After six months with only memories of him, she wanted to feast her eyes on him every second of the day.
She did so now, turning in his arms to study his face. She smiled softly as her movement automatically caused his arms to tighten around her, even when he was asleep. She would have tried to get up to close the curtains in his room, but she didn’t want to wake him.
She traced her eyes over the hard planes of his chest up his thick, muscular neck and to the dimple in his chin. There she paused, mouth curving upward as she brought her hand up and lightly brushed her hand along his jaw, from the dimple up to his ear. The back of her fingers grazed back down over his cheek and then she ran her thumb over his bottom lip with a feather-light touch.
The corner of his mouth twitched, signaling that she had woken him and he pressed a kiss to her thumb. Chloe quickly replaced her fingers with her lips, moving hers over his persuasively, tongue darting into his mouth.
And yet he pulled back. His self-control never failed to amaze her. “How are you feeling?”
She gave a quiet laugh. The same question every morning.
“Hot and bothered,” she answered bluntly, sliding her leg up and over his.
Oliver chuckled, too.
He’d been holding back for her, making sure she had time to heal, and it was maddening. He’d never had a case of blue balls like this in his life.
Chloe was more fed up than he was. Her foot glazed over the back of his calf seductively, and Oliver had to give her a careful warning.
“Emil said--”
“Not until I’m fully recovered,” she supplied. “He said at least a month and a half for my ribs. It’s been two. We’re golden.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he reminded her quietly, even as his hands slid down to the small of her back. “The last thing I need is to have your recovery process backtracked,” he grinned at her, pressing his nose to hers.
“Ollie, I’m fine.” She pushed him over onto his back as though to demonstrate her point, the sheets and blanket sliding off her back as she did. She straddled his hips wantonly and then twisted slowly to her right and then left. “See. They should put me in the circus, I’m so bendy.” She carefully kept any trace of pain from her face. She was healed, yes. She wasn’t lying, but she was still tender.
He chuckled, sitting up to kiss her while she stayed in his lap, his hands gripping her waist possessively and wrenching her closer. “They should put you in a circus, all right,” he teased against her lips. “Craziest woman alive. Step right up.”
She bit his lip in playful punishment. She had high hopes from the bulge pressing against her heat that she was going to get her way.
He still made one last attempt to distract her, though. “Aren’t you hungry? Coffee?” he offered, smirking slightly into her kiss as he threw her weakness on the playing field.
Chloe just groaned into his mouth and deliberately rolled her hips down on his. “Cheater,” she accused.
He shrugged arrogantly. “A guy’s gotta try.”
“No,” she corrected, slowly removing his shirt and working her lips up his chest as soon as it was bare to her. “A guy’s gotta make love to his girlfriend. That’s what a guy’s gotta do.”
He smirked and in a movement she missed, he was suddenly hovering over her as she laid beneath him on the bed, his body pressed between her open thighs. “Is that so?” he asked.
Her hands traced the planes of his chest, memorizing each muscle for the millionth time since her return and she nodded, eyes on his. “You know,” she told him quite seriously, her right hand slipping around his neck and toying with the short hairs at its nape. “I had hoped when I got back that you’d...lock me away in here,” she raised an eyebrow, “but I had things in mind that were very different from chicken soup.”
He almost didn’t notice that her other hand was slipping down to the waistband of his pajama pants as she distracted him. “Oh?” he questioned, his stomach tightening.
Again she nodded.
His hands took hers, stopping their progress so he could pin them above her head. “And what did you have in mind?” he ground his hips down on her core and she shuddered.
“A lot less clothing,” she managed in a low voice. “And a lot less talking.”
“Thinking of making me your sex slave, huh?” he teased, bumping their noses together.
“Mmm,” she moaned as his lips traveled across her throat. “More like the other way around.”
An electric pulse coursed down to Oliver’s lower regions at the image of Chloe naked as he had his way with her. Over. And over. And over again. Any way he wanted.
“Now that’s a difficult offer to turn down,” he said as smoothly as he could, trying to ignore the desire to just rip the clothes from her body and take her hard and fast.
Instead he released her wrists and slowly skimmed his hands down the length of her arms and along her sides, passing dangerously close to her breasts, which had her back arching off the bed needfully, and down to the hem of her tank top, where a thin stretch of skin now lay exposed, hinting promisingly of what else awaited him beneath the garment. He pulled it up and over her body gently, lifting her off the bed with one hand, using the other to remove it.
Chloe’s arms were around his neck and she pressed her bared breasts against his naked chest, silently asking him to touch her, to give her everything she so desperately needed.
But Oliver had other plans, instead moving to the hem of her shorts, shifting to the side so he could slide them down her body. Then, as a man mesmerized, he drew a large, calloused hand slowly, lightly over her ankle, up her calf, beneath her knee and down her thigh.
Chloe whimpered as his hand edged closer to her panties and stilled, bucking her hips involuntarily.
He smiled softly at the sound, and barely allowed his hand to flit of her damp panties, causing another wild buck of her hips. His fingers slid under the garment but instead of going where Chloe hoped, they moved upward along the elastic until he reached the side, where he hooked his fingers and dragged those down as well. He made a show of smelling them, smelling the wetness they were saturated with in front of her, his eyes closing as he took in her arousing scent.
Chloe watched him with growing lust, half crazy she wanted him to touch her so badly, but still fascinated by his actions.
He opened his eyes to meet hers. “I missed that smell,” he told her and she actually shivered at the huskiness in his voice. He spread her thighs apart again and resituated himself between them. He pressed a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to the crook of her knee and felt the entire leg twitch beneath his lips. He moved dangerously closer to her core and whispered against it, his hot breath almost enough to make her orgasm right there. “I missed the way you taste, too.”
And he drew his tongue long and lingeringly across her pussy.
Chloe moaned loudly in ecstasy.
“Oh God!”
“I’m sorry,” he paused. “Who?” He kissed her clit torturously, sucking it as he pulled his head back again.
“Oliver!” she cried.
He smirked. “That’s what I thought.” And his head came down again, tongue torturing her magnificently. He sucked and kissed and licked and thrust his tongue in and out of her over and over again as his strong hands gripped her thighs wide open, battling her instincts to clamp them shut.
Chloe writhed, a mixture of groans and cries bubbling forth from her lips as he brought her higher and higher.
“Oh! Oh! Aaaaah!” she cried. “Ollie!” the sound of his name had his cock turning rock-hard, painful with desire to be inside her.
Her hands slid up her stomach to her neglected breasts, and she began to tease her hardened nipples. But Oliver was having none of it. His head pulled away and she moaned loudly at the loss.
“Let go,” he instructed. Her hands had already removed themselves to grip the sides of her head in frustration. But he didn’t want her touching herself at all. He had to be the one to satisfy every need she had. “Let go,” he repeated, and her hands drew shakily away before fisting in the sheets on either side of her body.
He nodded. “Next time,” he teased lightly, moving up her body and keeping eye contact with her, “just tell me you need something.”
His mouth latched onto her left breast and he carefully teased it, gentle but firm as he suckled it, his other hand attending to the right one, the callouses on his fingers driving her wild.
“Ollie!” she half-whined, bucking her hips. “Ollie, please!” she begged him.
He removed his mouth, but didn’t respond before trailing a long, teasing lick across her bud. “Yes?”
“Ollie, please. I need...” she trailed into a groan as he pinched her breast.
He hadn’t meant to torture her too much; he planned to give her everything she wanted for as long as she wanted, but he hadn’t been able to resist toying with her slightly, just slightly, enough to get her worked up so she would come that much harder for him. “Need what?” he asked, his hand sliding down to her pussy where he flicked her clit. “This?” His finger moved further south and he buried it inside her. “Or this?”
Chloe threw her head back. “Please!”
“Please what?”
“I need to come!” she practically screamed. “I need you to help me come!”
Before she had time to register his movements, Oliver’s pants had been discarded and he was positioned at her entrance. He leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “I love you,” then placed a tender, worshipping kiss over her lips before slowly, tenderly sliding into her.
She whimpered into his mouth, the feeling of him so huge inside of her unfamiliar after all this time. His hands stroked her sides lovingly while he waited for her to adjust. She was so tight. He could barely stand it. It was a miracle he hadn’t come all over her before this, and now he was almost certain he was going to lose it.
Somehow his hand found hers and he laced their fingers together, planting them at the side of her face. He kissed her more deeply, coaxing her mouth open to his so he could slide his tongue in and out suggestively.
Chloe whimpered again and squeezed his hand while bucking her hips slightly, indicating for him to continue.
With aching slowness, Oliver pulled nearly all the way out of her, before driving back in at the same pace. Chloe’s hips bucked again, encouraging him to pick up the pace, but he didn’t. He wanted this to last for ever, the feel of her hot, soaked walls closing around him with each stroke, and it was not going to last forever if he went hard and fast.
His hands moved under her back, lifting her body slightly to angle her better, his lips never leaving hers.
With each stroke he ground his body against her clit, eliciting a deep, unrestrained moan from her every time...a moan that got swallowed by his mouth.
Slowly, the pace began to pick up as her insistent hips demanded of him. Her lips tore from his.
“Please,” she reminded him. “I need it.”
Oliver nodded, suddenly grabbing her ass in his large hands and slamming into her more forcefully.
She screamed with pleasure.
He did it again.
The speed began to pick up as he thrust into her harder and harder, not sure he could hold on much longer when she suddenly let out the cry he had been waiting for, her walls clamping desperately around his cock as she shuddered with orgasm, coming around him.
It was the last trigger for him, initiating his own release as he spilled inside of her.
He nearly collapsed on top of her after pulling out, but keeping her newly mended body in mind, he managed to hold himself up. He kissed her mouth gently, softly and realized he tasted salt on them. He pulled back to see silent tears rolling down her face, her eyes closed.
He stroked the side of her face, brushing away the hair now clinging to her face.
“Hey,” he whispered soothingly. “Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. He kissed the two tears on either side of her face to banish them. “I’m here,” he told her, “Open your eyes.” She didn’t until she felt his thumb brush another tear from his cheek.
His heart ached at the agony behind those glassy green eyes. “I’m sorry,” she laughed breathily, admonishing herself. “I just...” her voice caught. “I missed you,” she managed lamely, not doing justice to how she felt at all.
Oliver cupped her face in his hand and kissed her softly. “Chloe,” he whispered, pressing his forehead against hers, his own eyes closing now, “you can’t imagine. You can’t possibly imagine,” was all he could say. He pulled her into his arms and rolled them over so that she burrowed into his chest while he stroked her hair lovingly. “But I’m here,” he promised her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She nodded her head silently and his free hand grappled to find the sheet and pull it around them.
“So,” he told her, forcing lightheartedness into his voice. “How long do I get to keep you as my love slave again? Cuz I was thinking forever would be good.”
The corner of her lips twitched, pleased. “I could do forever. But only for you.”