The Charity Auction
Title: The Charity Auction
Author: Alsike
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds x-over
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Rating: R
AN/Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 5288
Prompt: JJ 'buys' Emily in an auction (And, of course, by JJ, we mean Emma).
Apologies: A fic that I scribbled during the CM Kink Meme #2, clearly without any pretense at anonymity, which, of course, was supposed to be a short PWP and ended up being "10 pages of Plot and humorous dialogue Without any semblance of Porn." :( Still, Corset!Sex makes up for it, right? (I did write one more, but that will stay anonymous, thank you.) No mutants. Tony Stark is Emma's BFF (this has become a theme in my work. Check back Tuesday for more) and this one lives in the little world in my head where at some point, to the eternal horror of their daughters, Ambassador Prentiss and Mr. Frost had sex, ranging, in various worlds, from a Hellfire Club hook-up to a full blown affair. This is canon in my head. This worries me.
Morgan came prancing into the office after lunch. “Guess who has a date for this Friday,” he crowed, clearly thrilled with his prowess.
JJ cocked her head. “Did you just pick up someone in the coffee shop?” she asked wryly.
“Maybe I did. Just worked some of my awesome high-speed mojo.” He wandered past Reid’s desk and ruffled his hair. “You gotta learn from the master, boy.”
Reid frowned and put his hand on his head, smoothing the muss. “It’s not that hard. You don’t have to act like you solved one of Dantzig’s equations.”
JJ glanced at him. “It’s not that hard? What aren’t you telling us?”
Reid turned bright red. “It’s not, I mean, she’s a sociologist. We have interests that we want to talk about-“
“Reid,” Emily said, laughing. “That’s usually a good thing to have on a date, not something you need to be embarrassed about.”
“That’s excellent!” Morgan exclaimed, offering Reid a high-five, which he took hesitantly. “So I’m covered, you’re covered.” He pointed at JJ. “You?”
“Will’s off, and my mom’s babysitting. We’re staying in.”
Derek nodded, satisfied. “Garcia? You and Kevin going out?”
“White Wolf campaign,” came the response over the intercom.
Morgan turned slowly around the room until he was pointing at Emily. “And you?”
Emily shook her head, ducking away from his gaze. “Not me.”
“This is very disappointing, Prentiss. You’re not even going to party?”
“I’m not that desperate.”
“I don’t know about that. When was the last time you went on a date?”
Emily turned toward the coffee machine, a little tenser than she ought to be. “Why are we even talking about this? Don’t we have work to do?”
“And look how she evades the question!” Morgan spread his hands. “This is what I call a serious case of the stay-ins.”
“Morgan!” Emily turned too quickly and knocked the coffeepot off its stand, splashing it onto herself and scalding her arm. “Fuck!” She quickly soaked it up with a napkin but winced. “Don’t you know when to shut up?” she snapped, and threw the napkin at him before storming off to the bathroom.
Morgan caught the napkin and looked helpless. “What’d I say?”
“Way to go, hotshot,” Reid commented dryly.
* * *
Morgan was approaching with apology-coffee when he noticed that Emily was on her phone.
“No, mom! No! No no no!” Emily was hissing, under her breath. “I am not going to be auctioned off like a piece of meat!”
Intrigued, Morgan sidled nearer. He watched her take a deep breath, blowing it out in exasperation, and rub her forehead.
“Are you serious?” She sighed again. “It’s humiliating, that’s why. Going out with someone who paid for me, or not getting bid for at all? You tell me which one is worse.”
She made a frustrated noise at the response. “Fine, whatever. You’ll just harass me until I say yes.” She hung up and glanced up, seeing Morgan, and groaning in depressed resignation. But she took the coffee.
“A Charity Auction?” he asked, unable to keep the grin off of his face.
“Fuck off,” Emily mumbled through a screen of foam.
“Come on. Think positive. Maybe you’ll get laid.”
“Not if I get bought by a guy, I won’t.”
Morgan only processed this as he was taking a big gulp of his own coffee and in his surprise succeeded in spitting it all down his shirt. “Shit! Emily!”
But she was just laughing at him. He supposed that she was in a better mood at least, even if he needed a new shirt.
* * *
“Pick someone, Emma,” said Tony with a grin. “It’s bad form to go to a charity auction and not bid.”
“Because I’d really just die for a date with someone’s disaffected son, or a divorcee who’s desperate to reclaim her youth.”
“No one catches your eye?”
Emma snapped the booklet closed and took another sip of champagne. “I can’t say they do.”
“Just promise you’ll look. Maybe a bid or two?” Tony tried to wheedle.
Emma shook her head. “If I’m bidding, Tony, I’m bidding to win.”
Tony laughed.
He watched her through the first round. Her various expressions of boredom were more entertaining than the spotty college dropouts and heavily made-up older women. She yawned, signaled to the waiter for another bottle, paged through the booklet again. Tony leaned over to her. “If you want it, I have a pen. You can put mustaches on all the photos.”
Emma glared at him. “Shut up, I’m having terrible flashbacks to Oklahoma. I’m just waiting for someone to try to flog their saddle.”
Tony hid his smirk. There was a well-endowed matronly lady on stage who looked like she needed some excitement in her life, and Tony indulged in a lackadaisical bidding war with an unidentified opponent at one of the tables in the front. He lost with grace.
He inquired from the waiter whether they had any chilled agave nectar with pineapple. They didn’t. Emma made an odd noise, and he glanced back over at her, and then followed her gaze to the woman who had just come out on stage. She was pretty enough if you liked pale and bony, but everyone was a little narcissistic. At least she had a good rack, set off by red velvet.
“See something you like?”
Emma frowned, glancing over at him. “She just looks familiar.”
“What’s her name?”
Emma shrugged and threw the booklet at him. She continued watching the action, her expression oddly stiff. “Why is no one bidding for her?” she suddenly asked.
Tony blinked. There was a small bidding war going on at one of the front tables. It seemed rather heated.
“It’s not going to go above four-thousand. That’s atrocious.”
One of the men they were sharing the table with leaned over. “That’s Emily Prentiss,” he said. “The ambassador’s daughter. Everyone but her mother knows she’s gay. The bidders are trying to curry favor with her mother.”
“Small favor,” Emma muttered.
The auctioneer started to call out the final bid. “That’s three-thousand nine-sixty, going, going-“
Emma raised her paddle. “Sixteen thousand,” she said, her voice betraying nothing but utter boredom. Tony covered his face. She wasn’t joking when she said she bid to win.
Everyone stared. The woman onstage was looking over, her eyes wide with utter shock. The auctioneer stuttered, but announced the new bid. No one protested. “Sold!”
Tony shook his head. “Christ, Emma. That was a jump.”
Emma shrugged. “I would have gone up to twenty.”
* * *
This was the awkward part. Emily’s face was already red from the looks she had been given. Her mother had come backstage to yell at her about making her pet politicians very unhappy, as if she had planned this. She felt kind of like bursting out laughing, because this was so absurd, and it was taking everything she had not to just call Morgan in the middle of his date and brag.
She spotted the woman leaning up against the wall in the anteroom. She was easy to recognize. No one else was wearing all white. And this was where she had no idea what to say.
“Um, hi.”
The woman glanced up and looked at her, her eyes narrowing as she examined her up close, and Emily swallowed hard, trying not to panic. But then she smiled. “Hi yourself,” she drawled sarcastically.
She was not making this easier. “Do you…” Emily grimaced. “Do you actually want to… go out?”
The woman leaned towards her, reaching out and lifting her chin up so she could look into her face. “Honey, I spent sixteen thousand on you. I’m expecting you to put out.” Then she laughed.
Emily felt her face heat up and hoped hard that it was just a joke. She knew her weaknesses. Blonde, confident and gorgeous was a historical failing of hers. It would be too easy to be sucked in and believe that she actually wanted her, and then the inevitable rejection would sting like anything. Of course, if she had actually been bought for the sex, then that was something she ought to avoid as well. Prostitution, even for charity, was a line that Emily refused to cross.
“Um, we’ll see.”
And the woman laughed again, as if it were the perfect response. She took out her purse, removing something pearlescently white and flipping it open. “When are you free? I’m in town until Wednesday.”
It was a white blackberry. Emily blinked. “Do you have a Mac?” she asked, almost without thinking about it.
“What?” The woman stared at her. Then she glanced down at the object in her hand, back up, and rolled her eyes. “No,” she said dryly. “My company makes computers. They come in white, and run Linux. And I get them for free.” She glanced back down and poked the screen with the matching white stylus. “Monday is terrible. Tuesday?”
“Sure,” Emily said. They should still be in town, even if a new case came in on Monday. She gave her phone number.
“Good,” the woman clicked the blackberry off and dropped it back in her purse. She nodded and then just walked away. Emily stared after, watching as she met up with a shorter man in an amusing goatee and spoke to him. He offered his arm, and she took it as if she were amused by the gesture. She scanned them carefully, trying to put together the tells, trying to work out something, even if it wasn’t exactly a profile.
It was only when the door had shut behind them that she realized she had forgotten to ask the woman’s name. It was probably on the credit card though, so she went to ask the organizer.
* * *
“And, soooo?” Morgan rolled his chair over to Emily’s desk. “Were we purchased?”
Emily frowned at him. “Is that a royal we, or are you coming along?”
“You have a date!” He grinned. “So, girl or boy?”
Emily tried to look irritated, but she couldn’t help the grin of pride. “A woman, in fact, decided to purchase my company, for the good of the children.”
“Someone’s getting laid!” Morgan pressed his hand to his chest. “I can’t but help feel responsible for this.”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
“I know. That doesn’t make a difference. How much did you fetch?”
“Sixteen thousand,” Emily said, with practiced nonchalance.
Morgan froze. He looked at her, and blinked a few times. “What?”
“Sixteen thousand.”
He gaped. His eyes bugged. “Oh my god!”
Reid glanced up. “What is it?”
Even JJ peeked out of her office. “Morgan?”
“You pulled Sixteen Gs? That is…” He shook his head. “I took top prize at the FBI auction for five hundred.”
“Better class of buyers,” Emily said, not bothering to try not to grin.
“So what’s her name?” Morgan skidded around to Emily’s side of the desk, muscling her away from her computer. “We need to do some Google-stalking.”
“And a background check,” added Garcia though the intercom. Morgan perked up. “Can you do health records too, babe? We need to know if our darling Emily can go all the way.”
“I’m on it!”
“Oh no.” Emily hid her face.
“Oooh,” said Morgan, pleased with what he found on her computer screen. “It looks like someone’s already been doing some Google-fu. That’s her name? Emma Frost?”
“Yeah.”
Morgan clicked on the CNN website tab and swallowed hard at the included photo. “Babygirl!” he announced to the intercom. “You had better have good news, because if Emily doesn’t hit this chick, I am.”
“Interesting,” Reid leaned forward, looking over Morgan’s shoulder. “I read that article. She seems to be a very impressive woman, although with the rather cutthroat methods for success and the color-coordination, I’m going to say that there are probably some issues with control.”
“Like, in bed issues?” Morgan grinned. “Classy, controlling, confident, not married, no kids. She’s not into long-term relationships, probably doesn’t want to involve them in the power plays that are her real life.”
“Looks like she’s clean. No records of drug abuse, although one comment about self-medicating with alcohol and refusing therapy.”
“Okay,” Reid grinned. “Doesn’t trust shrinks, doesn’t like to let people in. Some use of alcohol. Has she ever been prescribed sleeping pills?”
“No,” came the immediate answer.
“So no real psychiatric issues. Probably just stress from the high powered lifestyle.”
“I don’t know,” JJ interjected. “She could be a functional alcoholic.”
Emily stared at the group of people surrounding her desk. “Are we really profiling my date?”
Morgan gave her a sidelong glance and grin. “Don’t tell me you didn’t start putting one together on your own.”
Emily groaned. “Fine! I did. But I didn’t start speculating on whether she was an alcoholic or not!”
“Non-smoker,” Garcia commented through the speakers. “That’s a good sign.”
* * *
“Looking forward to your date, Emma dear?” Tony’s smirk was audible over the phone.
“No,” Emma said flatly. “And could you stop giving my father my secretary’s phone number. I’m still not interested in what he’s selling, and, in fact, if you could tell him to die soon, I would appreciate it very much.”
“No? You spent sixteen thousand on that girl!”
“I was going to donate that much anyway.” Emma scowled and picked up her glass, listening to the ice cubes clink in the bourbon. She ignored his snort of irritated disbelief and downed the shot. Then she scowled at nothing. “I’ve slept with her before.”
“What?”
“She didn’t recognize me, not that that’s surprising. It was… god, twelve, thirteen years ago?”
“A teenage crush, Emma? I didn’t think you had any of those.”
“What? A crush?” Emma frowned. “We had sex. I didn’t moon pathetically over her for weeks on end. I think it was generally intended to piss my father off. Everything I did in those days was for that reason.” She picked up the bottle and considered refilling her glass, but she set it down instead. “It was right before I left.”
“A catalyst to encourage you to break with your family and make it on your own?”
“Have you been reading schlocky romance novels again, Tony? Try not to apply them to reality.”
Tony laughed. “So you’re nervous, because she doesn’t remember you? Are you going to confess?”
Emma made a disgusted noise.
“Relax, Ems. Why did you bid for her anyway?”
“Because…” Emma sighed. She flicked out at the empty cut glass snifter and sent it skidding off the table. It landed on the carpet with a thud. “Because I’m not who I used to be,” she snapped. “And I’d like to show that to someone.”
There was a pause, then Tony said dryly, “Has anyone suggested therapy for your daddy issues, Emma?”
“Shut up.” Emma hung up and tried not to punch anything.
* * *
“Mom, are you still freaking out about this? It’s a date. A date she paid for. I’m not marrying in to the clan.”
“You don’t have any idea about what that family is like.”
Emily gaped at the ferocity in her mother’s voice. “We’re having dinner,” she tried.
“She bankrupted her own father, and then she sent the IRS information about his overseas accounts.”
“How enterprising of her,” Emily commented flatly.
“Is it because she’s a woman?” Her mother sounded suspicious. “You don’t feel threatened. Do you think that because she’s a woman she won't try to pressure you into sex?”
Emily gaped at this and didn’t respond.
“I know you’ve never responded well to the men I’ve set you up with. Are you just uncomfortable around men?”
Morgan was making faces at her across the office, trying to get her to tell him what was going on. Reid had one of his comic books hidden in his files again. Hotch wandered through giving her a slight glare for being on the phone while they were supposed to be catching up on paperwork.
“I’m perfectly comfortable with men, at least when they aren’t treating me as a tool, either for sex or for your attention. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to be hit on someone who is more interested in my mother?” Elizabeth made an offended sound in reply. “Emma Frost, at least, doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
* * *
“There’s a restaurant a couple of miles outside of Quantico, it takes maybe a half an hour to get there. Should I pick you up at work?”
“Sure.” Emily tried not to stutter. “I didn’t know what time we’d get done, so I thought I’d get ready here anyways.”
“An hour?”
Emily nodded, and then wished she hadn’t. “Yes.”
She hung up and glanced around, hoping no one had seen that mess. Then she found her bag and disappeared into the bathroom. JJ came in as she was finishing her makeup.
“Wow.” JJ walked around her, eyes wide. “You’re really… dressed up.”
Emily bit her lip, and then needed to retouch the lipstick.
“Do you want it to… go well?” There was an odd expression on JJ’s face. Emily met her eyes in the mirror.
“I don’t want it not to.” She smiled, a little self-deprecating and shook her head. “I haven’t gotten laid in way too long.”
She was out the door, leaving JJ gaping behind her.
JJ marched into Garcia’s office. “Who is this person who’s picking Emily up?”
Reid, sitting behind a hard drive glanced up. “Didn’t you hear the profile we did yesterday?”
“She’s here.”
“I want to see!” exclaimed Morgan. Garcia typed quickly and the images jumped to the feed from the outside surveillance cameras. A blonde woman in sunglasses and a white leather duster was leaning against a champagne-colored Rolls Royce.
Emily came out and she took off her sunglasses, said something, and flicked her eyebrows. Emily ducked her head, but smiled like she was both pleased and embarrassed.
“Oh yeah,” said Morgan. “Some action is going to happen tonight.”
“It's a Tuesday,” JJ said disapprovingly.
There was a plink from Garcia’s computer, and she paged through a few screens. “Oh,” she said. “This is new.”
Morgan glanced over. It was an article from a newspaper published over a decade before, and had been scanned in. A tiny section of it was highlighted, a segment from the gossip page. “Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss, of the US State Department, seen in London accompanied by Winston Frost, CEO of Frost Corp Incorporated. A state contract in the offing for Frost Corp? Or something else?”
“That’s strange,” said Garcia. “Their parents knew each other?”
Morgan frowned. “That’s really strange. Her mother was way not okay with this date either.”
“How do you know that?” asked Reid.
“I eavesdrop on people’s phone conversations, duh.”
* * *
Emily thought it probably would be going rather well, if only she could just stop… being herself. So far they had had a very interesting conversation on whether or not bald people were less likely to be Vitamin D deficient, the new EU food regulations and whether they were good or bad for gourmands, and whether Sherlock Holmes technically counted as the first criminal profiler since he worked without the benefits of modern psychological evaluation. They decided he probably was, although his fictionality complicated that.
Emily sighed. “I haven’t been to London in ages,” she said, when the conversation bent that way.
Emma paused and gave her a searching look. She opened her mouth as if to speak, the closed it, frowned and tried again. “Do you… auction yourself off often?”
Emily glanced up at her in surprised, and felt horribly embarrassed. “No! My mother… I mean…” she sighed and glanced away. “I just couldn’t get out of it this time.”
“Sometimes it’s difficult to defy one’s parents.”
Emily glanced up at her. She had sort of expected to be mocked for this, chided at least. “You bankrupted your father.”
Emma flashed her a grin. “I didn’t say it’s impossible.”
“We’ll, I’ll certainly try harder next time.” Emily laughed. “Now that I have such an impressive role model to live up to.”
Emma gave her another curious look. “I always thought… I mean, I didn’t imagine you were the type of person to bend so easily.”
“My mother wasn’t very happy with a lot of the choices I made. But if it were something I knew was important, I wouldn’t let her stop me. She’s gotten used to those things, finally. She can’t tell me what to do. But she’s learned how to plead and wear me down.”
“I see, very adaptable. My father still hasn’t moved past the yelling and attempts at bribery.”
Emily smiled, and glanced away, wondering why this couldn’t be a real date, and not this desperate farce.
“Why don’t you tell me about some of those dramatic life choices you’ve made,” Emma said lazily, taking a sip of her wine. This was awkward, and Emily couldn’t even bear to answer such a blatant fallback question. But when she finally looked up, she found that Emma was looking at her, intently, and waiting, as if she actually really was interested. Surprised, Emily found herself beginning to speak without even thinking about it.
* * *
Emily wasn’t entirely sure how she had gotten here. Her mouth tasted like wine, and her head was a little foggy, but the room smelled uncomfortably familiar, like hotels and Emma, and she called her away from the minibar. “I don’t want any more to drink.”
“No?” Emma was almost smiling, and Emily just wanted to taste it.
“Look, I’m not…” she swallowed and tried again. “Sex,” she said, starting out strong and then faltering, “is not included in the sixteen thousand.”
Emma grinned and sauntered towards her. “So how much more do I have to pay? Half again? More?”
“I will throw it in gratis,” Emily said, proud of the sentence. Emma laughed, and Emily kissed her while her mouth was open. Emma quickly took over, sliding her tongue between her lips.
“My team decided that you have control issues.”
Emma blinked. “Is that a suggestion?”
Emily laughed. “Not unless you want it to be.”
“I don’t know if that’s necessary, but…” she looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “There is one thing that I’d want to try.”
“What?”
“I want to bind you.”
Even somewhat drunk and sated on good food and kissing, Emily knew she wasn’t quite okay with that. You couldn’t work as a profiler for that long without developing some warning signals. “I don’t…know you.”
“I didn’t mean tie you up,” Emma smirked and gave her a lazy glance. “Maybe when we know each other better. I want… to put you in a corset.”
“Oh,” Emily’s mouth opened. She hadn’t done that in a long time. “Why?”
“The first girl I slept with was wearing one,” Emma said with an odd look on her face. “I had no fucking clue how to get it off, so I just left it on. It turned out that that is entirely allowable, which was nice. You… remind me of her.”
There was something Emily was supposed to be remembering here, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She kissed Emma, lazy and slow, remembering the way the bindings had tightened around her ribs, like someone was holding you, holding on so tightly that you couldn’t be afraid of them letting go. “I want to.”
“Good,” Emma said. She leaned in, brushing feather light kisses along the curve of her neck as she unfastened the back of her dress.
It had been too long since she had done this. It had been years of looking but not touching, not being able to get close enough to touch or to smell. The sweet sweat, shampoo, and the cloying acrid napalm of perfume: women were just different. She shuddered, as Emma pushed her dress down, her hands sliding over the skin of her back, settling warmly on her hips.
The way she kissed was almost familiar, a little too hard, but slow and easy, as if she knew she wasn’t going to be refused, as if it hadn’t even crossed her mind. Emily smiled into it, that arrogance coupled with pure desire, why would she say no to that?
The corset was a canvas one, boned and laced. She hadn’t worn one like that since she had stopped binding in college, when she couldn’t even bear to look at it without remembering how she felt abandoned by those people who were supposed to be her friends. But that was a long time ago now. It tightened around her and she breathed out. Slowly the laces were pulled in and the pressure, the ache of it, was almost more than she could bear. She tipped her head back, feeling Emma’s fingers brush against her skin, and couldn’t hold back the moan.
As if that were a trigger, the laces snapped tight, and Emily felt herself being spun around and then shoved, almost roughly, until her knees hit the bed and she toppled backwards, Emma climbing on top of her, pinning her shoulders, mouths meeting like a fist to the face, and this was going just a little bit not like awkward one-date-sex was supposed to go at all. She wasn’t asking, not with her words, not with her body, and if she hadn’t been so deft with her hands, one sliding down her thigh and hiking up her leg, her fingers curling right over that spot on the inside of her knee that made her hips buck, her mouth light and then rough and then light enough again to turn the bruising into arousal, she might have been scared. But it wasn’t frightening, because it wasn’t sociopathic, it didn’t feel like being taken entirely at the pleasure of someone else. It felt like someone that knew you too well, that didn’t care about making you feel comfortable because she knew what you wanted better than you did, and Emily was just drunk enough to go along with that.
Emma had moved down leaving neon bite marks on her neck, and then she was pressing against Emily’s cleavage. The corset hiked her breasts up into a soft hilly cartography, and Emma had just stopped, nuzzling into them as if she wanted to do nothing but feel them against her face. Emily had always found excessive interest in her breasts to be rather unnerving, and she had other areas of focus that were not being appreciated properly. She hooked her legs around Emma’s ass, clenching tightly to bring her forward, and grinding up into her, catching a handful of hair to jerk her back up to be kissed properly. The sound she made at the rough handling was a catch of breath, and a low echo in her throat. Her back arched, body tensing, and then she was back, mouth claiming her, and her hands sliding down the rough canvas and onto skin, spreading over her thighs, her hips pushing into her in an ungainly irregular rhythm.
She felt like she was seventeen again, so greedy for touch that it was better when it hurt. The corset kept her from breathing deeply, and she was panting already. She had forgotten it was like to be bound during sex, had forgotten how every time her chest expanded, pressing out against the resistance, the force that couldn’t escape threaded out through the rest of her body, settling in a hot knot of arousal inside of her. And when Emma’s fingers burrowed into her, like they had every right to be there, they pressed right into the center of it, and she was so close to coming that this was going to be utterly humiliating.
“Not already,” she mumbled, but couldn’t keep from thrusting against the pressure. She felt Emma grin against her cheek, and speed up. And then it hit, only she arched, the corset a brilliant ache against her chest, not letting her release, and then it just exploded outwards, so much more intense, and so much more uncontrollable than it was without it.
“Oh…” she lay there, limp and overcome, Emma’s body a warm weight on top of her, and it came to her, easily, like opening up. “I missed you…”
“You fucking didn’t,” Emma grumbled, and rolled off of her, sitting up and working the cricks out of her shoulders.
“How would you know?” And Emily wriggled up her, pinning her hands at her sides. “Don’t touch,” she said and leaned down to bite at her breasts.
* * *
Five in the morning and hung-over sucked, but getting to work late and hung-over on a Wednesday morning was just asking for it. Emily levered herself sleepily out of bed and started searching for her clothes. Locating them she tried to work the laces on the corset. She was really out of practice. “Fuck,” she muttered, as she only managed to pull it tighter.
“Just keep it,” was the mumbled from the bed.
“Yeah?”
Emma propped herself up on her elbow. “Wear it to work,” she said, smirking lazily.
Emily snorted. “Because that won’t pass without comment.”
“I didn’t tell you it would.”
Emily slipped the dress on over the corset, smoothing out the wrinkles as best as she could.
“You don’t wear as much eye make up as you used to.”
Emily looked up at her and let herself smile. “You’re not as irritating as you used to be.”
“Yes, I am. You’re just used to me.”
Emily laughed, sticking her underwear into her bag, and starting towards the door. Emma made a short noise of protest and she paused. She glanced back, about to protest that she had to go. But it was clear what she wanted. Emily gave in. She crawled back onto the bed and kissed her. It wasn’t as light as she had intended and she had to draw back just to breathe.
“Mmm,” Emma mumbled, still half asleep. “I should probably apologize.” Emily blinked at her in surprise. “I… really don’t have any idea what your father looked like, so insinuating that your mother was a whore and you were a bastard and probably my half-sister was pretty groundless. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” Emily said, and kissed her again, lightly. “I was pretty angry with them too.” She crawled out of bed, starting for the door, this time intending on making it.
“My parents were still married,” Emma grumbled, and then pulled up the covers, going back to sleep.
Emily stepped outside into the dim light before dawn, dialing for a taxi to take her home. That had been… strange, to say the least. When she got home, it didn’t take her too long to shower and dress. The corset was easier to remove when she was awake. She was awake too early to go into work. After standing in front of the mirror for a while, checking to make sure none of the bite marks on her neck were visible, she stopped, and went and found her old photo albums. It was a glossy picture, one of the few her mother had deigned to take of her while she was still dressing Goth, up on one of the battlements of the Tower of London, the London Bridge in the background, and a scowling skinny girl with dirty-blonde hair standing next to her with crossed arms.
She found a frame for it and set it on the mantelpiece. Then it was time to go to work, and she left it behind.
* * *
FIN
Author: Alsike
Fandom: X-Men/Criminal Minds x-over
Pairing: Emma Frost/Emily Prentiss
Rating: R
AN/Disclaimer: Not my girls.
Word Count: 5288
Prompt: JJ 'buys' Emily in an auction (And, of course, by JJ, we mean Emma).
Apologies: A fic that I scribbled during the CM Kink Meme #2, clearly without any pretense at anonymity, which, of course, was supposed to be a short PWP and ended up being "10 pages of Plot and humorous dialogue Without any semblance of Porn." :( Still, Corset!Sex makes up for it, right? (I did write one more, but that will stay anonymous, thank you.) No mutants. Tony Stark is Emma's BFF (this has become a theme in my work. Check back Tuesday for more) and this one lives in the little world in my head where at some point, to the eternal horror of their daughters, Ambassador Prentiss and Mr. Frost had sex, ranging, in various worlds, from a Hellfire Club hook-up to a full blown affair. This is canon in my head. This worries me.
Morgan came prancing into the office after lunch. “Guess who has a date for this Friday,” he crowed, clearly thrilled with his prowess.
JJ cocked her head. “Did you just pick up someone in the coffee shop?” she asked wryly.
“Maybe I did. Just worked some of my awesome high-speed mojo.” He wandered past Reid’s desk and ruffled his hair. “You gotta learn from the master, boy.”
Reid frowned and put his hand on his head, smoothing the muss. “It’s not that hard. You don’t have to act like you solved one of Dantzig’s equations.”
JJ glanced at him. “It’s not that hard? What aren’t you telling us?”
Reid turned bright red. “It’s not, I mean, she’s a sociologist. We have interests that we want to talk about-“
“Reid,” Emily said, laughing. “That’s usually a good thing to have on a date, not something you need to be embarrassed about.”
“That’s excellent!” Morgan exclaimed, offering Reid a high-five, which he took hesitantly. “So I’m covered, you’re covered.” He pointed at JJ. “You?”
“Will’s off, and my mom’s babysitting. We’re staying in.”
Derek nodded, satisfied. “Garcia? You and Kevin going out?”
“White Wolf campaign,” came the response over the intercom.
Morgan turned slowly around the room until he was pointing at Emily. “And you?”
Emily shook her head, ducking away from his gaze. “Not me.”
“This is very disappointing, Prentiss. You’re not even going to party?”
“I’m not that desperate.”
“I don’t know about that. When was the last time you went on a date?”
Emily turned toward the coffee machine, a little tenser than she ought to be. “Why are we even talking about this? Don’t we have work to do?”
“And look how she evades the question!” Morgan spread his hands. “This is what I call a serious case of the stay-ins.”
“Morgan!” Emily turned too quickly and knocked the coffeepot off its stand, splashing it onto herself and scalding her arm. “Fuck!” She quickly soaked it up with a napkin but winced. “Don’t you know when to shut up?” she snapped, and threw the napkin at him before storming off to the bathroom.
Morgan caught the napkin and looked helpless. “What’d I say?”
“Way to go, hotshot,” Reid commented dryly.
* * *
Morgan was approaching with apology-coffee when he noticed that Emily was on her phone.
“No, mom! No! No no no!” Emily was hissing, under her breath. “I am not going to be auctioned off like a piece of meat!”
Intrigued, Morgan sidled nearer. He watched her take a deep breath, blowing it out in exasperation, and rub her forehead.
“Are you serious?” She sighed again. “It’s humiliating, that’s why. Going out with someone who paid for me, or not getting bid for at all? You tell me which one is worse.”
She made a frustrated noise at the response. “Fine, whatever. You’ll just harass me until I say yes.” She hung up and glanced up, seeing Morgan, and groaning in depressed resignation. But she took the coffee.
“A Charity Auction?” he asked, unable to keep the grin off of his face.
“Fuck off,” Emily mumbled through a screen of foam.
“Come on. Think positive. Maybe you’ll get laid.”
“Not if I get bought by a guy, I won’t.”
Morgan only processed this as he was taking a big gulp of his own coffee and in his surprise succeeded in spitting it all down his shirt. “Shit! Emily!”
But she was just laughing at him. He supposed that she was in a better mood at least, even if he needed a new shirt.
* * *
“Pick someone, Emma,” said Tony with a grin. “It’s bad form to go to a charity auction and not bid.”
“Because I’d really just die for a date with someone’s disaffected son, or a divorcee who’s desperate to reclaim her youth.”
“No one catches your eye?”
Emma snapped the booklet closed and took another sip of champagne. “I can’t say they do.”
“Just promise you’ll look. Maybe a bid or two?” Tony tried to wheedle.
Emma shook her head. “If I’m bidding, Tony, I’m bidding to win.”
Tony laughed.
He watched her through the first round. Her various expressions of boredom were more entertaining than the spotty college dropouts and heavily made-up older women. She yawned, signaled to the waiter for another bottle, paged through the booklet again. Tony leaned over to her. “If you want it, I have a pen. You can put mustaches on all the photos.”
Emma glared at him. “Shut up, I’m having terrible flashbacks to Oklahoma. I’m just waiting for someone to try to flog their saddle.”
Tony hid his smirk. There was a well-endowed matronly lady on stage who looked like she needed some excitement in her life, and Tony indulged in a lackadaisical bidding war with an unidentified opponent at one of the tables in the front. He lost with grace.
He inquired from the waiter whether they had any chilled agave nectar with pineapple. They didn’t. Emma made an odd noise, and he glanced back over at her, and then followed her gaze to the woman who had just come out on stage. She was pretty enough if you liked pale and bony, but everyone was a little narcissistic. At least she had a good rack, set off by red velvet.
“See something you like?”
Emma frowned, glancing over at him. “She just looks familiar.”
“What’s her name?”
Emma shrugged and threw the booklet at him. She continued watching the action, her expression oddly stiff. “Why is no one bidding for her?” she suddenly asked.
Tony blinked. There was a small bidding war going on at one of the front tables. It seemed rather heated.
“It’s not going to go above four-thousand. That’s atrocious.”
One of the men they were sharing the table with leaned over. “That’s Emily Prentiss,” he said. “The ambassador’s daughter. Everyone but her mother knows she’s gay. The bidders are trying to curry favor with her mother.”
“Small favor,” Emma muttered.
The auctioneer started to call out the final bid. “That’s three-thousand nine-sixty, going, going-“
Emma raised her paddle. “Sixteen thousand,” she said, her voice betraying nothing but utter boredom. Tony covered his face. She wasn’t joking when she said she bid to win.
Everyone stared. The woman onstage was looking over, her eyes wide with utter shock. The auctioneer stuttered, but announced the new bid. No one protested. “Sold!”
Tony shook his head. “Christ, Emma. That was a jump.”
Emma shrugged. “I would have gone up to twenty.”
* * *
This was the awkward part. Emily’s face was already red from the looks she had been given. Her mother had come backstage to yell at her about making her pet politicians very unhappy, as if she had planned this. She felt kind of like bursting out laughing, because this was so absurd, and it was taking everything she had not to just call Morgan in the middle of his date and brag.
She spotted the woman leaning up against the wall in the anteroom. She was easy to recognize. No one else was wearing all white. And this was where she had no idea what to say.
“Um, hi.”
The woman glanced up and looked at her, her eyes narrowing as she examined her up close, and Emily swallowed hard, trying not to panic. But then she smiled. “Hi yourself,” she drawled sarcastically.
She was not making this easier. “Do you…” Emily grimaced. “Do you actually want to… go out?”
The woman leaned towards her, reaching out and lifting her chin up so she could look into her face. “Honey, I spent sixteen thousand on you. I’m expecting you to put out.” Then she laughed.
Emily felt her face heat up and hoped hard that it was just a joke. She knew her weaknesses. Blonde, confident and gorgeous was a historical failing of hers. It would be too easy to be sucked in and believe that she actually wanted her, and then the inevitable rejection would sting like anything. Of course, if she had actually been bought for the sex, then that was something she ought to avoid as well. Prostitution, even for charity, was a line that Emily refused to cross.
“Um, we’ll see.”
And the woman laughed again, as if it were the perfect response. She took out her purse, removing something pearlescently white and flipping it open. “When are you free? I’m in town until Wednesday.”
It was a white blackberry. Emily blinked. “Do you have a Mac?” she asked, almost without thinking about it.
“What?” The woman stared at her. Then she glanced down at the object in her hand, back up, and rolled her eyes. “No,” she said dryly. “My company makes computers. They come in white, and run Linux. And I get them for free.” She glanced back down and poked the screen with the matching white stylus. “Monday is terrible. Tuesday?”
“Sure,” Emily said. They should still be in town, even if a new case came in on Monday. She gave her phone number.
“Good,” the woman clicked the blackberry off and dropped it back in her purse. She nodded and then just walked away. Emily stared after, watching as she met up with a shorter man in an amusing goatee and spoke to him. He offered his arm, and she took it as if she were amused by the gesture. She scanned them carefully, trying to put together the tells, trying to work out something, even if it wasn’t exactly a profile.
It was only when the door had shut behind them that she realized she had forgotten to ask the woman’s name. It was probably on the credit card though, so she went to ask the organizer.
* * *
“And, soooo?” Morgan rolled his chair over to Emily’s desk. “Were we purchased?”
Emily frowned at him. “Is that a royal we, or are you coming along?”
“You have a date!” He grinned. “So, girl or boy?”
Emily tried to look irritated, but she couldn’t help the grin of pride. “A woman, in fact, decided to purchase my company, for the good of the children.”
“Someone’s getting laid!” Morgan pressed his hand to his chest. “I can’t but help feel responsible for this.”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
“I know. That doesn’t make a difference. How much did you fetch?”
“Sixteen thousand,” Emily said, with practiced nonchalance.
Morgan froze. He looked at her, and blinked a few times. “What?”
“Sixteen thousand.”
He gaped. His eyes bugged. “Oh my god!”
Reid glanced up. “What is it?”
Even JJ peeked out of her office. “Morgan?”
“You pulled Sixteen Gs? That is…” He shook his head. “I took top prize at the FBI auction for five hundred.”
“Better class of buyers,” Emily said, not bothering to try not to grin.
“So what’s her name?” Morgan skidded around to Emily’s side of the desk, muscling her away from her computer. “We need to do some Google-stalking.”
“And a background check,” added Garcia though the intercom. Morgan perked up. “Can you do health records too, babe? We need to know if our darling Emily can go all the way.”
“I’m on it!”
“Oh no.” Emily hid her face.
“Oooh,” said Morgan, pleased with what he found on her computer screen. “It looks like someone’s already been doing some Google-fu. That’s her name? Emma Frost?”
“Yeah.”
Morgan clicked on the CNN website tab and swallowed hard at the included photo. “Babygirl!” he announced to the intercom. “You had better have good news, because if Emily doesn’t hit this chick, I am.”
“Interesting,” Reid leaned forward, looking over Morgan’s shoulder. “I read that article. She seems to be a very impressive woman, although with the rather cutthroat methods for success and the color-coordination, I’m going to say that there are probably some issues with control.”
“Like, in bed issues?” Morgan grinned. “Classy, controlling, confident, not married, no kids. She’s not into long-term relationships, probably doesn’t want to involve them in the power plays that are her real life.”
“Looks like she’s clean. No records of drug abuse, although one comment about self-medicating with alcohol and refusing therapy.”
“Okay,” Reid grinned. “Doesn’t trust shrinks, doesn’t like to let people in. Some use of alcohol. Has she ever been prescribed sleeping pills?”
“No,” came the immediate answer.
“So no real psychiatric issues. Probably just stress from the high powered lifestyle.”
“I don’t know,” JJ interjected. “She could be a functional alcoholic.”
Emily stared at the group of people surrounding her desk. “Are we really profiling my date?”
Morgan gave her a sidelong glance and grin. “Don’t tell me you didn’t start putting one together on your own.”
Emily groaned. “Fine! I did. But I didn’t start speculating on whether she was an alcoholic or not!”
“Non-smoker,” Garcia commented through the speakers. “That’s a good sign.”
* * *
“Looking forward to your date, Emma dear?” Tony’s smirk was audible over the phone.
“No,” Emma said flatly. “And could you stop giving my father my secretary’s phone number. I’m still not interested in what he’s selling, and, in fact, if you could tell him to die soon, I would appreciate it very much.”
“No? You spent sixteen thousand on that girl!”
“I was going to donate that much anyway.” Emma scowled and picked up her glass, listening to the ice cubes clink in the bourbon. She ignored his snort of irritated disbelief and downed the shot. Then she scowled at nothing. “I’ve slept with her before.”
“What?”
“She didn’t recognize me, not that that’s surprising. It was… god, twelve, thirteen years ago?”
“A teenage crush, Emma? I didn’t think you had any of those.”
“What? A crush?” Emma frowned. “We had sex. I didn’t moon pathetically over her for weeks on end. I think it was generally intended to piss my father off. Everything I did in those days was for that reason.” She picked up the bottle and considered refilling her glass, but she set it down instead. “It was right before I left.”
“A catalyst to encourage you to break with your family and make it on your own?”
“Have you been reading schlocky romance novels again, Tony? Try not to apply them to reality.”
Tony laughed. “So you’re nervous, because she doesn’t remember you? Are you going to confess?”
Emma made a disgusted noise.
“Relax, Ems. Why did you bid for her anyway?”
“Because…” Emma sighed. She flicked out at the empty cut glass snifter and sent it skidding off the table. It landed on the carpet with a thud. “Because I’m not who I used to be,” she snapped. “And I’d like to show that to someone.”
There was a pause, then Tony said dryly, “Has anyone suggested therapy for your daddy issues, Emma?”
“Shut up.” Emma hung up and tried not to punch anything.
* * *
“Mom, are you still freaking out about this? It’s a date. A date she paid for. I’m not marrying in to the clan.”
“You don’t have any idea about what that family is like.”
Emily gaped at the ferocity in her mother’s voice. “We’re having dinner,” she tried.
“She bankrupted her own father, and then she sent the IRS information about his overseas accounts.”
“How enterprising of her,” Emily commented flatly.
“Is it because she’s a woman?” Her mother sounded suspicious. “You don’t feel threatened. Do you think that because she’s a woman she won't try to pressure you into sex?”
Emily gaped at this and didn’t respond.
“I know you’ve never responded well to the men I’ve set you up with. Are you just uncomfortable around men?”
Morgan was making faces at her across the office, trying to get her to tell him what was going on. Reid had one of his comic books hidden in his files again. Hotch wandered through giving her a slight glare for being on the phone while they were supposed to be catching up on paperwork.
“I’m perfectly comfortable with men, at least when they aren’t treating me as a tool, either for sex or for your attention. Do you have any idea how uncomfortable it is to be hit on someone who is more interested in my mother?” Elizabeth made an offended sound in reply. “Emma Frost, at least, doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
* * *
“There’s a restaurant a couple of miles outside of Quantico, it takes maybe a half an hour to get there. Should I pick you up at work?”
“Sure.” Emily tried not to stutter. “I didn’t know what time we’d get done, so I thought I’d get ready here anyways.”
“An hour?”
Emily nodded, and then wished she hadn’t. “Yes.”
She hung up and glanced around, hoping no one had seen that mess. Then she found her bag and disappeared into the bathroom. JJ came in as she was finishing her makeup.
“Wow.” JJ walked around her, eyes wide. “You’re really… dressed up.”
Emily bit her lip, and then needed to retouch the lipstick.
“Do you want it to… go well?” There was an odd expression on JJ’s face. Emily met her eyes in the mirror.
“I don’t want it not to.” She smiled, a little self-deprecating and shook her head. “I haven’t gotten laid in way too long.”
She was out the door, leaving JJ gaping behind her.
JJ marched into Garcia’s office. “Who is this person who’s picking Emily up?”
Reid, sitting behind a hard drive glanced up. “Didn’t you hear the profile we did yesterday?”
“She’s here.”
“I want to see!” exclaimed Morgan. Garcia typed quickly and the images jumped to the feed from the outside surveillance cameras. A blonde woman in sunglasses and a white leather duster was leaning against a champagne-colored Rolls Royce.
Emily came out and she took off her sunglasses, said something, and flicked her eyebrows. Emily ducked her head, but smiled like she was both pleased and embarrassed.
“Oh yeah,” said Morgan. “Some action is going to happen tonight.”
“It's a Tuesday,” JJ said disapprovingly.
There was a plink from Garcia’s computer, and she paged through a few screens. “Oh,” she said. “This is new.”
Morgan glanced over. It was an article from a newspaper published over a decade before, and had been scanned in. A tiny section of it was highlighted, a segment from the gossip page. “Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss, of the US State Department, seen in London accompanied by Winston Frost, CEO of Frost Corp Incorporated. A state contract in the offing for Frost Corp? Or something else?”
“That’s strange,” said Garcia. “Their parents knew each other?”
Morgan frowned. “That’s really strange. Her mother was way not okay with this date either.”
“How do you know that?” asked Reid.
“I eavesdrop on people’s phone conversations, duh.”
* * *
Emily thought it probably would be going rather well, if only she could just stop… being herself. So far they had had a very interesting conversation on whether or not bald people were less likely to be Vitamin D deficient, the new EU food regulations and whether they were good or bad for gourmands, and whether Sherlock Holmes technically counted as the first criminal profiler since he worked without the benefits of modern psychological evaluation. They decided he probably was, although his fictionality complicated that.
Emily sighed. “I haven’t been to London in ages,” she said, when the conversation bent that way.
Emma paused and gave her a searching look. She opened her mouth as if to speak, the closed it, frowned and tried again. “Do you… auction yourself off often?”
Emily glanced up at her in surprised, and felt horribly embarrassed. “No! My mother… I mean…” she sighed and glanced away. “I just couldn’t get out of it this time.”
“Sometimes it’s difficult to defy one’s parents.”
Emily glanced up at her. She had sort of expected to be mocked for this, chided at least. “You bankrupted your father.”
Emma flashed her a grin. “I didn’t say it’s impossible.”
“We’ll, I’ll certainly try harder next time.” Emily laughed. “Now that I have such an impressive role model to live up to.”
Emma gave her another curious look. “I always thought… I mean, I didn’t imagine you were the type of person to bend so easily.”
“My mother wasn’t very happy with a lot of the choices I made. But if it were something I knew was important, I wouldn’t let her stop me. She’s gotten used to those things, finally. She can’t tell me what to do. But she’s learned how to plead and wear me down.”
“I see, very adaptable. My father still hasn’t moved past the yelling and attempts at bribery.”
Emily smiled, and glanced away, wondering why this couldn’t be a real date, and not this desperate farce.
“Why don’t you tell me about some of those dramatic life choices you’ve made,” Emma said lazily, taking a sip of her wine. This was awkward, and Emily couldn’t even bear to answer such a blatant fallback question. But when she finally looked up, she found that Emma was looking at her, intently, and waiting, as if she actually really was interested. Surprised, Emily found herself beginning to speak without even thinking about it.
* * *
Emily wasn’t entirely sure how she had gotten here. Her mouth tasted like wine, and her head was a little foggy, but the room smelled uncomfortably familiar, like hotels and Emma, and she called her away from the minibar. “I don’t want any more to drink.”
“No?” Emma was almost smiling, and Emily just wanted to taste it.
“Look, I’m not…” she swallowed and tried again. “Sex,” she said, starting out strong and then faltering, “is not included in the sixteen thousand.”
Emma grinned and sauntered towards her. “So how much more do I have to pay? Half again? More?”
“I will throw it in gratis,” Emily said, proud of the sentence. Emma laughed, and Emily kissed her while her mouth was open. Emma quickly took over, sliding her tongue between her lips.
“My team decided that you have control issues.”
Emma blinked. “Is that a suggestion?”
Emily laughed. “Not unless you want it to be.”
“I don’t know if that’s necessary, but…” she looked at her and arched an eyebrow. “There is one thing that I’d want to try.”
“What?”
“I want to bind you.”
Even somewhat drunk and sated on good food and kissing, Emily knew she wasn’t quite okay with that. You couldn’t work as a profiler for that long without developing some warning signals. “I don’t…know you.”
“I didn’t mean tie you up,” Emma smirked and gave her a lazy glance. “Maybe when we know each other better. I want… to put you in a corset.”
“Oh,” Emily’s mouth opened. She hadn’t done that in a long time. “Why?”
“The first girl I slept with was wearing one,” Emma said with an odd look on her face. “I had no fucking clue how to get it off, so I just left it on. It turned out that that is entirely allowable, which was nice. You… remind me of her.”
There was something Emily was supposed to be remembering here, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She kissed Emma, lazy and slow, remembering the way the bindings had tightened around her ribs, like someone was holding you, holding on so tightly that you couldn’t be afraid of them letting go. “I want to.”
“Good,” Emma said. She leaned in, brushing feather light kisses along the curve of her neck as she unfastened the back of her dress.
It had been too long since she had done this. It had been years of looking but not touching, not being able to get close enough to touch or to smell. The sweet sweat, shampoo, and the cloying acrid napalm of perfume: women were just different. She shuddered, as Emma pushed her dress down, her hands sliding over the skin of her back, settling warmly on her hips.
The way she kissed was almost familiar, a little too hard, but slow and easy, as if she knew she wasn’t going to be refused, as if it hadn’t even crossed her mind. Emily smiled into it, that arrogance coupled with pure desire, why would she say no to that?
The corset was a canvas one, boned and laced. She hadn’t worn one like that since she had stopped binding in college, when she couldn’t even bear to look at it without remembering how she felt abandoned by those people who were supposed to be her friends. But that was a long time ago now. It tightened around her and she breathed out. Slowly the laces were pulled in and the pressure, the ache of it, was almost more than she could bear. She tipped her head back, feeling Emma’s fingers brush against her skin, and couldn’t hold back the moan.
As if that were a trigger, the laces snapped tight, and Emily felt herself being spun around and then shoved, almost roughly, until her knees hit the bed and she toppled backwards, Emma climbing on top of her, pinning her shoulders, mouths meeting like a fist to the face, and this was going just a little bit not like awkward one-date-sex was supposed to go at all. She wasn’t asking, not with her words, not with her body, and if she hadn’t been so deft with her hands, one sliding down her thigh and hiking up her leg, her fingers curling right over that spot on the inside of her knee that made her hips buck, her mouth light and then rough and then light enough again to turn the bruising into arousal, she might have been scared. But it wasn’t frightening, because it wasn’t sociopathic, it didn’t feel like being taken entirely at the pleasure of someone else. It felt like someone that knew you too well, that didn’t care about making you feel comfortable because she knew what you wanted better than you did, and Emily was just drunk enough to go along with that.
Emma had moved down leaving neon bite marks on her neck, and then she was pressing against Emily’s cleavage. The corset hiked her breasts up into a soft hilly cartography, and Emma had just stopped, nuzzling into them as if she wanted to do nothing but feel them against her face. Emily had always found excessive interest in her breasts to be rather unnerving, and she had other areas of focus that were not being appreciated properly. She hooked her legs around Emma’s ass, clenching tightly to bring her forward, and grinding up into her, catching a handful of hair to jerk her back up to be kissed properly. The sound she made at the rough handling was a catch of breath, and a low echo in her throat. Her back arched, body tensing, and then she was back, mouth claiming her, and her hands sliding down the rough canvas and onto skin, spreading over her thighs, her hips pushing into her in an ungainly irregular rhythm.
She felt like she was seventeen again, so greedy for touch that it was better when it hurt. The corset kept her from breathing deeply, and she was panting already. She had forgotten it was like to be bound during sex, had forgotten how every time her chest expanded, pressing out against the resistance, the force that couldn’t escape threaded out through the rest of her body, settling in a hot knot of arousal inside of her. And when Emma’s fingers burrowed into her, like they had every right to be there, they pressed right into the center of it, and she was so close to coming that this was going to be utterly humiliating.
“Not already,” she mumbled, but couldn’t keep from thrusting against the pressure. She felt Emma grin against her cheek, and speed up. And then it hit, only she arched, the corset a brilliant ache against her chest, not letting her release, and then it just exploded outwards, so much more intense, and so much more uncontrollable than it was without it.
“Oh…” she lay there, limp and overcome, Emma’s body a warm weight on top of her, and it came to her, easily, like opening up. “I missed you…”
“You fucking didn’t,” Emma grumbled, and rolled off of her, sitting up and working the cricks out of her shoulders.
“How would you know?” And Emily wriggled up her, pinning her hands at her sides. “Don’t touch,” she said and leaned down to bite at her breasts.
* * *
Five in the morning and hung-over sucked, but getting to work late and hung-over on a Wednesday morning was just asking for it. Emily levered herself sleepily out of bed and started searching for her clothes. Locating them she tried to work the laces on the corset. She was really out of practice. “Fuck,” she muttered, as she only managed to pull it tighter.
“Just keep it,” was the mumbled from the bed.
“Yeah?”
Emma propped herself up on her elbow. “Wear it to work,” she said, smirking lazily.
Emily snorted. “Because that won’t pass without comment.”
“I didn’t tell you it would.”
Emily slipped the dress on over the corset, smoothing out the wrinkles as best as she could.
“You don’t wear as much eye make up as you used to.”
Emily looked up at her and let herself smile. “You’re not as irritating as you used to be.”
“Yes, I am. You’re just used to me.”
Emily laughed, sticking her underwear into her bag, and starting towards the door. Emma made a short noise of protest and she paused. She glanced back, about to protest that she had to go. But it was clear what she wanted. Emily gave in. She crawled back onto the bed and kissed her. It wasn’t as light as she had intended and she had to draw back just to breathe.
“Mmm,” Emma mumbled, still half asleep. “I should probably apologize.” Emily blinked at her in surprise. “I… really don’t have any idea what your father looked like, so insinuating that your mother was a whore and you were a bastard and probably my half-sister was pretty groundless. I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” Emily said, and kissed her again, lightly. “I was pretty angry with them too.” She crawled out of bed, starting for the door, this time intending on making it.
“My parents were still married,” Emma grumbled, and then pulled up the covers, going back to sleep.
Emily stepped outside into the dim light before dawn, dialing for a taxi to take her home. That had been… strange, to say the least. When she got home, it didn’t take her too long to shower and dress. The corset was easier to remove when she was awake. She was awake too early to go into work. After standing in front of the mirror for a while, checking to make sure none of the bite marks on her neck were visible, she stopped, and went and found her old photo albums. It was a glossy picture, one of the few her mother had deigned to take of her while she was still dressing Goth, up on one of the battlements of the Tower of London, the London Bridge in the background, and a scowling skinny girl with dirty-blonde hair standing next to her with crossed arms.
She found a frame for it and set it on the mantelpiece. Then it was time to go to work, and she left it behind.
* * *
FIN