The Secret
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Adult ++
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Category:
M through R › Pretender
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
1
Views:
3,246
Reviews:
2
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own The Pretender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
The Secret
Title: The Secret
Author: Mandy
E-mail: kitty_amazon@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Category: S
Spoilers: everything
Key words: JMPR
Author’s Notes: Please see notes at the end.
Summary: A secret that neither of them chooses to acknowledge.
Disclaimer: Not mine blah blah blah no infringement intended, no profit gained.
The Secret
JULY 2002
One photograph became his undoing. Jarod, off to one side in the pictured crowds, not looking at the camera, turned to the right, thick strands of hair in his eyes, as he looked at a point beyond where the picture ended, somehow tortured. His hands may have been reaching. It had appeared in a newspaper, beside some boring feature on tourism in NYC, post-terrorism. The location was the top of the Empire State building. He was wearing some kind of blue jumpsuit. He had been working there, doing maintenance.
Miss Parker makes creases on the corners by sitting in her offices and touching the edges of the newspaper cut out. Fiddling, folding, tearing – her mind is absent from her activities. She is thinking about the way he had looked when they dragged him through the lobby, blood mashed on his face and hands, bitter fury hiding absolutrrorrror. He’d screamed and yelled all the way to the elevator. Nobody had looked at him, nobody had turned from their tasks to watch, except for Miss Parker. She met his eyes, and flinched at what she saw there. Betrayal.
She had been the one he was reaching for in the photograph.
APRIL 1997
smo smokes a cigarette in bed, turned on her side, not caring about the ash on the sheets. He is lying behind her, not touching, but near, still a little breathless. She knows he wants to touch her, or hold her, because that’s what he thinks sex is about. She is giving him a new education. They fucked, she thinks.
“I’m not your first, am I?” she asks. It is sort of a question, sort of a statement.
“No,” he says, and nothing more.
The woman in Oregon, she remem. N. Nina, or something. Nina had a sex-glazed, love happy look on her face when she interviewed her. He had called Sydney, asking about sex. He lost his cherry, and a couple of months later they end up in bed together. He was good, she thinks. Either he learned fast, or he’d been practising since his little bush-bashing chickadee. She knows for a fact he has not been back there.
There is no light in the room, asides from the little neon glow of her cigarette. She takes a last puff, but she’s burning filter now, so she drops it in the glass of water on the bedside table. All dark now. She’s naked and cynical, and refusing to face whom it is in her bed and what they just did. Until she feels his hand investigating her hip.
She rolls over, into his arms, less concerned with kissing than with getting on with it. Again. To her surprise, he is already hard again, thick and heavy in her hand. He’s been deprived most of his life, she reasons, a stiff breeze could probably get him hard. She teaches him as they go, saying ‘harder’, when he bites her nipples, and ‘yes, there’ when his fingers delve into her folds. He is an apt pupil.
The night before, she had brought herself to orgasm whilst picturing him as she had seen him in the Florida Keys – damp with rain, shirt clinging to his broad shoulders, half unbuttoned. She thinks of this again as he slides between her legs, the tip of his erection sliding against her and then pushing in, slowly, slowly.
He kisses her, and she goes with it, although it is more an action to supplement the sex than one of love or affection. She turns her face and mouth away as he picks up the pace, gasping. Fuck me, she thinks, fuck. She grabs his ass in her hands, feels how perfect and tight it is, pulls him into her, again and again. He is hot, she is hot, they are slick with sweat but he isn’t slowing down. He has a lifetime of stamina and one fairly recent orgasm to be going on with.
She comes, doesn’t call his name, but cries aloud, several times, with the shocking power of it. She bites his shoulder, but he still doesn’t stop. He is slamming into her now, his own cries hoarse. It’s beginning to hurt, in a good way, in a bad way, and the pain and the pleasure triggers another orgasm in her. Her hips buck, she braces her hands on the headboard, which is beginning to knock against the wall, bang bang bang, just like them.
Finally, with the first curse she’s ever heard him mutter, he comes inside of her. His sweat mingles with hers, his semen leaking down her thigh. They didn’t use a condom, and she isn’t on the pill. She will have to go get the morning after pill, and does not look forward to the side effects.
She doesn’t hold him as he slumps on top of her, doesn’t cradle him in her embrace, rock him close, as a lover might. They are not lovers. He is heavy on top of her, she doesn’t find the weight comforting, and tension gathers in her. His mouth touches her jaw, and she turns away, out of his reach. There is no intimacy here.
He lifts her leg, pulls it around his waist again, jerks his pelvis, reminding her he’s still inside of her. His mouth seeks hers, and she evades. He takes the hint, rolls away. She feels his weight leave the bed, hears him dressing, and finally, hears him leave, the same way he arrived – without fuss, without words, without reason. She smokes another cigarette. They fucked. They will not speak of it again.
JULY 2002
Miss Parker has no access, no influence and no chance of seeing Jarod. She cannot raise suspicions by approaching Lyle, would not even bother to ask Raines. Instead, she sits in her office, and fumes. The man she knew as her father her entire life is dead, and he has taken their deal with him. There is no escape for her. She is trapped at the Centre, but she no longer has anyone to chase.
Sydney is close to going mad with worry. Every day, Raines sinks in the elevator, deep into the earth, to Jarod, and does not come back again until late at night, a creepy smile lurking in his eyes. This is a Very Bad Thing.
She hopes to hear Jarod has escaped, neither she nor Sydney have the power to protect him anymore. Lyle and Raines are running the show. She sits in her office, doing security things, of no particular interest. Broots attempts to hack the system, at her request, looking for a way to access the digital recordings of Jarod. She wonders when she joined Jarod’s side, and knows it happened slowly.
She goes home, two nights after he is brought back, and stands in her lounge room, at a loss. Her things are not her own, anymore, her life has drained away. She has nothing left to do, no ambition beyond staying alive, no more inspiration than is required to dress appropriately. Without Jarod, there is nothing left, Misrkerrker thinks.
She does what anyone would do in her situation, and gets drunk.
FEBUARY 1998
When the door to her bedroom creaks open, she begins mentally counting months. From April, the year before, to now, makes ten months. A long time, she thinks, they’d done well. But she is not surprised he has come to her now. She’d been reading the sex scenes out of his romance novel, ‘The Saddest Little Valentine’, which just happened to be with a tall, dark and handsome stranger. The sex scenes, hot and explicit, reminded her of the way he tasted.
He undresses beside the bed, as though they have done this a thousand times before, instead of just once. The curtains are open, and moonlight spills in. He is golden and sculpted with shadows, and noticeably erect already. He slides into bed, and reaches for her.
He applies himself admirably to foreplay, kissing her mouth, but not too much, moulding her breasts and sucking on her nipples through the silk of her nightgown, caressing her calves and thighs. On the phone, she had said, ‘If you’re lonely, call a 900 number’. He has found a better cure for loneliness.
She must be his fuck buddy, she tells herself, and gets angry. Once angry, she becomes aggressive. She bites his neck, pushes him back on the bed, pulling up the hem of her nightgown. No more foreplay, she decides, and impales herself on his cock. He pants, and groans, and reaches for her. She grips his hair and pulls his head back, chews on his earlobe. She sets the pace, hard and fast, pins his hands above his head, and doesn’t let him move, although he doesn’t try. She can see his expression in the moonlight. It is sad.
She brings herself to a brief and unsatisfying orgasm. Disappointed, she tries again, pushing herself down onto him, but he has gone still, and his erection is faltering, failing. She lets out a groan of frustration.
“Stop it,” he says, and again, more forcefully, “Stop it!”
She stops, lets go of his wrists, sits up straight, feeling him slip out of her a little.
“You’re fucking yourself with me,” he says. His hands go up, peeling her nightgown over her head, tossing it aside. He cups her breasts, and his hands are gentle. He flicks her nipple with one hand, rubs her belly with the other. It is warm, sensual. He shakes his head, “Not like that.”
He drags himself up, almost dislodging her, propping himself against the headboard. They are chest to chest, face to face, and this frightens her. His mouth moves down her neck, slow, moist, warm, his fingers trailing up her side. She can feel him hardening again inside her. He brings her hips forward as he becomes fully erect, deepening penetration.
“Shh,” he says, although she has made no noise. His hand on her back presses her forward, so the tips of her breasts rub against the hard curling hairs on his chest. She begins to rock, breathing deeply, slowly, watching him watching her.
They go slowly, orgasm rolls over her in electric waves, and his release is marked by a stifled cry against her throat. He holds her against his chest, afterwards, and she listens to his heartbeat for all of four minutes. Then she pushes herself off him, fights him off in anger when he tries to catch her arm, tumbles off the bed, and runs to the bathroom. She puts the shower on ultra-hot, and tries to scrub his scent off her skin.
When she goes back into the bedroom, it is empty. Happy Valentine’s, she thinks.
JULY 2002
Broots gets the recordings. Miss Parker is not quite sure what to expect, but seats herself in her office, late at night, and puts the disc Broots made into a player. It flickers, rolls, and then comes into focus. Jarod sits hunched in the corner, eyes vacant. He is neither seeing nor hearing Raines, who paces in front of him. He ignores Lyle, who leers.
Parker hits the track ball, speeds through the recording. In fast forward, Jarod is pushed, yelled at, tortured and beaten. His reaction is no reaction at all – silence, uncompromising silence. Somehow, Miss Parker is proud. She puts the disc in her pocket, and goes home.
In the quiet of her bedroom, she slides between the sheets, naked. She spreads her arm across the empty space beside her.
MAY 1998
He is on top of her, rough and fumbling, before she is even awake properly. It is close to dawn, he’s still dressed, the sheets are still between them, and he is heavy, so heavy. She cries out as he grabs her breast, hard, kicking at him and the sheets and everything, not sure if she’s thrilled or furious.
He drags the sheets away, tears her nightgown right down the middle. He leaves bite marks on the sides of her breasts, growling like a dog. His hand paws at her panties, grabbing the material, tugging, until it cuts into her skin, making a satisfied grunt when it tears. She fumbles at the zipper on his jeans. He still smells like dirt and dust and death, like sweat and blood. He kisses her mouth, forces his tongue between her lips, and she can taste blood on his lips.
His cock spills into her hands and she strokes it eagerly with one hand, shoving his jeans down with the other. He doesn’t wait, dropping his hips on her, pushing her hand out of the way, guiding his erection. He pushes into her, hard and fast. She chokes, arches her back, wraps her legs around him. Her nails drag down his back, and she moans. She’s being fucked, she thinks, fucking nailed into the mattress.
She comes, in violent waves, drawing blood on his shoulders. His hand is forced between them; he pushes his finger against her clitoris, which feels like it is being stabbed by a needle. She jerks, shudders, spasms around him, and he watches her in eerie silence. She falls back against the mattress, and he looms above her.
“Fuck,” he says.
He draws out, flips her over, onto her knees, steadies her hips and pierces her again. He fucks her, barrels down hot and heavy, she is shaken by the urgency. She grips the headboard, tries to brace herself, but he is strong and she’s being pushed forward with every thrust. It’s beginning to make her ache, and not in the good way.
“Jesus!” she hisses, shifts her grip, pushes back against him.
He makes guttural cries, slams into her, knocking the headboard against the wall, goes faster, frenzied into action, and every time he pushes into her, she groans, aches. She’s pushed into some feeling that is an imitation of orgasm, panting and straining, whispering for him to stop, please stop, but he doesn’t.
He is sobbing, plants a hand on her back, presses her down until she lets go of the headboard, sinks to lie on her belly awkwardly, with him still moving, too hard and too fast, inside of her.
“I can’t! I can’t!” he cries hoarsely. He lets her go, pulls out, rolls onto his back, crying.
His cock is painfully hard and leaking, and quivers under her gentle touch. Blue balls. She insinuates herself into his arms, licking the tears from his face, licking away the dried blood from his temple, the salt and dust. He shakes with sobs, crying with grief and frustration and anger and shame.
“Relax,” she says, “Relax.”
She ignores his erection, caresses his chest, tugs gently on the hairs there. She strokes his biceps and tongues his nipples, dips her finger into his bellybutton. His sobs quiet as she strokes his thighs, wriggles to sit between them, and palms his balls.
“I can’t,” he says stubbornly.
“Shh,” she says.
She takes him into her mouth, but does not move, just holds him in her mouth, inhales his scent, hard and musky. She strokes his thigh, lets her tongue flatten on the underside of his erection, and waits. His breath evens out in ripples of sighs and short gasps, and turns slowly deep and even. She waits. The tension leeches away from his body, and a warm hand cups the back of her head, threading through her hair.
“You don’t have to…” he says stiltedly, awkward. She remembers that he is not so experienced in this area, not so confidant.
She gives him everything. She moves her mouth with deliberate care, teases him with her fingers, her slowly stroking hand, goes so slowly he groans with frustration, and brings him to the brink of heaven, again and again, until his hand is in her hair, so gentle, guiding her. Finally he arches and gasps, hot liquid spilling across her tongue, and his muffled cries of release turn, to her sadness, into quiet sobs.
She holds him to her belly, strokes his hair, and lets him cry. She says nothing, but tears track down her face too. He says words against her skin, but the only one she can make out is ‘Kyle’.
She dozes, or thinks she does. When she wakes, maybe an hour later, he is gone.
JULY 2002
The days drag by. There is no disruption to the terrible monotony of it. Only tension leaves a mark, notched higher with every passing day. Miss Parker is waiting to be told Jarod has escaped. Maybe he has already, she thinks, and hasn’t come to tell her. Maybe he is not coming back to her.
She finds Angelo, hiding in the vents. She strokes the side of his face, and watches him earnestly. “Find Jarod, Angelo. Jarod’s here. Tell me where he is. Can you find Jarod?” she asks.
Angelo goes.
APRIL 1999
Late one night, she opens her eyes, knowing he has come. She rolls over, out of Tommy’s embrace, and sits up on the side of the bed. She looks back. Tommy is sleeping soundly, a slight smile gracing his face. He is so happy, knowing her family is letting her go.
He is standing in the doorway, a dark shadow. Watching her. She gives another look at Tommy, and rises from the bed, going to him. She is wearing Tommy’s shirt. They step out into the hallway, standing half a foot apart. She should have her gun, she thinks. He should not be here.
“Are you really going?” he asks, his voice low and rough. She nods.
They fuck quietly, in the hall outside the room in which her lover sleeps. He presses her against the wall, fondles her breasts as though it’s the last time, which it probably is, unbuttons the shirt but doesn’t take it off her. She pushes her hands under his tight black tee, and enjoys kissing him. Hot, wet, deep.
He winds one of her legs around his waist, tests her moist folds with his fingers, and then pushes into her, trying not to groan. Her breath catches with every thrust, and she clings to his neck as they rock. She can see his eyes, and decides not to break his gaze. Even when they kiss.
Orgasm is a slow wave that reminds her why she needs him. She makes no noise, bites it off in her throat, and swallows his cry of release in her kiss. They shudder together, and although she tries very hard, she can feel no shame.
He holds her, keeps her gaze for several long minutes. They both back down. He withdraws, steps away, and she puts her leg down. There is a sticky trickle down her thigh, but she is on the pill now. She buttons up her shirt. She’ll need to clean up. She says goodbye with her eyes, and he is sad.
She goes back in to the bedroom with Tommy, and doesn’t look back.
JULY 2002
Angelo comes to her like a guilty puppy, humble, unhappy. Miss Parker doesn’t need his words, only the look in his eyes. No success, no Jarod.
She goes down to the sim lab, where Sydney spends all his time, and sits on the stairs. Sydney walks around touching things. Finally he acknowledges her, coming to sit. The silence lasts almost an hour. Finally she says, “I didn’t betray him. He thinks I did, but I didn’t.”
“Can he forgive you?” Sydney asks. She smiles, sadly.
“He has to.”
MARCH 2000
He looks grungy, has stubble on his chin, and she is angry at him for staying away so long. She knows he was with some girl in November, Zoe, and she hates him ft. t. She hates him for not coming to her bed after Tommy died. She hates that he could frighten her with drug use. She hates that he goes down on her for the first time, because she knows he didn’t learn it with her.
He sucks on her clitoris hard, thrusts two fingers inside of her and holds her hips down as she growls and attempts to buck away. He laughs, a dangerous chuckle, and attacks again. He’s too damned good, and she curses him under her breath, before hissing in pleasure as she comes in a short and sharp burst.
He makes to climb up her body and she is mad, pushes at his shoulders, tries to wriggle away. He is irritated, catches her against him for one moment, before she unceremoniously pushes him off the bed, to the floor. There is silence. She waits for him to get up. He doesn’t. She peeks over the side of the bed. He is lying on the floor, hands behind his head, watching her.
She slithers over the edge and onto his chest, taking half the sheets with her. She kisses his collarbones, and when he puts his arms around her, she presses her fingers along the soft skin of his inner-elbow. She is relieved to find no track marks.
He rolls her over, slides between her thighs, pushing her hands up above her head and holding them there. She watches him, wide-eyed, and he moves inside her without a word. She has no desire to climax, just watches. The pleasure he takes in her is fascinating, she thinks, and wraps her legs around his waist, moving in counter-point. He comes after a very long time, mouth opening in a soundless cry, eyes closing. She thinks he is beautiful.
It is on the tip of her tongue to ask him to stay, but then she remembers who and what they are. She lets him walk out the door.
JULY 2002
If she hadn’t gone to meet him on the stupid Empire State building, it might no have happened, Miss Parker thinks. She’s decided to get drunk again. She’s on her third martini, in a bar. The same bar she went to after Tommy died. Jarod should never have asked her to meet, she reasons. He should never have brought there little unspoken agreement into the light of day.
It has never come up in conversation. It has never been mentioned or even hinted at in their numerous conversations. Their sporadic sexual exploits are a secret, a dark and dirty secret that neither of them chooses to acknowledge. She likes it that way, she thinks. She has another martini, chews viciously on the olive, and snaps the toothpick it was on. It makes sense that way. Sex for the sake of sex, the resolution of irritating sexual tension between them. Fucking. That was all it was. Wasn’t it?
On the top of the Empire State building, Jarod had brought it out into the light. He had blurred the lines. She had gone to leave, neither of them had noticed the photographer, and now he has ended up in hell.
Miss Parker has another martini.
DECEMBER 2001
He comes to her house three times in December, almost once a week, and the last time is on Christmas Eve. He sits on a straight-backed chair in her lounge room, and she sits on his lap, his bare chest to her bare back, and her legs are straddling his, and his cock is inside of her. Outside it is snowing, but inside he is cupping her breasts, which are rose-tipped and golden in the light of the fire. She knows, in the back of her mind, that they have recreated the scene at Ocee’s, the way it should have gone. They are breathing slowly, in time.
He kisses all across her shoulders, and she rocks so very slightly, rhythmically squeezing her inner-muscles around him. His big hands push her breasts up. She’s had half a bottle of wine, and he’s had the other half. His hands seem enormous in comparison to her. She watches as one wanders down to touch her belly, her hip. It arrows through her dark curls, and she moans aloud as his fin fin find her clitoris.
She tips her head back, onto his shoulders, and puts her feet on the rungs of the chair for leverage, pushing, rocking, sliding against him. It feels good. She feels full, with him. He is sucking on her neck, right where her pulse is, and she moans again, because she can. This is what she wanted.
They rock and push their way slowly towards ecstasy, towards slow release that throbs through her and into him, and she’s never had sex like she’s had with him, never felt melded with a lover like she does with him. He holds her long after their breath has evened out, long after the need has abated, against his chest, like treasure.
She is so sleepy, half asleep, and murmurs contentedly against his neck as he carries her into the bedroom. She is tucked under blankets and sheets, and is so warm and comfortable that she begins to doze. She frowns, in her state of almost-sleep, because he is not beside her.
JULY 2002
For the first time, Miss Parker wakes beside him. It is morning, there is sunshine in her bedroom, and he is in her bed. Jarod smiles when he sees she is awake. His face is bruised and his lip is cut, but it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
“You got out!” she says in astonishment.
She wriggles across the bed, into his arms, pressing kisses against his mouth, his jaw, his neck. He wraps her up, pulls her tight, and kisses her properly, even though she knows it must hurt him.
“Jarod,” she sighs, and touches his cheek.
Miss Parker closes her eyes, so he cannot see her tears, and pushes her face into his neck. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying not to sob, and squeezes him even tighter. He feels good in her arms, warm, strong, male. She can feel his heart beating next to hers.
“I was… I was afraid,” she says awkwardly.
“I know,” Jarod says. He knows everything she was afraid about.
They make love. Jarod kisses and touches her into arousal, groaning when her small hands slip across him, delighting in the sunshine in her hair. Miss Parker smiles when he slides inside of her, holds him so close he can hardly move, and when she is brought to a thundering release, she says his name, over and over again.
In afterglow, he lies on top of her. She finds his weight comforting, and cradles him close. He nuzzles her hair with his nose, and smiles sleepily at her. She wants to tell him that she didn’t help the Centre find him, that she didn’t know what to do, that she didn’t think she’d ever see him again. But it can wait.
“Run away with me,” he says.
She shifts slightly, curls her foot around his calf and pushes a lock of hair off his face.
“Yes,” she says.
The End.
Author’s notes: The episodes I used for the various dates in the story and occasionally make reference to are, in chronological order, Keys, Gigolo Jarod, Red Rock Jarod, Ties That Bind, Junk and, of course, The Island of the Haunted movie. You can find a synopsis for each here -> http://www.mydailyplanet.com/00-episodeindex.htm
Author: Mandy
E-mail: kitty_amazon@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Category: S
Spoilers: everything
Key words: JMPR
Author’s Notes: Please see notes at the end.
Summary: A secret that neither of them chooses to acknowledge.
Disclaimer: Not mine blah blah blah no infringement intended, no profit gained.
The Secret
JULY 2002
One photograph became his undoing. Jarod, off to one side in the pictured crowds, not looking at the camera, turned to the right, thick strands of hair in his eyes, as he looked at a point beyond where the picture ended, somehow tortured. His hands may have been reaching. It had appeared in a newspaper, beside some boring feature on tourism in NYC, post-terrorism. The location was the top of the Empire State building. He was wearing some kind of blue jumpsuit. He had been working there, doing maintenance.
Miss Parker makes creases on the corners by sitting in her offices and touching the edges of the newspaper cut out. Fiddling, folding, tearing – her mind is absent from her activities. She is thinking about the way he had looked when they dragged him through the lobby, blood mashed on his face and hands, bitter fury hiding absolutrrorrror. He’d screamed and yelled all the way to the elevator. Nobody had looked at him, nobody had turned from their tasks to watch, except for Miss Parker. She met his eyes, and flinched at what she saw there. Betrayal.
She had been the one he was reaching for in the photograph.
APRIL 1997
smo smokes a cigarette in bed, turned on her side, not caring about the ash on the sheets. He is lying behind her, not touching, but near, still a little breathless. She knows he wants to touch her, or hold her, because that’s what he thinks sex is about. She is giving him a new education. They fucked, she thinks.
“I’m not your first, am I?” she asks. It is sort of a question, sort of a statement.
“No,” he says, and nothing more.
The woman in Oregon, she remem. N. Nina, or something. Nina had a sex-glazed, love happy look on her face when she interviewed her. He had called Sydney, asking about sex. He lost his cherry, and a couple of months later they end up in bed together. He was good, she thinks. Either he learned fast, or he’d been practising since his little bush-bashing chickadee. She knows for a fact he has not been back there.
There is no light in the room, asides from the little neon glow of her cigarette. She takes a last puff, but she’s burning filter now, so she drops it in the glass of water on the bedside table. All dark now. She’s naked and cynical, and refusing to face whom it is in her bed and what they just did. Until she feels his hand investigating her hip.
She rolls over, into his arms, less concerned with kissing than with getting on with it. Again. To her surprise, he is already hard again, thick and heavy in her hand. He’s been deprived most of his life, she reasons, a stiff breeze could probably get him hard. She teaches him as they go, saying ‘harder’, when he bites her nipples, and ‘yes, there’ when his fingers delve into her folds. He is an apt pupil.
The night before, she had brought herself to orgasm whilst picturing him as she had seen him in the Florida Keys – damp with rain, shirt clinging to his broad shoulders, half unbuttoned. She thinks of this again as he slides between her legs, the tip of his erection sliding against her and then pushing in, slowly, slowly.
He kisses her, and she goes with it, although it is more an action to supplement the sex than one of love or affection. She turns her face and mouth away as he picks up the pace, gasping. Fuck me, she thinks, fuck. She grabs his ass in her hands, feels how perfect and tight it is, pulls him into her, again and again. He is hot, she is hot, they are slick with sweat but he isn’t slowing down. He has a lifetime of stamina and one fairly recent orgasm to be going on with.
She comes, doesn’t call his name, but cries aloud, several times, with the shocking power of it. She bites his shoulder, but he still doesn’t stop. He is slamming into her now, his own cries hoarse. It’s beginning to hurt, in a good way, in a bad way, and the pain and the pleasure triggers another orgasm in her. Her hips buck, she braces her hands on the headboard, which is beginning to knock against the wall, bang bang bang, just like them.
Finally, with the first curse she’s ever heard him mutter, he comes inside of her. His sweat mingles with hers, his semen leaking down her thigh. They didn’t use a condom, and she isn’t on the pill. She will have to go get the morning after pill, and does not look forward to the side effects.
She doesn’t hold him as he slumps on top of her, doesn’t cradle him in her embrace, rock him close, as a lover might. They are not lovers. He is heavy on top of her, she doesn’t find the weight comforting, and tension gathers in her. His mouth touches her jaw, and she turns away, out of his reach. There is no intimacy here.
He lifts her leg, pulls it around his waist again, jerks his pelvis, reminding her he’s still inside of her. His mouth seeks hers, and she evades. He takes the hint, rolls away. She feels his weight leave the bed, hears him dressing, and finally, hears him leave, the same way he arrived – without fuss, without words, without reason. She smokes another cigarette. They fucked. They will not speak of it again.
JULY 2002
Miss Parker has no access, no influence and no chance of seeing Jarod. She cannot raise suspicions by approaching Lyle, would not even bother to ask Raines. Instead, she sits in her office, and fumes. The man she knew as her father her entire life is dead, and he has taken their deal with him. There is no escape for her. She is trapped at the Centre, but she no longer has anyone to chase.
Sydney is close to going mad with worry. Every day, Raines sinks in the elevator, deep into the earth, to Jarod, and does not come back again until late at night, a creepy smile lurking in his eyes. This is a Very Bad Thing.
She hopes to hear Jarod has escaped, neither she nor Sydney have the power to protect him anymore. Lyle and Raines are running the show. She sits in her office, doing security things, of no particular interest. Broots attempts to hack the system, at her request, looking for a way to access the digital recordings of Jarod. She wonders when she joined Jarod’s side, and knows it happened slowly.
She goes home, two nights after he is brought back, and stands in her lounge room, at a loss. Her things are not her own, anymore, her life has drained away. She has nothing left to do, no ambition beyond staying alive, no more inspiration than is required to dress appropriately. Without Jarod, there is nothing left, Misrkerrker thinks.
She does what anyone would do in her situation, and gets drunk.
FEBUARY 1998
When the door to her bedroom creaks open, she begins mentally counting months. From April, the year before, to now, makes ten months. A long time, she thinks, they’d done well. But she is not surprised he has come to her now. She’d been reading the sex scenes out of his romance novel, ‘The Saddest Little Valentine’, which just happened to be with a tall, dark and handsome stranger. The sex scenes, hot and explicit, reminded her of the way he tasted.
He undresses beside the bed, as though they have done this a thousand times before, instead of just once. The curtains are open, and moonlight spills in. He is golden and sculpted with shadows, and noticeably erect already. He slides into bed, and reaches for her.
He applies himself admirably to foreplay, kissing her mouth, but not too much, moulding her breasts and sucking on her nipples through the silk of her nightgown, caressing her calves and thighs. On the phone, she had said, ‘If you’re lonely, call a 900 number’. He has found a better cure for loneliness.
She must be his fuck buddy, she tells herself, and gets angry. Once angry, she becomes aggressive. She bites his neck, pushes him back on the bed, pulling up the hem of her nightgown. No more foreplay, she decides, and impales herself on his cock. He pants, and groans, and reaches for her. She grips his hair and pulls his head back, chews on his earlobe. She sets the pace, hard and fast, pins his hands above his head, and doesn’t let him move, although he doesn’t try. She can see his expression in the moonlight. It is sad.
She brings herself to a brief and unsatisfying orgasm. Disappointed, she tries again, pushing herself down onto him, but he has gone still, and his erection is faltering, failing. She lets out a groan of frustration.
“Stop it,” he says, and again, more forcefully, “Stop it!”
She stops, lets go of his wrists, sits up straight, feeling him slip out of her a little.
“You’re fucking yourself with me,” he says. His hands go up, peeling her nightgown over her head, tossing it aside. He cups her breasts, and his hands are gentle. He flicks her nipple with one hand, rubs her belly with the other. It is warm, sensual. He shakes his head, “Not like that.”
He drags himself up, almost dislodging her, propping himself against the headboard. They are chest to chest, face to face, and this frightens her. His mouth moves down her neck, slow, moist, warm, his fingers trailing up her side. She can feel him hardening again inside her. He brings her hips forward as he becomes fully erect, deepening penetration.
“Shh,” he says, although she has made no noise. His hand on her back presses her forward, so the tips of her breasts rub against the hard curling hairs on his chest. She begins to rock, breathing deeply, slowly, watching him watching her.
They go slowly, orgasm rolls over her in electric waves, and his release is marked by a stifled cry against her throat. He holds her against his chest, afterwards, and she listens to his heartbeat for all of four minutes. Then she pushes herself off him, fights him off in anger when he tries to catch her arm, tumbles off the bed, and runs to the bathroom. She puts the shower on ultra-hot, and tries to scrub his scent off her skin.
When she goes back into the bedroom, it is empty. Happy Valentine’s, she thinks.
JULY 2002
Broots gets the recordings. Miss Parker is not quite sure what to expect, but seats herself in her office, late at night, and puts the disc Broots made into a player. It flickers, rolls, and then comes into focus. Jarod sits hunched in the corner, eyes vacant. He is neither seeing nor hearing Raines, who paces in front of him. He ignores Lyle, who leers.
Parker hits the track ball, speeds through the recording. In fast forward, Jarod is pushed, yelled at, tortured and beaten. His reaction is no reaction at all – silence, uncompromising silence. Somehow, Miss Parker is proud. She puts the disc in her pocket, and goes home.
In the quiet of her bedroom, she slides between the sheets, naked. She spreads her arm across the empty space beside her.
MAY 1998
He is on top of her, rough and fumbling, before she is even awake properly. It is close to dawn, he’s still dressed, the sheets are still between them, and he is heavy, so heavy. She cries out as he grabs her breast, hard, kicking at him and the sheets and everything, not sure if she’s thrilled or furious.
He drags the sheets away, tears her nightgown right down the middle. He leaves bite marks on the sides of her breasts, growling like a dog. His hand paws at her panties, grabbing the material, tugging, until it cuts into her skin, making a satisfied grunt when it tears. She fumbles at the zipper on his jeans. He still smells like dirt and dust and death, like sweat and blood. He kisses her mouth, forces his tongue between her lips, and she can taste blood on his lips.
His cock spills into her hands and she strokes it eagerly with one hand, shoving his jeans down with the other. He doesn’t wait, dropping his hips on her, pushing her hand out of the way, guiding his erection. He pushes into her, hard and fast. She chokes, arches her back, wraps her legs around him. Her nails drag down his back, and she moans. She’s being fucked, she thinks, fucking nailed into the mattress.
She comes, in violent waves, drawing blood on his shoulders. His hand is forced between them; he pushes his finger against her clitoris, which feels like it is being stabbed by a needle. She jerks, shudders, spasms around him, and he watches her in eerie silence. She falls back against the mattress, and he looms above her.
“Fuck,” he says.
He draws out, flips her over, onto her knees, steadies her hips and pierces her again. He fucks her, barrels down hot and heavy, she is shaken by the urgency. She grips the headboard, tries to brace herself, but he is strong and she’s being pushed forward with every thrust. It’s beginning to make her ache, and not in the good way.
“Jesus!” she hisses, shifts her grip, pushes back against him.
He makes guttural cries, slams into her, knocking the headboard against the wall, goes faster, frenzied into action, and every time he pushes into her, she groans, aches. She’s pushed into some feeling that is an imitation of orgasm, panting and straining, whispering for him to stop, please stop, but he doesn’t.
He is sobbing, plants a hand on her back, presses her down until she lets go of the headboard, sinks to lie on her belly awkwardly, with him still moving, too hard and too fast, inside of her.
“I can’t! I can’t!” he cries hoarsely. He lets her go, pulls out, rolls onto his back, crying.
His cock is painfully hard and leaking, and quivers under her gentle touch. Blue balls. She insinuates herself into his arms, licking the tears from his face, licking away the dried blood from his temple, the salt and dust. He shakes with sobs, crying with grief and frustration and anger and shame.
“Relax,” she says, “Relax.”
She ignores his erection, caresses his chest, tugs gently on the hairs there. She strokes his biceps and tongues his nipples, dips her finger into his bellybutton. His sobs quiet as she strokes his thighs, wriggles to sit between them, and palms his balls.
“I can’t,” he says stubbornly.
“Shh,” she says.
She takes him into her mouth, but does not move, just holds him in her mouth, inhales his scent, hard and musky. She strokes his thigh, lets her tongue flatten on the underside of his erection, and waits. His breath evens out in ripples of sighs and short gasps, and turns slowly deep and even. She waits. The tension leeches away from his body, and a warm hand cups the back of her head, threading through her hair.
“You don’t have to…” he says stiltedly, awkward. She remembers that he is not so experienced in this area, not so confidant.
She gives him everything. She moves her mouth with deliberate care, teases him with her fingers, her slowly stroking hand, goes so slowly he groans with frustration, and brings him to the brink of heaven, again and again, until his hand is in her hair, so gentle, guiding her. Finally he arches and gasps, hot liquid spilling across her tongue, and his muffled cries of release turn, to her sadness, into quiet sobs.
She holds him to her belly, strokes his hair, and lets him cry. She says nothing, but tears track down her face too. He says words against her skin, but the only one she can make out is ‘Kyle’.
She dozes, or thinks she does. When she wakes, maybe an hour later, he is gone.
JULY 2002
The days drag by. There is no disruption to the terrible monotony of it. Only tension leaves a mark, notched higher with every passing day. Miss Parker is waiting to be told Jarod has escaped. Maybe he has already, she thinks, and hasn’t come to tell her. Maybe he is not coming back to her.
She finds Angelo, hiding in the vents. She strokes the side of his face, and watches him earnestly. “Find Jarod, Angelo. Jarod’s here. Tell me where he is. Can you find Jarod?” she asks.
Angelo goes.
APRIL 1999
Late one night, she opens her eyes, knowing he has come. She rolls over, out of Tommy’s embrace, and sits up on the side of the bed. She looks back. Tommy is sleeping soundly, a slight smile gracing his face. He is so happy, knowing her family is letting her go.
He is standing in the doorway, a dark shadow. Watching her. She gives another look at Tommy, and rises from the bed, going to him. She is wearing Tommy’s shirt. They step out into the hallway, standing half a foot apart. She should have her gun, she thinks. He should not be here.
“Are you really going?” he asks, his voice low and rough. She nods.
They fuck quietly, in the hall outside the room in which her lover sleeps. He presses her against the wall, fondles her breasts as though it’s the last time, which it probably is, unbuttons the shirt but doesn’t take it off her. She pushes her hands under his tight black tee, and enjoys kissing him. Hot, wet, deep.
He winds one of her legs around his waist, tests her moist folds with his fingers, and then pushes into her, trying not to groan. Her breath catches with every thrust, and she clings to his neck as they rock. She can see his eyes, and decides not to break his gaze. Even when they kiss.
Orgasm is a slow wave that reminds her why she needs him. She makes no noise, bites it off in her throat, and swallows his cry of release in her kiss. They shudder together, and although she tries very hard, she can feel no shame.
He holds her, keeps her gaze for several long minutes. They both back down. He withdraws, steps away, and she puts her leg down. There is a sticky trickle down her thigh, but she is on the pill now. She buttons up her shirt. She’ll need to clean up. She says goodbye with her eyes, and he is sad.
She goes back in to the bedroom with Tommy, and doesn’t look back.
JULY 2002
Angelo comes to her like a guilty puppy, humble, unhappy. Miss Parker doesn’t need his words, only the look in his eyes. No success, no Jarod.
She goes down to the sim lab, where Sydney spends all his time, and sits on the stairs. Sydney walks around touching things. Finally he acknowledges her, coming to sit. The silence lasts almost an hour. Finally she says, “I didn’t betray him. He thinks I did, but I didn’t.”
“Can he forgive you?” Sydney asks. She smiles, sadly.
“He has to.”
MARCH 2000
He looks grungy, has stubble on his chin, and she is angry at him for staying away so long. She knows he was with some girl in November, Zoe, and she hates him ft. t. She hates him for not coming to her bed after Tommy died. She hates that he could frighten her with drug use. She hates that he goes down on her for the first time, because she knows he didn’t learn it with her.
He sucks on her clitoris hard, thrusts two fingers inside of her and holds her hips down as she growls and attempts to buck away. He laughs, a dangerous chuckle, and attacks again. He’s too damned good, and she curses him under her breath, before hissing in pleasure as she comes in a short and sharp burst.
He makes to climb up her body and she is mad, pushes at his shoulders, tries to wriggle away. He is irritated, catches her against him for one moment, before she unceremoniously pushes him off the bed, to the floor. There is silence. She waits for him to get up. He doesn’t. She peeks over the side of the bed. He is lying on the floor, hands behind his head, watching her.
She slithers over the edge and onto his chest, taking half the sheets with her. She kisses his collarbones, and when he puts his arms around her, she presses her fingers along the soft skin of his inner-elbow. She is relieved to find no track marks.
He rolls her over, slides between her thighs, pushing her hands up above her head and holding them there. She watches him, wide-eyed, and he moves inside her without a word. She has no desire to climax, just watches. The pleasure he takes in her is fascinating, she thinks, and wraps her legs around his waist, moving in counter-point. He comes after a very long time, mouth opening in a soundless cry, eyes closing. She thinks he is beautiful.
It is on the tip of her tongue to ask him to stay, but then she remembers who and what they are. She lets him walk out the door.
JULY 2002
If she hadn’t gone to meet him on the stupid Empire State building, it might no have happened, Miss Parker thinks. She’s decided to get drunk again. She’s on her third martini, in a bar. The same bar she went to after Tommy died. Jarod should never have asked her to meet, she reasons. He should never have brought there little unspoken agreement into the light of day.
It has never come up in conversation. It has never been mentioned or even hinted at in their numerous conversations. Their sporadic sexual exploits are a secret, a dark and dirty secret that neither of them chooses to acknowledge. She likes it that way, she thinks. She has another martini, chews viciously on the olive, and snaps the toothpick it was on. It makes sense that way. Sex for the sake of sex, the resolution of irritating sexual tension between them. Fucking. That was all it was. Wasn’t it?
On the top of the Empire State building, Jarod had brought it out into the light. He had blurred the lines. She had gone to leave, neither of them had noticed the photographer, and now he has ended up in hell.
Miss Parker has another martini.
DECEMBER 2001
He comes to her house three times in December, almost once a week, and the last time is on Christmas Eve. He sits on a straight-backed chair in her lounge room, and she sits on his lap, his bare chest to her bare back, and her legs are straddling his, and his cock is inside of her. Outside it is snowing, but inside he is cupping her breasts, which are rose-tipped and golden in the light of the fire. She knows, in the back of her mind, that they have recreated the scene at Ocee’s, the way it should have gone. They are breathing slowly, in time.
He kisses all across her shoulders, and she rocks so very slightly, rhythmically squeezing her inner-muscles around him. His big hands push her breasts up. She’s had half a bottle of wine, and he’s had the other half. His hands seem enormous in comparison to her. She watches as one wanders down to touch her belly, her hip. It arrows through her dark curls, and she moans aloud as his fin fin find her clitoris.
She tips her head back, onto his shoulders, and puts her feet on the rungs of the chair for leverage, pushing, rocking, sliding against him. It feels good. She feels full, with him. He is sucking on her neck, right where her pulse is, and she moans again, because she can. This is what she wanted.
They rock and push their way slowly towards ecstasy, towards slow release that throbs through her and into him, and she’s never had sex like she’s had with him, never felt melded with a lover like she does with him. He holds her long after their breath has evened out, long after the need has abated, against his chest, like treasure.
She is so sleepy, half asleep, and murmurs contentedly against his neck as he carries her into the bedroom. She is tucked under blankets and sheets, and is so warm and comfortable that she begins to doze. She frowns, in her state of almost-sleep, because he is not beside her.
JULY 2002
For the first time, Miss Parker wakes beside him. It is morning, there is sunshine in her bedroom, and he is in her bed. Jarod smiles when he sees she is awake. His face is bruised and his lip is cut, but it is the most beautiful thing she has ever seen.
“You got out!” she says in astonishment.
She wriggles across the bed, into his arms, pressing kisses against his mouth, his jaw, his neck. He wraps her up, pulls her tight, and kisses her properly, even though she knows it must hurt him.
“Jarod,” she sighs, and touches his cheek.
Miss Parker closes her eyes, so he cannot see her tears, and pushes her face into his neck. She takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying not to sob, and squeezes him even tighter. He feels good in her arms, warm, strong, male. She can feel his heart beating next to hers.
“I was… I was afraid,” she says awkwardly.
“I know,” Jarod says. He knows everything she was afraid about.
They make love. Jarod kisses and touches her into arousal, groaning when her small hands slip across him, delighting in the sunshine in her hair. Miss Parker smiles when he slides inside of her, holds him so close he can hardly move, and when she is brought to a thundering release, she says his name, over and over again.
In afterglow, he lies on top of her. She finds his weight comforting, and cradles him close. He nuzzles her hair with his nose, and smiles sleepily at her. She wants to tell him that she didn’t help the Centre find him, that she didn’t know what to do, that she didn’t think she’d ever see him again. But it can wait.
“Run away with me,” he says.
She shifts slightly, curls her foot around his calf and pushes a lock of hair off his face.
“Yes,” she says.
The End.
Author’s notes: The episodes I used for the various dates in the story and occasionally make reference to are, in chronological order, Keys, Gigolo Jarod, Red Rock Jarod, Ties That Bind, Junk and, of course, The Island of the Haunted movie. You can find a synopsis for each here -> http://www.mydailyplanet.com/00-episodeindex.htm