John was just considering the possibility of calling it a slightly early day when a tap on the frame of his open office door made him look up.
Steve was standing there with his phone in his hand, looking a little sheepish. “Hey, partner. I know it’s BlackPatch’s first official day and everything, but you won’t tell the boss if I knock off a little early, will ya? Got a thing I need to take care of.”
“I was just considering doing the same thing myself,” John admitted. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. Just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t mind locking up here and all.”
“Nah, I got it. Go ahead.”
“Thanks, man. I’ll owe you one,” Steve said, and vanished before John could even tell him that really wasn’t necessary.
John spent a few minutes shutting down his laptop and filing the little bit of paperwork that thus far graced his desk. It felt good to have a desk again, to have an office, to have a job. Not that he particularly needed to work from a financial standpoint–selling his share of Basic Black that last time had pretty well taken care of that–but he wasn’t really the sort of man to sit around idle.
I’d rather chew glass, he thought wryly, and chuckled to himself as he slid his laptop into his bag.
He was just reaching for his phone to let Marlena know he was on his way home when he heard the door to the outer office open.
“That was quick,” he called. “What’d you forget?”
But it wasn’t Steve who appeared in his doorway. It was Marlena, smiling mischievously.
“Hey, sailor.”
John stepped out from behind his desk to enfold her in a hug. “Hey, Doc. I was just thinking about you.”
“A good thought, I hope.”
“Always.” He ducked his head to nuzzle his nose against hers. “Now, what’s a pretty lady like you doing in a PI’s office at this hour? You in some kinda trouble?”
“Not yet,” she said teasingly, “but I’m working on it.”
“Oh, really?”
“Mm-hmm. See, there’s this guy…” She ran her fingertips lightly down the button placket of his shirt. “…and he’s been sending me some pretty racy text messages.”
John raised an eyebrow, playing along. “This guy harassing you? Because I can definitely take care of that.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s a game we play.” She flicked open a button. “But I lost a round earlier today, so I figured…” A second button met the same fate. “…that it was time to raise the stakes.”
John ducked his head to whisper into her ear. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, it’s time to lock a couple of doors.”
She giggled. “Not into the extra element of danger?”
“When it would most likely be Steve walking in on us?” John asked wryly. “Not really, no.”
Marlena drew back to look up at him, affecting an innocent expression. “Oh, I’m pretty sure Steve has better sense than to come back.”
John stared at her, suddenly hearing Steve’s voice in his head. Got a thing I need to take care of.
“I’ve been set up,” John said, not without respect.
Marlena laughed. “Yep. Do you really mind?”
“That depends on exactly what you told Steve,” he answered, only half kidding.
“I called him and asked him to skedaddle. And like any trained investigator, he was smart enough not to ask any questions he didn’t really want me to answer.”
“Oh, my God, Doc,” John said, laughing in spite of himself.
Marlena undid another button. “Will you stop worrying about Steve and get with the locking up?”
“You just want a chance to check out my ass as I walk away.”
“Yeah, actually, I do.” She grinned up at him unrepentantly. “So get walkin’.”
John obliged, locking both the outer door and the door to his private office before returning to take her in his arms again. “How was the view?”
“It requires further examination,” she answered, and slowly slid her hands into his back pockets.
He made a little growling sound and sank his fingers into her hair and kissed her deeply, reveling in the way her body arched into his. God, how he loved the feel of her like this, all heat and softness and surrender. Her head grew heavy in his hands, and he deepened the kiss still further, letting her taste the fire her touch kindled in him.
She moaned into his mouth and clutched at him reflexively, rolling her hips against his.
John broke the kiss and nuzzled his way back to her ear. “Why do I suddenly get the feeling,” he murmured, deliberately dropping his voice into its lowest register, “that you didn’t get much work done this afternoon?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted breathlessly. “I couldn’t, not after–”
He drew her earlobe into his mouth and sucked softly, flicking his tongue lightly against the sapphire stud.
She made a sound he immediately wanted to hear again, a breathy little gasp of pleasure. “Oh! Oh, John–”
He lowered one arm to wrap around her lower back and stepped into her, backing her up against the wall, carefully making sure she didn’t bump her head. She looked a little dazed anyway, and he allowed himself a moment to just drink in the sight of her like this, hair mussed from his hands, lips swollen from his kiss, pupils blown with desire. It triggered something possessive in him, a primitive masculine thing that wouldn’t be denied.
Mine, he thought, and lowered his mouth back to hers.
Over the course of the next few minutes he succeeded in getting the breathy gasp out of her again, along with several other, equally delicious sounds. She was back to doing battle with his shirt buttons–he noted with a certain degree of pride that her manual dexterity wasn’t quite as good as it had been earlier–and when the shirt finally yielded she went right on to his belt buckle with equal determination.
John reached down to catch her hands. “Whoa, Doc, slow down.”
“I don’t want to slow down.” There was fire in her eyes that matched her tone, and John knew better than to argue outright.
“Then tell me what you do want,” he challenged instead, bringing their joined hands up between their bodies. “Tell me what you thought about all afternoon.”
She gave him a playfully defiant look. “You know the answer to that.”
“I want details.” He slowly drew her hands up farther still, leaning in between them to whisper, “And if you want your hands back anytime soon…”
He pinned her in a single swift movement, wrapping his hands around her wrists and pressing them back against the wall over her head, putting enough strength into it to genuinely overpower her.
Marlena gasped and jerked, reflexively pulling at his grip with a fairly good bit of her own strength.
John didn’t release her, but his eyes were fixed on hers. It had been a long time since they’d played this way, and if he saw even the slightest sign of genuine distress…
But she stilled, and her breathing slowed, and after a moment all the tension went out of her at once.
“You’ve got me now,” she murmured, smiling again. “So what are you going to do with me?”
He ducked his head to whisper into her ear again. “That depends on what your fantasy was about.”
“It wasn’t a fantasy. It was a memory. Of the two of us in your old office at Basic Black.”
John nuzzled her throat, smiling against her skin. “You’re gonna have to be more specific, sweetheart. We had a lot of fun in that office.”
“Mm-hmm.” She tipped her head to the side, giving him easier access. “I was remembering the day I ambushed you…from underneath your desk.”
John groaned and bit lightly at the soft skin under his mouth. She’d hit squarely on one of his best memories of that old office. Hell, one of his best memories, period. He’d come back from some meeting and sat down at his desk–
–and damn near gone into orbit when Doc’s familiar voice suddenly spoke about two inches from his knee. He’d pushed his chair back to ask her what in the world she was doing under there, and she’d knelt up between his legs and… Well, he’d ended up in orbit, all right.
Because that remained, to this day, the single most spectacular blowjob he’d ever received. More than fifteen years later he could still feel the heat of her mouth and the silk of her hair twined around his fingers, could still see the look in her eyes as she watched him, could still hear the soft sounds of pleasure she made as he got closer to the edge. She had completely overwhelmed him that afternoon. It was maybe the most purely wanted he’d ever felt.
And the memory still made him so hard it almost hurt. He really, really needed to get out of these jeans before–belatedly, John realized that he was basically leaning on Marlena panting into her neck, his hands still wrapped around her wrists.
She laughed softly. “I see there’s no need to ask you whether you remember.”
It took him a minute to find his voice. “You must be confused, Doc,” he finally managed. “I think you spent the afternoon in my fantasy instead of yours.”
“Really?” She turned the tables on him and shifted so that she could whisper against his ear this time. “If you think you had more fun that afternoon than I did, then we do need to refresh your memory.”
He drew back enough to look at her. “You’re serious?”
“Does that actually surprise you? That I would fantasize about that?”
“A little,” he admitted.
She looked up at their hands, then back at him, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Let me go, and I’ll show you.”
John was smart enough to recognize that he’d already lost control of the situation. If, indeed, he’d ever had control of the situation. Sometimes with Marlena it was a little hard to tell. But that was part of what he loved about her.
He released her, bringing her hands down to his shoulders and letting go of her wrists.
She smiled up at him and softly said, “Kiss me again.”
He did, not objecting this time as her hands returned to his belt buckle, then found the buttons of his fly. The relief of pressure was so intense that he swayed a little as she freed him. She untucked his shirt but made no move to push it off his shoulders, just letting it hang open as she slowly ran her hands up his chest.
Up, and then just as slowly back down, pressing soft, open-mouthed kisses to his breastbone as her hands continued downward, one wrapping around his hip and the other tracing the conspicuous bulge in his boxer-briefs through the open fly of his jeans. John swayed again, breaking the kiss to try to breathe.
“Time for you to sit down, I think,” she murmured, and nudged him backward toward the desk. “Hope you don’t mind sitting on the desk this time and letting me have the chair. I’m not quite as flexible as I used to be.”
Which was news to John, considering some of the things they still got up to. But by that point he would gladly have hung from the ceiling fixtures if she’d asked him to, so it was certainly no problem to sit on the desk. He sat and leaned back on his hands, making room for her to stand between his knees.
She made a show of looking him over, her gaze traveling slowly from his eyes to his package and back up again. “Mmm, Mister Black, you look good enough to eat.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Hungry?”
“Oh, I am. I definitely am. But I’ve always preferred not to eat standing up.” She lowered herself into his chair and took a moment to adjust it to suit herself.
John laughed softly. “Make yourself comfortable there, Doc.”
She finished with the chair and slid forward to trail her fingernails up his thighs, scratching lightly at the denim and very effectively shutting him up. “Wouldn’t want to get a crick in my neck. I do plan to be down here a while.”
John let his head fall back and focused on breathing. She’d barely touched him, and he was already thinking that a while might be a tall order. But Marlena took pity on him, sort of, and gave him a minute to compose himself, stilling her hands on his hip bones and just lightly circling her thumbs there.
Until he brought his head up and looked down at her again. She hadn’t been exaggerating, he saw–she looked every bit as turned-on as he felt. She looked into his eyes for just a moment, then lowered her head to rub her face against the soft fabric of his underwear, nuzzling him through it. It was an exquisite sensation. He managed to keep still until she started breathing on him–hot, deliberate puffs of air that penetrated the fabric and made him twitch.
“Have I ever told you…” God, he could feel her voice. Was she actually trying to kill him? “…how good you smell when you’re turned on?”
He managed a sound in response, which might have been yes, no, or almost anything in between.
Marlena laughed softly–evil, evil woman–and finally set about freeing him from his boxer-briefs, taking her time about it. Partly as a tease, he knew, but also partly because she was always remarkably gentle about this. He’d always privately suspected that she must have accidentally hurt a guy once, probably whoever had been lucky enough to be her first, and that she’d never forgotten the lesson. Whatever the reason for it, he always savored that extra little bit of care she took with him in these moments.
Then at last she had him in hand, and the sight of her licking her lips was enough to make him twitch against her fingers.
“Welcome to your new office, Mister Black,” she said, giving him a scorching look before lowering her head. “Brace yourself.”
And he actually did try, but the first touch of her mouth nearly undid him anyway. It was like a thousand-volt straight current to every nerve ending in his body at once, and he moved without meaning to, his hips jerking once before he could force himself to be still again.
“Sorry,” he gasped.
She laughed–and damn, but that was an interesting sensation–and redoubled her efforts, doing the same thing again but even more intensely.
John gave up on any semblance of self control. If she needed him to be still she could easily let him know, but she didn’t seem to mind and this just felt too good. He braced back on his left arm and brought his right hand around to sink his fingers into her hair. He wouldn’t pull, but he just had to touch, had to have some way of telegraphing to her exactly how incredible–
She did something different with her tongue on the next stroke, and the filter that normally kept him from cursing in front of her failed spectacularly.
“Fuck!” It came out on a harsh, explosive breath, wrung from someplace deep inside him.
She did it again, and his vision started to tunnel. He fought it, panting, not willing to let go yet. He wanted to stay here a while longer, wanted to keep riding this edge where the pleasure almost hurt.
Mercifully, she backed off a little, not releasing him but dialing down the intensity just enough to let him breathe. He ran his fingers through her hair, gently brushing it back from her face. She glanced up, and their eyes met for an instant, a connection pulsing between them that had nothing to do with what they were doing and everything to do with who they were.
Then she got back down to business, and in just a few minutes he felt himself nearing the point of no return. They had a rhythm going now, and he waited for an upstroke to tug lightly at her hair, knowing she liked to have some warning. What she did with that information varied, but she liked to know.
Tonight she kept right on doing what she was doing, and he stopped fighting the pressure building inside him. His peripheral vision whited out, and the roaring in his ears grew louder and louder until finally light exploded behind his eyes and pleasure pulsed through him in rapid, shattering waves.
When he returned to himself he was surprised to find her standing between his legs with her arms wrapped around him. His face was pressed into her neck, and it took him longer than it probably should have to realize that she’d caught him to keep him from sliding off the desk.
“Wow,” he murmured, too thoroughly mind-blown to do any better than that.
Marlena laughed into his hair. “Yeah, I’d say that about covers it.”
He slowly ran his hands up her back, feeling a more relaxed looseness in her muscles than he had expected. “Did you…”
“Mm-hmm,” she confirmed, giving him a little nuzzle. “About the same time you did, and then you missed both of us nearly ending up on the floor.”
“Ah.” His brain dropped a little more fully back into gear, and he drew back enough to look at her in genuine puzzlement. “Are you still dressed?”
She lost it completely, dropping her head forward against his chest and laughing until she lost her breath. “Oh, honey,” she finally managed, still giggling. “I’m even better than I thought I was.”
“That’s a fact,” he agreed, and wrapped his arms around her to add, “Round Two to you, Doc.”
“Oh, I dunno about that–I kinda thought we both won.”
“Yeah.” He rested his forehead against hers and gazed into her eyes. “Yeah, we did. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She smiled softly. “The new office feel more like home now?”
“It does, yeah, but home-home would feel even better. You drive here?”
“Nope. I left my car at the hospital. So you get to drive, and I get to curl up in the passenger seat and enjoy the afterglow.”
“Normally I’d say that sounds a little unfair, but I’m feeling remarkably good at the moment.” He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her deeply, then reluctantly released her. “Bathroom’s between my office and Steve’s. I’ll be out in just a minute after I, uhm…tidy up a bit in here.”
Not that there had been much stuff on his desk to begin with, but things were sort of everywhere. To say nothing of the fact that he wasn’t still fully dressed, and he could hardly drive home like this.
She laughed again and headed for the door, and he let her get most of the way there before he called her name. Not Doc, for once, but her actual name.
“Marlena.”
She stopped and half-turned, looking a question at him.
“You amaze me.” The words seemed completely inadequate once they were out there, not in any way up to the task of conveying what he really meant.
But the look in her eyes told him she’d gotten the message, and it was this, amazingly–this, after everything else they’d just done–that caused her to blush. “John…”
He shook his head, not needing a reply. “Go on. I just wanted you to know.”
“I know,” she assured him quietly, then turned and disappeared out the door, leaving him to straighten up his desk and contemplate what an incredibly lucky man he really was.
*****
The Jarlena Journal 