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sga_flashfic2006-11-22 07:07 am
tielan) wrote in sga_flashfic2006-11-22 07:07 am
Entry tags:
fic: Two To Tango by Tielan [Song and Dance Challenge]
Title: Two To Tango
Author: Tielan
Summary: Agent John Sheppard stops for a night in Buenos Aires, and the pulse of the music rides his soul as his partner rides his desire - without mercy.
Pairing: John/Teyla
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,700
Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis isn't mine.
Notes: Because someone mentioned John and Teyla dancing the tango and the muse ran off with it. This originally started out as 'Sheppard, John Sheppard', then turned into 'Caldwell's Angels' and then...kinda got off-track. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dzurlady for the beta!
Two To Tango
John was tired of the hunt.
Another flight, another city, another hotel.
Rodney might sneer at 'the high life' of the field agents, but he'd never lived out of a suitcase for weeks on end - sometimes months.
And John was tired of this hunt in particular.
Last night, what he'd wanted was to fly home walk in his door, hug his wife, and park himself in front of the TV for a couple of hours, while the dog chewed on his shoes. Of course, it probably would have helped if he'd had a wife, a TV, or a dog back at the spartanly-furnished apartment on the Baltimore foreshore, but that was a minor detail.
That had been last night before the meeting with Mitch Halloran.
That had been before he acquired the missing pieces.
For reasons unknown, the Agency had authorised him to remain in Buenos Aires overnight before heading back to the offices in DC to make his report.
Her last message had been simple beneath the decryption: Meeting tonight about the Hell's Angel report and the Ferryman. Information to follow.
It never did. She vanished without a trace, leaving only the lingering scent of Chanel No.5 in her locker - a classy scent for a classy lady, Zelenka had declared in his excessive Slavic way.
Life and business went on in the halls of the CIA Atlantis Project the way it always did when an agent went MIA; the Wraith crime syndicate continued to grow like dandelions, spreading with noxious insistence through the Americas and dipping their long, thin fingers into every black-market pie on the planet; and the hunt for the Hell's Angel report and the Ferryman continued without the information Agent Elizabeth Weir should have provided no less than forty-eight hours after her meeting with an unnamed contact - the meeting during which she disappeared.
The hunt was nearly over. John had the disks.
John sipped at his scotch, savouring the harsh, smoky flavour as he leaned his elbows against the bar. The plucked notes of the guitar hung delicately in the hot night air as he watched the dancers on the floor.
He'd almost chosen to spend the night in his room, rather than down in the club that the hotel sported in its basement. But he'd hesitated out in the gardens, and the music had drawn him in, mere bait for the hook that awaited.
Cherchez la femme, went the saying. Look for the woman.
John was looking at her now.
She'd danced on the edges of his awareness from the moment he walked in the door. Tanned and untamed, she was sleek as a seal and alluring as a siren.
There were other women in the bar - tall, slender, curvaceous, pretty, charming. A blonde dripping with diamantes and not much else tried to coax him out to dance, and he could have had her with nothing more difficult than a lazy smile.
But blonde was not his style tonight; the direction he was tending towards was dark - sable hair, cedar skin, eyes like shadows, lips like a ripe cherry.
Some men just watched her; others approached. Some were accepted as dance partners, others were refused.
John didn't approach.
Instead, he sat at the bar, drank his scotch, and watched the way those long legs flashed in and out of the short silk flutter of her skirts; watched the hands that curled around a man's nape as she swayed with him, hip to hip; listened for the low clear voice that ran sensuously across a man's nerve endings as she spoke in soft, measured tones.
And when the dance set ended and she looked for a drink, he'd already ordered her preference from the dreadlocked bartender and had it sitting at the empty stool beside him.
He didn't turn around as her hand touched his shoulder, drifting over the Egyptian cotton of his shirt.
She slid into the chair beside him in a graceful movement, facing the bar so her bared back made a sleek line against the reddish lighting of the club. "Thank you." She lifted the drink in a toast, not questioning that it was hers.
"You're welcome."
A lesser man would have slavered as her hair spilled over almost-bare shoulders, as silk clung lovingly to every curve, as one corner of her mouth quirked in amusement.
"Do I owe you a dance?"
John turned to look her in the face, acknowledging what his body wanted and deciding that if she made the offer, he wouldn't say no.
There were some advantages to 'the high life' of an unattached world traveller.
"Do you think you owe me?"
The smile deepened as she stirred the swizzle stick around in her drink. "I believe it would be unwise to owe anything to a man like you," she said as she plucked the cherry from the end of the stick. "One day, you might collect."
His mouth twitched. At the Agency, he was known as a man of his word. "I might." John watched as she sipped at the drink, noting the way her lips parted to suck the maraschino cherry of her cocktail, and briefly thinking about those lips on his body. "So?" He asked, deciding to cut to the chase. "Do you owe me a dance?"
The dark lashes dipped down, shading her eyes as she considered the question. "No," she murmured. "I do not believe I do." Disappointment coiled tight loops in John's belly a moment before the lashes raised and she looked him in the eye. "I do not owe you a dance, but I believe I wish to dance with you all the same."
"A free ride?"
Her eyes gleamed with laughter at his innuendo. He'd judged her right, then. "Do you prefer astride or sidesaddle?"
John's body tightened at the very visual image of her naked body beneath him, strong thighs cradling his hips as he thrust into her, every shove pleasure. He tossed down the last of his scotch and slid a hand onto her knee. "Finish your drink and let's find out."
He led her out onto the floor as the band began a tango - Spanish guitar and light, tonal drumbeats with a syncopated beat to the rhythm. John smiled as he turned towards her. "Can you follow?"
She stepped into place with a glitter of dark eyes, her head tilting back to look at him as they stood, chest to chest, belly to belly. "If you can lead."
At the agency, it was scoffed that John Sheppard could never resist a challenge, whether it was a competition or a woman. As her fingers slid into his, and his hand settled on the supple line of her waist, John reflected that this exotic siren was both.
On the dance floor, they moved with a grace that drew the eye, stepping and turning, she following his movements with barely a hesitation, he learning her balance and style.
His breath caught when he misjudged and pulled her too hard against him. He felt the press of her breasts against his chest for one blurring moment, before they corrected and moved on. Her lashes flickered up, and her next step between his legs was close enough for thigh to press briefly against thigh before she stepped neatly away.
Step, turn, flare, step, step, flare, turn... The beat beneath the guitar's melody was like a heartbeat rhythm, a pulsing ache in his blood as her fingers rested lightly in his, her hand warm through the thin material of his shirt as they stood close. He could feel the flutter of her skirts through the material of his trousers, teasing him as they moved back and forth across the floor.
Individually, they were striking - the cant of her cheekbones too angular for conventional beauty, the lines of his face too long for acceptable hunkitude. But together - ah, together! - they were like a fine brandy, carefully kept.
John intended to savour it.
And when he looked down into the smoky dark of her tilted eyes, he saw that she was enjoying the partnership as much as he.
Brutal heat slid through his veins as he drew her around the floor. If he looked directly down the valley between her breasts would be soft shadows, and if she tilted her head back a little further, John knew he'd kiss her and let the fire take them both.
The staccato music came to an end with an ascending arpeggio and a rattle of maracas, and the audience applauded - both for them and the other dancers on the floor.
Breathing was an effort, the air stolen from his lungs by the sheer sensuality of both dance and partner. Judging by her slow exhalation, John wasn't alone in the restive desire that swept him up in a fierce grip.
The curve of her mouth deepened, mere inches from his. "Well led."
"Well followed," he answered, surprised that he could speak at all, and that his voice sounded almost normal. "Care for another?"
"Another drink first, perhaps," she said without relinquishing his eyes. "Will you join me?"
At her signal, the bartender had drinks for them - another scotch for John and a gin and tonic for her. The rims chimed like bells in the warm night and they drank without taking their eyes from each other.
Then they danced again; hip-to-hip this time, slow and dangerous in the hot night. Amidst the yearning strains of the violins and the pulsing staccatos of the guitars, her hands toyed with the hair of his nape as his thumbs stroked the dimples in the small of her back.
Perhaps they made a scene; John wasn't sure and couldn't have cared less.
He wanted her hands on his skin in reckless abandon, her voice in his ear like a serpent's whisper. He wanted her under him, over him, as ubiquitous as water and as necessary as air. He wanted to lose himself in the dark of her eyes and the heat of her body.
And she wanted him. A brilliant flush rose in her cheeks as his body stirred against her, and she angled her hips against his.
John had watched her most of the evening, and she'd been distant as the moon to each of her partners; what happened in the dance, stayed in the dance, and she was their partner but not a participant in their desire.
He was happy to be different.
"Want to go somewhere quieter?"
Dark eyes lifted to his, and her thumb ran the line of his jaw up to his ear, his five o'clock shadow rasping against the pad. "I will have to think about it," she murmured.
John figured that meant at least one more dance while she made up her mind.
Then, as they turned with the music, she rose up on her toes, touching her lips to his in a soft, exploratory kiss. It was only a moment, a slow tasting of the possibilities ahead of them. John briefly tasted the full curve of her mouth before she began pulling away.
His hands tightened on the slope of her waist in involuntary spasm, but he let her go. The music swayed on, unhindered by their interlude, and John forced himself to take two careful breaths before asking, "Do you need to 'think about it' again?"
The music swung and swayed around them, a pulsing bloodbeat in his chest, in his belly, in his balls. And her eyes were lazy and hot beneath the thick sweep of her lashes.
"No," she said. "We may leave."
"One more thing."
Her lips curved and she angled her face up to his, expecting a kiss.
John obliged her, but only briefly. He'd take and taste her later. What he wanted was something else. "Do you have a name?"
"You may call me Emma."
"And I'm John." At her eyebrow, he murmured, "You'll want to know whose name to scream."
She laughed, a pulsing ripple that sent tingles down John's spine. "You are very sure of yourself, John."
"It's a personal flaw." Then, because that lovely mouth was still so close, he bent and kissed her again, tugging at her lips and tongue with his teeth until he was close to drowning in the taste of her, feel of her. From the laughter and comments around them, John knew they were making a scene, and he didn't care.
When John drew back this time, they were both breathing heavily.
"Satisfied?" Emma asked.
"Not even close."
"Then perhaps we should fix that," she suggested, that smile teasing her lips again.
John led her off the floor, paused to hand over a bill to the bartender, and slid a hand around her waist as they departed.
He remembered very little of the trip up to Emma's hotel room, only that the elevator was too private to resist pulling her back against him. One hand skimmed up her leg, and found the lacy edge of a stocking high on her thigh. In revenge, she pressed one buttock into his groin and shifted, eliciting a groan John muffled in her hair.
Outside her room, Emma fumbled with the key as John swept her hair over a shoulder the colour of burned honey and bit down, giving in to a need to taste her skin, to mark it in possession.
He lingered over the line of her neck where it joined her shoulder, salt, sweet, and smooth, then slid up to her earlobe.
"Eager," she laughed as the keycard slipped into the electric slot.
"Desperate," was his answer as the light went green and they shoved their way into the room with more haste than class.
Judging by the soft moan she made beneath his lips, and the way her hands slid under his shirt edge to scrape against his belly, she didn't mind his desperation at all. And Emma was bold, knowing, and quite shameless when it came to sex, which was exactly the way John liked his women.
They nearly didn't make it to the bed at all.
Afterwards, John buried his face in her shoulder, spent and exhausted, but utterly satisfied as she panted beneath him. "Nice."
She smelled fragrant, even after sex, both earthy with musk and sweat, and lightly floral with whatever perfume she'd been wearing tonight. Hm. Or maybe that was just her shampoo.
John's mind was beginning to drift in the liquid aftermath of orgasm. He hadn't had sex this good for months. Possibly years.
Emma laughed at his lethargy, a soft chuckle in his ears. "Well-pleased?"
"Yep."
She stretched beneath him, careless as a cat as she slid her arms over his shoulders. "Good."
John pushed himself up on one elbow and traced a finger down her cheek and throat to toy with her nipple. He felt oddly languorous. "Did I return the favour?"
Emma shifted under him, a small movement, but effective. "I believe you did."
John grinned and bent to kiss his way up her throat to her mouth. He went slowly, because he felt as though he could fall asleep right here in her bed. "Give me a few minutes...and maybe we...can go...again..."
Abruptly, exhaustion washed over him like a wave, sinking him like a torpedoed sub. His eyelids felt so heavy and he couldn't seem to move his arms...
Realisation hit him like fist in the balls. His eyes flew open and he stared into dark eyes that were no longer so soft or heated and felt his stomach lurch.
Cherchez la femme.
He'd been played.
"I am sorry," she said as she rolled him onto his back, the sleek muscle of her body suddenly taking on new angle. John could only lie there, staring at her in an anger that couldn't quite find purchase as the world folded in at the edges. "But she owes us a debt and it cannot go unpaid."
John felt cold as those eyes watched him fall back, back, back into night.
Perhaps there was regret in them.
Perhaps not.
He woke to a headache the size of Texas, naked as a newborn, with the sunlight pouring in through the open curtains of the hotel room.
--
Notes: Think of it as Stargate Atlantis meets Alias... Not that I ever watched Alias. Although Rodney is so Q. The 'classy' comment was by David Nykl at a convention in Sydney, October 2006 and I snurched it.
Author: Tielan
Summary: Agent John Sheppard stops for a night in Buenos Aires, and the pulse of the music rides his soul as his partner rides his desire - without mercy.
Pairing: John/Teyla
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 2,700
Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis isn't mine.
Notes: Because someone mentioned John and Teyla dancing the tango and the muse ran off with it. This originally started out as 'Sheppard, John Sheppard', then turned into 'Caldwell's Angels' and then...kinda got off-track. Thanks to
dzurlady for the beta!Two To Tango
John was tired of the hunt.
Another flight, another city, another hotel.
Rodney might sneer at 'the high life' of the field agents, but he'd never lived out of a suitcase for weeks on end - sometimes months.
And John was tired of this hunt in particular.
Last night, what he'd wanted was to fly home walk in his door, hug his wife, and park himself in front of the TV for a couple of hours, while the dog chewed on his shoes. Of course, it probably would have helped if he'd had a wife, a TV, or a dog back at the spartanly-furnished apartment on the Baltimore foreshore, but that was a minor detail.
That had been last night before the meeting with Mitch Halloran.
That had been before he acquired the missing pieces.
For reasons unknown, the Agency had authorised him to remain in Buenos Aires overnight before heading back to the offices in DC to make his report.
Her last message had been simple beneath the decryption: Meeting tonight about the Hell's Angel report and the Ferryman. Information to follow.
It never did. She vanished without a trace, leaving only the lingering scent of Chanel No.5 in her locker - a classy scent for a classy lady, Zelenka had declared in his excessive Slavic way.
Life and business went on in the halls of the CIA Atlantis Project the way it always did when an agent went MIA; the Wraith crime syndicate continued to grow like dandelions, spreading with noxious insistence through the Americas and dipping their long, thin fingers into every black-market pie on the planet; and the hunt for the Hell's Angel report and the Ferryman continued without the information Agent Elizabeth Weir should have provided no less than forty-eight hours after her meeting with an unnamed contact - the meeting during which she disappeared.
The hunt was nearly over. John had the disks.
John sipped at his scotch, savouring the harsh, smoky flavour as he leaned his elbows against the bar. The plucked notes of the guitar hung delicately in the hot night air as he watched the dancers on the floor.
He'd almost chosen to spend the night in his room, rather than down in the club that the hotel sported in its basement. But he'd hesitated out in the gardens, and the music had drawn him in, mere bait for the hook that awaited.
Cherchez la femme, went the saying. Look for the woman.
John was looking at her now.
She'd danced on the edges of his awareness from the moment he walked in the door. Tanned and untamed, she was sleek as a seal and alluring as a siren.
There were other women in the bar - tall, slender, curvaceous, pretty, charming. A blonde dripping with diamantes and not much else tried to coax him out to dance, and he could have had her with nothing more difficult than a lazy smile.
But blonde was not his style tonight; the direction he was tending towards was dark - sable hair, cedar skin, eyes like shadows, lips like a ripe cherry.
Some men just watched her; others approached. Some were accepted as dance partners, others were refused.
John didn't approach.
Instead, he sat at the bar, drank his scotch, and watched the way those long legs flashed in and out of the short silk flutter of her skirts; watched the hands that curled around a man's nape as she swayed with him, hip to hip; listened for the low clear voice that ran sensuously across a man's nerve endings as she spoke in soft, measured tones.
And when the dance set ended and she looked for a drink, he'd already ordered her preference from the dreadlocked bartender and had it sitting at the empty stool beside him.
He didn't turn around as her hand touched his shoulder, drifting over the Egyptian cotton of his shirt.
She slid into the chair beside him in a graceful movement, facing the bar so her bared back made a sleek line against the reddish lighting of the club. "Thank you." She lifted the drink in a toast, not questioning that it was hers.
"You're welcome."
A lesser man would have slavered as her hair spilled over almost-bare shoulders, as silk clung lovingly to every curve, as one corner of her mouth quirked in amusement.
"Do I owe you a dance?"
John turned to look her in the face, acknowledging what his body wanted and deciding that if she made the offer, he wouldn't say no.
There were some advantages to 'the high life' of an unattached world traveller.
"Do you think you owe me?"
The smile deepened as she stirred the swizzle stick around in her drink. "I believe it would be unwise to owe anything to a man like you," she said as she plucked the cherry from the end of the stick. "One day, you might collect."
His mouth twitched. At the Agency, he was known as a man of his word. "I might." John watched as she sipped at the drink, noting the way her lips parted to suck the maraschino cherry of her cocktail, and briefly thinking about those lips on his body. "So?" He asked, deciding to cut to the chase. "Do you owe me a dance?"
The dark lashes dipped down, shading her eyes as she considered the question. "No," she murmured. "I do not believe I do." Disappointment coiled tight loops in John's belly a moment before the lashes raised and she looked him in the eye. "I do not owe you a dance, but I believe I wish to dance with you all the same."
"A free ride?"
Her eyes gleamed with laughter at his innuendo. He'd judged her right, then. "Do you prefer astride or sidesaddle?"
John's body tightened at the very visual image of her naked body beneath him, strong thighs cradling his hips as he thrust into her, every shove pleasure. He tossed down the last of his scotch and slid a hand onto her knee. "Finish your drink and let's find out."
He led her out onto the floor as the band began a tango - Spanish guitar and light, tonal drumbeats with a syncopated beat to the rhythm. John smiled as he turned towards her. "Can you follow?"
She stepped into place with a glitter of dark eyes, her head tilting back to look at him as they stood, chest to chest, belly to belly. "If you can lead."
At the agency, it was scoffed that John Sheppard could never resist a challenge, whether it was a competition or a woman. As her fingers slid into his, and his hand settled on the supple line of her waist, John reflected that this exotic siren was both.
On the dance floor, they moved with a grace that drew the eye, stepping and turning, she following his movements with barely a hesitation, he learning her balance and style.
His breath caught when he misjudged and pulled her too hard against him. He felt the press of her breasts against his chest for one blurring moment, before they corrected and moved on. Her lashes flickered up, and her next step between his legs was close enough for thigh to press briefly against thigh before she stepped neatly away.
Step, turn, flare, step, step, flare, turn... The beat beneath the guitar's melody was like a heartbeat rhythm, a pulsing ache in his blood as her fingers rested lightly in his, her hand warm through the thin material of his shirt as they stood close. He could feel the flutter of her skirts through the material of his trousers, teasing him as they moved back and forth across the floor.
Individually, they were striking - the cant of her cheekbones too angular for conventional beauty, the lines of his face too long for acceptable hunkitude. But together - ah, together! - they were like a fine brandy, carefully kept.
John intended to savour it.
And when he looked down into the smoky dark of her tilted eyes, he saw that she was enjoying the partnership as much as he.
Brutal heat slid through his veins as he drew her around the floor. If he looked directly down the valley between her breasts would be soft shadows, and if she tilted her head back a little further, John knew he'd kiss her and let the fire take them both.
The staccato music came to an end with an ascending arpeggio and a rattle of maracas, and the audience applauded - both for them and the other dancers on the floor.
Breathing was an effort, the air stolen from his lungs by the sheer sensuality of both dance and partner. Judging by her slow exhalation, John wasn't alone in the restive desire that swept him up in a fierce grip.
The curve of her mouth deepened, mere inches from his. "Well led."
"Well followed," he answered, surprised that he could speak at all, and that his voice sounded almost normal. "Care for another?"
"Another drink first, perhaps," she said without relinquishing his eyes. "Will you join me?"
At her signal, the bartender had drinks for them - another scotch for John and a gin and tonic for her. The rims chimed like bells in the warm night and they drank without taking their eyes from each other.
Then they danced again; hip-to-hip this time, slow and dangerous in the hot night. Amidst the yearning strains of the violins and the pulsing staccatos of the guitars, her hands toyed with the hair of his nape as his thumbs stroked the dimples in the small of her back.
Perhaps they made a scene; John wasn't sure and couldn't have cared less.
He wanted her hands on his skin in reckless abandon, her voice in his ear like a serpent's whisper. He wanted her under him, over him, as ubiquitous as water and as necessary as air. He wanted to lose himself in the dark of her eyes and the heat of her body.
And she wanted him. A brilliant flush rose in her cheeks as his body stirred against her, and she angled her hips against his.
John had watched her most of the evening, and she'd been distant as the moon to each of her partners; what happened in the dance, stayed in the dance, and she was their partner but not a participant in their desire.
He was happy to be different.
"Want to go somewhere quieter?"
Dark eyes lifted to his, and her thumb ran the line of his jaw up to his ear, his five o'clock shadow rasping against the pad. "I will have to think about it," she murmured.
John figured that meant at least one more dance while she made up her mind.
Then, as they turned with the music, she rose up on her toes, touching her lips to his in a soft, exploratory kiss. It was only a moment, a slow tasting of the possibilities ahead of them. John briefly tasted the full curve of her mouth before she began pulling away.
His hands tightened on the slope of her waist in involuntary spasm, but he let her go. The music swayed on, unhindered by their interlude, and John forced himself to take two careful breaths before asking, "Do you need to 'think about it' again?"
The music swung and swayed around them, a pulsing bloodbeat in his chest, in his belly, in his balls. And her eyes were lazy and hot beneath the thick sweep of her lashes.
"No," she said. "We may leave."
"One more thing."
Her lips curved and she angled her face up to his, expecting a kiss.
John obliged her, but only briefly. He'd take and taste her later. What he wanted was something else. "Do you have a name?"
"You may call me Emma."
"And I'm John." At her eyebrow, he murmured, "You'll want to know whose name to scream."
She laughed, a pulsing ripple that sent tingles down John's spine. "You are very sure of yourself, John."
"It's a personal flaw." Then, because that lovely mouth was still so close, he bent and kissed her again, tugging at her lips and tongue with his teeth until he was close to drowning in the taste of her, feel of her. From the laughter and comments around them, John knew they were making a scene, and he didn't care.
When John drew back this time, they were both breathing heavily.
"Satisfied?" Emma asked.
"Not even close."
"Then perhaps we should fix that," she suggested, that smile teasing her lips again.
John led her off the floor, paused to hand over a bill to the bartender, and slid a hand around her waist as they departed.
He remembered very little of the trip up to Emma's hotel room, only that the elevator was too private to resist pulling her back against him. One hand skimmed up her leg, and found the lacy edge of a stocking high on her thigh. In revenge, she pressed one buttock into his groin and shifted, eliciting a groan John muffled in her hair.
Outside her room, Emma fumbled with the key as John swept her hair over a shoulder the colour of burned honey and bit down, giving in to a need to taste her skin, to mark it in possession.
He lingered over the line of her neck where it joined her shoulder, salt, sweet, and smooth, then slid up to her earlobe.
"Eager," she laughed as the keycard slipped into the electric slot.
"Desperate," was his answer as the light went green and they shoved their way into the room with more haste than class.
Judging by the soft moan she made beneath his lips, and the way her hands slid under his shirt edge to scrape against his belly, she didn't mind his desperation at all. And Emma was bold, knowing, and quite shameless when it came to sex, which was exactly the way John liked his women.
They nearly didn't make it to the bed at all.
Afterwards, John buried his face in her shoulder, spent and exhausted, but utterly satisfied as she panted beneath him. "Nice."
She smelled fragrant, even after sex, both earthy with musk and sweat, and lightly floral with whatever perfume she'd been wearing tonight. Hm. Or maybe that was just her shampoo.
John's mind was beginning to drift in the liquid aftermath of orgasm. He hadn't had sex this good for months. Possibly years.
Emma laughed at his lethargy, a soft chuckle in his ears. "Well-pleased?"
"Yep."
She stretched beneath him, careless as a cat as she slid her arms over his shoulders. "Good."
John pushed himself up on one elbow and traced a finger down her cheek and throat to toy with her nipple. He felt oddly languorous. "Did I return the favour?"
Emma shifted under him, a small movement, but effective. "I believe you did."
John grinned and bent to kiss his way up her throat to her mouth. He went slowly, because he felt as though he could fall asleep right here in her bed. "Give me a few minutes...and maybe we...can go...again..."
Abruptly, exhaustion washed over him like a wave, sinking him like a torpedoed sub. His eyelids felt so heavy and he couldn't seem to move his arms...
Realisation hit him like fist in the balls. His eyes flew open and he stared into dark eyes that were no longer so soft or heated and felt his stomach lurch.
Cherchez la femme.
He'd been played.
"I am sorry," she said as she rolled him onto his back, the sleek muscle of her body suddenly taking on new angle. John could only lie there, staring at her in an anger that couldn't quite find purchase as the world folded in at the edges. "But she owes us a debt and it cannot go unpaid."
John felt cold as those eyes watched him fall back, back, back into night.
Perhaps there was regret in them.
Perhaps not.
He woke to a headache the size of Texas, naked as a newborn, with the sunlight pouring in through the open curtains of the hotel room.
--
Notes: Think of it as Stargate Atlantis meets Alias... Not that I ever watched Alias. Although Rodney is so Q. The 'classy' comment was by David Nykl at a convention in Sydney, October 2006 and I snurched it.
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