Chapter Text
Halla moaned softly as Michael kissed her stomach. She was fairly certain that there wasn’t an inch of her skin he hadn’t kissed in the last thirty hours. He continued kissing his way up her abdomen, trailing his tongue along her sternum. His hands closed over her breasts as he moved up her body and his thumbs circled her nipples as his tongue plunged into her waiting mouth. She moaned again, tasting herself on his lips and she ran her nails down his back, making him arch his back. She loved the feel of him under her hands; it was like petting a jungle cat, sleek skin and strong muscles and barely restrained power.
She hooked one of her legs around Michael’s thigh as she kissed his throat, mouthing at his Adam’s apple. It was rough against her tongue with his stubble and she bit softly, getting a groan from Michael in response. She could feel him hard against her even through his pants and part of her brain wondered if he had any condoms stashed in his living room or if they were going to make another pilgrimage to his bed.
She pressed her hips upward, circling them against him as she continued kissing down his throat when there was a knock at his door. She paused and looked up at him. He shook his head. “They can come back later if it’s important.” She went back to his neck, that long delicious column of skin and licked at the flesh where it merged with his shoulder. She blew against the moisture, making him shiver as it evaporated and continued to kiss across his shoulder as he pressed kisses into her hair.
Again the knock at the door. She rubbed her hips against him again, tightening her leg around him. She didn’t want to stop now, not when he was resting between her legs, his hard cock rubbing against her heat with each movement of her hips. She rubbed her hands down his back, slipping her hands inside his pants and scraping her nails over the firm curves, smiling against his shoulder as the muscles tensed under her hands.
This time it was a pounding at the door. She could feel the muscles knotting under her hands and mouth before he got to his feet. He stalked across the room to the door and Halla debated whether or not she should tell him that there was a definite darker area on the front of his pants where he had been rubbing against her, but she heard the door yank open before she could make up her mind.
“What?” he demanded. There was a pause of a second before the door slammed shut.
Michael walked back into the living room, rubbing a few fingers against his chin as he grinned. “So, it’s James. I forgot he was coming over for the Scotland-Ireland rugby match this afternoon.”
Halla scrambled to her feet and ran for the bedroom and Michael chased after her laughing. He hurried into a pair of jeans and headed back down the stairs pulling on a shirt while Halla rifled through her bag. They had made it to her flat long enough yesterday to get her clean clothes for the weekend so at least she wouldn’t have to go downstairs wearing Michael’s shorts, but this was going to be so embarrassing. Maybe Michael would just let her hide in his bedroom until James left again.
She pulled on a pair of knickers and slumped down on the edge of the bed as she realized the pair she had been wearing was somewhere – she wasn’t really sure where they had ended up when Michael had taken them off her earlier – downstairs. Not that pink lace was going to stand out at all in his nice masculine living room. That’s it. She was just going to stay in here forever.
She stared at the ceiling for a minute before she realized she was hungry. Damn her stomach. She pulled on a pair of jogging pants and a t-shirt and went downstairs and straight into the kitchen. She opened the fridge only to find the leftovers of the take-away from last night and a six pack of some microbrew that hadn’t been there earlier. James must have brought it. Someone was really going to have to teach that boy to buy some veg at the market or he was going to die of scurvy or rickets or something suitably Victorian sounding. She called out, “I’m ordering food. What do you want?”
“Hello, Halla.”
She felt her face heat at the laughter in his voice. “Hello, James.”
“Order pizza.”
“No, get Chinese food, with the barbeque pork.”
“Chinese isn’t rugby food.”
“Neither is pizza.”
She grabbed her laptop off of the table and set to ordering food, Chinese and pizza and Salvadorean. She had a craving for pupusas. A few minutes later she went into the living room and took a seat next to Michael on the sofa, thankful that he had taken the center position and was covering up the wet spot that she was positive she had left earlier. The pre-game babble played quietly in the background as the three of them regarded each other awkwardly.
“So, poppet, I wasn’t expecting to see you here today.”
“I wasn’t expecting to see you either.”
“That much was fairly obvious.” His nose crinkled as he nodded repeatedly. Halla sighed and rested her head on her knees. She was going to die. She was going to prove that it was physically possible to die of embarrassment. She was going to be famous. For dying. She’d be in books. Her death would advance the cause of science. It would totally be worth it.
She could feel Michael shaking next to her with repressed laughter and smacked him in the thigh. “This isn’t funny,” she muttered.
He picked her up and seated her in his lap. “It’s a little funny.” He wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, “And I have your knickers in my pocket.”
Halla wondered how it was possible for her to still be blushing after everything that had already happened, but she felt the familiar heat in her cheeks again and hid her face in her hands again. “You’re such a boy,” she murmured.
“So,” James dragged out the word, turning the vowel into music, “how long have you two been…canoodling?”
Halla giggled. “Canoodling? What are you, a grandmother?”
He chuckled and scratched at his beard. “It seemed a bit more polite than shagging.”
Halla snorted. “A day.”
“Ah, so this is new then?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Just wondering if my plan worked.”
Halla looked up at Michael in confusion, but he didn’t seem to have any more idea of what James was talking about than she did. “What plan?”
“I could only put up with so much of Michael here crying into his Guinness–,”
Michael’s chin lowered as he gave James a dirty look. “I didn’t cry.”
“Mooning then. Mooning over you.” James’s smooth Scottish slipped into Michael’s deeper, slightly rougher Irish accent. “Should I call her? Maybe I should go by the museum. Do you think it’s been long enough? I’m going to call her. No, I’m going to wait. No, I’m going to call her.”
Halla looked at Michael, biting her top lip to keep from laughing. She could feel a tremor in her cheeks though. “You were mooning?”
He huffed. “I may have asked for advice a few times.” He ran a finger along her jaw and fixed her with his compelling eyes. “I didn’t want to fuck it up again,” he said softly, and Halla’s breath caught in her throat as she got a small insight into how much he regretted what had happened in Rotterdam. Her smile softened and she snuggled into him, resting her head against his shoulder.
“I told him Anne-Marie was sick and suggested he call you to go to the premiere.”
Michael’s head popped up from where he had been resting his lips against Halla’s forehead. “You mean she wasn’t ill?”
“No.” He grinned. “I lied.”