Archive of Our Own

“Give us your leg then, Captain.” 

Eddie’s focus snapped away from the drink in his hand to Susie’s face. Doing so meant inclining his head downward, because she was kneeling in front of his armchair. She was kneeling because she was about take his shoes off. She was taking his shoes off because he couldn’t bend at the waist. He couldn’t bend at the waist because there was a bullet wound in his right side. It throbbed fiercely. It felt like someone had taken a hammer to his ribs. He kept having the unnerving sense of being a plush toy with the stuffing come loose.

Eddie focused on the pain. It was the only thing keeping the arousal in check. He slowly extended his right leg toward Susie. Helpfully, pain shot up and down his entire sciatic nerve. Sweat broke out, again, under his chin and between his shoulders. He probably smelled terrible, having gotten into a death-match at Jethro’s apartment. It wasn’t like there was time to shower before going to Johnston-with-a-T’s party. He thought of his smell as he watched Susie’s clever fingers, with their long nails and gold rings, pluck at the laces of his shoes. 

Susie clicked her tongue. “You can do better than this, Captain.” Her nails tapped across the shoe’s toebox. “You’re the Duke, now, Your Grace. You should start dressing the part. Or lacing it up, in this case.” 

“I haven’t exactly had time for a custom fitting, Susie. Things have been…” He quickly downed more of his drink. “Hectic. Wouldn’t you say?” 

The sequins of Susie’s dress glittered as she shrugged. “Have the cobblers come to you, then. It’s more in character.” 

His lips twitched. “I can’t do that, either, now. How would I explain this?” He pointed at the wound. 

Susie gave him the same look his teachers gave him when they accused him of sleepwalking through his classes. You’re better than that, the look said. Stop faffing about and put in some real effort. 

“Hunting accident,” Susie said, blithely. She slid the shoe off and set it aside with the laces left dangling in. “You trapped a wild fox. But at the last second, she slipped the snare, and you had to hold her, tight. And she tried to dig her way loose. Like the story of the Spartan soldier boy.” 

“Dad told you that story, too, did he?”

Susie smiled. He could see why she didn’t smile very often; it was at odds with her usual Ice Queen of Crime thing. It made her younger, sweeter, more human. It crinkled the skin at her eyes and her mouth. But Eddie often felt it swimming beneath her stare, like a seal ready to sun itself when the coast was clear. And he enjoyed teasing it to the surface. 

“A vixen did this?” His voice was lower than he’d meant it to be. “That’s my story?” 

Susie reached for his other wingtip. “If the shoe fits.” 

“Ha. Ha.” He finished his drink. He reached up and poured another, then realized he was being rude. “Sorry. Top up?” 

Susie grabbed her lowball and tried to match his movements. Their hands wove around each other. Finally, Susie plunked her glass directly on his thigh. “There,” she said. “Do you know where that is?” 

“I’m reasonably familiar with the terrain.” 

Eddie kept his eyes on the glass and not on her fingers — God, what was it about her nails? — splayed over his trousers. He tried to fade them, blur them into the background, like a deeply focused photo. The bottle was shaking by the time he finished, and she helped him set it down on the table beside him. 

Susie sipped. She swallowed. She looked up at him through her lashes. “Feeling lightheaded?” 

His ears were actually burning. “Blood loss,” he murmured. 

Susie said nothing. She merely began undoing the laces on his left shoe. When she’d set it aside, her hand slipped up under his trouser leg, and the sensation of her nails scratching their way up his calves was so full of shivery delight he almost kneed her in the face. 

“Ticklish?” Susie started rolling his sock down toward his ankle. 

“Just surprised.” 

“I like to provide a holistic service, like Felix says.” She nodded at the bullet wound. “Did he patch you up, before Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS had her go?” 

“Rosanne was being helpful. In more ways than one.” 

Susie tugged off the rest of the sock with more force than perhaps was necessary. She stuffed it down inside his shoe like she was cramming billiard balls down a deadbeat’s gullet.  “Oh?” 

“With information, Susie. She gave me information, about Johnston.” With a t. “So while you were chatting him up directly, I got a second impression from someone who’s known him for a while. That way we, the two of us, have a more complete portrait of him.”

Why was he explaining himself like she was a jealous housewife? She had no reason to be jealous, and he suspected she’d chew off her own leg before becoming a housewife. But she was reaching up his right trouser leg, more carefully this time, when she didn’t have to be helping him at all. And he’d been late. He’d been late and left her hanging, because he’d cocked up what was supposed to be a very simple side trip. He’d cost them extra money. That warranted at least some explanation.

“Besides. Rosanne has had plastic surgery. She knows wound care. And she’s seen me throw up before, so I’d have felt slightly less awful doing it front of her again, from the pain.” 

Susie’s eyes had gone distant, as though she were weighing up sums. 

“I haven’t come home in years, Susie. My old crowd, what’s left of it, has plenty of reason to catch me up on all the gossip. Including the fact that Uncle Stan is the kind of man who buys Rosannne flights and yachts and diamonds and…” He shook his head. “Christ knows what else.” 

Susie frowned. “She can’t buy her own?” 

Pain knifed through his stomach at his sudden snicker. But the way Susie blinked her — huge, blue, confoundedly innocent — eyes at up at him, he realized she didn’t understand what was funny. 

“Her family is royalty, but they’re not rich. Not in any way that matters. The reason Rosanne stayed with our family over summers is because their home is a tourist destination, and summer is tourist season. Every day, guided tours through their home, just to keep the lights on.” He snorted. “She’s royalty, but you’re more of a princess than she is.” 

Susie’s hand paused on his leg. She scowled. “Sorry?” 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Eddie took a deep swallow of his drink. “I meant that you have an actual empire that you’re fighting to defend, while she, and most of her class, have only the ghost of one. And it’s haunting all of us, rattling its chains around houses that cost the absolute Earth to heat.” 

Susie took the glass from his hand. She threw back the rest of it herself. “I think you’re done, soldier.” 

“Stay,” Eddie said. Then he realized she hadn’t actually stood, he’d simply been anticipating that she would. And he had the further and even more discomfiting realization that part of him had in fact already planned for what to say when she made to leave, so that she wouldn’t. So he added: “You’re no safer to drive than I am.” 

“I drove us here, Captain.”

“True. But we’ve had rather more since then. So you can’t go. It’s not safe.” 

“Not safe.” 

“Not at all.” 

“Are you so concerned with my safety, Captain?” 

Yes. Terribly. “I feel responsible for you,” Eddie said. “I am responsible for you. When you’re in my house. And I’d be responsible, both legally and morally, if you took off into the night and wrapped your car around a tree.” 

“You can’t wrap a Land Rover around a tree.” 

“I’ll try and explain that to your father, before his men pour on the petrol and grab their lighters.” 

Her sudden giggle set her earrings dancing. The firelight caught the emeralds just so, and for some reason he thought of Christmas. A real Christmas: Christmas as a child, when it seemed his parents’ love was real, when they still hosted parties and hired a jazz trio and he kissed girls who tasted like rum punch and icing sugar. 

“You’re just trying to save your own skin, soldier.” 

“My skin is your skin.” He blinked. “Wait. No. I mean we’re both…facing the same threats. Together.” 

Holy Christ, he was drunk. That, or he’d lost a lot more blood than he’d originally assumed. Susie stood. She reached across him and slid the decanter outside his reach. Some remote part of him wished she would wear her hair up more often. Then he could see her neck and ears. Susie rested her hands on the arms of his chair. If he stretched his fingers, they would cover hers. 

“Are you saying we’re one flesh, Edward?” 

Eddie rolled his head back to look at her. “Susie, in the past twenty-four hours, I have witnessed a murder, covered fifteen thousand acres at a dead sprint, literally taken a bullet, and made small talk at a party whose idea of a main course was umami cupcakes. I wish we were one flesh.” Too late, he heard himself. So he muttered: “Then the pain might be distributed equally.” 

“Are you in pain now?” 

She smelled like a bakery at Lunar New Year. Lotus and pineapple and honey. Druggingly sweet. Like something cooked low and slow for hours and hours, until it finally surrendered and broke down to its simplest sugars. 

“Yes.” 

Susie’s gaze dredged over him. Susie stepped closer. Somehow, through grinding pain, Eddie widened his legs to let her do so. One of her nails found a stray thread in the chair’s upholstery. “Is there anything I can do to make it better?” 

God, yes. Yes, please. Please, now. Now, before I lose my nerve. “I imagine so.” 

Her eyelashes fanned over her face. “Let’s start with your shirt, then.” 

“What?” 

“I should soak it,” she said, as her nails worked the buttons. She moved quickly and quietly. Eddie thought of heist films. He felt like he was a security system she was re-wiring: un-weaving and re-weaving him in the dead of night, cutting in, changing signals, making him a thing under her control. 

“Soak it?” 

“I run a boxing gym, don’t I? I know how to get blood out of…” She seemed to weigh her words. “Anything, really.” 

She pulled the shirt free of his waistband and he made a genuine sound of pain. “Sorry,” they said to one another, in unison. 

“Maybe I should do the belt first?” Susie asked. 

“Please,” Eddie said, and then he felt her actually slowly, carefully, almost teasingly pulling the excess back. Helpless, he looked down to watch her fingers moving. A second later he saw his own outline, a subtle shadow on black trousers, and the way Susie’s fingers just barely brushed it and then didn’t. It was a miracle there was any blood left in him at all, not to mention this much. “Please. Susie.” 

“I know,” she murmured. “I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“You won’t.” Eddie needed someplace to put his hands. He settled for Susie’s arms. He ran his fingers up and down them, feeling how delicate the lace was that covered them. Someone had sewn those emerald sequins by hand. He was going to shred her sleeves. “You should…” He was struggling for air. “I might…”

“Don’t worry, Captain. You won’t hurt me, either.” 

His belt buckle clinked. It was the single best sound he’d ever heard. Better than the last school bell, better than a starting pistol, better than kettle whistles or cocktail shakers. 

“I might hurt your pretty dress.” 

“Do you think it’s pretty?” She seemed to examine it anew, as she pulled the buckle slowly backward. “I found it somewhat matronly, compared to the competition.” 

“You’re not in competition with anyone.” 

Her hands paused. “I didn’t make the team?” 

He somehow had it in him to laugh. Then he winced. “No, Susie. They’re in relegation. You are Geoff Hurst at Wembley in ’66.” 

Pink spread up her neck. She was undoing his top button. “You think I can score three times in the final?” 

Marry me. “Pretty sure you can score as many times as you like.” He was raking her sleeves. It helped distract from the sensation of each individual tooth of his zipper coming apart at roughly the same speed as his composure was. “Ref’s bought and paid for. Run any play you want. Pitch is yours.” 

Susie made a skeptical noise as she pulled his shirt free at last. “I don’t know. That sounds kind of…” Her eyes locked on his. “Dirty.”

“Filthy,” he agreed, as she fanned his shirt aside. Christ, how had he not known how good — how right — her hands would feel, on his chest and his shoulders as they pushed his shirt back? How good it felt just being petted and stroked? “Corrupted. Irretrievably.” 

Something like sadness crossed her features. “Do you think I could ever win on merits?” She fussed with his collar. “You know. Skills? Talent? Dedication? Think I could score without the ref being bought and paid for, first?” 

Eddie took hold of her hands. He pulled them low over his heart. “Any day of the week.” When she didn’t smile, he reached up and ran the backs of his fingers over one cheek. “I’ll prove it. Dress out.”

Susie frowned. Her facade slipped just a tiny bit. “You mean I should-”

“Take off your dress for me, Miss Glass.” Susie blinked wide eyes. Then she moved, as though in a daze, to stand and reach for the fastenings of the gown. Eddie stopped her just in time. “No, wait, don’t. Let me. I want to. Sit.” 

Susie perched at the edge of his chair. Following the direction of her fingers, Eddie unhooked the frogs at the top of her gown. Then he pulled down the zipper, and very carefully, forcing himself to savour it, folded the the lace of her gown back from her skin and pushed the sleeves down her arms.

“If I could bend forward, I’d be kissing you here.” He traced his middle finger down her neck and watched goosebumps follow in its wake. 

“I would let you,” Susie replied. Those, Eddie decided, were the best four words in the English language. 

“Would you let me unhook this?” he asked, sliding a finger between her spine and corset. “Not all the way. Just so you can breathe better.” 

Susie twisted to peer at him over her shoulder. “You’re saying you don’t want it off, all the way?”

It occurred to him that he might be dying. That the bullet had in fact ruptured something major and he was bleeding out. His cold, dead body would be found in Jethro’s apartment tomorrow, tangled up in a headphone cable and clutching an engraved invitation to Stanley Johnston-with-a-T’s party. This, right now, was just the final twinkling synapses of his brain giving him one last hurrah. 

“Not before I see the rest of it.” 

She grinned, and stood. The gown whispered free of her, and she stepped out of it. Eddie had a moment to think of where she should put it — hung up next to his clothes, or spread across his duvet — before she turned to face him, and every rational thought evapourated. 

Eddie had known, on some level, that Susie would look good enough to eat. What he hadn’t expected was how shy and sweet she would look with her hands behind her back, how soft, how her skin would glow in the dying orange light. How he’d be torn between the urge to make her scream and the impulse to cradle her close. That he’d be genuinely conflicted about which road to take.

“Susie…” He plucked the air with his fingers, and she stepped back inside the V of his legs. The corset, stockings, and belt were black, and minimalist to the point of being utilitarian. The only concession to frivolity were the garter stays: where he’d expected ribbon, there were elastic strands of tiny seed pearls. 

“They’re real,” Susie murmured, as his thumb ran over them. “But maybe you should check?” 

Eddie needed no further instructions. He darted forward, pain be damned, and licked up the nearest strand of pearls. Susie hissed. One of her legs stumbled; Eddie tugged behind her knee and stabilized it on the chair inside his thigh. He kissed and unclipped as he went, blindly pushing her stocking down with one hand with the other gripped and groped and pulled her closer. She was unclipping the other stocking, now, fussing with it and cursing at it as he found new stretches of thigh for his mouth and tongue and teeth to go. Susie yelped and tensed, muscles clenched in his hands. He pulled back to look up at her. 

“It’s all right,” she reassured him. She braced her hands on the arms of the chair. “Just…sensitive.” 

Eddie paused to re-examine her thighs. She was smooth. Unspeakably smooth. So smooth he now wished he’d shaved more closely. And now that he really looked, he saw faint pink and purple discolourations, like bruises or sunburn, leading straight to the centre of-

“Susie?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Did you get this done recently?” 

“Yeah. This afternoon. For the party. Last minute appointment. Not because of-” Her gaze fluttered away from him. “I didn’t expect, I wasn’t planning, I just thought-”

“Does it still hurt?” He made his fingers looser, lighter, more teasing. “Should I be more careful?” 

Sweat had curled the silky little baby hairs at the nape of her neck. “Maybe. A little. I mean I can handle it, it’s not-”

He blew cool air very gently across her skin. Susie made a sound somewhere between falling down stairs and winning at pub trivia. “Edward, stop, I’ll fall, I’ll hurt you, I’ll-”

“No, you won’t.” He unsnapped the heroically thin strip of fabric beneath her. She was wet and swollen and her arms shook on the chair when his fingers just barely grazed her. “This isn’t balsa wood and glue, Susie. It’s eighteenth-century Georgian walnut. Which you well know, given your love of antiques.” She twisted over him, almost dancing, trying to follow his finger as he drew it closer and closer to him. “Whole generations of my family have likely been conceived in this chair.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’ve got-”

“I’m not worried. About anything. A day that started with gunshots has ended in the best way possible. Fate, it seems, is on my side.” 

He continued just barely caressing her. Susie was flummoxed. Frustrated. Poleaxed. He could tell by the way her mouth kept working as her hips kept twisting. Her hair had already begun falling from its pins. She looked suspicious. Wary. And suddenly he saw it, as though the Bowmore and the blood loss and the adrenaline had opened some vast dreamtime for him. The men Susie met most often were trying to get into Bobby Glass’s good books via his daughter’s pants. They were toughs: thugs, gangsters, thieves. They were on some level terrified of her. It came out in the form of attempts at domination: slapping, choking, name-calling. Porn sex, not real sex. She’d likely never had anyone treat her like, well, a gentleman. 

“Now may I please be allowed to give you a kiss, Susie? I’ve been so awfully good.” 

Susie was blinking very bright eyes. She nodded, jerkily, rolling her lip between her teeth. She tried to move, but Edward had already pulled her to him and he was kissing the core of her like it was a virgin in a supply closet at a debutante ball. It’s just a kiss, a very helpful older woman had told him once. Stop trying to turn it into a Street Fighter combo. Stop button-mashing. It’s just a kiss, and you’re already good at kissing, Eddie. 

“Sweet Jesus fuck-”

He was very good at kissing. 

“Edward-”

Extremely good, one might say, when properly motivated. And he was truly, madly, deeply motivated. 

“Edward, I-” Her nails raked across his shoulders and up his neck and into his scalp. “I’m-”

He was motivated because he couldn’t fuck her properly, and he very much wanted to be given the chance later on. Preferably after receiving stitches and antibiotics. 

“Ed-” 

The rest was a howling scream smoothered by red upholstery and horsehair. She went slack. He slowly guided her back to kneeling on her haunches. Susie was making snuffling little girl sounds into his neck. 

“There, now. I said you wouldn’t fall, and you didn’t. You did beautifully.” He kissed along her bare, trembling shoulder. “Let’s take this off so you can breathe, hmm?” 

He undid the garter belt, tossed it aside, and started unhooking the corset. It was surprisingly easy: it had been made with a few large clips and not a million small ones. He threw the corset as far as he could. It wasn’t far, given the pain in his side. Susie took a deep gasping breath that might have been a sob. She clung even closer, still trembling. Aftershocks, probably. He ran his hands up and down her neck and back and shoulders. Thank God she’d unbuttoned his shirt; being this close without feeling her skin-to-skin would be torture. 

“That’s better, isn’t it?” She was still shaking. A very dark thought crossed his mind about the men she might be more used to and the kind of experiences that might lead her to want to hide her face at this moment, when all he wanted to do was kiss her. “Thank you for letting me do that. For trusting me.” 

“I don’t normally-” She gulped air. “Normally, I can’t, like that, that way-”

He smiled into her neck. “Now you’re just trying to make a dying man feel better.” 

Susie pulled away. Her eyes were actually wet. “No, seriously, I mean it-” She followed the direction of his gaze and snapped her fingers. “Oi. Look at me.” 

“I am looking at you.” Eddie lifted his eyes dutifully. His hands rose with them. She was already pebbled and rough. And where she wasn’t, she was heavy and soft and squeezable. “You look cold. Are you cold, sweetheart?” 

Susie’s mouth opened and closed, then opened again as her breath came fast and light. “Maybe?” 

Eddie applied his mouth and his hands rather liberally. He was drunk, on many things, and now that she was more relaxed, so was he. So he squeezed and rolled and plucked and tested, while his tongue confirmed what his brain and cock had long suspected — she was perfect here, too. (Perfect for him. He didn’t give a shit about anyone else’s opinion.) She was soft and full and eventually, when he didn’t hurt her, she rested her arms on his shoulders and caressed his hair. He purred. 

“Do you like that?” 

He opened his mouth wider, to get his answer across. 

“Do you like doing this, for me?” 

He rumbled assent. 

“That’s good, because…” She was weaving a little. Grinding on his safe leg. “It’s good. It’s really good, and I’m glad you-”

Eddie popped free of her with a delightful sucking sound, and trained his finger directly beneath her. He made a come hither motion “Here? Do you need me here?” 

Susie gave a tiny, emphatic nod. She sank down around him so molten hot, he briefly wondered if she was in pain. Her mouth made an equally tiny little O shape. It grew much wider when he crooked his finger forward and angled the heel of his hand up so she could rock against it. Eddie gave a silent prayer of thanks to years of frustrated piano teachers. 

“Can you do the work, sweetheart? I’d like to concentrate on what I was doing before.”

“Yes.” Susie rocked against his hand. “Yes, I can do that.” 

“Thank you,” he said, and returned to his former studies. 

“You’re…” She angled herself. Pitched and rolled. He could feel his target at the edges of his fingers, a stitch of embroidery in silk, like a lover’s name hidden in the hem of a skirt. “You’re so…” He pinched ever so slightly harder. “You’re so very welcome,” she said, and sucked his earlobe tenderly between her teeth. He pinched and bit and pressed, hard. Susie Glass broke like borosilicate: a perfect instrument exposed to sudden heat and fracturing on hidden lines. She was whole and hard and clear, and a second later she was in pieces, jagged and glittering, flooding him. It took him a moment to understand what had happened; his first thought was that he himself had come right along with her. The pain was probably the only reason he hadn’t.

“Sorry!” She wrenched away from him and stumbled backward to her feet. He’d seen foxes in crates with less fear in their eyes. “I’m sorry. That’s never happened before. Really. I would’ve warned you, I swear. I can clean them. Or have them cleaned. The trousers. Your staff doesn’t have to know…”

“Do you think you could get them framed?” He nodded downward. “The trousers. I want to hang them somewhere. Like a jersey with a retired number.” 

In case Susie didn’t yet grasp the point, Eddie took a deep inhale from his knuckles, as though he were testing a cigar, and sucked his middle finger into his mouth. She had sort of a Oloroso sherry flavour, sticky and complex. Susie swallowed at the same moment he did. 

“Oh,” she said, as though finally having solved a riddle. “Right. I suppose that’s possible.” She approached his chair slowly, in halting little steps, and her path was not straightforward. “But I should still make it up to you, just in case.” 

Eddie wished he were wearing his glasses. Then he could peer over the rim of them, which would help to communicate the point he was trying to make. “Should you? Or do you want to?” 

“I want…” She licked her lips. “I want to know that I can?” 

“That’s a question, not an answer.” He took hold of her hand. “Susie. I’ve lost blood. I’m not good for much more, at the moment. And even if I were, you wouldn’t have to do anything for me. This isn’t a transaction.” He ran a thumb over her knuckles. “Unless you felt like going over to that bed and lying naked in my sheets until sometime after the next bank holiday. I would fucking love that.” 

Susie turned very bright pink, everywhere, and looked down at her toes. My sweet girl. My precious, darling girl. She had gooseflesh everywhere. This must be how Geoff felt about every stray kitten he found. Like he wanted to pick them up and put them in his breast pocket and walk around with them next to his heart, all day. 

“Go on,” he said, nodding toward the bed. “Go warm up. You’re freezing.” 

Susie shook her head. As she did, more of her hair fell free of its pins. She squeezed his hand, then withdrew it, and began pulling the pins loose. Eddie thought, suddenly, of grenade training. She shook her hair loose around her shoulders. 

“Edward?” 

“Hmm?” 

“May I please give you a kiss goodnight?” 

“You can kiss me anytime you like, Susie, in case I somehow haven’t made that…” She was on her knees. “Abundantly…” Her hands were trailing up his thighs. “Clear.” 

She reached for him. He stopped her hands. “I’ve been distracted,” he said, quickly. “And the aforementioned blood loss. I’m not where I was at a little while ago. I don’t know if-”

“You seem to be in the same general vicinity,” she said, trailing her fingernails under him. “I mean, it’s not like I drew a map, or anything, but I like to think I’m a fairly organized person. I remember where I left things.” 

“You didn’t leave anything. I distracted you.” 

“Maybe I was waiting for you to sober up, a little,” she said, pulling him loose. “Maybe that was my evil plan, all along.” 

“Oh, fuck me,” he murmured, looking at himself in her hands. 

“Should I be as gentle with you as you were with me?” She ran a single fingernail all along one vein. “Probably, yeah? Given the gunshot of it all?” 

“Yes,” he said, and his voice was embarrassingly thin. “Please.” 

“But later, I could be rougher,” she said, firming her grip just slightly. “Later, both of us, we could be a little…messier. Yeah?” 

He knew what she was doing. It was working. There were increasingly visible metrics of success. “Yes.” 

“But for now,” she said, nuzzling him, stroking him with her cheek, “this is good?” 

“So good, Susie.” He could scarcely breathe. “Christ, you’re beautiful. Should’ve told you-”

Her tongue, when not busy issuing orders, was capable of the most delicate little baby kitten licks.

“Should’ve told you tonight; sorry; I was in pain and pissed off and-”

She was kissing him. Kissing along the length of him, the way she might the inside of his wrist or under his jaw. Not unlike the way she’d kissed and licked and sucked his earlobe. 

“If I weren’t bleeding everywhere, he’d never have taken you outside; I wouldn’t let him; sharing a cigar with you, that prick-”

Susie smiled a little, and nuzzled him some more. Almost as though she were reassuring him. Soothing him. His hand settled in her hair. “Is this all right?” 

She nodded.

“Good. Because I can’t not touch you. While you do this. For me. Oh fuck-” She’d drawn him inside, and the sight of it alone had him most of the way there. The sweet hot silken clutch of her, and the slow drag of her tongue along him, was doing the rest. His other hand stroked her cheek. “Fuck, that’s perfect, Susie; you’re an angel-”

Her lashes fluttered and she took him a little deeper. His hips jerked and one of her hands clamped down on his thigh, trying to keep him in place. She pulled off him. “Later,” she said, firmly, “you can fuck my throat. But not when you’ve got a hole in your gut.” 

Eddie, trapped between questions like Really? and I can? and When? nodded mutely. He leaned back in the chair and slid down a little for good measure. Then she was on him again and his head rolled back and her hand reached up and he was kissing her knuckles, her wrist, her pretty fingers. She purred and thrummed and when he looked down, her earrings danced in the light cast by embers as her head moved and her body squirmed-

“Three.” Susie’s eyes darted up to look at him, questioning. He sucked her two middle fingers into his mouth. He kissed the tips of them on their way out. “You can score a third time, right? For me?” 

Her eyes sparkled. He returned her hand, and it disappeared, and she made a sound of such utter relief it actually licked up his spine. “That’s it,” he murmured. He stroked her hair back from her face. Tried very hard not to grip it too tight. “That’s my girl. That’s my sweet, precious, lovely, good-”

Susie whimpered. It was like she was hungry for the praise itself. Never having heard much of it himself, Eddie suddenly wanted to lavish it on her. 

“Darling girl works so hard, does everything all by herself; I should lock you up and spoil those perfect tits and that pearly clit every day, princess; get you off your feet and on your back and give you a good…looking…after-”

A tiny little scream sounded in Susie’s throat, and it was all he needed. He gripped her shoulder, tried to pull away, but only made it half way. He spurted down her neck and her chest and possibly even on one of her earrings, which he very much hoped she never noticed. She was filmed over with sweat. A shower would be nice for them both, assuming Eddie could ever walk again. Susie laid her head on his thigh. 

“Oh, Captain my Captain,” she murmured. 

Eddie laughed. I love you. “Thank you, Susie. That was…perfect.” He ran a thumb over her lower lip. “Give us a kiss, love.” He pointed at his own lip. “Here.” 

Susie groaned, either at his attack of soppiness or at being asked to bestir herself. But she shakily stood on her knees and climbed into the chair, still careful not to jostle him. She reached for his jaw. “Ready?” 

He shook his head softly. “No. But when’s that ever stopped Susie Glass?” 

She tasted like him, and like Bowmore, and like cigars, and she kissed like she was already half-asleep and dreaming. But she made a little mewling sound when he pulled away, and instead of trundling off to bed she reached down and picked up his coat from the floor. She pulled it around both of them and sealed herself to his chest. 

“Still want me off your land?” 

He dropped a kiss on her crown. “My apologies, but I want your organization off my land even faster, now.” 

He felt her frown on his skin. “What? Seriously?” 

“Seriously.” He slid his arms around her, under the coat. “As in, I seriously never want that to be interrupted with work. So if that was your plan, it backfired spectacularly.”

Susie made a dismissive sound. “We can lock the door.”

“Locked doors aren’t good enough. Imagine Jimmy pounding on the locked door while I’m keeping the British end up.” Susie was giggling, now. Eddie couldn’t stop smiling. “It would be…sacrilege. Blasphemy. Against my sincerely-held spiritual beliefs.”

“Oh, so you want to worship me, then?” 

“I do worship you. Or hadn’t you noticed?” 

Susie nestled herself more deeply into his neck. “Driving you to the doctor later. Get you all fixed up.” 

“Thank you, darling.” 

“…’night, soldier.” 

He reached for her hand and kissed it. “Goodnight, princess.”