They were getting dressed. Or trying to. Elektra had her pants halfway up her thighs, standing with her back to him, and Troy was reaching for his jacket on the floor when he saw the cut.
Her collarbone. Shallow, three inches long, still beading blood where the fabric had been pressing against it. One of the Hand operatives had gotten closer than he'd realized.
He stood up. Reached out without thinking. His thumb traced the edge of the cut, feeling for depth, and she caught his wrist.
Fast. Assassin-fast. Her fingers closed around the bone and she didn't twist, didn't pull. Just held.
Her pants bunched at mid-thigh. His jacket in his other hand. Neither of them breathing.
She looked at his hand on her collarbone. Then at his face. Whatever she was searching for, she didn't find it, because her expression didn't sharpen or close off. It just stayed.
She pulled him down.
No teeth this time. No impact. Her fingers slid from his wrist to the back of his neck and she pulled and her knees bent and they went down together, her back hitting concrete, his weight settling onto her without either of them saying a word.
He got the jacket under her. Shoved it beneath her shoulders, her head, because the floor was concrete and she'd just pulled him onto concrete and someone had to think about it.
She watched him do it. He couldn't read her face.
"Take them off." He touched her hip. The pants still tangled at her thighs.
She kicked them down. One leg, then the other. No ceremony. Her boots were already gone from earlier. She lay on the cold warehouse floor in her shirt pushed up to her ribs and nothing else, gooseflesh rising across her stomach, her thighs, the tops of her breasts where the fabric had ridden up. She didn't seem to notice.
He settled between her legs. The difference was immediate. She was swollen from the first two rounds, wet enough that he could feel it against his inner thighs before he was anywhere close. Her body radiated heat against the cold air and the contrast made his breath catch. The warehouse was maybe fifty degrees and she was burning.
He lined up. Pressed the head of his cock against her entrance. Didn't push in. Just rested there, nestled against slick, swollen flesh, and the wetness between them was obscene. He could feel her pulse through the contact point, fast and hard.
Her hips shifted, trying to pull him in. He didn't move.
She looked at him. That analyzing look. Reading his face like she'd read the Hand operatives before killing them. Looking for the angle. The play. A reason she could file this under and dismiss.
He pushed in slowly. The first inch and she was so swollen, so worked over from everything before, that her stomach flexed hard and her breath stuttered and her fingers dug into his shoulders. Then he sank the rest of the way and her eyes fluttered shut and her mouth opened and a sound came out, small, almost nothing.
"Nn."
She was burning inside. Hotter than the first time, hotter than the second. Everything swollen and slick and gripping him in a way that had nothing to do with control - her body clenching reflexively because she'd already cum twice and every nerve was raw. He could feel her pulse through the walls of her pussy, fast and hard, and each fractional movement sent sensation up his spine and into the base of his skull.
He pulled back. Slow. Felt every ridge and texture of her drag along his length on the outstroke, her body reluctant to let him go. Almost all the way out - the head catching at her entrance, the slight resistance of swollen flesh, the cold warehouse air hitting the wet inch of him that was exposed. Then back in. All the way. Every inch deliberate. He watched her stomach ripple as he bottomed out, the muscles in her abdomen contracting around his length like a reflex she couldn't shut off.
He cradled the back of her head. His palm cupped her skull, lifting it off the jacket, off the concrete underneath. His fingers wove through her hair - damp with sweat, splayed across the dirty floor - and held.
Her jaw clenched.
He did it again. Same pace. Same depth. The wet sound between them was quiet and intimate. A slick slide and the soft give of her body taking him in. Nothing like the hard slapping rhythm from before. This was slow enough that he felt every texture of her, every degree of her heat, her inner walls rippling along his cock on the push.
Her eyes snapped open.
She was watching him again. Hunting for a motive she could identify and categorize and file away. A reason this was happening that fit neatly into her understanding of men.
He kept going. Same pace. Same depth. And he held her gaze.
Her hands went to his hips. She pulled, trying to set a faster pace, and he didn't let her.
"Faster." Her first word in what felt like an hour. Tight, controlled - the voice she'd use to give an order in the field.
He rolled his hips instead. Deep, grinding pressure that shifted the angle, and the head of his cock dragged along her front wall and found the spot that was already swollen from the previous rounds. Her breath hitched. Her fingers spasmed on his hip bones. Her thighs tensed against his sides.
"Troy-"
He kept the pace. Slow. The outstroke dragged along her front wall and he could feel the ridges, the heat, the places that made her clench harder when he passed over them. He angled for them on each stroke and her hips bucked and she bit down on nothing and the sound that leaked from her throat was involuntary and desperate.
She was trying to fight this. He could see it in the set of her jaw, in her eyes refocusing on his face like she could analyze her way through what was happening to her body. Two rounds of hard, fast, aggressive sex and she'd held it together. Controlled the surrender. Chose when to let go. Made it look like her decision even when her body was falling apart.
Slow forced her to feel every stroke. The stretch of him pushing in, the drag of him pulling back, the empty ache at the top of each outstroke, the fullness of him sinking back to the hilt. Fast was combat - a pace she understood, a rhythm she could ride and control and time her reactions to. Slow was exposure. Nowhere to hide. No speed to blur the details.
Her breathing changed. Through her nose at first, measured, the same controlled intake she probably used when she was waiting in shadows to kill. Then it broke into her mouth and she couldn't get it back. Her ribs expanded under him, chest rising and falling in uneven pulls, and her breasts pressed against his chest on each inhale, nipples hard through the thin fabric of her shirt, dragging against his skin.
He was still half-dressed. Jeans shoved down his thighs, shirt still on. The denim scraped her inner thighs where his hips met hers and she flinched at the rough texture but didn't push him off, just looked at him with an expression that was slowly losing its edges.
His hand on the back of her head. Fingers in her hair. She turned her face into his palm for half a second - maybe not even on purpose - and then turned back and her eyes went hard again. A wall slamming shut. Her jaw set and her chin lifted and she looked at him like she was daring him to mention it.
He thrust in. Slow. Her pussy gripped him on the push, wet and hot and clinging, and the sound it made was quiet and filthy and her face went red. The blush started at her chest and climbed her throat and reached her cheeks and she couldn't do a thing about it.
"Ah-" One sound. Bitten off at the root.
He did it again and watched her fight the next one down. Her throat worked. Her teeth closed on her lower lip. Her chest vibrated with the sound she wouldn't let out.
He could feel how wet she was getting. Each stroke slicker than the last, her body producing more every time he ground against that front wall, the squelch on the instroke getting louder despite the slow pace. Wetness pooled at the base of his cock where their bodies met. He could feel it running down, warm, soaking into the jacket beneath her.
Her hands moved. From his hips to his back.
They didn't claw. They lay flat against his shoulder blades. Fingers spread. Palms warm. Just holding on.
His chest went tight.
He kept the pace. She was wetter now than the first stroke. Impossibly wet. Frictionless, his cock sliding in and out of her with a slick ease that was its own kind of torture because there was nothing to distract from the raw sensation. No friction to grit his teeth through. Just heat and wet and the grip of her body loosening and clenching in rhythm with her breathing. Each outstroke left him glistening and the cold air bit at the exposed skin for the half-second before he sank back into her heat.
He looked down between them. His cock disappearing into her, the stretch of her lips around him, slick and swollen and flushed dark. The visual on the outstroke - him pulling free, her pussy gripping, a string of wetness connecting them before it broke. He pushed back in and she took him to the hilt and her stomach tensed and her hips rocked up to meet him.
Her eyes were losing focus. The sharp stare that had been pinning him softened at the edges, pupils blown wide, and she was looking at him but not reading him anymore. Just seeing. Her lips parted and stayed parted and her breathing was audible now. Shallow, irregular. A small hitch on every inward stroke that she couldn't control.
The sounds between them filled the empty warehouse. Wet, slow, rhythmic. Her breathing. His breathing. The creak of his jacket under her shoulders when she shifted. No bed frame, no headboard. Just bodies and concrete and the cold air carrying every sound further than it should.
He shifted his hips. Found the angle that had made her buck earlier and held it, grinding into that spot on each stroke. Her back arched off the jacket and her breasts pushed against his chest and her hands pressed flat against his shoulders and pushed and he couldn't tell if she was trying to push him away or anchor herself to him.
"Don't-" she started.
He stopped.
Her eyes focused. Narrowed. The tendons in her neck stood out. "Don't stop."
He didn't.
The sounds got louder as he sank into her again. Her body had stopped resisting. She was soaking, dripping around him, the slick running down between her thighs and pooling on his jacket underneath her. The cold warehouse air hit the wet skin where they separated on each outstroke and she shivered and he pushed back in and the heat swallowed him.
Her legs came up. Thighs resting against his hips at first, feet hovering off the floor. Then her heels settled on the backs of his thighs and she was open and the angle shifted and he was deeper. She made a sound like air forced out of her lungs.
"Hh- nn-"
Her hands on his back. Still flat. Still just holding. He could feel the individual press of each finger on his skin.
His forehead was close to hers. Breathing the same air. Her breath was hot on his mouth and it tasted like copper - she'd bitten her lip hard enough to bleed and he didn't know when. He could see the sweat beading along her hairline, the pulse hammering in her throat, the flush that had spread from her chest to her jaw. Her hair was a wreck on the dirty floor and she didn't care.
Slow. The same pace. He could feel her building. Micro-clenches coming faster and tighter around him, her inner walls fluttering, her body working toward a peak her face was still trying to deny. Her wetness was everywhere now - coating his thighs, the insides of hers, the jacket, the floor. The scent of it mixed with sweat and copper in the cold air.
Her composure was gone. The jaw wasn't set anymore. Her eyes were glassy and half-lidded and her mouth hung open and she was breathing in short, rough pulls that matched his strokes. Her hips had started moving on their own. Small, rhythmic tilts that met him on each push, adding depth she wasn't choosing.
He thrust into her and held. Buried. Grinding. The pressure against her front wall with nowhere to go and her whole body tensed and her toes curled against the backs of his thighs and her nails finally dug in - not clawing, just pressing crescents into his skin.
Her stomach flexed. Her walls clamped down and the tremor started in her thighs and ran up through her core.
She came quietly.
A raw, broken sound from the bottom of her throat that died between her teeth. Her body locked around him - legs tightening, arms pulling him down, her pussy squeezing so tight he couldn't move, could only stay buried inside her and feel her shake apart. Her hips jerked in small involuntary pulses, grinding against him, and he felt every contraction ripple along his length in waves. Her stomach flexed under him and her back arched and her fingers dug into his shoulder blades and held.
He put his hand on her jaw. Gentle. Turned her back.
"Look at me."
She did.
Her eyes were wet. Open in a way he'd never seen on anyone. Whatever lived behind the assassin's discipline, behind the walls she'd built from childhood, behind every deflection and controlled surrender, it was right there on the surface. Exposed. She was looking at him like he'd opened a door she didn't have the strength to close and she couldn't decide if she hated him for it or not.
Her orgasm was still rolling through her. Slow aftershocks that made her clench around him in waves. Sweat on her forehead. Hair plastered to her temples. Tears at the corners of her eyes.
He thrust twice more. Three times. Slow still, into the clenching heat of her, and his own orgasm hit him low and sudden. He came inside her and his hand tightened in her hair and his hips pressed flush against hers and he stayed there, buried, pulsing. She squeezed around each throb. Her legs held him in place. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and relaxed and dug in again with each pulse, matching his rhythm without meaning to.
His breath was ragged against her collarbone. Right next to the cut that started this. Her chest rose and fell under his weight. His pulse in his cock and her heartbeat through her ribs, out of sync. Then not.
Neither of them moved for a long time.
She got dressed with her back to him.
Methodical. Pants pulled up, belt buckled. Shirt tugged down. She found her jacket on the floor near the pillar where round one had started, pulled it on, zipped it to her throat. Hair twisted into a knot. Every gesture was a brick going back into the wall and he could see the mortar setting in real time.
He sat up. The concrete was cold through his jeans. His jacket was soaked with sweat and her and he pulled it on anyway because the warehouse was freezing.
"This doesn't happen again."
She said it with her back still turned. Her voice was level. Clean. Someone who'd already decided.
"Okay."
She turned around. The word had landed wrong. He could see it in the pause, in her weight shifting like she'd been expecting to brace against resistance and the resistance wasn't there.
He didn't know what she'd wanted him to say. Argue, probably. Fight for it. Give her a wall to push against so she could feel right about walking away.
He didn't have the energy for games. And it wasn't a game.
"The Hand has a shipment coming in." She crossed her arms. Back to business, the pivot so clean it would have been impressive if he hadn't just felt her shaking underneath him thirty seconds ago. "Pier 16. Three days."
"What kind of shipment?"
"Weapons. New recruits." Her chin lifted. "I want to destroy it."
"Together?"
The question sat between them. She didn't answer for a beat too long.
"I'll send details." She turned for the exit. The warehouse door was thirty feet away and she walked it without looking back and her stride was perfectly even and she didn't limp and he watched her go.
The door opened. Closed. Her footsteps faded.
He sat on the warehouse floor for a while. Cold getting into his bones. Blood from the fight drying on his forearm. Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off and stopped and went off again. The notification appeared.
[Intimacy Achieved: Elektra Natchios] [Bond Classification: Physical Release] [Emotional Engagement: Denied] [Bonus Unlocked: Enhanced Reflexes - Combat Instinct Sharpening] [Note: Bond classification is based on acknowledged mutual framework. Subcategory analysis suggests-]
He dismissed it before it finished.
Physical Release. The system had looked at what just happened - her hand catching his wrist, the floor, her face turning away when she came - and filed it under Physical Release. Stamped it. Cataloged it. Gave him faster reflexes for his trouble.
The reflexes were already there. A subtle sharpening in his peripheral vision, reaction times clicking shorter, edges crisper. His body was better now because of what had happened on this floor.
He hated how right the system was. He hated more that it wasn't right enough.
He stood up. His knees ached from the concrete. His jacket smelled like her.
Three days. Pier 16.
He left through a different door.