Bearing the Risk

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by templemarker

Notes: For the “Painplay (other)” square of kink_bingo. Burn Notice, Michael/Fi, painplay kinky NC17 etc etc. Early season three. Thanks to those that entertain my fits and starts.

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Fi’s nails raked across Michael’s back and he stifled the noise that wanted to escape his mouth.

Her smile took a cruel edge, and Michael felt his own face fall into the expressionless mask that had gotten him through more than one interrogation. “Fi,” he said carefully, willing himself not to look at his back to see the blood she probably drew, “I know you can be catty, but you might want to retract those claws.”

She stepped back, the outline of her lean, toned frame visible in the light from the club next door. It poked through the holes in the grating, covering the white dress she wore and the tanned skin she showed with flickering, washed-out light. Michael watched her run a hand from the column of her long neck down between her breasts to rest at the barely-legal hem of her skirt. Slowly, agonizingly, she pulled at the fabric until Michael could almost see the scrap of fabric over her cunt in the half-light. And Michael had very good vision.

“Michael,” she said, and there were times in a dozen different countries when he woke up hearing his names on those lips; those dreams hadn’t gone away, having her here in front of him. She took one step, then another, up towards the place where his bed was kept. His bed, that had too quickly become theirs.

“Michael,” she said again, and every cell in his body was telling him to pick her up and haul her into that apartment, but he didn’t, and he watched her hand drop.

“Michael,” and this time, her voice held that note of sorrow that made him leave her in a warehouse in Cork. She stepped down from the stairs and walked towards him. In the shoes she wore tonight she was nearly at eyeline with him, and one hand came up to trail his arm. He hadn’t realized his fists were clenched until her fingers brushed them. He didn’t move as she ran her hands over him, over his skin, like she owned some part of him when he had taken every precaution to make certain there were no parts of him to own.

Then her nails dug into the wounds she had only just made, and his face screwed up in pain that he couldn’t hide from her.

“I’m waiting for you to catch up, Michael,” she said, her accent coming through thick with emotion. “I keep stopping and waiting and wanting, but you’re so damnably slow.” Her fingers dug in again, and he couldn’t control the hiss the escaped his lips. Her other hand crept to the front of his trousers, rubbing at the erection he’d been nursing all night, until he was caught between the pleasure she was giving him and the pain, too. This was why he couldn’t have her. He gave away too much.

“Don’t you want this?” she asked, her breath chasing his lips that would inevitably part for her. “Don’t you want this life you’ve built?” She rubbed at the wet spot building on his pants. “Don’t you want me?” she questioned, finally breaking her interrogation with a kiss as bruising as she was.

He let her, for a minute, still squeezing at his shoulder, still jerking a little under her touch. He wanted to fuck her, right there on the metal staircase; he wanted her to go back to Ireland and her gunrunning and never have come after him in the first place. He wanted to be back in Nigeria dealing with petty princes for dirty weapons and he wanted the life he had so carefully built to have never crumbled at all.

With every bit of strength and control and training he had, he pulled away, forcing his breath to regulate and his heartbeat to settle. Fiona looked flushed and kiss-stunned, sinful in her rucked-up dress, flecks of his blood on her nails. He couldn’t stop her from taking some part of him, but he could stop himself from asking for more.

“Good night, Fiona,” he said, finality in every word, and he went upstairs and shut the door. As he carefully taped gauze to the wound covered in antibiotic ointment, he kept himself from thinking what do you really want by pressing a little too hard into the marks she had made.

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