Five: Push

AN: Thanks as always to fhestia for being my beta for this, and snapekat for being such an encouraging cheerleader.

Always a challenge. From the first moment he'd met her to this very instance.

Of course, he never shied away from a challenge. More often than not it was a weak swat that he had no trouble deflecting in his customary cool disdain. It had been years since any challenge had been sufficiently strong to make him flex his muscles, with most of those willing to try having given up long ago at ever really making an impression in that impenetrable façade.

She'd pissed him off from day one. At first, he'd thought it a deliberate attempt on her part to aggravate him, but he'd seen her do the same with others, though with not quite the same depth of effort. The certainty of her assertiveness had many hesitating, unsure in the face of her outright and rather blunt honesty.

He remembered feeling surprised when she'd given him a verbal slap, and then angry that he'd not been fast enough to think of a suitable retort. Lack of practice had made him rusty and dulled the edge of his invective, leaving him open to her jabs. He hadn't liked that. He hadn't liked it at all. And he'd liked her even less.

That didn't faze her in the slightest. She didn't play the popularity game that others did. If they didn't like what she had to say, then so be it, and she was fairly undiscerning whom she blessed with the brunt of her forthrightness.

Naturally, it amused him no end when someone copped a face-full of her attitude. He lost his sense of humour when he got a dose of it, especially if someone else witnessed it.

So he sharpened the blade of his repartee on the whetstone of her insolence until he won almost as many vocal battles as he lost. She hadn't liked that. She hadn't liked it at all. And that had piqued his interest.

He'd thought she had as much grace as a punch to the face. The lack of finesse and subtlety in her conversation fooled him into thinking she wasn't as sly as he was. Yet she knew things about him before he'd even realised them in himself, harbouring an unfair advantage that unbalanced the playing field in her favour. She seemed to find it amusing that she could get one step ahead of him. In fact, she revelled in it, waiting for him to catch up just so she could jump ahead of him once more. Their exchanges had left many wincing and backing away from the carnage lest they get hit by the shrapnel.

But her methods were more varied than he had first realised, as dextrous as she was overpowering, switching between her weapons with a honed skill that left him in grudging admiration. She was a terrifying adversary if the situation dictated it. He couldn't imagine that many would have had the guts to stand against her, and he wondered if that disappointed her. He knew what that was like.

So, he deliberately pushed her until she snapped, letting the acid roll over him as he smirked at her, the scent of his victory in the air the second her face shifted into steely outrage at his gall. He liked that. He liked it a lot. And he kept doing it.

Admittedly, it did sometimes backfire, leaving him smarting internally as she bared her teeth at him in that smile that was both insulting and enervating. But the successes were too addicting to stop him from trying. He learned new ways to push her that didn't involve words. Sometimes the simplicity of a blank look would be enough to have her huffing in annoyance. Sometimes, when he stood close enough, he could feel the static of her agitation run through him, making his muscles tense in anticipation. The risk was worth the reward if the cut could go both ways. He grew to love the sting of it.

His attraction to her had snuck up on him long before he'd been conscious of it. It had taken someone else pointing out his unusual behaviour around her to make him realise that it was too late. She'd found the chink in his defences that he thought he'd closed over long ago. He hadn't like that. He hadn't liked it at all. But he fell anyway.

He tried to hide it, and wonder of wonders, she seemed not to notice. He didn't know whether or not to be disappointed at that. Not long after, he'd learned that she harboured strange notions about her physical appeal to such an extent that the idea that she should seem attractive to a member of the opposite sex caused an excessive amount of hilarity in her. The lack of guile and willingness to prey on a man's gullibility both mystified and intrigued him.

He found himself wishing she would touch him, and it caused a flush of embarrassment in him. He eschewed physical contact with others, preferring to stand beyond the normal radius of personal space in denial of his physical need to connect with another person. Connection meant being open to hurt, and quite frankly he'd had more than his fair share of that. He still wished she would touch him.

She'd granted that wish, though not quite in the manner he had hoped for. She'd driven her fist into his midriff in a stark demonstration of the ineffectiveness of his supposed control over her. He'd been lucky to escape with not much more than wounded pride. He'd spent the remainder of the evening seething in his bolt hole, resenting her success over him like a thwarted child. His dreams that night had been disgusting. He'd liked that. He'd liked that a lot. And he wondered if she'd let him try those things out on her.

Circumstance arose that allowed him to see her as more than a knife-wielding, sarcastic virago that did little more than agitate him or give him a hard-on, usually at the same time. He'd seen her near-drown in the depths of bone-deep despair, buckle under a bitterly cruel burden placed upon her by others, and stumble in exhaustion towards a death he'd pulled her back from. She'd felt rather strongly that it meant that she owed him something. A part of him did crow in possessiveness at that, and it shamed him even as it appealed to him that he could make her do what he wanted and she would not refuse him. Most of him, however, recoiled from such a disgraceful possibility. He wanted her to come to him willingly, not under the duress of obligation, and the chances of that were so close to zero that he should have given up even thinking of it. But of course, he hadn't. He cursed himself for a fool even as he indulged himself in the fantasy of it.

Then she had saved his life. It had taken all his willpower not to offer what little he had of himself to her until the strength of his anger had taken over. The resulting argument had been gargantuan in proportion. She'd seemed to find it bizarre that he would berate her "for doing her job", as she had so calmly described it. He'd shouted at her that her actions had been foolish and ill-considered, but what had really enraged him was the likelihood that now she would consider her obligation to him fulfilled, and that it would have been through his own carelessness that it was so. He'd turned his fury on her when it should have been directed at himself. Afterwards, he had been too ashamed to retract his vituperation and sulked in black resentment. She feigned not to notice. For days he could barely look her in the eye for fear she'd see his gratitude at that. Not as graceless as he had thought.

He pushed her, and she pushed back, the balance tipping back and forth until they reached an impasse that neither of them seemed to know what to do with. Almost imperceptibly, the push turned into a pull. She did it by staring at him when she thought he didn't realise it. He did it by willingly standing closer to her than he ever did another human being. They both pretended nothing was going on, but in all seriousness, who were they trying to fool? He'd thought that she was testing him, but he wasn't certain, and he was too reluctant to take the risk that perhaps he was mistaken. Some things he was never willing to gamble, no matter how convincing the evidence. Was it a cruel trick to make him think she was interested just so that she could rebuff him and cut him so deep that it would drive him away? His experience said yes. His heart said no. His head still didn't know.

The uncertainty made him ratty and unfocussed. He couldn't concentrate when she was nearby and he couldn't ignore her absence. His dreams forced him into greater physical indulgence than he had ever enjoyed as a hormone-riddled teenager, leaving him somewhat mortified that he had regressed in such alarming magnitude. It came as a rather sad realisation to him that he was one step short of resenting her. Of hating her. He didn't want that. He already hated too many people. And liked too few.

And so, in a rather stunning surrender on his part, he decided to stop the charade, consequence be damned. A part of him had actually breathed a sigh of relief at it, too tired to care that it might go so painfully awry.

And so, that was why he was here, on his knees, the taste of her still sweetening the inside of his mouth, the pull changing back to a push in his attempt to cajole her into a more active participation.

The feel of her against him had been intoxicating. He'd touched her before but never like this, not with his body. He'd whispered to her before but not like this, not with his lust. He'd indulged in such lewd acts with her before, but not like this, not in reality.

The sensation of her hands on his body had been exhilarating, and that had been before she'd even touched bare skin. To have her pull him towards her instead of shoving him away turned him into jelly. To have her legs wrapped tight around his hips was a honeyed snare he wanted to entrap him once more. To have her whisper his name for the first time, not in scorn or mockery or anger, just for him alone, nearly caused him to drop what pathetic excuse for control he already had.

The sound of him losing this fight was that of fabric been torn. The strange thing was that it was also the sound of his victory.

Her right hand clenched into a fist and she ripped the sleeve of her coat off the arm of the chair with a heave of her shoulder. He saw her hand disappear into her coat just before he turned away, stumbling on the hem of his own coat where it was trapped under his knee. His outstretched hands broke his fall.

The floor vibrated as her feet landed either side of him, a fistful of his hair in her grasp and a line of cold steel pressed against his throat as she pulled his head back.

"A bit slow, Professor," she whispered in his ear, her lips grazing his skin and making him shudder. "Either you're getting old, or you want to get caught." She pulled harder on his hair to get him off his hands and knees, dragging him back until he sat with his back against her leg. Her knife held him still as she let go of his hair so that the strands slipped forward to frame his face.

The fingers of her free hand glided over his shoulder and snuck between the torn pieces of his shirt. He gritted his teeth to muffle the groan her touch pulled out of him as it slid over his skin, trying to remain as still as possible lest the blade at his throat bite in. Her hand travelled lower, down over his sternum, along the ripples of his muscles, dipping briefly into his navel before the tips of her fingers splayed so she could slide them either side of the hardness he'd mocked her with barely moments before. His own fingers dug harshly into the thread-bare carpet, and he drew his feet in closer to his body to bend his legs, to brace himself so he could push slowly but firmly against her open palm.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that it's polite to share?" she asked him softly, dragging her fingers through the curled hair under them, making him squirm and gasp. "Let's just see how much you have to go around, shall we?"

The edge of the blade at his throat changed to the flat that she used to make him lie back, the fingers of her hand at his groin grasping the darkness tightly, making the breath hiss through his teeth. He looked straight into those pale eyes for a brief second before the knife pushed his head back to leave him staring at the aged ceiling of the room with its cobwebs and cracks that appeared and disappeared in the flickering firelight and shadows.

The steel left his throat. His clothing was pushed aside to bare his body. Her breath sighed against his chest, making him arch his back to try and force contact with her lips. At his failure to do so, his hands sought her out. The steel returned to his throat.

"Lay still, Professor," she told him in a voice that brooked no argument. "I wouldn't want you to get hurt, now."

He bit his lower lip and returned his arms to his sides, his breathing increasing in rate in a mixture of fear and excitement. This had been precisely what he was after, and the last thing he wanted to do was ruin it.

Lest he try and disobey her, the steel stayed at his throat while the hand at his groin proceeded to run smoothly over his skin, over the prominence of his ribs, along the gentle curve of his collarbones, teasing in the hollow of his hip and cresting the swell of hard muscle above it. The need to snatch this questing hand up and bind it around his lust and under his own hands drove him insane, his chest rising and falling erratically while the blood drained the sense from his head and fuelled the lascivious desperation between his legs.

She was crueller than he thought she'd be. He liked that. He liked that a lot. And hissed out his pleasure repeatedly.

His shoulders pushed back against the floor, his bent legs allowing him to make the tiniest of rhythmic motions with his hips as the ends of her hair brushed against his skin, as her breath warmed the skin below his navel, as her mouth tasted his flesh with a velutinous eagerness.

He screwed his eyes shut as her tongue played across him, and her teeth scraped lightly at the cords of his muscles that were tight with his effort to restrain himself from moving any more than that plaintive rocking of his hips.

Her knife left his throat so that she could double the contact, caressing him with a tortuous delicacy as her mouth found places of such sensitivity that it threatened to overload his brain. She treated him to the same liquid enthusiasm that he had shown in his exploration of every square inch of her breasts, her hands kneading his chest like a hungry kitten. A kitten that bit. A kitten that drew its claws possessively down his stomach in reddening trails.

Her hands closed around his length firmly for a few seconds and then cradled it so she could suck at the base of it, dredging up her name from his lips as she mimicked a deep drinking to slake the thirst she had for him.

The mouth she abused him with, the mouth she challenged him with, the mouth she smiled with in her triumph over him moved slowly up that thickened flesh with precise and thorough attention, her tongue spreading and flattening under the head to slide up and down the smoothness she found there in time with the rhythm of his own subtle motions.

He had to see it. He had to watch her do this to him, this intensely erotic consumption of him, her lips closing around him as she stroked him with such utter skill, mouth and hands rubbing along him, feeling every vein, every ridge, every piece of taut, heated skin that he wanted her to own, that he wanted her to take.

A solid pressure under his chin stopped his head from moving.

"Ah, ah, Professor!" she muttered against him, the vibrations sinking into him and making him shiver. "You don't get to watch what I do."

His groan turned into a yelp as her mouth took in half of him in one swoop and pulled the engorged flesh hungrily, her tongue a silken bed for the underside of him, one hand closed around the base of him to hold him still and firmly as she sucked on him with a twisting motion, her other hand buried under the opening of his trousers to cup him carefully, pressing the palmful up against what her other hand held in a delectable counterpoint to the penetration she was orchestrating.

Her bent leg across his chest told him that it was her foot lodged under his chin that kept his head tilted back and against the floor. The foot he'd once seen come close to killing someone who'd threatened her. The foot he'd healed from brutal injuries she'd withstood during months of incarceration. The foot he'd had the most perverse fantasies about. The foot he'd fucked. Twice.

Words fell from his mouth, incomprehensible, pleading, affirming as she gradually took in more of him in that repeated suckling, burying him inside her until her lips brushed the hair clenched in her fingers. He let his thighs fall open to allow her to stroke with firm, moistened fingertips that smooth flesh lower down that sent jolts of pleasure straight into his spine.

As he sank again and again into that delicious embrace, the strength of her throat squeezing him in vicious pleasure, he defied her by grabbing the foot under his jaw and bringing it to his mouth so he could lap her with his tongue with furious intensity, biting her skin voraciously, engulfing each toe in turn into his own fluid grasp.

Too late he realised what she was doing, so lost in his own efforts at satiation that he missed the point of no return.

He pulled his mouth from her foot. "Ah... no... that's... too much!"

She batted his hands away from her head and pinned his hips to the floor, her foot going back under his jaw.

He gritted his teeth. She was going to take him over the edge without his assent. Deliberately. Maliciously. Resoundingly. Too soon! He strained against her hands braced on his hips, grinding his pelvis into the floor as she ate him up, as she plunged her mouth up and down faster and harder, pushing him right up until the end.

Right up until the orgasm ripped through him and tore his spine out.

Right up until the pulsing surges hit the back of her throat.

Right up until he cursed her in a snarl as he drained into her.

His just punishment for denying her what she had forced on him, breaking under her ruthlessness that was as sadistic as it was sensual.

"Why?" he asked her in a ragged voice even as his body continued to convulse in the aftermath.

Her mouth freed him in a firm, slow pull, her foot no longer braced under his jaw.

"Because you deserved it."

He gasped lungfuls of air in and out painfully for a few moments.

"You shouldn't have."

Her hands played over his sweat-soaked body hungrily. "Why?"

"I'm not eighteen," he reminded her. "I don't have the same... stamina for repetition."

She threw back her head and laughed. "Repetition isn't what interests me, Professor. I expect you to last longer than an eighteen year-old ever could, and you were too close to the edge to hold out as long as I need you to."

She pressed her lips to the crossed scars on his chest in a gesture that was strangely simple and sweet after such lewd treatment that they had just bestowed upon him.

"And we still have so far to go."

Looking into her eyes, he didn't know whether to be overjoyed or terrified.

Always a challenge. From the first moment he'd met her to this very instance. And beyond.