Archive of Our Own ^beta

Trolling.

He was out trolling with the object of his desire for some other personages to get horizontal and mambo with. Jim vaguely wondered what act of his or Sandburg's had torn a hole in reality and slipped him sideways into this odd little universe.

Then he remembered and his face burned hot with shame, hunching his shoulders a little more in the cubicle, ignoring the woman drooling on his 'fabulous physique.'

He had tried.

Really, he had. After the Carausco fiasco, he had decided it was time to seek new avenues. He personally, had come to grips - as it were - with the fact that every move the kid made, every wriggle of that fabulous ass sent him scurrying for some intimate time with his left hand, but when his own desires started to hurt Blair, wounded him to the depth that his affair with Maya had, it was time to stop.

Unfortunately, he was having a hard time convincing his hormones of that. Like his Sentinel controls, they seemed to have wrapped themselves firmly around his elf-like partner, dragging him and his raging libido in their wake.

Elf -like?? Jim shook his head. He needed sleep or something. Next thing he knew he'd be fantasizing about the kid in tights and a spangled tutu.

Another woman brushed past him, brushed into him and Jim drew in a breath. This one was different. Not the cold, nauseating obvious fawning arousals from the other woman he'd tried with, but a tingle, a shock. It started in his toes and worked its way through his entire frame, like some sort of full body hard-on.

"Jim, man if you do not go over there, I will." And now Blair was pushing him, literally shoving him at the woman, coincidentally leaving him stuck with two drop-dead gorgeous co-eds...

And strangely enough, Jim found he didin't mind. Something a~out the woman called at him, a message straight from her eyes to his dick. And he liked it. This could be it. This could be the one he could use to make the break, get away from the endless cycle of want and need he was trapped in with Sandburg.

"I told him I was waiting for you." Even her voice sent shivers up his spine.

"I never would have guessed."

By the end of the night he couldn't keep his hands off her. Letting her words flow over his sex-fuzzed brain as he stroked his fingers over and over through the soft hair, so like Sandburgs, twining it around his fingers, mesmerised by the way it clung to his knuckles.

He was a lap dog. A love slave. Totally and utterly devoted, he begged for kisses from his mistress, the slow, seductive movements langorous, waiting for her consent. Her skin was so soft, so smooth, her scent filling his nostrils, pushing him , rolling him over...

She left without letting him kiss her.

It made him want her all the more

The next day he was like a love-struck teenager, every detail of the night before recorded, noted and repeated to the highly amused Sandburg. Jim had no idea why he was relaying his personal life to the kid. Maybe part of the breaking process? Letting the smaller man know he wasn't available any more?

Jim touched each item Blair handed him, pleased to note that he no longer thrilled at every subtle touch that passed between them.

"You feeling anything?" Jim rolled the latest item, a torch between his palms and shook his head. His whole body was singing with Lora, how was he supposed to pick up a faint, almost imagined vibration?

Their only clue. Gone.

Feeling angry with himself, somehow selfish for daring to feel in love, Jim curtly cut off his conversation with Sandburg, and spent the rest of the day in a guilty haze, shuffling paperwork.

He didn't see her again until he was working a case. A glitzy party across the road fom a blown jewellry shop, and there she was...across the room, like some old nineteen forties love epic.

"This is a sign from god. Go forward, man!" he vaguely heard his partner's delighted chuckle and he was moving. Drawn to her like a filing to a magnet, like a planet into the gravity of its sun. Sucking him in.

The tingling started again, hardening his groin, balloning his pants, frying his brain, making him want wantwantwantwant..... he stumbled with his aching hard-on to where she was waiting.

"Jim!" he shot his Captain a look and some sort of hazy acknowledement, then took her by the arm and made for the nearest secluded spot.

They rutted like animals in the cloak room, kissing, grinding, fantic, he couldn't stop, even if he wanted to, she was all around him, in his ears, eyes, nose, on his tounge, in his skin, and he wanted even more.

Jim smelled, heard, felt his partner's entry into the dark room, but didn't break away. If anything he ground himself harder into the lithe body clinging to his, each movement showing the kid: Look, I don't need you, I don't have to need you, I have her, I have any woman I want, I don't have to want you any more...

But at the same time, another, more primal part of his mind was howling: Look, see what I have. This could be for you, all for you, just take it, please, all you have to do is say...

Until the final calling of his name broke through the spell and he remebered who he was, where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing.

Oh shit.

They'd caught the bad guys....well, Simon had....well, they weren't really the bad guys they were looking for, but they were still bad...Jim shook his head to clear it, and looked over in time to see some savine bastard roughing up his girl, and went to her rescue in true Galahad style.

"Wanna take me home?"

Jim smiled, lazily, sharklike. Ask a stupid question....

She fit perfectly into his arms, like she had always belonged. Her hair tousled at his nose and he buried his face in the sweetness, hands slipping down to brush against a firm breast, sensitive Sentinel fingers exploring the taut nipples, for some reason thinking it was odd to dream and touch a hairless, mounded chest...

He rolled over, trying to force all thoughts of Sandburg from his mind, leaning into her caresses, clothing flying everywhere, bedsheets torn in clawed hands, silent, restrained, needing to touch someone, to have someone. Someone female, some one not Sandburg, someone...

Not like Sandburg? Jim felt absurdidly like he was betraying a sacred trust, a vision of Blair's beautiful face, stained with tears, weeping over a love lost and broken flashed before him as he moaned and ground and sweated his way to completion.

As Jim came to climax he threw his head back and screamed the name of his mistress, the woman who held him like a dog on a leash. But in his mind, his heart, another name was cried out.

He came home the next day not quite knowing what to expect. Visons of the pained face flashed before his eyes and he heaved a sigh of relief when he spotted his partner sprawled comfortably on his bed, scribbling in one of his ever-present notebooks.

Normality.

Coffee sounded goo~. Even re-used. Everything sounded good. Everything tasted good. Everything felt good, a big, shit-eating grin threatening to split his face in two.

He happily dawdled upstairs, changing his clothing, everything seeming fresh and alive.

The mood lasted until Sandburg darted quickly up the stairs and proceeded to tear his happy little world apart.

Jim tolerated the efforts at first, recognising the...jelousy in each eager little word. Too late, kid, he thought wryly. I was there and you coulda had me before, but whoops! I guess you missed the wagon.

But the words started to hit a little close, a nagging voice in his head telling him the kid was right.

Pheromones. His little castle of fantasy started to tumble. The tingle at the crime scene. The electricity from Lora. One and the same. His escape from Sandburg was a lie he could never have.

And the kid was jelous of Lora. Never had been.

The wine glass was just the final straw. Jim studied it for a moment, then threw it over the railing, watching the way it caught the light as it turned end over end before dropping out of sight and smashing on the cold Loft floor.

End Silent Seduction #9 - Attraction.