You don't know how you got here

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei.
WHAT: Two Contractors after a messy hit.

[ The assignment is complete. After a fashion. ]

[ The target's stretch limousine explodes, a time-bomb hurtling at eighty miles per hour. Hei verifies the detonation in the side-view mirror of their getaway van. The brilliant flames glow across the express lane, a bonfire on a humid July night, the deadly cacophony fifty yards behind him on the I-95. The ferocity from the detonation rolls through the atmosphere, juddering both sides of the interstate and adjacent roads like in a San Francisco earthquake. Brake lights flare in a screeching chorus. Behind Hei, beyond the blazing limousine, four lanes of interstate crowded with cars, trucks, and motorcycles careen to an ear-splitting halt, too late for speed demons to swerve and avoid flying debris. ]

[ Their van keeps going. The target is dead. The botched mission completed in less than forty-eight hours. The teflon-coated politician inside the limo had coasted through a dream-life of caviar and champagne, bodyguards at his side, girls in his lap, boys paid to shoot and kill and girls trained to smile and please. A man who didn't hesitate to have his enemies dragged to the desert and fed to the buzzards. ]

[ A prominent Syndicate faction had become one of his problems. And so the politician became one of theirs. ]

[ All BK201 knows is what he'd been briefed on, during the overseas assignment. And that, in itself, isn't much. The less the killing-machines knew, the better. What mattered was that they rectified the situation as they'd been ordered to. ]

[ The remote trigger that sparked blast is still in Hei's gloved hand. With a zzzt and a curl of smoke, he shorts it out. Tosses it out the window, while their van lurches from right lane to left lane to right lane, threading traffic like a bulky needle, becoming a fast-moving blur vanishing down I-95. Hei exhales, absorbing the metal's chill; the van is a freezer. Across him is the only other survivor of the hit: NC-108. Korra. Both their faces are crusted in dried blood, clothes grimy, hair in tufts. But everything else is intact -- unlike the rest of their teammates. The politician managed to weed them out before they'd fully infiltrated his base. Two were murdered in their hotel room by a hitman dressed as a waiter. The other three were machine-gunned on the street last night during dinner in a café by hostiles in police uniforms. The Syndicate is still recovering their mangled bodies. ]

[ Hei and Korra were advised to abort the operation and contact their respective handlers. Neither had bothered. Hei, because his inner-completionist refused to leave the job undone. Korra, because -- let's face it -- she has a streak, miles wide, that compels her to throw herself into the maelstrom of disaster, daredevilry the cover for an easy exit. During their firefight with the politician's hitmen, Hei had to drag her away a few times from almost certain disembowelment or death -- narrow saves that made Korra grin like she was high, the fevery glow off her skin like an irradiated firefly. ]

[ Hei can't say it bodes well. Not for her -- or her long-term career. ]

[ It doesn't matter. They've both succeeded at this mission. Five dead teammates equal five less cuts on the final payment. There's a tidy sum waiting for the two of them. A quarter of a million dollars, each. Hei's cellphone has already vibrated with the message: FUNDS TRANSFERRED. ]

[ It's a living, he thinks, gazing out the window with a sedate veneer but a tensile edge to his jaw. Forty-eight hours, five eliminated associates, and he's earned $250,000. And all it took was a few scrapes and bruises, a tricky full-immersion identity, and a block of old-fashioned C-4. ]

[ The Syndicate's safehouse is in an old motel, one of twelve pink stucco cottages strung out around a gravel parking lot. The cabin reeks of must, and like everything that night, humidly salty. Switching on the rattling air-conditioner, Hei conducts his careful sweep for bugs across the room. Satisfied, he shrugs off his coat -- stiff with caked blood -- before glancing impassively toward Korra, ]

Take the first shower.

[ He's not being a gentleman. But the widest window for enemy retaliation -- and the Syndicate's own post-mission clean-ups -- occurs in the twelve hours after the successful hit. If they're ambushed, Hei doesn't plan to be naked, dripping wet and unarmed. ]

Comments

nope

[anatural]

That was yesterday. Why wait to tell me now? [Korra stares at him, her eyes narrowed slightly. She can't think of a reason for him to send her into a trap — he's had plenty of other chances to attack her over the past few days, and there are better ways to kill her. At the same time, the timing is awfully suspicious.]

Are you trying to get rid of me?

yeeeee

[mortemscintilla]

If I was, I'd go about it differently.

[ Flat and matter-of-fact. He can't blame her for being suspicious. They're both Contractors -- concepts like 'consideration' and 'compassion' aren't in their lexicon. Not unless there are strings attached. Certainly, if this were an assignment, Hei would never let Korra run off on a whim. But this isn't an assignment. They've both been crammed together for an interminable amount of time, volatile and on-edge. It's risky to prolong the arrangement. They both need to decompress, in their own ways. The past few days have been punctuated by stress and sniping: from a purely rational standpoint, it's dangerous for them to keep running hot. ]

[ Keeping his tone mild to avoid firing off her alarms, he says, half-truthfully, ]

You've been pretty wound-up these few days. It's starting to make me jumpy.

[ Not that it shows. (But does anything, where BK201 is concerned?) ]

forgot i had some spare dw points...

[anatural]

[Yeah, he looks real jumpy. She rolls her eyes, and is still not pacified.]

If you're that jumpy, maybe you should come too. [If this is a trap, she's not going to walk in alone.]

:D :D :D!!!!!

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei exhales, then rubs a finger along the winged edge of his nose. He'd expected her to leap at the idea of being away from him for a few hours, to fully indulge the brief grace-period -- footloose, fancy-free and well-fucked. He's both commanded and fought side-by-side with men and women in war and understands their needs. Besides, he would rather Korra get a taste of the local fauna early so she'll be less inclined to chase after it when he's preoccupied, the way she did during their hit in California. The situation they're in is dangerous, and Hei wants both of them sharp. ]

[ Except it's clear she's suspicious of his motives. Well -- he can't fault her. ]

[ Cracking an eye open, he gazes at Korra equably, ]

You need a babysitter that badly? [ Arch, but without that characteristic zing of contempt. In the next breath, he sits up, scrubbing both hands through his hair before rolling smoothly to his feet. ] Fine. I'll come.

[ Only so one of them is at hand for careful reconnaissance. ]

[anatural]

Ha. Ha. [She kicks a gust of wind at him, a half-hearted tongue-waggling rather than an actual attack. She doesn't otherwise dignify that "babysitter" comment with a response.

The cantina isn't far, well within walking distance. The night is just cool enough to send a pleasant shiver through her skin. She can already feel the music in her bones, her footsteps the percussive beat to an unformed melody. She loves dancing. Dancing and Naga are the only two things in her life that remain untarnished. They don't make life worth living — they don't make her regret the idea of dying — but they make existence bearable.

She doesn't bother trying to make conversation. He's terrible at it anyway, and not the kind of terrible where she could at least enjoy watching him suffer.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's footsteps crunch across the pavement, a quiet echo to Korra's. Logging their surroundings on instinct, he gazes absently up at the sky, clearer here than in the big cities. The patterns of the false stars are unrecognizable, nothing like the ones above his flat in Tokyo -- but their stale glow is equally illusory. The length of the town's commercial strip stretches out before him for a handful of blocks, detailed in the wan starlight and neon-glow with an almost antique softness. He might have picked a bar in a different periphery, found a more anonymous chain establishment, but there is something about the district that he likes, something that strikes him as simultaneously stalwart and seedy. ]

[ Certainly it doesn't look like the kind of place where anyone will ask a lot of questions -- even if the visitors are an 'Indian woman' and a 'Chinese man.' ]

[ The cantina -- ironically named Chances -- is nothing fancy, a honky-tonk more than a bar. Glossy cedar-paneled walls, dim golden lighting, a few pool tables, a sunken dancefloor, a couch. Over the hubbub of laughter and conversation, the music is some kind of smoky late-night jazz, like he hears in the old black and white movies that he watches sometimes in the motels when he can't sleep. The walls are lined with the stuffed heads of animals: a bison, a bear, a gigantic ten-point buck. He estimates about forty people at the bar and at the tables, and that the place can accommodate maybe twice that if no one is paying overly close attention to fire code limits. ]

[ Slipping onto a stool, Hei orders a glass of steelhead. Murmurs to Korra, beneath the relentless thump of music, ]

Enjoy your dance.

[ He'll guarantee that once she's out there wiggling her moneymaker on the dancefloor, she'll have her pick of punters within five minutes. She can fuck whoever she takes a fancy to. ]

[anatural]

Don't have fun without me. [She grabs his drink, takes a gulp, and spins away before he can protest. She laughs as she jumps into the writhing, pulsing crowd. It doesn't take her long to get into the rhythm, letting energy become part of her and then pass through.

She keeps an eye out for a trap — or a good lay. A few guys approach: some too hands-y, some too delicate-looking, others just not clicking. (She knows the problem. She's attracted to a certain kind of condescension, coupled with power and intensity. It's something she realized during her fling with that cute Japanese guy — Mako. He was no Contractor, but he was strong by human standards, and he had this attitude like he was waiting for the world to impress him... while still being fiercely ambitious and passionate. It was like bedding fire.

Unfortunately, there's only one guy here she knows fits the bill.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't bat an eyelid when she hijacks his drink for a sip. Instead he half-turns away from her, his lip curling as he raises the glass to his lips. He can hear her laugh ribboning sleekly through the air, audible over the burble of music, before she melts into the dancefloor. He likes her laugh, he realizes. It's not like Amber's, or Pai's. It's a warm golden jumble of incongruities: deep, but also sweet, almost innocent in its delighted timbre, the entire combination like a smooth drizzling of honey across the brain. ]

[ Blinking, Hei shakes his head clear. God, he's probably getting buzzed on his drink. ]

[ He watches her dance, the energy born from a helical inner frizz of cell within her allowed expression. He envies how she can be so caught up in the beat -- but he understands the need to move, to keep the blood flowing, the pulse thumping. Never as good as fucking or fighting but it is in the ballpark. And as he'd predicted, the boys come to her -- ants swarming a dollop of sugar. ]

[ Who she picks isn't his business, so Hei glances away, returns to scanning the room as he sips his drink. No one pings his radar, and before long he's trying out a home-brewed cerveza, and then is spirited into a flirting conversation with one of the local barflies, who laughs at his deliberately stilted English and twinkles at him. Not a bad package: older than him by a handful of years, tumbling blonde hair, a nose ring that she manages to make look elegant; or at least sophisticated. And she gives him a look -- the look -- that is almost a laser-sharp perusal. This is the type of woman he should be having stupid flings with. Not girls like Korra, soft-skinned, bright-burning disasters who live as supernovas do -- struggling to achieve escape velocity straight out of this world, spitting stray sparks in their wake that burn glowing holes into your skin. ]

[ His Lady of the Moment coaxes him out back to a dark corner of the deserted beer-garden. No doubt she assumes he's in a relationship with Korra -- the resulting associated paranoia of which would explain the countersurveillance moves he doesn't bother to hide as he scans the area. By the telltale signs, she's married herself, and he doubts she'd find the idea of a little inconstancy shocking. ]

[ They get to kissing, and she coos and ripples approvingly as he gets his hand up under her skirt. Wine-buzzed, aroused, but still alert, Hei deliberates whether he should fuck her. Conventional wisdom decrees he snap up whatever is on offer, never knowing when the opportunity might come around again: she's not a Contractor, or a human honeytrap, and in his estimation that makes her as safe as houses. ]

[ But the whole thing would be the sexual equivalent of a lube job. Pure maintenance. ]

[ A sly part of him whispers, You have a better option. She's out on the dancefloor. Hei dismisses it in the same heartbeat. He's not in the particular mood to have sex with some random chick. But he's run down his capital of patience with Korra, and she with him -- they both need to drink beer and unwind and talk to people who aren't each other. ]

[ The days of being practically glued together, at each others' throats, have been hellish. ]

1/2

[anatural]

[Korra sees Hei make off with another woman -- not fair! He's not even the one who came here to get laid! So she grabs the hand of the guy grinding against her ass and drags him towards the bathroom. He's cute, he's horny, and if nothing else, he's thick.

The cantina has single unisex bathrooms, so Korra's able to lock the door behind them. (She ignores his nervous prattle — blah blah he's never done something before, blah blah god she's so hot, blah.)]

No talking.

[He shuts up, so she rewards him by dropping to her knees and unzipping his pants. He's already at half-mast; a quick blowjob should get him ready for a pounding. He makes charming little whimpers of pleasure as she sucks him off, and is almost flatteringly confused when she asks him for a condom. (Still, she's glad she brought her own.) A quick slide, a little shimmy, and he's pushed inside her. Fuck yes. Fuck. Yes. She hooks her legs around his waist and moves her hips faster. Ignores his breathless pleas to slow down —]

2/3 actually

[anatural]

[Until he shudders, and she feels his come squirting out into the condom.

She stops and stares at him.]

Are you fucking kidding me?

[No, no he's not. And he's softening quickly, which means he has to pull out before the condom slips off.] I can't believe this. [She shoves him off and pulls up her pants. The frustrated desire is actually, physically painful. She's tempted to kill him, but they're trying to keep a low profile. So she just bursts out of the bathroom, leaving Mr. Disappointing to clean himself up.]

done

[anatural]

[No more picking at random. Korra needs release; she needs a fuck that will leave her bruised and unable to stand. She's not going to let Hei tell her "no" this time.

She finds him out in the garden, his hands up that woman's skirt. A dim part of her is surprised they're not farther along - either Hei's secretly a romantic who likes to take it slow, or he's not as into this woman as he's pretending to be. Korra would bet money on the latter. And since he's probably just banging this woman because she'll take her panties off, then he won't mind switching one pussy for another.

She taps the woman on the shoulder.]

You might want to get inside. Your wife is looking for you.

[The woman pales, jerks away, and frantically tries to straighten her clothes before leaving. Once she's gone, Korra yanks him in for a kiss — offer and demand in one.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ By the time Korra arrives, Hei's decided he might as well get laid. Korra is tetchy, troublesome and threatens to grind his patience into a pulped mass of nerve endings -- whereas the woman right in front of him, whom he doesn't know or care about one bit, is about as perfect as any woman can be. So why not stick around and improve their acquaintance? ]

[ That's what he's planned, anyway. At which point she's fondling the hard bulge in his crotch with a lewd indifference to their surroundings, and he's got her wriggling like a belly-dancer, both hands up her dress, their heavy breathing making a counterpoint to the music. Backing her up to perch on the edge of a creaky table, her legs flexing open, Hei drops a hand to undo his fly, to rummage in his pocket for a condom. ]

[ At which point Korra traipses up, then taps the woman's shoulder. In a beat, she's wriggled out of Hei's grasp, tottering in her high heels, and disappeared back inside the bar. Something in him curls, arid with a scorching annoyance. He turns, mouth half-open, ready to snap that unless there's an emergency, she's going to end up zapped to a crisp -- ]

[ Then her mouth crashes upon his -- the kiss a wet burning-hot flower. ]

[ Hei's breath catches almost inaudibly, pulse kickstarting behind his ribs. If the kiss were tender, it would be easy to jerk away, to maintain his usual distance. But this isn't someone being being drunkenly self-indulgent. This is like being a witness to self-inflicted violation. It tells in her kiss. There is no softness in there. Just manic desperation. Hei's every sense contracts to nothing but her grasping little hands, the hot vacuum of her mouth, endlessly thirsty, endlessly consuming -- until it feels as though the crackling ball of rage in his gut is rising to meet her with her every gulp, everything in his body rising with it. A hot, resigned arousal. ]

[ With a vicious force, he hauls her in, opening her mouth to his biting kiss. One hand fists the warm thick tumble of her hair; the other palms her right breast, squeezes with a rough leisurely possessiveness, then slides down the ladder of ribs before splaying bruisingly-tight across the jut of her hip. ]

[ When he breaks the kiss, he doesn't wrench away. Just crowds her back against the nearest shuttered window -- a hard glancing force off the glass. A pane fractured in dusty spiderweb cracks. ]

[ Hei ignores it. His gaze is fixed on Korra -- sere, severe, the face cryptically smooth. ]

...Is this what you're after?

[ Suicide by Contractor? Is she trying to get him so riled up he'll lose his head and snap her neck? (Because if she keeps it up, he'll oblige.) ]

[anatural]

[Cryptically smooth, but the way he's touched her tells Korra everything she needs to know. He knows exactly how much violence to use to make stars explode behind her eyes; just the right amount of force to make her body tremble with need. He'll eat her alive and she'll love every moment of it.]

Getting there. [She wraps her legs around his hips and grinds herself against his erection.] Seems to me like we're both after the same thing. [As added enticement, she pulls off her shirt. It doesn't matter that they're basically in public; sports bras are perfectly acceptable to wear in public. (Which makes them the perfect bra for situations like these. Easy to pull up for access, easy to pull back down for propriety.) Her shirt flutters to the ground, unwanted and forgotten.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ This isn't a good idea. He's taken enough chances already tonight, coming to the bar, macking on one of the local barflies, conversing with the bartender. Fucking Korra on top of it -- in a venue so risky -- seems like really pushing his luck. Except at this point, Hei is past consequence, past caring. Keeping himself under such perfect control, every impulse and emotion iced over, is like a degenerative brain-disease, roots spreading from his skull to every tight-wired joint. Worse, the past few days have been an endless pile of frustrations. Each time he's felt an impatience unleashing itself, and tamped it down. If it overwhelms him, he'll end up chasing thought to thought. He'll be able to form no plans. He'll have to go with the flow. And that's not his style. ]

[ Neither is this. But BK201 has always been the opposite of everything predictable. ]

[ Korra curls herself around him, her hips a shameless corkscrewing against the crux of his trousers, and Hei lets off a clenched-teeth hiss -- not approval but something almost like anger. He doesn't stop her when she strips off her shirt. Doesn't acknowledge the pert curl of her smile. Instead, he slings an arm around her, and scoops up her fallen blouse with the other hand. ]

[ There is a small greenhouse not too far out -- in creaky disrepair, more a place to stow away old equipment. Hei hauls Korra there, a careless manhandling, weaving between the long dusty tables, trowels, and boxes of expired slug poison. He drops Korra heavily on the bags of peat, the white plastic splitting in puffs of dust, and when his mouth catches hers again, a hard delving lick, he can taste the earthy grit of it on his tongue. ]

[ Breaking the kiss, he keeps her pinned, the web of his palm across her throat. No pressure, but the threat is implicit. The other hand wrenches up her sports bra. Perfect tits in the wan light, nipples dark, the fabric peeled back like wrapping to display them. Almost idly, he kneads her breasts, tweaking the nipples cruelly now and then, and kisses her mouth, biting at her lower-lip, sucking at her tongue, keeping at it until he knows the ache of frustration will flare as hotly inside her as any other sensation. ]

[ Because maybe it's true. They're both after the same thing. But that doesn't mean he's going to give her what she wants. Not the way she wants it. ]

[anatural]

[Except he is. She's broken the Black Reaper's iron-control, has him ready to maul her. The way he kisses her, the cruel twists to her nipples, even the hand around her throat — it's all perfect. Frustration is the sweetest ache.

She slides her hands down to the clasp of his pants. She doesn't want to just lie there and look pretty, after all — she wants to give as good as she gets.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Indulgence like this is a temptation Hei can rarely afford. He almost wonders what the repercussions for this mistake -- because it is a mistake -- will be. Except the thought is just a loose pinball rolling around in his skull and bouncing off the twinkling lights of his brain. Her hand slips down, and he lets it, breath hitching briefly in sync with hers, his teeth gnawing at the crook of her jaw, the rapid beat of her heart pulsing her neck vein. He's got both hands on her breasts now, heavy delicious weights, Stitching the nipples almost viciously, he clutches them hard before the first stinging slaps come, the flesh swaying beneath the hot shocks of the spanks -- heating, reddening. He's not afraid of hurting her. Learning to take pain is an important lesson -- they both know it, because they've been trained to deflect it and to dish it out. It comes in handy. ]

[ But in the next beat, he draws back, fingers gripping her waistband. Drags her jeans down her legs, a wadded-up constriction around her ankles. Dust drifts in shafts of weak light from the greenhouse glass. Even from this angle, he can see the plump cleft of her sex through her panties. Sopping-wet, the cotton molded to her labia. He tears the fabric down the middle, the underwear pulling away with a stinging snap of elastic. Dropping a hand between her thighs, he cups her there, a hard enveloping squeeze, the forefinger rubbing up and down rapidly over her clit. Then again comes the walloping slap between her legs, stinging the slick flesh -- cruelly, yet almost caressingly, as if punishing the plump wet lips, the taut nub of her clit. ]

[ Straightening, Hei steps back, shoes crunching on the gravel. His dick aches in his trousers; he unzips himself one-handed, drawing out his erection, moist-tipped and ruddy, stroking it with a slow twist of the wrist. The other hand reaches down and hauls Korra by the hair, draws her up off the bed of peat, his fingers tangled into the dark furry spill. ]

[ Flatly, ]

Let's see if that mouth is good for something besides backtalk.

[anatural]

[The slaps to her breasts get little more than grunts of pleasure-pain, but that hit between her legs -- an area already over-sensitized from frustration and the earlier thwarted fucking -- all but makes her scream. She chokes it back as best she can and, as he pulls away to undo his pants, takes the chance to catch her breath.

Dicks are such strange, funny things, especially with pale guys. The color difference between the rest of their skin and their erection is so different, it looks like someone else's penis. Hei's is much the same in that respect, a deep ruddy color, like a particularly nasty bruise. But it definitely looks like it belongs to him. Korra's never seen an angrier looking penis. She manages not to giggle... in part because he hauls her up and demands a blowjob in the most obnoxious way possible.]

Yes sir. [She mock salutes, then takes him in hand. It pulses angrily too, so she kisses the tip. She keeps her touches torturously soft, as though she's afraid she might break it, little kisses and licks and nuzzles.

Then she opens her throat and takes him in straight to the hilt.

She likes deep-throating; it's a skill she worked hard to acquire, and it's never failed to impress the men she's slept with. She likes to start without any movement, just swallowing and humming. Then of course it varies by lover, whether she goes fast or slow, how much she pulls out. For Hei, she pulls out all the way, until the tip barely remains inside. She grabs his hands and digs her nails in so he doesn't try to set the pace himself. He wants to see how good she is with her mouth? He'll have to stand back and watch.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's gaze is downcast, darkly-lit, the smooth angles of his face reshaped into something taut, sharply-etched. He's had many, many blowjobs over the last eight years. Blowjobs that go on and on, blowjobs that have made him shoot like a geyser almost at once. Blowjobs that were hot, worshipful, angry, languorous, frenzied, ecstatic. But few quite like this. And it isn't just that the girl seems to have no gag reflex to speak of -- that he can stir his hips, fuck her mouth like a kid bouncing in and out on a trampoline, then dig in close, and tight, and slow, and the girl just takes it with a ravenous eagerness. It isn't even that unabashed enthusiasm as she laps at him, her tongue small and pink, hot and wet, flicking over the tip like a lollipop -- a mesmerizing jumble of lewd and innocent. ]

[ It isn't all that. Or -- yeah, it is part of it. But what it mostly is ... is that gaze. ]

[ Her eyes are bright with an infinitude of playfulness. Like she's actually fucking enjoying this. Like the filthy goings-on have completely bypassed her psyche, like it's just the pure fun that has penetrated something in that hard, whorish Contractor's shell, and sparked her desire to show off and please. ]

[ Hei doesn't know. All in all, it's a disconcerting reminder that she's less a Contractor than an ordinary, fresh-faced girl. ]

[ He jerks her hands off his. But he doesn't grab her hair and take charge, either. His palms stay curved around her skull, bracing rather than commanding, fingers curling and uncurling through her hair as he gusts out jittery breaths. His gaze stays fixed on the sight of her, on her knees, all liquid blue eyes and hollowed cheeks and glossy full-lipped mouth. His dick is heated and achy: each time she gulps it down, it twitches from root to tip, the balls a heavy tightening throb. ]

[ When his whole body is nearly at the edge,exultant and throbbing in every particle, he fists his hands in her hair. Tugs in a mute order to stop, drawing his dick out, glazed with her saliva, the tip smearing pre-come across her chin. Tempting to spill into her waiting mouth, as wildly on edge as he is. But he stops in time with a brutal squeeze behind the head. Swallows, drawing in deep breaths, forcing himself to relax, the tension in his sinews melting as if he's been given a sedative. ]

[ All that remains is the dark potential flowing through the air around him, natural and ordinary. ]

Not bad.

[ But she'll have to try harder to establish the upper-hand. Dragging her to her feet by a loose bunch of her hair, Hei's other arm wraps like a restraining bar around her waist -- right before she is lifted and tumbled back onto the bed of peat-sacks. In the cloud of grit, Hei tugs off her boots, before stripping her jeans down all the way. Eyes the lush sprawl of her body, more speculative than greedy, before he grabs her legs with a manacling grip at the ankles and slings them over his shoulders. Gripping her buttocks for a handhold, fingers digging viciously into the pliant flesh, he hauls her up so she's practically dangling upside down, just the weight of her skull and the spill of dark hair across the sacks. ]

[ The gleaming folds of her sex are right at his mouth: the inner-lips like a glistening pink conch, clitoris poking from its hood hard as a polished pebble, everything framed by a riot of dewy black curls. The pungency of her scent wafts through his head. Not off-putting, the way it is when he goes down on some women. Hers is rich, heavy -- and as he laps at her with the flat of his tongue, back to front, delightfully salty. ]

[anatural]

[It is fun. Korra's had more than a few bad fucks, of course, but nothing to taint the idea of sex for her. She gave her virginity to a girl in her village a few years before being dragged into the Syndicate's world. And even as a Syndicate operative, she's never had to sell herself, or been forced to sleep with anyone she didn't choose. For her, sex is just plain fun — even sex with someone she hates.

She moans quietly as he goes down on her. The ridiculously uncomfortable angle doesn't matter — just the fact of getting eaten out is a pleasant surprise. That twerp who couldn't even keep his dick hard would never have done this. Sex for him (and for a lot of her impulse one-night stands, really) was all about dick in hole. Who knew that the Black Reaper would be into more?

And fuck he is good at it. Her arms aren't long enough to grab his hair, so she latches onto his forearms, digs into his skin. Her hips move instinctively, trying to fuck his tongue. She can feel the pressure building up just below her belly; all it will take is one little push for her to explode like a geyser.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ For Hei, sex is little more than a commodity, a tool to get a job done. He's reached a saturation point -- like everyone in the business does, whether they're a recruiter or a grunt, a provocateur or a raven. He's spun more lies than a spider constructing a skyscraper of webs, faked more desire than a boytoy for an octogenarian billionaire, smelled so much sex it's permeated his nostrils the way smoke will permeate a wool sweater -- while biting back the cold awareness that the lust, the actual heat-haze of passion, is completely absent. No one in his trade is ever getting off -- but they are all scheming of getting out, getting up, getting ahead, with the right opportunities or info. ]

[ When you reach that point, about the only thing that gives you a boner anymore is a hot shower, good Szechuan takeout, and an empty evening of stargazing. His mind has blurred sexuality and operational necessity together, so all that remains during the act is the tedium, the careful self-awareness, the borderline loathing felt by any stymied perfectionist trapped in any dead-end occupation. ]

[ So this -- Korra's deranged innocence, those flashes of kittenish wickedness that are entirely unfaked ... They're disquieting. Unnatural. He almost wants to wrap each detail in paper, to tuck it away in the folds of his memory -- a rarefied novelty flung down from outerspace. ]

[ Forcibly, he dismisses it as one of those high-pitched sexual thoughts. (Ironic in itself. It's been ages since he's even had those). ]

[ In his brutal grip, Korra twitches and jerks like a marionette, tossing her pretty head in a dark storm-tumbled heap. Her cries are the same: like aching, humid, hurricane-threatening weather. He can tell how close she is: her thighs are buttery-slick against his skull, sweat-sheened and smothering, the tendons taut as wires: his mouth buried against that wet heaving sex, opening her with thick messy stabs of tongue between sucking on her clit every once in a while, letting her feel the edge of his teeth. Winding her up, higher and higher, until she's wildly on edge, at the tip of climax -- ]

[ Then he drops her back across the sacks -- a puff of dust and a lovely spill of limbs, her face all shiny and reddened in its tangle of hair. It's a mutual cruelty: he hasn't come yet, either. His erection bobs full and stiff from his groin, impossibly needy. Dragging his belt free from the loops, he reaches out with the other hand, dragging her up before she can break through the fever-fog and make vile eyes of outrage at him. He deposits her across the smooth gritty floor, on her hands and knees, pressing her neck down and forcing her thighs wide apart. ]

[ The belt wallops across her buttocks -- a single, stinging-hot blow -- before he says, ]

Count. [ Another whack, jolting her to his directive. ] Count back from twenty-one.

[ Twenty-one hours. That's how long they have until they meet their contact and split ways. That's how long he's got until he's done glutting himself on that voluptuous little peach of her body. ]

[anatural]

[Operational necessity to spend twenty-one hours fucking her senseless? Is that what they're calling it these days.

He's smart to move as quickly as he does — she almost breathes fire on him when he stops short of her orgasm. He shoves her to the floor, and she tastes blood in her mouth. Her nipples are so stiff, they feel like blades being thrust into her breasts by the press of the floor. Everything hurts and it's exactly what she wants.]

FUCK! [It's a strangled scream as he hits her, making her body shudder. She blinks back tears and tries to get the traction to buck her hips up.]

Do those — two count? [She's pretty sure they don't, but she wants to show that she's not cowed just because he's got her pinned by the neck with a belt to her ass.]

[mortemscintilla]

Don't ask stupid questions.

[ That's an eloquent No. ]

[ His hand covers her bottom for a moment, fingers pressing into her flesh, squeezing her buttocks together. His pulse is fevery but he's almost getting chills at how sweet and perfect her ass is, a dark ripe curve like an apple to bite into, her back glistening under a sheen of sweat, the fragile stem of her neck and the dark corona of hair spilling from the curve of her skull. Her body is practically buzzing: that scream of hers, at the first wallop, seems to have connected a circuit and proved that her body is primed for shocks and sparks. ]

[ He plans to give her plenty. ]

[ Then his hand thrusts her bottom up so high that her forehead is sealed to the floor, her breasts crushed against the grainy surface. And without warning the belt comes cracking down, the strokes noisy and rhythmic. Again, then again, spacing out to when she counts off, one great hard slap then another falls, stinging the flesh of her thighs, the curve of her buttocks, one burning cheek then the other, the skin seeming to ignite to a gorgeously blotchy red under the blows. ]

[ But no matter how he busies himself to tormenting tender spots, he returns always to her sex, the belt strap smacking her little mound over and over, the leather scraping her clit, and the harder the blows come the more the juices in her seem to surge, until he almost can't hear the crack against the slick lips -- it's all an undifferentiated, sloppy-wet blur, the fierce blows seeming to shape themselves to her as they spank her. ]

[ Twenty-one strokes, and they are done. ]

[ Panting lightly, Hei lets the belt drop to the floor. He gives Korra barely a heartbeat to compose herself, stroking the inflamed curve of her ass while his own ricocheting pulse eases. In the next blink, he's hauled her up by one of her biceps, wrenching her around to bite off that inevitable saucy stream of words before they blossom. To bite those delicious lips, that little pink tongue. ]

[ Shoving her against the edge of a crude wooden table, face-first, he grabs the torn strip of her panties, with the sort of ironic flourish of hand that a magician uses to pull scarves out of hats -- before stuffing it into her mouth. Not a gag, but a noise-muffler. ]

[ She's going to need it. One palm splayed across her tailbone, pinning her down, he suits himself up with a condom with the other. His cock, sheathed, darkens all the more and bobs as if trying to pull him forward. Hei obeys the compulsion, though his handling is carefully controlled as he spreads Korra's thighs wider, erection nosing against her dripping sex -- then thrusts in with no restraint, the flaring head hardly enough of a greeting to smooth entry for the rest of him. ]

[anatural]

[Korra can't help making a face when he shoves the panties in her mouth -- they taste terrible. She's never much cared for her own flavor, and this is her flavor mixed with sweat, cotton, and maybe the faintest hint of Mr. Disappointment. It knocks her out of the stratosphere his brutal spanking had sent her flying out to.

Then he thrusts inside her with one deep stroke and she doesn't care. Maybe Mr. Disappointment had served a purpose, helping her loosen up so she could take Hei in like this. Fuck, this is what she wanted, not just today but since that first night when he shut down her invitations. Her abused flesh cries out in pain where he pushes against her, which only makes her buck harder against him.

We could have been fucking like this all week, she wants to tell him, except she's too busy screaming. Doggy style is one of her favorite positions... She loves the wild, animalistic nature of it. (She also uses it as shorthand for her one night stands, an easy way to tell them don't get attached without getting into a lady-boner killer conversation about feelings and expectations.) She bucks her hips and writhes against the table, going mad with pleasure.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ One of his favorite positions too -- but largely for the anonymity, the ease of access, the control. Everything hidden, all of it out of sight and out of mind, but ready to service his lust. ]

[ Except the moment he sinks into her, balls-deep, breathing in short, shocky gasps, all the thoughts gathering quietly under the surface of his mind white out -- a perfect, blown-apart blankness. She feels so fucking good. Everything he's never allowed himself to imagine. Searingly hot, impossibly tight -- she has to have one of the most divine little cunts he's been in. ]

[ Her scream is a live-wire jolt thundering up his spine. She surges back against him, shameless and pliant, gorgeously lust-crippled, her skin yielding a sheen of sweat everywhere. With brutal hands, Hei grips her hips, hitching himself in deeper. Almost lazily traces and kneads the curves of her body -- ass, thighs, spine, ribs, breasts, with a map of ownership. His prick feels enormous, throbbing, filthy with lust, and the way he rides into her is relentless, hard slapping thrusts that rattle the table in a never-faltering rhythm. One hand seizes the spill of her hair, winding it tight in his fist, gripping it like reins, cowboy style, the fingers of the other hand sharp as spurs in her hips. ]

[ Her whole body seems to gulp at his, a liquid peristalsis. So fucking hot -- and he knows he isn't going to last long. But it is a ghost of a thought; he doesn't give a shit. Doesn't care if she comes or not either. If it happens: hoo fucking ray. If not: her nut, her business. ]

[ All he's interested in is the thrill of the ride. In the wicked flash of supremacy as she's forced to take him inside, that sweet yielding clench of inner-muscle. At setting a ruthless pace to make those snapping blue eyes of hers glaze over and her body go boneless and aching and helpless as a kitten being carried by the scruff. ]

[anatural]

[The one problem with this position -- one that dawns on her slowly, because she loves the feeling of something inside her, filling her, pounding her -- is the way it neglects her clit. She is hot and horny and feeling amazing, but it's stalled. She needs more stimulation if she's going to come. Hei isn't doing anything to remedy that (no surprise), and shoved up against the table like this, she can't take care of it herself.]

Back up. [She pushes her hips back, trying to make some room for her to touch herself without breaking her wrist against the table.]