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Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Chapter 1:

Lucy glances around the bar, her heart in her throat and her stomach in knots. Tim is by her side, his large, hot hand on the small of her back, and she draws strength from him even though his touch is simultaneously causing her heart to beat faster and her stomach to knot more. She’s wearing a very short crop top and a skirt that’s about a foot shorter than she’s used to, and she can feel his warm palm across her entire back. 

She downs the last bit of her club soda, and then glances around the bar again, which is a mistake. 

There’s skin everywhere. 

There’s skin and leather and cuffs and collars, and Lucy has never felt as uncomfortable or as horny as she does at this moment. 

As far as undercover ops go, this one is definitely… unique. 

“Relax,” Tim murmurs, and Lucy feels a shiver run through her entire body as his warm breath caresses her ear. “You’re going to give us away, Nova.”

Lucy nods and sucks in a breath. She closes her eyes and leans back into Tim because he is and always will be her safe place even if their relationship has been a little strained recently, and when she opens her eyes again she lets herself slip into character. 

She’s Nova and Tim is Alex, and they’re at the BDSM club because they’re into it. 

She’s his sub. 

He’s her Dom.

By the time Tim is urging her forward, walking her out of the eye of the storm and into the hurricane, she’s feeling a little bit more brave. 

Tim walks her over to a table and sits down, his hand on her back as he urges her to follow his unspoken lead. Lucy glances down at the cushion on the floor, and she thinks that she’s going to hate kneeling at Tim’s feet, but … she doesn’t, is the thing. 

She sinks to her knees, and her eyes slip closed as the hand on her back slides up and then settles around her neck. Tim’s long fingers curl around her throat, his palm hot and heavy right above her collarbone, and the pressure is just enough to make her shiver. Her hair is tangled in his fingers, and she finds herself relaxing even more as he rubs his thumb back and forth over her skin. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and Lucy shivers again as his voice, deep and rough, washes over her. 

By the time that a waitress walks up to the table and asks Tim if he’d like to order anything, Lucy is feeling much looser and less anxious. Her knees ache a little from kneeling, but she makes herself hold still because this is supposed to be something she’s good at. It’s supposed to be something she’s done, with Tim, for a long time. 

“We’ll have iced tea and water, and … some mozzarella sticks and an order of fried mushrooms.”

Tim glances down at Lucy as she turns toward him, her lips parted in surprise. It doesn’t escape her notice that he’s ordering finger foods, and she finds herself wondering if he’s going to feed her from his fingers while she kneels at her feet, and even though it should feel degrading, all she feels is excitement. 

“I know you love mushrooms, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy feels her heartbeat increase when he tightens his fingers around her neck. She leans back into him, her eyes fluttering closed as a wave of right and comfortable washes over her. 

She’s never done this before… but she likes it. 

She likes the way she feels like she’s floating, her body heavy and light all at the same time, and she knows she should technically be on alert because they’re undercover, but she also knows that Tim has her back and she is playing a part, after all. 

She’s just letting herself fall into the fuzz slowly filling her brain when she hears Tim curse. 

“Don’t look,” he says, and Lucy licks her lips and tries to look relaxed even as Tim tenses beside her. “But fucking Sanford is here.”

Lucy has to bite the inside of her cheek to stay in character as she processes the information Tim has given her. 

Chris. 

Why the fuck is Chris here?

“I bet you anything he followed us,” Tim murmurs, and Lucy nods minutely. 

He hadn’t been happy about her going undercover with Tim again, but she’d basically told him to get over it and had gone on the op anyway. 

This is what she’d trained for. 

This is what she’s good at. 

And he’d been the one to encourage her to go to the undercover training in San Francisco in the first place. He was fine with her going undercover as a general rule, and he’d only thrown a fit when he’d peeked into the file that Lucy had left out and seen the details. 

When he’d seen who she’d be going undercover with, and where. 

“If he makes a scene, our cover is broken. Be ready,” Tim whispers, and Lucy nods again even though she’s fighting a shiver. His large, hot hand is still on her neck and his breath puffs warmly over her ear as he leans closer to her. He doesn’t lean away even as Chris walks closer. 

“I can’t see,” Lucy complains, and Tim makes a noise as his free hand slides down her waist and settles on her ass. He lifts her effortlessly, his fingers digging into her hip and the hand around her neck supporting her head as he pulls her off of the floor and deposits her on his lap. Lucy whimpers, her stomach swooping at the ease with which he manhandles her, and then swallows thickly, dropping her head to his shoulder. She nuzzles into his neck, keeping up their cover while simultaneously getting eyes on Chris. 

He’s glaring at her, his eyes filled with something darker than she’s ever seen in him. 

“Tim,” she whispers, and he hums in response as he pinches her hip. 

“I know. But as long as he doesn’t do anything monumentally stupid, we can explain him away as a jealous ex. Keep your eyes on the target, Chen.”

Lucy nods and turns back around. She leans against Tim and has to start counting in her head, slowly, from one to ten and then back down before she’s calm enough to slip back into her undercover persona. 

“You okay?” Tim murmurs, and Lucy nods, tucking her head further into her neck. 

“I will be,” she responds, and she’s about to whisper into Tim’s ear how Chris had reacted when he’d seen the file containing the details of their operation when someone takes a seat on the leather bench across from them. Lucy can’t see him from where she’s laying in Tim’s lap, her head resting on his shoulder, but she hears the noise the seat makes and she feels the way Tim tenses ever so slightly underneath her. 

“It’s a busy night,” the man comments, and Lucy knows without knowing how that he’s their target. 

Tim hums in agreement and runs his fingers slowly up and down Lucy’s spine. His fingers dip under her crop top and his breath catches when he caresses her skin all the way from the small of her back to the bottom of her neck without encountering any resistance. Lucy smirks into his shoulder, knowing that he’s just now realized she’s not wearing a bra, and then moans for good measure because Alex is her Dom and he’s making her feel good. 

“Pretty little thing you got there,” the man says, and then he laughs. Tim raises an eyebrow as he flattens his palm on Lucy’s back, his fingers spanning the length between her shoulder blades, and he holds her closer because he doesn’t like the way their target is looking at her as if she’s an object and not a person. 

“She is,” he agrees, though he doesn’t think the word pretty does her justice. 

“The name’s Eddie Perez,” the man says, and Lucy feels Tim’s body shifting as he reaches a hand out to shake with their target. 

“Alex Hunter,” he murmurs, and Lucy grins against his neck at the way the name slides off his tongue so naturally. “This is my sub, Nova.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Eddie says, and Tim nods as he leans back. Lucy is curled into his lap, her legs pulled up against her chest and her head on his shoulder, but despite the way she seems like she’s out of it, floating in subspace, Tim knows that she’s acutely aware of every word and every movement from both him and their target. 

“You as well,” Tim says, and then he nods his thanks at their waitress as she lays down their drinks and the two plates of appetizers. “Help yourself,” he adds, and then he’s reaching for a fried mushroom, reaching up to press it to Lucy’s lips. She moans and then opens her mouth, and Tim’s heart begins thundering in his chest as she wraps her tongue, wet and soft, around his fingers. She takes the mushroom and chews it slowly, and Tim feels his belly filling with warmth as she chases the taste of the fried treat, her tongue winding between his middle and pointer fingers. He pulls away, his hand shaking almost imperceptibly, and then reaches for another mushroom, completely ignoring the mozzarella sticks he’d ordered for himself. 

“That good, baby?” he asks, and Lucy nods, moaning straight into his ear as she takes the second mushroom from him. 

“Yes, sir,” she whispers, and he grins as he spreads his legs further on the bench, letting Lucy settle more comfortably in his lap. He reaches for the iced tea, sipping on it to wet his suddenly dry mouth, and then he’s eyeing their target with interest. 

“Not to be rude, but what caused you to want to sit with us?”

Eddie shrugs and pops a mushroom into his mouth, and Tim knows he’d told the man to help himself, but he can’t help but be a little irritated that he’s eating Lucy’s mushrooms. 

“Your girl is pretty. I like pretty girls, and you’re not hard on the eyes either.”

Tim raises an eyebrow and sips on his tea before reaching for a mozzarella stick. Lucy makes a needy noise against his neck when she realizes it’s not another mushroom, and Tim chuckles as he bites into it. 

“And?” he prompts, and Eddie laughs as he leans back against the booth and opens his arms wide, settling them on either side of the leather. 

“You’re an observant one.”

Tim inclines his head in agreement, and then waits. 

“I’ve heard things,” Eddie says, and Tim grins. 

“Yeah? What things?” he asks, and Eddie shrugs as he reaches for another mushroom. 

“You’re good at what you do. I like getting to know people who are good at what they do, that’s all.”

“I’m very good,” Tim says, and as he speaks he runs his hand down Lucy’s back, his large, warm palm settling over the curve of her ass. 

“Not what I was referring to, but I’m sure you are,” Eddie says with a laugh. 

Tim just smirks. 

He knows how to give just enough to keep someone interested, but not enough to confirm or deny any suspicions. 

Their mission tonight is only to make contact, and they’ve done that. He knows they can leave any time, but there are six mushrooms left and even though he knows it’s wrong he can’t help but crave the feeling of Lucy’s lips and tongue wrapped around his fingers. 

He reaches for another, and this time when he passes it to Lucy, he presses his fingers further into her mouth, chasing the warm, wet feeling. She obliges him, putting on a show, and Tim has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from moaning as she swirls her tongue around his fingers, seeking out any leftover saltiness from the fried treat. 

Eddie watches, not even bothering to hide his obvious arousal, and Tim equal parts grossed out and sympathetic because Lucy is breathtaking, half naked with miles of warm, honey skin on display. Her cheeks are flushed and her hair a mess from where Tim has been messing with it as he holds her neck, and she’s making these little noises as she takes each mushroom from his hands. 

Tim isn’t unaffected, either, though he knows she’s a professional and won’t think anything of it. 

They’re undercover, and he’s pretty certain there’s a couple having sex not ten feet away from them. 

Of course he’s a little bit hard. 

“You’ve made contact,” Angela’s voice murmurs in his ear, and Tim tries not to show his surprise when he hears her speaking through his comm. He’d honestly forgotten they were wearing them for a little while. “You can head out at any time, guys.”

Lucy runs her tongue along the length of Tim’s finger for one final time, and then drops her head to his shoulder.

Tim takes the cue and smirks as he wipes his fingers off on his jeans. 

“You tired, baby?” he asks, and she nods, fluttering her eyelashes for good measure as she glances up at him.

“Yes, sir,” she breathes. “You wore me out earlier.”

Tim grunts, a wave of arousal hitting him like a fucking freight train as he imagines wearing her out, but he quickly forces himself under control as he helps Lucy climbs from his lap. Her heels are high and her skirt is short, and he feels himself thickening further in his pants as he lets his eyes roam her body. 

He could push her skirt up so easily, he realizes, and fuck her without even having to strip her. 

“We’ll see you around,” he tells Eddie, and the other man nods, raising his glass in salute as Tim wraps one arm around Lucy’s shoulder. His fingers go to her neck again without thought, and she sighs as he tightens his hold around the delicate skin while he drops a generous $50 on the table to cover their bill and tip. 

“I sure hope so,” Eddie comments, and Tim grins, slaps Lucy’s ass, and laughs at the squeal she lets out as he begins walking her forward. 

They leave the club, and the second they’re alone in the crisp night air, Lucy shifts back into Lucy and leaves Nova behind, and Tim is both horny and confused as she pulls away from him fully, a foot of space between them. 

“That went well,” she says, and Tim nods, shoving his hands into his pockets to hide the way he’s aching and desperate for her. 

“Other than your boyfriend nearly ruining it,” he says. “What the fuck was that? Why was he there?”

“That’s a good question,” Angela pipes up, and Tim growls as he reaches up and takes the comm out of his ear. He knows she’s parked in a surveillance van less than a block away, and he’ll talk to her when they get there. 

Right now he’s more interested in talking to Lucy, even if she doesn’t seem all that interested in talking to him. 

“He saw the file,” she says. “He got jealous and upset, it doesn’t matter. I’ll talk to him tonight; it won’t happen again.”

“It’d better not,” he says, and there’s just a touch too much of Sergeant Tim Bradford in his tone for his liking. 

Lucy nods and puts a little more space between them, and Tim had sensed that things were different between them when she’d gotten back from Sacramento, but he’d hoped, perhaps foolishly, that this undercover operation would help them get back to Tim and Lucy. 

He’d hoped it would be a smooth return to their partnership, the easy camaraderie they’d had before they’d gone undercover as Dim and Juicy and he’d walked into her apartment and nearly ruined everything between them. But instead it’s making things worse, muddying the waters between them even more. He hadn’t realized… though he should have, he thinks. He hadn’t realized how much more intimate everything on this op would be. Dim and Juicy had been flirty, yes, but this was… god, it was so much more. 

They walk in silence to the surveillance van and after they’re debriefed, Lucy climbs into her car and drives away. 

Tim sighs, presses the heel of his hand against his chest to relieve some of the aching pressure behind his ribcage, and then heads home, too.

They have another long day as Alex and Nova tomorrow. 

__________________________________

“You shouldn’t have been there!” Lucy cries, and she hates that she’s having to have this conversation with Chris at nearly midnight, but she’d walked into her apartment and he’d been there, his eyes downcast and his lips pulled into a frown. 

She’d barely even gotten her hellishly high heels off before he’d made the first comment, and she just wants him to leave. 

“I’m not comfortable with this!” Chris yells, and Lucy rolls her eyes as she slams her clutch down on the kitchen counter. 

“This isn’t about you, Chris. This is about taking down a drug dealer. He’s ruined countless lives, murdered countless more, and we have a chance here, okay? So Tim and I have to … to act like we’re into the scene, so what? It’s not that big of a deal. It’s for our cover, nothing more.”

“It sure looked like a hell of a lot more when you were sitting in his lap!”

“What part of undercover is hard for you to understand, Chris? It doesn’t mean anything,” Lucy tries again, and she feels a little stab of guilt and shame as she utters the words because they’re all lies. 

She remembers asking Tim do you want to come in, and she knows for a fact that she would have led him into her bedroom if Chris hadn’t been bleeding out on her couch. She knows for a fact that they would have slept together, Tim would have fucked her, if it hadn’t been for Chris, and as much regret as she has about nearly cheating on her boyfriend, she has even more regret that she hadn’t gotten to know what Tim’s hands had felt like on her body. 

Tonight she had got to feel his hands on her naked skin, though, and she thinks that if she had slept with Tim then she wouldn’t have been able to let him go. 

“I don’t want you to do this operation,” Chris says, and Lucy sighs because she knows she can’t give into him. She can’t feed into his insecurity and allow him to force her into making choices that will affect her work. 

“I can’t stop now,” she says. “Chris, we already made contact with our target. If Tim suddenly goes in with a new sub, it’ll be suspicious.”

And I don’t trust anyone else to have his back, she thinks but doesn’t say. 

Chris is silent for a long moment, and Lucy sighs as she stalks toward her bedroom. 

She wants to change, to slip into more comfortable clothing and then go to sleep. 

She’s so tired. 

Chris follows her, the kicked puppy expression on his face deepening as she pulls her crop top over her head. 

“I don’t like how he touches you.”

Lucy sighs and turns on him, her own lips pulled into a frown. “You’re the one who told me to go to the undercover training, Chris. This is what it means. Playing a part, being someone else. Nova is fucking Tim, Chris, not me. It’s not me when I do these things, it’s my undercover persona.”

Chris frowns, and Lucy knows that she’s not going to win this fight. 

She doesn’t even want to win this fight, she realizes, and she sighs as she shoves her skirt down and then reaches for her pajama top. 

“You should leave,” she whispers, and Chris’s expression shifts from kicked puppy to irritated in the span of a single second. “Go home, Chris.”

“You’re kicking me out just because we’re having a disagreement?” he scoffs, and Lucy just wants to be done. 

“No, Chris, I’m asking you to leave because you’re being unreasonable. You followed me to the club tonight while I was undercover. If you’d blown our cover we could have gotten hurt, Chris. But you were too jealous to separate me from my undercover work, and I can’t… I just can’t handle that right now. I don’t have the mental space for your insecurities. I just want to be alone, okay?”

Chris frowns and doesn’t move, and Lucy wants to scream and cry and maybe even throw a few things. 

“I want you to go, Chris,” she emphasizes, and she’s expecting him to argue or try and convince her to let him stay, but she’s not expecting what comes out of his mouth next. 

“Lucy, I’ve seen the way you look at him, okay? I’d hoped… but it doesn’t matter. That was not Nova tonight. That was you.”

“No, Chris,” she protests, but even as she utters the words of denial, they taste like ash in her mouth. She’s been lying to herself for a long time, but it’s getting harder and harder to lie to everyone else in her life, too. “It was for the op.”

Chris shakes his head. “We should break up,” he says, and Lucy feels an irrational surge of anger not because he’s breaking up with her, but because she’s not the one to break up with him. 

“Yeah, maybe we should,” she snaps. Chris sighs in resignation and Lucy turns away from him, searching through her dresser for pajama pants to hide the way her eyes are filling with tears. “You should go. I can bring your stuff to the station tomorrow. I just want to be alone.”

“Okay,” Chris whispers, and Lucy knows she’s being a little bit of a coward by not turning around to watch him leave, but she just doesn’t want to face him. She doesn’t want to see the knowing glint in his eye or face the reality that maybe he’s right. She wants to remain in denial, play the part of Nova, and then go back to normal with Tim and their jobs and everything. 

She waits until she hears the front door close, and then she falls into bed without having found any pajama pants, groaning as the softness of her comforter surrounds her. She snuggles under the blankets and rests her hands on her belly, and she wants to relax and unwind and sleep, but despite everything that had happened with Chris, she still feels a buzzing in her veins and a warmth in her stomach that’s been there since Tim pressed his hand to the back of her neck and his fingers to her lips.

She reaches for her phone and dials, and it’s not until the third ring that she even realizes what she’s doing. 

Fuck, she thinks, and she’s about to hang up when he answers, his voice sleep rough and raspy. 

“Chen? What’s wrong?” he asks, and Lucy sighs as she closes her eyes. 

“Nothing. Sorry, I didn’t mean…”

Tim sighs and Lucy can hear him rustling around in bed on the other end of the phone. 

“Talk to me,” he says, and it’s less of a request and more of a demand, and Lucy feels the heat in her stomach turn up a notch as she gives in.

“Chris and I broke up. We had a big fight.”

“Thank fuck. Now maybe he won’t blow our operation.”

Lucy laughs incredulously and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “I think what you meant to say was, Lucy, I’m so sorry to hear that. Are you okay?”

There’s a long moment of silence on the other end, and then Tim is dutifully repeating her words, his voice deadpan and lacking all emotion. “Lucy, I’m so sorry to hear that, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she whispers, and she bites her lip as she plays with a rogue curl that’s escaped the messy bun she’d thrown her hair up into once they’d walked out of the club. “He was being a dick about the operation, telling me that he didn’t like that I was doing it and that I should quit. I told him to go home, and he broke up with me.”

“His loss,” Tim says, and Lucy smiles fondly as she hears him yawn. “Will you be able to sleep tonight? We have to go back in tomorrow.”

Lucy nods and then whispers, “Yeah, I’ll be okay. Sorry to call. I know … I shouldn’t have, but…”

“It’s okay,” Tim says, and he yawns again and Lucy knows she needs to let him go. “I’m glad you did.”

“Okay,” Lucy says, and then she sighs as she pulls the phone away from her ear to see that it’s nearly one in the morning. “I should let you go. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Good night, Chen,” he says, and Lucy repeats the farewell before hanging up and throwing her phone across her bed. It lands on what used to be Chris’s side, and she glares at it for a moment before returning her hand to her belly. 

Talking to Tim had done nothing to dull the buzzing in her veins or the heat in her stomach, and Lucy bites her lip as she plays with the waistband of her panties. 

If she’s being honest with herself, she knows what’s wrong. 

She’s turned on.

She’s been turned on since the club, since she’d kneeled at Tim’s feet and felt his hand on her throat and his fingers in her mouth. She’s been wet, aching, since he’d fed her that first mushroom, his fingers tasting like a mix of oil and sweat and salt. 

She’d sucked them into her mouth and, despite knowing that she needed to focus on the mission, she’d thought about having other things in her mouth. 

She knows it’s wrong. 

She knows that they’ve already fucked everything up, muddied the waters too much after their first operation. She knows that this one is only going to make things worse, to blur the lines even more, but she hadn’t been strong enough to say no when she’d been approached about it. She was just greedy enough to want Tim in her life any way she could have him, and after he’d told her I think it’s time for you to move on, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to have this again, that she’d ever be able to work with him again. 

But despite everything being a mess, one thing is clear as day: she’s horny and her pussy is sopping wet, and she knows she won’t be getting any sleep unless she does something about the need running through her veins.

“Fuck,” she grunts, and she sighs in frustration as she shoves her hand into her panties. 

She thinks about Tim and she comes in less than a minute, panting and sweating, her thighs shaking as she remembers how he’d touched her, how his skin had tasted between her lips. 

She wipes her hand on her comforter, rolls over, and tries not to feel guilty as she falls into a restless sleep. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 2

Tim meets Lucy in the precinct parking lot the next morning and despite all of her attempts to pretend that everything is fine, she feels unaccountably awkward as he opens the door for her and lets her walk through first. 

“Thanks,” she whispers, and he nods but doesn’t say anything else. Lucy licks her lips, walks two steps ahead of him, and tries not to think about how she’d come with his name on her lips and her fingers in her pussy just last night, her eyes closed as she’d remembered the pressure of his hand on her throat, the feeling of his fingers between her lips. 

“Through here,” Tim murmurs, and Lucy realizes that she’s about to walk past the conference room they’re meeting in as his voice washes over her. 

“Right. Thanks.”

Tim nods and holds the door open for her again, and Lucy wonders how being undercover with him is so easy when talking to him in person is so hard. Even talking on the phone had been easier than this, though it had been more stilted and awkward than she was used to. 

Everything had changed, after they’d become Sava and Jake. 

For one long moment, when he’d stood on the threshold of her apartment after she’d asked if he’d wanted to come in, she thought it might change for the better… but now here they are, barely talking unless it’s about work, and Lucy hates it. 

“Good job last night,” Nyla says as they enter, and Lucy throws her a halfhearted smile as she takes the seat next to Tim. Across from them sit Nyla, Angela, and Sergeant Murray, and there’s a tense silence in the room while Murray flips through the file in front of him. 

“Eddie Perez is a known drug runner, which we already knew, but as of last night we have some new intel that may… extend your operation,” he says. He glances up to gauge Lucy and Tim’s expressions, and then continues slowly. “He’s not the head of the operation, though he likes people to think he is. I also assume the real boss uses him as a decoy. Can’t be targeted if no one knows you exist.”

“Makes sense,” Tim says, and Lucy glances over, her eyes on him as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair. 

“So… he’s not our target now?” she asks, and Murray sighs as he mirrors Tim’s posture and leans back in his own chair. 

“No, he is. He’s still how you’re going to get in. He recruits. We’re going to get him to recruit you, and then from there we can get a lead on this other player, hopefully.”

“Okay,” Tim agrees easily, more easily than Lucy would have expected considering his general feelings around undercover work and his specific feelings about her and them. “So, this is longer term than we were originally told. What are we thinking? A week, then?”

Murray shakes his head slowly, and Lucy feels a pit of unease growing in her stomach. 

“Longer?” she asks cautiously, and Murray sighs as he nods. 

“Yeah, I would say it’s for the foreseeable future, unfortunately. Look, this isn’t what you signed on for. We can pull you and work on sending in another set of UCs if you’re uncomfortable. I understand that it’s a … unique assignment.”

Tim snorts in amusement and Lucy blushes. She remembers seeing leather and collars and chains in the club last night. She’d seen more skin than clothing, had touched Tim more in the two hours they were there than she has in the entire three years she’s known him, and it’s not that she’s uncomfortable with what they’d done, necessarily… instead, she’s uncomfortable with how much she liked it. 

“I know we gave you a quick rundown on how to act and what to do for last night,” Murray continues. “But if this is going to be more long term, we’re going to need you to spend some time with one of our people. Tim, you seemed … well, you were a natural dominant.”

Tim shrugs, the corners of his lips lifting into a tiny smirk. His arms are still crossed over his chest, and Lucy gets briefly distracted watching the way his muscles bulge as he shifts in his chair. 

“Eddie is a scumbag who thinks he’s a Dom,” Angela says, interrupting Lucy's thoughts. She looks up just in time to see Nyla make a face and nod her head in agreement. “In reality he’s just an abuser. He likes to sell drugs, kill people, and abuse women. If you’re up for this, taking him down will do a lot of good, Tim.”

Tim sighs and nods as he turns to look at Lucy, and despite the newfound awkwardness between them, she can see the concern in his eyes, the need to make sure that she’s on the same page as he is. “People like Eddie disgust me,” he says, not breaking eye contact even as he talks to Angela, Nyla, and Murray. “They use the guise of being a Dominant to hurt and abuse, and that’s not what a real Dominant and submissive relationship is like. I’m in if Lucy is; this bastard needs to be taken down along with the rest of them.”

Lucy swallows hard but nods slowly as she searches Tim’s gaze for any sign of hesitation. 

There is none. 

“I’m in. Let’s do this.”

“All right,” Murray says, and he nods to himself as he closes the file in front of him and leans back in his chair. “Then we need you both to spend some time with one of our people, like I said. We need to immerse you in the scene, make sure you’re comfortable and knowledgeable about what you might see or be expected to do. You won’t be expected to do anything you’re uncomfortable with, of course, but as long as you’re knowledgeable no one will question your hesitation to do or not do something specific in public.”

“Sounds like Timothy doesn’t need much training,” Angela cuts in, and Lucy raises an eyebrow while Tim shoots his best friend a glare. She’s grinning like the cat that got the cream, and Lucy is intrigued by the way Tim shakes his head almost imperceptibly. 

“Angela,” he growls, and there’s a warning in his voice. 

Angela either doesn’t hear it, or ignores it completely.

“How do you know so much, anyway?” she continues, twirling a lock of hair around her finger innocently. “You were… really good last night. You played Lucy like a three string fiddle. She was putty in your hands.”

Lucy blushes bright red while Tim rolls his eyes. 

“She’s been trained for undercover work, Angela. She knows how to adapt to any situation, even if that situation does call for leather skirts and fuck me heels.”

“Right,” Lucy agrees, though she’d been more distracted last night than she wants to admit to anyone. “We didn’t cover this specifically at UC school, but being able to adapt to any situation, no matter how … unique it is, is of the utmost importance. I observe, imitate, and blend in.”

“Mmm hmmmm,” Angela hums, and Lucy’s blush deepens as she stares at them both, grinning widely. “I’m just saying. Tim knows things.”

“I know you’re getting on my nerves,” he grunts, and Angela laughs as she holds up her hands in surrender. 

“Fine. Fine, don’t tell me then. I’ll just create some elaborate backstory in my head about how you used to dominate people for money before joining the LAPD. Oooooh maybe you were like a sugar daddy…”

Tim sighs loudly as he pushes up from his chair. “Before Isabel, I was into it. When I met her, she wasn’t. That was the end of that. Can we please focus now?”

Angela nods, a self satisfied smile stretching across her face as she watches Tim move toward the door and hold it open. He ushers each of the women through, closing it behind Lucy as she walks out slightly ahead of him. They fall into step behind Sergeant Murray, Tim with his hands in his pockets and Lucy with a weight settling uncomfortably in her stomach. 

“Tim?” she murmurs, and he makes a noise to indicate he’s listening as she slows down and walks beside him. “Are we… are we okay?” she whispers, and she hears him sigh though she doesn’t dare glance over. 

“We’re fine, Chen,” he whispers, and the uncomfortable feeling in Lucy’s stomach only grows. 

Chen.

Not Lucy. 

“Okay,” she says. 

They fall silent as they walk the long, echoing hallways, and all Lucy can think is that she hopes that whatever is happening between them or has already happened between them doesn’t get one of them hurt. 

_________________________________

After a sitdown meeting with one of the undercover handlers in which Lucy learns about things like subdrop, subspace, and aftercare, they’re told to go home and rest before they have to go back under at the club. Lucy leaves the station quickly, lamenting her need for a long nap, but Tim lingers, trying to decide between a power nap at home and a long, hard session in the precinct gym. 

Before he can come to a decision, though, Angela appears at his elbow like a fucking genie, grinning and guiding him over to her desk in the middle of the bullpen. She shoves him into her chair and sits on the edge of her desk, and Tim sighs as he runs his fingers through his hair. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, but she just shakes her head. 

“Not about that, though I have to admit I’m curious. I can see it, you know, with your control issues and the fact that you’re…” she pauses to wave her hand in his general direction. “You know. You.”

Tim glares, because what the fuck does that mean? But before he can ask, Angela is waving her hands in front of her face, shaking her head and refocusing them. 

“I’m not asking about that, though I’m not not asking about it if you want to share...”

“No.”

“Fine, but I am asking about you and Lucy. Things seem… different between you two, since you went undercover as Jake and Sava.”

“We’re fine,” Tim says shortly, though even as the words slide past his lips, he finds himself questioning them. 

Are they fine?

Had he fucked everything up by walking inside her apartment that day?

Had they fucked everything up by kissing, not once or twice, but three times? 

“What happened?” Angela asks, and as she stares down at him, taller than he is from her perch on her desk, her voice softens and her tone shifts from teasing to serious. “Tim, did something happen while you were undercover?”

Tim leans back in the desk chair, blowing out a breath as he crosses his arms defensively over his chest. He glances at Angela and then away, his eyes focusing on the pile of paperwork on her desk and the picture of Wesley and Jack. He stares at the little boy and Angela’s husband, and he feels a pang of longing for what she has. 

He wants that, but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to have it.

“Lucy kissed me,” he says, and then he adds quickly, “Or I kissed her. We kissed, anyway.”

Angela stares at him, her lips parted and her eyes wide, and Tim can tell that she’s working up to an inappropriate level of excitement so he holds out a hand, pausing her glee. 

“It wasn’t like that. We were practicing,” he says, and if he meant his words to calm her down he greatly miscalculated. Her smile grows even wider and she practically swoons in place where she’s sitting on the edge of her desk. 

“Practiced? For what?”

“We knew we’d have to act like a couple,” Tim explains, his voice cracking. “We knew that we were going to have to pretend to be in love and-and everything, and we didn’t want the first time we ever kissed to be awkward and blow our cover, so we practiced. That was it. It wasn’t anything more than that.”

“Mmmm hmmm,” Angela says, and Tim rolls his eyes. 

He’s getting really tired of her knowing, smug tone. 

“Then why are you two acting so awkward? If it was nothing, if it was just practice?”

Tim sighs and shrugs his shoulders. 

“Because… because what if it wasn’t just practice, for her?”

“For her, huh?”

Tim glares and Angela holds up a hand in surrender. 

“Sorry, sorry. I see what you’re saying — how can you know what she’s thinking about the kiss? But Tim, the only way you can find out is by talking to her. And I suggest you do it soon, because this undercover operation is going to be so much worse than when you were Jake and Sava. More intimate, more raw. She’s putting herself into a very vulnerable position, pretending to be your sub. And yeah, she holds the power when it comes to scenes and safewords, but you’re holding a lot of power over her feelings here, Tim. Just… don’t fuck this up, okay? Your friendship, or whatever else you could be.”

Tim nods, but he doesn’t respond as he sits in Angela’s chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his brain whirling a million miles an hour with a million different questions. She walks away eventually, leaving him alone with his thoughts, but by the time Lucy returns to the station, refreshed and ready for another night of undercover debauchery, he hasn’t managed to find any answers. 

He knows he needs to talk to Lucy, but before they go undercover tonight, he has an errand he needs to run.

“I’ll be back in time for the briefing,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods from where she’s sitting at her own desk, a webpage on Dominate and submissive relationships already pulled up her browser.

Tim watches her for a moment, and then turns and leaves. 

_________________________________

Later that night, Lucy pauses Tim outside of the club with a hand on his arm. He stops immediately, his large, warm body coming to a stop right behind hers, blocking her from both the cool wind and the view of the other men outside of the club. He drops a hand to the small of her back, and his touch actually helps Lucy fall deeper into her character. She closes her eyes, focuses on his warm skin pressing into hers, and then nods as she leans into Tim, into Alex, searching out the comfort and warmth and safety of her Dom. 

“Ready?” he murmurs, and she nods. “Good. Then just one more thing.”

Lucy looks up, curiosity shining in her eyes. Tim is staring down at her, his lips pressed in a thin line. He’s got his serious face on, and Lucy glances around to make sure that there’s no one suspicious, that they haven’t blown their cover. Tim just shakes his head, though, and pulls out what looks like a slim, black jewelry case from his jacket. 

“We’re fine. No need to worry. But here; you’ll need this for tonight.”

Lucy makes a curious noise but takes the box, opening it slowly and then gasping when she sees what’s inside. 

“Tim…”

Tim shakes his head and steps closer. 

“Nova,” he reminds her, his lips less than an inch from her ear. She shivers as his warm breath caresses her skin, and then reaches out to touch her fingers to the cool leather. 

“What is this?”

“It’s a collar. I know you saw some people wearing them last night, but Murray and his team didn’t touch on the meaning behind them today. Let me tell you, and then you can decide if you want to wear it, okay?”

Lucy nods, and Tim reaches into the box to take it out. He tosses the box into a nearby trash can, likely not wanting others to know or see that it’s brand new, and then holds it out to Lucy. She takes it in both hands, testing its wright and the feeling of the buttery smooth leather against her skin. 

“Collars can be worn for a lot of different reasons, but most often a Dom will collar his sub to show devotion. It’s just as or more meaningful than a wedding ring, and they aren’t taken lightly in the scene,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods along as she presses the leather against the skin of her throat. Tim watches her movements, swallowing hard and licking his suddenly dry lips as he continues, his eyes never leaving her. “A sub can wear a collar during play or all the time, but the ones worn publicly are usually less… flashy than this. This is a play collar; it locks, and it has this ring,” he says, sliding his finger through the sturdy, stainless steel loop. “For me to hold onto while we play, or to attach a collar to. It helps get you in the mindset for a scene, but they’re often something that both the Dom and sub become emotionally attached to. You feel safer, more calm, when you’re collared, and I feel more in control. More like I own you.”

Lucy whimpers, and it doesn’t escape her notice that Tim has shifted from using a Dom and sub in nonspecific terms to me and you. 

“If you don’t feel comfortable wearing it, I understand,” he whispers, but Lucy shakes her head, her hands tightening around the leather. 

She wants to wear Tim’s collar. 

She knows she can’t have him, not for real, but she can have this. She can have his collar around her throat, can feel his fingers tracing the leather and pulling on the loop in the front. 

“I want to wear it,” she breathes, and Tim nods as he reaches to take it from her. Lucy almost doesn't let it go, but she knows he’s only taking it so that he can fasten it around her neck. “Put it on me,” she whispers, and then she adds “Sir,” and she nearly whimpers when she hears Tim groan. He leans further into her space, his stomach pressed to hers, and Lucy nearly stops breathing when she simultaneously feels the leather touch her throat and Tim’s hard cock press into her belly. She whimpers and closes her eyes, swallowing just to feel the way the collar settles over her throat, and when she hears the click of the collar settling into place, when she feels the weight of it around her neck, she shudders. 

“Good girl,” Tim murmurs, his lips right next to her ear, and Lucy knows they’re on a mission but she can’t fucking focus. 

He takes her hand and walks her into the club, and Lucy knows that he thinks she’s just playing a part, pretending to be as affected as she is, but she’s not. Her stomach is warm and her chest tight, and every time she breathes, every time she swallows and feels the collar, she feels another rush of arousal flooding her body, her fingers tingling and her legs unsteady.

Tim sits and she kneels at his feet, and she sees Eddie in the distance but she’s struggling to keep her mind clear and focused. 

“Tim,” she whispers, and he shushes her quickly, his fingers looping into the collar on her neck and pulling. 

“Nova,” he warns her, and Lucy nods, licking her lips. 

“S-sir,” she tries instead, and Tim turns to her, lazily rolling his head until their eyes meet. She stares at him, her gaze cloudy and her body positively thrumming with need, her pussy wet and aching, clenching around nothing as Tim’s long, calloused fingers caress the skin under her new collar. Tim stares at her in concern for a moment and then leans down, brushing his lips over her temple as he whispers into her ear far too quietly for anyone else to hear. 

“Do I need to pull the plug on the op?” he murmurs, but Lucy shakes her head. 

She wants to do this. 

She can do this, she knows she can. She’s been trained.

She’s been on multiple undercover operations before and she’s damn good at what she does. 

She just needs to fucking focus. 

“No,” she whispers, and Tim hums as he leans back. He stares at her, not removing his finger from where they’re caressing the leather of the collar, dipping under it to scrape his fingernails across the delicate skin of her throat. 

“Say the word any time if you need to,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods just before he curls his fingers around the lead on her collar and tugs, pulling her forward until her head is in his lap. He brushes his fingers through her hair, and Lucy moans, drawing a chuckle from Tim just as she hears footsteps behind them. 

It’s Eddie, she knows. 

She sucks in a deep breath and tries to think past the haze of arousal clouding her brain. 

She has a job to do. 

And she can’t let Tim distract her. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 3

Tim wraps the collar around Lucy’s throat and realizes with sudden clarity that he has made a huge fucking mistake. He watches as she swallows, as the soft, delicate skin of her throat presses against the leather, and the sudden and all consuming feeling of mine that wells up within him nearly knocks him off of his feet. 

Because she’s not. 

She’s not his, no matter how much he wants her to be. 

She shudders, her whole body trembling as her eyes flutter closed, and Tim knows that he’s too close, too involved, but they’re undercover, right?

What happens undercover…

Well, it doesn’t stay undercover, he knows that much, but he’s just desperate enough to hear the little sound that passes Lucy’s lips as the collar settles over her throat that he finds he doesn’t really give a shit if it stays undercover or not.

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and Lucy fucking whimpers as his lips caress the shell of her ear. He grins, licking his lips and chasing the taste of her skin as he reaches for her hand. He wraps his long, thick fingers around her smaller, delicate ones. Everything inside of him is screaming mine mine mine, and the feeling only grows worse when Lucy shudders and then stumbles, unsteady on her feet. 

Is she actually affected, or is she acting? 

He doesn’t know, and it’s driving him insane as he leads her to a table in the middle of the bar. He sits down in the booth and pulls on Lucy’s arm, and his stomach swoops and fills with warmth and arousal as she folds neatly, dropping to her knees like she’s been kneeling for him for years. 

She’s so fucking perfect, and she doesn’t even know it. 

“Tim,” she whimpers, and Tim’s heart races as he glances down at her and then back up to where he sees Eddie leaning against the bar in the distance.

She can’t just be acting, he knows, despite what he’d told Angela. 

She keeps breaking character, something that Lucy Chen would never purposely do in a million years. 

“Nova,” he murmurs, and he’s both reminding her of their covers and warning her to stay in character. 

Do not speak unless your Dom speaks to you first, he remembers telling her earlier, and Lucy nods and licks her lips as she comes back to herself a little bit. 

“S-sir,” she whispers instead, and Tim grins reflexively at the title. He turns to her, rolling his head to the side until their eyes meet. Her gaze is cloudy, unfocused, and Tim hums as he reaches out to brush his fingers under the leather of her collar. He tugs on it, putting pressure on the delicate skin of her neck, and then rubs his fingers back and forth along the line of baby-fine hair at the nape of her neck. He watches her, watches as her eyes cloud over again, and while part of him is absolutely thrilled at how responsive she is, the other part is just worried. 

“Do I need to pull the plug on the op?” he murmurs, but Lucy shakes her head slowly as Tim presses his thumb against the top of her spine.

“No,” she whispers after several long seconds, and Tim hums, nodding almost imperceptibly as he leans back.

He trusts her. 

If she says she’s good, she’s good. 

But…

“Say the word any time if you need to,” he reminds her, and she nods just as before he’s curling his fingers around the metal ring on the front of her collar, pulling her forward until her head is in his lap. He brushes his fingers through her hair, chuckling softly as she moans.

He’s just thinking about what a fucking amazing sub she’d be, how good she’d be for him, when he hears footsteps approaching heir table. He’d been expecting Eddie to head in their direction, of course — the man is obsessed with Lucy, a little more than Tim is comfortable with even if it does work to their advantage — but he finds himself more than a little annoyed at the interruption.

He feels Lucy tense next to him and then relax just as quickly, and he knows without looking that she’s more focused than she’d been even a moment ago. She’d been relaxed when it was just them, slipping slowly into subspace, but now that Eddie is here she’s on alert. 

“I was hoping I’d run into you again,” Eddie says. His voice is soft and quiet, almost a purr, and Tim feels a different type of shudder run though Lucy as he takes the seat across from them. 

“We had fun the other night,” Tim says offhandedly. He reaches for his water and takes a sip, and he hasn’t ordered any food yet but he’s tempted to. He wants to press little bites of warm, savory goodness against Lucy’s lips and watch as she takes them into her mouth. He wants to feel her tongue on his skin again, to watch as she licks around his fingers and then asks for more. 

He waves a waitress down and orders an appetizer sampler before he thinks too hard about why, and then turns back to their target. He leans back against the bench, one arm stretched out along the edge of it while he plays with Lucy’s hair with the other. She’s a puddle in his lap, her head resting on his thigh and her eyes closed though he knows she’s paying attention to every word. 

“Remind me of your names,” Eddie requests, and Tim grins as he scratches his blunt nails across Lucy’s scalp. She moans, and both Tim and Eddie are distracted for a moment by the sound.

“I’m Alex,” Tim eventually responds. “This is Nova.”

“I like the collar. It’s new,” Eddie comments, and Tim has to resist the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Thanks,” he says. He doesn’t offer anything else, though, just slips his fingers down the back of Lucy’s head, tangling them in her hair as he reaches for the collar again. He pulls on it and the noise Lucy makes goes straight to his groin. He’s been hard since the parking lot when he’d snapped the collar into place around Lucy’s neck, marking her as his. 

Eddie sips his drink, a tumbler of whiskey, and Tim finds himself envious of the alcohol as he tries to keep his head in the game. He’s distracted by Lucy and her noises and the feel of her silky hair under his hand. He’s distracted by his hard cock, the way it aches each time Lucy moans or trembles against him, and he could definitely use a drink right about now. 

“Your food, sir,” the waitress murmurs, and Tim thanks her as the appetizer platter is set down in front of them. He reaches for a piece of brie wrapped in prosciutto. He brings it to his own lips, tasting it, and moans at the flavor as he presses the second half of the hor d'oeuvre against Lucy’s lips. 

“Try this, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy obediently opens her mouth, her tongue peeking out between her lips as Tim feeds it to her. She closes her lips around his fingers, her tongue darting out to steal the treat, and it takes all of Tim’s self control to stay focused as she sucks his skin to remove all traces of the smooth, creamy cheese from his fingers. 

“Mmm,” she moans, and he grins as he reaches for another one of the appetizers. 

He sees Eddie just watching them, and while he knows that the man’s fascination with them is good for the cause, he feels a pang of possession as Eddie’s eyes flicker to Lucy’s lips. 

“This one’s an oyster,” he tells her, trying to ignore the other man sitting in their booth. “It has butter on it; it’s messy, and you know I don’t like messes, baby.”

Lucy nods and whimpers as she waits, though Tim catches when she flickers her gaze toward their target. He presses the oyster against her lips and nearly comes undone as she cleans the butter from his skin. She licks and sucks and then drops his fingers from her mouth, panting for breath as she traces her own lips, chasing the butter or the taste of his skin, he doesn’t know. 

Eddie clears his throat, breaking them out of the moment, and Tim forces a smile as he leans back against the booth, his fingers slipping from Lucy’s lips and down her throat. He curls his pointer and middle fingers in the ring on her collar and holds her close as he turns his attention back to their target. 

“Do you share?” Eddie asks. He licks his lips as he watches Lucy sway where she’s kneeling, and the flare of possessiveness in Tim takes him by surprise. 

“No,” he growls, and he has to hide a wince when Lucy pinches his calf hard. 

“What a shame,” Eddie murmurs. He leans back in the booth, spreading his legs as he lets his eyes roam Lucy’s body freely. She’s dressed in a short, leather skirt today and it’s bunched around her thighs from how she’s kneeling. Tim knows from Eddie’s position that he can see up her skirt, maybe all the way to her panties, and he wants to grab Lucy and haul her away from this man but he doesn’t. Instead he tightens his grip on her collar and flashes Eddie an annoyed look. “I’d share mine,” Eddie adds, and Tim raises an eyebrow as he forces himself to relax. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. He shifts again and Tim lets his gaze flicker down to the other man’s lap. He’s hard, straining against his pants, and Tim feels an irrational anger flare within him. 

“Well, I don’t share,” he reiterates, and then sighs when Lucy pinches him again. 

He’s not backing down on this one, though. 

He doesn’t give a fuck if it’s for the undercover operation, this man will not be touching her. 

“God, I’d love to get my hands on her,” he says wistfully, and Tim growls low in his throat as he shifts closer to Lucy on the bench. He wants to reach down and pull her into his lap, to protect her from this man’s filthy gaze, but he doesn’t. “Do you at least let people watch?”

Tim opens his mouth to tell the man to fuck off, but before he can ruin their entire mission, Lucy pinches his leg again. He grunts in pain and then glares down at her. She’s not even looking at him; her eyes are closed, her cheek red where it’s smushed against his thigh. 

He flexes his fingers where they’re holding on to her collar tightly and then sighs as he turns his gaze back to Eddie. 

“Sometimes,” he allows, but he regrets it almost immediately when Eddie grins and leans forward. 

“Oh, I’d pay to watch. I bet she’s such a good little bitch.”

Lucy stiffens against Tim’s thigh, and this time it’s Tim trying to rein her in, to remind her that they’re undercover and that they’re here for the sole purpose of bringing this bastard down. It’s hard to keep his cool, but he knows that how Eddie sees a Dominant and submissive relationship is all wrong and that this type of comment, this exact type of thing, is why they’re doing this. 

Well, he thinks. 

They’re mostly working this op because he’s a drug smuggling murderer, but he’s also a abusive asshole who uses the scene to justify the way he hurts women, and Tim isn’t too picky about what charges they bring against him as long as he’s no longer free to prey on others who might not know better. 

“I have a … uh, a job coming up soon that’s gonna require all of my focus,” he says, because this conversation is the exact opening he’s been waiting for. “But, if it goes well… Nova and I do like to celebrate.”

Eddie grins and tips back the rest of his whiskey in one gulp. 

“Well then, godspeed,” he says, and Tim forces a laugh as he reaches onto the plate in front of him for another oyster. He eats this one and then stares at his butter covered fingers, considering. 

“Clean me up, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy opens her mouth obediently. He slides his fingers across her tongue, and he knows he’s pushing it, that this isn’t in any way necessary. But as she closes her mouth around the digits and flicks her tongue over his skin, he can’t help but imagine her pretty little mouth elsewhere. “Do you want one?” he asks, and Lucy nods, her eyes half lidded and her cheeks pink when Tim pulls his fingers away. 

“Yes, sir,” she breathes, and Eddie moans across the table as he watches Tim continue to feed Lucy.

“Fuck, but I hope your job goes well,” he says, and Tim can’t help the chuckle that escapes him.

Hook, line, and sinker. 

Eddie is theirs. 

“What kind of job?” the man asks, and Tim smirks as he helps Lucy take a sip of water from where she’s still kneeling on the floor beside him. He cups her chin and rests his long fingers on her throat, biting back a groan when he feels the leather collar tighten and then release as she swallows the cool liquid. 

Tim smirks and brushes his thumb over Lucy’s lip to catch a droplet of water before setting the glass down. He takes him time before answering, turning his attention to Lucy to check in with her. She meets his gaze, and Tim watches with his heart pounding as she licks her wet, pink lips. 

“You good to keep kneeling, baby?” he murmurs, and Lucy nods. She hasn’t so much as shifted uncomfortably, but Tim knows she probably is. She’s not been trained for this, and despite the cushion under her knees, he knows she must be hurting. “Or do you wanna sit in my lap?”

Lucy whimpers, her eyes flickering back and forth between Tim’s lap and his face, and he smirks as he makes the decision for her. He reaches down, one arm sliding behind her neck while the other nudges behind her knees. Lucy melts into him, letting him push and pull her to his satisfaction. He lifts her easily, his muscles bulging as he widens his stance and sits her ass on his lap. He leans her against his chest, her legs settling on the empty space next to him on the booth, and he doesn’t realize his mistake until her warm breath is puffing against his neck and her ass is rubbing against his crotch. He grunts and tries to reposition, but she’s pressed against his erection and he has no hope of hiding it. 

Eddie, annoyed by being kept waiting, clears his throat and repeats his question. 

“What kind of job?”

Tim regards him with an air of nonchalance as he glances at him over Lucy’s head. 

“The kind that lets me buy my girl nice, expensive things.”

He leaves it at that, refusing to say more even as Eddie raises an eyebrow in curiosity. He watches carefully, his eyes flickering toward Eddie and then away as he raises his hand and waves down a waitress. 

“Another whiskey, neat,” he says, and Tim nods as he cups the back of Lucy’s head in his large palm. She rolls her head to where she can see the goings-on of the club, and Tim smirks as she eyes Eddie. 

She’s so good at this, he thinks. Both at pretending to be his sub and at undercover work; he’s honestly astonished at how easily she can slip into different roles, pretending to be different people. 

“One for me, too,” Tim says, and he ignores the grumble from Angela in his earpiece about how he shouldn’t be drinking on a mission. He doesn’t plan on getting drunk or even tipsy; he just needs something to do with his hands so he doesn’t keep touching Lucy. He’s already hard, aching, and he could use the warmth and the burn of a nice whiskey. 

The waitress returns with both drinks, and Tim sips his with a pleased groan. It slides hot and burning down his throat, and he chases the first drink with an oyster before pressing another piece of the prosciutto wrapped brie against Lucy’s lips. She takes it from him, sucks him clean, and then nuzzles into his chest. 

Eddie watches them for a while longer, finishes his drink, and then stands to his feet. 

“When will you be back?” he asks, and Tim shrugs as he takes another sip of his whiskey. 

“After the job. A few days, maybe a week. We’ll want to … celebrate, afterward.”

Eddie grins and lets his eyes linger on Lucy’s bare thighs as his tongue runs slowly over his lips. 

“Then hopefully I’ll see you soon,” he says, and Tim nods as he relaxes back into the booth.

Eddie walks away, and Tim feels the exact moment that the tension drains from Lucy’s entire body. 

“He’s fucking creepy,” she grumbles, and Tim laughs as he nods. He presses his face into Lucy’s curls, breathing her in, and then pulls back and downs the rest of his drink, chasing it with the final oyster before leaning back and observing the other patrons in the club. He’d been so distracted by Eddie and Lucy that he hadn’t paid much attention, but now that he is, he finds that any calm he’d managed to find in Eddie’s absence dissipates. 

There’s leather and skin and loud, reverberating music. There’s people dancing, and as he watches them, he imagines Lucy out there with them, her skin sweaty and her hair in loose waves around her shoulders, her hands raised above her head as she gives herself over to the music. 

“You can leave now,” he hears over their comms, and he’s grateful for the distraction as his belly fills with warmth at the images in his mind. He nods and then slides his hand down Lucy’s neck and side, settling it on her hip as he helps her stand between his still parted thighs.

“Take a moment,” he tells her, because she’s been kneeling and sitting for a long time, and he knows that standing must hurt. 

“Okay,” Lucy says, and Tim watches as she closes her eyes and licks her lips as he digs his thumbs into her hips, massaging the skin as she shifts back and forth on her feet. It takes several long moments, but eventually Lucy is nodding and reaching out a hand to pull Tim up, too. “I’m okay. We can go now.”

Tim nods and slides his hand around her waist as he reaches for his wallet. He throws several twenties down on the table, making sure to leave enough for a generous tip (it’s not his money, after all, and what good is drug money if you can’t use it for oysters and tipping the working class of LA?), and then he’s leading Lucy out of the club, his body behind hers as they walk through the throng of sweaty people. 

The second they’re out in the cool, night air, he feels Lucy relax completely. She switches from being Nova to being Lucy so easily that his head spins, because try as he might, he can’t seem to separate Alex and Tim. It hadn’t been Alex in the club with a beautiful woman on his lap, it had been him, and he’s still just as affected as he was before, his cock hard in his jeans and his stomach warm with arousal. 

He watches as she reaches up to press a hand against her throat, and he swallows hard as her slim, delicate fingers caress the leather. She doesn’t take it off right away, instead just touching it reverently, but eventually she does, unclasping it before turning around and pressing it into Tim’s hands. 

“Um,” she whispers, unsure what to say. 

Tim just nods, though, and runs his thumb over the warm leather before he folds it and tucks it gently into his pocket. 

“I’ll keep it safe for you,” he murmurs. He hears Lucy’s sharp intake of breath and then adds, “For… for next time. For when we go undercover next time.”

Lucy nods and licks her lips, her gaze traveling slowly from Tim’s face down his chest and toward his groin, and the flush on her cheeks is the only evidence that she’s affected as she takes a step back and motions her head toward where Tim knows the van and Angela and the rest of the team are waiting. 

“Okay,” she breathes, and he nods, trying desperately to force himself back into being just Tim as they fall into step next to each other, the easy give and take between them slowly disappearing the closer they get to reality and the further they get away from the club. 

By the time he’s holding the door of the van open for her and ushering her inside, it feels like that morning at the station all over again. 

Stilted. 

Awkward.

Wrong. 

He hates it, but he doesn’t know how to get back to the Tim and Lucy they were before, or the Alex and Nova they are when she’s wearing her collar. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 4

“You would actually make a good undercover agent if it were something you were interested in, Bradford,” Angela says the next morning, and Tim is just barely awake enough to comprehend her words but he somehow manages to summon the willpower and energy to roll his eyes at her. 

“No.”

“You were really good last night,” Lucy confirms. Her voice is low and quiet, and Tim can’t tell if it’s because she hasn’t even finished her first cup of coffee yet or if it’s because she’s still walking on eggshells around him. He can’t really blame her if it’s the latter; he’s been walking on eggshells around her, too, unsure of where they stand not only because of their conversation before she’d gone to UC school, but also because he’s basically been her Dom for the past several nights. 

He watches as she munches on her customary blueberry muffin for breakfast, and he wants to tell her to kneel and lay her head in his lap so that he can feed it to her. 

He lets his eyes roam over her bare neck and he wants to snap her collar into place before tugging on it and bringing her face closer to his so that he can kiss her. 

He glances at her lips and remembers how they’d felt around his fingers while he’d been feeding her. 

It’s possible, he has to admit, that he’s let the lines between them blur ever so slightly, and giving her the collar the previous night had only made it worse. He’s never collared a sub before, though he hadn’t had much of a chance before he’d met Isabel and decided that she was more important than his interest in being someone’s Dom.

“I’m just saying,” Angela continues, and Tim rolls his eyes again just because he can as he leans back in his chair and takes a long pull from his (black, bitter, perfect) coffee. “Last night was… really good. That bastard Eddie is eating right out of your hands. We’ve already heard from a few of our CIs that he’s been asking around about you. We greased some palms, made a few minor charges go away, and we have several criminals singing Alex Hunter’s praises. Trust me; the next time you and Lucy go in, Eddie’s going to be begging to take Lucy’s place kneeling at your feet.”

Tim grimaces at the mental picture Angela paints, and then closes his eyes and envisions what Lucy had looked like kneeling beside him to erase it. 

Angela chuckles for a moment at the look on Tim’s face and then continues. “Anyway, while we give our CIs time to work their gossiping magic and while you do the ‘job’ you’re supposed to be doing these next few days, you and Lucy have some time off. I know the hours with this operation have been wild, so take the time to relax and rest up. We won’t let Eddie see you for a few days so we can build suspense, and by the time you go back he should be eager enough to hopefully spill something or invite you to do a job with him.”

“Sounds good,” Lucy murmurs, and Tim is about to agree with her when a sudden realization makes him frown. 

“Wait. So we have the day off? Then why did you make us come into the station in the first place? You could have sent this all over text.”

Angela chuckles and shakes her head. “You need to meet with Murray and his team again to go over a few more things for your covers, but after that you can leave.”

Tim wants to snap ‘ I know what I’m doing’, but more than he wants to go home and relax with Kojo on the couch while watching the game, he doesn’t want to give her any more ammo to use against him. 

“All right. Let’s go get this over with.”

He stands up, tosses his empty coffee cup into the trash can, and then holds the conference room door open for Angela and Lucy as they stand to join him. Angela walks through first, already talking about the plans for the next few days, and then Lucy follows. She pauses before she walks through the doorway, though, reaching out to place her hand on Tim’s arm.

“You were really good last night,” she tells him, and while Tim can hear the sincerity in her voice, he can’t make himself believe it. 

If he was good last night, it has nothing to do with his acting abilities or any predilection to undercover and everything to do with her. 

It’s easy to act like Alex, because Alex wants the same things that Tim wants. 

The only difference is, Tim can’t have them. 

“Thanks,” he whispers, and Lucy offers him a small nod and a smile before she follows Angela through the bullpen. 

Tim takes a deep breath, and then follows. 

_________________________________

Lucy has just settled down for an evening of binge watching True Crime when there’s a knock on her door, and she frowns because she knows it’s not Tamara. The teenager had just texted her to say that it would be an hour or so more before she was done studying with her friend. Lucy had texted her back to tell her to take her time, and then she'd changed into her pajamas (a tank top, itty bitty shorts, and one of the softest kimonos she owns) before rooting around in the freezer for the good, lactose free ice cream she hides behind bags of vegetables from ravenous teenagers. 

She’d been just about to settle in for a nice, relaxing evening, and she has half a mind to tell whoever’s at the door to take a hike. 

She doesn’t, though it’s a close call. Instead she sighs, stands from the couch, and pads across the floor, her feet bare on the chilly floor. 

“Hey,” Tim greets, and Lucy can’t help the small smile that stretches her lips as she takes him in. He’s standing at her door the same way he had all those weeks ago before telling her to move on, but despite the twinge of pain that the memory brings, Lucy’s glad to see him. 

She’d missed him while in Sacramento. 

“Hi.”

Tim smiles and then glances back down at the ground, and Lucy wonders if he’s thinking about the same thing that she is. 

She wonders if she’ll always think about how she’d invited him inside whenever he’s at her door. She wonders if she’ll always remember the way he’d said I shouldn’t and not no, and she knows without a shadow of a doubt that she’ll never forget the look on his face when he’d finally given in and walked inside. 

Nervous. 

Uncertain. 

Excited. 

“Um,” Tim says, and Lucy takes pity on him as he shuffles back and forth in the hallway, his hands in his pockets and his gaze focusing anywhere but on her. 

“Want to come in?”

Tim’s lips quirk up briefly before he schools his expression into something more neutral, and Lucy realizes with a thrill that he was thinking about the same thing she had been. 

Do you want to come inside?

I shouldn’t. 

“Yeah.”

She opens the door wider and steps back, and then suddenly Tim is in her apartment. It feels like deja vu, like this exact moment has happened before. And it has in a sense, but this time they’re alone. 

No Tamara. 

No Chris. 

Just them, just Lucy and Tim and everything between them that they’re both too afraid to talk about. 

“I was thinking—”

“So, do you want—”

Tim laughs and Lucy blushes when they both speak at the same time, and it’s awkward in a way their relationship has never been before. Lucy motions for him to talk first, her stomach in knots, and she hates that this is where they are but she doesn’t know how to get back to the Tim and Lucy they were before their first undercover operation. 

Before their first kiss. 

“I ordered pizza,” Tim says, and Lucy laughs as she closes the door behind him and then heads into the kitchen, pulling down two wine glasses before moving toward the fridge. 

Even if Tim doesn’t want a drink, she sure as hell is going to need one. 

“You were awfully confident I’d let you in,” she teases, and Tim cocks his head to the side, smirking as he takes a seat at her kitchen island. 

“Well, I figured if you didn’t let me in then the pizza could be a consolation prize.”

“Half pineapple and ham?” Lucy asks hopefully, and Tim makes a face but nods. 

“Of course,” he says simply, and Lucy hums in pleasure as she begins pouring two glasses of wine. “And half meat lovers because some of us are normal.”

Lucy makes a face at his pizza choice, and things aren’t perfect between them but they’re not terrible, either. She slides a wine glass across the counter to Tim and he takes it, swirling it around before sipping the sweet liquid. Lucy watches him, watches the way he licks his lips after his first sip, and she has to distract herself before she does something stupid.

“So, what’s the occasion?” she asks, and Tim shrugs as he sets his glass down. 

“I was thinking we should… talk about the undercover operation,” he says, voice quiet and soft, and Lucy nods reflexively but she feels a pit of unease growing in her stomach as she imagines all of the things he could want to talk about. 

“Yeah. Um, yeah, I guess we should.”

Tim takes another sip of his wine, this one larger, and then licks his lips. He glances at the wine bottle on the counter behind Lucy and then at the pictures on her wall, and he knows he’s being a coward by not meeting her eyes but he can’t. 

If he does, he’s never going to get this out. 

“I should have talked to you about all of this beforehand, but it’s been…”

He trails off, but Lucy knows. 

“It’s been weird, hasn’t it?” she asks, her voice barely a whisper. 

Tim nods. “Yeah, and I’m worried that this operation is making it weirder, you know?”

“Mmm,” Lucy agrees, and Tim nods as he blows out a frustrated breath. 

“I just don’t want to do anything you’re uncomfortable with, Lucy. I wanted to come over and make sure… that I haven’t been pushing you too far, because undercover or not, I never want to do that. I never want to make you uncomfortable.”

Lucy is opening her mouth to reassure Tim that he has never and will never make her uncomfortable (in any way that matters, that is; she’s been uncomfortable and awkward in his presence since his lips first touched hers), but before she can, a knock on her apartment door interrupts them. 

“Pizza,” Tim murmurs, and Lucy nods, turning to the door to greet the pizza man. Tim pays and tips, and Lucy holds the box tightly, a shield between herself and Tim and the increasingly large elephant in the room. 

“Um. Want to eat on the couch? I was … shit, the ice cream is probably melting, actually.”

Tim laughs and takes the pizza from Lucy, and she walks around him, her cheeks red and her hands hanging awkwardly at her sides as she heads to the couch. She grabs the ice cream off of the coffee table and takes it back to the kitchen, watching over the island as Tim sets the box down and carefully separates their two very different types of pizza. She allows herself a moment to breathe and then grabs two plates, napkins, and their wine glasses before heading back in. 

Tim nods his thanks and takes the plates, filling them both with pizza, and Lucy hadn’t known it was possible to put quite so much room between two bodies on her impossibly small couch, but Tim somehow manages it. He sits in the corner, as far away from her as he possibly can, and she tries not to be hurt by it but she is a little bit, anyway. 

She's halfway through her second slice of pizza before the awkward tension practically sizzling in the fucking air becomes too much. 

“This is stupid,” she says bluntly, and Tim laughs in surprise as he turns to her. Her cheeks are red but her eyes determined, and he sets his pizza down, giving her his full attention. 

“What's stupid?” he asks. 

Lucy waves her hands in the air between them, her erratic movements almost upending her pizza. Tim reaches out and saves the plate from certain death, moving it swiftly to the coffee table before scooting closer to Lucy and meeting her gaze. 

“Us! This! Things are so… they were never like this before. We were never like this before.”

“Well, we’ve had to… this is the second undercover operation where we’ve had to act like a couple, Lucy. Of course it’s a little… weird,” Tim says, and Lucy sighs even as she nods. 

“Yeah. That’s… that’s true.”

Tim wants to ask her if it’s more than that, because the way she’s looking at him and then away, her face and neck flushed and her eyes wide, tells him that maybe there is more to what’s going on between them than just pretending.

But then he remembers basic biology and we’d have to be dead not to feel something, and he’s just not brave enough to question their motives again. 

He’s not brave enough to be told it’s nothing again. 

“Right. Right, and that’s what I wanted to talk about,” he says, because regardless of whether this is pretend or real or some fucked up thing inbetween, he knows that he will never forgive himself if he hurts her during the course of their operation. “I know being at the club is… a lot. And we haven’t really had a chance to talk about it. About what you’re comfortable with doing while we’re there.”

Lucy’s blush deepens, but she doesn’t shy away from the conversation. 

“I’ve been okay with everything we’ve done so far. The-the kneeling, and the feeding. Sitting in your lap. Um. That’s all been… fine.”

Fine, she thinks, and her blush deepens further as she remembers how he’d been hard under her ass. She hadn’t been unaffected, either; her pussy had been soaking wet, aching for him, and she wonders if this is more but she doesn’t want to be the one to make the first move this again.

Do you want to come in? she’d asked, and though she’d managed to ask it without stuttering, her heart had been beating so fast she’d almost felt sick. 

“And… the collar?” Tim asks, and Lucy realizes suddenly that he’s brought it with him. He’s running his fingers over something in his pocket, something collar shaped, and along with the realization comes a flash of heat and need. 

She wants it. 

She wants the collar around her throat again, the leather warm and pressing against her skin as she breathes. She wants Tim to loop his fingers through it and pull her closer, to—

“Yeah, I like the collar,” she breathes, and then stutters, “I m-mean, it’s okay. The collar is… is okay.”

Tim smirks and slides it from his pocket, laying it on the couch between them. 

“Yeah?”

Lucy licks her lips and nods. 

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Tim says, but he doesn’t make a move to return the collar to his pocket. He just keeps watching Lucy, his eyes lingering on the flushed skin of her collarbone as he continues talking, the collar lying innocently between them. “But… I think we should have a safeword for the club. Something you can say to get me to stop something I’m doing, anything, at any time. If you say it, I stop. No questions asked.”

Lucy nods, and then her lips stretch into a wide, mischievous grin. “Xanadu,” she says, and Tim rolls his eyes but he can’t stop the way he smiles at her. 

“Fine. Xanadu it is. If you say that at any point, I will stop completely. Hands off, stepping away and checking in. Even if you’re a little bit uncomfortable, Lucy, use it.”

“I will,” Lucy promises, though she doubts that she’ll ever want him to stop. 

Tim nods and then glances down at the collar between them. Lucy follows his gaze, and as her eyes caress the smooth leather of the collar, the shining, silver ring that Tim had slipped his fingers through before pulling her closer to him, she can’t help the noise that slips past her lips. 

Tim’s eyes grow wide and his lips part, his stomach twisting in arousal as Lucy whimpers. Her eyes are glued to the leather between them, and he entirely blames his fucking cock and the fact that he can’t seem to think with his big brain when he’s around Lucy anymore for what he says next. 

“Do you want to… do you wan to wear it?” he asks, and Lucy nods so quickly that he wonders if she was just waiting for him to ask. 

“Yes, sir,” she whispers. She licks her lips, and Tim knows that they’re playing a very dangerous game, but he doesn’t allow the fact that this could end very, very badly to stop him from reaching for the collar. He picks it up and then holds it out, and Lucy bows her head so perfectly, so beautifully, that Tim lets out a low moan of his own as he fastens it around her neck. 

“Do you want to… should we…” he tries, but he can’t force the words out. 

We might have to… PDA? he remembers Lucy saying, and he knows that they have literally no reason to ‘practice’ but he desperately wants to kiss Lucy and it seems like the perfect excuse.

“Practice?” Lucy asks, and Tim grins, nodding in relief that she seems to be on the same page. 

“Yeah,” he breathes, and then he’s leaning forward, slipping his pointer finger into the metal ring on her collar, pulling her toward him.

It’s so easy, after that, to press his lips to hers. 

At first it’s just a brush of dry, warm lips, but then Lucy fucking moans and Tim grunts, scooting forward on the couch so that he can drop one hand to her hip while the other tugs on her collar. He drinks in every sound she makes, his heart racing and his cock swelling as he parts his lips against hers. Lucy whimpers and melts into him, falling against his body as he licks into her mouth, his hot, wet tongue brushing hers as he deepens the kiss. The hand on her hip slides until he’s cupping her ass, pulling her against him, and Lucy grunts before she’s surging up against him, pushing him back against the couch as she swings one leg over his thighs, straddling his lap before she cups his face in her hands. 

Tim stares up at her, his eyes glazed and wide, his lips shiny with spit (both his and hers), and he doesn’t know who moves first but suddenly they’re kissing again, Tim’s fingers under the collar and pressing against her bare throat while she slides one hand down his chest, tugging on the buttons of his shirt. 

“Fuck,” he grunts, and Lucy nods as she slides her hand down to his waistband, pulling the cotton of his button down out of his pants so that she can slide her hot, little hand up his belly. 

Tim wrenches his lips from Lucy’s, breathing hard, and he tries to stutter out a sorry or a wait, but Lucy is licking her lips and staring at him hungrily and he thinks this is what would have happened if they’d been alone when he’d followed her into her apartment that day. 

“Should we…” he says, but Lucy shakes her head. 

“We’re just practicing,” she whispers, and Tim groans deep in his chest as she dives back in, her tongue pressing against his lips and her hips rocking into his where she’s sitting in his lap. He’s hard and he knows she can feel it, but if the little noises she’s making as he thrust his fully clothed groin against hers are any indication, she doesn’t mind in the least. 

“Tim,” she moans, and he’s just about to give in, to say fuck it and take her to bed, to fuck her so hard that she screams, when the sound of a key in the lock causes him to pause. 

He doesn’t pull away, though, his brain too foggy with arousal and need to realize what the noise means, and then suddenly the door is open and they’ve been caught making out for the second time and he knows that the ‘it was for work’ excuse is only going to work so many times. 

“Holy fucking shit,” Tamara cries, and Tim groans, half out of frustration and half from the way he’s pressed, hard and hot, against Lucy’s pussy. It doesn’t matter that there are several layers of clothing between them, he can feel her heat every time she grinds down on him. “Sorry, sorry, fuck, sorry. I can go — I’ll go.”

“Tam,” Lucy says, and Tim grunts and drops his head back on the couch as she climbs off of his lap, nearly kneeing him in the crotch in the process. “This isn’t —  it’s not…”

“If you tell me this is for work…” Tamara utters disbelievingly, and Tim sighs and closes his eyes as Lucy wrings her hands nervously. She’s still wearing the collar, and he watches as her hand flies up to caress the leather.

“It is for work. I mean, it was, but…”

Lucy trails off, at a loss, and Tim knows that if he doesn’t leave now he’s going to either make a fool of himself (more than he already has, that is) or haul Lucy into her bedroom despite the fact that her roommate is home now.

“I should… that was enough, um, practice,” he says, and Lucy turns to him, her fingers tightening on the collar unconsciously. Tim reaches out and unclasps it, trying desperately to ignore the sad, little noise Lucy makes when he does, and then he’s running a hand through his hair, staring at the ceiling as he tries to figure out how to beat a hasty retreat. 

“I can go…” Tamara says again, but Tim shakes his head. 

“No, I should go. I need to… Kojo…”

It’s a lame excuse and they all three know it. He hasn’t even been gone for two hours; Kojo is fine. But he nods as if this is a perfectly reasonable excuse, glances around the living room to make sure he hasn’t left anything, and then nearly runs out of Lucy’s apartment for the second time, his metaphorical tail between his legs. 

Fuck. 

He drives home on autopilot, his eyes not really seeing the road. Instead he’s envisioning how Lucy had looked in his lap, her generous chest at eye level and her lips, red and swollen, against his. She was beautiful, her cheeks flushed and her thighs thick in her short little pajama shorts. 

He parks in his driveway, greets and lets Kojo outside, and then he’s flopping back into his bed, his hand sliding into his jeans without conscious thought as he thinks about the way Lucy had made desperate little noises while grinding down on his cock. 

“Oh, god,” he grunts, and his brain catches up to the fact that he has his thick, red cock in his hand, that he’s leaking an embarrassing amount of precome, and that he’s about to fucking explode while thinking about his former rookie/aide/best friend. He’s remembering how the skin of her throat had felt beneath his fingertips and how she’d looked wearing his collar, and then he’s coming, spilling into his hand less than a minute after first getting his fingers around himself. 

He slumps back against his pillows, his fingers still wrapped around his softening cock and his heart thundering in his chest, and as he comes down from the high of his orgasm, he realizes something very suddenly and very clearly. 

“I’m so fucked,” he groans, throwing an arm over his face. 

He’s so fucking gone on Lucy Chen, and he has to somehow finish this operation without giving himself away. 

Fuck. 

Chapter Text

Happy April Fool's Day!

But seriously, a new chapter IS COMING TODAY! Don't kill me. :)

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 5

Angela deems two days long enough for Tim’s ‘job’ and sends them back undercover that Friday. Tim hasn’t seen Lucy since they’d practiced (since he’d completely lost himself in their kiss) but it apparently doesn’t matter how much time they spend apart. The second he sees her again, everything he’s been trying to push down and ignore comes right back to the surface, stealing his breath away and causing his chest to ache. 

He wants her. 

He wants her in his bed, of course, but more than he wants a quick fuck, he wants all of her. He wants her in his bed and his home and his life, and the feelings that cause his throat to swell and his stomach to fill with butterflies nearly knock him over as she comes sauntering toward him, her legs long and shapely in four inch fuck me heels. She’s wearing a little black dress and Tim is glad for the few feet of distance between the entrance of her apartment building and his truck as he allows himself to check her out. His eyes roam lazily across her body, and he finds himself squirming in his seat, his belly warm and his cock half hard just from staring at her. 

From remembering how her lips felt on his. 

From remembering how she’d straddled him and moaned and how good she’d looked in his collar. 

“Hey,” Lucy murmurs as she opens the passenger side door of his truck, and Tim tries to respond but his throat is clogged with emotion. He clears it and licks his lips, and then chances a glance at her, which turns out is a huge fucking mistake. 

Up close he can see how the dress parts between her breasts, how the neckline plunges and just barely covers enough to be decent. 

(He remembers feeling her breasts pressed against his chest as he’d kissed her, and he is driven to distraction). 

“Uh,” Tim says.

Lucy chuckles as she settles into the truck, dropping her purse between them before reaching for her seatbelt. She clicks it into place and then wiggles a little in her seat, getting comfortable before she turns to Tim expectantly. 

“Are we ready to go?” she asks.

Tim nods dumbly and then returns his now shaking hands to the wheel of the truck. 

Focus, he admonishes himself. He shakes his head and draws in a cleansing breath, and as he puts the truck into reverse and backs slowly out of his parking space he reminds himself that if he’s not completely focused, he could get one or both of them hurt tonight. He could tip their target off and blow the whole mission, and putting Lucy in danger because he’s not able to compartmentalize will never, ever be an option. 

“So, what’s the plan tonight?” he asks, breaking the tension. He relaxes into his seat a little bit as Lucy talks, outlining the plan he already knows by heart. She knows he knows it, too, but she’s humoring him, her lips pulled into a little smile as she shifts in her seat so that when he glances over he’s treated to the sight of her breasts nearly spilling out of her dress. 

“The hope is that Eddie approaches us tonight. Angela and Mark said that he’s been asking around, and some of their UCs in the field have been talking you up. So tonight we wait for him to approach us and see if he offers to let you in on one of his jobs. Once that happens… well, Narcotics will be able to wire us and send us in, and we should be able to take them down.”

“Good,” Tim whispers fiercely, because beyond the drugs, Eddie is a creep. He’s nothing but a disgusting abuser, and the sooner he’s no longer able to prey on women (and men) weaker than him, the better. “Perfect. So we go in, have a drink and dinner, and just wait.”

“Yeah,” Lucy agrees, and Tim watches out of the corner of his eyes as she bites her lip and squirms in her seat, and he wonders deliriously if she’s just as affected as he is.

Had their kiss made her insane with arousal the way he had been? 

Had she touched herself after he’d left? 

He hadn’t waited around for her or Tamara’s reactions, but he remembers the noises she’d made while she was in his lap and the way she’d been grinding down on his erection, and at the very least she hadn’t seemed to mind. 

“Can you order stuffed mushrooms again?” Lucy eventually whispers into the silence, and Tim nearly groans out loud as he recalls the way her lips had felt, warm and wet, around his fingers as he’d fed her. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, and Lucy makes a happy little noise as he nods his head. “Yeah, I can do that. Anything else?”

Lucy bites her lip and thinks, and Tim wonders if she was put on this earth specifically to destroy every ounce of the self control he used to pride himself on, because when she speaks again her voice is low and quiet and positively dripping with desire. 

“More of the oysters, with extra butter.”

Tim whimpers, but before Lucy can call him out on the noise he makes, they’re pulling into the parking lot of the club and he’s turning the truck off, turning to her, and holding out the collar that’s been sitting between his legs throughout the drive. The leather is warm and malleable, and Lucy’s breath catches as he holds it out. 

“Ready?” he asks, and she licks her lips and nods, her eyes dropping to his mouth as he reaches out and brushes her hair over her shoulder. She drops her head, baring her neck to him, and Tim wonders if she knows how fucking perfect she is, how perfectly she presents herself to be collared each time. 

He clicks it into place and lets his fingers trail over the soft leather, the warm metal of the ring, and then over her collarbone before he pulls his hand back. He has to clear his throat twice, but eventually he’s able to speak in a mostly even tone as he reaches into his pocket for the second thing he’d brought with him. He holds it up, and Lucy fucking moans when she sees the three foot length of the lead he’s holding. It’s leather like her collar, but thinner, and Tim watches with his heart beating furiously as Lucy nods and licks her lips, dropping her head back and presenting her throat to him. 

“Yes,” she whispers. “Yes, please.”

Tim nods and leans forward, clasping the lead to the metal ring on her collar. He gives it an experimental tug. Lucy makes a positively sinful noise as she jerks toward him, and Tim is just about to say fuck it and throw her into the backseat of the truck to have his way with her when he hears the crackling of the comm in his ear. 

“Focus, Bradford,” Angela snaps. 

Her voice is like a bucket of cold water and Tim nods, dropping the length of the lead so that he and Lucy can climb out of their respective doors. He locks the truck behind him, shoves his keys and wallet into his pockets, and then he reaches for the lead hanging from Lucy’s collar, wrapping it around his hand until the length between her throat and his hand is taut. She has to walk right next to him, pressed into his side, and Tim smiles as he feels her body warm and soft against his.

“Ready?” he asks, and Lucy nods. 

“Ready.”

__________________________________

Tim slides smoothly into one of the booths, tugging on the lead and guiding Lucy into his lap instead of having her kneel. 

He wants her close tonight.

Close to him, and as far away from Eddie as he can manage. 

He orders a drink for both of them (something light and fruity, because he knows they both need to be on alert), as well as an appetizer sampler with oysters (with extra butter, per Lucy’s request), stuffed mushrooms, and fried calamari. Their food is delivered quickly, but when Tim reaches for a mushroom to feed her, he notices that her movements are slow and sluggish as if she’s moving through molasses.

Fuck, he thinks, and the realization that settles over him like a warm blanket is equal parts terrifying and arousing. 

She’s fucking floating. 

“Lucy,” he murmurs, and he knows it’s a risk using her real name but he doesn’t know how deep she is in subspace. “Baby, come back to me.”

“Mmm,” Lucy moans, and Tim’s stomach feels hot and heavy, full of butterflies and arousal as she lazily turns her head to stare at him. 

“There you are,” he murmurs, and he smiles as he brushes his thumb across her bottom lip. 

“Hi,” she whispers, and then she’s dropping her head back against his chest, a little whimper escaping her lips as Tim tugs on the lead. 

Fuck, but she’s responsive. 

“Come with me,” he murmurs, and then he’s standing, helping Lucy to her feet and trying not to give into the needy little noise she makes when she’s removed from his lap, from his warmth. She stumbles along beside him, her steps unsteady in her heels. She grips tightly to his arm, and Tim barely has the presence of mind to shove her into one of the private play rooms before he’s crowding her up against the wall, one hand cupping her jaw as he forces her to meet his gaze. 

“Lucy,” he says, this time more urgently. Lucy turns her head lazily and meets his gaze, and the way she smiles makes Tim weak in the knees.

“Tim,” she sighs, and then she’s leaning her head back against the wall and baring her throat and Tim nearly breaks, nearly gives in as she presents to him. 

“How are you doing?” he asks, and she sighs and thinks for a moment. 

“I feel… really relaxed. I’m having a hard time focusing,” she admits, and Tim nods as his gaze searches hers. 

“You’re in subspace,” he murmurs. He reaches up and traces the length of her collar, and then tugs on the lead again, smirking when he hears the little noise she makes as the leather tightens around her throat. “Do we need to pull the plug tonight? We can try again tomorrow.”

Lucy shakes her head, and Tim is about to pull the plug anyway when she finds her words. 

“No, I just… it feels so good. I like the collar and the lead and the fact that you can-can jerk me around, haul me anywhere you want me to go. I liked sitting in your lap. I felt… I felt really, really safe.”

“Yeah?” Tim whispers, his self control slowly, slowly melting away as he watches her nod, her beautiful brown eyes wide and just a little bit glazed. She’s smiling, unconsciously tugging his body closer to hers as she pulls on his arm, one of her little hands pressing against the small of her back to bring him closer, closer, closer. 

“I always feel safe with you,” she tells him, and then she’s standing on her tiptoes and pressing her lips against his and Tim’s control snaps. He presses her back against the wall, one hand pulling on the lead until she’s trapped against him, her lips pressed to his and her collar tight around her throat. He coaxes her lips open and deepens the kiss, swallowing the little noises of pleasure that Lucy makes, and it’s only the pressure from the comm in his ear that keeps him from reaching over, locking the door, and giving in to what they both want. 

“Tim,” Lucy whimpers when he pulls back, and in a moment of weakness he leans back in, capturing her lips and kissing her noisily, their lips both wet with spit and their tongues tangling as he lets the entire weight of his body settle against hers. 

“You’re so responsive,” he groans as he pulls back. “You… god, you float so easily. You’d make such a perfect sub. Fuck, Lucy.”

Lucy whimpers and tries to kiss him again, her belly hot and her pussy wet. She’s been wet since he brought out that fucking collar and lead, but the way he kisses her, the way he uses every inch of his considerable height to tower over her, dominate her, causes her slick thighs to slip together, her panties absolutely soaked through. She feels wanton, her pussy clenching around nothing, desperate for the man in front of her, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to focus on the mission but she knows she needs to.

“You’re such a good sub, baby,” he moans, and Lucy isn’t sure how much of what he’s saying is Tim and how much of it is Alex, but she isn’t sure she currently gives a fuck. “So good for me.”

Lucy whimpers and nods, throwing her head back against the wall as Tim drops his lips to her neck. He kisses under her chin and then trails his lips down the warm, flushed skin, and Lucy may not know how much of what Tim is doing is acting, but she knows for a fact that she’s not Nova right now. 

She’s Lucy, and she wants him. 

“Tim,” she says, and he pulls back, his eyes glazed and his cheeks flushed as he stares at her. 

“Yeah?”

She wants to tell him to take her right here, right now. She wants to reach out and tear the buttons off of his unfairly sexy shirt. She wants to slip into the moment, give in to what’s been brewing between them for so long, but she knows that not only are they on comms but that Tim is probably confused. He’s always had trouble separating his undercover persona from himself, and she doesn’t want to take advantage of him. 

“We need to get back out there,” she says, instead of what she wants to say, and she isn’t sure if she imagines the disappointment that flashes in Tim’s eyes or not but it causes her stomach to clench regardless. 

“Yeah. Fuck. Shit, yeah we do. Are you… are you gonna be okay? Should I make you kneel instead of sitting on my lap? How can I help?”

Lucy bites her lip and thinks. 

“Yeah, I want to kneel,” she decides. She doesn’t know if it’ll help keep her more alert, but she thinks it will. At least for a while. She’s not been trained to kneel and it’s hard for her. It takes a lot of concentration, whereas melting into Tim’s lap had been so easy. 

Tim nods and reaches for the lead, and Lucy bites her lip to hold back a moan as he takes it and tugs her toward him. She stumbles and falls into his side, and then he’s leading her out of the private room and back to their table. 

Tim flinches as they approach, though, and Lucy turns her head to get a glimpse at what had cause him to tense up. 

Eddie. 

He’s sitting at their table, sipping his own drink as he taps his fingers against his knee, and the feeling if safe and comfortable and floating that had taken over Lucy just moments before completely disappear. 

Oh, she thinks. 

That’s why she’d started floating.

Because she felt safe with just Tim. 

Now that Eddie is here, she knows she won’t have nearly as much trouble paying attention. 

“Hello,” Eddie greets, and Tim nods his head in greeting as he waves a waitress down. He points to their drinks and food, and smiles apologetically as he speaks. 

“Hey, I’m so sorry, but could I get these thrown out and order new ones? I’ll pay for all of it, of course, but we left it unattended so we need new food and drinks.”

The waitress nods and takes their dishes, and Lucy drops to Tim’s side, kneeling and leaning her head on his lap as her chest swells with emotion. 

He remembers what had happened with Caleb and he knows she barely trusts drinks that are made in front of her, much less ones that they’d left unattended. 

She wants to thank him but she doesn’t want to break character, so instead she turns her head and nuzzles into his stomach. Tim reaches down and tangles his fingers in her hair, and she knows that he understands. 

“Hello,” he finally says, and Lucy hears Eddie chuckle as he sips on his drink. 

“How did your job go?” Eddie asks, and Lucy smirks where her face is pressed into Tim’s belly. 

“It was fine,” Tim says nonchalantly. “Went off without a hitch.”

Lucy turns her head so she can watch Eddie, and just as she does, the waitress walks back over with two new drinks. Tim sips on one and then swirls his finger around in the liquid before bringing it to Lucy’s lips, painting them with the fruity concoction. She parts her lips and touches her tongue to Tim’s finger, tasting salt from his skin and sugar from the drink, and she moans as she sucks the digit into her mouth. 

“I’ve been asking around about you,” Eddie continues, though his attention isn’t on Tim. 

He’s staring at Lucy, his eyes wide and his lips quirked into a smirk. One hand is holding his drink while the other falls beneath the table, and Lucy feels sick as she thinks about what he might be doing. 

“All good things, I hope,” Tim murmurs, and Eddie laughs as he nods. 

“As a matter of fact, it was,” Eddie says as he leans back in the booth. He spreads his legs wide and takes up the entire other side of the table, and Lucy has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from voicing her disgust as his eyes roam over her body again. She’s kneeling so her dress is pushed up her thighs, more skin than she’s used to having on display, and she knows he can see right into the plunging neckline of her dress. She shivers and then tries to focus on Tim as he offers her small sips of their drink. 

“In fact,” Eddie continues. “I heard such great things that I was wondering if you might be interested in… another job.”

Tim hums in consideration, but before he can speak he’s interrupted by their waitress returning with their food. He grins, reaches for a mushroom, and then leans down and presses it against Lucy’s lips. They both get lost in the moment, Lucy’s eyes fluttering closed as Tim feeds her the treat, and it takes several long moments before he responds. 

“I could be convinced… for the right price.”

“You’ll be able to buy your girl lots of nice things after this job,” Eddie boasts. “I pay my people well.”

“Yeah?” Tim asks, and Eddie nods as he reaches without being invited to steal a piece of fried calamari. Tim glares at him but doesn’t say anything, especially when he notices Eddie shifting around as if he’s about to stand up. 

“Yeah, I do. So, I’ll be in touch, then, Mr. Hunter. And do me a favor… next time you play, let me know? I want to watch.”

Tim stiffens but nods shortly, and they both watch as Eddie stands. He’s tall, almost as tall as Tim, and Lucy lets her eyes flicker up to his before realizing that he’s still staring at her. He grins as he steals another piece of food from their plate, and Lucy feels a shiver run through her body as he eyes her. He licks the grease from the fried treat off of his fingers, and then he’s winking and walking away. 

Lucy watches him, and when he’s out of eyesight and earshot she slumps against Tim.

“He creeps me out,” she murmurs, and Tim nods in agreement as he reaches for another mushroom. He sniffs it, makes a face, and then offers it to Lucy. 

“He’s not watching us,” Tim growls, and Lucy smiles as she presses her face into his belly again. “You’re…”

He trails off, but Lucy’s brain helpfully fills in the blanks, even if what she thinks isn't what he'd meant. 

You’re mine. 

She wants to be his, and for him to be hers, but if this is all she can have… well, she’s just greedy enough to take it. 

“Do you want to leave now?” Tim murmurs, but Lucy shakes her head, dropping it back into his lap as she licks the salt from the fried mushroom off of her lips. 

“No, let’s… let’s stay a while. Finish our drinks and food,” she whispers, and Tim nods as he leans back against the leather booth.

“All right,” he agrees, and Lucy sighs in contentment as the feelings of safe and comfortable from before come flooding back. With Eddie gone she feels some of the floaty feelings return, and even though she knows it’s stupid and dangerous, she gives into them, letting herself relax further and further into Tim as he feeds her bites of food and helps her sip from their straw. 

He pulls her collar taut and then runs his fingers through her hair, and Lucy feels like fucking purring she’s so content, but she manages to bite it back as they relax together in the last place she’d ever imagined she'd be with him. 

She’s enjoying this more than she knows she should and she dreads to think of what will happen when the operation is over, but as Tim presses his fingers to her lips, wet with butter as he offers her an oyster, she decides that it’s a problem for later. 

For now, she’s going to enjoy what she can get, even if it’s not everything she really wants. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 6

Angela tells them to take the next night off and let Eddie sweat for a while, and Tim jumps at the chance to put some space between himself and the object of his desires. 

Lucy. 

After talking with Eddie, she’d asked if they could stay and finish their drinks and food and he’d given in without even a second thought. He’d nodded and tangled his fingers in her hair and held her close to him, and they’d hung out in the club for almost half of an hour, her just kneeling by his side as he fed her bits of food from his fingers. He’d let himself enjoy the idea, the fantasy, that she actually was his sub for as long as he could, and it wasn’t until they’d eventually had to leave and she’d taken the collar off and handed it back to him with an almost disappointed look on her face that the facade had broken down. 

He’d been silent all throughout the debrief and when he’d gotten home, he’d placed Lucy’s collar on the nightstand next to his side of the bed.

It’s still on his fucking nightstand over 24 hours later, just inches away from where he’s laying, his arm thrown over his face as he tries to ignore the gnawing want and need inside of him.

He never should have accepted this fucking undercover assignment. 

He should have said no. 

No one would have questioned him, not with his history. 

But then someone else would have gone undercover with Lucy, and the mere thought of someone else pretending to be her Dom makes his stomach twist unpleasantly. 

She’s his. 

She’s his and he’s hers and the thought of anyone else, anyone, touching her the way he’s been touching her… 

Tim sits up and drops his head into his hands. His fingers dig into the short strands of her hair, and he blows out a frustrated breath. 

She’s not his, as much as he increasingly wishes that she was, and the thought that someone else, some other man or woman might get to see her the way he’s seen her… that they might get to kiss her the way he’d kissed her in the club… it makes his blood boil. 

“Fuck, Bradford, get yourself together,” he growls at himself, and then he sighs, shaking his head. 

This is ridiculous. 

He needs to distract himself.

It’s nearly dark, he realizes, which means that the outside temperature is cooling down. 

A run, then. 

Maybe if he runs a few miles (or ten) he’ll be able to fall asleep without thinking about Lucy and the way her waist had felt under his fingertips and how soft her lips had been under his. 

“Kojo,” he calls, and he grins when he hears the dog’s nails scraping against the wood on the living room floor. He careens into the bedroom, his ears perked, and then wags his tail so quickly that his entire back end shakes as Tim hops on one foot while trying to pull on sweatpants. “Wanna go on a run?” he asks in his excited, for-Kojo-only doggie voice, and Kojo yips. “Yeah, let’s go,” Tim says. He puts on and ties his tennis shoes, and he’s just about to grab Kojo’s leash and walk out the front door when his phone rings. 

“God fucking damn it,” he growls, sighing as he stops right in front of the door. 

If it’s Angela calling them in… 

But it’s not. 

It’s Tamara. 

“Bradford,” he greets, and he tries to tamp down on his irritation because it’s not the teenager’s fault. He’s irritated at himself for his lack of control around Lucy. 

“Hey, it’s Tamara.”

“I know. I have caller ID,” Tim says, chuckling as he reaches for Kojo’s leash. He clips it onto the dog’s collar but doesn’t leave the house just yet, just in case Tamara actually needs to talk to him about something important that requires his attention. 

“Sorry. Um, yeah, I-I guess you do.”

“What’s up, Tam?”

“It’s Lucy.”

Tim is immediately on alert, his body tense and his heart thundering in his chest. 

“She’s fine!” Tamara quickly adds, as if she’d been able to sense Tim’s anxiety over the phone. 

Tim doesn’t speak, instead waiting for the teenager to elaborate. 

“She’s just… I don’t know. She told me she was fine but then she closed herself in her room and she seemed kind of… like, shaky? And upset? She was crying earlier, after she got off the phone with her parents, but she won’t talk to me about it. I hate the idea that she’s just… closed off in her room, all alone. I’m supposed to be meeting with some of my friends to study because we have a huge test coming up in Sociology, but I don’t want to leave her alone. And then I thought about you…”

She trails off, but Tim knows what she’s asking. 

Furthermore he knows he’ll say yes, because the thought of Lucy alone in her bed, crying over whatever shitty thing that her parents had done this time, is enough to break his heart. 

“I’ll be over soon. Let me call the dog sitter and grab a few things, and I’ll be on my way.”

“You’re the best, Tim! Okay, I’ll wait until you get here to leave. I’m already late, but it’s okay.”

“Be over in about twenty,” Tim says, and then he says goodbye and hangs up before standing in the middle of his living room, his heart still thundering but for an entirely new reason. 

He’s not ready to see Lucy.

He’s not ready to comfort her, to be that close to her. He hasn’t had time to build his walls back up, to prepare himself for the feelings that assault him every time he’s in her presence. 

But she needs him. 

And that… well, that will always take precedence. 

He walks back into his room, grabs a hoodie to toss on over the grey tanktop he’s wearing, and he’s about to leave, to jump in his truck and drive to Lucy’s apartment, when his eyes linger on the collar sitting on his nightstand. 

Fuck. 

He grabs it without thinking too hard, and then leaves his house. 

__________________________________

Tamara lets Tim in and then leaves, and Tim pauses in Lucy’s living room, his eyes flickering over all the little touches in the apartment that just scream Lucy. He loves the potted plants and the frankly excessive number of pillows and blankets and the teapot on her stove. He loves how warm and comfortable her apartment is, and despite the tension that hangs in the air, he feels comfortable here. 

“I’m fine,” Lucy says without preamble, pulling Tim from his thought as she opens her bedroom door and slinks out. She’s beautiful, flawless even with swollen eyes and red cheeks, and it’s just second nature to reach out to pull her into his arms. 

“Okay,” he says. 

Lucy sighs and melts into him, and Tim closes his eyes as he buries his face in her hair. Her curly, long, beautiful hair. She smells like lavender and vanilla, and he greedily drinks in her unique scent as she wraps her arms around his waist and nuzzles into his chest. 

“My mom was being … well, she was being my mom,” she finally mutters, and Tim nods as he reaches up and scratches his blunt nails across Lucy’s scalp before dragging them through her hair. Lucy moans at the touch and Tim knows he should stop but instead he does it again. She melts further into him, and he wonders when he became the person she wants to share these moments with. 

“You didn’t need to come,” she whispers, but she immediately negates her words by holding onto him more tightly. 

“I know,” Tim says, because he knows she doesn’t need him. She’s strong and independent and he knows she would have been fine without him, but he finds that he likes being here. 

“But I’m glad you are,” she finishes, and Tim can’t fight the smile that tugs at his lips then. 

“Let’s sit down,” he says, and Lucy nods as he leads her over to the couch. 

He realizes later, after, that the moment he sits down and she sinks to the floor in front of him instead of sitting beside him, falling to her knees without conscious thought, that what happens next was kind of inevitable. 

“Lucy,” he whispers, and she glances up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes. 

“Please?” she asks, her voice soft and quiet, and Tim licks his lips, considering. 

This is dangerous. 

It’s so fucking dangerous, but he knows that, if he really were her Dom, he would have suggested something like this to help her get out of her head. He would suggest something for her to focus on other than her mother, something to make her fall into subspace where she feels comfortable and safe. 

“Okay,” he whispers, and Lucy makes a noise as she stares up at him, her cheeks pink but no longer with the tracks of her tears. She’s flushed, her eyes fluttering closed, and Tim watches as she assumes a perfect kneeling position, her body swaying unconsciously toward him. She’s kneeling between his legs, his knees spread on either side of her, and Tim wants to pull her into his lap but he knows she needs this. 

“Let me know when you’re … when you want to stop,” he whispers, and Lucy nods and then lurches a little, her body swaying toward him without her consent. 

“Can I… do you have my collar?” she whispers, and Tim nods, licking his lips as he reaches into the pocket of his hoodie. 

“Yeah.”

“Put it on me.”

Tim knows he shouldn’t. 

They’re not at the club. 

They’re not undercover, they’re not Alex and Nova. 

They’re Lucy and Tim and they’re alone in her apartment and he knows that if he puts her collar on here then things will change. 

He reaches for it anyway, rubbing the soft leather as he considers. 

“Please,” Lucy whispers, and Tim gives in. 

He’ll always give in to her.

“Okay,” he breathes, and then he’s pressing the leather against her throat, closing it around her neck, and Lucy moans, her eyes closing as Tim rests his large hand over her collarbone once it’s in place. 

She kneels for a long time. 

Neither of them speak, the apartment silent except for the ticking of the clock and their synced breathing. Lucy kneels and Tim watches her, his lips parted and his chest tight with everything he’s feeling but is too afraid to voice. He watches Lucy, watches how she calms, how her body relaxes the longer she kneels, and he senses the exact moment that she lets go of everything that’s been bothering her. 

She deflates, and the air around them is tranquil, serene. 

“Good girl,” Tim whispers, the praise slipping so easily from his lips. He watches, his eyes trained on Lucy (as if they’d ever left), and he sees the exact moment his words register. She perks up, her lips turning up into a smile, and Tim realizes that he would do unholy things to keep her smiling the way she is right now. 

“Tim,” she whispers, and he makes a noise to indicate he’s listening but he’s not sure he can form words. He watches, breathless, as Lucy stands from her kneeling position and then climbs into his lap, her hands going to his arms as she slides her thighs around either side of his hips. He doesn’t realize he’s hard until she settles in his lap, but at that point it doesn’t seem to matter. She leans forward and presses her lips to his, and Tim knows that he should push her away and put her to bed and sleep on the fucking couch, but he doesn’t do any of that. 

Instead, he kisses her back.

He brings his hands up cup her face, his thumbs brushing along the line of her jaw, and the noise she makes as he licks the seam of her lips causes him to moan. She drinks in the noise he makes and then presses closer, her breasts pressing to his chest. 

“Lucy,” he gasps, but she shakes her head before moving back in. He pulls back, though, sucking in a breath before trying to piece together his fragmented thoughts. “Lucy, you’re… you’re upset. We shouldn’t.”

Lucy grins and presses her forehead against his. Her lips are red and kiss swollen, and Tim is distracted. 

“Yeah, I’m upset. But it’s just my mom. She’s… god, she’s always on about something. I’m not… vulnerable. I know what I want.”

Tim licks his lips and lets his gaze dart back and forth between her eyes and her lips, down between the curve of her breasts where her t-shirt has slipped down enough for him to see down the neckline. 

“What is it you want?”

Lucy grins and wiggles on his lap, and Tim grunts as she presses against his cock, thick and hard in his sweatpants. 

“You.”

And… well. 

How can he say no to that?

He knows that they should talk more. 

He knows there are many, many reasons that they shouldn’t do this. 

They’re affected by the undercover work they’ve been doing, just like they had been when they’d come back from the Vegas op and she’d invited him inside. Lucy is fresh off of a break up and his relationship with Ashley is ambiguous at best, and he knows he should stop this before they go any further but she’s in his lap, wearing his collar, her lips swollen and her beautiful brown eyes nearly eclipsed by the way her pupils are blown so wide. 

He knows they shouldn’t, but… 

“Tim. Be my Dom,” she breathes, and any argument Tim had hoped to verbalize is gone. 

Obliterated. 

“Okay,” he breathes, and then he’s standing with her in his arms, his hands falling to her ass to hold her groin against his as he heads toward her bedroom. Lucy squeals and buries her face in Tim’s neck, her legs wrapping around his waist, and he grins as he kisses her hair. 

This is stupid. 

He knows this is stupid. 

But he’s gonna do it anyway. 

“Lucy,” he whispers, and she nods as he lowers her to the floor. She stumbles for a second, her muscles quivering from kneeling so long and then sitting in his lap, and he massages the flesh of her ass, his hands moving further down to dig his fingers into the meat of her hips and thighs. She moans and sways toward him, and Tim smirks as he moves one hand from her hip to tangle his fingers in the metal ring of her collar. “What’s your safeword?”

Lucy licks her lips and pauses for a moment, thinking. 

Tim waits. 

“Xanadu.”

The absurdity makes him grin for a moment before the reality of what’s happening settles over him again. 

“Good girl. Now, strip and get on the bed.”

Lucy moans but nods, pulling away from Tim and dropping her hands to the waistband of her leggings. He watches, his eyes roaming lazily up and down her body, lingering on the curve of her ass and the swell of her breasts, one hand falling to press over his cock as he follows the movement of her hands. She pushes her legging down, her thick thighs bared slowly to him as she follows his directions. She glances up when she steps out of them to find Tim staring at her, his eyes glued to the white cotton of her panties. They’re simple and plain, a tiny little pink bow settled in the middle right over her mound, and Tim groans despite the simplicity of the garment. 

They’re sexy. 

She could make anything look sexy, he thinks. 

“Keep going,” he demands, and Lucy nods, reaching for the hem of her shirt. She’s not wearing a bra, Tim knows, because he could feel the way her nipples had pebbled when she’d pressed her chest to his, and he finds that the knowledge is nothing compared to the reality. When she pulls her shirt over her head her breasts bounce and then settle, her nipples already hard and begging for attention as she tosses her shirt to the ground. 

“Tim,” she moans, and he grins, stepping toward her as she shivers in the cool air of her bedroom. 

“You’re so pretty, baby,” he murmurs, and he feels his cock swell even further as she shivers again. 

This time, though, it has nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with his words. 

“Now your panties.”

Lucy whimpers and flushes, her cheeks and her neck and her chest all bright red, but she reaches for her panties as Tim takes another step toward her. She pushes the cotton down over her thick thighs, and Tim groans, his eyes glued to her perfect body as she steps out of them. She’s just about to toss them on the floor when Tim shakes his head, reaching out. 

“Give them to me.”

Lucy whimpers and holds them out and Tim takes them, caressing the warm cotton. He runs his long, thick fingers over the wet center where she’d soaked through them with her arousal, and then he’s bunching them in his hand, pressing them to his nose and breathing her in. 

“Fuck, you smell good.”

“Tim, please,” Lucy whimpers. 

Tim grins and takes another step forward. He’s so close now that he knows she can feel his clothes brushing against her naked body, the cotton of his sweatpants and the zipper of his hoodie rough against her oversensitized skin. She moans and shivers again, her eyes fluttering closed, and Tim knows she wants this as much as he does but he pauses, anyway. 

“Lucy,” he whispers. 

She glances up, her eyes endless pools of black, her cheeks flushed and her lips red, and Tim knows that if she says no or stop that it will kill him but he’ll do it anyway. 

“Are you sure you want this?”

She nods immediately, though, not an ounce of hesitation. 

“Yes.”

Tim grins and takes the final step forward, his entire body pressed to hers. Lucy melts into him and Tim wants to draw this out because he knows it’s likely the only time he’s going to get to have Lucy in this way. He wants to make it last all night, but at the same time, he can’t stop himself from reaching up and drawing the zipper of his hoodie down. 

“On the bed,” he murmurs, and though his voice is gentle his tone leaves no room for argument. 

Lucy nods and climbs onto the bed, her thighs shaking as she crawls into the middle. 

“On your stomach, ass up,” Tim commands. 

Lucy whimpers but compiles, and Tim groans as he shoves his hand in his sweatpants, wrapping his fingers around his cock as her thick, beautiful ass is presented to him.

There’s so many things he wants to do to her. 

He wants to have her on her knees for him, her mouth wrapped around his cock while he tangles his fingers in her hair and fucks her face.

He wants to press her into the bed and eat her out until she’s screaming. 

He wants to spank her perfect ass, to bite marks into her beautiful skin. 

He wants to tie her up and spread her legs and make her come so many times that she can’t even remember her own name. 

He wants to have her in every way imaginable, but if he only gets this once, he wants to make it memorable. 

“I’m going to tell you what I want to do, and you let me know if you’re comfortable with it, okay?”

Lucy nods as Tim shoves his sweatpants down and tears his tanktop off. He crawls onto the bed naked, settling behind her with his hands on her hips and his long, thick cock settled between the thick, perfect globes of her ass. He’s already leaking precome, and he’s briefly distracted by the way it glistens and then drips, trailing across Lucy’s skin until it settles in the crease of her ass, over her hole for one long, perfect moment before dripping to the bed below. 

“I want to spank you,” he whispers, because every time he stares at her ass he can’t help but think about it. Her ass is perfect for spanking, and he’s dreamed of the way it would ripple under his hand as he hit her hard enough to cause a single, momentary shock of pain before the pleasure settles in. “I want to spank you until your ass is red and tender, and then I want to fuck you from behind so that you feel every stroke, every thrust.”

Lucy whimpers and nods, rubbing her ass back on his cock. Tim chuckles and pulls back until she’s no longer touching him, and then taps his palm gently on her ass, just enough to sting but not enough to hurt. 

“Be a good girl,” he murmurs. 

“S-sorry, sir,” she whispers, and Tim has to close his eyes briefly to gather his thoughts before continuing. 

“I want to spank you and fuck you bare, and then I want to come inside of you. I’m clean; I was tested at my last physical and I always use condoms. Is that okay?”

Tim knows that, as far as scenes go, as far as Doming goes, that this is light. 

But Lucy isn’t his sub even if she wants him to Dom her, and he doesn’t want to push her too far.

Asking to fuck her bare is far enough, he thinks. 

“Y-yes,” she stutters, and Tim nods but he leans down until his front is pressed against her back. He runs his hands from her ass to her breasts, cupping their weight in his palms as he whispers in her ear. 

“You’re sure? I can fuck you bare?”

Lucy nods again, and Tim knows that if he didn’t trust her implicitly that this would need to be a longer conversation. But he does. He trusts her with his life, and he nods as he presses a kiss to the top of her spine before pulling back. He flicks both nipples before trailing his hands to the small of her back, and then he’s squeezing and spreading the cheeks of her ass.

“Your safeword?” he asks. 

“Xanadu.”

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and then he’s pulling his hand back and then lowering it to her ass. The sound of his palm on her skin echoes throughout the room, and the noise she makes echoes throughout the entire apartment. Tim breathes in sharply through his nose, his eyes wide and his cock leaking as he glances down to see the red imprint of his hand on her left ass cheek. 

“You like that?” he asks, and Lucy nods, moaning as she shoves her ass back toward him, begging for more. 

“Yes. More, please.”

“I’ll give you what you want, baby,” he whispers, and then he does. He pulls his hand back and then spanks the opposite cheek, groaning when red blossoms across her skin in the shape of his hand. Lucy cries out and then drops her head between her arms, wiggling her ass in request for more. “You like that, baby?” he asks, and Lucy nods as Tim slips his fingers down the crease of her ass and across the lips of her pussy. She’s soaking wet, dripping on the quilt beneath them, and Tim grunts, sliding his fingers through her arousal before pulling his hand back and landing a hit right between her cheeks, across her hole and her pussy. 

“TIM!” she cries, and he grins as he does it again and then again before pulling back and giving her a second to breathe. 

“You’re doing so good,” he murmurs. He drops his hands to the cheeks of her ass, kneading the flesh even as she cries out from the sensitivity, and then drops his lips to her spine, kissing and licking her sweaty skin until his lips are hovering over her ear. “Five more, baby? Can you do five more?”

Lucy nods and licks her lips, and Tim grins as he nips at the skin of her neck before pulling back. He runs his hands up and down her back, soothing her, and then lands the sixth hit over the red, inflamed flesh of her left cheek. Lucy moans and whimpers, her thighs and arms shaking as she tries desperately to hold herself up. Tim winds one arm below her belly, pulling her back against him and taking some of her weight as he continues. 

“Count for me. How many more?” he asks, and Lucy licks her lips and whimpers but doesn’t respond. Tim taps her ass but doesn’t spank her again. “How many, Lucy?”

“Um… Four?”

“Good girl.”

His hand lands on her cheek again, the noise of flesh on flesh obscenely loud in the room, and then again, and by the time he’s done, her ass is bright red and she’s nearly nonverbal, a steady stream of Tim and please falling from her lips as he shushes her and kisses her spine and then her neck. He reaches down and cups her cheek, turning her head to the side so that he can capture her lips with his as he wraps his hand around his cock and slaps it against her ass. 

He kisses her for a long moment and then pulls back, meeting her gaze as he presses the head of his cock against Lucy’s soaking wet pussy. He stares at her, a question in his eyes, and she nods, shivering, her eyes fluttering closed as Tim slaps his cock between her legs, the head of it catching on her clit and causing her to moan. 

“Please, Tim, please fuck me,” she begs, and he nods, licking his lips as he leans back. He lets his eyes roam Lucy’s body from her perfect, wavy hair to the devastating dip of her waist and her irritated, red ass. 

He knows that once he has her like this, he’ll never be able to move on. 

He knows that if he fucks her, no one else will ever compare. 

He knows it’s a terrible idea, but he’s going to do it anyway. 

He buries his face in her hair, breathing in and whispering words of praise and adoration against her skin as he presses the head of his cock against her pussy. 

She’s hot and wet and perfect, and as he slips inside the tight, wet heat of her cunt, he knows that this isn’t going to last nearly as long as he wants it to. 

“Oh fuck!” he groans, and he drops his chest against Lucy’s back as he slides all the way inside. His cock, long and thick and hot, stretches her pussy wide, and they both moan in unison as he bottoms out, the head of his cock pressing against her cervix. He fills her completely, more than anyone has ever filled her before, and Lucy cries out as she trembles, her arms giving out as she collapses into the bed. 

“You feel so good,” Tim moans, and then he’s pulling back, watching in fascination as he slides almost all of the way out before sinking back inside, his cock disappearing inside her wet, pink pussy.

“Oh, god, Tim!” Lucy cries, and he nods, sliding his hand from her belly up her sternum to settle along the length of her collar. He pulls her up until her back is pressed against her chest, his hand splayed across her throat, and then he sets a fast, punishing rhythm. The hand on Lucy’s hip moves around her front, his fingers slipping through her wetness to press against her clit, and she’s crying out in no time, her body trembling as Tim fucks her hard and fast. He pants harshly against her neck, his breath hot and wet, their sweaty skin sliding together as he fucks in and out of her hot, wet cunt. 

The sound and smell of sex fill the air as he feels Lucy’s pussy beginning to flutter around him, and he knows she’s close but he wants them to come together. 

“Hold on for me, baby. Just hold on,” he murmurs. Lucy nods, swallowing hard, and Tim groans when he feels the movement against his palm. He reaches his fingers around and tangles them in the metal ring of the collar, pulling on it until Lucy moves where he wants her to, and he feels the pressure building in his belly, his balls pulling tight against his body, and his cock swelling within Lucy’s pussy. “I’m gonna come, baby. Come with me.”

Lucy nods and moans, and it only takes a few more thrusts before she’s crying out, her screams echoing off of the walls as Tim grunts and his rhythm stutters as he buries himself as deeply inside of her pussy as he can before letting go. 

“Fuck fuck fuck,” he groans, and it feels like he comes forever, pumping spurt after spurt of hot cum inside of her cunt. 

“Tim,” she whimpers, and he nods as he lowers them both to the bed. He’s still buried inside of her, his cock twitching with aftershocks as Lucy wiggles in his arms. He’s gripping tightly to her collar, his fingers wrapped around the metal ring, and he refuses to let go even as their breathing calms and the sweat on their bodies begins to cool. 

As he calms, though, the reality of what they’ve just done begins to settle in. 

Oh, fuck. 

Eventually he has to pull out, and he knows without asking that Lucy is still floating a little bit. She’s grinning, her eyes closed and her body occasionally trembling with aftershocks, and as much as Tim wants to bolt, to run the fuck away from what they’ve just done, he knows that he can’t. 

A good Dom would never, ever leave their sub after a scene. 

“Let me get some water and a rag to clean you up,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods but doesn’t move as he stumbles out of bed on shaking legs. 

He walks into the kitchen, runs a hand through his hair, and blows out a breath.

He doesn’t know how the fuck they’re going to go undercover the next night with this hanging over their heads, but the one thing he knows for certain is that it can never happen again. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 7

Tim wakes up first the next morning, and for a brief moment he considers bailing and pretending this never happened when he inevitably meets up with Lucy later on for the operation. 

He doesn’t, though, in the end. 

He’s a lot of things, but he’s not a coward. 

Or an asshole. 

He won’t leave Lucy to overthink things when the chances of her dropping are still high. He won’t leave her alone with her emotions, questioning everything they’d done, when all of the endorphins and the adrenaline from their scene are long gone. He knows she’s a chronic over-thinker, and the thought of her being alone with negative feelings and emotions makes him feel sick. 

So instead he waits, staring up at the ceiling through her canopy, until Lucy begins to stir where she’s curled against his chest. She wakes slowly, and Tim finds himself wondering if this is normal for her or if she’s still sluggish from their scene. 

Does she always wake up in fits and starts, making the most adorable little moans and grunts as she stretches and then curls back into a ball, unwilling to wake fully just yet? Does she always curl against whoever she’s with, burying her head under their arm, her cold nose digging into their skin? 

Does she always snuggle as close as she possibly can to whatever warmth she can find? 

He desperately wants to find out, but he knows that it’s not his place to know these things about her. 

They’re not… 

They’re not together. 

Last night was a mistake, regardless of how much fun Tim had, because he knows she doesn’t feel the same way about him that he feels about her. He knows that, for her, this doesn’t go beyond sex. He remembers do you want to come inside? and he knows that this, just like that would have been, isn’t about anything other than release. 

They’ve both been… tense, sexually, since they started going undercover as Dom and sub, since they started visiting the club. 

Since he’d collared her. 

Lucy moans and blinks her eyes open, and Tim’s chest feels heavy with everything he feels for her. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, his voice thick with emotion.

He wants to reach out and run his fingers through her hair.

He wants to pull her body close to his, to slide one of his own naked legs between hers, to brush his lips over hers. 

He doesn’t, though.

“Hey.”

Lucy hums and snuggles closer, and Tim knows that if he doesn’t move soon he’s going to roll her over and cover her body with his own. He’s going to kiss her and make love to her in a way that has nothing to do with his cover as a Dom and hers as a sub. He wants to nudge her legs open and slide inside of her while kissing her everywhere he can reach. He wants to make her cry out his name when she comes.

He wants this with her, the lazy early mornings, forever. 

“Last night,” he begins, and he pauses when he feels Lucy’s lips stretch into a smile against his ribs. She kisses his skin, and for one brief moment, Tim lets himself believe that he can have this.

That he can have her. 

But then he remembers basic biology and the way Lucy had been completely convinced that what they’d been doing, what they’d been feeling, had been because they were Jake and Sava.

He remembers that this is no different, except this time it’s because they’re Alex and Nova. 

The only difference is that, this time, they’d given in. 

He can’t let himself hope, he realizes, because he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to hear we’d have to be dead inside for it not to trigger something again. He’d barely been able to force himself to respond last time, and he doesn’t think he can do it again. 

Lucy pushes herself up on her arms, her hair falling around their faces like a curtain of privacy, and Tim panics. He sits up, causing Lucy to nearly fall over. His heart is pounding as he pulls the blankets over his groin, covering his soft cock as he stares at the ceiling, the gauzy curtains on Lucy’s bed frame, anything that isn’t her. 

“Last night,” Lucy begins, continuing his earlier line of thought, but Tim cuts her off.

“Shouldn’t have happened. I-I mean, I know it was inevitable… we’ve been Alex and Nova more than we’ve been Tim and Lucy lately, and we let ourselves get carried away. But I’m still with Ashley, and … and it shouldn’t have happened.”

Lucy stares at him with wide, brown eyes, and Tim wants to throw himself off of a building when he sees the brief flash of uncertainty and sorrow in her gaze. 

Fuck. 

Did he… had he misread this? 

Had he just ruined whatever chance they’d had?

“Right,” Lucy whispers, and Tim swallows as he scoots to the edge of the bed, letting his legs fall over the side as he begins searching for his pants. “Right, it was a mistake. It was just… just because of … of everything. Because of the mission.”

Tim nods but doesn’t speak. 

He’s not sure he can speak. 

There’s a lump in his throat and his chest hurts, and all he wants to do is turn around and take Lucy into his arms and tell her no, it wasn’t a mistake. He wants to tell her that he thinks he’s in love with her, that things with Ashley are strained and falling apart anyway, and that he’d break up with her in a second if it meant that they could be together. 

But he doesn’t. 

“Will you be okay to continue the mission?” he asks instead, and he hates himself a little more when he hears Lucy shuffling around on the bed behind him. He can hear how she pulls up the quilt, and he knows she’s covering herself even though she’d been completely comfortable being naked in his presence before he’d open his stupid mouth.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, and Tim nods as he finds and reaches for his pants. He pulls them on without boxer briefs, wincing when the thick material rubs against his cock. He tries to ignore it as he zips and buttons them and then reaches for where his t-shirt had ended up on Lucy’s dresser the previous night. 

He grabs it and remembers the way that Lucy had surrendered to him so perfectly last night, how perfect she’d been when he’d spanked her. He remembers how she’d begged him to fuck her, how she’d come around his cock and how she’d let him pull and push her wherever he wanted to, his fingers wrapped around the metal of her collar. 

He knows if he turns around now he’ll see it.

He’ll see the warm leather around her neck, the most beautiful jewelry she’s ever worn. 

“Okay,” he finally whispers, and he chances a glance back toward the bed to see that Lucy has shifted into the middle, her quilt wrapped tightly around her body, the collar almost hidden by the way she’s hiding from him. “I need… I need to go. I left Kojo with the pet sitter last night, but he needs… I need to go.”

Lucy nods, silent as she watches Tim find and pull on his jacket. 

“I’ll see you later,” he says, and then adds, “At work,” because he’s an idiot.

Lucy nods again, and Tim doesn’t know if he should say anything else, if he should ask if she feels okay or if she feels like she might be dropping. He doesn’t know how to provide aftercare in a situation like this, though, so he hopes and then turns and walks out of her bedroom. He finds his shoes and pulls them on, and then glances back to see Lucy standing in the doorway of her bedroom, the quilt still wrapped around her body, her eyes wide and vulnerable.

“See you later,” she whispers, and Tim nods, opens her front door, and leaves. 

__________________________________

Less than twelve hours later he’s fastening the leather collar around Lucy’s slim neck again, and as he does he can’t help but remember the way her skin had tasted as he’d licked under the line of leather. How he’d pulled on the ring as he’d fucked her, how he’d pulled her until her back was flush against his chest as he rocked his cock in and out of her sweet, little pussy. 

He feels himself hardening in his jeans and internally curses his body. 

He’s had a taste now, is the problem. 

He knows what she feels like, what her skin and her pussy and her fingers feel like, and he wants more. 

He's an addict, and he’ll never have enough of Lucy Chen. 

“Are you okay?” Lucy whispers, and Tim nods, his lips pressed in a firm line as he slides his hand down her neck to rest over her collarbone. 

“Yeah. I’m fine. You?”

Lucy nods, and Tim gives in and lets his gaze trail up her body to meet hers. Her brown eyes are wide but guarded, and Tim hates that there’s this wall between them but he doesn’t know how to bring it down without making himself vulnerable to a type of pain he doesn’t think he’ll be able to recover from. 

He’s survived a lot in his life, but he won’t survive having his heart broken by her. 

“I’m fine,” Lucy whispers, and Tim nods before sliding his hand down her back, his arm wrapping around her waist as he pulls her body close to his. 

“All right. Here we go.”

They walk into the club, and Tim knows immediately that if Eddie sees them like this, then their cover is blown. 

He glances around the club, clenching his jaw as he considers his next move. 

Eddie isn’t here yet, or at least Tim doesn’t see him. So instead of leading Lucy to one of the booths like he does normally, he tightens his arm around her waist and pulls her in the direction of the private rooms. She follows willingly, though she does glance up at him with a question in her eyes. 

He shakes his head though, and then shoves her into one of the rooms, twisting the lock before he pushes Lucy up against it, his hand going to the side of her head, his fingers tapping against the comm in her ear, silencing it before doing the same to his own. 

“Lucy,” he whispers, and she sucks in a desperate breath, her eyes wide as she searches his gaze. “We’re going to get caught, okay? If we don’t loosen up. I know… fuck, I know we made a mistake last night, but Eddie is going to take one look at us and know. He’s going to know something is wrong, so we need to —”

Lucy cuts him off, her lips pressing to his. She takes him by surprise and he sucks in a shocked breath, stumbling as she wraps her thin arm around his waist and reverses their positions, pushing him against the door before standing on her tiptoes and kissing him again. 

He moans and drops his hands to her hips, pulling her flush against his body, and they both groan in unison when Lucy’s belly presses against his hard cock. 

This is a terrible idea. 

He knows it’s a terrible idea. 

But he doesn’t really give a shit when Lucy wiggles one of her little hands between them and presses it against his length. He grunt and thrusts against her hand, and they moan in unison when his tooth catches the edge of her lip and cuts it. Their kiss tastes like blood, like iron, and Tim feels something feral unleash inside of him as Lucy’s tongue brushes against his, lapping up the blood before pushing into his mouth. 

“Tim,” she whimpers, and he almost corrects her, tells her to call him Alex, but then he realizes that they're alone. 

No eyes. 

No ears. 

They’re alone. 

“I can help you relax,” he whispers, and Lucy nods as she falls flat on her feet again. Tim towers over her now, his breath disturbing the little strands of wispy hair at her temple. He glances down at her, at her flushed cheeks and her swollen lips and the miles of skin on display in the clothing that their handlers had dressed her in for tonight. 

It seems easier when she’s dressed like this, when she’s Nova.

It seems easier to justify the terrible, horrible decision he’s about to make. 

It’s only going to make things harder, but he can’t do anything but give in when she’s standing before him, panting and flushed and so, so beautiful. 

“I can help you relax, baby. I can get your mind off of whatever is bothering you.”

Lucy nods again, and though Tim wants to take the sharp jerk of her head as permission, he doesn’t want to take advantage of her. 

“Lucy, can I… can I help you get into character? Can I help you relax?”

He moves the hand he has on the small of her back down further, his fingers brushing the curve of her ass, his intent clear. 

“Yes,” she whispers, and it’s all the permission Tim needs. He grips the flesh of her ass tightly and spins them, shoving her against the door face first, his hands on her hips pulling her ass against his groin as she throws her palms out, flat against the door. Tim moves one hand from her waist to her collar, his fingers tugging on the cool metal of the ring as he thrust his hips against her ass. 

“Safe word?” he murmurs. 

“Xanadu,” Lucy gasps, and when he hears the way her voice catches, thick with arousal, he gives in. 

He gives up all pretenses that what had happened last night would be a one time thing.

It can’t be. 

He’s fucking addicted to her, and he doesn’t think he can give her up especially not when she’s panting, whimpering when his thick cock brushes between the cheeks of her ass. He can’t give her up, even though he knows that this will only end in pain and broken hearts. His broken heart, more specifically, because he’s fucking in love with her. But if this is all he can get, if this is the extent of what he can have, then he’s just desperate enough to take it. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he murmurs in her ear, but Lucy shakes her head and shoves back against him. 

“Please don’t stop.”

Tim nods, rocking his hips lazily against hers as he tries to decide what he wants. 

There’s so much that he wants, but he also knows they don’t have a lot of time, that Angela and the other detectives will be getting suspicious about their silent comms. 

“I want to spank you again,” he murmurs, because the thought of Lucy kneeling for him, her ass red and sore as she tries to focus, is enough to make him even harder in his jeans. He wants to spank her and fuck her and know that the entire time he’s talking to Eddie that his cum is leaking out of her, staining her panties and slipping down her thighs. “I want to spank you and fuck you again, baby.”

Lucy whimpers and nods, and Tim may have a minor obsession with her ass but who can blame him, honestly? 

He wonders if, one day, she’ll let him fuck her hole. If she’d let him stretch her out with his tongue and his fingers and then slip inside of her ass, owning her in a way she’s never been owned before. 

“Please, Tim,” she whimpers, and he nods as he tries to focus on her. He shoves her thin little skirt down, letting it pool around her ankles, and he nearly comes undone when he sees she’s not wearing any panties at all.

“Fuck,” he groans, and she giggles breathlessly as she wiggles her ass against his groin. 

“That’s the idea,” she breathes, and Tim rolls his eyes as he smacks her ass, his palm causing the flesh to ripple and her to groan. It isn’t a hard hit, more of a tap than anything, but it causes her to moan regardless.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he whispers, his breath hot and wet against her ear. “Just five today, but they’re gonna be hard, okay, baby?”

Lucy nods and drops her forehead against the door as Tim kneads the flesh of her ass.

“Ready?”

She nods again, and then she’s crying out, her voice loud but the noise in her head quieting as the sting reverberates throughout her body. It settles, hot and heady, in her ass cheek, and Tim hums against her ear, his tongue tracing the shell of it as he whispers, “One.”

She whimpers, and then cries out as his open palm lands on the opposite cheek, the stink sharp at first before dulling, aching, her ass burning as Tim’s long fingers dig into the flesh. He brushes his thumb over her hole, slipping it between her cheeks as she whimpers and pants against the door. He follows the crease of her ass down until his fingers are slipping through the wet lips of her pussy, his finger circling her clit as he uses his other hand to tug on her collar, the leather digging into the flesh of her neck as he pulls hard enough to make her breathless. 

“Two.”

Lucy whimpers and pushes her ass back against him, and Tim nearly says fuck it an shoves his pants down so that he can slip inside of her. 

It would be so easy. 

She’s so wet, and he bets she’s still stretched out a little bit from the night before. She’d been so tight, so perfect around his cock, and he’s desperate to feel her again. 

“M-more,” Lucy whimpers, and Tim nods, breathless with want as he watches her writhe in front of him. 

He brings his hand down on her ass hard, harder than he ever has before, and Lucy screams as the sound of his palm on her flesh echoes throughout the play room. 

“Oh, fuck!” she cries, and Tim smirks as he presses his lips to hear neck and then traces his tongue from the shell of her ear down her neck. He licks under the neckline of her shirt, wishing he had time to strip her properly so that he could lick and kiss every inch of her skin. 

“Three,” he murmurs, and Lucy trembles in his arms as he moves both hands to her hips, holding her up, keeping her from falling as he digs his thumbs into the red, inflamed skin of her ass. “Two more. You okay for two more?”

Lucy nods. “Y-yes, sir!”

Tim smirks and leans back, letting his eyes trail across Lucy’s back, across her ass, and down to her trembling thighs. Her skirt is still pooled around her feet, and Tim realizes in a sudden burst of clarity that, without panties, she’s going to make an absolute mess of herself after he fucks her. 

“You’re so fucking perfect,” he murmurs, and then he’s landing both final strikes on her ass, one on each cheek, in quick succession. She screams, tenses, and then relaxes, her whole body going limp, and Tim stares at the imprint of his fingers on her ass and groans as he reaches for his fly. He unzips and unbuttons his jeans, shoving them down just far enough to get his cock out, and as he presses it against her wet, trembling cunt, he realizes that the material of his jeans, still around his hips, are going to fucking irritate her ass as he fucks her. “Ready?”

Lucy nods and Tim shoves inside in one smooth stroke, his cock stretching her and then bottoming out, the head pressed snug against her cervix. 

“TIM!” she cries out, and he grins, reaching one hand up to cover her mouth as he slides the other around her belly, holding her against him as he pulls out and then thrusts back inside. 

She’s so wet. 

So tight. 

Fucking perfect. 

“God, Lucy,” he breathes, and she nods as she reaches up and wraps her fingers around the hand on her collar. She holds on tightly, her body a heavy weight against the arm around her belly, and Tim is kind of glad they don’t have a lot of time because he can use it as an excuse as to why he’s going to come so fucking fast. 

He wants to last longer, but the thrill of what they’re doing, the fact that they’re in the club, on an active operation with people milling around on the other side of the door, listening to the noises they’re making… he knows he can't stop what's coming, no matter how hard he tries. 

“You’re so perfect,” he whispers in her ear, and he feels her body shudder against his as he rocks in and out of her. He’s not thrusting so much as grinding at this point, but he doesn’t think it’s going to take much more than that to get them off. They’re both close, riding the high of endorphins from his hand on her ass, and he knows all it’ll take to send her over the edge is his fingers on her clit. “So perfect and responsive, baby. So tight and hot and wet for me.”

“F-for you,” she stutters, and Tim knows he should be more concerned about the fact that he’s cheating on his girlfriend, again, but all he can think about is Lucy’s skin and the way she’s stretched around his cock, the little noises she makes and how she’s holding his hand as he holds her collar. “All for you, Tim.”

In the end, it’s her words that send him over the edge. 

He groans, his fingers dropping from her belly to her pussy, rubbing against her clit as he comes long and hard inside of her. She’s almost there, and Tim is determined to make her come around his cock. He continues thrusting, his balls heavy as they slap against her pussy, his fingers calloused and rough against her most sensitive skin. 

“Come for me, baby,” he whispers, and he grins when Lucy obliges him almost immediately, her pussy trembling around his cock, milking even more cum from him as she shudders and cries out and then falls limply against the door. 

Tim follows her, pressing his chest to her back, and breathes heavily against her neck as they both tremble and shake from the aftershocks. 

“You’re gonna make such a mess, baby,” he murmurs, his fingers trailing around where she’s stretched around his cock. He knows the second he pulls out that his cum and her arousal is going to gush out of her, trailing down her legs. She’s going to make a mess of herself, of her pussy and her thighs and her pretty little skirt. “You’re going to be such a mess when we go out there, when you kneel for me. My cum will be leaking out of your little pussy the entire time we’re talking to Eddie, as I feed you and pet you and remind you how good you are.”

Lucy whimpers and nods, and Tim smiles as he kisses her neck. 

“Ready?” he asks. 

Lucy nods again and then Tim pulls out, both of them groaning as his cum drips from her cunt. He reaches down and shoves two fingers inside of her, keeping their combined mess inside of her as he reaches for her skirt and pulls it back up, settling the leather around her waist and pulling it over her ass before sliding his fingers from her. She spins around, her back against the door as Tim stares at his fingers, and they both groan in unison when she reaches for his hand and sucks the digits into her mouth. 

“Fuck, Lucy,” he moans, and she smiles around his fingers as she licks them clean. 

Tim reaches for her cheek with his free hand, brushing over the bulge of him inside of her, and then moves to brush her hair out of her face, his fingers tapping against the comm to turn it back on again. 

He smiles and presses a long, lingering kiss to Lucy’s forehead, and then pulls his fingers from her mouth. 

“Ready to go back out there?” he asks, and when Lucy nods this time, he knows she really is. 

They’ll be fine, now. 

They’re relaxed. 

She’s floating, at least a little bit. 

They’re playing the part, blending in, and he knows Eddie won’t suspect anything when he sees them.

He knows that he and Lucy are going to need to talk at some point, but for right now, he’s Alex and she’s Nova, and he’s going to enjoy the time he has left with her as his sub before he has to face reality again. 

Chapter Text

Pandemonium, Ch. 8

Eddie shows up less than five minutes after Lucy kneels down at Tim’s side, and she's still floating, his cum and her arousal sliding sluggishly down her inner thighs when he slides into the booth opposite them. 

Tim stiffens, and his thigh tensing under Lucy’s cheek is just enough to snap her back into reality, to clear her head a little bit.

“Evening,” Tim greets, and Lucy shivers as he runs his fingers across her neck, dipping them under her collar briefly before settling his hand on her shoulder. 

Eddie grins and lets his eyes lazily trail over Lucy’s body, his gaze trailing sluggishly up and down her form, lingering on her thighs before he licks his lips. Tim tenses further, his lips dipping into a frown as he pulls Lucy closer, the fingers on her shoulder digging into her skin almost painfully as Eddie eyes her like she’s a particularly mouth-watering slab of meat. 

“I thought I said that next time I wanted to watch you next time,” he purrs. He licks his lips again and then takes a drink from his glass, letting his legs spread as he settles back into the booth. Lucy holds in a shiver, her skin nearly crawling with the wrongness of his stare. She forces a smile, though, determined not to blow their cover when they’re so close, and then nuzzles her face into Tim’s thigh, her fingernails digging into his calf in warning. 

She watches, fascinated, as Tim melts, forcing himself to relax as Eddie sips his drink and watches them. 

“Sorry, you know how it is sometimes,” he murmurs, and Eddie laughs easily. 

“Oh, I get it. Sometimes there’s just no waiting, am I right? Especially when your girl looks like that, fuck, I’d never get anything done. She looks so good, man, the mess you’ve made of her. I’d love a turn.”

Tim laughs, and it sounds real but Lucy can sense the strain. 

“Not gonna happen, Eddie. I don’t share,” he says, and despite the fact that Lucy knows it’s his cover as Alex Hunter, her Dom, that causes the possession she hears in his voice, she melts a little bit anyway. She shudders, and then leans further into him when his fingers trail over her neck again, sliding them around to the front to press against her throat. She moans, rubbing her cheek on his thigh, and then shivers again when Tim presses his hand tighter against her throat. “She’s mine.”

Eddie pouts as he sips his drink, his lips wet with the whiskey and his cheeks red from arousal. He meets Tim’s gaze, and Lucy watches in fascination as the two men stare each other down, unflinching, for several moments. 

Eventually Eddie gives in, though, shrinking under Tim’s gaze as he slumps back in the booth. 

“Well, in spite of the fact that you’re a selfish asshole who won’t share,” he grumbles, and Lucy has to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing as Tim puffs up his chest, smiling smugly as he leans back, his fingers moving from her throat to tangle in her hair now that his little show of possession is over. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you and believe me, I’ve done my due diligence. I only work with the best of the best. So, with that in mind, I’ll ask again: are you interested in helping me with a job? The pay is fifty per person, and it shouldn't take more than a few hours. You won’t get a better deal from any of the people you’ve worked with before.”

Tim raises an eyebrow as he watches Eddie run his finger along the edge of his now empty glass. He sets it down heavily, and Tim hums in consideration for a moment. 

“Yeah, okay, I’m in,” he finally decides, and Eddie grins as he leans forward and clasps his hands together. He’s flushed with alcohol, happiness, and arousal, and Lucy can see that he’s taken their bait hook, line, and sinker. 

“Smart man,” he says, and Tim chuckles as he scratches his fingernails across Lucy’s scalp. She moans and leans into the touch, her body still buzzing with her release and the happy chemicals that had flooded her body as Tim had spanked her. She’s relaxed but not deep in subspace, and she finds it easy to follow their conversation while still allowing herself to relax against Tim’s warm, solid body. 

“When’s the job?” Tim asks. 

“Meet me here tomorrow, before the club opens,” Eddie says, easily sidestepping the question before reaching into his pocket and pulling out what Lucy assumes is a burner phone. It’s an old fashioned flip phone, the kind you can buy at a convenience store for $20, and she knows that Angela is going to be irritated; these phones are hard to track or trace. “And come alone. Leave the lady at home.”

Lucy stiffens, hopefully not noticeably, as Eddie’s words wash over her. 

“Nah, man,” Tim says, and Lucy breathes out a sigh of relief, thankful that they’re always on the same page. “Me and my girl work together. Always.”

“Well, not this time,” Eddie shoots back, an eyebrow raised as he watches how Tim rakes his fingers across Lucy’s scalp, a gesture meant to soothe him just as much as her. “We only need one for this job. That’s either you, or someone else. We’re not bringing any extra bodies on this one.”

Tim frowns, considering, and Lucy hasn’t minded her role in this undercover operation until this very moment. It’s actually been interesting to have the freedom to just listen and observe without being expected to add to the conversation. But right now, as she watches Tim actually consider doing this job without her, she fucking hates it, because if she speaks up now, their cover is blown. 

“All right,” he finally says, his tone resigned. “Just me this time. Nova’s done jobs without me before; I guess this time she can be the one waitin’ at home worried about me.”

Lucy knows they’re undercover, but try as she might, she can’t help but feel a little bit hurt (and irritated) by his words. 

She’s trained to go undercover; of course she’s gone on operations without him. And it’s not like they’re dating, it’s not like she owes him anything, she reasons, though as she feels his cum slip from her pussy and down her inner thigh, she has to admit that they’re something, at least now that they’ve blurred the lines so thoroughly. 

Do you want to come inside?

But they’re still not dating, and the tone of voice Tim had used when he’d said this time she can be the one waitin’ at home worried about me rubs her the wrong way. 

Sure, she knows Tim has hookups with undercover work because of Isabel, but it’s not… she’s not the same. 

Eddie grins, completely oblivious to Lucy’s inner turmoil. “All right, then. I’ll send instructions to your phone tonight and we’ll meet here tomorrow before the job. 7pm sharp; don’t be late.”

Tim nods, flips the phone in his hands a few times, and then slides it into his pocket. Eddie leaves after tossing down a few bills on the table for his drink and a tip, and then they’re alone and the air is thick with tension, all of the easy, relaxed feelings from before suddenly gone as Tim removes his hand from Lucy’s hair, putting a few inches between them on the bench as he sighs. 

Lucy swallows, suddenly feeling alone with Tim no longer touching her. The mess between her thighs doesn’t feel sexy anymore; instead it just feels uncomfortable, and Lucy is desperate for a shower to clean herself up.

She remembers the last time they’d been in the club, how the air between them had felt charged with anticipation and promise. How they’d stayed long after Eddie had left, both of them enjoying pretending to be something they weren’t. 

This time, though, they don’t linger. 

They don’t order food or drinks, and Tim doesn’t run his fingers along Lucy’s lips as he feeds her. Instead he just pulls her to her feet, slides his arm around her waist, and leads her outside. 

Once they’re clear of the club, though, he removes his hand from her waist, and Lucy tries to ignore the way her stomach drops and her chest aches as he puts space between them. 

She ignores her feelings, though, and focuses instead on what Tim had agreed to. 

“I don’t feel comfortable with you doing this job alone,” she says, and she watches, the chasm between them growing, as Tim rolls his eyes and shoves his hands in his pockets. 

“Imagine how I always feel, then,” he snaps, and Lucy takes a step back as if she’s been slapped. 

She doesn’t know what the fuck is happening. 

Less than an hour ago he’d had her shoved up against a door, his cock inside of her pussy, whispering into her ear how good she was, how beautiful and perfect she was for him. Just this morning she’d woken up in his arms, and while he’d told her it was a mistake, what had happened at the club had given her hope that maybe it hadn’t been. 

But seeing him now, stiff and angry, makes it very, very clear that it had been. 

What had happened last night had been a mistake, and letting him fuck her in the club, letting him spank her and call her baby, had been an even bigger mistake. 

“This is different,” she whispers, her voice firm but quiet in the still night air. She can still hear the music from the club, a deep, distant bass that makes her chest ache and her skin tingle, but the air around them is quiet enough that she can hear them both breathing harshly. 

“How?” Tim asks, and he doesn’t sound angry now. He just sounds tired. “Lucy, I’ve watched you go undercover countless times before, always wondering if it was going to be the last time I saw you. I’ve covered you and worried about you and I even thought I’d lost you once. So how is this different? Because it’s you on the sidelines this time?”

Lucy swallows and shakes her head, and she tries to tell herself that Tim is just being an ass because he doesn’t know how to deal with his feelings and that this stupid, stupid undercover operation is bringing unpleasant memories back to the surface of his mind. 

“It’s different because I’ve been trained, okay? Tim you don’t have any training; you barely have any experience. I know what to do and what to say but you don’t. You don’t even know what you can and can’t do as an officer undercover. You’re basically going in blind and you’re going to get yourself hurt.”

And that, Lucy realizes, is what’s making her feel so off center, so unbalanced. 

She’s not upset that Tim is upset. She knows he’s just a repressed idiot who doesn’t know how to talk about his feelings, and she doesn’t hold it against him. 

But the thought of him getting hurt? 

Of him never coming home? 

It’s unfathomable. 

“I’ll be fine,” he whispers, and he takes a step closer. Lucy lets out a ragged breath, her eyelids fluttering as she glances up at him. He’s so much taller than her, and she has to crane her neck to meet his eyes as he steps into her space. He reaches out and runs his fingers along the collar on her neck, and Lucy whimpers, falling so easily back into being Nova as his skin touches hers. 

She feels owned when she’s wearing his collar, when he touches it, touches her. 

“You might not be, though,” she reasons, but Tim just shakes his head as he lets the tips of his fingers slide under her collar, tugging on the warm leather. She takes an involuntary step toward him, and as their chests press flush together, she thinks that this would be so much easier if she had any willpower whatsoever. 

It was a mistake, Tim had said, yet he’s touching her like this. 

She wants to yell at him, to scream at him to make up his mind. 

But she doesn’t. 

She’s caught in his spell, and she thinks that if this is all she can have, then she’s going to take it. She’ll cherish every touch, every soft smile, every baby and good girl she can get. 

She’s always been strong and independent, but with Tim… she doesn’t have to be, and that’s what makes it so exciting. 

She’s always had to stand up for herself, to assert herself and fight for what she wants. 

But with Tim she can just be, and it’s addicting. 

“I’ll be fine,” he whispers again, and Lucy imagines a baby lingering in the space where his sentence ends and the next one begins. “I’ll do the job and we’ll arrest him, and then…”

Then. 

He trails off, the minuscule space between them charged with the promise of then, and Lucy is about to open her mouth and say something that could ruin their friendship (if it isn’t already ruined) when their comms crackle. They both jump back in surprise, Tim’s fingers slipping from Lucy’s collar, and she feels the loss acutely as Angela speaks into their ears. 

“I need you two to get back to the station ASAP so we can give Tim a rundown on undercover dos and don’ts,” she says, and Lucy nods as she licks her suddenly dry lips.

“All right,” Tim whispers, and then he’s sliding his hand down to the small of Lucy’s back, guiding her forward as he begins walking in the direction of his truck. 

Lucy follows him easily, her skin tingling where he’s touching her, and she wonders briefly if she can escape and clean up a little bit once they’re back at the station. The mess between her thighs is drying and feels uncomfortable, and the short, leather skirt she’s wearing suddenly isn’t as comfortable as it was when it was just her and Tim. 

He opens her door and helps her into the passenger seat, and then he’s walking around to his side and starting the engine. They sit in silence for a minute, though, neither of them sure what to say, before Tim reaches out and runs his fingers along the edge of her collar again. 

“We should…” he says, and then he’s unclasping it and sliding it from her throat, and Lucy whines low in her throat at the loss because she feels naked without it. Her hand flies to her neck, her fingers sliding around her skin in a weak imitation of the collar, and Tim licks his lips as he watches her.

There’s so much he wants to say. 

But instead of saying anything, he lays the collar on the seat between them and turns the truck in the direction of the station. 

Neither of them speak the entire way there. 

Chapter Text

Lucy goes into the station the next day even though she’s technically off. 

“You don’t need to come in tomorrow,” Angela had said, but Lucy had turned to see Tim talking quietly in the corner to Murray and her anxiety had increased as she watched him nod solemnly, his arms crossed over his chest as he tried to absorb an entire career worth of undercover training in a single hour. 

How can she not go in? 

How can she not support him during this, even if all she can do is listen over the comms?

“I thought I said you could rest today,” Angela says in lieu of greeting. Lucy shakes her head, though, smiling softly as she glances across the room to see Tim being fit with a wire. He’s shirtless, and she feels a tiny jolt of jealousy run through her as she watches the young tech (blonde, slim, beautiful) tape the wire to his smooth, well-defined chest. 

He’s mine, she finds herself thinking, and the possession causes her chest to warm and her cheeks to redden. 

Angela, of course, misinterprets the blush. 

“You know, I have heard you over the comms…” she murmurs quietly, and Lucy’s eyes widen as she turns to stare at her friend. “He’s a beautiful man, and from what I’ve heard… he wouldn’t say no if you were to express interest.”

Lucy scoffs and shakes her head, though, because everything he’d said and done while they were on comms had been for the undercover mission. 

Well, she thinks, remembering the way he’d fucked her roughly against the door of the private play room. 

Maybe not everything. 

“It’s not… it’s not like that,” she says, though even as she denies Angela’s insinuations, she finds herself wondering what it is like. 

They’re attracted to each other, that much is clear. He’s hot, she’s hot, and they’re hot for each other. 

They have amazing chemistry. She’s not exactly a nun by any standards, but Tim is easily the best she’s ever had, and the way he collars her (even if it is for undercover), owns her, possesses her… it’s unmatched. His hands on her body, his cock inside of her pussy, his lips whispering dirty things in her ear… how he spanks her… 

She doesn’t think she’ll ever find any other sex satisfying again. 

Tim has ruined her. 

But beyond the physical… she has no fucking idea where they stand. 

She remembers how she’d felt when he’d fake proposed to Ashley, though, and she has to admit (within the safety of her own head) that what she feels is more than friendship. A lot more, if she’s being honest, because the idea of Tim marrying Ashley, having a family with her, growing old with her… it had filled her with a jealousy so intense and a hurt so deep that she had almost fallen to her knees in the middle of the station. 

So maybe she’s a tiny bit in love with him — but there’s no way he feels the same way.

“It could be like that,” Angela murmurs, and Lucy throws her a glare as Tim walks over to them. Lucy is distracted by the way he’s pulling his button down back on, and she nearly groans when she realizes that he's sexy even when putting clothes on. 

“Ready?” Angela asks, and Tim nods as he closes the top button of his shirt. He begins trying to button the sleeves closed, but his fingers slip and Lucy reaches out without thinking, her own slender fingers running over the warm, delicate skin of his wrist as she easily buttons one sleeve and then reaches for the other. Tim stares at her, his intense, blue gaze causing her stomach to warm and her heart to pound furiously. 

“As ready as I can be,” Tim says finally. 

Lucy finishes buttoning his shirt and then takes a step back. 

“Please be careful,” she whispers. 

Tim offers her a small smile, soft and just for her as he reaches out. His hand stills in mid-air, though, and Lucy doesn’t know whether he stops because they have witnesses or because he realizes that she’s not his to touch, but her chest aches when his hand drops back to his side. 

“I will be,” he promises, and Lucy nods, swallowing around the lump in her throat as Angela passes him the tiny, flesh colored comm for his ear. 

“We’ll be on the other end listening and watching out for you,” she says, and Tim nods as he presses it into his ear. “Vice will be on standby to provide backup if needed. Remember — no undercover operation is worth your life. If things are going south, pull the plug. You have people who love you and are waiting for you to come home.”

Lucy doesn’t miss how Tim’s gaze flickers to hers when Angela says people who love you. She blushes and lets her gaze drop to the floor, and she wishes she were brave enough to tell Tim that she does love him, desperately, but she thinks that his rejection might actually break her. 

“I’m coming home tonight; don’t you worry,” Tim says, and when Lucy finally forces herself to look up, he’s staring straight at her. 

Her mouth is suddenly dry and her throat tight; she doesn’t think she can speak. 

Tim waits, his gaze on her for several more long moments, and then he offers her a smile before he ducks around her and heads in the direction of the detective waiting to give him the final rundown before he heads to the club. 

Lucy bites her lip and turns to Angela. 

“Are we Tim’s backup, or are we here at the station?”

Angela takes Lucy by the arm and herds her over to her desk. 

“We’re station bound tonight. Vice and Narcotics are providing backup, since we have reason to believe that the job Eddie wants Tim for involves either drugs or human trafficking or both. I know you want to be out there with him, but they’ve got this covered, Lucy. He’s going to be fine.”

Lucy blows out a breath and drops into the chair beside Angela’s desk. 

“I know he will be. I know that. But it should be me going undercover. Or at the very least I should be going with him. I shouldn’t just be… sitting here. I feel useless. This is what I trained for! I just… I hate being sidelined.”

“I know,” Angela says, her voice soft with sympathy as she sits down and scoots her own chair closer to Lucy’s. “It sucks. But he’s got some of the best backup there is tonight, and he’ll be home before you know it.”

Lucy nods, and logically she knows that what Angela is saying is true, but it doesn’t lessen the worry or lessen the weight on her chest. 

She doesn’t think she’ll breathe easy until Tim is back, alive, and unharmed. 

All she can do for now, though, is wait. 

___________________________

Tim has never been more nervous in his entire life, though he likes to think that he does a good job hiding it as he watches the buildings and streets pass in a blur from inside of the car. 

“We’re just transporting some cargo tonight,” Eddie explains, and Tim nods as he tears his eyes away from the scenery and turns his attention back to the other man. Eddie has a driver, because of course he does, and they’re alone in the back of the car, talking in low tones as they draw closer and closer to the docks. 

Tim knows where they’re going, and he has a strong feeling he knows what they’re going to be transporting, too. 

“What’s my part in all of this, anyway?”

Eddie chuckles as he sits back, draping his arm over Tim’s shoulder as he stretches his arms along the back of the seats. 

“All in good time, my friend. All in good time. Relax a little; we have a bit of a drive ahead of us. We’re not in a rush. Ooooh, I know — tell me about Nova. How did you meet? What’s she like?”

Tim feels his heart begin racing as Eddie probes, but he forces himself to relax as he goes over the details that he and Lucy had come up with. 

Keep things as close to the truth as you can; it makes it easier to remember, she’d told him, and he smiles now as he remembers the backstory they’d come up with together. “We met about four years ago,” he says, and he finds himself smiling as he remembers the first time he’d laid eyes on Lucy, fresh from the academy and eager to prove herself to him. “I was going through a bad breakup at the time, and she … she helped pull me from a pretty dark place.”

Eddie makes an interested noise, and while Tim hates that he’s sharing details of his life with this man, he knows that building this relationship with him only strengthens his chances of making it out of this alive. 

“She’s fucking beautiful,” Eddie says, and Tim finds himself nodding in agreement because she is. “She seems like the perfect sub. She’s so… docile. She listens to you and does what you tell her to. You have her very well trained.”

All good feelings evaporate as Eddie describes Lucy like she’s nothing more than a pet, and Tim finds himself stiffening, frowning as he watches Eddie lick his lips hungrily. 

“She is a good sub,” he says, because even though he knows it’s all for their covers, Lucy is an amazing sub. She’s a natural, and so beautiful kneeling at his side that it makes his chest ache. “And she listens so well because she knows I’ll reward her. If she’s good, I make her feel good.”

“And what if she’s bad?” Eddie asks, a predatory gleam in his eyes as he searches Tim’s face. “Do you punish her? Make her scream like a good little bitch?”

Tim sucks in a breath through his nose, letting his eyes flutter closed as he tries to control himself.

“Do not punch him,” Angela warns over his comm, and he has to fight the smile that threatens to overtake his face as his friend so easily predicts what he wants to do. He hears a shuffling noise, and then it’s Lucy speaking in his ear and he feels the tension draining from his body as her soft voice floats over the line. “You’ll blow your cover and he has the advantage right now, Tim. Tell him what he wants to hear because I swear to god if you get yourself killed defending my honor I’ll haunt you.”

Tim opens his eyes and forces his lips into a smug grin as he leans back against the door, the cool glass of the window on his skin grounding. 

“She’s not bad very often, but when she is… I like to make her scream,” he says, and he feels his confidence grow when he realizes that he can bullshit his way through this by infusing as much truth into what he says as possible. 

He does like making Lucy scream, though not in the way that he knows Eddie will think he means. 

He likes hearing her cry out when he spanks her, when his bare hand lands on her soft, supple flesh, and he can only imagine how it would feel if he were actually punishing her. If she mouthed off to him or broke one of his rules and he spanked her in response. Harder, more sharply than he has before — spanking for punishment is different from spanking for pleasure, though of course he’d never cause any permanent damage. A little sting, a reminder that he is in charge would be enough, because he knows that his Lucy loves praise. She loves his words of praise, and he knows she’d do everything possible to earn his forgiveness if she broke one of his rules. He’d spank her (maybe with a paddle instead of his hand) leaving her ass red and sore, and then he’d fuck her before rubbing salve in her ass and cuddling her, telling her how good she’d done. 

“That good, huh?” Eddie asks, and Tim snaps out of his thoughts to see Eddie staring at him, a blush high on his cheeks as he no doubt imagines what Lucy would look and sound like while screaming. 

He doesn’t answer, though, choosing instead to let his lips curl into a smirk as he raises one eyebrow. 

“I half want to shoot you right now for not letting me watch,” Eddie says, and though his tone is joking and there’s a smile on his lips, Tim knows that he’s just unstable enough that he might. “Or shoot you and take her. She’d look so beautiful spread out in my bed, I think. Wearing my collar. Calling me sir.”

Tim chuckles and leans back against the window, breaking his gaze away from Eddie’s as though he’s not at all concerned about being murdered. 

“She might take offense to you killing me,” he says, infusing his voice with a confidence he doesn’t really feel. “We’re monogamous, and she’s pretty fond of me. She wears my collar and my ring. I can’t imagine she’d forgive you quickly.”

Eddie sighs and slumps back in his chair, and Tim smirks for a moment before Lucy’s voice is in his ear again. 

“I must have missed the proposal,” she says, and Tim has to bite back a grin as her teasing tone washes over him. 

“Fine,” Eddie relents, and some of the tension in Tim’s chest loosens as he holds up his hands in surrender. “Though I maintain that I’d like to watch sometime. If you’re ever feeling adventurous.”

“We might,” Tim allows, because he knows that, by tonight, Eddie will be in cuffs. “We can be into voyeurism, if the situation is right.”

Eddie licks his lips, his eyes sparkling with interest, and it’s only because of the fact that Tim knows it’ll never happen that he’s able to force himself to offer. 

“Wonderful,” Eddie says. “Maybe after this job, if the boss likes you enough, we can bring you on permanently. Then you and Nova and I can spend more time together, getting to know each other.”

“The boss?” comes Lucy’s voice, and Tim can hear the sudden wariness. “I thought he was the boss.”

“Ah, the boss?” Tim questions, and Eddie laughs at the look of confusion on his face. “Aren’t you the boss?”

“Nah. Or at least not the top dog,” Eddie says, waving a hand around in the air as the car comes to a stop. Tim glances out of the window to find that they are, in fact, at the docks. They’re surrounded by shipping containers, and he feels sick to his stomach when he realizes that his prediction is most likely right — they’re here to transport people. 

“So, what do you need me to do tonight?” Tim asks. Eddie steps out of the car, closing the door behind him, and then turns to Tim as he stretches his arms above his head. The movement causes his shirt to ride up, and Tim watches, repulsed, as he scratches at his exposed belly. He’s smirking, his eyes sparkling in the moonlight, as he walks away from the car and motions for Tim to follow. 

“You’re so good at getting bitches to obey you that I thought you might be a perfect choice for this,” he says, and before Tim knows what’s happening he’s unlocking one of the large shipping containers and throwing it open. 

It takes a moment for Tim’s eyes to adjust to the darkness, though he doesn’t have to be able to see to hear and smell. 

The shipping container smells like human waste — it’s acrid and sharp, burning his nostrils, and he feels sick to his stomach as he hears the whimpering inside and knows that these women, these children, most likely, have been forced to live with their own waste as they were transported from their homes to be sold like cattle. 

“We need to move them and they tend to whine and complain, you see. Lots of crying and calling out for their mommies. You’re going to help me by getting them to keep their fucking mouths shut during transport.”

Tim nods, though he thinks the motion is more automatic than anything. He’s barely hearing Eddie’s words; his head is buzzing, his breathing coming in sharp, shallow gasps. 

His eyes have adjusted, and he feels sick at what he sees. 

He’s seen some pretty awful things in his life, but this… this takes the cake. 

They’re children. 

Teenagers, mostly, though a few look older. They’re terrified, sobbing, whimpering as he and Eddie walk closer. 

Ten of them that he can see. 

Ten. 

“Tim.”

He sucks in a breath when he hears Lucy’s voice in his ear, and he clings to it like a lifeline as Eddie walks further into the container and kicks over a bucket as he screams, “Shut up! Be quiet! God, you all are so fucking annoying!”

The girls’ cries quiet, though Tim knows it’s because of the fear. 

“Tim, we have Vice on standby. These girls will never, ever be sold, okay? We’re going to save them. We’re going to end this. Just… just don’t get yourself hurt in the process. Do what he says, please. Do whatever he says, and Vice will follow and intercept, okay?”

Tim nods to himself, barely trusting himself to speak for fear of verbally eviscerating the man in front of him. 

He clears his throat and forces his lips to move, though, forcing the words past the lump in his throat as Lucy’s voice echoes in his head. 

“Where are we taking them?” he asks.

Eddie turns toward Tim, tearing his eyes away from one of the girls that has clearly caught his interest. 

“One of our properties. We clean them up there, get them ready. There’s a van coming; they should be here soon.”

Get them ready for what, Tim wants to ask, though he’s fairly certain he already knows the answer. 

“Okay,” he says. “Do I have any help? Any backup?” 

Eddie nods. “Two other guys are coming with the van. We try to keep a low profile, though, so there aren’t many of us. Now, the boss wants me to let you lead tonight and see how you do. Get them up and ready to go. I’m going to go meet the van outside.”

Tim nods sharply and watches as Eddie turns and walks out of the shipping container. 

“Do it, Tim,” comes Lucy’s voice over the comm, and he knows her well enough to know that she’s upset. He can hear the tears in her words, the anger and disgust simmering beneath the surface. “Remember, you’re saving their lives, okay? They’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. But do not, do fucking not blow your cover. It’ll all be over soon.”

He nods, and then turns towards the women, and he knows he’s supposed to yell at them, to terrify them into compliance, but as he looks at their terrified faces, he can’t force himself to do it. 

He can’t. 

He can’t be just another monster in their lives. 

He glances back to see that Eddie is out of earshot, talking loudly on his phone, and then makes possibly the stupidest decision of his life. 

He kneels down and holds his hands up in a placating gesture, showing that he has no weapons and means no harm. 

“Listen to me,” he whispers, his voice an urgent hiss as he tries to ignore Lucy's indignant squeak in his ear. “I’m here to help, okay? I swear that by tonight you’ll be safe and free if you listen to me. But you have to listen to me, okay? We don’t have a lot of time if we’re going to make it out of this alive.”

One of the girls, a woman, really (the oldest of the bunch) takes a step forward, her expression terrified but determined. 

“How do we know you’re not lying?” she whispers, and Tim swallows as he reaches up to tug the comm out of his ear before he holds it out to her. 

“Here. Put this in your ear and listen. That’s Lucy on the other end; she’s my friend. She’s at the police station right now, and there’s a whole team of officers just waiting to save you. We’re going to help you.”

The girl places the comm in her ear cautiously, and then after a few moments tears spring to her eyes. She raises a shaking hand to her mouth, and then nods, whispering "Yes,” before handing the small device back. 

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Lucy hisses once she’s back in his ear, and Tim has to stifle a laugh as he stands back to his feet. “If you get yourself killed, I’m going to kill you. And yes I realize that doesn’t make any sense but I just told you not to break your cover. Fucking hell, Tim, get them out of their and get back home now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispers, and though his hands are shaking and sweating and his heart is racing, he feels hope blossom in his chest as the girls all quickly rise to their feet. They hold onto each other, tears in their eyes, and Tim knows that there are thousands, millions of other girls like them in the world, and while he wishes that he could help all of them, he knows that saving these ten is not nothing.

“Act like you’re scared,” he whispers urgently. “Don’t… don’t look at me at all, okay? Or you might give me away. He might realize that you’re not scared of me. Just look at the ground, at each other. Keep quiet and do whatever I say, all right?”

The girls nod, and Tim finds himself staring at the one in the arms of the woman he had offered the comm to. 

She’s so small, probably barely even a teenager. She’s 13, maybe 14, and as he watches her cry and shiver in the cool night air, covered in dirt and possibly her own waste, he wants to kill Eddie.

Somehow he manages to hold himself together, though, as he leads the girls out of the shipping container. He snaps at them and even pushes one as they approach the van (the oldest, the one he knows has made it her mission to protect the others). She stumbles and nearly falls, and Eddie laughs as she straightens herself and holds the little girl in her arms closer. 

I'm so sorry, Tim wants to say, but he doesn't. 

He’ll apologize when they all make it out of this alive. 

____________________________

“You fucking idiot!” Lucy cries, but despite her harsh words, her hands are soft as she grabs him. Her fingers dig into his skin, but it’s a nice, grounding touch. She runs her hands up and down his arms, over his shoulders, and then cups his face in her hands, searching for any damage. 

He’s fine, though. 

“I’m fine,” he whispers, but Lucy shakes her head as she cups his cheek with one hand while the other holds onto the material of his shirt. Her grip is so tight that her knuckles turn white, and Tim yearns to take her into his arms but they’re in the middle of the police station. “I’m fine,” he whispers again, and it takes everything in him not to whisper baby at the end of his sentence. 

“You fucking idiot. You’re never going undercover without me again. I told you not to blow your cover! I told you… I told you—”

Tim moves his arms from where they’ve been hanging at his sides and wraps them around Lucy’s body, pulling her flush against him despite the several pairs of eyes on them. 

It’s not like hugging her will be any more damning than the way she’s screaming at him, tears in her eyes as she touches him everywhere she can reach. 

“I’m mad at you,” she whispers, but her words are accompanied by a sniffle. 

Tim knows she’s pissed, of course, but despite the anger she’s relieved. 

“I said I’d come home, and I did. But I couldn’t… I couldn’t be just another monster to those girls. They were so scared, Lucy. I couldn’t do it.”

Lucy sniffles and murmurs something about too fucking honorable for your own good. She doesn’t pull back from where she has her head buried in his chest, though, even as she continues to mumble what are probably less than complimentary words into his shirt. He just holds her and lets her rant into his chest, knowing that her words aren’t necessarily for him, anyway. 

“She’s been like this for hours,” Angela whispers as she walks up to them. “Pacing, yelling at you, threatening your life if you got yourself killed. She’s been beside herself.”

Tim nods, and while he hates that he’d caused her to worry, he knows he couldn’t have forced himself to do things any other way. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, because while he knows that he couldn’t have forced himself to treat the girls the way Eddie had wanted him to treat them, he is sorry that he caused Lucy to worry. “But I’m fine, okay? Not even a scratch on me.”

Lucy sniffles and pulls back, and it’s not until she puts a few inches of space between them that Tim notices she’s shaking. 

He frowns and then leans in closer, his breath tickling her skin as speaks softly so that only she can hear. 

“Do you need me to help you calm down, Lucy? Do you need me to get you out of your head?”

Lucy bites her lip, her eyes sparkling with the remnants of her tears, and Tim watches, his gaze never leaving hers, as she considers what he’s offering.

He knows that he’s the only one she gives control up to, and he cherishes that fact. He also knows that she’s spent the past few hours out of her mind with worry, and he knows that he can help center her, help her give up control to him so she doesn’t have to agonize over the what ifs.  

He can take the weight of decision making off of her shoulders, help her float and relax and unwind in a healthy way. 

“Okay,” she whispers, and Tim smiles as he leans back and catches her gaze again. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs, and he watches as her cheeks darken and her pupils dilate. “I’m going to debrief, shower, and change out. Can you meet me at my house in an hour?”

Lucy nods slowly, her gaze never leaving his as she licks her lips and rocks back and forth on her heels. He can see the lingering terror in her gaze, the way she’s unsettled because of what they’d found, and he very much wants to be the one to help center her again. 

“Yes, sir,” she murmurs, and despite the heaviness of the situation and the horror of what he’d seen tonight (or maybe because of it all) Tim finds himself looking forward to holding Lucy in his arms and helping her get out of her head. 

“One hour,” he reminds her, and then he’s squeezing her hand, dropping it, and following Murray into the conference room to debrief the mission. 

Chapter Text

Lucy changes and showers with shaking hands, her brain and body both completely confused about what to focus on. 

Tim. 

Tim, going undercover alone. 

Tim, who ignored her advice and told the girls who he was, anyway. 

Tim, nearly dying. 

But also… 

Tim, waiting for her in his apartment. 

Tim, who collars her and tells her what to do and plays her body like a finely tuned instrument. 

Tim, who she’s a little bit in love with. 

Tim, who had told her it was a mistake after the first time they’d slept together. 

It all comes back to Tim, though, and even as she washes her breasts and her belly, as she plays with the idea of sliding her hand down just a little further, all she can think about is Tim. 

She’s snapped out of her thoughts when she hears the locker room door slam open, though, and she breathes out a shaky sigh as she finishes washing her body, turns the shower off, and wraps a towel around herself. She rubs a second towel over her hair, squeezing the long locks to get out as much water as she can as she pads across the locker room in her flip flops toward her locker. 

She doesn’t have time to blow dry her hair tonight. 

Tim is waiting for her. 

He’d told her one hour, and she both does and doesn’t want to find out what will happen if she’s late. 

Her heart rate doubles at the thought, and she has to pause and take a few deep breaths before she’s opening her locker and grabbing her go bag. She tosses her dirty clothes inside and then quickly dresses, pulling on a pair of panties that she wishes were sexier (this hadn’t been on her agenda tonight), a sports bra, and a pair of leggings with a long t-shirt. It’s simple and comfortable, and besides, she knows she won’t be wearing the clothes for long, anyway. 

A glance at the clock tells her that she has 27 minutes to make it to Tim’s before her hour is up, so she closes her locker, grabs her bag, and reaches for her phone as she heads toward the parking garage. 

To: Tim Bradford
From: Lucy Chen
I’m on my way. 

She’s in her car, pulling out onto the street, when she hears her phone ping with a reply. 

To: Lucy Chen
From: Tim Bradford
See you soon. 

She smiles the rest of the way there. 

______________________________

Tim opens the door and then takes a step back so that Lucy can enter his house.

He notices the way her hands are shaking, how her eyes widen and then flutter halfway closed when she sees him standing there, whole and unharmed, and he knows that today has been hard on her even more than it’s been hard on him. 

“Strip,” he orders her, and he watches as her pupils dilate. She gasps softly, and Tim watches as a blush spreads slowly down her chest. “Strip, and put your collar on for me, baby.”

He holds it out and waits, and then smiles sweetly as she reaches out to touch it. Her fingers, thin and so delicate looking next to his, shake as she runs them across the warm leather. 

“Will… will you put it on for me?” she asks.

Tim nods, and then lets his eyes trail across her body. 

“Strip first, and then I’ll put it on you.”

Lucy nods and reaches for the hem of her shirt as Tim pushes his door closed. He locks it and then just stands there, his pupils pinpoints of arousal as he watches her slowly take her shirt off, then her bra. She folds the garments and lays them on the entryway table, and then pushes her leggings and panties down. Tim watches the whole time, his eyes never leaving hers, until she’s naked and he’s fully dressed, standing in the entryway of his home. 

“Come here,” he murmurs, and Lucy shivers as he takes her hand and leads her into the living room. He leads her to the couch and watches as she takes in the water bottles and snacks on the table, the TV remote next to them, and he grins as she casts him a confused glance. 

“What…”

“I said I was going to help you relax, baby, and I will. I’m going to get you out of our head. I’m going to help you stop worrying and overthinking about the what ifs. Now come here.”

Lucy steps closer and closer until her body is pressed to his, and she shivers as the rough material of his jeans and his button down scrape across her naked skin. Tim smiles and wraps his arms around her waist, his fingers dancing across her spine, sliding from her ass to her neck until his large hand is cupping the back of her head. His fingers slide through her still wet hair, and Lucy moans low in her throat, her eyes slipping closed, as Tim scrapes his blunt fingernails across her skull.

“Let me put your collar on, Luce,” he whispers, and she nods as she tips her head back. His large hand slides from the back of her head to the front, pressing over her throat as he clasps the collar around her delicate neck. She shivers once it’s in place, and Tim smiles as he takes a step away and sits on the touch. 

“Kneel,” he murmurs, and Lucy falls to her knees without a thought, the movement automatic. She lands on the pillow Tim had set out for her, and she finds her eyes closing without her consent as Tim reaches for her, guiding her head into his lap as she fixes her posture. “Hands on your knees, Luce,” he says, and she nods as he reaches for the zipper of his jeans. She hears the movement rather than sees it, though, because she still can’t force her eyes open. 

“Tim,” she breathes, and she hears his breathy chuckle as he shifts, his hips lifting off of the couch as he shoves his jeans and boxer briefs down. 

“I’m going to tell you what I want to do, baby, and you tell me if it’s okay.”

Lucy nods and licks her lips as the hand on the back of her head guides her closer to his groin, and then moans as she breathes in the scent of Tim’s fresh, clean skin. She can smell his body wash, his laundry soap, and something that’s just him. Something like sweat and skin and Tim, and she breathes in greedily as he shifts on the couch again. She hears cloth rustling, and she knows he’s taking off his top.

He’s naked, just like her. 

She forces her eyes open, and then moans when she sees him on the couch, comfortable and at ease, his legs spread and his soft cock nestled in a bed of curls. 

“I want to watch the game,” he says, and Lucy makes a confused noise but doesn’t interrupt him. “It’s how I unwind. But while I’m watching the game, I want you to warm my cock. Do you know what cockwarming is, Lucy?”

Lucy shakes her head. She doesn’t know, but if it has anything to do with her hands or mouth on his cock, she knows that she’ll like it. 

“Cockwarming is where you just hold me in your mouth while I do a normal, everyday activity — like watching the game. The point isn’t to blow me, though. I may not even get hard, or I may be hard sometimes and soft others. The point is that it’s an act of submission, and it’s a way to pacify you, or to de-stress and help you focus on just one thing. It can be … kind of like meditating. It’s hard at first, to focus on kneeling and holding me in your mouth without sucking, but eventually… you just kind of slip into subspace. I want you to do that, Luce — I want you to relax and float and de-stress from today, okay?”

Lucy nods and licks her lips, her eyes flickering back down to Tim’s flaccid length. 

“Okay. Can I start now?” she asks, her voice a low whisper. 

Tim smiles and nods, his fingers tightening in her hair a she guides her face forward.

“Yeah, Luce. Take me in your mouth.”

Lucy nods and then opens her lips, and Tim guides his soft length between them, and she moans at the taste and feel of him — salty, warm, his hairs tickling her chin — as she settles her cheek against his thigh. 

Tim starts the game and ignores her other than running his fingers through her hair, and Lucy lets her eyes close again as she tries to relax into him. Her thighs ache and her mouth is full of saliva, and at first, just like Tim had said, it’s hard. There’s too many sensations and things to focus on. She’s worried about where to put her hands and how to swallow her saliva without sucking too hard, but eventually she just kind of … melts. Tim isn’t big like this, his cock soft and unassuming, and it’s easy to take all of him in. His skin is warm and soft against hers, and the noise of the game in the background fades into nothingness as her eyes close and her body relaxes. 

“Good girl,” Tim murmurs, and she nearly purrs in satisfaction as he feels her begin to melt against him. “This is perfect, baby. Let me know if you need a break.”

Lucy nods and then nuzzles her face into Tim’s thigh, and as he watches the game and scratches her scalp, the fingers of his other hand tangled in her collar, she floats. 

The focus required to stay kneeling with Tim in her mouth takes all of her attention, and as she sits there, her body flush against his, all she’s able to think about is him. 

Not about the undercover operation. 

Not about what had happened today. 

Not about him almost dying. 

Not about the fact that what they’re doing together is dangerous and can only end badly. 

All she can think about is him, the way he smells, the weight of his soft cock in her mouth, and his scent.

She doesn’t know how long she stays there, on her knees with him in her mouth, but when Tim begins to move, to shift under her and try and move her mouth off of him, she whines, her fingers digging into his skin and trying to hold him in place as she swallows around his length. 

Tim chuckles and runs his fingers through her hair, brushing his thumb over her cheek as she glances up at him. 

“You’re so pretty like this, Luce. So fucking sexy. But the game is over, and your knees are probably hurting. It’s time to get up, okay?”

She doesn’t want to, but she knows he’s probably right, so she lets him pull her off of him and haul her into his lap. 

“Did I do good?” she whispers, and she feels her heart race after the words leave her mouth because it’s such a vulnerable thing to ask, to seek praise from a man who gives it so infrequently, but she knows that he’ll give it to her. 

She’s the exception to most of his rules. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, and she whines low in her throat as he tucks her face into his neck. “You did such a good job, Luce. So perfect for me. Such a good girl.”

Lucy whines and wiggles in his lap, and now that she’s slowly coming out of her haze, she realizes that she’s wet. She’s wet and her pussy aches with emptiness, and she whimpers as Tim’s mostly soft cock brushes against the sensitive, soaked skin between her thighs. 

“You want me, Luce?” he asks, and she nods as she begins rocking on his lap. Tim drops his hands to her hips and lets her, grunting as her breasts bounce in his face as she moves. He leans down and sucks one between his lips, biting softly as she grinds down on his lap. He’s hardening rapidly beneath her, and he knows it won’t take much until he’s ready. “You want me here, or in bed?”

Lucy bites her lip as she thinks, her brain still fuzzy. Most of her thoughts are centered between her legs, on how Tim feels as he hardens beneath her, how his wiry pubic hair feels against her bare mound as she rocks in his lap. 

It’s hard to think. 

“Here,” she finally decides, and Tim nods as he reaches between them to wrap his hand around his cock. He’s fully hard now, soaked in her arousal, and they both moan as he presses the head of his cock to her entrance. 

“Please,” she whines, and Tim nods as he moves his free hand to Lucy’s cheek. He cups her face and guides her into a kiss as he begins pressing inside, and they both moan into the other’s open mouth as he stretches her, his cock thick and hard and hot as it sinks inside of her pussy. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods as she settles in his lap, his length nestled fully inside of her. She clenches the walls of her pussy a few times, groaning as he touches every part of her, and then raises up on shaking legs before falling back down again. 

“Tim, I need… I can’t…”

She can’t find the word to explain the way her thighs shake with exertion, or how her whole body feels like fucking jelly, but Tim knows. 

He always knows. 

“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, and Lucy whimpers as he wraps his hands around her thick thighs. He helps her rise and fall on his cock, thrusting his hips up to meet her as she falls back down. He kisses her gently, their lips wet and hot, their bodies covered in a thin sheen of sweat as they fuck slowly. 

It’s not fast and frantic like the last two times, Lucy finds herself thinking, and she knows there’s a reason why that should concern her, but she can’t seem to think past the haze of arousal and the flood of endorphins in her brain. 

“Tim,” she whines, and he nods as he drops his mouth to her neck, his tongue and lips sucking and his teeth biting as he fucks up into her. 

“I know, Luce. I’m close. Are you close?”

She nods, her breath coming in short gasps as Tim wraps one arm around her waist and pulls her body as close to his as he can. He breathes hotly against her neck, against the mark he’s just made, and Lucy moans as he drops a hand between them, his fingers sliding through the mess she’s made of herself, circling her clit and causing her to cry out. 

“That’s it, baby. That’s it; come for me, Luce.”

Lucy whimpers and drops her head to Tim’s shoulder, her eyes closed and her wet lips sliding along his sweaty skin as he rubs at her clit and fucks her hard and fast, his fingers digging into the skin of her thighs as he helps her rise and fall and rise and fall and rise and fall —

“Oh, god,” she groans, and Tim shudders underneath her as she spasms around his cock. She comes hard, her whole body shaking as he continues to fuck her, his cock splitting her open as he chases his own release. 

It only takes a handful more thrusts and he’s following her over the edge, burying himself as deeply in her body as he can as he groans and comes, hot spurts of cum filling her pussy and sliding down his cock and making a mess of both of them. 

They breathe harshly in the aftermath, Tim murmuring words of comfort and praise to Lucy as she shivers in his arms. He makes her drink sips of water and feeds her some of the snacks he’d set out and then, without thinking about it too hard, he picks her up and carries her into his bedroom. 

Neither of them speak as he dresses her in one of his large t-shirts, or as he crawls into bed behind her and takes her into his arms. He kisses her forehead and her cheek and her hair, pulls the blankets tight around them, and then turns the lights off. 

They’re both asleep within minutes. 

___________________________________

When Tim wakes up the next morning, he’s alone. 

He sighs, rubs a hand over his face, and then turns to stare at the table on the side of the bed that Lucy had slept on. 

His t-shirt is folded neatly, a crisp, white piece of paper on top. 

A note. 

He doesn’t want to look at it, but he knows he needs to. 

He sits up, grabs the note, and runs his fingers through his already messy hair as he reads it. 

Tim, 

Thank you for helping me get out of my head last night, but it can’t happen again. Not… not like that. That was different than anything we’ve done undercover, and I can’t do that again. Like you said after the first time, it was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened. You’re with Ashley, but even if you weren’t… I don’t think this would work. We want different things. So, let’s try and forget about this, okay? 

The operation is done, so Alex and Nova are done, too.

I’ll see you at work. 

-Chen 

Tim stares at the note, his chest tight and his throat thick with emotion. 

It was a mistake. 

He remembers saying the exact same words to her after the first time they’d slept together, and he wonders if hearing him say them had hurt her as much as reading them hurts him now. 

He reaches for the collar Lucy had laid on the bedside table next to the note, and he holds it close to his chest as he falls back onto his pillows, his eyes blurring with emotion as he rereads and rereads and rereads her words. 

Chapter Text

The fact that they’re no longer riding together makes the next few weeks both easier and harder for Tim after Lucy leaves him with nothing but a note and the lingering scent of her shampoo on his pillow. 

Easier because he doesn’t have to see her everyday and not have her. 

Harder because he craves her. 

He watches her from the corner of his eye during roll call, cataloging each breath and smile and laugh. He commits her face to memory, but the few minutes he has in her presence everyday are not nearly enough to tide him over. He lingers in the break room during lunch to see if she’ll come in for something, and waits in his truck until he sees her leave after shift. Not to be creepy, of course, but just to make sure that she got through her shift okay and that she is okay. 

Aaron notices, because of course he does, but all it takes from Tim is a glare and a terse reminder that they don’t talk about their personal lives in the shop to keep him from asking questions. 

He tries to distract himself with Ashley, but all he can think about is Lucy. 

He texts Ashley and asks her to dinner, and she responds enthusiastically which makes him feel worse because he knows he’s been a terrible, horrible, awful, cheating boyfriend, and he knows that he needs to break up with her but then he’ll be alone and he doesn’t want to be alone. 

Ashley meets him there, and she notices that something is off right away but doesn’t call him on it until after their meals have been delivered. 

“So, is your undercover operation over?” she asks, and Tim tries to keep the myriad of emotions he’s feeling off of his face but he knows he fails. 

“Yeah. Yeah, we finished the job. We caught the bastard, arrested him after I went under, and passed him over to the detectives to interrogate. Last I heard he’s still holding out, but they’re hoping to get him to roll on his associates soon.”

“Oh,” Ashley says, picking at her pasta, and Tim sighs as he nods. 

“Sorry, I’m talking about work. We said we wouldn’t talk about work during date nights. How have you been? Sorry I’ve been… distant.”

Ashley offers him a small smile and shrugs. 

“It’s okay, I know how it is. My dad… but there we go again, talking about work. I missed you, though. I brought an overnight bag…”

She trails off suggestively and Tim tries to smile but he imagines Ashley in his bed, tall and thin, blonde and beautiful, and it just feels wrong. 

He wants long, wavy brown hair. Thick thighs leading to a curvy, thin waist and full breasts. He wants to feel warm leather over delicate skin. He wants … 

Fuck it, he wants Lucy. 

But he can’t have her.

“Sounds good,” he says, but he knows he responds a moment too late because he can see the way that Ashley’s eyes fall to her lap for a moment before raising again, determination in her gaze. 

“Tim. What’s wrong? Something is wrong, and I’ve put up with a lot from you but I’m putting my foot down. Tell me what’s been going on with you, why you haven’t been responding to my text messages and why you haven’t invited me over in weeks. You haven’t even kissed me in weeks, Tim. You kissed me on the cheek the other day when I came by the station, and I know you don’t like PDA but this is excessive. You’ve been acting weird and I deserve to know why.”

Tim swallows thickly, his food tasting like ash in his mouth as he leans back in his chair. He meets Ashley’s gaze and lets his eyes take in her stubborn, indignant expression, and he means to let her down easy, to say it’s not you, it’s me, but what comes out of his mouth isn’t what he expects even if it is true. 

“I slept with Lucy.”

He watches as Ashley’s expression goes from confused to just… completely closed off. Her face is blank, her eyes fluttering closed as she sucks in a slow, deep breath. 

“You what?” she asks, her voice a low, dangerous whisper. 

Tim sighs and runs a hand over his face. 

“We were undercover and things got heated and we just… we just gave in. We gave in, and we slept together and I’m sorry. I should have broken up with you first, or-or right after, but I just—”

“No, Tim, what you should have done is you shouldn’t have slept with her!” Ashley cries, and Tim sighs as every head in the restaurant turns toward them. Ashley stands, her chair scraping noisily across the floor as she balls up her napkin and throws it at him. “God, Tim! I knew… I knew you guys were close, but you told me not to worry and I trusted you. I trusted you, but I should have known better.”

Tim doesn’t even bother defending himself, because he knows that there is no defense. 

He hadn’t just slept with Lucy once. 

He’d slept with her three times, and he wants to do it again. 

And again. 

And again. 

He wants to be with her, to be the one who wakes up beside her in the morning. He wants to be able to touch her, to kiss her, to whisper his love into her ear. He wants to collar her, to slide his fingers under the leather and hold her life in his hands while he makes love to her. He wants to wrap his fingers around her throat and see the absolute trust in her eyes. 

He wants her and not Ashley, but he knows that he should have broken things off with her before he hurt her. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, his voice a whisper, and when he gathers the courage to look up, Ashley is staring at him with tears in her eyes. 

“Was it just… was it just because of the job? Like, you got too into character? Or was it…”

Tim swallows and shakes his head. 

He could maybe blame the first time he’d walked into Lucy’s apartment after she’d asked do you want to come inside? on the job, on the adrenaline high of completing his first undercover mission, but not the first time he slept with her. 

He’d known what he was doing. 

He’d walked into Lucy’s bedrooms with his eyes wide open. He’d known the second time, too, and by the third time, it didn’t just feel like sex anymore. 

It felt like more. 

He’d been hopeful that what was happening between them could become something more, but then Lucy had left his bed and had left a note behind saying that everything they’d done was a mistake and Tim felt like his heart was breaking even though he’d known it was inevitable. 

“Sorry,” he whispers again, because he doesn’t think Ashley needs to know the details of all three times he’d slept with Lucy. 

It won’t help the situation, even if it’s true. 

“You’re a bastard, Tim Bradford,” she snaps, and Tim nods because she’s right. 

He is a bastard. 

He doesn’t regret anything he’d done with Lucy, of course. He only regrets how he’d gone about it. 

“I can bring your stuff to the station,” he murmurs. Ashley sniffles and Tim drops his eyes to their table, hating that he’s hurt her. She’s a good girl, of course… she’s just not his girl. “I’m sorry, Ash.”

“Fuck you,” she sobs, and then she’s turning and walking away and Tim is glad that they’d driven separately because he can’t imagine riding beside her after dropping the news that he’d cheated on her.

He sighs, pulls his money clip from behind his belt, and drops enough money on the table to cover their bill before standing up and walking out of the restaurant, not bothering to finish his food or take it to-go.

He’s not hungry anymore. 

He drives home in a daze, gathers all of Ashley’s things (though there aren’t many), and then throws the box in his truck before walking back inside, slamming his bedroom door, and then falling back onto the bed he’d shared with Lucy less than a week before, the bed that still smells a little bit like her if he breathes deeply enough.

He remembers her kneeling while he watched the game, his soft cock in her warm little mouth, and he remembers how she’d crawled into his lap and asked did I do good? afterward. He remembers how he’d taken her on the couch and how he’d carried her to his bed afterward. He remembers how they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms, how safe and warm and content he’d felt. 

He remembers, and he wants. 

He glances at his phone and considers calling her, but he doesn’t know what he’d say. 

He rolls over, turns the lights out, and goes to sleep alone. 

____________________________

Lucy sees Tim every day after their undercover operation. She sees him in roll call and in the hallways and in the parking garage. 

She sees him, but they don’t talk. 

They haven’t said a single word since she left his bed in the early morning light, and while she’d wanted some time and space to keep herself from falling even further in love with him, she hadn’t wanted this. 

She hadn’t wanted this complete and utter silence. 

Tim doesn’t speak to her or look at her or even acknowledge her existence, and Lucy had thought it was hard playing the part of Nova, of being so close to Tim without being able to have him the way she truly wanted, but this is worse. 

It’s so much worse. 

She spends the two weeks after leaving his bed yearning for him, for a word or a glance or something, but when he finally does acknowledge her presence it doesn’t quite go how she’d imagined it would. 

“Angela needs us.”

Lucy glances up from her paperwork, her heart thundering in her chest and her mouth suddenly dry because Tim. 

“W-what?” she stutters, and she watches with wide eyes as his lips quirk into a tiny smile before he forces his expression back into something more neutral. 

“Angela said she needs us. She told me to grab you and meet in the conference room.”

Lucy stands up, bumping her thigh on the edge of her desk and upsetting her paperwork. She curses and hisses, one hand flying to where she knows she’s going to have a bruise while the other shoots out, just barely keeping her piles of files from falling to the floor. 

“What for?”

“I don’t know, Chen. Let’s just go find out, okay?” Tim says, his voice clipped and short. 

Lucy bites her lip and nods, her heart aching at the way he’d called her Chen again, the way he had after she’d gotten back from UC school. 

After he’d told her to move on. 

She nods again, pushes her chair in, and then falls into step behind Tim as he stalks toward the conference room. He opens the door and walks inside, not bothering to hold it open for her, and her heart sinks even further as she slinks inside and drops into one of the chairs, stubbornly staring straight ahead and not looking toward Tim. 

This isn’t what she’d wanted when she’d left the note on his bedside table, but… well, she supposes she should have seen it coming. 

They’d fucked up. 

They’d fucked, actually, and that was the problem. 

“What’s up?” she asks, forcing a smile as she turns toward Angela. Her heart falls, though, when she sees Mark Murray standing next to her friend. 

Well, fuck. 

“We got Eddie to talk,” Angela says, and Lucy bites her lip as she hears Tim sigh. “We need you and Tim to go back under at the club.”

Chapter Text

Arriving at the club that night is more nerve-wracking than Lucy had anticipated, and she reaches up to touch her throat without really thinking about the why until her fingers caress warm skin instead of soft leather. 

She whimpers and turns to Tim, eyes wide, and she doesn’t understand why she feels so naked without her collar but she does. She feels like she’s on display and untethered without the soft press of the collar on her throat each time she breathes, and she can’t imagine kneeling by Tim’s side without his fingers playing with the leather or pulling on the metal ring.

Tim doesn’t pull it from his pocket, though, even as she stares at him with her own fingers touching her throat. 

She swallows and looks away, and she considers not asking about it but she needs it. 

She hates that she feels like she needs it, but she does. 

“My collar?” she whispers, and she glances up just in time to see Tim swallow and shake his head. 

“I don’t have it, I’m sorry. I thought… I thought you’d be uncomfortable because of what you said in your note. I didn’t … I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Lucy nods and tries to ignore the heat stinging her eyes. 

This whole situation, the fucking undercover job, has her on the edge. 

She’d left Tim’s house that morning determined to give them a clean break, but now they’re back. They’re back here where they’d first acted on their feelings of attraction, where she’d realized she was in love with Tim, and she doesn’t know how she’s going to get through this night while kneeling at Tim’s side.

She doesn’t know how she’s going to pretend it’s just for the job when she wants this all of the time. 

She wants Tim’s collars and his hand on her ass and his commanding voice in her ear. She wants to kneel for him and make him proud. She wants to feel his fingers on her lips as he feeds her. 

She wants him. 

She wants him as her Dom. 

“Okay,” she whispers, and she turns before she sees the way that Tim’s face falls. “Let’s just do this,” she says, and Tim nods as he climbs out of the truck and walks quickly to her side. 

“Is there anything that I shouldn’t do tonight?” he asks, caging her against the truck with his body before she can run away from him. She glances up, her breath caught in her chest and her lips parted as she meets his endless blue eyes, and she tries not to notice how Tim’s gaze flickers down to her lips, how his words are more breathy as he continues speaking. “Anything I did before that you didn’t like?”

Lucy shakes her head, because she doesn’t think there’s anything Tim could do that she wouldn’t like. 

“No, I’m fine. Let’s… let’s go to this meeting and then just… we can forget all of this ever happened.”

Tim clenches his jaw and nods, the movement jerky and short as he turns and begins walking toward the club. Lucy runs to catch up with him and slips her hand in his, and her touch seems to loosen him somehow. He sighs and his shoulders relax, and Lucy swallows tightly as they walk into the club and are waved through by a hostess who recognizes them. 

They sit down and are joined by Eddie almost immediately, and Tim sighs because if the man doesn’t relax he’s going to blow their cover. 

“You are a terrible CI,” he grunts, and Eddie rolls his eyes as he reaches for his drink. He’s sweating and nervous, and Tim wonders if this operation is going to be over before it even begins. 

“Whatever. I just want this to be over. This isn’t worth the fucking deal they gave me; I’m still going to jail. I should just bounce and leave you to fucking die here,” he hisses, and Lucy glances at Tim in concern as she sinks to her knees beside him. He reaches out for her, placing his hand on the back of her neck, and she shudders and relaxes a little bit because if she can’t have her collar then this is the next best thing. 

“If you blow our cover, the deal’s off the table and you’ll have years added to your sentence for fucking us over.”

Eddie glares and downs his glass in one drink, grimacing as the alcohol slides down his throat. 

“Another one,” he tells the waitress as she walks up to take Tim and Lucy’s order. 

“And we’ll have a whisky sour and an order of fried mushrooms,” Tim adds, and Lucy fights a smile as he orders her favorites. She knows he's doing it because he can tell she’s on edge even though his fingers are digging into her neck, trying to release some of the tension there. 

“I can’t believe you’re fucking cops,” Eddie grumbles, and Tim sighs as he kicks him under the table. 

“Shut the fuck up or you’re going to ruin this,” he hisses. 

Eddie glares but shuts his mouth, and Tim leans back in the booth, watching him carefully as he runs his thumb up and down the top of Lucy’s spine. She shivers and leans into his touch, and he fights a smile as he feels her body melt against him. 

“Boss is here,” Eddie says, and he nods his head in the direction of a tall, dark haired man near the bar as their waitress returns with their drinks. Tim thanks her, takes a sip of the whiskey sour, and then dips his finger into the liquid before painting Lucy’s lips with it. Her tongue darts out to taste the sharp flavor of the whiskey, and she groans as Tim turns slowly to look at their newest target. 

“You need to fucking relax,” he tells Eddie, and though the man glares, he does his best to act natural as he raises his hand and waves the man over. Once the boss sees him and begins walking in their direction, Eddie reaches for his glass and downs it again, licking his lips nervously. 

“Eddie,” the man says, and Tim feels Lucy stiffen at his side again as the boss’s velvety voice washes over them. He’s handsome, tall and looking nothing like what she suspected a human trafficker to look like, and she can’t help but remember how harmless Caleb had seemed at first, too. 

The man slides into the booth beside Eddie, letting his eyes roam over Lucy even as he addresses the men in the booth. “I heard you were arrested. Tell me why I should be sitting this close to you before I walk away and send Marcus to make sure you never have another chance to roll over on me.”

Eddie swallows and licks his lips again, his eyes darting to Tim before he turns back toward the boss. 

“I didn’t tell them anything, I fucking swear. They just couldn’t hold me because they couldn’t connect me to the girls, you know? I was there at the docks, but they can’t prove that I was there because of the girls. They had to let me go; they have nothing on me.”

Tim smirks as Eddie spews the lies Angela had fed him; they absolutely can prove he was connected with the girls, and the only reason he’d agreed to become a CI was because he was looking at life otherwise. 

“I’m free and clear, and Alex here, he’s good. He got the girls to come with us without a single peep, really put the fear of god in them. He’s a natural, and we could use him for that big job coming up.”

The boss hums as he runs his finger across the rim of his glass. Tim watches him carefully, searching for signs that he knows something is up. Angela is on comms, listening, and Nyla and Nolan are on backup, across the street in case they need assistance quickly. So he knows that they’re fine, that if they need help it’ll be here in seconds, but he can’t help the anxiety that this might go south while he and Lucy are unarmed and vulnerable. 

“We do need an extra set of hands,” the man murmurs, and Tim smiles slowly as he tightens his hold on Lucy’s neck. 

“I’m good at what I do, and my girl is the best getaway driver I’ve ever worked with. She’s fast and can outrun fucking anyone. We’re looking for a cash influx, so we’re on board for just about anything.”

The man presses his lips together, watching as Tim reaches for one of the newly delivered mushrooms. He pops one in his own mouth despite the fact that he hates them, and then presses one to Lucy’s lips. Chewing and focusing on not making a face at the fungus in his mouth helps him concentrate on something other than the anxiety swirling in his stomach and making him feel sick. 

“Open up, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy shudders as her lips part. Her eyes flutter closed and her warm, wet tongue caresses Tim’s fingers as she sucks the treat into her mouth. Tim lingers, letting her taste his warm, salty skin, and when he pulls away and turns back to the men in the booth across from them, he feels  little more in control of his emotions. 

“If Eddie here says you’re good, then you must be,” the man decides. “He may be a fucking idiot for getting caught, but he’s been my number two for years. I trust his recommendations. So, you’re in. You tossed the phone Eddie gave you for the last job?”

Tim nods sharply, reaching for another mushroom. He takes a small bite of the breading, which isn’t half bad, and then presses the actual mushroom against Lucy’s lips.

“Yeah, after the op went bad I didn't want to take any chances.”

“Smart man,” the boss murmurs. “I’ll have another phone waiting for you here tomorrow morning. Pick it up, wait for communication.”

“Yes, sir,” Tim says, leaning back against the booth and relaxing fully as he wraps his fingers around his drink. The glass is sweating, and his fingers slip through the condensation as he takes a drink. 

“Now, before I go,” the man says, and he grins as his eyes slip from Tim’s face down to Lucy’s. “Are you two playing tonight? I’d love to watch.”

Tim nearly rolls his eyes, but it’s not exactly as if he can fault the man. 

Lucy is fucking beautiful, and he’d want to watch, too, if he were in their shoes. 

“No, we’re just here for business tonight.”

“Mmm. Too bad. Next time, maybe,” the man says, and Tim nods, offering him a tight smile as he places his glass down and then stands up. 

Eddie waits until he’s exited the club before letting out a breath and dropping his head into his hands. 

“Fuck, but that was stressful,” he groans. 

Tim smirks and chuckles darkly as he wraps his arm around Lucy’s waist and nudges her hip. “Up,” he murmurs, and his heart thunders in his chest as Lucy follows his commands so easily. She stands and then climbs into his lap, laying her head on his chest as he finishes his drink and reaches for another mushroom. 

“You two are, like, really committed to your undercover act,” Eddie grumbles, raising an eyebrow. 

Tim shoots him a glare and then feeds Lucy the last mushroom before wiping his fingers on his jeans and returning his hand to her neck. He squeezes, and though he knows his hand is a poor imitation of the collar she longs for, she relaxes into him, sighing as she lays her head on his collarbone. 

He wishes desperately that this was reality, that she wanted to be here, in his lap and in his arms. 

But she’d left him that fucking note. 

It was a mistake.

It can never happen again. 

The mission is done, so Alex and Nova are done, too.

He finds himself wondering, half hysterically, if since the mission isn’t over if she’ll come home with him again, if she’ll let him kiss her and take her to bed the way he’s longed to for the past few weeks. 

He doesn’t ask, though, because he’s been turned down too many time to put himself out there again. First in the hotel room, when they were Jake and Sava, and then when she’d slipped out of his bed in the middle of the night and left him that note. 

“Think he’s gone?” Lucy murmurs, and Tim nods as he glances toward the door. 

It’s been long enough, he thinks. 

“He should be,” he whispers, and he sighs as Lucy climbs off of his lap and stands on shaking legs in front of him. “We should go, huh?”

Lucy nods, biting her lip as she glances down at him. He nods again, as if he’s convincing himself, and when he stands, his body is pressed all along her front. She can feel his heat through both of their clothes, and she wants to reach out and pull him closer even though she knows it’s a fucking terrible idea. 

She doesn’t, and they walk out of the club with Eddie trailing glumly behind. He’s put back in cuffs by Nyla, whisked away by Nolan, and then Tim is leading Lucy to his truck, opening her door and helping her climb in before going around to his side. 

The ride back to her apartment is silent, tense, and Tim doesn’t know why he climbs out and walks her up to her apartment but he does. 

He’s struck with deja vu as Lucy unlocks her door and turns to him, and he knows that she must be, too, because she bites her lip and holds onto the handle of her door so tightly that her knuckles are white. 

Don’t ask, Tim thinks, but he’s never been that lucky. 

She meets his gaze and her lips part, and Tim can feel the tension buzzing in the air between them as his heart beats frantically. 

He knows what she’s going to say, but knowing doesn’t prepare him for how her voice sounds as she whispers an invitation for him to come into her apartment, and he knows, just like he knew last time, that it won’t be for just a drink. 

“Stay, please.”

Chapter Text

“Stay, please,” she whispers, and Tim is tempted. 

He wants to, is the thing. 

He wants to stay and follow Lucy inside. 

He wants to take her into his arms and kiss her and hold her and then take her to bed. 

He wants so many things with her, but he doesn’t know if he can have her — at least not the way he wants her. 

And that’s… well, that’s the problem, really. 

“What are we doing, Lucy?” he asks, his voice a pained whisper, and she swallows hard as she meets his gaze. He shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs, and he watches as her face falls but he doesn't think that he can go inside her apartment if he can’t have her the way he wants her. He can’t keep digging himself into this hole, because he thinks if he buries himself too deeply that he’ll never be able to claw his way out. 

It’s self preservation, really. 

“W-what do you mean?” she asks. 

“I mean this. I mean us. We’ve slept together, Lucy, and not just once. It wasn’t just a one time, desire-fueled thing. We’ve fucked three times. And I want more. But then you left me that fucking note. You left, Lucy, but now you’re asking me to stay? And as much as I want to, I can’t. So I mean exactly what I asked — what are we doing?”

Lucy bites her lip and shrugs, and Tim sighs as he takes a step backward. 

“Just… call me when you figure it out, okay?”

Lucy nods, her brown eyes wide and wet, and Tim wants to take her into his arms but he doesn’t. 

Instead he walks away, and he doesn’t look back. 

_____________________________

Lucy doesn’t call. 

Tim waits up nearly all night, and when his alarm goes off the next morning he’s fucking tired. He can’t just roll over and go back to bed, though, because he has to get into character, drop by the club, and collect the cell phone that had been left for Alex. He has to somehow be Alex tonight and run this op with Lucy without getting them killed or breaking his own damn heart, and he’s not sure he can. 

“What’s wrong, Bradford.”

Tim sighs as Angela sits on the edge of the desk he’s working at. 

“That wasn’t a question. It was a statement,” he says, and his best friend rolls her eyes as she scoots closer, her hip bumping against his hand as he pretends to work on paperwork when he’s really just trying not to stare at Lucy. He sighs, because he knows she won’t give up, and tosses his pencil before leaning back in his chair. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You, Timothy Bradford, are a lying liar who lies,” she says, and he sighs as he bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from turning to look at Lucy. 

Again. 

“I’m fine.”

“If you’re not and you go on this op, you could get both you and Lucy hurt. Or killed,” she says, and Tim glares at her because she knows he would never put Lucy in danger if he can help it.

“Fine. Things are a little weird between me and Lucy, but we’ll be fine,” he says, and he groans internally as Angela’s eyes sparkle. 

“Weird how?” she asks. 

“This op. It’s… and right after the last one, you know? It’s just weird. We’re just weird. But we’ll figure it out. It’ll be fine. We’ll do the job tonight and then we’ll be done, and we’ll get back to normal.”

Angela opens her mouth to respond, to no doubt say something that’s going to make him want to roll his eyes, but she doesn’t get a chance because Lucy walks up to the desk Tim is at and smiles uncomfortably at him before nodding toward the roll call room. 

“Murray says they’re ready for us.”

Tim sighs and nods and then stands, offering Angela a tight smile before following Lucy. He wipes his sweaty palms on his jeans and tries to listen as they’re briefed, but he honestly he only follows along with about half of what is said. 

“Ready?” Lucy asks, and Tim sighs as he nods. 

“Yeah. As ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s just get this over with.”

_____________________________

Things go smoothly at first. 

The Boss calls, they meet at the docks, and Lucy waits in the get-away car while he, Eddie, Tim, and two men they’ve never seen walk toward the water. 

Tim doesn’t blow his cover this time, which Lucy is thankful for, at least not until one of the girls manages to escape and tries to run. 

“No!” Tim cries, and Lucy’s heart fucking stops as he bolts after her. The shots ring out and the girl falls, screaming in pain as the bullet tears through her leg. Tim drops down beside her and Lucy throws open the door of the car, stepping out as Eddie walks up to Tim and presses his gun to his head. 

“Get the fuck up,” he hisses. “This fucking bitch ruined everything. Someone heard those shots for sure; get up, we have to get the fuck out of here.”

Tim stands, but instead of moving back toward the group of quivering, crying girls, he stands in front of the injured preteen on the ground and blocks her from Eddie’s view. 

“No.”

The boss pushes past Eddie and grabs the collar of Tim’s shirt, his gun pressing into Tim’s belly as he growls low and dangerous. 

“Eddie said you were good, but you’re about to fucking ruin everything. Get up and help us get these girls out of here, or I will fucking kill you.”

Lucy watches as Tim swallows, but he doesn’t move until he glances up and catches her terrified gaze. She’s frozen, her eyes wide and filled with tears, and she watches as he nods slowly and backs down, reaching for the girl on the ground as he speaks. 

“She’s seen all of us, we can’t leave her behind,” he says, and the boss nods slowly as he sticks his gun back in his jeans. 

“Fine. Grab her and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Tim nods, scoops the girl up, and then Lucy loses track of them for a few minutes as she climbs back into the van and starts it, her heart in her throat as she waits. They load the girls, but before she even has a chance to do her one job, the police are flooding the docks and everything is chaos. She's shoved out of the car, Eddie screaming in her face that this is their fault, and she cries out in pain as the butt of his gun meets her forehead. Blood drips down into her eyes, and she’s terrified for one long moment before Tim is there, shoving Eddie off of her and pushing her behind him. 

They’re cuffed and shoved into the back of a shop, and even though she can’t reach out and touch Tim, just knowing he’s there beside her is enough. 

“It’s over,” she whispers, and Tim nods, swallowing thickly as he lets his head drop to Lucy’s shoulder. 

“It’s over,” he agrees. 

_____________________________

She follows him home, afterward.  

They walk to his door and then she turns and stares at him, her brown eyes wide and the little cut on the side of her face red and inflamed. He stares at it for a long time, longer than he should, and he thinks that it’s the tiny fucking cut that causes what happens next, because it’s a tiny cut this time, but next time it could be more. 

He could have lost her tonight, and the thought is enough to propel him forward, to push her through the door and then up against it. 

“Tim,” she gasps, but he shakes his head because he doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to talk about how he’d told her no, about how he’d almost lost her, or about how this is a monumentally stupid idea. 

He wants to lose himself in her body, to listen to her heart and feel her warm skin against his.

He wants to convince himself that she’s alive.

That he’s alive.

“Please,” he whispers. He pulls back far enough that he can meet her gaze, and he thinks he sees some of his own desperation reflected back at him. 

He’d almost died, too, and even if Lucy doesn’t love him the way he loves her, she feels something. Whether it’s friendship or more, she feels something, and he knows that her heart had been in her throat when he’d been in front of that fucking gun, just like his had been. 

They’d nearly died. 

Lucy licks her lips and nods, and after that Tim isn’t sure who moves first. They crash into each other, lips and teeth and tongues, and Lucy cries out as Tim digs his fingers into her hips and picks her up, helping her wrap her thighs around his waist. He’s already hard and hot between her legs, his thick length pressing into her through the material of their jeans, and she moans as he thrusts his hips into hers. 

“Tim,” she whimpers, and he grins as he pulls his lips from hers, mesmerized by the line of spit connecting their mouths. It snaps and drops to Lucy’s bottom lip, making it shine, and Tim growls as he dives back in, licking her lip before biting it. He can taste blood in his mouth, and he knows he’s being too rough but he can’t stop himself. 

“Safeword if I do anything you don’t like,” he grunts, and Lucy nods and then shudders, her thighs tightening around his waist as he trails one hand up her side and presses it to her throat, his long fingers spanning the delicate skin. He presses just hard enough to make her breathless, and she feels herself gushing into her panties, her pussy soaked with need for him. 

“Tim, please,” she begs, and he nods as he shoves his other hand under her shirt. He pulls it up, grunting when he has to move his hand to take it off, but then his fingers are back around her neck and his mouth is trailing kisses down her chest. He licks and sucks at her skin, leaving marks, and when he draws one of her nipples into his mouth she screams, rutting against him as he bites down and sucks on the hard point. She feels her pussy clenching around nothing, desperate for him, and she sobs with need as he switches breasts. 

“Can you come just from rubbing against me?” he murmurs, and Lucy nods because she can and she’s going to if she keeps this up. Her clit is being abused by the material of her jeans as she rocks against his cock, and she knows that it won’t take her much to get there. “Then come, baby. Come for me.”

Lucy whimpers and throws her head back, tangling her fingers in Tim’s hair as he continues abusing her breast. His hand presses tighter against her throat, a poor imitation of her collar, but the breathless feeling and the hot tightness in her chest is all she needs to push her over the edge, and she comes with a cry, shaking and trembling in Tim’s arms. 

He grins, pulling back and meeting her gaze, and he knows that he could stop here but he wants her. He wants to strip her and fuck her up against the door, and then take her to the bedroom and do it all again. He wants so spank her and gag her, to fuck her face and tighten his collar around her throat. He wants her to wear his collar all of the time, at home and at work, letting everyone know that she’s his. 

“Yes, Tim. Yes,” she whimpers, her voice hoarse and positively dripping with need, and Tim drops his head to her shoulder with a groan when he realizes that he’s spoken out loud. “Tim, fuck me. Please. Please fuck me and make me yours. Please put your collar on me.”

Tim nods, breathless with want, and then helps Lucy stand on shaking feet so he can push her jeans down. He shoves her panties down with them and then spins her, pushing her up against the door as he grabs her hips and pulls her ass against his groin. 

“Can I spank you?” he asks, and Lucy nods, moaning as he digs his fingers into the flesh of her ass. 

Her ass is perfect. 

He loves watching it ripple as he hits her, watching the red bloom and spread across her cheeks. He loves fucking her afterward, hearing her moan and feeling her writhe as his pelvis slaps against her sensitive skin. 

“Please,” she begs, and he nods, pressing a kiss to her spine before he’s pulling his hand back and letting it hit against her left cheek. She screams and trembles, and he groans as he watches red bloom across her skin in the shape of his hand. 

“Was that too hard?” he asks, but she shakes her head, shoving her ass back at him as he unbuttons his pants. He reaches for his cock, wrapping his fingers around it and slapping it against her ass before shoving his jeans down the rest of the way. 

“Again, please,” Lucy whines, and Tim nods, kicking her feet apart as his hand lands on the opposite cheek. Lucy moans and Tim feels his cock twitch as he watches the arousal from her pussy drip down her thighs. “Again.”

“How many?” he asks, because he’s not used to spanking someone without a limit. 

“As many as you want to give me,” Lucy says, and Tim feels a shudder run through his whole body as he stares at her, naked and at his mercy. Her hair is falling in loose waves around her face, the skin of her back sweaty and her ass bright red just from the two hits he’s already given her. 

“Ten,” Tim says, though he thinks she could take more. 

She’s so fucking perfect. 

Lucy nods and flattens her palms on the door, and Tim takes a step back, observing her as he runs his fingers up and down his cock. He feels heat in his stomach, arousal and admiration and adoration vying for attention as he stares at the woman in front of him. 

“Count for me,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods as he hits her left cheek again. She cries out but gasps out “Three!” before he’s hitting her again in the exact same place. 

He spanks her hard enough that he knows she’ll feel it for days. She won’t be able to sit without remembering his hand on her ass and his cock in her pussy. She won’t be able to take a hot shower without the sting reminding her who her Dom is. 

“Four.”

Tim presses his lips to her spine, giving her a moment to revel in the sting and ache before he’s spanking her again, two in quick succession, one on each cheek. Lucy counts them with a sob, and if Tim didn’t know her so well, if he didn’t trust her with his life and hers, he would pause to check in, but he knows that she’ll safeword if she needs to.

He trusts her to know her own limits. 

By hits seven and eight, she’s trembling, rising on her tiptoes as if it’ll relieve some of the ache. It won’t and it doesn’t, but Tim smirks anyway, digging his fingers into the flesh of her ass as she moans and whimpers, her arms shaking where she’s holding herself against the door. 

“Two more, baby. You can do two more.”

“Y-yes, sir,” she whimpers, and Tim sucks a breath in through his nose, his eyes fluttering closed as her words wash over him. 

“Good girl,” he praises, and he leans down to press his lips softly against her neck, his tongue tracing the artery under his mouth as he delivers the last two hits. Her ass is hot to the touch, red and pulsating, and as he rubs his palms over it, she whimpers, pushing into him while at the same trying to pull away. 

“Can I fuck you?” he murmurs, and Lucy nods as her arms give out. She falls forward into the door, her forehead making contact with the cool wood as Tim reaches for her hips, pulling her ass back against his cock. He’s thick and hot, leaking precome as he rubs between her cheeks. “Can I fuck you, baby?”

“Y-yes!” she cries, and Tim grins as he slides his hands from her hips and across her belly to cup her generous breasts. He plays with her nipples, tugging on them and pinching hard enough to make her yelp, kissing her neck and her shoulder as he lines his cock up with her pussy and presses slowly inside. 

They moan in unison as he bottoms out, and Lucy whines loudly as the rough, coarse hair at the base of his cock irritates the red skin of her ass. 

“You okay?” he murmurs, and she nods as she shoves back on him. She’s still on her tiptoes, her legs shorter than his, and Tim grins as he moves a hand from her breast back to her hip, helping her stay steady as he pulls out and then sinks back inside. 

“Yes,” she moans, and Tim grins as he moves his other hand from her breast, his fingers sliding around her throat as begins to fuck her in earnest, setting a quick, hard pace. He fucks her deeply, his cock splitting her open as he bottoms out with each thrust, and Lucy cries out continuously, her body on fire as Tim holds her against him like she’s something precious. “Harder,” she requests, and Tim nods, his forehead sweaty as he pulls her back against him, her head against his sternum, her long, smooth neck stretched where he’s holding her, his palm flat against her collarbone. 

“You gonna come for me, baby?” he murmurs, and she nods, her eyes slipping closed as she reaches one of her own hands down, her fingers pressing against her clit as Tim fucks her hard and fast. The noises they’re making echo throughout the house, loud and obscene, but what pushes her over the edge is Tim’s voice in her ear, his lips pressed against the sweaty skin of her neck. “Come for me, Luce. Come for me.”

“For you,” she moans, and then she’s tightening around his cock, her pussy trembling as she comes so hard that her vision blacks out a little bit. Her thighs tremble and her knees give out, and it’s only Tim’s hand on her throat and his cock inside of her that keep her from falling to the ground. 

“Gonna come inside of you,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods, her pussy still trembling as Tim murmurs filth in her ear. “Gonna come inside you and make you mine, Lucy. Are you mine, baby?”

Lucy nods, whining low in her throat as she feels Tim’s cock thicken inside of her. 

“Yours,” she whispers, and her soft whimper is what sends him over the edge. He buries his face in her neck and comes inside of her, his own thighs weak as he fills her to the brim. His cum leaks out around his cock, and he groans as it drips down her thighs. 

They stand there like that, pressed together head to toe, for several minutes, just breathing in the silence. The sweat begins to cool on their bodies, and Tim’s heart rate is just returning to normal when Lucy steps out of his arms and then turns to meet his gaze, groaning when his cock falls from her pussy. 

“I seem to remember something in that long rant about you taking me to bed…” she says, and Tim grins as he brushes a lock of hair away from her sweaty face. 

“You know, I think you’re right,” he says, and Lucy giggles as he sweeps her into his arms and carries her into his bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them. 

He’s just pressing her into his bed, trailing a line of kisses from between her breasts and down her belly, when she digs her fingers into his hair and whispers three little words that cause him to stop immediately, a flash of heat running from his belly all the way to his fingertips. 

“God, I love you,” she moans, and Tim freezes, his heart pounding as he stares at her belly button, miles of her perfect, honey colored skin laid out in front of him.

I love you I love you I love you. 

Surely she doesn’t mean it like that, though, right? He’d just given her a very intense orgasm, and she probably means that she loves what he does to her. 

She doesn’t mean… she can’t mean…

“Oh, fuck,” she whispers, and Tim glances up to see that her eyes are wide, her lips parted in shock as she realizes what she's said. “Fuck, I didn’t… I mean, oh god.”

Tim sits back on his heels, his hands on Lucy’s thighs as he stares at her. 

Is it possible…?

“Lucy,” he whispers, but she shakes her head, pulling away from his touch as she sits up. Her lip is caught between her teeth now, her brown eyes filling with tears as she glances toward the door. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that,” she whispers, but Tim shakes his head. 

“It’s okay, baby. I —”

Lucy pauses him before he can speak, though, the first tear slipping free from her eye and trailing slowly down her cheek. 

“Tim, don’t,” she warns, and he wonders if she’s worried that he’s not going to say he loves her, too, or if she’s worried that he is.

“Lucy, baby, it’s okay,” he murmurs, and he reaches for her again but she shies away, whimpering as she pulls her legs up to her chest, hiding herself from him. “It’s okay, because I lo—”

“Xanadu,” Lucy whispers, and Tim stops speaking immediately, his hand falling to his lap between them and his teeth clacking he shuts his mouth hard. “Xanadu, okay? I can’t… I cannot talk about this.”

“We need to,” he says, because he thinks that if she leaves his bed right now, after telling him that she loves him, that they might not be able to recover whatever friendship they have or whatever they could be. “We need to talk, baby, because what we’ve been doing? This?” He pauses to wave a hand between their naked bodies. “It’s not just… it doesn’t feel like pretend, okay?”

Lucy shakes her head, though, and Tim sees the fear in her eyes and he knows that she’s never been in love before, and he wants to hold her, to reassure her that everything is going to be okay, that they’re going to be okay, but she’d used her safeword and he won’t ever ignore that. 

“I should just… I need to go,” she whispers, and Tim nods, swallowing thickly as he watches her stand to her feet, her legs still shaky. 

He watches as she opens his bedroom door and disappears, and he listens as she gathers her clothes and dresses. He pulls on a pair of boxer briefs and stands in the doorway, his heart shattering as she cries and dresses, and he manages to ask her at one point if she needs him to call her an Uber but she says she’s already called one. 

He watches as she opens his front door, and he wants to chase after her but she’d said Xanadu.

“Bye, Tim,” she whispers, and he watches as she walks away from him, closing the door behind her. 

Fuck. 

Chapter Text

Grey catches them in the hallway early the next shift as they approach from opposite directions, holding up a hand to pause them before they attempt to walk to opposite ends of the roll call room and completely ignore each other. 

“Thorsen asked if he could ride with Lopez and Harper today and I said yes. That means you need a new gofer for today, Tim.”

Tim nods tightly and Lucy bites the inside of her cheek, already aware of where this conversation is heading. 

“You and Chen can ride together. It’ll be like old times,” Grey says, and he’s grinning and preparing to walk off when he sees the way Lucy and Tim won’t meet each other's eyes. “Is there some reason you can’t ride together that I need to know about?”

“No, sir,” Lucy whispers, but as soon as her sweet voice washes over him, all Tim can hear is xanadu, xanadu, xanadu. 

He remembers how she’d moaned god, I love you in the heat of the moment. 

He remembers the tears in her eyes when she’d walked away from him.

He remembers, and he fingers the edge of the leather collar in his pocket as Grey nods at them and walks off. 

He’s going to give it to her after shift and be done. 

If she doesn’t want the same things he does, if she doesn’t want him, then he needs to make a clean break and focus on healing himself as best as he can. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be whole again, of course. He’ll never move on from her completely. But he has to try, for his own self preservation. 

He holds open the roll call room door and Lucy walks in ahead of him, not meeting his gaze as she takes a seat as far away from his as she possibly can. 

They make it all the way through roll call and nearly to Tim’s favorite coffee cart before he breaks, and when he speaks, his voice sounds hoarse even to his own ears. 

“Lucy,” he begins, and she turns to face him but her gaze is guarded, her posture tense. He stares into her beautiful brown eyes and wishes he could go back to before they’d fucked everything up. Before this mission, before the last mission. Before he’d kissed her in her apartment and everything had changed. 

“Tim.”

He puts the shop in park across the street from his favorite coffee cart, and sighs as he leans back in his seat. 

Lucy’s collar is burning a hole in his pocket, heavy and warm, and he would just give it to her now and be done with it but he’s hopeful, even though he knows he shouldn’t be, that when he tries to give it back to her she’ll break down and tell him what he did wrong so that maybe he can fix it. She won’t if they’re in the shop, though, he knows she won’t, so he doesn’t take it out or even press his palm over it like he wants to.

“I’m sorry, for whatever I did,” he whispers, and the broken, resigned look in Lucy’s eyes makes his chest ache. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong. We’re okay, Tim,” she says, but even as she says the words, Tim knows she doesn’t believe them. 

If they weren’t riding together today, he knows she wouldn’t have spoken to him at all. 

He doesn’t know when she would have talked to him again, if Grey hadn’t forced them into this situation. 

They’ve fucked everything up, and he hates himself for it. He’d gone and messed up the most important relationship in his life because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself or his dick in his pants, and he knows now that he’d rather have her friendship than the few nights he’d gotten to spend with her, because a few nights will never be enough. 

He wants her forever, in whatever capacity he can have her.

He sighs and drops the topic as he climbs out of the shop, though, heading across the street to get his coffee and hers even though she hadn’t told him to get her anything. 

He glances back while he waits, and his heart thunders in his chest when he realizes that she’s watching him. 

It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself, because he’d spent all of last night talking himself into giving her collar back and making a clean break. 

He can’t allow himself to hope. 

He hands over a cinnamon chai latte as he climbs back into the shop, and if he’d bothered looking over at her, he would have seen the tears in her eyes as she wrapped her hands around the warm paper cup and breathed in the scent of her comfort coffee. 

He drinks his own in silence, and neither of them speak again until a call comes over the radio. 

________________________

By the time shift is over, Lucy is nearly vibrating out of her skin. 

She wants to change out, go home, and drown her sorrows in a bottle (or two) of wine and an entire carton of ice cream. She wants to have a good, indulgent cry on her couch to mourn what she could have had with Tim if she hadn’t been too afraid to just fucking talk, because while she doesn’t know for sure what he was going to say before she'd cut him off, she has a pretty good idea. 

“Lucy, baby, it’s okay,” he’d whispered, and she’d wanted to crawl into his arms and bury herself in the sound of his frantically beating heart, but she’d been scared. 

“It’s okay,” he’d said. “It’s okay because I lo—”

But she’d cut him off, like the coward she was, and then she’d crawled out of his bed and she hadn’t looked back. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she growls at herself, and she ignores the shocked look from the rookie changing next to her as she pulls her boots on and zips them up. The rookie practically runs away as she stands and stomps back to her locker, but Lucy pays her no mind. 

She’d fucked everything up because she was scared. 

Hell, she’s still scared. 

Tim is… fuck, he’s the first man she’s ever loved in her entire life, and she’d run away from him instead of just talking to him. 

“Coward,” she hisses at herself. 

She grabs her backpack and slings it over her shoulder, and she’s walking out of the locker room when she catches her elbow on the metal of the doorway. Heat and pain race through her arm and tears spring to her eyes, but it’s no less than she deserves. 

She’d fucked everything up, and the fact that she’d hurt herself doesn’t matter half as much as the fact that she’d hurt Tim. 

He’d stared at her with such pain and longing in his eyes, and she’d whispered Xanadu instead of I love you. 

She deserves this pain, she knows, so she sucks in a breath and soldiers on even as her elbow aches and her heart slowly shatters into a million pieces. 

She’d caused this.

She’d been the one to make Tim cry. 

She’d—

“Lucy.”

She pauses mid-step, her heart fucking stopping in her chest as his voice washes over her. 

Her car is right there. 

Maybe she can pretend she hadn’t heard him—

“Don’t run away from me, please,” he whispers, and Lucy closes her eyes and sucks in a desperately needed breath as he takes a few steps closer to her. He walks until he’s standing in front of her, a careful few feet between them, and then pauses. 

“What do you want?” she asks, and she knows her voice comes out harder than she’d intended, but for all her history with psychology and understanding the human heart and brain, she’s at a loss as to how to cope with the pain in her own heart. She doesn’t know how to do this, because she’s never been in love and she’s so scared that if she lets herself fall, then when Tim inevitably wises up and leaves her, she’ll never be able to put the pieces back together again. 

She’ll never be whole again. 

She’d spent so long putting herself back together after her parents, after her best friend and boyfriend had cheated on her, after Caleb, so carefully gluing the mismatched pieces of her heart together, that she doesn’t think she'll be able to handle Tim leaving her. 

Whoever said it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all was clearly full of shit, because Lucy Chen knows that she won’t survive having Tim and then losing him. 

“I just wanted to give you this,” he murmurs, and Lucy tears her eyes away from his to glance down and see that he’s holding out her collar. “I’ll never use it on anyone else, Luce. It’s … it’s yours. If you even want it.”

Her collar. 

The one he’d given her after their first night at the club. The one he’d traced so lovingly with his fingers. The one he’d pulled on while he’d fucked her. The one that made her feel like she belonged to him. 

She gasps and reaches up to touch her bare throat, and Tim’s fingers twitch as he tightens them around the leather. 

She wants him to put it back on her, to whisper how beautiful it looks against her throat. To tell her what a good girl she is for him. 

She wants to be his, and tears spring to her eyes as she stares at the leather and realizes that she’ll never have that again. 

She’ll never feel Tim’s fingers on her throat as he fastens the collar in place. 

She’ll never feel him tug on the ring, or attach a lead to it again. 

She’ll never feel the weight and the warmth of Tim’s claim around her throat again, and as the realization that it’s over settles in, she begins to sob loud, guttural sobs that fill the entire parking garage. Her chest aches and her eyes burn, but she reaches out and takes the collar anyway, her slim, delicate fingers wrapping around the leather as she holds it against her chest. 

“T-thanks,” she whispers, and she’s turning to walk away, to climb in her car and break down in private, when Tim’s hand lands on her arm. 

She wants to pull away, but she’s just not fucking strong enough. 

“What’s wrong?” he whispers, and she shakes her head because she knows that if she opens her mouth, everything will come flooding out and she won’t be able to stop it. Her words will be a tsunami, destroying everything in their path. 

Tim, however, doesn’t give in like she thought he might. 

“Lucy, tell me, baby. What’s wrong? What did I do wrong? How can I help you; how can I fix this?”

Lucy sobs and shakes her head again, but she’s powerless to stop Tim as he reaches out and pulls her into his arms. She collapses against him, sobbing, her fingers digging into his shirt as he holds her together while she breaks down. 

She cries for a long time, but it’s not until she feels the warmth of Tim’s tears dripping into her hair that she realizes he’s crying, too. 

“Tim,” she whispers, and she feels the shudder that runs through his body as she speaks. 

“What’s wrong, baby?” he murmurs again, though this time his voice is thick with emotion, his words watery as he pulls back and brushes a lock of wavy, brown hair out of her face. His tear stained eyes meet hers, and Lucy knows that there are cameras watching them but she doesn’t give a shit because the man before her looks like the man she’d first met. 

The man who had been broken because of losing his wife. 

Except this time, she was the one who hurt him. 

“Lucy, talk to me,” he begs, and she feels her resolve weakening because surely he wouldn’t be this upset unless he felt the same way, right? “Talk to me, baby, because you told me you loved me last night but then you walked away and I can’t keep doing this, okay? I need… I need to walk away if you’re not all in because I am and it breaks my heart every single time you walk away from me.”

Lucy looks up, eyes wide and lips parted, as Tim speaks, because… 

“Tim,” she whispers, and he smiles a small, sad smiles as he cups her cheek and brushes tears off of her soft skin. 

“I love you, Lucy. You didn’t let me say it the other night but I’m saying it now. I love you, and you love me. So why do you keep pushing me away? Why, baby?”

Lucy shakes her head and then buries it back in his chest, her hands clinging tightly to his shirt as he holds her. 

“I’m scared,” she whispers, and he hums as he drops his chin to her head, rocking them back and forth slowly in the dimly lit parking garage, their bodies only partially hidden from the cameras by Tim’s large truck. 

“Of what, Luce?”

“Of loving you. Of losing you,” she admits, because fuck it, their friendship is already ruined. It’s not like she can ruin it anymore by telling the truth. “I love you, but it’s not worth it if loving you causes me to lose you. I can’t… you’re the most important person to me, Tim. The most important relationship in my life, and it’s… it’s not worth the risk of losing you just for this, right?”

She presses the collar against his chest, the ring digging into the skin of his belly painfully, but he doesn’t pay it any mind as he pulls back again, his eyes meeting hers as he cups her jaw and presses his lips to her cheek. 

“Unless it is,” he murmurs, and Lucy whimpers low in her throat as he stares at her with complete adoration in his eyes. “Lucy, my love for you and this are not mutually exclusive,” he says, reaching for the collar she’s still holding between them, his fingers wrapping around hers where they’re clinging to the leather. “I love you and I want to Dominate you. They go together, don’t you see? I want you to kneel at my feet and I want to tie you up and spank you, and I want to take you on dates and spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up with you in the mornings, and go to bed with you at night. I want you to wear my collar and my ring. I want you to carry my marks and my babies, one day. My love for you and this, me being your Dom and you being my sub, they go together, baby, and you don’t have to be scared of losing me because I’m not fucking going anywhere. ”

“Oh,” Lucy whispers, and it hits her all at once how stupid she’s been. The tears well up in her eyes and spill over, except this time Tim kisses them away as he holds her close. “I love you, Tim,” she says, and as she whispers the words, as she gives in to the adoration and devotion and affection she feels for the man in her arms, she feels lighter than she has since they’d started this mission weeks ago. 

“I love you, too, baby,” he whispers, and a fresh wave of tears soaks her cheeks as Tim cups her chin more firmly and angles her face until she meets his gaze. 

She gasps when their eyes meet, and then moans as Tim lowers his lips to hers. 

Kissing him feels different, because they’re not Alex and Nova. 

They’re not Jake and Sava. 

They’re not even the Tim and Lucy they were at the club or between operations, desperate for each touch and kiss because they knew their time together would be ending soon. 

They’re Tim and Lucy, who are in love and have all the time in the world to explore each other. 

They kiss slowly, softly, until Tim pulls back and presses his forehead against hers. 

“Come home with me, Lucy, and let me show you how much I love you,” he murmurs, the pads of his thumb soft on her cheeks even as he tightens his grip around the collar between them with his other hand. 

She shudders, and knows that within the hour, it’ll be back around her throat, right where it belongs. 

“Okay,” she whispers, and she feels laughter and happiness bubbling up her throat as Tim takes her hand and leads her to his truck. 

__________________________

As soon as Tim has Lucy in his house and in his bed and in his arms, once he knows for a fact that she won’t be leaving anytime soon, he loses his fucking mind a little bit. 

“Hold your head up, baby,” he growls, and Lucy moans but obliges, raising her neck off of the pillow as Tim reaches for her collar. He fastens it around her throat, a primal growl building in his chest as he stares at the leather settling over her warm, tan skin. 

She’s completely naked except for the collar, and she’s easily the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in her entire life. 

“Tim,” she moans, and he grins as her eyes flutter closed. Her hands are already tied to the headboard, the ropes around her ankles loose and not fastened to anything yet. She’s not going anywhere, he thinks, and then his chest warms when he remembers that she doesn’t want to go anywhere. 

She wants to be here, with him. 

She loves him. 

“What’s your safeword, baby?” he murmurs, kissing a path between her breasts and down her belly, skipping her pussy completely for the moment as he travels lower. He bites into her thighs, moaning as the soft, thick skin fills his mouth, and it takes Lucy a moment to respond as he works the flesh between his teeth. She’s crying out as he brings bruises to the surface of her skin, marking her, and they’re both breathless by the time he pulls back, his eyes roaming greedily over all the unmarked skin of her inner thighs as she pants and tugs on her bindings. 

“X-Xanadu,” she murmurs, and Tim hums in approval before he kisses right over the bruise he’s sucked into her skin. 

“Good girl.”

Lucy whimpers and rubs her thighs together, and Tim clicks his tongue as he pulls them apart, keeping her from getting any friction as he grabs the soft, silky rope he’d tied around each ankle before climbing off of the bed. He pulls Lucy’s legs obscenely wide, leaving her on display for him, and then knots the silk bindings around his footboard, tugging when he’s done to make sure they’ll hold. 

“Tim,” Lucy moans, her head thrashing from side to side as she tests her bindings. She’s spread across his entire bed, her arms and legs pulled wide, her body on display for him, for his pleasure. 

“Such a perfect sub,” he murmurs, and Lucy moans as he begins kissing a path back up her leg. “My good girl. My Lucy. Mine.”

“Y-yours,” she stutters, and he grins into the flesh of her inner thigh before dropping a kiss to her bare mound. 

“Rules,” he says, and Lucy nods, opening her eyes and giving Tim her attention even as she squirms, desperate for any friction as he teases her with light touches, his fingers dancing over her belly and her breasts, pulling on the ring of her collar before he surges up and kisses her. “You don’t get to come until I say so. You don’t get to hide your noises; I want to hear all of them. From here on out, you call me sir. If you don’t like something that I do, you use your safeword and we talk about it. Got it?”

Lucy nods, and Tim taps his palm on her inner thigh hard enough to sting but not leave a mark.

“Verbal responses,” he reminds her, and she nods, biting her lip as she stares up at him with adoring eyes. 

“Yes, sir,” she says, and he rewards her by sucking one of her nipples into his mouth. 

He doesn’t say anything else, his mouth too busy as he suckles at her breasts, his fingers digging between her inner thighs as he bites and licks and sucks at her nipple. She cries out, writhing on his bed, and he grins, his cock hard and heavy between his legs. 

This isn’t about him, though.

At least not yet. 

He switches breasts as his fingers find her pussy, his lips stretched into a smile as she pulls against her bindings and tries to push into his hand more. He circles one finger around her clit, a barely-there touch, groaning when he feels how absolutely soaking wet she is. Her pussy is soaked, her thighs and the bed beneath her dripping, and he knows that if he were to push into her right now there would be no resistance. 

“So wet for me,” he murmurs, and she nods as he pulls away from her breasts, his eyes greedily drinking in the sight of her nipples wet with his spit and red from his teeth. Her chest is heaving, flushed an angry red, and he grins as he watches red and then purple rise to the surface of her skin, his marks marring her perfect breasts. “So good for me.”

“For you, sir,” she gasps, and Tim hums in approval as he slides one finger inside of her. She whimpers and pushes against him, and he knows it’s not nearly enough but he’s not trying to get her off just yet. He rocks it in and out slowly, his cock thickening even further as her arousal seeps out around his finger and drips to the bed, and just as he can feel Lucy tightening around his finger he pulls it out and slaps his hand against her cunt, drinking in her cry of surprise as he captures her lips with his. 

“Did you like that, baby?” he asks, and she nods, moaning as he runs his fingers through her wet folds, careful to avoid her clit and her hole. “Do you want me to spank your little pussy?”

“Yes, sir,” she moans, and Tim hums as he kisses under her chin, his tongue darting out to taste the leather of his collar around her throat. He feels her swallow, her skin pressing against it, and he wants to tighten it, to make her focus on each and every breath she takes, desperate for air as he works her to orgasm. 

Not today. 

But soon. 

Instead he focuses on spreading her arousal everywhere, making as much of a mess of her as he can before pulling his hand back and slapping her cunt again. He watches as Lucy’s back arches, as she tries to push her thighs together, and grins when she cries out in frustration. 

“Does it hurt?” he asks, his lips on her ear as he spanks her pussy again. 

“A l-little, sir,” she moans, her head thrashing from side to side as he repeats the motion again and again. “But m-mostly it feels good. Please!”

“Please what?” he murmurs, but Lucy doesn’t respond. She either can’t or she’s too shy to tell him what she wants, but he thinks he knows. “Two more,” he says, and Lucy nods as he slaps her pussy again and then again, and when he pulls away he groans at the sight before him. Her mound and lips and inner thighs are bright red, pulsating, arousal seeping from her hole as she clenches around nothing. 

“Please, Tim, please,” she begs, and he smirks as he presses her thighs as far apart as her bindings will allow before he lowers his lips to her pussy. 

“Is this what you want, baby?” he murmurs, and Lucy nods desperately, crying out in frustration as she pulls against the bindings around her wrists. 

“Yes!”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir! Please! Please make me come! Please can I come, sir?”

“Yeah, yeah you can. Come for me, baby,” he murmurs, and then he dives in, his lips and cheeks and mouth immediately covered in Lucy as he licks a stripe from her hole to her clit and then back down again. He shoves his tongue as far inside of her as it can go, and then groans as he feels her walls tighten around the muscle immediately. He glances up, his mouth still pressed to her cunt, and watches as her eyes snap shut and her lips form an ‘O’ of pleasure. He doesn’t stop, though, because he knows she can give him more. 

“Tim,” she moans, and he hums against her pussy as he wraps his lips around her clit. He tugs and then bites on the sensitive bud, and then he’s back to licking up her juices, drinking down everything she gives him as his stubble scratches her thighs and his fingers delve inside of her, searching out that place that makes her scream. 

It doesn’t take long before she comes again and then again, and as he wrings her third orgasm from her, he sits back on his heels, observing her flushed skin and the way her chest heaves and the tears trailing slowly down her cheeks. 

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy lets her eyes flutter open as he drops a soft kiss to her lips. “Doing okay?”

“Mmmm,” she moans, and he chuckles as he reaches up and unties her hands, rubbing blood back into her wrists as she flops onto the bed, wrung out and pleasure drunk. “I feel so good, sir. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” Tim whispers, and he kisses her again, soft and slow, before breaking away and untying her legs. He tosses the silk ropes off the side of the bed and then settles himself between Lucy’s thighs, his thick cock hard and leaking as he runs it through the mess he’s made of her. 

“Fuck me, Tim,” she moans, but he shakes his head. 

“You’re too sensitive, baby. I won’t hurt you.”

“Please,” she begs, and Tim chuckles, reaching a hand behind her head to cup her skull. His large fingers reach around to her ear, and he plays with her hair as he kisses her cheek and her chin and then down between her breasts. “Please, Tim, it won’t hurt me. Please, I want you to come inside of me.”

Tim hums and considers, the hand not cupping her head in constant motion as he rubs her wrists and then runs his large, hot palm up and down her side. 

“You’ll tell me if I’m hurting you?”

She nods, her brown eyes wet and her cheeks stained with overwhelmed tears. “I promise, sir. I promise. Please fuck me. Come inside of me. Please.”

“Okay, baby,” he murmurs. “All right. I’ll give you what you want.”

“Love you,” Lucy slurs, and Tim knows she’s close to falling into subspace but he also knows it’s only going to take a few strokes before he’s coming, and then afterward he can hold her and take care of her the way he’s longed to since the first time he’d taken her to bed. 

“Love you, too, Luce,” he whispers, and they moan in unison as he lines his cock up with her swollen pussy and sinks slowly inside. It’s an easy glide with how fucking soaking wet she is, and Tim moans long and loud in her ear as he drops his body on top of hers, his thighs framing hers and his chest heavy against her as he sets a slow, shallow rhythm. He can’t move far or fast without pulling away from her, but he doesn’t care. He loves how close they are, how he can feel her heart beating and her chest rising and falling with her breath. His cheek is pressed to hers, and he can hear every single moan and whimper and gasp she lets out. He can feel the way her thighs tighten around his when she’s close, and he hears every single little noise she makes as he sends her over the edge for the fourth and final time. 

“That’s it, baby,” he croons, his voice low and deep as he whispers into her ear. “Such a good girl, coming for me again. So perfect, so fucking beautiful. I’m gonna come and fill you up, baby.”

“Please,” she begs, and Tim nods as he presses his sweaty forehead to hers. He catches her gaze as he continues to thrust, his hips slapping noisily against hers as he begins to lose his rhythm. “Come for me, Tim. Fill me up. Come inside of me, please!”

“Oh, fuck,” he grunts, and they both cry out together as he buries himself inside of her and erupts, thick ropes of cum filling her up until it begins to leak out around his cock. “Oh, god, Lucy. Fuuuuuck.”

She giggles under him and then huffs as he drops his body on top of hers, and they breathe together in the silence for several moments before Tim stands and staggers into the bathroom on shaking legs for a washrag. He walks back into the room to find Lucy in the exact same position, thighs spread, red, and dotted with his cum, her hair a mess and her eyes glazed as she floats. 

She’s perfect. 

She barely responds as he cleans her and then heads to the kitchen for a bottle of water and some crackers, and when he crawls into the bed behind her and pulls her into his arms, she breathes out a contented sigh. 

“Love you,” she whispers, and Tim feels something inside of him settle as he helps her sip the cool water, her sweaty skin soft against his. 

They’ve scened before, of course, but this is different.

“Love you, too, Luce,” he murmurs, and he kisses her cheek, pulls the blankets over their bodies, and turns out the bedside lamp as he settles in. 

He sleeps easy with the knowledge that when he wakes up in the morning, Lucy will still be there. 

Chapter Text

Six Months Later 

Going to the club as a couple is somehow different than going when they were Alex and Nova. 

The anticipation is greater. 

The excitement is greater. 

And it helps, Lucy thinks, that she knows that regardless of what happens tonight, she will leave with Tim. 

More than that, though, she knows she’s going to get off tonight, probably multiple times. Going undercover as Alex and Nova had almost guaranteed she’d walk away high strung and on edge, horny but unable to do anything about it until she went home alone. But this time… 

Well. 

The plug in her ass and the collar around her throat promise wonderful things, and she shivers in anticipation as Tim opens the passenger side door of his truck, snaps the lead onto her collar, and tugs on it until she has no choice but to move. 

She climbs out of the truck on shaking legs, and then moans when Tim wraps his arm around her waist. He kisses her head, burying his grin in her hair, and then slides one large hand down until he’s tapping on the jeweled end of the plug nestled between her cheeks.

“Are you excited, baby?” he murmurs, and no matter how long they’re together, no matter how many times he whispers in her ear, deep and rumbly and sexy, Lucy reacts the same way. She shivers and her stomach swoops with warmth, and a low moan escapes her lips as her thighs clench against the gush of wetness that floods her panties. 

“Yes, sir,” she whispers, and he hums in approval as he removes his hand from her ass and replaces it in safer territory.

“Good girl. Now, before we go in, let’s review. What are my rules?”

Lucy swallows thickly and forces herself to think through the haze of pleasure and anticipation flooding her brain. 

She’s been on edge all day. 

Tim had woken her with two fingers in her ass and his mouth on her pussy, but just as she’d been about to come, he’d slid the plug into her and backed away, leaving her right there but not pushing her over. She’d reached down to finish herself off but he’d grabbed her hand and growled at her, and the sound alone had almost been enough to push her over the edge. 

“Not to come until you say,” she stutters out, and Tim smiles and nods in approval. 

“Mmm hmmm. And what else?”

“Um.”

Her brain is a little fuzzy already; she’s been overstimulated and on edge all day, and she’s had moments where she’s sure she’s about to fall into subspace, but each time Tim has pulled her out. 

“Don’t speak to anyone but you,” she finally recalls, and Tim rewards her with a soft kiss on the cheek. “And… and to safeword if I feel uncomfortable or want to stop or pause at any time.”

“My good girl,” Tim croons, and Lucy shivers as he cups her cheek and angles her head toward his. He captures her lips and kisses her slowly, deeply, dirty. His tongue caresses hers, and she groans, her eyes falling closed as she surrenders to him completely. He owns her mouth — her whole body, really — and she lets him kiss her exactly the way he wants to. It’s messy and perfect, their spit mingling between their lips and connecting them even as Tim pulls away. “So perfect for me,” he murmurs, and then he’s brushing her bottom lip with his thumb, wiping away the spit before pressing it between her lips. “And remember, Luce, this is whatever you want to do. We can sit there and eat and drink and just watch, or we can go to one of the private rooms. I have… very fond memories of one of those rooms. I remember fucking you up against the door and then watching my cum slide out of your pretty little pussy. If you want to do that again…”

Lucy nods frantically, her cheeks red as she remembers the way Tim had taken her so roughly against the door. 

She definitely wants a repeat. 

“Can we go in now?” she asks, nearly bouncing in anticipation. 

Tim chuckles and nods, reaching for her hand and entwining their fingers as they walk toward the door. 

Lucy’s heart thunders in her chest as they walk inside, the memories of the last time they’d been here bombarding her. She has some good memories of the club, of course, but also some bad ones. 

She’s hopeful that, tonight, they can replace all of the bad memories with fun ones. 

“Hello, and welcome to Pandemonium!” the hostess greets. 

Tim smiles and tugs Lucy forward, his fingers wrapped around the thin leather of her lead. She follows him easily, her eyes flickering around the club as Tim speaks to the hostess. She sees skin and leather and cuffs and collars, but unlike the first time she’d been in the club, none of it is new or shocking to her, now. 

She and Tim have cuffs like that, she has her own collar — well, several collars, really. She has one she wears just in the bedroom, and then she has a necklace that she wears to work and the store and everywhere she goes. It’s discreet, but it’s her public collar, just tight enough around her throat to remind her wherever she goes that she’s Tim’s, just as surely as he’s hers. 

The hostess checks them in and then Tim leads her across the floor before he pauses in front of the booth they’d frequented when they’d been trying to take Eddie and his goons down. 

“Here, or somewhere else?” he asks, and Lucy bites her lip as she thinks. 

“Here,” she finally decides, because no matter what else had happened in this booth, it’s also where she first realized that she liked kneeling for Tim. That she liked it when he fed her, or helped her take a sip from his drink, or held her in his lap while driving her absolutely insane with lust. 

Tim nods and slides into the booth, and without thinking, Lucy sinks to her knees beside him. There’s already a cushion on the floor, and she settles onto it, the position almost second nature for her now. 

Tim hums in approval and reaches out to wrap his hand around the back of her neck. His palm settles warm and heavy over her collar, and she sighs and closes her eyes as she relaxes, knowing that he’s watching out for her and will make sure she’s safe. It’s nice to be able to turn her cop brain off. Normally in public she’s always on alert, but here, with Tim, she’s able to tune everything out and just focus on the feel of her knees pressing into the floor through the cushion, and the feeling of his hand on her neck. 

A waitress comes by and takes Tim’s order, and while Lucy hears them speaking she doesn’t distinguish individual words. She’s fuzzy, floaty, and she sighs in pleasure as Tim rubs his thumb across the hair at the base of her scalp. He digs it in, applying the perfect amount of pressure, and she shivers, her body flooding with endorphins and warmth as he takes such good care of her. 

It takes her a while, in her bubble of pleasure and happiness, to realize that Tim is trying to get her attention. 

“Luce.”

He tugs gently on the lead and her collar pulls tight, and she lets her eyes flutter open before she lazily turns her face toward her Dom. 

“Sir.”

“You doing okay, baby?”

Lucy nods and licks her lips, glancing around the club before settling her gaze back on Tim. 

“Yeah. I feel really good.”

Tim smiles and nods, and then he reaches for a glass of water Lucy hadn’t noticed being delivered. It has a lid and a straw, and he holds it out for her to wrap her lips around. She takes a few long drinks, sighing in pleasure as the cool liquid wets her dry mouth, and then she pulls back to indicate that she’s done. Tim replaces it on the table, and then he’s reaching for the food he’d ordered. Lucy doesn’t pay much attention, but she knows she doesn’t have to. He presses little bites to her lips and she accepts them, knowing that he’ll make sure she’s fed and hydrated while she just floats. 

It’s perfect, and it’s everything she never knew she needed. 

__________________________

Lucy isn’t aware of how much time passes between when she begins kneeling and when Tim reaches down, wraps his arms around her, and hauls her into his lap, but she knows it’s a while. She moans as the plug in her ass shifts, and she goes from floaty to really fucking horny in almost no time at all, wiggling in Tim’s lap as she tries to get some friction. 

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs, pressing his lip right beneath her ear. She glances up at him, her eyes a little glazed and her smile soft, and he makes a soft noise in his chest before he kisses her. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, sir,” she whispers, and then she becomes aware of Tim’s need as well as her own. He’s completely hard in his jeans, straining against the zipper, and Lucy knows that he’s been watching the other couples in the club and drinking, because his cheeks are flushed and he’s ready. He gets turned on most easily by her, of course, but she knows that watching other people does it for him, too, especially once he crosses the line to just a tiny bit tipsy. 

“Wanna go home so we can get that plug out of you, or…?”

He trails off, leaving the decision completely in her hands, and the thing is that Lucy knows she’d be fine for the drive home. It’s not far, and she knows that once they arrive, Tim will take care of her. He’ll make her come and then he’ll give her a bath and rub her favorite lotion into her skin and then cuddle her until she’s a melted pile of goo in their bed. 

But she also knows that he can take care of her here, too. He can take her into one of the private rooms and use the tools at their disposal, and then he can take her home, run her a bath, and cuddle her. 

It’s not either/or. 

She can have both. 

“Here,” she whispers, and Tim grins as he reaches down and taps the edge of the plug. It shifts and Lucy moans, grinding down on Tim’s lap as he chuckles against her temple. His lips are wet and warm, and Lucy finds herself hoping that he’ll finish what he started this morning and eat her out while she’s pressed up against the door like she had been the last time they were here. 

He stands up and brings her with him, and he’s mostly supporting her weight as they walk down the hallway toward the private rooms. He pushes her into the first open one he sees, and then the door is closing and she hears the tumbling of the lock before he has her pressed up against the wood, and she grins because it’s like they’ve always been able to read each other’s minds. 

“What’s your safeword?” he asks, and Lucy shivers in anticipation because she knows that he’s about to make up for leaving her on the edge all fucking day. 

“Xanadu.”

“Good girl. Remember, if you say your word at any time I’ll stop and we can talk, okay?”

Lucy nods, though she doubts she’ll need to use it. She can count on one hand the number of times she’s used it, and most of those times had been because she was physically overwhelmed and needed a break before the next orgasm. 

“Okay,” she whispers, because she knows Tim won’t continue without a verbal response, and then she moans when he dips his hands into her pants and shoves them down in one smooth motion, taking her panties with them. They drop to the floor and he helps her step out of them, leaving her standing in the long, flowy tank-top she’d worn and her high heeled shoes. 

“Tim Bradford finishes what he starts,” he murmurs, and Lucy moans out loud because yes. 

She’s going to get exactly what she wants. 

Tim drops to his knees behind her, shoves her thighs apart, and then licks a stripe from the plug in her ass to her pussy. She screams, dropping her head against the door, and then nearly dies on the spot when Tim pulls away. 

“I forgot to say that you can come whenever you want, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods but honestly she forgot she wasn’t supposed to in the first place. 

Not that she’s going to be able to help it, she thinks, crying out as Tim returns his sinfully talented lips to her clit and sucks it into his mouth. She’s soaking wet, making a mess of her own thighs and his face, but Tim doesn’t seem to mind as he licks and sucks at her swollen pussy like he’s a starving man. He points his tongue and shoves it inside of her, and her thighs tremble, her stomach flooding with warmth as her first orgasm approaches. 

Tim bites down gently on her clit, his fingers running up her inner thigh before he presses two of them inside of her, and her first orgasm hits her like a fucking freight train. She screams, her thighs giving out completely, her pussy gushing arousal and liquid all over Tim’s face as he licks and sucks at her, lengthening her pleasure until she slumps against the door, unable to hold herself up. 

“That was beautiful,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods, her eyes clenched tightly shut as she tries to remember how to breathe. Tim stands, his hands sliding up her hips and her waist before tangling in her tank-top and tugging it off over her head. The movement leaves her hair in disarray, and Tim chuckles softly as he runs his fingers through it, messing it up even more. “What do you want, baby? What next?”

Lucy turns around, leaning heavily against the door as she reaches for Tim’s shirt. She starts unbuttoning it and he helps, grinning as he leans forward and kisses her with his messy, arousal coated lips. He presses his tongue between her lips, shrugging out of his shirt once it’s unbuttoned, his hands falling to his own jeans as he steps closer to her, his body hot against her front while the door is cold against her back. Her feet scramble on the floor, the clicking of her high heels echoing throughout the room. 

“What do you want, Lucy?”

“You,” Lucy whispers, because honestly she doesn’t care what he does to her. 

She just wants him. 

Tim hums as he pulls back, licking his red, swollen lips clean of her arousal. He considers for a long second and then grins, his eyes flickering down Lucy’s body and then back up to meet her gaze.

“I want to fuck your mouth, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy nods, trying to sink to her knees before Tim is even finished speaking. He holds her up, his hands on her elbows, and stares at her with naked adoration as he continues. “I want to fuck your mouth and then come all over your pretty face. Then I want to suck your tits and fuck both of your holes at the same time. I want my cock in your ass and my fingers in your pussy. I want to stuff you so full, baby. I want all of your holes filled with me.”

Lucy moans and nods, and this time when she tries to kneel in front of him, Tim lets her. He caresses her cheek with his thumb, dipping just the tip of it between her lips before he’s taking it away and unbuttoning his jeans, shoving them down just far enough to slide his cock from his boxer briefs. 

“Ready for me, Luce?”

Lucy nods, opening her mouth and closing her eyes, and she moans, long and loud, as Tim presses the head of his long, thick cock against her lips. Her tongue darts out, licking the bead of precome from his tip, and then she’s sucking him in further, hollowing her cheeks and swallowing as he sinks inside inch by inch. 

“So good. So fucking perfect, baby,” he croons, and Lucy flushes with the praise, her belly warm and her pussy soaked and aching to be filled by him. She wraps her tongue around him, drinking in the warm, sweaty, salty taste as he hits the back of her throat. “Suck me for a minute, Luce,” he commands, and she nods eagerly as she glances up at him through her lashes. She raises her hands to wrap around what she can’t fit, and then she’s trailing her lips up and down his length, sucking and caressing his throbbing length with her tongue. Her eyes are watering but she never breaks her gaze away from his, even when he reaches down and presses his thumb inside of her mouth alongside his cock. 

Spit and precome dribble down her chin, soaking her face and making the slide of her hands on the base of his cock smoother as she continues to suck him. She swallows greedily, trying to take everything he’s giving her, and he must like it because she can feel him swelling in her mouth and she knows he’s close. 

She’s not the only one that’s been on the edge all day, she thinks, and she smiles as she relaxes her throat and takes him in further on the next slide. 

“Ready for me to fuck your mouth?” he asks, and she nods eagerly. “It won’t take me long. Watching you on your knees for me is so sexy.”

Lucy wiggles in pleasure, flushed from all the praise Tim is giving her tonight, and then swallows before dropping her hands to hold onto Tim’s thighs. He always makes her hold his thighs when they do this, so that she can pinch him if she needs a break or to stop — their nonverbal safe signal. 

Tim reaches down and cups her chin, holding her in place so that she can’t get away, and then pulls his cock out of her mouth before thrusting back inside. He doesn’t stop even when he hits the back of her throat, forcing his way past the ring of muscle, and Lucy chokes and gags a little, but it’s not more than she can handle. Tim smiles down at her, pride shining in his eyes, and then he pulls back and does it again and his eyes flutter closed in pleasure as he fucks her mouth slowly. 

She wants him to go faster, though. She wants him to really fuck her mouth. 

She pulls on his thighs, her hands tugging him toward her mouth, and he must get the message because the next thrust is hard and Lucy’s eyes are watering, spit trailing down her chin as she gags and tries to breathe through her nose. Tim doesn’t stop, though, because she hasn’t signaled for him to. Instead he continues thrusting, his cock thick and hot and filling her throat completely. 

“God, you’re so good at this,” he groans, and Lucy whimpers as he showers her with praise while fucking her throat. “Such a good girl for me, taking all of me. I can’t wait to fuck your other holes, too, baby. To fill your ass with my cock and your pussy with my fingers. I want, oh god, I want to come inside all of your holes until you’re dripping with my cum.”

Lucy moans and Tim’s rhythm stutters, and then he’s pulling out and shooting thick stripes of cum across her face, painting her flushed skin with his cum until he’s shaking and empty, his hand on his cock stilling. 

“Fuck,” he says with feeling, and Lucy laughs a little breathlessly as he helps her to her feet. 

They stand there, breathing heavily in the silence, for several moments before Tim drops his lips to Lucy’s licking up his own cum as he kisses her. 

“Good to keep going?”

Lucy nods and lets Tim lead her to the leather bench in the middle of the room. He lays her out across it and helps her plant her feet flat on the surface, spreading her open to him. The jeweled end of the plug shimmers in the light, and Lucy moans as Tim covers her body with his, kissing her long and slow and deep as her heart rate returns to something resembling normal. 

“Tim,” she whimpers, and he grins as he pulls away and presses his forehead to hers. 

“Hey,” he whispers, and for a moment they just stare at each other, smiling like idiots in the miniscule space between them. 

“I love you,” she says, because she does, desperately. 

“I love you, too, Luce,” he murmurs. “You’re my whole life.”

Lucy’s chest fills with warmth, and then she moans as Tim kisses a path down her chest and takes one of her nipples into his mouth as he’d promised. He sucks on them equally, laving attention on both of them as Lucy moans and writhes and begs him for more. He doesn’t give it to her, though, at least not yet — instead he sucks and bites and kisses her tits until they’re red and almost too sensitive, his stubble and his teeth and tongue having worked them over until she can barely breathe. 

“Tim, please,” she whimpers, and she knows he’s just as desperate for her as she is for him because he keeps rutting against her, the material of his jeans irritating her ass as he rocks his cock against the plug in her ass. “Please fill me up, baby. Please.”

“All right,” he murmurs, and then he’s standing up, moving away from her, and even though she knows it’s necessary for him to take off his pants, she whines at the loss of contact. 

“I’m right here,” he says, and then he’s pulling the plug out of her ass and dropping it to the bench beside her and the blunt, thick head of his cock is pressed against her lube slick hole. His fingers slip into her pussy, one after the other until she’s stuffed full, and Lucy is already on the edge, moaning and thrusting her hips against Tim’s hand, when he begins to press his cock into her ass, stretching her slowly. 

“Oh, oh, OH,” she moans, and Tim grins as he drops his head to her chest, sucking one of her nipples back into his mouth as he rocks back and forth slowly, filling her inch by inch until she swears she can feel him in her throat. 

“This hole, too,” he murmurs, and the fingers of his free hand are pressing against her lips and Lucy is overwhelmed in the best possible way. She wraps her tongue around his pointer and middle finger and draws them into her mouth, and just as she’s sucking them in as far as they can go, Tim bottoms out and she feels the wiry hairs at the base of his cock tickling her ass. 

She whimpers, the noise muffled around the fingers in her mouth, and Tim drops his head to her neck, breathing heavily as he pulls out and then sinks back inside. His movements are already uncoordinated; he’s unable to set a steady rhythm, the fingers in her pussy and her mouth thrusting at a different pace than his cock in her ass. It doesn’t matter, though — Lucy is on the edge within seconds, so full she feels like she’s going to burst. 

She can feel Tim everywhere, from the tip of her toes all the way to the ends of her hair, and she can barely breathe as he fills her more than she’s ever been filled in her life. 

“God you feel so good,” he moans, and Lucy nods because he feels good, too. “So tight around me. So hot and wet. I’m not gonna last long, baby. You close?”

Lucy nods, sucking in a desperate breath through her nose as Tim fucks her mouth with his fingers. He moves his thumb to press against her clit, and Lucy knows that he’s close because he keeps losing traction on the floor, slipping as he fucks her ass and her pussy and her mouth. The edges of her heels are digging into the bench, and Lucy whimpers as she moves one leg from the leather to wrap around Tim’s waist. The movement causes him to sink further inside, and they moan in unison as he quickens his pace, grinding deep with every thrust. 

The heat builds low in her belly, and Lucy moans as she feels it expanding outward, her fingers and her toes tingling as Tim pusher her closer and closer and closer —

“Come for me, baby,” he murmurs, and Lucy screams as her orgasm rips through her. She feels herself gushing around Tim’s fingers as he presses them into her most sensitive spot, his cock filling her ass and his fingers digging into her throat as he moans and thrusts faster and harder. 

“Tim!” she cries, though it’s mostly incomprehensible as her release drips to the floor beneath them. Tim slips through the mess she’s made, and then he’s adding to it, burying his face in her neck and groaning as he comes, his cock buried deep inside of her ass. 

He collapses on top of her without pulling out, and Lucy can barely breathe but she doesn’t care. Her vision is fuzzy, her body buzzing, and her ears ringing, and she thinks she can confidently say that —

“That was the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had,” she pants, and Tim chuckles but doesn’t make a move to peel his body off of hers. 

“That was fucking amazing,” he groans, and Lucy nods in agreement, reaching a shaking hand up to tangle her fingers in his hair. She holds his face to her chest until they can both breathe again, and then she laughs, glancing up at the ceiling as Tim presses kisses to her collarbone. 

“We made a huge mess. You weren’t supposed to make me squirt, baby.”

Tim pulls away far enough that Lucy can see his smug grin. She snorts and slaps his chest, and then he’s pulling away and she wants him back, damn it. 

“You doing okay? Not too fuzzy?”

Lucy shakes her head because she’s actually not. She’s a little fuzzy, sure, and she knows that once Tim has her home and in a bubble bach, she’s going to float away while he holds her close, but for right now she’s doing okay. 

“I’m good. I don’t know if I can stand, though.”

Tim chuckles and reaches for her, and with his help, she’s able to pull her clothes back on and help him clean up the mess they’d made. They don’t bother cleaning too thoroughly, though, because they both know that the dungeon masters will have to sanitize the room before anyone else can use it. 

“Let’s go home,” Tim murmurs once he buttons his jeans, and Lucy nods enthusiastically. 

A bubble bath and cuddles await her, and she is excited. 

She reaches for Tim’s hand, entwining their fingers as they walk out of the private room. She leans into his side, reveling in the pressure of her collar against her throat as he tugs gently on the lead, and smiles as he guides her through the crowd of patrons filling the club floor. 

She remembers the first time she’d been here, a little bit scared and a lot turned on, and she blushes and hides her head in the crook of Tim’s arm as she says a silent thank you to the universe for bringing them here, where they’d both realized that nothing between them could ever just be pretend. 

It’s remarkable, she thinks, that in all the randomness and pandemonium of the universe, she and Tim had found each other, and they’d built a life together. 

She stands on her tiptoes and kisses Tim’s cheek, and as he glances down at her, his love for her shining clear in his eyes, she smiles. 

fin.