Freudian Slips
He's not going to leave me for Sydney. Of this, I'm quite certain. Michael might dream of a world where I am not in the picture, where he hasn't made promises and fallen in love with me in his way. He might whisper her name when he's dreaming beside me in bed, he might help her leave the country and put everything on the line...
...but he won't leave me. He loves me. He's promised to stay with me.
Lucky me, being married to such a dutiful, milquetoast husband. Faithful in letter, and oh, he even tries to be faithful in spirit, but the way his eyes move toward her first any time Sydney Bristow enters the room tells me that in Michael's heart and his dreams, he remains in her thrall. And he has left me, oh-so-politely, to have to accept this. After all, she was his dream woman. He nearly died when she did, and all of these rationales and reasons that explain why Michael hasn't quite moved on the way he'd seemed to.
It has left me dreading lovemaking. Not that much has changed, and part of me is quite offended by this. He's as kind and loving and pleasant a lover as ever, and I'm quite aware that it's petty of me to suspect that his attentions have always been a thin mask for his dreams of Sydney. This in no way changes my suspicions, and after he helps her flee, I know I was right.
And then she hits me, and everything changes. The look of passionate hatred in her eyes sent a shiver down my spine even as I cupped my mouth from the shock. I let her hit me again and again, each blow sending another electric charge through my system until she apologized for the fourth time and helped me to my feet.
"Thanks for helping," Sydney says shortly, looking a little regretful.
"Of course," I mumble, the soreness of my face not nearly as painful as the shame of my racing pulse. She hit me and all I could think about was how much the woman feels, how every emotion runs so close to the surface, and how much it attracts me.
Michael helps me into and out of the van, but I can barely stand to look at him. He loves me, and I know this. He is a good, kind, and decent man, but after the passion of Sydney's fists against my face, he seems like a candle that's been snuffed.
"It'll be okay soon," he promises me, giving me a gentle kiss on the forehead, as if I'm a delicate piece of china that he might break.
"I know," I reply, lying with a smile.
Then I'm left to the wolves, Lindsay and his petty, strange plans for power that involve the death and destruction of the Bristows, the CIA, anyone who he decides is in the way. I hate him the way I imagine Sydney does, a low-burning flame of contempt at his bureaucratic cruelty, the dead look in his eyes. Lindsay is dangerous only because he has the power of the NSA at his command; his soul is cockroach-small and vermin-petty.
When I excuse myself to go home for the night, I take an intense pleasure in imagining how Sydney will eventually kill him, by her own hand or perhaps her father's. Perhaps she could even con Michael into doing it, though that idea doesn't make me nearly so happy.
I go home, pop three or four Advil, and lay down, wishing I could fall asleep. Instead, my mind is full of Sydney Bristow, the angry dark eyes, the sleek muscular lines of her shoulders, the bland prettiness that allows her to become anyone. I know that I'm prettier than she is, but Sydney is alive in a way that few people can imagine, and the very thought of Sydney's aliveness has sent my fingers to tracing the top of my breasts, the hollow of my collarbone...
Sydney gasping as I whipped the car around the corner, the look of surprise on her face.
Sydney's determined attitude toward everything, the almost childlike stubbornness that is murderous and jaded in her father.
Those eyes. Those damnable, angry eyes that have so much passion in them have me hypnotized, dragging my hands over my skin and making you feel tight and uncomfortable in it. My breathing is the loudest thing in the room and it's slow and measured, slightly ragged around the edges.
"The best sex is between enemies," I hear her say, and when my eyes open, there she is, outlined in the tasteful lighting that I've outfitted the hallway with. Decorating concerns have always been a sideline of mine, but I'm more interested in how ephemeral Sydney's clothes are. A thin black tank top, plastered to her body. A pair of skin tight boy-cut panties, also black. Her legs are sleek, shaved, and longer than I remember. "Don't you think so, Lauren?"
"I've never really had cause to think about it," I say, sitting up and feeling an ache that has nothing about the bruises on my face. "Why are you here?"
"To finish what we started," Sydney replies with a sly smile, lifting the edge of her tank top, pulling it off, and casting it aside. "I want to know my enemy."
"We're not..." but she's right. We are enemies, and the knowledge makes the air hotter, charged, and strangely dreamy. And the way she's crossing the room, hips swaying back and forth while my eyes are focused on her small, perky breasts and their peaked nipples, makes me realize that I very much intend to know my enemy.
Her hand runs over the bruises she made as she climbs into my bed (the bed you share with Michael, Michael who is apparently not coming home tonight, Michael who is not an issue just now) and her eyes pin mine to the headboard.
"Vaughn loves you," she says, her lips suddenly trembling next to my jaw. "Does he make you feel like this when he touches you?"
"No," I confess honestly, reaching out to put a hand on those perfect shoulders. "Did he make you feel like this?"
"Like what?" Sydney asks, her hands on the lace of my camisole as I start to shiver.
"Like everything's stripped down to essentials," is how I explain it, my hands suddenly bold enough to cup those bared breasts. "Like if you don't feel everything, you're nothing but dead."
"That's called living, Lauren," Sydney growls, tearing the camisole in half. "What do you feel right now? What do you want right now?"
"I want you," I whisper, my eyes meeting hers fully. "I want you to fuck me, Sydney. I want to fuck you."
Michael almost never calls it fucking; the word would seem strange coming out of his mouth, but the way Sydney looks at me, dark eyes glittering like some predatory animal, makes me wet and daring and wanting. Fucking is definitely the right word. I want to strip away everything until she's naked against me, to end up raw and naked and together.
She crushes my mouth with hers, her teeth brushing against my lips as she pinches my nipples, her body straddling mine as my hands move up and down her abdomen, feeling the hardness of her body, the lethal potential in every muscle and tendon. The feeling is enough to make me even wetter, makes me push my hips up against hers as the tip of my tongue pushes into my mouth, is met by hers, tangles, and withdraws.
I moan into her mouth when one of her arms moves around my waist and the other to the waistband of my panties. The feeling of her hand on my hip is enough to strip away another layer of control and I respond by pushing her backward, straddling one of her thighs with my own.
"Fun, isn't it?" she asks, hands both on my ass now. "The feeling, I mean. It's like everything's electric."
I respond by kissing her throat, the place between her breasts, biting down on the bottom curve of one and watching Sydney's back arch as her hands grip my shoulders and push a little. This does not quite fit the script in my head, so I respond by dragging my body upward, rubbing my breasts against her ribcage and her breasts while my hand moves toward her panties.
"You have no idea," I answer, meeting her eyes just long enough to smile before kissing her again, this time moving up and down against her as I thrust my tongue into her mouth, making her kiss me back the way she'd kiss Michael, the way I've always deserved to be kissed. Now her hands are back in the game, trying to pull off my last remaining clothes. Very slowly, I pull away and remove my own underwear as she takes off hers.
Neither of us is about to forget this is all a deadly serious kind of game, even as we both come together again, kneeling on the mattress as arms, legs, mouths, and hips clash and tangle like a guerilla war.
"You're so hot for me," Sydney taunts, sliding a hand between my thighs. "What do you want me to do?"
"Whatever you want," I reply, pulling both of us down to our sides and moving a hand between her thighs. She's wet and I draw my fingers upward, brushing it against her clit, the top of her mound.
Sydney answers by pushing two fingers inside of me roughly, in and out. Slow, slow, hard, faster, harder. Just in case she thinks I'm only in this for myself, I start rubbing against her clit harder, waiting for her to ask for more, because I know in my bones she wants me, too.
"More," she moans, and I'm glad to give her more, to feel how much she wants me to touch her the way she's touching me, thrusting inside her. It almost feels better than the way she's fucking me with three fingers now, the edge of her thumb occasionally brushing my clit enough to keep building that pressure at the base of my spine that's making my head all feverish.
I don't know what I want anymore. If every night could be like this, with Sydney's hand, Sydney's body, Sydney's mouth against mine, I'd give up everything for this madness. To feel her trying to pull me deeper into her, to give her satisfaction as you pump faster and faster against her. I can imagine nights of this, of spreading her legs as far open as they go and licking her dry until she begs me to stop. Of riding her face until I collapse. Every little fantasy that I've squelched in my life because I'm Lauren Reed, a very good girl, has come undone with Sydney Bristow's fingers inside me.
"Please," I suddenly gasp, because I need to get off, can't stand this build-up anymore. It's unbearable. "Please, Sydney..."
She rubs against my clit with her other thumb. Once, twice, and on the third time, I'm coming, my entire body is pulsating, down to my fingertips that are soaked in Sydney and I think I'm still fucking her, but I'm not sure until I'm halfway come down from the first and realize that she's coming, too, which, given that she's still inside me, thrusting, is enough to bring me over again.
I move off her, limp and ragged and aching. The feeling is sweet, and it's made sweeter by Sydney leaning over and brushing a kiss against my jaw. She smells so good, better than anyone has ever smelled, the air full of the sex we've just had.
"If I asked you to come with me now, would you?" she asks, her body soft and warm next to mine.
"Yes," I murmur, pressing a kiss against the top of her hair. "Anywhere."
"Then it's a pity," Sydney says, stroking my stomach gently.
"What?" I ask, slightly alarmed.
"That he won't leave you," she says, kissing my shoulder. "Good-bye, Lauren."
She's suddenly gone and I'm suddenly aware of the feeling of sheets tangled between my thighs, something that I hadn't been expecting at all after this encounter.
"Sydney?" I ask, opening my eyes to darkness and solitude.
Oh, God. It was all a dream…but it doesn't change anything, including the smell of sex in the air. I am in love with Sydney Bristow. Lust. Hatred. It doesn't matter. The most powerful emotions of my life, passion that makes my interest in Michael seem trite, and they're all for Sydney.
But he's not going to leave me. And I can't leave him, because he loves me.
I smooth the sheets, pull my camisole down and my panties up, and turn over. My jaw aches, and I know I won't fall asleep again tonight.