Need
by loxley85
URL: http://www.bluecatsgraphics.com/pean/fanfics/56/

Part 1

Lady M sat down at her mahogany desk and gestured for her favorite client to do the same. After just a moment’s hesitation, he folded himself into the armchair opposite her, crossing his long legs and folding his hands in his lap. With the severe black suit and the tightly knotted tie, he looked as if he could be selling her a cemetery plot. His pale coloring and absolute stillness when he sat added to the image. She knew better. “Sherry,” she said, indicated the cut crystal glass before him. “We have not seen you in some little while, Mr. — Hammett, is it? This time?”

A small smile creased the impassive face before her. “That is correct. This time.”

She nodded. “I had assumed you wanted the usual arrangements. The tower suite is yours for the night. Fully stocked bar, two appetizer trays, cotton instead of silk sheets, and your companion...”

“As always, it is her choice. As always, the payment remains the same regardless of how long or short her visit is.”

Lady M bowed her head. “I did not wish to presume and so of course I wanted to check the arrangements with you.”

“Lady M, your service never fails to satisfy.”

“Mr. Hammett, you are one of our best patrons. I thank you for returning to us.” They bowed slightly to each other. She lifted one elegant hand to indicate the door behind her and to her left. He nodded and she followed him to it. “Have a good evening,” she said softly. He smiled at her before exiting and then closing the door firmly behind him. She locked it from her side and heard him doing the same on his. The evening had begun. She thought of Tiffany, the young woman who would be entering his suite from the main hall, and smiled a bit wistfully. She remembered when it had been her own evening with the redoubtable Mr. Hammett.



Tiffany knocked twice on the heavy oak door and then opened it, as directed. Her heart was pounding and she tried to get it to slow down. Lady M had impressed upon her that this was one of their most important clients during her regular pre-client briefing. “Our service offers intelligent conversation as well as companionship. With this particular client, expect the subject matter to go anywhere and everywhere. Wear a full length dress, as he is rather formal. Not stuffy, but very correct. No garters and stockings. He is not that sort of man. And give him whatever he requires. He may make you work tonight.” Lady M paused and looked at her with a knowing smile. “But you won’t notice it.”

Tiffany’s first thought was that he looked like death. He was sitting on the sofa, glass in hand, staring into the fire, and he was as still as the furniture. His coloring was so pale he might have been ill. Yet, even from across the room she could sense a certain energy, even vitality in him. His demeanor was completely composed, but there was a sort of coiled tension in his posture, in his feet flat against the floor as though ready to spring up in an instant, even the casual arrangement of his arms, set to push him up if need be. He turned his head as the door opened and then rose gracefully as she entered.

“Ms. Tiffany,” he said by way of greeting.

“Mr. Hammett.”

He invited her all the way in with an outstretched hand and she closed the door behind her. “May I offer you a drink?”

She gave him her best for-clients smile and walked down the three marble steps into the sitting room with as much confidence as possible. Lady M’s description had been correct but somehow didn’t cover the bases. His suit was very finely tailored and fit him in a way that showcased the length of his legs, the narrowness of his hips. She recognized custom work when she saw it, including the full formal cut of his shirt cuffs, pinned discreetly with gold cufflinks, the high diagonal lines of the white collar, tight against his throat with a closely knotted tie. His hair, almost like porcelain in the soft light of the sitting room, was swept back from his forehead and just brushed against the collar behind his ears. He was still looking at her and she noticed, with approval, that he held her eyes. She had grown used to clients, regardless of financial background and social status, who glanced momentarily at her face and then let their gaze wander up and down the length of her, coldly, as if regarding a fancy sports car in a window, or even a fine steak held up for inspection. Mr. Hammett did not do this. His brows were still raised slightly with his inquiry about the drink and she realized she had yet to answer. The echo of his question lingered, and she found herself drawn to the soft low tone of his voice as well as the sweet and warm drawl that marked him as a man from the deep South.

“Mr. Hammett, it is I who ought to be offering you a drink, or at least a refresher for the one you already have. That is why I am here.”

“On the contrary,” he said. He turned and crossed the room to the bar, long legs covering the distance in a remarkably short time. “I requested the pleasure of your company. I feel it befitting that I should ask you. What do you prefer? There seems to be no end of choices here.”

She smiled. “White wine would be perfect.”

He poured a glass for her, added a little more to his own, and then brought the drinks around to meet her. “Please,” he said, indicating the sofa. “Sit.”

She sat down on the sofa and was surprised when he positioned himself at a bit of a distance, close enough for conversation, but not touching. She began to wonder where exactly the evening was going. He was a most unusual man. Lady M had not really prepared her. Sitting here with her glass of wine, wondering what he had in mind for her, was unsettling and yet somehow exciting. As silly as it seemed, she felt as if she were being courted and by a man from a time that no longer existed, as if he had stepped out of an era that might have included horse-drawn carriages, walking sticks, top hats, and long, rustling gowns for the ladies complete with elbow-length gloves and veils on their hats. His air of timelessness and his manner made it impossible to guess his age. She met his glance and felt herself blush, he was looking at her so knowingly. Could he read her mind?

“Do you like music?” he asked. “And please, if anything I ask is too personal, do let me know. I am not trying to offend.”

His deference confused her. “Ummm, yes. I like music. I love music, actually, and can’t really get through the day without it.”

“Ah,” he said, and he seemed delighted. “And what do you listen to?”

“All of it,” she said. “Depending on mood. Rock, alternative, rap, classical.”

“Please do not tell me you are a devotee of the opera.”

She smiled at him and this time the smile was genuine. “You don’t like opera?”

He groaned. “I have had it inflicted upon me throughout my life, at nearly every turn. No, I am afraid I do not like opera.”

“I don’t listen to it much, myself,” she confided. “I like a few overtures. I like some arias. But I definitely prefer the orchestra. Actually, I have a strong preference for Baroque.”

“Vivaldi? Bach? Am I being too obvious?”

“Of course Vivaldi and Bach. But Corelli and Purcell, also.”

“I admit I prefer pure classical.”

“The emperor had it right in Amadeus. Too many notes.” He laughed with her and she was startled at how pleased she was that he seemed to be enjoying himself.

“And what do you read?”

“I used to be very good and read the classics. And I mean the classics. Cellini, Cervantes, Dante.”

He smiled. “And now?”

“Murder mysteries,” she confessed, a little embarrassed.

“I have a friend who writes those. Or who has written one or two. Perhaps you’ve read Angels of Purgatory?”

“Oh, yes. I liked that one. It was very realistic. I felt the writer really knew what he was talking about.”

“I shall have to tell him so. He will be pleased.” He took a sip of his drink and studied it for a moment. “And what of poetry?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “Again, not as I once did.” She looked at him carefully. “If you were reading poetry, I would guess... Hmmm. Pound, maybe? Eliot? Or maybe Beaudelaire?”

He widened his eyes as if shocked. “My dear woman,” he said. “Beaudelaire?”

“I apologize,” she said, bemused, playing along. “I would have thought—”

“I meant, why did you not name him first?” They laughed again, and she realized with a start that she was enjoying herself as well. She had learned early on that this job had nothing to do with enjoyment, although the paycheck and Lady M’s benefits were very nice. But it was a job, one that she sometimes fought hard to rationalize to herself. Tonight was starting out on a spectacularly different note. But she knew better. She would wait and see.

He put his drink on the coffee table and rose. She moved to follow him but he gestured her back. “I’m just going to get one of those delectable trays of food that Lady M provided. Will you join me?” He brought a tray of cheese and fruit from the bar to the coffee table.

She allowed herself a biscuit and a small wedge of aged cheddar, then restricted herself to fruit. He nibbled at grapes, at one or two slices of cheese, perhaps half a biscuit. But he seemed more interested in conversing with her. They talked, it seemed for hours, as he pulled endless information from her with very little effort: what she had studied, what her hopes had been in coming to New York from Connecticut, what she eventually hoped to do further down the road of life. He gave away very little information about himself, yet she learned that he was alone, that he was compelled to do his job, whatever it was exactly, and that it gave him great satisfaction and yet left him somehow hollow at the end of it. “I work with bad people.” He looked at her face and smiled with his eyes. “I catch them,” he explained softly.

“So you’re—” she began and he held up a finger to stop her.

“Sometimes I’m in a position to help people, as well. Should they have a need.”

He skirted any topics related to family. He did tell her that he had a Ph.D. and she ferreted out of him that he had a second one as well. “Shall I call you ‘doctor’?” she had asked, only half-teasing.

“No, no. That was someone else in my family.” The door shut firmly on that topic.

After a while, when the conversation had run much of its course, she found herself trying to stifle a yawn. She was embarrassed: this would not be what Lady M would have called professional or even acceptable. She tried to hide it, but he, with his quick glittering eyes, had seen.

“You are tired,” he said. “And the hour is late. Please, come and rest yourself.”

Now she was completely embarrassed. “No, I am so sorry. Perhaps it was the wine. I’m fine, really.”

But despite her protests, he had climbed the three marble stairs directly opposite to those at the main door and leading to the bedchamber, and begun to turn down the duvet on the bed. She hurried to his side, worrying that the evening had gone suddenly askew. “Please,” she said. “Don’t. It is not for you to be taking care of me.” She placed a hand on his to still his motions and was jolted by the touch. She looked up at him and found...

...he was looking down at her, completely motionless, something uncertain and somehow hopeful in his eyes. That was not right. He had paid for the evening. He had paid for her companionship. Why was he looking at her like this? But before she could think any further, he moved his head ever so slightly and she leaned forward in her own right so that their lips met.

Part 2

His touch was sweet and warm and he opened his mouth tentatively with the kiss, holding back. She touched her tongue gently to his and his response was to pull her to him, his hands cupping her head, his kiss deepening forcefully in a way that compelled her response. She slipped her hands within his suit coat and ran them down his sides, caressing his ribs, his thin waist, coming to rest on his hips. He drew her closer and his kisses became harder and more intense. He moved his hands down, tracing her neck in a way that made her shiver, and then he began unfastening her dress. The hook and eye that had given her so much trouble before slipped apart like magic in his fingers. He undid the length of the zipper, pausing to stroke the skin of her lower back, then brought both hands back to her shoulders and squeezed gently, breaking the kiss.

“If I am moving too quickly,” he said in his soft voice, somewhat breathless. “If you feel at all forced in this—”

She stopped him with her lips against his, then guided his hands to the straps of her gown. “Slip it off,” she whispered.

He did as she asked, letting the fine gown puddle at their feet, leaving her in just her slip, kissing her with an intensity that suggested the urgency of a drowning man. She took off his jacket and undid his tie with his assistance. His shirt flew open as she quickly worked the buttons and then her hands were against his bare skin. His abdomen was like rock. She stroked him gently with her fingertips and made both of them tremble with her touch. He buried his face against her hair and her mouth explored his throat, his chest. She undid his belt buckle and the top button of his pants. He caught her hand. “Stop,” he whispered.

“And if I can’t?” She looked at him and was captured by the intensity of his gaze, so many conflicting emotions, loss, need, even a glimpse of apprehension.

“I fear...” he began.

She didn’t understand. “But this is why we’re both here,” she answered. “For this.”

“Tiffany. If we cannot stop, we have gone too far. I have gone too far.”

She understood the compliment first. Then she understood the man. “I assure you we haven’t,” she said. She undid the zipper on his pants and gently slipped them off of him, tugged off his boxer shorts, before taking him by the hand and sitting him on the bed. “Not to complete this pursuit would be a lie,” she whispered in his ear, straddling him. He turned his head and the hunger in his kiss was overpowering. She ran her hands into his hair — pure silk — and grasped him to her, mouth hard against his, as she leaned forward into him and brushed the silk of her slip against his bare chest. He moaned into her mouth and she pushed him back slowly, never breaking the kiss, sinking herself against him and bracing her knees on either side of his hips. “It’s been too long a wait for you,” she said. “Far too long a wait.” She rotated her pelvis against him and felt the reaction she had sought.

He pushed her down onto the bed beside him so that they were both on their sides and looked at her, his hand tangled in her hair, his fingers playing gently against her scalp, her neck, her ear. “I never said before,” he began, his voice a little hoarse. “But you are quite beautiful, Ms. Tiffany.”

“My real name is—”

He put his hand against her lips. “Shhhh. That is something that is your own, not to be bought from you by someone like me.”

The truth of the statement made her eyes sting with sudden, unexpected tears. “But you—”

“We have gone too far for you, as well,” he whispered.

“Then it’s too late anyway,” she answered, and stopped him from turning away. She kissed him fiercely, again and again, until he responded, reluctantly at first but then... She slipped her hand down and stroked his waist, the ridge of his hips, his thigh, before bringing her hand between them and at last touching him the way she wanted, the way she understood he wanted.

Again he pushed her back. “Mercy,” he said in his drawl, and he was not joking. He leaned forward and removed his socks. “Too late, you say?” he said to her.

“Much too late,” she agreed.

“And to stop now would be a lie?”

“Absolutely.”

He smiled at her, a sad one, and she pulled him to her greedily, part of her noting that this was not the way she behaved with clients, part of her beyond caring. Lady M had said this one was special. Lady M should be fined for supplying only a half-truth.

He brought her gently to a sitting position and removed her slip slowly and carefully. “You are beautiful,” he said, eyes caressing her entirety.

She felt suddenly that no one had ever truly seen her before, not even her lovers back home, not the way he saw her now. This man, with the pale discerning gaze and the long gentle fingers that stroked like silk across her thighs, slipped slowly upwards to caress the sensitive undersides of her breasts before brushing so softly across her nipples, inciting fire and ache and need deep down within her, made her feel more beautiful, more desirable, more supreme within her own body than she had ever felt. “You’re beautiful, too,” she whispered in reply and neither of them backed away from the simple statements.

She ran her fingers across his alabaster skin, feeling him shiver when she stroked up the front of him, tracing gently the numerous — so many! — scars that creased and lined his body. A double Ph.D. How on earth had be been so wounded, helping people in need? She put her open mouth to his chest and left a trail of warmth and wetness as she worked her way down to his hard belly, his waist, his pelvis. She inhaled deeply the earthy tang of his personal musk and tongued him then, deliberately slow, teasing, lapping, swirling, before taking him into her mouth where she felt him grow impossibly harder and even more ridged.

His fingers found their way to her own secret places, and he alternately probed and penetrated, stroked and pressed. She moved against his hand, moaned with him deep in her mouth, and realized how raggedly they were both breathing, how close they both were. She withdrew her mouth and straddled him. “No lies,” she said, and impaled herself upon him. He drew his breath in sharply, head pushing back against the pillows, hands on her hips and grasping hard, and she moved, letting him guide her but following her own sweet rhythm. And then she cried out into the night, head back, fingers clutching the sheets on either side of him. If he made any sound, she did not hear him, but she felt his release, the shudder, the surrender, and cherished that.

When they finally stopped moving, when her breathing had become calmer, he bent his knees so that she could lean back against his legs and he cupped her face with his hand. “I thank you,” he said. “For what you have given me tonight.”

“I could say the same,” she said softly, covering his hand with her own. “I don’t often meet clients who would discuss Beaudelaire if I asked.”

He smiled at her in reply.

“And I will take this chance and say that I wish I could have met you any other way than this.”

The smile faded and he looked suddenly tired. “I do apologize for the circumstances. I also realize they cannot be helped.” He stroked the side of her face once and withdrew his hand. “And now it is time for you to decide what you wish to do for the rest of the night. You are welcome to stay here. You are as welcome to go. I do not know which is easier for you and so the decision is entirely yours.” His eyes still glittered, but there was a softness to them, and a shadow.

She did not know how to choose correctly. Who would it hurt more if she stayed? How hard would it be for her to put on her clothes and walk away, leaving him here? She knew it was a one-night appointment. She had known that going in. So why such difficulty in this decision? Lady M had said he would make her work. What an inadequate statement. This was not work, this was wrestling, questioning, doubting everything, and analyzing her own convictions.

He had been watching her quietly, and again she had the distinct impression that he knew very well what thoughts were going through her mind. “It’s all right,” he assured her. “Either way.”

She leaned forward and kissed his mouth, glad that he kissed her back. She kissed his nose, his eyes, and then his forehead. “I should go,” she whispered.

He smiled at her and nodded. “Wise woman,” he answered.

She dressed slowly, languidly, and he sat and watched her. When she was ready she turned to face him. “Thank you,” she said. “For...” she didn’t know how to say it so she spread her arms wide to indicate the entirety. “For everything.”

“Thank you,” he answered. “Before you go, there is an envelope for you on the mantle.” He caught the wounded expression in her eyes. “My dear Tiffany, this has nothing to do with business, with arrangements, or anything at all mundane. This is strictly for you.”

She nodded without saying anything and left him there, picking up the plain white envelope on her way out.



“You know you’ll never see him again,” Lady M said to her the following afternoon. “He has a rule and he never repeats with any of... us.”

Tiffany nodded. “I would have expected as much.” But she smiled at her employer as she left the room, and wondered if all the women this man saw received the same envelope. She had a feeling the answer was no. Within it had been a small card bearing nothing more than a ten-digit number and the words, “Should you ever have need.”




*For saintkitty who first thought to send him to a brothel and for deering who threw out the challenge.