The car they had switched out for the marked SHIELD car they'd driven to Central Park was covered in a fine film of dust when they stopped at an inn in Pennsylvania off the main roads. The shifting of gears had taken its toll on his knee and he needed to wrap an icepack around it and eat a few anti-inflammatories.

The inn has gaslights illuminating it in the dusk and foothills of the Poconos and three floors of rooms with no elevators. They were very apologetic about that when he stiffly limped his way in, a duffel bag and the black Kevlar bag that held his collapsible bow slung over his shoulder and Natasha two steps behind. There were no first floor rooms available they apologized again when Natasha asked not catching his eye or giving him a look that said she should have been allowed to drive and he should have rested his knee because she was better than passive aggressive looks even if she meant them. There was a whirlpool tub in their third floor room they said with faces that begged their new guests not to lower their tip.

This is how Clint Barton ended up in a bathtub taking a bath that seemed about three fifths foam and two fifths strange smelling water. The whirlpool tub had a shower over it but to stand in it required the kind of balance and strength Natasha had declared beyond him and she had commenced some sort of alchemy with the tiny little hotel bottles and hot water before he had a chance to explain that grown men do not take baths. Then she went to find ice leaving him so off kilter that he'd actually climbed into the damn thing without thinking and now he is slippery and vaguely oily and not entirely sure how to get back out again without twisting his knee even more.

"So you have become one with the whirlpool?" she says looking at him in the mirror as she puts ice in the pale blue ice pack over the bathroom sink. She has lost her boots and her jacket.

"She understands me and my needs in a way no mere woman ever could," he says before sinking under the foam. There are jets in here with him and they feel good, embarrassingly so, against the tight muscles of his neck and shoulders. If Natasha didn't have cracked ribs and he didn't have a swollen knee he might come up with interesting ways to use the pulsing water. Okay, who is he kidding? He is coming up with the ways regardless of their injuries. He is still Clint Barton. He is more than an arrow and a target.

He rises again pushing his waterlogged dirty blond hair from his forehead and the bubbles from his face as he opens his eyes. Natasha's black jeans and layered tops have joined his clothes on a pile on the bathroom floor. He gasps in air hoping she'll think that it is only because he has been underwater. Her bra and panties are black and lacy and they look more like operations Natasha than everyday Natasha. Shades of green and blue outline along her lower ribs and there is still an angry bruise across her calf despite Natasha's usual speed of recovery. And even though she is injured there is true beauty in her expanse of milky white skin stretched over the kind of curves you only see in classic Hollywood films. She leans down over the sink for a moment, the curve of her ass jutting out over her perfect legs. "Whatchadoin' Nat?" he asks.

"You seriously thought I made that bath for you Barton?" she replies raising an eyebrow at him in half fogged mirror. He replays the conversation about the bathtub and the shower in his head. "Why would I make you a bath?"

"Because you're nice?" Clint says sheepishly. He's having trouble focussing on being ashamed though as she is angled so perfectly that the mirror catches the swell and dip of each of her breasts barely contained in the dramatic black cups of her bra.

"Nice?"

"Considerate?" he tries. She only looks more incredulous turning towards him her hands on the graceful sway of her hips. He grins. "Aw hell, help me out?"

"Nothing doing. You can stay in there now," she shakes her head, red curls bouncing with the small movement and then unclasps her bra.

"Natasha Romanoff!" he says as she lowers the straps off her shoulders one arm crossed across her chest, "Are you trying to seduce me?"

"Seduction?" she asks her eyes widening, "I'm a mercenary at heart I don't do seduction without a pay check."

"So this is?"

"I'm taking a bath," she says simply. She turns and drops the bra from her body. From this angle her breasts draw his eye and steal his breath, a slope that ends in a puckered peach nipple and curves softly underneath back to her chest. He sinks further into the water. Natasha has magnificent breasts.

"I'm taking a bath," he says.

"Yes. Think of the water we'll save." She smiles a little menacingly over her shoulder at him. He knows she is doing this to win. He wonders when exactly the prospect of them being more than friends and partners became an elaborate game of chicken. It was possibly in retrospect when he suggested he could rock her world. He isn't about to let her win.

"Then you should hurry up before the water gets cold." He's pretty proud of himself when his voice remains even and controlled. He isn't sure the bath is big enough for the two of them without a serious amount of against medical advice jostling and weight bearing but he sure as hell isn't letting her win this round. Even turned to her side he can see the quick raise of her eyebrows before she covers sliding the black panties down from her hips, across her ass and to the floor. If he closes his eyes so as not to give away how very much he has wanted every part of this, every part of her, then the gods will surely forgive him.

She wants him to be gobsmacked; she wants him to stare with undisguised avarice at her as she slides herself into the bath and his arms. Clint will not give it to her. He will not be one of the hundreds of men who have lusted after her and never really known her. He will not raise his hands above his head and yell 'woo hoo'. And if she is a little annoyed by his reaction not being what she expected then it is all the better for it. This is what they do. This is them, the banter, the teasing, the finding of each other's weakest points and pushing.

With her back to him he senses rather than sees the Cheshire cat grin that she gives when she sinks into his lap and does not fail to notice his hardening cock that now presses into the small of her back. She leans back into him and sighs. He opens his eyes, his arms resting on the lips of the tub and Natasha resting against his chest, there is nothing but red and bubbles. He takes a moment to twist a red curl between his fingertips.

"You cut it."

"New cover, new appearance."

"Shame."

"Hair grows back Barton," she says her eyes closed and her features relaxed.

"Barton," he echoes.

"Hmm?" She turns her head against his shoulder her eyes opened.

"You keep calling me Barton."

"It's your name isn't it?" she answers and leans forward curving her spine and baring her long pale neck to him.

"It's distance Tasha."

"There is precious little distance in this bath," she pulls her knees into her chest hugging them. Her curls are damp in the humidity. He reaches out for her sweeping her short hair across to one shoulder.

"And you are smarter than this. It's distance."

"Distance is good to us. You see better from a distance. I…" she lets the words fade.

"You only know how to do this with distance," he finishes for her.

"If you do not want this all you need to do is say it." The words have bite; over the roar of the whirlpool he can hear the leonine quality to it.

"Natasha," he warns and then rocks forwards to press a kiss to her neck. "You can tell me you don't want this." He kisses again behind her ear, once, twice, three times, "But you can't make me not want you." He rests a hand on her shoulder for a moment and then slides it down her back. The jets shut off and he freezes his hand on her hip. The room echoes with the sudden silence. He slides his fingertips back up her side grazing at her skin. He does it slowly giving her time to stop him. He cups her full breast before gliding over her arm, her shoulder to her cheek. She pushes into his hand saying nothing.

He has a fleeting urge to tell her she is beautiful. Natasha knows she is beautiful. She doesn't want or need him to say it. She views declarations of her beauty as she does promises, worth very little. He presses his open mouth to her neck blowing hot breath through her hair as he goes. He delights in the way her body loses tension.

Men lie when they say they want a woman who is beautiful but doesn't know it. It is much the same as when women say they have no interest in wealth or status. Women look for security and wealth and status are the touchstones of that search. What men mean when they say they want a woman who is doesn't know she is beautiful is that they want a woman who doesn't know they are too beautiful for them.

Natasha is beautiful like she was carved out of marble. That is what her beauty is to her as significant and as meaningful as stone. Once and awhile he sees it in her eyes that it is as significant and as meaningful as a millstone and if she was carved out of marble the carving was done with bloody knives. As much as he loves her body, her face, it is in the end the banter, the teasing and the finding each other's weakest points and pushing that made him love her.

This isn't how he wanted this to go. Yeah okay he'd imagined furious, wall climbing sex; heat of the moment, burning through adrenalin fucking, a fucked up, chafe inducing amount but this quiet gentleness between them is surprisingly good. It wouldn't be half bad if he could see her eyes. Even in the depraved security of his own brain he'd wanted to see her eyes to know that she wants him as much as he wants her.

He bites down softly on her earlobe. Quicker that you'd expect if you didn't know Natasha Romanoff her fingernails are pressed into the soft skin of his inner thigh, hard enough and close enough to threaten but not necessarily maim. "Biting, really Ястреб?"

"Get up!" he orders removing her hand and still grinning at the nickname that has replaced Barton.

"What? Why?"

"Because we are not doing this in here," he answers. His skin against the tubs surface makes strange aquatic animal sounds as he shifts.

"I didn't realize rocking my world was location specific," she says not making any effort to move. He considers whether he could lift her and whether he could lift her without the threat of fingernails in soft, delicate places being seen to its conclusion.

"Up Nat! Now! Just this once, just this once the first time we do something it's going to be fucking awesome. Not on the fly, not the best we could do, not how the fuck did you manage that with so little intel, equipment or time."

"Equipment? And you are telling me you can't do fucking awesome in a whirlpool tub?"

"Oh Baby," he smirks watching her instantly turn on him flame hair flaring around her angry face, "I can do some amazing things in a whirlpool tub but you are getting off my lap right now. We are doing this right. We are not fucking up my knee in the process and we are not breaking your cracked ribs and dammit I am going to look you in the eyes."

"Is that an order?" Natasha asks letting something soften in her demeanor.

"You better believe it."

The water goes everywhere. His t-shirt, left on the floor, goes from washed out pink to wine colored as it absorbs the suds. And she is in his arms damp, soft skin pressed into him and a leg pushed between his own. Her nipples are pebbled against his chest and it makes him fight against a groan building in his throat. He leans down to capture her mouth just as she speaks.

"Hawkeye did you climb into that bath with sports tape still on your knee?" She wrinkles her nose.

"That's a surprise to you?"

"It's still floating in the tub." She leans slightly watching with disgust the offending medical material. He doesn't look.

"See it's not sanitary, another reason why we are going to make use of that ridiculous bed." His hands are on the small of her back and it is like all the times he has had to dance with her.

"Fitted sheets do not make a bed ridiculous."

"The fact that it's covered in pillows does."

She tilts her head looking him in the eye. Without high heels she is tiny, deadly but tiny. "Do you wish to continue this argument? I was promised a rocked world and thus far it has been a disappointment Agent." He feels his eyes widen at the insult. He wants to throw her over his shoulder and carry her into the bedroom but he knows that even if his knee was stable and her ribs were solid she'd flip herself round in his arms and he'd find himself passing out between her thighs… not a bad way to go but… he has plans.

Her hands that rested against his shoulders slide down until she is stroking his thighs in the most maddening fashion. Instead of responding to her accusations he reaches down pulling her face towards him and claiming her mouth in a filthy open mouthed kiss. Just as he feels her go limp in his arms he slaps her on the ass. Natasha hisses against his mouth and pulls away. He can see her face flicker with a decision not to hurt him. While she's distracted he twists her pointing to the doorway with his thumb, "Bedroom," he grunts out.

She saunters. She fucking saunters out the door way and he'd think she was Black Widowing him but there is something down right playful in the sway of her naked backside and the curl of her lips that he has never seen her do before. He allows himself the groan that has been on the verge of escaping him since she stripped off her remaining clothes. He turns slowly taking the weight off his left knee and bending down to search his sopping jeans for the two condoms he knows are in his wallet and he begs all that is good and fair in the world that they are not out of date.

Condoms rescued he leans on the door frame. Natasha is sitting at the foot of the bed waiting on him legs crossed and more comfortable completely naked than he has ever seen any woman in his life and he once, a lifetime ago now, spent a dirty weekend with a contortionist.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Hey," he says low and catching in his throat.

She rolls her eyes. "Ground rules," she says sliding herself back on the bed, "Call me baby again and I start cutting off appendages." He has to laugh when she pointedly looks at his crotch.

"Duly noted. Anything else in these ground rules?" he asks stalking his way across the room.

"I'll let you know when the transgressions occur."

"If."

"When," she says firmly. He pounces ignoring the complaint from his knee as he leans down over her body sliding his mouth over hers and teasing her tongue with his own. There is a good inch of space between their bodies and he is grateful for the upper body strength that ambidextrous archery has afforded him when she makes a frustrated sound and aches upwards trying to make bodily contact with him. She scrapes her fingernails at his shoulders, over barely healing cuts and tries to pull him downwards. He pushes backwards on his haunches and grabs her hands twining them together above her head in his own hands before returning to the action of kissing her.

When he is certain she will remain there he lets his hands move down her arms leaning his weight on his right side he traces patterns into her skin. Down her arms, down her throat, onto her sternum before ghosting small swirls under the curves of her breasts. Her breathing changes against his mouth, quicker and sharper as he draws closer to her nipples. He tugs back from her mouth and opens his eyes to find Natasha watching him closely. He slides one bow string finger across her hardened nipple and sees her eyes darken. He presses his mouth to her neck smiling as her legs fall open.

His mouth follows his fingertips and as he presses open mouthed kisses to the valley between her breasts he looks up at her and admits, "I'm going to kiss every inch of you Tasha, every god damn inch of you."

"Just kiss?" she asks in her oak aged voice and he winks before taking her nipple into his mouth. He runs his tongue over the surface before sucking hard. Natasha shifts, her hands coming to rest in his hair pulling at it lightly. He is hard against her thigh and he can feel her move to press more firmly against his cock. He uses both hands to still her hips as he moves and sucks a second nipple into his mouth. Natasha hmpfs softly.

He knows that there is new stubble on his chin and he knows that if he stays worrying a single nipple for too long it will go from pleasurable to torturous. Another day he might let them play an ever escalating game of tit for tat. It is, after all, who they are. But just today Tash, he thinks flicking a tongue over hardened flesh, let's be kinder to each other than we are ever to ourselves and see what we can make of it. She tugs at his hair again so he rubs circles into her hip bones matching them with circles made with his tongue on her breasts.

He is careful as he moves down her body only brushing his lips at the green and blue across her ribs before pressing more firmly into the pale undamaged flesh beneath them. He looks up every so often seeing her ducked chin and her open dark eyes trying to figure out his next move before he makes it, trying to prepare herself. He doesn't say he loves her, he doesn't say he isn't going to hurt her and he doesn't say she is beautiful. This is Natasha, always poised on the edge of a decision to kill or not to kill and he would not ask her to be any other way.

He reaches up into his own hair and takes one of her hands from it. Resting his chin on her hip bone he meets her gaze and kisses her palm. She blinks. Her breathing slows. Her lips part.

He dips his head pressing quick kisses to the junction of her inner thigh. She rolls her hips trying to move him to where she'd rather he'd be and he chuckles against her skin. "Tease," she breathes and throws her head back against the pillow.

"Just patient."

"Since when?" she asks staring up at the ceiling.

"Sniper," Clint says then smiles and sucks on her bare soft skin. He can feel her give in beneath his mouth and his hands.

Lightly he ghosts his tongue at the apex of her lips and she sucks in a ragged breath. She has a small strip of deep burgundy hair but nothing else to impede his exploration. He drags his tongue between her folds twice more before pushing in deeper. He feels her legs close around him. He glides lower opening her up with only his mouth and he barely hears her sigh. When her lethal thighs close tighter he pauses breathing heavily against her damp center while he lifts her knees settling her feet flat on the bed beside his head.

She is more open to him now and he circles his tongue around the sensitive blood filled flesh of her opening. He can taste her in his mouth and inhales her scent loosing himself in the sensations. When he feels her stomach muscles tense he moves upwards tapping a rhythm onto her clitoris and feeling her cant her hips towards his face. She takes a breath and holds it and he feels her flood with more moisture.

He pushes one of her knees down to the bed and curls a finger into her cunt never once abandoning the soft tapping at her clit. She is breathing now the same way she does when he has to remove shrapnel from her shoulders, shallow breaths as the wave begins to build inside her. He drags his finger back and forth inside of her and when she is lost enough that she squirms beneath his mouth he pushes another finger inside her, separating and curling them back against her internal walls like there is an imaginary bow string he is pulling back on.

Under his hand that he uses to push her knee to the bed he feels her begin to shake a little at first until she gasps and his fingers register the tightening of her walls. She is salty and yet fresh in his mouth and she gives a little cry when he swirls his tongue around her over stimulated clit. He sucks hard at her and her hips leave the bed, she stiffens and cries out in Russian, "Oх боже."

She pushes his head away from her. He grins. He knows that it is the kind of grin she dislikes the most, the kind he has no control over the one that suddenly transforms his face into that of a little boy who's discovered a secret clubhouse in his back yard full of fucking candy. It's the grin of a man who might laugh at any fucking moment so he tries to hide it from her boneless form as he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

He stands over her awestruck by the angles of her, the way her knee is bent against the cream quilt, the strands of hair caught between her lips, the faint flush across her heavy breasts and perspiration highlighting her smooth skin. She sighs and it is the sound she only makes when she has pinned him to the mat and he has been a challenge. She sighs and she uses two hands to push her hair back from her face. When her eyes open she looks straight at him and smiles, a sleepy relaxed smile, and he feels a rush of pride that he is certain not even Loki could take from him.

She pushes herself back on the numerous pillows and curls her finger beckoning him. "Don't just stand there. I feel as if I am supposed to be holding up a card with a score on it."

"Shit no. You? You'd be worse than the East German judges," he says as he relocates some pillows to make space.

"Doubting your abilities? That doesn't sound like you." Natasha frowns.

He pulls her into him wrapping a hand around her butt and dragging his teeth along her neck before whispering into her ear, "I know I did good. One day you'll admit it too."

She pushes back against him wriggling out of his grip, "Cocky, now you sound like you."

"Tasha…" he says stroking her skin relishing the contact.

"Don't. You'll say something revolting like, 'You feel so good' or 'you taste amazing' and I'll have to kick your ass."

"Ground rules huh? I wasn't gonna say anything like that. Pretty sure it's you being cocky now."

Instead of replying she raises a single eyebrow and beneath his eye level her hand suddenly grips his cock.

"Fuck!" Clint is pretty sure he could come from that alone.

"I thought that was the idea." How she managed to find the condom and produce it at that very moment he does not know but she runs a fingertip up and down the length of his cock without ever releasing the grip she has on it. In her other hand she flashes the silver packaged protection and smiles her most dangerous of smiles. Asking how she managed the sleight of hand becomes so very unimportant.

He tries to take the foil, she dodges and rolls legs wrapping around his waist and flipping him back on to the bed.

"Hey," he wheezes out, "thought I was the one who got to do the world rocking."

"You said," she says huskily leaning into him and sliding slickly forward on his almost painfully hard cock, "that we were not going to fuck up your knee. If you're not up to the challenge…" she shrugs and straightens lifting herself with her deceptively strong thighs. The abrupt lack of contact jolts him forward. He grasps her hips pressing harder than he means to at the soft skin, long blunt fingers digging into her butt cheeks.

"Natasha." He tugs her downwards. She laughs.

He isn't sure how much longer he will last with her rolling her hips over him her wetness lubricating him and warming him. She is truly a sadistic woman. She slides herself back one last time before using her hand to stroke him upwards running a thumb over the slick head of his penis. He props himself up on his elbows to watch as she efficiently unrolls the condom over him. She finishes with a quick cupping of his balls and he arches his back, closing his eyes as the sensation of her fingertips on him threatens to make him take leave of his senses.

Before she has a chance to do anything else he bucks his hips beneath her throwing her forward so he can taste her mouth once more. For a second when her mouth smiles against his he is almost happy to let this be all that happens but then Natasha eases forward positioning him at her opening.

His eyes open. He is certain that they are now black with want. They hold their breaths. Her mouth a fraction from his, her eyes almost the only thing he can see. She moves slowly, her chin tucked into her chest, her hands gripping his shoulders, her forehead nearly touching his and she lowers herself down on him.

She stretches around him, tight, hot muscles sheathing him so totally that he can hear his own breathing become panting in his ears. "Okay?" he asks nodding once at her. She bites her bottom lip. She is so close he could bite it for her. She looks down and away from his gaze. "Tasha? Okay?" Answer me, he thinks, Tasha, if you can't do this you gotta tell me. He doesn't move. It might kill him not to move but he doesn't move. "We okay?" he asks again bathed in sweat.

Her eyes open again, pupils blown but large and entirely Natasha Romanoff. "Yes… Yes we're okay." She pushes her weight through his shoulders and she moves. She maintains a gloriously slow rhythm. Every time he bottoms out within her she inhales and drawing upwards like she is massaging his cock she releases her breath through full rose colored lips.

She feels so perfect wrapped around him that he counts in his head, calculating wind speed and distance trying to draw out the moment. It has been far too long but then the idea of doing this with anyone other than Natasha has made him feel wrong for months if not years. Her hands move further down his chest resting on his abdominal muscles, hand over hand like she is trying to stop him bleeding out. He does not look away from her, her eyes, her mouth, and her hair like fire and blood and ribbon tangled about her face.

She whimpers, her rhythm shifting slightly. He presses his thumb to her clit stroking at the point where they join. Her breasts bounce as she speeds up. He bends his healthy knee up behind her allowing her to lean back changing his angle within her and her breathing becomes stuttered.

There is a wave of pleasure building inside him strong enough that it is almost painful. He drags himself up to her using all the strength he has left to leaver himself off the bed pulling her into him. Her breast rubbing against his chest, his hips thrusting up into her, he presses his face into her neck. Sound escapes her like she has no control over it, with every thrust a sweet 'ah' leaks from between her lips. He feels one of her hands trying to gain traction on his scapula as he strains beneath her. Her other hand is between them having replaced his as he pulled her towards him.

"Nat," he groans, "now Nat, let go." The heat at the base of his back, the tightness in his balls bloom outwards, she clenches down on him, muscles spasming around him and in seconds he is spilling into her any sense of rhythm gone. Her exhale leaves her in stages and he grunts as he urges his mouth to her neck.

He holds her as tightly as he dares with arms corded with muscle around ribs he knows are bruised and damaged. She rests heavily against him until he falls back onto the quilt taking her tranquil body with him.

"I've wanted to do that for so long," he says when he has enough breath to speak. He can feel her heart beat against his chest. He lets his long fingers play their way down her back. She has left her marks all over him from the sweaty sheen of his skin to the purple crescent of her bite mark on his forearm to the blood he is sure she has caught under her nails after clawing into abrasions not yet healed. His body is now a document of proof that he is hers.

It is dark outside the lead lined arts and crafts window of the bedroom and she presses a kiss to his pectoral muscle. She is curved into him breathing in time with his own breaths. "I have too," she whispers her small hand curling behind him caressing the scar made with her own knife, "I have too Clint."