The Code

It was about time to knock off, but the squad was all still milling about their desks. Jen was the first to head out. "I've gotta get home. I promised my mother I'd call her before it got too late."

Rhys waved. "Bye, Jen. See you tomorrow." He turned back to the rest of the group. "Anyone fancy a beer?"

"Sure, I'm in," Duncan agreed. "Nick? Allie?"

"I could use a drink, yeah," Allie replied, grabbing her bag to go out.

But Nick had to turn them down. "Next time. I'm gonna go for a run in my neighborhood." And with that, he waved to his crew and headed to the elevator to go to his car.

Jen returned home right away. She was relieved to finally be free from the police station. She adored her work and she would always throw herself headlong into a case, but sometimes it was so freeing to just be done and be home and away from everyone else. Just being alone was a welcome respite.

She had just opened a bottle of wine to unwind from the day when her doorbell rang. With a small smile, Jen went to answer it. "Hello, Mum," she greeted.

"What a surprise, I guess my neighborhood run brought me here," Nick replied, walking into the house.

Jen closed and locked the door behind him and grinned. "I hope you didn't run all the way here. Don't want you to be too exhausted before you even get inside."

He stood very close to her, looking down with an affectionate smile. "And I hope you're not going to keep calling me 'Mum,'" he said.

"Well, what should I call you during sex?" she asked teasingly, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck.

Nick's face broke into a wide grin. "How about just Nick?" he suggested. His hands found their way under her jacket and traced the line down her ribcage to her trim waist and the flare of her hips. He began toying with the button on her trousers.

Jen didn't reply. She just pulled him down to kiss her. Nick responded immediately. He undid her trousers and started unbuttoning her pink blouse and their mouths moved together. The way her tongue caressed his was a heady drug, making him dizzy with want.

Once her top was open, Nick couldn't stop himself from caressing her bare flesh. Jen moaned into his mouth at his touch. Her own hands wandered his body, reaching around to his bum, squeezing it and pressing his hips against hers. Nick tore away from her kiss, breathing heavily as he looked at her with dark, lust-filled eyes.

They wasted no more time undressing each other. Clothes flew off and landed haphazardly in the entryway. A few things may have ripped. They weren't paying attention. Nick was already hard by the time they were naked, and Jen made no attempt to hide the way she marveled at his proud erection. With a smug smirk, Nick pulled her against him, bending to kiss her messily and reaching to the backs of her thighs to lift her up into his arms. Jen wrapped her legs around his waist and began kissing and sucking on his neck. In the light of day, she wanted nothing to even hint that she and Nick were carrying on an illicit relationship. But in Nick's arms, all Jen wanted to do was lick every inch of his body and taste his skin and bite into that delicious muscle of his and mark him everywhere as her own.

That wasn't a conversation they'd had yet. Probably wouldn't be a conversation they'd ever have. But Jen knew without a shadow of a doubt that Nick Buchanan was hers. In every look and every touch and every word and every breath, he was hers and she was just as much his.

Nick carried Jen over to the dining room table. He began to kiss a line down her neck, though avoiding too much irritation anywhere that might be visible. But his mouth journeyed down to her breasts, devouring one, flicking his tongue against her hardening nipple and sinking his teeth in hard enough to make her let out a high-pitched gasp. He moved his lips to trace the curve of her other breast with his tongue and sucking on the sensitive underside as she panted with her arousal.

Jen clung on to Nick's shoulders for dear life, her whole body seeming to vibrate from the delicious things he was doing. She wanted more. She needed more. Jen pried her own hands away from him so she could pull back and lower herself to lie back on the table. Her legs were spread wide in front of him, coaxing him to her.

That was more than enough of an invitation for Nick. With a hungry grin, he sat down at one of the dining chairs, putting himself at a better level to her. He pulled her hips forward and draped her left leg over his shoulder. And with gusto, he buried his face between her thighs. His tongue licked a few testing swipes over her folds, making her shiver. He dipped inside her briefly before sucking hard on her clit. One finger slid inside her first as his tongue flicked at her, almost lazily at first. As Jen's moans grew louder, Nick's efforts increased. He added another finger inside her, thrusting in and out faster and faster while his mouth teased her and brought her higher and higher. Her inner walls were fluttering and he added a third finger to plunge into her and curl to find where she would come undone. A visceral cry fell from the back of Jen's throat as her body clenched him inside her and radiated pleasure through every nerve ending. Nick didn't quite want to finish his feast of her, but he slowed anyway, knowing Jen would want him to be moving on. Besides, this certainly wasn't his only opportunity.

When Nick stood up, kissing back up her stomach and chest and finally finding her mouth, Jen was limp and boneless. But she kissed him back with gusto, licking the taste of herself off his lips. "God, you're incredible," she mumbled into the kiss.

Nick did not respond. He only smiled. Now was time for more. Much, much more. Despite the dampness of his hand, he picked Jen up off the table. But instead of carrying her off to the bedroom or even to the sofa, he only turned her around so her back was pressed against the hard plane of his chest. "You ready, Jen?" he whispered in her ear.

She shivered to feel his hot breath on her neck. "Please, Nick," she moaned.

"Please, what?" he asked. His hands were wandering her body now. Squeezing her breasts and moving down to massage the firm, perfect flesh of her ass.

"I need you," she begged.

"What do you need?" he growled. "Tell me."

"Hard," she gasped. "I need you to fuck me hard."

Without any more conversation, Nick bent her over the table, lined himself up, and thrust inside her. The both of them groaned at the sensation. Nick kept himself steady for a moment, savoring the beautiful feeling of being inside her. But Jen wiggled slightly, encouraging him to move. He gripped her hips and pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in.

For Jen, the world seemed to fall away. The sounds of their bodies slapping together with each one of Nick's powerful thrusts mixed with the grunting and panting and moaning over which they had no control. She could feel Nick lean over, changing their angle slightly. His chest was covered in a layer of sweat and his skin slid against her bare back. The feeling of his breath in her hair, his lips dragging over the back of her neck as he moved deep inside her was one of the most erotic things she'd ever experienced. Her whole body was tensed tighter and tighter until she finally snapped as she came hard. Nick finished at almost the exact same time, spilling inside her as her body continued to clench around him.

They both collapsed down onto the table, breathing heavily. Nick's body surrounded her in every way. He softly kissed her shoulder in a tender way that made her feel so very warm inside. In many ways, this was her favorite part. This quiet time after they were finished, when they were both happy and sated, when everything was calm and light.

Eventually Nick had to slip out of her and move aside to fee her from his crushing weight. He wanted to hold her close and never let her go, but he couldn't quite do that very well bent over the dining room table. But as soon as Jen stood up, she turned and crumpled into his embrace. "That was good," she murmured, kissing his chest just above his heart.

"Really good," he agreed, kissing the top of her head.

They were quiet again. Just standing there, holding each other close. Jen was rather sure her knees were about to give out, but Nick kept her upright.

The moment ended with Nick's stomach rumbled rather loudly. Jen began to laugh and pulled away from him. "Alright, let's figure out dinner," she announced.

Nick followed her somewhat sheepishly. "It's hungry work," he defended.

"Let's take a quick shower and I can heat up the Chinese from the other night, eh?" she offered.

He gave her a quick kiss, just because he could, just because he wanted to. "Sounds great."

While in the shower, Jen admired her own handiwork of purple-red blotches all over Nick's neck. She considered adding a few more to his chest while they were in the shower, but that would have undoubtedly ended in more sex—not usually a problem, but they were both rather hungry at the moment. So they both rinsed the sheen of sweat and sex off their bodies relatively quickly and toweled themselves off. Nick changed into the track pants and jumper he kept at Jen's place for this very purpose, and Jen pulled on her favorite pink silk dressing gown.

Over dinner, Nick remarked, "You know, people are going to start asking if your mum's alright."

"What?" she asked, pouring them both another glass of the wine she'd opened earlier.

"The number of times you've summoned me for sex in the last two weeks," Nick explained.

Jen scoffed, "I do not summon you!"

"Isn't that what the code is for? You announce that you've gotta get home to phone your mum, and that's my cue to come over."

She chewed a bit on her bottom lip. "Well…yes, but I'm certainly not summoning you. You don't have to come over if you don't want to."

Nick replied in a gravely serious tone, "If I ever don't want to come over, Jen, you can assume I'm dead."

Jen laughed. "I'll keep that in mind. Good to know you've not gotten tired of me."

Nick opened his mouth to respond, to tell her that he could never get tired of her, that she was the girl of his dreams, that only in his wildest fantasies could he have ever imagined a woman so beautiful and brilliant and strong and tough who begged him to fuck her hard three times a week. But Jennifer Mapplethorpe wasn't a fantasy, she was real flesh and blood, and he loved her with all his heart. Nick didn't tell her that though. He only said, "I'm not tired of you, Jen."

"You're lucky your lie is easier to maintain than mine is. Because you're right, people are going to ask why I have to call my mother so often. But with the amount of exercise we do, no one will question the number of neighborhood runs you're supposedly going out on."

"Maybe we should come up with a new code if we're going to keep this up," he commented.

Jen didn't want to ask him how long he thought they'd keep this up for. Because she didn't want to know if he meant the sneaking around or the relationship as a whole. They were going to reach the point soon where they'd need to make a decision, to figure out how they'd handle both being on Homicide and being romantically involved. But Jen didn't want to get into all that now. Didn't want to contemplate a world where she and Nick weren't just like this, having leftovers for dinner after a round of exquisite sex. So she just replied, "Yeah, we'll come up with something."