Summary: It's not a love potion; it's worse. Eli tries a free sample, and both Gillian and Ria start to take an unnatural interest in him...

Rated M because it's LornaCat, and it involves the entity known as Gillian Foster.

Pairing: Gillian/Eli

A/N: This started as a joke to blow off some steam (my feelings on the Lightman/Wallowski "relationship" will be made quite clear) but as always I got interested in finishing it as a shareable story. Another victim/benefactor of the EIIS project. Please enjoy!

GQ

One day, at the Lightman Group, Eli Loker decided to read an issue of GQ. It was sitting there, on the table in the waiting room, which he was sitting in because he had, at the moment, nothing better to do. He read magazines like GQ all the time, but today was going to be different. Eli was going to find that this issue of GQ was downright enchanted. You see, it had a sample of a new cologne hidden among its glossy pages, a cologne that technically hadn't yet been approved by the FDA. When Eli came across the sample page, he considered it for a moment, and then flipped past. Why, my Old Spice body wash already does the trick. he thought to himself. Then he remembered that he hadn't had a date in ages. But, that's just because I work so much! Once I prove myself to Lightman, he'll give me a raise, and I'll be a success, and women will flock to me like...

Eli turned back to the sample, and lifted the magazine to his nose. It wasn't bad. It was different. Manly enough. Eli looked around the waiting room to make sure no one would see him. It was really dead in there, no clients, no appointments. He peeled the cover off and quickly rubbed the magazine on his neck. With a harsh throat clearing, Eli returned the magazine to his lap, looking around the office the entire time.

Later that day Eli would learn the true power of that mysterious scent...

Yes, and later that day, Cal brought in the lovely Officer Sharon Wallowski to watch over the latest interrogation in some bullshit case she'd asked him to help her with.

"Another favor." Ria muttered to Gillian. She shared Gillian's disappointment that Cal still felt he owed anything to the cop, and Ria was not as shy as Gillian about voicing it. Gillian wasn't that shy about it to begin with, so one could imagine what they were like together. They both stood outside the Cube, arms crossed in defiance, watching and trying not to roll their eyes every time Cal brought up Wallowski's lack of skill.

"You know," Cal's muffled voice traveled through the walls. "You ask me for these favors and then you whine and complain the entire time about my methods. If you don't like the way I do things, find another micro-expressions expert. Oh! There aren't any..."

As Cal went on and on about how special he was and how not special Wallowski was acting, Eli crept into the room. He hadn't realized they were all convening, so he felt like he was arriving tardy. Nobody really noticed though, not at first. He went over to his buddies Gillian and Ria, crossing his arms just like them.

"Another favor?" he scoffed under his breath. Gillian turned to him and smiled knowingly, a quiet substitute for a warm hello. She turned back to the spectacle: Cal inside The Cube with Wallowski and the suspect. She tried to watch, but she found herself distracted. Usually the sight of Cal with Wallowski - with anyone else, really - made her jealous, but at the moment she couldn't really concentrate. She found her gaze drawn back to Eli. He was standing right next to her, closer than usual. Maybe it was because it was dark, and he wanted her to hear his disapproving whispers. Ria had done the same when she'd shown up, sidling up next to Gillian and whispering something supportive in her ear. It made Gillian feel much better, knowing they were on her side. But no...no, there was something different going on here. When Ria said it, Gillian felt pride. When Eli said it, it made Gillian feel sort of...

...hot.

Gillian found herself staring at Eli, at his jawline in particular. He had a very serious expression on his face. He looked good. Gillian had never noticed before how handsome he was. She'd always found him cute, but today, in the shadows, with that look on his face, like he could take Cal in a fight or something...

Eli felt eyes on him. Gillian's eyes. It made his skin tingle. He glanced at her, just as she was looking away. He wondered if there was something on his face, or if he'd said something wrong, or if his stomach growled without him realizing. That happened to him a lot.

The threesome watched Cal perform, they watched Wallowski scowl, and they watched the subject sweat. Nothing much came of it. A clue here, a revealing facial expression there. None of the three of them really cared. It was Wallowski's case, not theirs. They weren't even getting any money for it. In fact, it was after five o'clock on a boring day; why were they still there at all?

"I'm thirsty." Gillian said out loud, at normal volume, out of the blue. One of the interns that was watching the monitors almost turned to look at her, but they were afraid they might miss something important. Eli wanted to tell them they shouldn't be so worried about displeasing Lightman, but Gillian was speaking, and she was more important.

"We never hang out." she said, turning first to Eli and then to Ria. "Let's go somewhere."

"Dinner?" Ria suggested hopefully.

"Yeah!" Gillian said, looking at each of them again and smiling like she'd just gotten a breath of fresh air. Ria and Eli smiled at each other. They loved it when Gillian got happy.

The Lightman Group may have been dead, but at six on a Friday night, the rest of the city was just coming to life. Gillian put her name in at a decent restaurant, and they decided to stand at the bar as they waited for their table.

"So, this is on Lightman, right?" Ria asked, eating an olive from her martini.

"Mmhm." Gillian hummed happily as she sipped her double whiskey sour through a small straw. "Start a tab." she told the bartender, sliding a familiar credit card over the bar. "Please." she added with a smile, since she was the nice one. She turned around then, facing the restaurant. There was that breath of fresh air feeling again. Except it wasn't just fresh, it was yummy. That yummy smell...it was Eli, wasn't it?

"Loker...?" said Gillian. She trailed right off, not sure if her question was appropriate. He was a subordinate, but she wanted to be friends, so she decided to act like one. Instead of asking, Gillian leaned toward Eli and inhaled near his neck.

Whoa.

More intoxicating than the alcohol slowly seeping into her veins, the scent that filled Gillian's brain almost knocked her over. Her first instinct was to sink her teeth right into his neck, but she managed to control herself. Leaning back, she noticed her heart rate was up just a little, her pulse just a little stronger in certain places.

"Is that new?" Gillian said, her voice just a little lower than normal.

"...Um." said Eli, trying to think of an answer to her question. Gillian had sniffed his neck. Her face had been kissably close. That certainly was new.

Ria was made curious by Gillian's little investigation. From the other side of their boss, Ria walked around to Eli and sniffed his neck. She'd been there before, so she wasn't as shy about it. She thought it would be just another boyish body spray smell, but when she inhaled, she knew she'd inhaled a little too deeply.

Ohhh, shhhit...

For a second, Ria would have sworn she was high. The effect faded when she got control of her senses, remembering that she'd had some of that, and that it hadn't worked out. Damn, he smelled good, though.

"That's good." Ria said approvingly, though she finished it with a layer of nonchalance.

The sample! Eli thought to himself. Jeez, I picked a good one...

"Yeah, I, uh...decided to try something new." Eli said, nodding casually. He looked away and sipped his beer as Gillian put her lips around her straw and watched him. He didn't want to indulge in his normal train of thought with the two of them so close. Two expert mind readers, and a healthy, young man with lust on the brain. Embarrassing situation potential, to put it lightly. Not that the women didn't know already - in the backs of their minds, if not in the very front - what their actions did to Eli Loker on a daily basis.

"Foster, party of three?" the hostess called out, already approaching them. Gillian smiled at her and led her party to the back of the restaurant, where a cozy table awaited them.

Gillian, still haunted by some pheremone infused cologne, told Eli to sit next to her. She didn't say it with words, though. She made eye contact with him over her shoulder, and gestured with her head toward one side of the table. Her warm, friendly smile looked different to him that night. It looked more like the smiles she gave Cal when Cal was flirting with her. It kind of freaked Eli out.

"You're hair's getting long." Ria said to Eli, leaning over the table and running her fingers through it before she took her seat on the other side of the table. This also freaked him out.

"It's been a while since -" Eli halted when he felt Gillian's hand in his hair. "...I...cut it..." he said, controlling his voice with an iron will. She slipped her fingers through the curls, getting right down to the scalp.

"You should keep growing it out." Gillian said, smiling softly. "It's so...thick."

Eli laughed a nervous little laugh at her comment. The softer her smile, the sexier the look. "It'll start going gray when I'm forty." Eli mentioned, nerves forcing him to make small talk as Gillian continued to massage his scalp. "But, uhm, I'll never go bald. Everyone on my mom's side...still has their hair..."

Gillian took her hand back, scrunching up her shoulders and smiling big at the two of them before taking another sip of her drink. "So!" she said. "What are we hungry for?"

Eli couldn't help but notice, during dinner, how Gillian and Ria were acting toward him. Something seemed to be bothering Ria, as if she were being pulled in one direction and resisting it as much as possible. Gillian, on the other hand, had given herself freely to whatever she was feeling, and it got worse the more she imbibed. Her eyes sparkled when she laughed at all of his stupid jokes. He started to make the jokes purposefully bad, just to see how she'd react, and nothing changed. She still put her hand on his arm and laughed like he was the funniest man in the world. She leaned on him, and fed him bites of her delicious dinner so she could steal bites of his, and she gazed with adoring eyes as he was telling his stories.

"You know what I'm going to do?" Gillian declared once their empty dessert dishes had been cleared from the table. "I'm going to authorize a big, fat raise. Just for you." She was looking straight at Eli with her shining, drunk eyes when she said it. Ria cleared her throat in an obvious manner, and Gillian turned to look at her. "For both of you." she said, clearly an after thought. Ria didn't mind as long as she got the pay bump in the end. The two women smiled at each other, and Eli noticed something very strange pass between them.

He'd only had one beer, since it had been quite obvious from the moment they arrived that both Gillian and Ria intended on getting smashed. He recognized instantly Ria's confrontational smirk, and it gave him a funny feeling deep inside. She only smirked like that when she thought she could win some sort of personal battle or prove someone wrong. Eli had been on the receiving end of that smirk many a time, through many a work-based competition. But what could Ria possibly be feeling competitive about with Dr. Foster?

"You know what I'm going to do?" Eli asked them, only slightly intimidated when they both turned their smirks in his direction. "I'm going to drive you both home, because you are both beyond drunk."

"Oh, please." Ria began to disagree, but she was distracted by Gillian reaching out to touch Eli's cheek.

"So sweet." Gillian murmured softly, smiling warmly at him.

"And you, the drunkest of them all." Eli muttered.

Gillian paid the bill, left a very generous tip, and handed her keys over to Eli. Between the alcohol and her sudden, strong attraction to him, it would have been understating it to say she was feeling out of sorts, and not quite herself. All she wanted was to be near him, and she found herself doing very un-Gillian like things to get Ria out of the picture. It was made worse by the fact that Ria seemed to want Gillian out of the way as well.

"We should take Dr. Foster home first," Ria suggested. "We wouldn't want her to pass out on the way."

"But Ria's place is so much closer." Gillian reminded them. "With gas prices being what they are-"

"We can take my car," Ria said with a mean smile. "If that's all you're worried about. I just filled up this morning." It was nowhere near as convincing as Gillian's faux friendliness.

Eli could see the dangerous look in Ria's eyes. He thought for a moment about which woman he wanted to piss off the least, and which woman he wanted out of his hair - his soft, thick, full head of hair - first. Gillian was his boss, and Ria was his subordinate. Gillian kept touching his body, and Ria kept giving her looks of hate. Gillian was wasted, and Ria was merely drunk. The choice was simple.

"I'll drop Ria off first."

He received a fresh look of hate from the younger woman, but he tried not to think about it. She wouldn't do or say anything in front of their boss, and he thought Gillian would be easier to take care of later - meaning, easier to resist if they were alone, of course - after he dropped Ria off. That was not his first mistake, but it would, perhaps, be his biggest. And best.

Gillian called shotgun, and she was buckled into her seat before Ria even had the chance to argue. Eli tried to ignore the angry girl in the back seat, and drove faster so they could be rid of her sooner.

What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?

Eli kept asking himself this question, but no one would answer. The possibility of being alone in a car with Gillian...but she was drunk! He couldn't...he shouldn't! But she wanted to, and he wanted to, and maybe throwing them both in a taxi would have been a better idea.

"Loker," Ria said desperately as the car pulled up to the curb outside her modest apartment. "You should help me inside, I might stumble and fall."

She'd scooched up behind him, behind the driver's seat, and placed her hands on his shoulders. Gillian turned to her, smiling, and said "You're fiiiine."

Eli looked at Gillian. He felt pain blossoming in the soft flesh of his neck as Ria's fingernails dug in. "Yeah." Eli agreed, hiding the pain as much as possible. "You're fine, Ria. Just sleep it off. Just-" Eli took his hands off the wheel and peeled Ria's hands from his shoulders. "Sleep it off." he said firmly, avoiding direct eye contact and placing both hands back on the wheel. He looked at the rearview mirror, and knew that Ria would have eaten him alive had he not rejected her. The look that flashed in her eyes - they made eye contact in the mirror - needed no words.

"Any day now." Gillian said suddenly, turning fully in her seat. Ria pursed her lips and contemplated her options for just another moment. Apparently not quite as susceptible to the spell of the cologne, Ria used her lingering anger and bitterness toward Eli to break that spell before exiting the car. On her way around the back of the car, Ria did stumble. Eli caught it in the rearview, and a guilty feeling of responsibility crept up on him.

"Maybe I should make sure she gets in all right-" he began to say. Gillian reached a hand over the stick and placed it high enough on Eli's thigh to startle him.

"Drive." she said, leaving no room for ifs ands or buts. Eli's hands squeezed the wheel, and his foot pressed down on the gas as if of its own will.

Gillian breathed deeply and sighed, her hand never leaving its place on Eli's thigh. The only time it moved was when she lowered it and squeezed the taut inner muscles. Eli kept scooching up in his seat, trying futiley to escape her grasp. He kept his leg tense, and told himself it was for the sticky gas pedal.

"It's so hot in here." Gillian murmured. From the corner of his eye, Eli saw her shifting in her seat. Was...was she writhing?

"You should-" Eli began, and then stopped because his voice was cracking. He cleared his throat before he continued. "You could open a window."

"That's not what I was talking about." said Gillian, her voice now more of a purr than a murmur.

"Well," Eli said, as conversationally as possible with his strained voice. "We're almost to your place."

Gillian turned her head and stared at him, her hot gaze melting him from the inside, though it certainly didn't soften any part of him. "I can't wait that long." she told him, making those not-so-soft parts even harder. His leg was so tense. He was squeezing every muscle, expending so much effort just to keep from getting an erection he could barely speak. He was afraid to even ask what she meant, since he was fairly certain he already understood completely.

"Pull over." Gillian begged him, breathing the words out as if there just wasn't room enough in her body with all that lust inside of her. Eli's panic spiked. They were in a residential neighborhood, blocks from Gillian's home. The street lights were on and if anyone walked by -

Her hand squeezed his leg tighter. It was not a request; it was an order.

"Pull over." she said, unbuckling her seatbelt as she spoke.

"Okay, uh, Dr. Foster-" Eli stammered, pulling over only because Gillian was beginning to climb over the stick shift and he was going to crash if he didn't stop right that moment.

"Call me Gillian."

"Gillian!" Eli exclaimed. He made the car screech to a halt, parked at a diagonal to the curb, and he pulled up on the emergency brake. She'd stopped climbing, but only to hike up her skirt and pull down her panties. He had a desperate need to stop her before she did anything else she'd regret.

"Eli, why are you fighting this?" She asked, contorting her body in the confines of her compact car so she could be as efficient as possible. All that mattered now was getting him inside her. "I know you're feeling what I'm feeling, I can see it all over your face."

"You're very drunk," Eli insisted, his hands tight on the wheel, his face forward, afraid to look at her.

"I'm not that drunk." she purred. The panties were off. He could feel her smiling.

"And, also," he continued as if she had not spoken. "I think a nervous breakdown might be part of this, this...whatever this is."

"We can discuss your pathetically low self-esteem later." said Gillian. "Right now I need you to unzip your pants."

"No, Gillian-" Eli said haltingly, distracted by her resuming the climb onto his lap, and also by the fact that he'd called her Gillian again. She had no trouble fighting his feeble resistance. The part of him that wanted her to stop was so small, and it was shrinking every second. Unlike that other part of him.

"Do I have to do it for you?" she said teasingly. He took her by the wrists, but again she fought him and won. He didn't want to hurt her - or maybe he really wanted her to unzip his pants? Eli pondered this thought as Gillian pulled his belt out of its buckle. She inhaled deeply again, and this time Eli realized it wasn't just preparation a sigh. She was smelling him.

"God, you smell so fucking good." she breathed out. She bent down, buried her face in his neck and inhaled again. She moaned, and gave his neck a long, wet lick that went all the way up to his ear. His eyes crossed, and then rolled back in his head. No more fighting, said the voice inside his head. He was hard as a rock, Gillian was straddling him, and he knew the fight would be over once she pressed her body against him. Her skirt was hiked up past mid-thigh. He felt it when he placed his hands on her legs without thinking about it. One of her hands was gripping the headrest behind Eli's head, to steady herself, because the other hand was reaching into Eli's loosened zipper and pulling him out and stroking him and he hadn't been laid in so long and it was Gillian fucking Foster on top of him.

"Oh." said Eli, closing his eyes, letting his head fall back against the headrest. "Good god."

Gillian moaned again, stroking him harder, faster. She smelled the cologne and she wanted to come, she wanted him to come, but not before she had him inside of her. She had to have him inside her. Now.

The licking and the smelling and the moaning continued, and suddenly she was lowering herself onto him. Eli made a sound like he wasn't sure what planet he was on, and the feeling of Gillian surrounding him as she arched her back and thrust her hip towards him did not help the disorientation. All he could see, feel and hear was Gillian, on his lap, moaning, gasping for air and then moaning again.

"What did you do to me?" she moaned, the words strung together somewhere in there. The snarky part of him would have said 'Seems to me you've got the monopoly on 'doing', here.' The insecure part of him wanted to say 'I don't usually come this fast, please believe me.' But Gillian was starting to grind faster and faster and she was shouting and squeezing things and hitting the car horn behind her and having what seemed to be a very intense orgasm. After that Eli could no longer control himself. The most intense feeling of pleasure a man could experience ripped through him, while Gillian was still shouting and hitting the damn horn. As Eli's feeling faded he reached up, without looking, to take her hand away from the wheel. Gillian, her body turned to quivering Jello, whimpered and allowed him to control her weakened limbs. His head was resting limply against the headrest, and it lolled to the side as she cuddled closer and inhaled once again with her face against his neck. She was still smelling him. She was still licking him. She was still horny. This couldn't be natural, thought Eli. Even if it was true.

"I want to spend the rest of my life in a bed with you." She murmured into his neck, breathing him in, devouring the scent as much as she could. Unfortunately for this rabid version of Gillian, Eli was a post-orgasm nap kind of guy.

"I have to get you home." he groaned, disappointed only because he was sure it was all about the sample he'd found in the magazine. He wondered if she'd even remember it the next morning.

Somehow, some way, Eli got Gillian into her apartment. There may have been some trickery involved, like telling her he would stay and then bolting the moment she laid down on the bed. She yawned and let her eyes slip closed; she was sleepy, not from exertion but from whatever cycle had begun when she was exposed to the scent. She'd had her way with him; her body could rest now.

In the morning, Eli reluctantly - dutifully - stepped into the shower. After driving Gillian's car back to the restaurant and picking up his own, the need-a-nap feeling had worn off. He hadn't slept very well at all.

"With great power..." he muttered, bowing his head and letting the harsh stream push his hair over his eyes. "Comes great responsibility. And I cannot be responsible for women debasing themselves like that."

His feelings were mixed, of course. He didn't believe it really happened, yet he remembered every detail. Gillian's hand in his hair, on his leg, in his pants. Her voice, the words, the moaning...the moaning. He thought about the car horn blaring, over and over again, into the night. What her neighbors must have thought...

Eli thought about it a moment too long. He began to hit his head, softly, against the shower wall. Why? Why? Why? he asked himself. Why did I wash it off?

Upon arriving at work, Eli almost ran right into Cal.

"Grace." said Cal. "Composure. The ability to see people that are walking right in front of you. These are the things I prefer to see in my employees."

"Yeah." Eli replied curtly, not in the mood. Aimless but for his desire to avoid Cal, Eli walked briskly toward the other end of the building.

"Yeah!" a confused Cal called after him. "Top of the morning. And all that."

Gillian's office was coming up on the right. Eli began to walk faster, hoping to breeze by undetected. He should have known, with his luck, that she would walk out just as he reached the edge of her doorway. They almost collided; it would have been a full body contact type of collision, too. Gillian froze, recoiled, and stared at him with her mouth open and nothing to say. Eli watched her cheeks blush a deep, deep red. She remembered all of it just like he did.

You're so beautiful when you're flustered. he wanted to say. You're so beautiful, exclamation point! I didn't mean to let you use me!

Why wouldn't the words come out? Gillian turned abruptly and brushed past him, leaving Eli alone in front of her door, his mouth hanging open just like hers.

"You've got to be kidding me." Ria's voice came from beside him. Oh, the contempt. Eli turned and made eye contact with her just long enough to confirm that she was looking at him exactly the way he expected her to be looking at him. With barely a muttered rebuttal, Eli shook his head and set off for the waiting room. He had to find the magazine. He had to find the sample! To warn others, of course. To get its name, to find out what company manufactured it, he had to tell someone! He had to...he had to...he had to find it, cover his entire body with it and lock himself in Gillian's office until she smelled him again and they could do anything and everything she'd imagined the night before.

When he got to the lobby, he found the tables were bare. No magazines, not even a stray subscription postcard. Panic, and then the sound of high heels behind him. It was Heidi, with a stack of glossy magazines in her arms.

"Can I...?" he half asked, before taking the entire stack. He went through them quickly, looking for the GQ he'd read the previous day.

"I want them laid neatly on the table in a cascade pattern..." Heidi instructed him, since he was so intent on taking them from her.

"No..." he muttered. "No, no, no...these are all new."

"They all arrived today." Heidi explained, wondering why that would be a bad thing. All the tattered covers really bugged her by the end of the month.

"Where are the old ones? The ones that were here yesterday?" Eli asked urgently, wondering how Heidi could be so careless.

"I threw them out." said Heidi. Duh.

"You didn't even recycle them?" he said, not hiding the judgment. "You just threw them away?"

"That's what I meant. They were picked up by the recycling people."

"When?"

"Just now!"

Eli sighed. He dropped the magazines on the table, and he let himself drop down onto the nearby couch.

"I didn't realize you saved them. I'll save them from now on-"

"Don't." said Eli, head in his hands, dejected. "Don't bother."

"Okay." Heidi mouthed, raising her eyebrows and turning on her heel to leave the room. These people, they had their quirks. She'd come back later to organize the new magazines - the ones with only FDA-approved cologne samples.