Chapter 2: The Storm After the Storm
The click of the latch was deafening.
Teresa sat in stunned silence as Patrick opened the door, stepped through, and closed it behind him. The solid thud of wood meeting the frame was a full stop, an ending. He was gone. The room felt colder, larger, suddenly hollowed out. The only evidence he’d been there was the slick warmth between her thighs and the phantom echo of his touch branding her skin.
She didn’t move. She sat on the bed, the comforter a damp, tangled shroud around her hips, and stared at the rain-blurred window. Her mind, usually so orderly, was a frantic scramble of conflicting signals.
I love you.
The words reverberated, looking for a place to land. Could they be true? Or was it just another layer of the con, the most devastating performance of his life? Maybe it was payback—some twisted retaliation for years of her reining him in, for being the voice of reason that clipped his chaotic wings. A punishment dressed up as passion. Or perhaps he’d sensed her pathetic, obvious infatuation and decided to have a little fun with it, to reduce the unflappable Agent Lisbon to a begging, shuddering mess for his own private amusement.
A darker, simpler thought surfaced. Maybe he was just horny. He’d heard her, seen an opportunity, and taken it. But she dismissed that almost as quickly as it came. He hadn’t taken anything for himself. He hadn’t even unzipped his pants. He had touched her with a single-minded focus that was almost devotional, studied her responses, given her a shattering release, and then walked away. He had taken care of her. And then he had left the next move entirely up to her.
Just like he always did. Just like he had been doing, quietly and persistently, since his return from South America. Reaching out. Checking in. Being present in a way that was entirely new. He had been rebuilding the bridges he’d burned, brick by careful brick. And tonight, he had laid his heart at her feet in the rawest possible terms and then… retreated. He had presented her with the nuclear option and then vacated the control room, leaving her alone with the big red button.
The realization crystallized, cold and sharp. He had done what he wanted—he had touched her, confessed to her—and then he had slunk away, leaving the catastrophic fallout, the decision of what happened next, squarely on her shoulders. He’d created the chaos, as was his nature, and left her to pick up the pieces, as was her fate.
The shame and confusion curdled, simmering into something hotter, cleaner.
Anger.
It ignited in her chest, a white-hot flare that burned away the last of her shocked stupor. How dare he? How dare he ambush her in her most vulnerable moment, crack her open like a safe, spill her secret yearning out into the light, and then just… walk out? Delivering a confession like that was a grenade. You didn’t get to toss it into someone’s lap and then calmly stroll into the next room.
"Son of a bitch," she whispered to the empty room.
With a sharp, furious motion, she threw the comforter off. The air hit her sweat-damp skin. She stood, her legs steady now, fueled by rage. She didn't look at the mess of the bed, the indentation where he’d knelt. She yanked her silk nightgown down over her hips, not bothering to smooth the tangled mess of her auburn hair. She was a storm contained in a slender frame, marching across the carpet.
She didn’t knock. She didn’t pause. She grabbed the handle of the connecting door and hurled it open.
The scene in his room was a study in contrast. It was neat, undisturbed. The bed was made. A single whiskey glass sat half-full on the nightstand. And there he was, lying on top of the covers, propped against the headboard, shirtless. The faint light from the bathroom outlined the lean muscles of his chest and abdomen, the pale scars she knew were there. He was staring at the same rain-smeared window, his profile calm, as if he’d been waiting.
The casual, expectant pose was the final spark.
“How dare you?”
Her voice wasn’t a shout. It was a low, venomous scrape of sound. He turned his head slowly, his blue eyes meeting hers. He didn’t look surprised.
“Teresa.”
“Don’t you ‘Teresa’ me,” she spat, stepping fully into his room, letting the door swing shut behind her. “How dare you do that? How dare you say those things to me and then just… walk out that door?”
He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I gave you a choice.”
“You gave me a burden!” She took another step forward, her fists clenched at her sides. “You don’t get to drop a bombshell like that and then make it my responsibility to defuse it! That’s what you always do! You act. You manipulate. You create these… these impossible situations, and then you stand back and watch the rest of us scramble to deal with the consequences! ‘Your call, Lisbon.’ That’s just your way of avoiding the blame when it all goes to hell!”
He stood now, facing her. The space between them crackled. “What did you want me to do? Force the issue? You were shaking. You looked at me like I was a ghost. I told you the truth. Anything after that had to be your choice.”
“The truth?” A brittle laugh escaped her. “Which part? The part where you love me? Or the part where you’ve apparently been fantasizing about me for years while treating me like your fucking keeper? Was this your payoff, Jane? A little thank-you for all my hard work keeping you alive?”
His calm finally fissured. A flash of genuine pain crossed his face, followed swiftly by a darkening anger that matched her own. He closed the distance between them in two strides. He didn’t touch her, but his proximity was a physical force.
“You think that was a payoff?” His voice was dangerously quiet. “You think what I felt for you in that room was gratitude? Damn it, Lisbon. Look at me.”
She did. She glared up at him, her chest heaving. The anger was a live wire in her veins, making her reckless, sharpening her tongue to a weapon. She wanted to shatter that infuriating calm, to crack the placid surface and see what boiled beneath.
“I am looking at you,” she snarled. “And I see you, Jane. I finally see you. You used me, just like you always do. You heard me, vulnerable and alone, and you saw an opportunity. Was it a game? Another puzzle to solve? The great Patrick Jane, figuring out how to make his plain strait-laced boss come apart?”
He flinched, but she barreled on, years of frustration and hurt pouring out in a toxic stream.
“All these years, that’s all I’ve been, right? A tool. A useful idiot to be manipulated. To keep you in line, or out of jail, or just to clean up your goddamn messes. And tonight—what was that? A new form of manipulation? If you weren’t thanking me for my service, then you must have just been horny. Or was it simpler? Did you just want to see me humiliated? You’ve always been good at that.”
She took a step closer, her finger jabbing toward his chest. “You love me? You have a fucking terrible way of showing it. You vanish for years. You come back haunted and quiet and you… you look at me with those eyes and you think that undoes everything? You think that gives you the right to—”
He had gone utterly still. Preternaturally quiet. She didn’t notice the change in the air, the dangerous focus narrowing in his gaze. She was in the middle of her next sentence, the words “you always run away” forming on her lips, when he moved.
It wasn’t a gentle motion.
He closed the last inch between them in a blur, his hands shoving her back against the wall. The impact knocked the air from her lungs in a hard, surprised gasp. Her hands flew up, palms slapping against his bare chest to push him away, but he was already grabbing her wrists.
His grip was iron. He pinned her hands to the wall on either side of her head, his body caging her in. The cool plaster was a shock against her back. His face was inches from hers, his breath hot on her skin.
“I. Don’t. Run.” The words were gritted out, low and venomous. “Not from this. Not from you.”
All the anger in her coiled into a tight, hot ball of pure defiance. She struggled against his hold, but it was useless. His strength, usually so carefully concealed, was absolute. “Then what do you call that?”
He didn’t loosen his grip. His eyes, dark and blazing, bored into hers. “What I call that,” he said, his voice dropping to a lethal, hushed tone, “was walking away from what I wanted to do because I chose to do what I thought was right. Don’t confuse the two, Teresa. Don’t ever confuse what I chose to do with what I wanted to do.”
She swallowed, the heat of him seeping into her through the thin silk of her nightgown. “What did you want to do? Because all I saw was a man who would do anything, use anyone to get his revenge.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Damnit, woman. From the first day I met you, I wanted to kiss you. I had this utterly irrational, overpowering urge to just… put my mouth on yours. It scared the hell out of me.”
He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. His confession wasn’t gentle; it was wrenched from him, each word rough-edged. “That feeling never went away. It got worse. It festered. No matter what I did, no fucking thing I tried, it got worse.”
His gaze dropped to her lips, then back up, holding her captive. “You’d wear that grey cashmere sweater, the one that hugged your tits, and I’d spend the whole meeting imagining the weight of them in my hands, the shape of your nipples under the wool. You’d be yelling at me, your face flushed with that righteous anger, and all I could think about was kissing you until you shut up, until you were gasping for a different reason.”
Teresa’s breath caught. Her struggles had stilled. She was listening, utterly transfixed, as he painted a secret history she’d never glimpsed.
“I wanted to bend you over the interrogation table,” he continued, the words filthy and low. “Use your own cuffs on you. I wanted to fuck you right there until neither of us could remember our own names, until we were both just… gone. You’d stand by my couch to berate me and your scent—that clean, sharp perfume—would hit me. It made my mouth water. I’d sit there with a fucking case file in my lap and all I could think about was how you’d taste.”
She gaped at him. Her mind, so adept at profiling, had completely missed this. She’d seen his obsession, his brilliance, his grief. She’d never seen this hungry, relentless want directed at her.
“It got so bad,” he said, the admission sounding torn from his throat. “By our fourth year, I had to move my workspace. The attic storage room. The smell of dust and old paper was the only thing that drowned you out enough for me to focus.”
“I… I had no idea,” she breathed, the anger evaporating under the deluge of his truth.
“Of course you didn’t.” His laugh was short, bitter. “I made sure of it. I knew that if I gave you even a hint—if I let you see that I wanted you, that I had fallen in love with you somewhere between you saving my life and you buying me a damn cup of tea—it would make you a target. Red John would have seen it. He would have used you. And I… I was terrified of the choice I’d have to make. My vow of revenge, or a life with you. I was afraid of what I’d pick.”
The raw honesty of it was a physical blow. All those years of his distance, his barbs, his infuriating self-isolation, took on a devastating new shape. It hadn’t been disdain. It had been a brutal, calculated protection.
“You left me behind,” she said, her voice strangled by the memory of his disappearance. “You went to South America and you left me.”
He laughed again, a sardonic, pained sound. “To avoid damaging your life any more than I already had. I thought I could stay away. I thought distance would kill it.” He shook his head slowly, his gaze tracing her features as if memorizing them. “But I am drawn to you, Teresa. Like a moth to a fucking flame. I always have been.”
He stopped. The silence that followed was total, swollen with everything he’d just laid bare. Teresa could only stare, her mind utterly blank of a response. She had built her understanding of their history on a foundation she now realized was sand. It shifted under her, terrifying and exhilarating.
Patrick watched her processing, his impatience visibly returning. Her silence seemed to grate against him. “If you want me to follow through,” he said, the words clipped and intense, his eyes dropping to her mouth once more. “Then I will follow through. Right now.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He took her face in his hands, his thumbs rough against her cheekbones, and kissed her.
It wasn’t like anything she’d imagined. It wasn’t gentle or questioning. It was a claiming. A searing, hungry pressure that shattered her last thought. Teresa let out a sharp, surprised yelp against his lips, and he used the sound, the slight part of her lips, to plunge his tongue into her mouth.
She melted. The last vestige of resistance dissolved into a liquid heat that pooled low in her belly. Her hands, freed from his grip, flew up to clutch at his arms, to pull the solid weight of him closer. But Patrick caught her wrists again in a swift, unbreakable motion. He pinned them back against the wall above her head, his fingers intertwining with hers, holding her there.
He kissed her like he was starving. His tongue explored her mouth with a frantic, possessive intensity, tasting her, learning her. She moaned into the kiss, her body arching off the wall to press against the hard line of him. The feel of his bare chest against her silk-clad breasts sent shocks through her system. She could feel the evidence of his want, hard and insistent against her stomach.
He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged gusts against her swollen lips. His eyes were wild, unfocused. “Tell me,” he demanded, his voice gravel. “Tell me to follow through.”
“Yes,” she gasped, the word ripped from her core. “God, yes, Patrick. Follow through.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. He released her wrists only to grab the neckline of her nightgown. With one vicious, tearing pull, the delicate silk gave way. The sound of it rending was obscenely loud. Cool air hit her skin, followed instantly by the scorching heat of his gaze as he looked his fill at her bare breasts.
Cool air hit her skin, followed instantly by the scorching heat of his gaze as he looked his fill at her bare breasts. The torn silk hung from her shoulders, a ruined banner. He didn’t kiss her again. He gripped the remaining fabric at her hips and yanked it downward in one swift, relentless motion until the nightgown pooled around her ankles on the carpet.
He took her hand, his fingers lacing through hers with a firm, unarguable pressure, and pulled her away from the wall into the centre of the room. The space felt vast and exposed. “The first thing I want,” he growled, the sound vibrating in the quiet room, “is to see you.”
He reached over and slapped on the bedside lamp. A low, yellow light flooded the area, stark and unforgiving. Teresa blinked rapidly, her eyes struggling to adapt from the dimness. She stood completely naked before him, every scar, every curve, every secret illuminated.
Patrick stood back, his eyes traveling over her with a slow, analytical intensity that made her skin prickle. This wasn’t a lover’s glance; it was an inventory. He closed the small distance and lifted his hand. The tip of his index finger traced a feather-light path around one areola, then stroked directly over the tightened peak of her nipple.
She gasped softly, the sensation a bright shock.
“You have gorgeous breasts,” he said, his voice a husky note of pure discovery. “I have wanted to see them. For so long.” He teased each nipple with that same light, maddening touch, circling and brushing until they were hard, aching points. Then his fingers trailed down the valley between her breasts, over the flat plane of her stomach, and settled with a possessive weight on the curve of her hip.
He nuzzled into the junction of her neck and shoulder, his breath hot, and nipped her earlobe. A full-body shiver wracked her. He began to circle her then, a predator assessing his claim, his voice a low murmur she felt more than heard. He pressed up behind her, his chest to her back, and his hands came around to cup her breasts fully, lifting their weight.
“I knew they would fit perfectly in my hands,” he breathed into her hair. The statement was devoid of boastfulness; it was a simple, satisfied fact.
Teresa let her head fall back against his shoulder, a moan escaping her. She wrapped her arms back around his neck, arching her spine to push her breasts more firmly into his palms. The feel of him, hard and urgent against her lower back, was a delicious promise.
“Do you like your nipples sucked?” he asked, his thumbs brushing back and forth. Before she could form a full answer, he pinched both peaks firmly, rolling them between his finger and thumb.
“Yes!” The word tore out of her in a sharp gasp.
He released her and stepped back. The loss of his heat was a shock. He moved around to face her again, his gaze dropping to the sweep of her hips. “You have an amazing ass,” he said, his tone conversational yet laden with intent. He leaned in, his lips almost touching her ear, and whispered, “I cannot wait to fuck you from behind.”
He straightened up, his expression shifting to one of command. “Sit on the end of the bed. Spread your legs. I want to see you.”
A fresh wave of vulnerability crashed over her. She turned and slowly lowered herself to sit on the edge of the mattress. The cool bedspread kissed her thighs. She looked up at him, her heart pounding against her ribs. She hesitated, her muscles refusing to obey, the instinct to conceal herself warring with the desperate need to please him.
Patrick saw it. He dropped to his knees on the carpet in front of her, putting his eyes level with her core. “Spread your legs,” he repeated, his voice softer now but no less imperative.
She looked down into his upturned face. His gaze was unwavering, intensely blue in the lamplight. Her own eyes were wide, uncertain. She had never been looked at like this before—with such raw, unabashed hunger and focused attention. It was more exposing than the physical nakedness.
“You told me to take what I want,” he reminded her, his hands resting on her knees. “What I want is to see you. All of you.” He paused, his thumbs making small circles on her inner thighs. “The only way I can take what I want is if you give it to me.”
The truth of it unknotted something inside her. This was the choice he’d spoken of. Not in the abstract, but here, on her skin. Her surrender was the permission. Teresa took a shaky breath and, closing her eyes against the burning embarrassment, let her knees fall apart.
“Look at me,” he said.
She forced her eyes open.
“You’re beautiful.” His praise was matter-of-fact, devastating in its sincerity. He didn’t look away from her face as his hand moved. His fingers trailed lightly through her damp curls, a bare whisper of contact over her swollen folds. The touch was so gentle it was agony. “I’m going to taste your pretty pussy.”
Teresa caught her bottom lip between her teeth, a tremor running through her. She watched, utterly mesmerized, as he held her gaze. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he slowly leaned forward. The first hot, wet stroke of his tongue was a deliberate, broad press against her entire cleft.
She cried out, her hands flying to fist in his hair. He didn’t close his eyes. He watched her unravel as he licked her again, slowly, deeply, savoring her. Then he focused, his mouth finding her clit with unerring accuracy. He sucked the sensitive bud gently into his mouth, flicking it with the tip of his tongue.
“Oh, god, Patrick…” Her head fell back, but she wrenched it forward again, compelled to keep the visual connection he demanded. His blue eyes were dark with pleasure, watching every twitch of her face as he ate her with a slow, thorough dedication. He lapped at her, drinking her in, his tongue delving inside her before returning to circle her clit with relentless precision.
The pleasure was a sharp, coiling wire, tightening with every stroke. His hands slid under her thighs, lifting her, opening her wider to his mouth. The obscene, wet sounds of his feast filled the room, mingling with her ragged pants and helpless moans.
“You taste even better than I imagined,” he murmured against her, the vibration making her jolt. “All those years. Fuck.” He returned to his task with renewed hunger, sucking harder, licking faster.
Teresa’s thighs began to shake. The build was too intense, too fast. “I’m… I’m gonna…”
He pulled back, leaving her aching and empty. A sob of frustration broke from her. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes gleaming. “Not yet,” he said, his voice rough. “I’m not done looking.” He rose to his feet, his own breathing uneven. He unbuckled his belt, the leather sliding free with a sharp hiss. “My turn.”