Title: The Other Woman Author: Isabel "Izzy" Izenthe izzy_izenthe@yahoo.com Archive: Anywhere Rating: NC-17 (MSR) Classification: VR Spoilers: "Drive" and "Triangle" Disclaimer: Characters from the "X-Files" are the property of 1013 Productions and the Fox Television Network. This story is dedicated to my long-time friend and benefactor who wanted just one thing for Christmas. * * * His lies sounded like poetry when groaned in the meter of sex. "No one else. Only you, Scully. Only you." Everything about the evening had been perfect, meticulously planned, lit by firelight and candles, scented with wine and freshly laundered sheets. Silk flowed over her body like cream as she led him from front door to dinner table and from there to her bedroom. And when the time came to undress her, his inertia wasn't from lack of desire, but because he feared his clumsy hands would mar her flawless skin or muss the purposeful tangles of her hair. Mulder stood and watched as she pushed one narrow strap from her shoulder, then he obediently kissed the skin she'd laid bare for him. Another strap, another kiss, and he followed behind the fabric as she slipped it over her right breast, then her left, her stomach, her hips, her legs and feet. This was real, not the tease of a familiar dream. His dreams didn't know how her taste on his tongue would mix with the waxy flavor of her lipstick when he brought her back to lucidity with kisses. He'd pushed himself inside her body in a thousand fantasies, but he'd never felt her fingers kneading his ass, didn't know her eyes got bluer with every orgasm, he'd not imagined the music she could make with gasps and insensate words. In the euphoria of release, he'd given the beauty in his arms a promise of fidelity, a sugar candy vow that melted with his memories of the other woman. He'd met her in Idaho, this other woman, on the afternoon of the third brain-numbing day of fertilizer inspections. The note on the door informed would-be visitors and thieves that the farmer and his family were in Montana until Tuesday. Mulder had nearly finished his tour of the barn when she appeared, stepping from the shadows into a stripe of sunlight. Gorgeous. Half-naked. She pressed a finger to his lips, evoking his promise that there would be no questions. Fine by him since his vocabulary had fallen apart like an upset Scrabble board. She lifted his hands and pressed them to her breasts, instructing his fingers with hers to peel her bra down until her nipples were resting on pillows of wrinkled white satin. Beyond that, there had been no gentle preliminaries, just bruising kisses and groping hands. She stepped out of her panties and knelt on all fours, pushing her ass toward him like a rutting animal. He fucked her from behind while the horses watched. When he returned to the car, he found Scully carefully mapping out their route to the next farm, checking and rechecking mileage figures on a handheld calculator. He didn't talk about the other woman, but he did pick a piece of hay out of his partner's hair. He and Scully spent two more days in Idaho, and though he looked for her everywhere, the other woman didn't return. It was just as well, he figured. Mulder wasn't fool enough to forfeit the serious, articulate scientist he'd come to love in favor of a woman who rasped out obscene instructions for exactly how she wanted to be fucked, no matter how enticing she might have seemed on the surface. The spontaneous bump and grind in the barn had been an interesting diversion. The other woman had cured his melancholy, sparked his enthusiasm for a mundane assignment by turning it into a game of hide and seek, but he would have been content to leave her in Idaho. She followed him to California. There weren't words sufficient to describe the horror of his cross-country road trip with Patrick Crump. Fortunately, words had been unnecessary with Scully there to shield him. With the authority of a drill sergeant she seized control of the scene, barked her orders and dared anyone to challenge, dispatched the merely curious and negotiated for time from those with a legitimate reason to talk to her partner. With the tender patience of a lifetime companion, she coaxed Mulder from his numb, seaside vigil and drove with deliberate slowness to a comfortable hotel. She would be nearby, she assured him, but Scully knew him well enough to sense his need for solitude. The other woman had no such insight. She just presumed she would be welcome in his shower, that he would not fight the hands that bathed him, that he wouldn't resist her warm, wet body. She had the audacity to think her mouth on his cock would so blind him with pleasure that for a few minutes he would forget the blood that splattered color across his consciousness. So brazen was she that she seemed to expect it when he picked her up, slammed her against the tile, and drove into her with his body and his madness until she'd absorbed all she could of both. With her tongue she stole a declaration of love from his mouth, even though the sentiment wasn't supposed to belong to her. Afterwards, guilt drove him to Scully's door. He would have talked to her then about the other woman, but the noise of her hair dryer obscured the sound of his knocking. They'd been home less than a day when an anomalous blip on a radar screen cried out to him like siren song. He'd been running away from Scully more than running to anything; the Queen Anne was a convenient alibi for cowardice. He'd shut his eyes to the storm and the saltwater spray and made a silly, childlike wish that hers would be the face he saw when he opened his eyes again. If given the chance, he promised to no one in particular, he would tell Dana Scully exactly how he felt. When he kept that promise in a North Carolina hospital room, his partner seemed wholly unimpressed, but someone else had been eavesdropping with an open heart. Scully dutifully adhered to visiting hour rules and left at nine o'clock. The other woman donned a pair of blue scrubs over nothing at all and slipped into his room at midnight. She slowed the pace in deference to his bruises, but sacrificed none of the intensity of their other encounters. If anything, she was more desperate for him now and this time her coarse language was tempered with endearments. Mulder's love for Scully had been built on years of shared experiences, had been reached on stair steps of trust, yet as much as he'd grown to love his partner, he loved this woman he'd so recently met. He shared with her the same words he'd offered Scully, and this woman returned them with a passion. Any man would consider himself blessed to have either woman. Mulder, selfish bastard that he was, wanted both. The other woman had been willing to share him, but he wasn't certain Scully would be as obliging, especially now that he'd spent the night making love to her in her bed. He was sure something, some tension in his arms, some message in the aimless patterns he was tracing over her belly, had revealed the anxiety he'd tried to hide because she sounded worried when she asked, "Did you like it better before? The way it was in the barn?" He recognized in her troubled expression that this wasn't a new fear. All the time he'd been grunting under the weight of his questions, she'd been carrying the same burden on stronger shoulders. And here the answer was, so ridiculously simple it took him by surprise. "Scully, I love both the women you are." She smiled then, the faint upturn of lips that on his partner was equal to a toothsome grin, and rubbed her body against his like the wanton he'd met in Idaho. "Who said there were only two?" * * * Special thanks to my editors (names withheld to protect their delusions of innocence). This wouldn't be any fun without you guys. Your feedback would be very appreciated at izzy_izenthe@yahoo.com. == Isabel "Izzy" Izenthe "Please leave your values at the front desk." -In a Paris Hotel Elevator