By Marnie Rowe <bumpkin.is@gmail.com>
Rated: PG-13
Submitted: November 2001
Summary: On a deserted night at the Planet, Lois decides to play a game with Clark. Does she have a hidden motive? Does it have the desired effect?
***
Lois looked over Clark's shoulder, pressing into him as she did so. He knew that she was just trying to get to him and so he did his best to ignore her. But the steady pressure of her upper body leaning against his back was making all his efforts at writing a joke.
Clark soon did not even feel up to making the pretense of writing anymore.'She wants to play, does she?' he thought to himself as he suddenly spun his chair around so that Lois's front, which had been distracting and tormenting him for too long, was now lying against the top of his head. He supposed that he could have straightened in his seat, gaining access to his shapely and otherwise perfectly formed tormenters; but he had something else in mind. He had pushed up her midriff shirt when he had spun around, giving himself access to her naked stomach; he could not resist the temptation, he blew the loudest and wettest raspberry that he could on that white creamy surface.
Lois shrieked in surprise; she had not expected him to turn the tables on her so suddenly or in such an undignified manner. Still holding his partner around her waist in a loose embrace, Clark leaned his head back so that he could see her face. Her shock was evident, but he could tell that she wasn't upset. That was good, meant that he would have to use a bit of creativity to get her riled for real, and he did not want to do that.
Lois knew that she was in trouble now; in the dark eyes of her partner, she could clearly see the devilment dancing. She wondered why it was that she didn't feel any disappointment at her game being ruined; but then again it hadn't been ruined really; Clark had just rewritten her mental script a bit. She wondered what he was going to do next.
He did the unthinkable; he turned back around and started to work again. Lois flipped. After being that close to her, he could work? Who did the man think he was? Her stomach was still slightly damp and tingling from where his lips had made such energetic contact. She lifted her hand to smooth the front of her shirt over her belly and rubbed, using her soothing motion to try and regain her equilibrium.
What she could not see was that Clark was not working at all. He had turned back to his monitor as a method of getting his own equilibrium back. Being that close to Lois in such a sexually playful way had wrought havoc on his insides. He was almost hyper-aware of everything the Lois did behind him, so he knew exactly when her hand lifted to rub her stomach. He wished that it was his hand soothing away the leftover tingling that his impetuous raspberry had left on that silky expanse. His mind wandered to where he would like his hands to be able to roam on her gorgeous body, and he lost all sense of where he was. He became so caught up in his mental caressing of Lois that he forgot to keep his guard up; and when Lois had already been playing with him, that was very, very dangerous.
Lois calmed down from her fit of pique and noticed that while she had, Clark's hands had stopped all motion on the keyboard. She waited for one minute, two… Curious as to what had made her partner immobile, Lois moved slowly around to be able to see his face. He wasn't even looking at the monitor! He had a glazed look in his eyes as he stared into space; his breathing was uneven, as if he was exerting himself, but he was just sitting there.
'So, he could just turn around and go back to work could he?' Lois sniggered to herself. He had made her think that he had not been affected, but he was worse off than she was.
He still had not given her any clue to whether he had seen her edge around to the side of his desk, but Lois didn't think so because the glassy look of his eyes were still very much in evidence. She edged further into her partner's personal space, eeling in between his knee and the desk. 'This is going to be so much *fun*,' Lois thought as she positioned herself so that she was perched on the desktop and placed one high-heeled shoe tip in the tiny space left on the chair's seat by her partner's very muscular thighs.
She had decided that since the subtle approach had not been working all that well for her so far, she was going to go for the all out siren and vamp. Not Cat-like, she wasn't going to come on to him that strong; but her approach was going to be not as no-nonsense as she usually strove to be. She was going to use her wit, her razor tongue, not to slash but to delicately shave away excuses and inhibitions.
"Oh, ~Cla-a-rk~," Lois singsonged in a little girl type of voice, "Wa-key, wa-key sleepy-head—Lois wants to play!" Clark's eyes, went from open and unseeing to sharp and focused as soon as she had begun to talk. He had been clearly stunned again by the picture that she made in front of him. His eyes widened as he became aware of where she was perched, and then they dropped unconsciously to her tiny waist which was partially obscured by a… knee? The thigh-length skirt that she had worn to work that day was rucked up slightly by her raised leg, which when he followed it to its end where he found the foot firmly planted between his thighs. Boy, the Prankster had known what he was talking about when he said that she had great legs. Not that it was something that he had missed for over a year.
Clark flushed a deep shade of red with what he had been thinking about, what he was still thinking about. When Lois crept up on him, he knew that his body must have been reacting. Now that he was more aware, he could clearly feel how his body was reacting; and he really hoped that Lois had not noticed it for herself, even though that was probably a vain hope due to where she had planted her foot.
"You know something Clark?" Lois asked, still mostly using that little girl voice. "You work too hard. You need to loosen up—learn how to have some fun!" And with that, she pushed with her strategically placed foot; the castors of Clark's chair rolled freely on the linoleum tile floor of the newsroom. She placed the foot that had been resting on the seat of his chair on the ground and resisted the urge to straighten her skirt. Even in its current state of being rucked up, it was just as long and even longer than some skirts out there; and she did want to torment her partner. She had a feeling that seeing her in disarray was something that he secretly longed for.
"Me work too hard? Lois, you are losing it." Clark managed to make his voice sound mostly normal, if a bit husky; but he couldn't help that, not when Lois was doing what she was doing. "I am not the most driven reporter at this paper— that would be your… ah…skirt tease." Lois had shifted her weight from one foot to the other while he spoke and drawn his eyes back to where her skirt was rumpled. He longed to be able to smooth it down, reaching up from the bottom first to pull it down gently so that it was straight and not bunched, then to reach up and cup her wasp-like waist and draw his large hands down over her rounded hips and then further over her thighs as they tapered to her knees.
Lois nearly laughed aloud when she heard his Freudian slip. His eyes were starting to glaze again; she had him roped and tied good and proper; he was going nowhere. Now on to the next stage of her plan. Her lips twitched as she held back her great amusement yet again, she knew that this part was really going to get to him. To be totally honest, she had to admit that the game she was playing was getting to her, too. She was getting positively giddy with the power that she had over her handsome co-worker.
"Yes Clark, I work hard; but when I decide to let loose and play, I really let loose." She artfully began to fan herself, not that she wasn't feeling a little hot and bothered; but she was going to overplay her part a bit. Lois did not think that Clark was going to notice the overplay but she disliked the need for sloppy execution. "Clark, isn't it warm in here? Whoooph." She began to flutter the front of her midriff shirt. She knew that the angle was premium; Clark was sitting down; and she was standing while her pulling on the shirt was showing him some very tantalizing glimpses.
Clark's breath was harsher as it rasped out of a drier and drier throat and mouth. Did she know what she was doing to him? Her eyes dared him to do something, anything; but all he felt up to at the moment was putting his hands deep in his pockets and fisting them. He really did not think that his legs would hold him up at the minute, not with the way his knees were making class-A imitations of rubber.
"Wow, it really is warm in here." Clark watched as Lois leaned back slightly to pick up two pencils from his pencil cup. "Maybe if I put my hair up… I would be able to cool down a touch." He could have sworn that his swallow was audible to anyone in a three-block radius. Then she upped the ante even more as she raised her hands above her head to twist her dark, shining locks into an untidy chignon, which she secured with deft fingers and the aid of the two liberated pencils. Her shirt had ridden up the bare expanse of her stomach as her arms had been raised, teasing him as the bottom edge had fluttered just under the fullness of her chest in time with her arms as they hovered over her head.
Clark wondered why she was doing this; what was the point of the exercise? Did she need to have him do something? Had she found out his secret? Was she really making a play for the hero cutout?
He longed to be able to tell her that when he had taken back his declaration of love in front of the Planet, that *it* had been the lie. That she was playing not only with his body here, but his heart. She was walking towards him — What now? He didn't think that he could take much more. Forget that, he *knew* that he could not take much more. He had to give in; he had to tell Lois that he was at the end of his tether.
"Lois, please, I can't take anymore of this. You don't know what you are doing to me." Clark's voice reflected the strain that he was feeling so keenly. It was harsh from lack of moisture and low, a deep timbre that made his very bones resonate in tune.
Lois stopped her flirtatious advance as he spoke, his voice telling her all that she needed to know. Her whole game had been to find out what he felt for her. She had had a feeling for a long time that his initial confession of love in the park that day had been the truth, that when he had stood in front of the Planet many days later and took it all back, that it had been because she had been so callous in her dismissal of him at that time. She winced, especially when just after she had turned him down, she had asked him to get Superman to come and see her. That really must have hurt him, to know that she was using him to get to another man after she had turned him down.
But now she saw things a bit differently, she saw that he still loved her and that gave her the strength to do what she wanted to do. She was still stunned by the fact that a man like Clark could love her. He was kind, gentle and giving. He had actually given her message to Superman when she had asked, when she knew full well that in his place she would have deliberately mislaid it. And since she had been studying him for a long time subconsciously she knew that beneath the odd-fitting dress clothes that he wore, he was built like some kind of god.
'Yes,' Lois thought to herself, Clark was her personal savior, the way that he had let her in when the Prankster had been targeting her had only been the last in a long line of sweet and protective things that he had done for her.
"Clark, you know something? I don't think that your statement when the Planet started up again was the truth." Lois had been looking steadily at her partner's face as she spoke slowly and deliberately. She knew for certain that she was right when she saw him visibly catch his breath. He always did that when she had caught him out in an evasion. She smiled in triumph and then hurried to reassure him as she saw that his eyes were roaming wildly, looking for an exit. "No, Clark, you don't understand—that is a *good* thing. At least I think so…" Her voice trailed off with insecurity when his eyes snapped back to focus on her when she spoke.
She started in on one of what Clark teasingly referred to as a 'patented Lane babble'. "Because, I think that I want for you to feel that way; I know that I hurt you horribly that day in the park, and to tell you the truth, I think that I hurt myself just as much. I didn't know what I was throwing away when I dismissed your love, but I began to figure it out when I was standing in the vestibule getting ready to marry Lex and the only name that sounded right was Lois Lane Kent… From that moment on I saw nothing but images of you, you and me; the things that we had done together. I knew then that I was going to call off the wedding to Lex, how could I think about marrying one man when all I could think about was another? I have seen since then that you have done more for me in many ways than even my own flesh and blood have. I hoped so much over the last few weeks that it was because you actually did love me like you said that day in the park because— because I am sure that I love you too… Oh God, I can not believe that I actually said that out loud, I have thought it so many times but I was so scared to say it. Clark, please, say *something*."
Clark slowly got up from his chair and walked over to where Lois was standing, she had not moved since he had stopped her advance with his plea; and she had stunned him with the start of her impassioned and predictably, babbled speech. He kept moving slowly in order not to startle her and make her bolt like the frightened deer that she resembled as he gathered her into his arms and held her tight to his frame. After being told that the woman of his dreams actually loved him back, that she had already been about to call off her wedding to Luthor for him, he was not too coherent, but he managed to at least get out enough to comfort Lois and allow her to relax. "Oh Lois, *yes*, yes I love you, I only took it back because I thought that you would be uncomfortable around me when we started to work together again. I thought that all you wanted was a friend and I was willing to be anything to you for the chance to be near you everyday…"
Lois moved to silence Clark as soon as she heard that 'yes, he loved her'; she cut off his flow of words in mid- sentence with the very simple gesture of raising a couple of fingers to his lips. She only had one last thing to say to him. "Clark, don't you country boys know when to talk or when to shut up and kiss the girl? Kiss me, farm-boy."
Clark needed no more urging than that. He bent his head and claimed her lips for a searing kiss that seemed to go on forever.
THE END