Iron Man: Drink Deep (Tony/Pepper)
Title: Drink Deep
Fandom: Iron Man (movieverse)
Spoiler: Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Summary: (vignette) She's pretty sure in a minute or two she's going to quit.


**

He's leaning in like this is planned, like he's really going to kiss her, like he's pretty sure she's going to let him. And she might. And she does.

He swipes a tongue across her lips, once, and then twice, and then she lets him in, because letting him in is always a little too easy. He is measured and paced, and she can feel his hand move from her cheek, down across the side of her face, and along her neck, until it rests just below the curve her breast, his thumb moving across the fabric of her shirt as if testing the give of it, like he was conducting a stress test, an experiment. On her.

And for a moment she lets him because she's pretty sure in a minute or two she's going to quit. Maybe she's shallow, and maybe just a little needy, and maybe she's just a complete cliche, and maybe she really was just a little in love with her boss, but she was hardly stupid because she knows how this sort of thing ends.

So she lets him kiss her and maybe she gets in a few gropes of her own: lets her fingers skim along the waistband of his pants, tug at the shirt until it's free. His fingers at her side clench as her own skim across the exposed patch of skin above his belt, and she smiles briefly into his mouth. His chest may glow with the light of a miniature battery capable of powering the Eastern US seaboard for a decade, but Tony Stark, Iron Man, was still more than a little ticklish.

"Not fair," he mutters into her mouth, trapping her tongue before she can reply, and she runs her fingers back across his navel. He might have growled, or cursed, but she couldn't really be sure because he's already retaliated: using the leverage he'd gained the moment she'd kicked off her heels to push her back until she collides with those damned glass doors. She knew what a bitch they were to get clean, and god they weren't doing the maid any favors with all their squirming.

"Then maybe you shouldn't have told me you were so-"

She takes another swipe, and the sound of it: of his sudden intake of breath against her ear where his lips had been working, almost makes her dizzy.

But then she lets her fingers travel further up, pressing lightly so it's just her fingernails against his skin and he leans back a little and-

"-Oh no you don't."

And now Tony's lips are at her throat, his knee pushing between her own, pressing the full length of his body against hers and then she remembers he's actually a little bit taller than her. Maybe she had worn those heels for so long so she wouldn't notice exactly this: how easily he can overpower her, make her feel a little too weak, a little too small. And now his lips have found her earlobe and his hands are trying to still her traitorous fingers by pressing her wrists against the glass and for a moment it's a little too much.

She will regret this in the morning. She wants to regret this. She doesn't want to be that girl, that cliche: the secretary who takes dictation between the sheets. Except at the moment she's dangerously close to doing just that, and on one level she's totally not that girl, but on another she kind of wants to be so she won't feel guilty about quitting in the morning, about leaving him even more alone than he already is.

When he pulls back a little he's grinning and she's grinning back and it's really, really nice. Sweet almost, and for a brief second she thinks that maybe she can do this; that maybe this won't be so hard-

-and then his mouth is against her jaw and her neck feels cold, and then he's kissing her again: breath hot, tongue tasting like scotch and she knows, she knows-

**