"I'll just *bet* Stefano is crazy about you," John nears the bed, returning her blatant gaze with one of his own. He takes in her lush curves and the spun gold of her hair. The sardonic curve of her lips makes his heart beat a little faster. "You're exactly the kind of woman that reduces the old man to a mass of quivering jello. I'll bet you have him wrapped around that.... exquisite little finger of yours....."
She returns his predatory smile as he runs a hand casually up her calf.
"Stefano...." her eyebrows lift with just the hint of a smile reaching the hazels below. She really needs to find out exactly what John Black *did* for Stefano. "Well, I suppose you could say we make a good team."
"A good team." He repeats her words with a touch of sarcasm. "I can imagine. I assume you took over where Gina left off?"
Grace freezes. This is the question she's been dreading. She schools her expression into one of indifference.
"Gina!" She deliberately scoffs at the mention of her predecessor. "Gina was a waste of good oxygen. Stefano couldn't wait to be rid of her."
John laughs again, coldness and cruelty echoing through the vibrations of his mirth.
"Be thankful you didn't have to work with the stupid bitch. It was the longest job I was ever assigned when Stefano had us working together." His face takes on an expression of disgust as he remembers his time with the 'Princess'. "I had to pretend to 'have feelings'," the sarcasm drips from his words as he rolls his eyes, "just to get her to finish the damn job. I can't even express how many times I almost threw her off a building."
Grace can barely contain her glee as she hears him talk about Gina. She knows what happened on the submarine with John and Hope. When they'd supposedly been influenced by the feelings of their former personas. For a moment she had been convinced this John was going to reveal his *grand passion* for Gina. And that would complicate matters far too much.
Besides. How could she ever respect a man who had loved, or wanted, Gina?
"I must say," her eyes glitter, "I'm rather glad to hear that."
"The old man," he says carefully, "is the only person who has ever told me what to do...." He smiles, baring white, even teeth. Which suddenly look predatory. "At least the only person who ever lived to tell the story."
A thrill runs through her. He's challenging her, already. Stefano must have known that this would happen. That Mercenary Man John Black would be the one person beside him who could provide her with the contest of wills she craves.
She's beaten Marlena's John Black into submission. She's broken him and now she's left with.... John Black. Mercenary Man. The incarnation of Stefano's most valued pawn.
She looks him up and down, her gaze lingering on the planes of hard muscle and curves of hot flesh. Her body tenses and the rivulets of lust congregate in her groin as he returns her ravenous gaze.
"If that's a challenge, John," she licks her lips, "you may just have met your match."
John returns her come-on with a chilled smile.
"Don't count on it, Blondie," he raises an eyebrow but at the same time, he eases himself down on the bed, next to her. "I live my life by one set of rules." He runs the palm of his hand over her breast and up to her neck, where he circles the delicate flesh with calloused fingers.. "My own."
Grace feels a fleeting surge of emotion. A pain which she can't, or won't, pinpoint. Instead, she ignores it, pushing it back into her unconscious. "And if *I* don't want to live by your rules?"
John shrugs. "Don't see anything shackling us together, do you?"
Grace starts to shake her head, but finds herself gasping instead as his fingers weave through her hair and her eyes flutter closed.
"*She* might have been *his* wife," he growls, even as his fingers travel over her throat and her jaw, "but I'm a free agent. You slow me down, Blondie, and we're history."
Cinnamon eyes open, and she lifts them to meet the intensity of his gaze. The wintry blueness strips her defenses for a moment and a stinging pain shoots through her chest.
"And if I don't slow you down?"
"I'm sure we can come to some," his hand slips down over her breasts and seeks the lush curve where her waist meets her hip, "kind of accommodation."
"I'm no mere bedfellow," she shakes her head with a warning glare. "You might think you've got all the aces John, but you'd be wrong."
"Oh believe me," he grins sadistically, "I'm not about to underestimate you. I've seen what you're capable of." With a single, smooth moment, he pulls her towards him and rolls over so that she is astride him. "And I'm quite impressed."
"Is that right?" A small smile steals across her lips. He's going to be a challenge all right. Like nothing else she's ever encountered. Like no-one else.
"That's right." He sucks in a fierce breath and then groans as she takes him in her hand. "Oh fuck *me*."
Her throaty laughter fills the room. "Only if you ask nicely."
~
The next morning Grace wakes up to find the space next to her empty. With a fleeting echo of fear sounding in her head, her eyes search the Spartan room. It is, of course, also empty.
With a curse that would make a construction worker blush, she pulls on a shirt and yanks open the door. She takes a step and then stops short, her heart pounding.
John is sitting, wearing only a pair of boxer-briefs, on the steps of the balcony, a cigarette between his finger and thumb. A thin stream of smoke curls from his nose and up to dissolve into the moist and heavy air.
"Thought I'd done a runner huh?" he drawls before lifting the cigarette to his lips and inhaling deeply. "Damn I've missed that."
"Missed what?" she leans against the door, crossing her arms defensively.
"Nicotine," he closes his eyes and leans his head back, blowing a long stream of smoke through his nose.
"How?" She wants him to look at her, to acknowledge her, but she's not going to force the issue. She needs to be careful. He's smart and he's dangerous and she needs to win each round of the dance with cunning and perseverance. "I mean, I don't understand how you remember what John Black lived."
He's silent as he appears to contemplate her question. Beyond the dusty parking lot in front of the strip of motel rooms, eighteen-wheelers thunder past. It's not even nine and already the heat is rising, the full force of summer rushing to meet them with unseemly haste.
Grace brushes the hair out of her face and gazes out over the concrete jungle that stretches out from the motel. How anything can live here, let alone people, she doesn't know, or even want to understand. This kind of life is so far removed from her own that it's almost as though it's another planet. And she hates it.
"John Black." He sneers as he stubs out the cigarette and flicks it into the weeds that grow at the side of the porch. "Weak bastard," he pauses to pick up the cigarette packet and draw out another smoke. He taps it against the packet and then lifts it to his lips. He looks as though he's going to toss the packet to one side but suddenly he turns to look at Grace and holds it out. "Want one?" he asks, smoke bouncing up and down between his lips as he talks.
"No. Thank you." She shakes her head, a look of distaste lingering as he turns back. In a single movement, he drops the packet by his feet and swipes up a box of matches. He strikes one and cupping his fingers around it, he carefully holds it to the end of the cigarette. The tobacco flares and glows as he shakes the flame from the match and he takes another lungful of the noxious smoke. "Christ that feels good." He rolls his head back again and closes his eyes, simply enjoying the feeling of the smoke and the nicotine as it winds through his head and into his blood.
His words and his actions have a distinctly sexual overtone and Grace is discomforted to find herself turned on as she watches him. She wants him to want her as much.... no, much more than he wants that packet of cigarettes.
"What was I saying?" His voice shakes her from her thoughts and finally he turns to look at her. "You think he was weak, don't you?"
"Do I?" she counters. She's not about to give away anything.
"Of course you do," he grins wickedly. "And you're right. But not in the way you think."
"Oh?" Her arms tighten across her middle.
"His love for her was the only thing that kept him together." John smirks. "I was there the whole time. Once that fucking stupid chip had gone, I was simply waiting for the chink in the defenses. But as long as he loved her, as long as he thought he could save her, it kept him on top."
Grace feels like her cheeks are burning as she looks at him. She swallows, trying to moisten a suddenly parched throat.
"He didn't love her," she avows stubbornly, almost desperately.
"Of course he did," his eyes narrow as he watches her reaction. "You know, for such an intelligent woman, sometimes you really are stupid."
"You have no idea what you're talking about," Grace snaps with a coldness that counteracts the heat of the day. "How dare you!"
"Pretty easily," he shrugs. "Listen Blondie, he was *crazy* about Marlena. Always has been, ever since.... well, forever. And you might look like her, but babe, he would never have loved you like that." He grins, a feral gleam in his blue eyes.
"Is that supposed to upset me?" she raises her eyebrows, even though inside, there's a turmoil of feelings that she can't even name that threatens to eat her inside out.
"I don't know," he raises his eyebrow in return. "Does it?"
She wants to shoot back some biting retort that will stop him dead in his tracks. Wants to wipe that smug smile from his face and prove to him that he doesn't have a clue what's going on in her head.
But she can't. Can't find the words. Couldn't spit them out over the lump in her throat even if she could find them.
"You'll be much better off with me." He winks suggestively at her in a way that makes her feel almost dirty, and then turns back to contemplate the trucks that roar past.
Grace glares at the back of his head, her chest rising and falling in barely contained rage. Twin red patches burn on her cheeks and beneath her still-crossed arms, her hands are clenched into whitened fists.
Self-righteous, arrogant *bastard*! How dare he! He knows *nothing*. She takes an unsteady breath, trying to calm herself before she speaks again. She won't let him see that he has hit his mark. After all, it's not like she wanted John to love her. It's not like any of it is important to her at all. She just wanted to win, that's all.
Just wanted to break John, and she'd done that.
"Well, if you want to stick with *me*," she says haughtily, "you'd better be ready to go in ten minutes. Because I'm out of here at nine, whether you're with me or not."
She doesn't wait for his answer, just turns back to the room and slams the door behind her.