Table of Contents

heartsways - The First Way: Ownership

LOST GIRL - BO/LAUREN

“Ways To Tell You I’m Sorry” series

The First Way: Ownership

heartsways

Title: Ways To Tell You I’m Sorry - The First Way: Ownership

Author: heartsways

Rating: NC–17

Fandom: Lost Girl

Pairing: Bo/Lauren

Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for–profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.

Summary: Lauren wants to tell Bo she’s sorry, but what will it take for Bo to listen?

Author’s Note: Thanks to you for the idea in the first place and for the beta. You know who you are and I suck at html.

The First Way: Ownership

heartsways

The moment Bo stalked into the lab Lauren knew she was in trouble. And not the sort of trouble that Bo usually attracted and wrapped around herself with a mischievous light dancing in her eyes and a bottle of tequila in her hand. No, this was the sort of trouble that furrowed twin lines on Bo’s brow and brought her to an abrupt halt close to where Lauren was scribbling notes onto a medical chart. Too close, in fact, for Lauren to feel anything other than discomfort, gnawing at her back in a perpetual reminder of how she’d hurt the Succubus. She’d seen Bo like this before; wild–eyed and hasty. She’d looked rather like that on the night she’d left her house, throwing down The Ash’s necklace like a gauntlet of shame and betrayal.

So as Bo shifted agitatedly before her, boots scuffing on the pristine floor, Lauren took a breath and prepared herself for the worst.

“I need you to do something for me,” Bo said, her tone ticking over syllables with the sharpened edges of hurt.

“Bo…” Lauren began, but the Succubus held up a hand that halted apologies and even made Lauren flinch a little with its inferred ferocity.

“Save it,” Bo shook her head, gaze burning. “I need you to do something and you’re going to do it. That’s all. I don’t want to hear any more sorries from you.”

Dropping her hand, she allowed herself a luxurious sweep of Lauren’s body with eyes that were bright in anger. Lauren’s heart sank. She’d expected Bo to bear something of a grudge, but she hadn’t expected the other woman’s animosity to be so enduring. After the silence and unreturned phone calls, there had been a brief, accusatory conversation and then nothing. Not until now, anyway.

“You know what?” Bo said, chin jerking forwards, defiant and pointed in chagrin. “I don’t even want to be here!”

Lauren raised her eyebrows and half turned away, placing the clipboard and pen gently down onto the metal surface of the table by her side, moving with the quiet deliberation of someone who considers every action; every consequence. In fact, the only time she’d acted without thought had been the one night she and Bo had spent together.

Well, she reasoned with herself, she wouldn’t be making that mistake again. Judging from the way Bo was glaring at her right now, she wouldn’t have the opportunity anyway. Lauren sighed. Sometimes Bo acted like a child and sometimes she talked like one. When she did both at the same time, it proved difficult to remember that she was a grown woman. But her life experience – at least, her romantic one – had never progressed past the first date, so Lauren was trying to remind herself to cut Bo a bit of slack. But that was proving very difficult right now, and irritation flickered in Lauren’s eyes momentarily.

“And yet,” she turned back to face the Succubus with a resigned expression on her face, “here you are anyway. Careful, Bo, or I might start to think you can’t stay away from me.”

She knew as soon as the words fell from her lips that she’d said the wrong thing. That was the problem with Bo; she hated being told an irrefutable truth that didn’t fit into her world view. Especially a truth that they both knew would always bring them back towards one another, no matter how much she tried to deny it. They were like magnets, repelling and attracting and always unpredictable. Just when Lauren had almost given up hope that Bo would ever want her again, here she was, standing in front of her and literally vibrating with an undisguised and open hurt that Lauren just wanted to kiss away.

If only it was that easy. If only everything was that easy. If it had been, Lauren’s mouth would have been on Bo’s right now and her arms would have encircled the Succubus and made all the bad dissipate into the ether. But romantic notions, like Bo’s patience, were thin and unsubstantial. It was going to take a lot more than a few desperate kisses to assuage the curl of Bo’s mouth and the clenching of her fists down by her sides.

“I’m sorry, I – ”

“Stop saying that like it means something!” Bo growled, a muscle on her neck flickering angrily.

“It does!” Lauren insisted, holding out her hands in supplication. “I know you think I betrayed you but I didn’t! If you’d let me explain, you’d see that – ”

“Explain?” Bo’s eyebrows shot up and she let out a mirthless laugh, as brittle and hard as her voice. “Explain what, how you whored yourself out to please The Ash? Yeah, newsflash Lauren. You don’t need to explain that to me. I got it loud and clear.”

Despite the fact that Bo could quite possibly kill her where she stood, Lauren couldn’t help feeling a faint flare of annoyance in the pit of her stomach, crackling at the back of her neck and pursing her lips. Bo being hurt was one thing. Bo being wrong was another. Meting out justice was something she wholly supported, when appropriate. But Bo’s sense of injustice was skewed and quite off the mark and that, she found, irritated her enough to forget that she was physically inferior to the other woman.

“I think you should leave now,” she said in a halting tone. She tried to ignore the outrage that fled across Bo’s features and instead folded her arms almost imperiously across her chest. “Whatever it is you want from me, ask me another time. Maybe when you can keep a civil tongue in your head.” It wasn’t perhaps the wisest piece of advice she’d ever given, but it was all she could muster, given that Bo was clearly on an emotional rampage and wouldn’t be satisfied until both of them were feeling desperately unfulfilled and emotionally decimated.

Bo shook her head and gave another one of those disingenuous, icy laughs. “Maybe you’d rather I lie about how I’m feeling then?” she suggested. “You know, seeing as that’s how you operate,” she added with a resentful glare.

“Okay,” Lauren let out a long sigh and released her arms, shoving her hands into the pockets of her lab coat. Even she, in her unswerving belief that every problem had a solution, knew when to sideline a project for another day. She shrugged slightly and glanced down at the floor, admitting defeat. “Goodbye, Bo.”

She’d barely turned towards the doorway when hands gripped her shoulders, spinning her around and pressing her against the cold metal table that bumped mercilessly on her hips. She almost lost her footing and stumbled slightly, giving Bo further purchase on her stance and it was only when she was pushed up against one immovable object that she found another holding her in place. Bo’s body was flush on her own, the only thing separating them clothing and an almost palpable tension that slid down in between their breasts and stomachs, hot and heavy and fetid. Lauren could feel the other woman’s quickened breath on her cheek as Bo leaned in and fixed her with a blistering gaze. Hands trapped in the pockets of her lab coat, a vague sense of panic began to rise in Lauren’s chest and she blinked rapidly, feeling her heartbeat accelerate with the unknown.

“What do you want from me?” she gasped, more than a little fearful. “You won’t listen to anything I say, Bo.”

“Maybe because you haven’t said anything worth hearing,” Bo hissed, her fingers digging painfully into Lauren’s upper arms. Biting at her lip, Lauren caught sight of a glimmer of acknowledgement in Bo’s eyes – she knew that she was hurting her. And even though they’d implicitly agreed to ‘take it slow’, that hadn’t happened. It wasn’t happening now. Everything with Bo was instantaneous; that was how she lived her life. It was also how she ruined it. Because the simple truth was that when you cared about someone – when Bo cared about someone, she gave them implicit permission to hurt her.

And Lauren had.

As they stared at one another, Lauren could see Bo trying to figure her out. Trying to see behind the mask she wore so completely that it almost seemed a part of her now – her achievements within the Fae hierarchy paying homage to her inherent skills and wanton eagerness to take her place beside The Ash. But for all Bo understood about Lauren’s loyalty to her owner, she misunderstood a thousand times more than that. She leapt from conclusion to assumption and denied the truths that Lauren kept hidden lest anyone should really know her. And that, the doctor knew with a sinking heart, was what Bo was unable to see right now, no matter how hard she stared into wide brown eyes.

“Then let me explain,” Lauren insisted, moving in Bo’s vicelike grip and realizing that struggling against a Fae was fairly pointless. Leaning back against the table behind her, she dropped her gaze and let out another sigh. “Please, Bo.”

“Shut up,” Bo snapped, glowering and closing her eyes for a brief second. “Just…shut up, Lauren. I thought we had something, you know? I thought you were…” she stopped herself and shrugged as though the mere motion of her shoulders could dismiss the longing that burned acid in her throat. “I thought we had – ”

“We did!” Lauren looked up again, meeting Bo’s eyes, her gaze plaintive and insistent. “We still do, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” She moved, bumped up against Bo’s pelvis and felt the electric shock of contact hit them both at the same time. She’d spent a lot of time pondering what exactly it was that they ‘had’. Eventually she’d given in to the conclusion that it was complicated and intangible, and that she might never know precisely what it was, just that it was there. All the time. Every time they were together.

“I’m not here because of that,” Bo answered, dragging her eyes from Lauren’s and shaking her a little, as though it could loosen the hold that the doctor seemed to have over her thoughts…her emotions.

“Then why are you here?” Lauren’s voice was soft, enquiring. It was the velvet sound that Bo had heard when they were in bed together, the audible caress that shivered up and down her spine and enticed her into kisses and more…so much more. Hearing it now, after all that had been sullied and tarnished, it excited her in ways she despised. Because she still craved it; still felt the need for Lauren’s hands on her skin and lips on her own. She wanted it to go away, but pressed up against the blonde, able to catch the faint scent of perfume that drifted towards her, Bo was aware that this sort of feeling wasn’t fleeting. It was so diametrically opposed to the sexual hunger she so often felt that she didn’t possess words to explain it – not to Lauren and most definitely not to herself.

But it was very, very frustrating.

Glancing up, she caught sight of Lauren’s mouth, half–open with a strange mixture of fear and desire. She noticed, with a thrill, the wavering haze of heated lust that was rising from pale skin and the pulse that jumped underneath it. Being a Succubus meant that nobody could hide their appetites from her, not when it came to sex. And Lauren had ceased trying a long time ago.

She pushed at the doctor again, shoving her back up against the table – this time, harder and with more vigor. Another gasp escaped Lauren’s mouth and she closed her eyes before opening them to look at Bo with a heavy–lidded gaze that was quite at odds with her forcible entrapment. Bo’s fingers dug in deeper to Lauren’s upper arms and an expression of faint pain slid briefly over those features that were usually so serene and controlled.

“You’re hurting me,” Lauren whispered, and discerned a slight easing of the grip on her flesh. But it wasn’t the physical pain that hurt. Not really.

“Yeah?” Bo leaned in so that her lips were almost touching Lauren’s, almost close enough to feed. “Now you know how it feels.”

Brown melted into a yearning expression that engulfed Bo in a heady wave of sorrow and regret. The backwash took her by surprise and she caught her breath, tugged by an overwhelming undercurrent of denied want towards lips that were, even now, opening up under her own. Crushing her mouth against Lauren’s, there was no resistance and no contemplative hesitation that the doctor had exercised so many times before. The groan that slid from Lauren’s mouth resonated and hummed on Bo’s and was the touch–paper ignited between them.

Without breaking the kiss, Bo’s hands scraped a line up to Lauren’s shoulders and grasped at the lapels of her lab coat. Dragging it down over Lauren’s body, Bo bunched it around delicate wrists and let out a satisfied murmur as the doctor found she was effectively restrained, arms trapped against her body and helpless to offer resistance. Eyes widening in realization, Lauren felt her head jerked back as Bo’s hands sunk deep into her hair and pulled without reserve, exposing her long, slender neck. Pin pricks of pain exploded across her scalp as handfuls of her long, blonde tresses were twisted around Bo’s strong fingers, but Lauren found that she didn’t really care.

Bo’s mouth was on her neck, teeth nipping in delighted torture at her skin and sure to leave marks. It was incredible; insatiable. It was wholly wrong and yet nothing had ever felt so passionately right. As she was thrust back over the table, Lauren let out a hiss of discomfort and looked up at Bo. The Succubus’ face was set in an undisguised expression of want that was beautiful and terrifying all at the same time, and Lauren knew that for all her medical reasoning and scientific curiosity, this was the true source of her attraction to Bo. She was incandescently beautiful, and never more so than when her power was worn on the outside, instead of tamed and controlled. It was thrilling, to see it this way. To know that she was the one who unleashed it.

So as Bo freed a hand from her hair and scraped it down over her torso, Lauren ignored the hard edge of the table against her back and the unrelenting hold on her hair; she dismissed the white cotton shackles on her wrists and instead focused on the body pushing on her own, a leather–clad thigh nudging between her own and opening her up to the vulnerability she’d always abjured.

Bo’s fingers scrabbled against the waistband of her pants and slid underneath it; Lauren felt a mouth at her neck again. A hot, damp line dragged up the skin there until she could feel Bo’s breath on her ear.

“This is why I’m here,” Bo whispered, her fingertips tracing invisible lines of desperate fire down over Lauren’s belly, down to where a molten heat was building, circling the doctor’s hips in an unmistakable sway of hunger. “I hate what you did to me,” Bo added, relishing the groan that was thick and deep in Lauren’s chest. “I hate you for doing it, too.” She thrust her fingers into Lauren and closed her eyes as her hand was enveloped in a sticky wetness that sent pleasure coursing through her veins.

“Do you?” Lauren’s voice was hoarse, silken tones replaced by the roughened nudity of her emotional and physical response to this wonderful creature, even now moving in and out of her without preamble. Bo’s teeth closed around her earlobe and tugged on it hard; Lauren felt a withering tremble begin in her thighs and willed herself to stand, to remain tall, to endure. But of all the challenges she’d faced since working with the Fae, this was surely the most trying. The most incredible. The most terrifying. Because as Bo drew her towards orgasm and pinned her against the table, Lauren was almost certain that she didn’t want to escape. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Even though she knew with every fiber of her being that she should. That this was wrong and not how intimacy should transpire between them – not how it had ever been before.

“Yes,” Bo’s voice was guttural with a force that seemed quite at odds with the way she was touching the other woman. “I hate you, Lauren,” she snarled, but her tone was marred with cracks of pain that spread icy tendrils into her chest. “I hate you,” she said again, shoving her fingers into the other woman as far as they would go. She knew that there were only moments…seconds left before they plunged into the abyss together and allowed herself a secretive look at the blonde. Lauren’s head lolled back on her neck, supported only by Bo’s hand buried deep in her hair; her mouth was open and a deep crimson flush crept up the length of her throat, puckered with the faint marks of Bo’s teeth. She was utterly undone; so broken open that Bo almost caught her breath at the mere sight of it. It was almost too much. Always never enough.

“God, I hate you,” Bo said, and felt the shameful prickle of tears behind her eyes as she thrust upwards once more, drawing out a long keening sound from Lauren’s throat as the blonde stiffened, silent lips open and gasping for breath.

For a moment, Bo could only hear her own heartbeat like a whirlwind in her ears, and the sight of Lauren, unkempt and disabused underneath her. Then the cold, impersonal walls of the lab came back into focus and reality, never more stark than now, began to seep into her line of vision.

Letting go of Lauren’s hair and tugging her hand from the doctor’s pants, Bo stumbled and took a step backwards to steady herself. What had she done? What might she do, given the chance? Her eyes met Lauren’s and she shook her head, clamping a hand over her mouth as the blonde frowned and moved towards her. But that only sent Bo reeling backwards once more and she blinked, shame darkening her gaze to almost black.

Lauren said her name, just once. Low and soft and inviting, with a timbre of forgiveness and impenetrable regret.

And now it really was too much.

Turning away from the disheveled mess she’d created, Bo spun on her heel and ran from the lab.

continued in

The Second Way: Choices