Seeing Red

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Kal/Chloe
Season 6, based on spoilers for "Crimson"
Rating: Adult. If you're under eighteen, please go elsewhere now.
Disclaimer: These characters belong to the CW and DC Comics, not to me.


"Kiss me."

"Kiss you?" Chloe Sullivan tilted her head up and glared at Clark, defiance and annoyance shining from her hazel eyes. Since he was so tall, and still standing, she had to crane her neck to look at him, and his gaze was drawn to the graceful, fragile line of her throat. He wanted to kiss her there. He wanted to kiss her everywhere.

Damn it.

He glanced around, seeing that the basement was deserted, since it was well past five on a Friday afternoon. He could kiss her right here, and no one would see them. Hell, he could make love to her on her desk. The idea appealed to him a whole lot more than he wanted it to.

But she snorted as if he'd made a joke."I hear you already kissed Lois and Lana," she drawled. "Going for three out of three?"

He shrugged, unconcerned by the acerbic note in her voice. "News gets around fast."

"They both called me. They thought you were acting weird. I'm starting to see their point."

He dropped both hands flat onto her desk, leaned forward, and stared into her eyes. "I want to kiss you."

"And every other female you run across, apparently. What's this all about, Clark? What's with the kissing spree?"

"Lois kissed me," he said. "I wondered if she was as hot as she looked, so I kissed her back."

Chloe leaned back in her chair, looking unconcerned, and lifted an eyebrow. "Was she?"

"No. You'd think a girl with boobs that size would be a better kisser."

Chloe's mouth twitched like she was about to giggle, but she managed to hold it back and gazed at him soberly. "That's typical guy thinking. I actually don't think boob size has much correlation with kissing ability."

"In a perfect world, it definitely would."

She snickered, but caught herself, covering her mouth in an apparent attempt to smother the sound. "I guess from a guy's point of view, that might be true. So how about Lana? Were you just testing your boob size theory?"

He shrugged. "I kissed Lana because I wanted to see if the spark was still there. It wasn't."

"Well, yeah, that's not surprising now that she's pregnant with another guy's baby. That'll tend to put out a spark, all right."

"True. Besides, her boobs are too small."

This time he definitely heard a giggle, although she covered her mouth again and tried to turn it into a cough. She looked up at him, her dark gold eyes gleaming with amusement. "Good grief, Clark. Did you just finish taking a class on how to be a male chauvinist, or what?"

"You've got nice boobs," he said. "Definitely nicer than Lana's. Although they're not quite as nice as Lois's."

"Gee, thanks so much."

"So I was wondering if you were a good kisser. How about we find out?"

There was a lot more underlying his sudden desire to kiss her, of course. In fact, it wasn't a sudden desire at all. He'd wanted to kiss her for a hell of a long time, but he didn't particularly want to let her know that. And it didn't have a damn thing to do with her boob size.

The truth was, he already knew she was a good kisser. He could still taste the last kiss she'd given him at the Daily Planet, could still feel her hand against his cheek and her fingers curling into his hair, could feel her tongue sliding shyly over his lips and brushing against his, just for a second.

He'd kissed Lois and Lana in a desperate effort to forget the light caress of her lips against his. But the unfortunate truth was that he hadn't forgotten a damn thing, even though it had been six long months since she'd kissed him. The vivid memory of that kiss made him grow hard, made his heart pound.

Unfortunately, she didn't look terribly interested by his offer.

"Thrilling though that invitation is," she drawled, "I'm trying to get some work done here. And then Jimmy is going to take me to dinner."

"Jimmy." At the name, he felt rage bubble up inside him, a dark, unreasoning anger that made him want to throw things, to put his fist through walls. "You're going to dinner with Jimmy?"

She lifted that eyebrow again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him quizzically. "He is my boyfriend, Clark."

"You don't want him." He leaned forward so far their noses almost touched and glared into her eyes. He was so annoyed that he could feel heat vision burning in his irises. "You've never wanted him. You're just using him to make me jealous."

"Yeah, right." She snorted and turned back to her computer. "And it's working so well that you kissed Lana and Lois. I sure know how to make a guy jealous, don't I?"

His hand snapped out and captured her wrist with the speed of a striking snake, and she gave a startled yelp and looked away from the computer, back at him. "Your relationship with Jimmy is all about me," he snarled. "You know it is."

"Clark." She tried to pull her hand away, looking genuinely alarmed for the first time since he'd stalked into the Planet's basement. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me," he said between his teeth, "is that you chose Jimmy instead of me."

Her mouth fell open. "I never had the chance to choose you, Clark. You never wanted me."

"Crap." His hand tightened around her wrist, holding her in an unbreakable grip. "We kissed before I went off to fight Zod. Remember?"

"I remember kissing you," she said cautiously.

He remembered her wide-eyed, vulnerable expression, the way she'd murmured his name, the words I don't know if I'll ever see you again, just before running across to him and throwing her arms around his neck. He remembered wrapping his arms around her and kissing her like she was the most important thing in the world, like she was all that mattered.

And she did matter to him. She mattered to him a lot more than he'd ever let himself admit.

"I kissed you back, Chlo. I wanted you so badly I would have thrown you down on a desk if that damn phone hadn't rung. I wanted you."

Her eyes went wide with surprise, and she stared at him. "You did not."

"Yeah, I did. And when I came back from the Phantom Zone, I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to--" He choked back the words make love to you. "To screw you. And instead..." His voice went cold with fury, and his eyes practically steamed with heat. "Instead you went off with Jimmy for some freaking Ho-Ho's."

"You didn't say anything." Her voice was very soft, and shaking with an emotion he couldn't identify.

"I didn't think I had to say anything. I thought you knew how I felt."

She looked at him, and her chin went up in a defiant gesture. "You were wrong."

"Obviously." He reached over the desk and grabbed her, sweeping her up into his arms. "So I'm saying something now."

*****

Chloe blinked in confusion as the brightly lit basement of the Daily Planet blurred, and suddenly everything went dark. She clung to Clark's neck, because it was the only tangible thing she had to hold onto.

"What-- where--"

"A storage closet," he said. His voice was deep and husky, and close to her, so close that she could feel his breath brush over her ear. A shudder racked her.

"Why are we here?"

"Why the hell do you think?"

She suddenly became aware of his big hand on her back, splayed out over her shoulder blade. His other hand was curved around her ass, keeping her from falling, his fingers digging gently into her flesh.

"Kiss me, Chlo," he whispered, his voice like a dark pool, smooth and inviting, but with dangerous undercurrents swirling beneath the surface. Not like Clark's normal light, gentle tenor voice at all.

"I'm not kissing you, damn it." She shoved at his shoulders helplessly, struggling more because she thought she ought to than because she really wanted to. "I have a boyfriend."

"You don't give a fuck about him. You know you don't. You want me."

"Did you just have your ego inflated today, or what?"

He bent his head and brushed his lips over her jawline. "When the world was ending," he whispered, "I'm the one you ran to. I'm the one you kissed."

"I wasn't dating Jimmy then." She heard her own voice quaver a bit. "I hadn't seen him for years at that point, Clark."

"So what are you saying?" He brushed his lips over the frantically racing pulse in her throat. "You were just horny? You just wanted to kiss some random guy?"

"No." She didn't want to admit the truth, but the words were dragged out of her by the light touch of his mouth on her skin. Her voice fell to a whisper. "The world was ending. And I... I wanted to kiss you."

He lifted his head and bent forward until his nose bumped gently against hers.

"So kiss me again," he said.

Read Chapter 2 here.