Just Knowing

They'd nearly died.

The memory of those few adrenaline drive moments haunted him as he drove back from Mark Devlin's burned house.

The sun shining down in the parking lot suddenly seemed a lot brighter, and the colours of the world seemed a lot more vivid. The world around him was subtly altered, changed by his brush with death. But she opened the door of the car and stepped out, never missing a beat.

There was no sign that she'd escaped death mere minutes earlier. Every hair was in place, her expression was calm.

She had it all together. Why didn't he?

Of course, he reminded himself bitterly, she was used to this kind of thing. Her job meant she dealt with life-and-death situations ever week. This was nothing new for her.

It was definitely new for him.

He hated feeling so weak compared with her. He hated feeling like he was on the back foot here. She had a certainty about her in this matter, an absolute assurance of O'Neill's innocence. It clung to her like an aura, like the glow of beauty about a pregnant woman.

She was hiding something.

Something.

She glanced at him over the roof of the car, one eyebrow arching over wary blue eyes. And when he said nothing, she began to walk towards the hotel lobby.

He watched her as they crossed the parking lot, the chrome edges of the car gleaming in the sunlight, blinding him - but not as much as the thatched blonde head making it's determined way to the room.

She had a lovely curve of the neck, he decided. Slender throat running into elegant shoulders. A neat waist curving out to slender hips, and the long length of her legs. As he watched her, his eyes boring into the tanned skin at the nape of her neck, he felt his body begin to respond to her proximity.

He trusted so few people these days, seeing shadows everywhere. Especially since Kinsey's 'murder'.

He didn't understand how she could know O'Neill was innocent.

When you work with someone that long, you just know.

She had such certainty in the Colonel's innocence, her faith unshakeable, her assurance absolute. And it lit her up like a beacon.

Her looks had registered that first day in the warehouse over a year ago, but he'd had other things on his mind at the time. Beautiful, yes; admirable, yes - even after she and her partner managed to take out two of his men; but even as she'd sat down in the chair in his office, he'd forced himself to see the person, not the woman.

Now, trying to hunt down the trail of a killer who might or might not be Colonel Jack O'Neill, with their escape from death so close, he was seeing her as a woman.

It was a physiological reaction: after near-death shaves, the body wanted to reaffirm life. And it did this in the most primal way possible.

Desire.

He wanted her.

Gnawing at his belly, pricking at his loins, the beast rose and hungered. It snarled and slavered inside him, pacing within the cage of his self-control, forced to submission, but never tamed.

Charged with its appetite, everything about her became sensual. Her movements, the brisk, businesslike way she walked, without the seductive hip-swinging of other women, was like a red rag to a bull. The way her hair clung to her scalp, to her nape, only emphasised the soft pink skin of her throat and jaw. The quick, sharp movements as she found the keys to her room, inserted them into the lock, and opened the door.

He entered the room behind her. He shut the door.

And the beast leapt.

The taste of her surprise was sharp in his mouth as he claimed her, demanded her, sought her psyche for her beast - her hungering. He gave her no quarter, and as she came to life beneath his hands, she asked for none.

They gave to each other, fiercely, brutally, passionately. No kindness, no gentle caresses. This was not about love and tenderness. This was not about the loyalty she gave to Colonel O'Neill, or the affection she gave to her team-mates.

This was pure need, pure lust, unadulterated and raw.

Hands and bodies grappled, flesh meeting flesh, voice losing voice, swift and piercing and shredding them both from the inside out. They marked each other with lips and hands and tongue.

The beasts within met and melded, brutal in their fever, cruel in their necessity.

She screamed. He howled. And he left the mark of his teeth deep in her shoulder, the sharp incisors of the beast digging into soft flesh.

And when they were done, and passion was spent, he stripped the condom from his dick and scrubbed himself down under the cold shower. The beast slunk back into its cage with only the softest throbbing growl to assure him it would be back.

He stood with his hand on the knob of the bathroom door for nearly a minute after he'd dressed. There would be no escaping it. No denying what had been done. Mad and impossible and without meaning except release and relief and reaffirmation of life and living.

But when he yanked open the door, she was already dressed and on her laptop, typing some notes into a file. She looked up and coloured pink. But she held his gaze, almost defiantly. If she held regrets, she wasn't going to run and hide - fear might be part of the human psyche, but cowardice was not part of this woman's nature.

"All right," he said, his voice sounding surprisingly loud - and surprisingly hoarse as he spoke. "We need to talk."

She arched a brow, quizzical and mocking.

"Who else knows about this operation at Stargate Command?"

He had to give her credit, she didn't miss a beat. And for all that they'd just been through an act that should have represented the epitome of intimacy, as he voiced his paranoia, they might have been worlds apart.

She believed. She trusted. He did not.

That delineated the lines between them; allies for a case, lovers for an hour, but their organisations were at political war with each other and they were wise and canny in their loyalties to the entities that had made them who they were.

As they argued over their next course of action, Malcolm looked at her and wondered about her relationship to the commanding officer who she believed in more than truth, evidence, or proof. And he wondered how Colonel O'Neill felt with the weight of her trust on his shoulders.

In the end, they worked together and she gave him trust - of a kind. And a hand of friendship - but nothing more. Nothing more.

He saw that clearly in the cool, assessing glances Jonas Quinn gave him over dinner. He knew it when he looked at the silent Jaffa, listening, watchful, warning. And he felt it when he met the velvet-dark gaze of Colonel O'Neill, observing him with the faintest hint of a smile on the inscrutable face.

It was like being summed up in a sentence and then discarded for brevity.

It stung his pride.

But he said nothing of it until they were in the parking lot, and the men of SG-1 were clustered around her car, and watching him as he paused by her side.

"Thank you for your help, Agent Barrett," she said, her voice cool and sweet and low.

"You're welcome, Major Carter." If she could be polite, so could he. But the beast rose in him again, not fast enough to pass his guard, but enough to awaken a wicked instinct in her. "Thanks for the 'just knowing'," he said, his voice low and amiable. She'd explained the significance of "You just know" to her team-mates earlier, so it might pass them by without snagging their attention.

Then again...

The tide of scarlet washed up her throat and across her cheeks to cover her to her hairline. It was barely visible in the streetlight, but he was close enough to enjoy her embarrassment as her team-mates were not.

"You're welcome," she said, just as low and amiable. And then she opened the car doors, climbed in without a further word, and waited for her team-mates to get in. She answered none of their low-voice queries, but drove the car off into the night, with one more inscrutable look as they drove past Malcolm on his way to his own hire car.

And that was the end of that.

*