Leave Me Breathless

Chapter 15

I'm dependin' on you to teach me

All the things I forgot I ever knew

Baby, you can lean on me

I may lean a little too

Whatever gets us through

Nobody's Child - Maria McKee

Marlena didn't have any clothing. The Paris police and ISA agents were scouring the catacombs near where John had caught up with Stefano and Marlena, but the only clothing she'd had there, were clothes selected by Stefano. She wanted nothing to do with those. She fell onto a nearby couch, with a sigh, and attempted to get the boots off of her feet. Her hands hurt from falling in the alley, and she found herself fumbling with the small buttons trailing up her ankles.

John sat on the coffee table across from her, and lifted her foot into his lap, "Let me do that, Doc."

"This corset is so tight, I can barely breath," she said. "I'm surprised I was able to run as far as I did, and I know I have blisters on my heels."

John slid the first boot off of her foot, and his fingers trailed lightly over the delicate, pale pink silk of her stockings. John pinched her big toe teasingly, before placing her foot on the carpet. He lifted her other one, and began to unfasten the intricate buttons, "How did you get them on in the first place?"

"Stefano had people come," she said quietly. "They did everything. I just stood there. My job was to look pretty."

John stopped what he was doing and looked at her sadly, "I'm sorry, Doc. I'm sorry that it took me so long to get to you. I'm sorry that you were subjected to his psychological torture and his physical abuse." He finished with her second boot, placing it beside the other on the table beside him, but he continued to hold her foot in his hands. Stroking over the soft pink silk of her stocking, he whispered, "I watched you every day, sometimes for hours, and I felt so helpless."

"Stefano was so diabolical," she whispered, leaning against the back of the couch with a soft sigh. His hands on her foot felt amazing, and she wanted to enjoy it for a moment. She wanted to enjoy his attention. "I don't know how he got me, but I know I was drugged again. The same drug that was used the last time he attempted to take me."

John's hands worked the muscles around her ankle, molding and smoothing over the achy flesh, "How do you know it was the same drug?"

Marlena was quiet, watching his hands push her voluminous skirt up her leg, and then glide up her calf muscle. Her core clenched, and she could feel moisture drip from her. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment, but she refused to acknowledge the way his hands were making her body feel. "That particular drug...makes me have odd dreams, and say things...I might not normally say. I think Stefano used it to make me more malleable."

"Malleable?"

"I was imagining you," she said softly, looking at her hands in her lap. "I was dreaming of...you. At one point I woke, and he was..." Marlena stopped speaking, feeling a sob in her throat. She couldn't allow herself to start crying again.

John didn't want to draw attention to her vulnerability, when it was so obvious that she wanted to move past it. He knew that eventually it would all come crashing down, probably in the middle of the night, when the nightmares, he knew she would have, came to her. Placing her foot on the floor, he picked up her other one and began the same process, massaging her skin through the silk stocking that clung to her long leg.