New Jack City: The Beginning

Part I: Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreams…

~*~

Cupid, draw back your bow

And let your arrow go

Straight to my lover’s heart

For me…

~*~

            “Dance with me, Jack.”

            The rich, soulful voice of the incomparable Sam Cooke serving as their backdrop, the newlyweds began a slow dance that was more envelopment than motion. 

             Jack Bauer’s strong, defined arms while draped lightly about the waist of his wife—the former Sabrina DeLane Cassadine now Sabrina Bauer—nevertheless held her close to his faintly moving form.  The lovely surgeon’s hands, instruments of healing, now danced about the nape of his neck with the same methodical precision they did in the O.R., only this time the goal was to soothe and satisfy.

 Briefly, the newly reinstated Field Ops Director of the Los Angeles branch of the Counter Terrorism Unit—CTU—allowed his intense gaze to leave that of his wife and scan the room they occupied. Adjacent to the state-of-the-art kitchen, the sprawling dining area—one of several housed on the estate—was damn near twice the size of even the most spacious conference room at CTU.  When he teased her that the dining room could easily serve as a small ballroom Sabrina smoothly shot back, “No, babe, that would be the formal dining room.” 

Formal.  Informal.  Estate.  Mansion.  Jack still found the terms all so strange.  Never did he ever envision them being part of his vocabulary much less descriptions of his environment.  Just when he thought he’d taken a tumble down his last rabbit hole, along came another one—like the new house—to shock the hell out of him.  Still given the bombshells that abounded in his wife’s family—an attempt to freeze the world, random poisonings, arranged marriages to cousins, just to name a few—a shock of this magnitude was more than welcomed; a bit overwhelming but welcomed nonetheless. 

Surprisingly he  found that his recall of a bit of sage advice given to him by his brother-in-law and good friend Marcus Taggert had proven to be the perfect deterrent to the headache that loomed just along the periphery of his thoughts.

 Several weeks after their stateside nuptials, Jack and Sabrina had journeyed to her homeland of Greece for her ‘official’ wedding.  As Jack looked out at the sea of faces gathered in the majestic cathedral, many of whom were Cassadines Sabrina freely admitted she rarely if ever had contact with, his best man Marcus leaned in and whispered: “Remember what I told you the night of the dinner…”   His advice, those simple words, had done more to soothe Jack’s jangled nerves than the best single malt scotch ever could: “This has nothing to do with you or Bri.  This, like 99% of everything done in this family, is about one thing and one thing only: Nikolas, the Prince.   When you get back home, when it’s just the two of you…then it’s about you and her.”

Even now, nearly two years later, he still felt the slightest twinge of something akin to guilt at recalling Marcus’ words. The reason was simple.  Marcus had already run the gauntlet when it came to dealing with the strange entity that was the extended Cassadine family.  Where Jack had the benefit of Marcus’ wisdom when he came into the Cassadine fold the strapping but quiet Detective had no one available to glean such insight from when he married Sabrina’s sister Alexis Davis several years earlier. 

Still Jack had vowed if he could manage to live among the Cassadines—both extended and immediate family—with even a tenth of the sanity and strength the handsome lawman did then Marcus’ advice would not have been given in vain.

~*~

Cupid, please hear my cry

And let your arrow fly

Straight to my lover’s heart

For me…

~*~

            “What are we gonna do with all this damn space, Bri?”

            The nearly 20,000 square foot residence was one of the few “smaller houses” his wife had actually liked that also met his approval (as well as that of her meticulous, meddlesome cousin, Stefan) when it came to security.  If Jack thought his professional environment was equipped with the best technology had to offer when it came to safeguarding its occupants, he was left slack-jawed when he beheld the security system his new home came equipped with.  Infrared sensors.  Isothermal monitoring.  Satellite uplink capability.  Panic rooms.  All this and more in addition to the external security in the form of the 24 hour surveillance provided by the Cassadine guards patrolling the estate. 

One more than one occasion Marcus had somberly reminded Jack, “If anyone makes it inside your house there are two possibilities and neither one is any good.  One, the most obvious scenario: your guards are dead.  Two, which easily explains number one and is the absolute worst-case scenario: it’s an inside job.” 

Jack knew all too well, any woman who became involved with him instantly became a target; there was no need for Marcus to elaborate—or attempt to sell Jack on the necessity of the degree of security being provided.  Having made more than his share of enemies as an intelligence agent, he knew his addition to the life of a wife—a millionaire in her own right by virtue of her profession—who hailed from Russian royalty upped the danger quotient considerably.  As a result every enemy known to Jack, from the moment he became involved with Sabrina, became hers.

“You know , Babe,” he once joked, “every enemy I have is now yours.  You still want to take this ride?”

Granted, the Cassadines were what was known as ‘royals on paper,’ not presiding over an actual kingdom, but that in no way lessened their staggering power and wealth.  The mere fact that the millions Sabrina was worth from her career as a surgeon when combined with her inheritance could still cause her to net worth to be considered mere ‘pocket change’ in comparison to the Cassadine fortune spoke volumes.  While not in the immediate line of succession, Sabrina still bore the name—that she had disavowed herself of it after the dissolution of her marriage to cousin Julian Luna was irrelevant—and was  in possession of the biggest trump card of all, she was a Cassadine by blood.  

Sabrina never so much as blinked; instead she had sadly smiled and cupped his face.  “I think given that mine, my family’s,” she corrected, “are now yours, I should ask if you still want to take this ride?”

Yet, even in the midst of such seriousness Jack still had to jokingly marvel that the world his wife had known since birth was something that even in his most outlandish Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous dream he couldn’t come close to imagining; it was mind-blowing just processing the minor details like food and clothing:  fresh fruits and vegetables flown in daily; a staff available to cater to your culinary whims any time of day or night; never using the same washcloth or sleeping on the same sheets twice…in a day; never wearing the same clothes more than once!  It all came as naturally to Sabrina as breathing; for Jack who, granted since his involvement with Sabrina, had gotten quite a bit of exposure to the ‘Wydemere experice’ as he called it, it still was a learning curve.  But he had to admit, he was adjusting.  He didn’t think he’d ever get used to having servants; still, Sabrina’s assurance that the revered Cassadine Housekeeper, Mrs. Landsburry, had trained the staff to operate with a stealth that would make a ninja envious helped considerably. 

“Did you say something?” Sabrina purred, pressing her shapely form closer to his. 

“I said,” he managed, his voice a strangled moan, “what are we gonna do with all this damn space?”

~*~

Now, Cupid if you arrow makes her love strong for me

I promise I will love her until eternity

I know between the two of us her heart we can steal

Help me if you will

~*~

“Oh, I think,” she laughed, the sound pure seduction, “we can come up with a few things we can do.”  A brief pause, as she first laved his lower lip with her tongue then offered up a none-too-gentle nip of her teeth against the supple flesh.  “To each other…”

 Save for a few movers’ boxes the room was devoid of all furnishings, making for excellent acoustics and enhancing the already amazing voice of the late crooner to a level that was beyond sublime. 

            “Is sex all you ever think about, woman?”  Jack chuckled against her hungry kiss.

            “No,” she shook her head.  All the while, her skilled fingers made quick work of undoing his well-worn button-fly Levi’s, attempting to free the impressive bulge housed within.   “Just sex with you.”  She moaned as her hand closed around the prize she’d been eyeing since they’d crossed the threshold of the multi-million dollar estate.

            “Good answer, Mrs. Bauer,” Jack responded in kind.  Suddenly he found it extremely difficult to stand, much less speak under the ardent touch of the determined doctor.

            “Why don’t you show me just how good my answer was, Mr. Bauer?”

            In mere seconds it seemed her flowing sarong-like dress was being hiked about the beautiful surgeon’s hips even as she was being lowered onto the nearby mover’s boxes.  Although the thick, heavy mover’s quilt cushioned her landing the boxes’ contents had no such good fortune.

            “Jack,” Sabrina panted between kisses, “the dishes…”

            Poised at the entrance of his wife’s warmth, his erection throbbing with an almost painful intensity, Jack’s next words made clear where his priorities lay.

            “Fuck the dishes.”

~*~

So, Cupid draw back your bow

And let your arrow go

Straight to my lover’s heart

For me

Nobody but me

~*~

Song Credit: Cupid—Sam Cooke