Shooting
the Moon
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Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. |
Naked and basking in each other, they made love on the floor before the fire as though it were the first time or the last. But it had almost always been that way for them--the first time after something or the last time before something else. Beginnings and endings were nearly all they'd ever had, even when they didn't know it. So little time in between. Oh, Michael.... Her legs around his waist, his weight along her body making it sing, she drew him in and in, knowing that the time before this had been their last affirmation, and this their first celebration.
Afterwards, the tile floor seemed much colder than it had been when he'd stripped them both, the firelight caressing his skin and dancing in his eyes. But there was a large, washed-to-softness comforter folded on the end of the waiting room couch. Spread on the polished tiles, it was large enough for them to lie close together on half of it and pull the other half over them. For a while they lay on their sides facing one another, mouths tasting mouths and hands caressing shoulders and backs and thighs. Then she lifted his chin with her finger and approached the question that had to be asked.
"I love you for being there for me."
"I'll always be there for you."
"Do you think abortion is wrong?"
"No. I think it was your decision. You'd made it. Fait accompli. Is that morality?"
"And if I'd gone the other way?"
"You didn't."
"Michael, if the decision was yours, what would it be?"
He drew her against him, his lips close to her ear as they had been when he told her for the first time that he loved her. "This could be the only chance we ever have," he whispered. She closed her eyes as she had then, and they held each other in silence.
After a time he said with a smile in his voice, "We should call her Grace."
"I'd only been flagged twelve days."
"Then we should call her Fate."
"Him."
"No."
"Yes. I couldn't care less. I just know."
"We'll see."
You sound like my father. But she was not about to say that out loud. "He should be Luc, after your father."
"My father's name was Nicholas."
"But you told me--" It took her a moment to see where this was leading. "Nice try, but no little Nickys in this family. He's Luc. It's in the profile." She shivered.
Before she could do more than squeak in protest, he was up and bundling her back into her sweats, then dressing himself, but only in his jeans and shirt. Their underwear and socks he gathered into one neat pile and left it there, causing her to grin in appreciation of his foresight. They sat on the floor together, leaning against the couch and each other, and then she moved to lie with her head in his lap. But he stopped her wordlessly and lay down with his head in hers, pressing a quick kiss to her belly. "Now," he said, "tell me about you."
"You have to get all the hearts and the Queen of Spades. If you can't, you lose everything."
"I think you may already have the Queen in hand."
"Good thought." She stroked his hair, wondering at the expression that had come into his eyes as she talked about her work and her plans for the Section, her interaction with the Group, and Christopher. Admiring? A little sad, maybe? Both? "I just hope I can stay like I've been this week. I feel so--so--"
"Focused," he said softly, and broke eye contact, his gaze wondering to the fire and then around the room. "Do you realize how much you've changed?"
"Changed? I haven't changed. It's just an adrenaline high."
"No." His gaze returned to meet hers. "You don't need me any more." Admiring, and a little sad.
"Oh, Michael!"
"Shh." He sat up, laying his fingers on her mouth, and then ran the tip of one of them over her lips. "You don't need me in Section any more. You're on your own there, and you love it."
"I hate it there! I always have!"
"You love being in charge of yourself." She tried to speak the denial she wanted to be there, but could not find it. "I was going to make you come back with me."
All other thoughts screamed to a halt. "You have no right." It had to be said, but it did not have to sound like a hurled accusation, and she was pleased to hear that it didn't.
"This is my child, too. So I would have had the right. But now I don't. Not with you like this."
"What did you expect? Another Terry?"
"I expected, 'I fear I've lost the courage for our dream.' If I'd found you here like that, I would have risked all our lives to bring you home."
Leaning her forehead against his, she whispered, "I fear that was me in a previous incarnation."
"So it would seem."
They were silent for a few moments, and then she raised her head to look at him again. "What does scare me is that it's all going too well. The Group, for instance."
"You should keep working Cornu."
"I'm not working him."
"What do you call it?"
"I don't call it anything. He's starting to respect my views, and he's starting to trust me. I'm just using--" Using? Hearing herself say the word, she stopped.
"What do you call that?"
"Not manipulation."
"What, then?" When she simply looked at him, aghast, he went on: "We filter in and censor out, Kita. It's how relationships survive."
"But...."
Censored out: "Don't call me 'Missy'!"
Filtered in: "He said Evelyn would have wanted us to know each other."
Censored out: "You sound like my father."
"So I should just go back and work Stare Bear like he's a hostile?"
"Whether he's a hostile or a colleague is within your control." His hand had been lying on her shoulder. Now he lifted her hair and smoothed it behind her ear. "It doesn't matter what you call it, just that you do it."
She raised her own hand, took his in it, pressed it to her lips, and laid it on his knee, still clasped in hers. "Don't Valentine me, Michael. Talk to me."
Again he broke eye contact, but she had expected that. "I thought I was."
"You were. Until just now." When he sat looking down at their hands, she shook his a little, and he slowly turned it to clasp hers. "That's better. Let's go check out the guest room. I get sleepy pretty early these days."
"Have we taken this as far as we should?"
"For now--yeah, I think we have. Don't you?"
He rose with his usual grace, pulled her up, folded the quilt and returned it to the couch, rolled the pile of underclothes into a neat clump and grasped it one-handed. "A la vie."
She was tempted to giggle as the two of them tiptoed up the stairs, shoes in hand, noting the location of the bathroom on their way past it. That temptation got the best of her when they fell onto the bed together, the springs creaking, the mattress sagging in the middle, and Michael grunting in mingled amusement and disgust.
"Merde."
"And you think I've changed?" The giggles were taking over now.
"Shh. You'll wake her up." He eased them both parallel to the cave-in and then rolled them into it, holding her close. The giggles died away, and she found herself torn between desire and her need for sleep. She would just close her eyes for a moment....
In a moment, it was the middle of the night.
Something about the muted quality of everything, she thought. The light from the window, the muffled clang-clang from the hot-air radiator beneath it. It all just seemed to say middle of the night...? She started awake, spooned against Michael, his arms enfolding her, both of them still in the clothes they'd lain down in. If he had been asleep, he'd waked as soon as she did.
"It's okay. Go back to sleep."
"It's not really fair, you know," she murmured.
"What's not fair?"
"You've been so much more patient with me than I ever was with you."
"Tell me what you mean."
"After two years, being undercover gets to be hell. It got so I didn't know what I was any more. No safe, warm place like this in the whole world. Couldn't find me any more. But you've never complained. You've been so good to me."
"You were always here." His arms tightened. "Why couldn't you share it all with me?"
"The danger, you mean? Wondering when Operations and Madeline were going to catch me at it and find some way to cancel me before Center could interfere? Like they almost did? No way was I going to share that with anybody, Michael, least of all with you."
"How did Center recruit you?"
She turned in his arms and moved a little away from him, lifting her head and resting her cheek on one palm. The room was not completely dark, and a wide shaft of light from the window fell across him at shoulder level, faintly illuminating his face.
How could such light eyes sometimes look so dark?
"After Jurgen, they said I could go anywhere in the world I wanted to. I went to a place in California where they have killer whales all penned up, close enough to the ocean to smell it, but they're never going to be let out of their pens. I think most of them are like Birkoff was. They've never even been in the ocean, and they have no idea what it's like to be free. But some of them are like us." He nodded--his gaze, intent and direct, never wandering from her face as she talked. "Whales are supposed to be so smart, maybe as smart as people. I wanted to watch them to see how they could stand it. See if I could learn by watching them. Couldn't, though. They all looked happy as clams."
"How long did you watch them?"
"Oh, about an hour, I guess. There was really nothing to see. Then I went shopping for a swimsuit and some books and a bottle of water and went to the beach. Great weather there. Not hot at all."
"What books?"
"Romance novels from a food market." At his questioning look, she grinned with satisfaction. "Don't tell me there's something I know more about than you do."
"Tell me."
"All the same story. She starts out kind of innocent, he's kind of mysterious, doesn't talk much, and they have all these misunderst-- No. Really. They have all these misunderstandings but they end up living happily ever after. Always the very same story. I only read about half of one of them, skimmed the rest, skimmed the other two. Between them and the penned-up whales, it didn't seem like much of a vacation, you know?" She lay down again, head on his shoulder, arm across his chest. "After I finished skimming, I fell asleep right there on the beach. When I woke up, this guy in a Hawaiian shirt was squatting on the sand next to me. He said, 'Smile. It should look like I'm hitting on you and you like it.' He wasn't pointing a gun at me, but he was carrying. It was like watching a replay of the worst movie I ever saw."
"What did they offer you?"
"Answers. About why I was brought in. Freedom eventually. All they were interested in was Operations and Madeline. How they treated the rest of us. How they treated hostiles. How they ran the Section. You were never mentioned. Nobody else either. The reason the Group is going along with me now is because of my intel on the two of them. I impressed the hell out of everybody, including my very own father it turns out, and now I'm paying the price for a job well done."
"Mick was your contact?"
She shook her head. "He was the watch Center put on me. Not that I ever knew that until he morphed into 'Mr. Jones' after they stopped Madeline from trying to electrocute me."
"Who was your contact?"
"Didn't have one. All dead drops. Had to be the fine hand of my father. He wasn't exactly into personal contacts."
"You agreed the first time you were approached?"
"Mostly because of us. It all just hurt too much."
"Nikita--"
"I was so in love with you, and I wanted you so much. I couldn't think about anything else, and I needed something new and important to focus or I was going to screw up and get myself killed. They only wanted to know about Operations and Madeline, and they said I'd be free. By the time Birkoff died I was starting to suspect it was all a lie, and I got--I got really down. Grenet's timing was perfect."
"I wish you could have told me how you felt."
"I tried."
"I mean when I first brought you back in."
"Told you? I told you over and over!"
"No, Kita. You never told me how you felt. You just told me how you thought I felt. Over and over."
She searched her memories for proof that he was wrong, and found none. "And I've been thinking that all you needed was patience."
"Each of us needed more than the other could give."
Something in his voice made her raise her head to look at him. In the half-light, his face was set, his eyes bleak. And it came to her that "There are things about me that must remain hidden" referred to more than Adam and Elena.
"Tell me."
"This isn't the time."
"Michael--"
"It happened when I was young, before L'Heure Sanguine. But this isn't the time." His eyes were like night. "Be patient with me."
"I will." This time, I will. Stripping herself from the waist down, she moved to sit astride him, pulled her sweatshirt over her head, then his shirt over his. "Now let me love you."
"Why not?" But she knew it was not to be. This was as far as she had ever gotten before, and so she was not surprised when her eager mouth got no farther down than his chest before he rolled her off and onto her side with her back to him. Once he was as naked as she, he pulled her against him, his hands gently kneading her breasts even as she laid hers over them, pressing herself into his palms. He began to enter her slowly, but when it became obvious that she was more than ready, he moved all the way into her, pressing forward steadily until a warm tide of pleasure surged upward through her body, making her cry out softly and press her head back against his shoulder. Now he was barely moving, pressing into her as one hand began to wander downward.
"Don't wait," she whispered. "I want you."
She got both, twisting in his arms even as they tightened convulsively around her and he groaned against her throat. When she could think again, she realized that their entire dance of love had taken only a few moments, asking nothing of her except that she love him back.
And that was a good thing; she was now almost dizzy with fatigue, even though her sated body still exulted in the touch of his.
"Sleep well." It was their ritual, and the lips that lightly touched her ear lobe were smiling.
"I'm not sure I can." The first time she'd said it, he had started to move away and had to be coaxed back.
"Try." He straightened his legs, rolling slightly onto his back so that she could rest more comfortably against him. She straightened too, sighed, closed her eyes, and was instantly asleep.
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