Be careful what you wish for.

The cliched warning flitted through Nikita's mind as she shifted restlessly in the marital bed she'd shared with Michael for nearly a week. She tried to swat the words away, but they returned again and again, buzzing through her brain like a swarm of insects.

Be careful...

Sighing, she turned to the next page of the newspaper she'd been pretending to read as she waited for Birkoff to tell her that they were back on line with a live visual feed. A moment later, she shifted her position again.

...what you wish for.

The flush of a toilet filtered through the door of the master bathroom, followed by the whoosh of running water. It was Michael, performing his customary evening ablutions.

The implied intimacy of the routine sounds both soothed and unsettled her. So, too, the images they conjured up.

Nikita resolutely ignored the sudden flutter of her pulse and folded the newspaper in half. Would this be her wish if she were given one? she challenged herself. To live in upscale suburban matrimony with Michael?

To fall asleep with him, each night.

To wake up with him, each morning.

To touch him as she pleased.

To talk with him about ordinary, everyday things...

She stared blindly at an article about the Mid-East peace process, remembering the way Walter had responded earlier in the day when she'd used the word "normal" to describe the status of the scenario she and Michael were playing out. Section's armaments expert had been right to scoff, she decided ruefully. Notions of normalcy had no place within the confines of their dark and dangerous world.

Had she ever known what "normal" was? Nikita mused. Even before her involuntary induction into Section, had she had any acquaintanceship with the kind of happily humdrum existence that so many people took for granted?

No.

Not really.

Heaven knew, her current performance as Michael's "wife" probably owed more to characters she'd seen on television than to anything she'd personally experienced. Her first-hand knowledge of domestic bliss was...was...

Essentially non-existent.

Did Michael "remember normal"? she wondered, fingering the edge of the newspaper. Was the caring husband role he'd been playing with such persuasiveness patterned after his father? Was it reflective of the way he'd been with his orphaned younger sister? Or...was it a reprise of the way he'd been with his late wife?

Nikita swallowed, struggling against a tide of speculative questions.

Had Michael complimented Simone on her beauty or her brioche?

Had he caressed or kissed Simone whenever she came within reach?

Had he shared with Simone the kind of ineffably sweet smile he'd given her across the breakfast table that very morning when she'd teased him about the truly ugly striped tie--

Nikita's eyes stung for an instant. She blinked rapidly, reminding herself that she was under observation. While Armel's surveillance team probably would shrug off a few tears as a delayed reaction to the stress of the day's events, she strongly suspected that Section's watchers would not.

Especially not if one of those watchers was Madeline.

Which led her, inevitably, to a reconsideration of the incredible conversation she'd had with Section's chief strategist just a few short hours ago.

The older woman's manner throughout the interview had struck Nikita as odd. Not unnervingly strange, but definitely a few degrees off psychological plumb. She'd felt as thought Madeline had had to keep dragging her thoughts back to the discussion at hand. She'd never seen her so distracted. Never heard her be so...inconsistent...in her tone.

There'd been something a bit too solicitous about her inquiry into the clarity of Birkoff's feed, for example. Her regretful sounding admission about the inherent difficulty of the mission had been rather out of character as well. Likewise, the very direct way in which she'd dealt with the issue of whether Section had engineered the death of Armel's young son.

Of course, all these vague anomalies of demeanor had been nothing compared with what Nikita had decided had been the raison d'etre for the interview. Now that had been very UN-Madeline.

Or...had it?

"By the way," the older woman had begun. "Armel is still watching you. He has to remain convinced that you and Michael are husband and wife."

That this seemingly casual--but no doubt pre-planned--shift of topics had jolted her, Nikita couldn't deny. Although she'd managed to control her expression, she'd been assailed by a sudden surge of wariness. A host of questions had flooded her brain--more that a few of them revolving around Michael's disconcerting explanation of why he'd selected her for the Armel mission.

"Is there something wrong?" she'd parried, willing herself to maintain eye contact.

Madeline had waited a moment, seeming to weigh her next words very carefully. Then she'd stated with clinical precision "The average couple who've been married under five years have intimate relations at *least* twice a week."

If there'd been an appropriate response to this matter-of-fact assertion, Nikita hadn't known what it was. So she'd swallowed her shock, lifted her chin a notch, and kept silent.

Looking back, she'd decided that her reaction--or, rather, her lack of one--had pleased Madeline. She'd gotten the distinct impression that she'd scored some points by keeping her cool. She'd also detected a hint of satisfaction in the brief curving of the other woman's mouth. Madeline had expected her to behave as she had.

As for the advice that had followed...

Well, the more Nikita thought about it, the more nonsensical it seemed. She couldn't imagine having a "small argument" with Michael. A mince-no-words quarrel or a physical fight, maybe. But a mundane marital spat about money? Or, God help them both, about their imaginary in-laws? She simply couldn't conceive of staging such a--

A tiny crackle of static intruded on her reflections. She stiffened slightly, like an actress preparing to pick up her cue. A moment later she heard Birkoff advise her to stand by.

She discarded the newspaper and adjusted her position once again. She glanced right, toward what she'd come to think of as Michael's side of the bed. The scenario called for him to exit the master bathroom once Birkoff switched Armel's surveillance pick-up back to a live feed.

Nikita drew a deep breath.

All right. She was standing by.

The question was For what?

Nikita exhaled on a hiss, deciding that the answer to the previous question was all too obvious. She was standing by to have sex--Section-sanctioned "intimate relations"--with Michael.

And she was standing by to do the deed on camera. With a bunch of strangers--to say nothing of some of her colleagues--scrutinizing every move.

"Okay," she heard Birkoff say through her com link. His voice held what sounded to her like a hint of smugness. He apparently had no qualms about his voyeuristic assignment. "They're watching the live feed now."

Great. Just wonderful. Lucky them.

Nikita levered herself up against the headboard of the bed, glancing toward the bathroom again. What was Michael waiting for? she wondered edgily. An engraved invitation? Surely he understood that after six days and five nights of flirtation and touchy-feely their audience was expecting some major conjugal follow-through. Unless--

She frowned suddenly, crossing her arms over her silk-clad breasts in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. Today's off-kilter session with Madeline had been one-on-one. So far as she knew, the older woman had not met with Michael. Until this moment, she'd assumed that she'd been summoned for a lecture because of some perceived lack in her--uh--"field mechanics." But what if...

Oh, God. What if Section's chief strategist saw Michael as the problematic partner in this perverse, played-for-surveillance set-up? What if the real message behind the "at least twice a week" speech had been that it was up to her to get him to do the job?

Nikita's stomach cart-wheeled. A peculiar thrill of excitement--or was it apprehension?--skittered through her nervous system.

Should she?

Could she?

And if she did...

Nikita gnawed on her lower lip, acutely aware of the abrupt acceleration of her heartbeat. Michael would know he was being manipulated. Of this, she had absolutely no doubt. But how that knowledge might affect him--assuming it affected him at all--she wasn't able to say.

If truth be told, she wasn't at all certain how it would impact her either.

She'd had an unusual amount of time for reflection during the past few days. Although she derived a peculiar kind of satisfaction from performing it, housework wasn't exactly an intellectually challenging activity. Initially, she'd tried to steer her thoughts along innocuously familiar paths. Gradually, however, she'd allowed them to stray. They'd ended up taking her into some very iffy emotional territory. One of the things she'd found herself contemplating with increasing frequency was what might be called the balance of sexual power between her and Michael.

These contemplations had required that she sort through a great many difficult memories. The erotic encounter in her apartment that had helped persuade her not to flee Section with Eric had been particularly painful to confront. Even worse, Jurgen's angry charge that she'd been enslaved by a man who regarded beautiful women as nothing more than puppets.

Eventually, she'd fixated on the implications of the question Michael had asked her in the bar at Volare's after she'd explained that she was the person Petrosian had instructed him to meet. "Am I under orders to please you?" he'd wanted to know.

Although Nikita believed that she'd managed to mask her reaction pretty well after the first moment or two, this calmly uttered inquiry had shocked her in ways she still couldn't adequately articulate. In seven words, Michael had altered almost beyond recognition the psychological landscape in which she'd believed they were operating.

Am I under orders to please you?

That her former mentor would have complied with any and all of her sexual commands had she answered yes was something she'd never really questioned. Indeed, she'd had several X-rated dreams about what would have happened had she surrendered to temptation and responded to him in the affirmative.

But the heat generated by these dreams had given way to the soul-chilling realization that a "yes" wouldn't have meant the return of the lover with whom she'd spent one incandescently ecstatic night. Rather, a "yes" would have transformed the man who'd been that lover into a whore.

Perhaps...just perhaps...Michael would have been able to forgive her had she succumbed to the twin lures of power and passion and ordered him to take her to bed. It truly wouldn't have mattered. Because she wouldn't have been able to forgive herself.

The reason for this boiled down to one fact. Leaving aside the mystery of exactly what motivated his unsolicited efforts to protect her, nothing Michael had ever done to her could be labeled selfish. Yes, there'd been instances when he'd used--even abused--her in the cause of achieving mission closure. But he'd never taken personal advantage of the authority he had over her.

A significant number of trainers required sexual compliance from their material. While this wasn't a fact of Section life that generated a lot of discussion, it wasn't a secret, either. Which wasn't to say forcible rape was condoned by those in charge. It was common knowledge that Operation had personally cancelled an operative who'd sexually brutalized a subordinate. But as long as a trainer stopped short of criminal assault in the course of establishing his or her dominance...

Nikita couldn't deceive herself. For all that she liked to argue otherwise, she knew that she'd been Michael's for the taking almost from the moment she'd laid eyes on him. Even during those times when she'd come close to convincing herself that she felt nothing for him but loathing, he could have claimed her physically--and broken her psychologically in the process--had he chosen to do so.

Only he hadn't.

Not because he hadn't wanted her. Quite the contrary. Despite his phenomenal self-discipline, there were certain physiological reactions even  Michael couldn't completely control. She'd felt his body respond to hers on more occasions than she could count. Yet until the night on the barge, he'd deferred--no, he'd denied his desires.

Why he'd held back was something Nikita had yet to puzzle out. But in the course of trying to solve the riddle, she'd realized something that had shaken her very deeply. And this "something" was that for all his Alpha male assertiveness in the other areas of their relationship, Michael had very rarely taken the sexual initiative with her. In fact, there'd been a number of situations in which his behavior had been...well, passive wasn't precisely the adjective she wanted, but it came pretty close.

I kissed you first, Michael, she thought with a pang, closing her eyes as a kaleidoscopic series of images flashed through her mind. So many times, I...kissed...you...first.

In her apartment when he'd set out to seduce her away from the idea of escape He'd woo'd her right up to the line with slow touches and soft words, but she'd been the one to step over it by touching her lips to his.

In Madeline's office, when they'd been preparing for their Peter and Sage masquerade He'd stood there, uncharacteristically resistant to following a mission-related instruction. She'd been the one who'd planted a quick smack on his cheek.

In Bauer's camera-rigged bedroom, after they'd been told to "do it" or else Again, he'd just stood there until she'd worked up the nerve to grab him and try to get down to business.

Even the night on the barge, when they'd finally made love, the decisive yea or nay had been hers. It had been her deliberately goading question that had stripped away the last shred of Michael's self-possession, leaving him vulnerable to her in a way she'd never imagined possible.

There'd been a heart-stopping moment--right after he'd confessed to the fear that had tortured him for six long months--when she could have doused the incendiary emotions she'd seen blazing in the depths of his compelling, silver-green eyes. She could have eviscerated him with a few whispered words. Instead, she'd dumped the verbal equivalent of gasoline on the flames and gloried in the subsequent explosion.

Nikita opened her eyes. Maybe this...passivity...was part of Michael's attraction, she reflected uneasily. Pursuit was not really his style. He offered himself on one obvious level, but remained fundamentally elusive on many, many others. He seemed to have mastered a kind of...of...sexual jujitsu. He didn't seduce his partners. They seduced themselves by surrendering to the oh-so-compelling fantasy that they might be the one human being to whom he would truly open up. But the more they gave, the less they got. The more desperately they tried to connect, the more emphatically he disengaged.

From a woman, such behavior probably would be labeled playing hard to get. But from a man like Michael...?

Nikita twiddled with a lock of hair and shifted her position yet again. As far as she could recall, Michael had kissed her twice of his own volition prior to this mission. True, she'd had moments when she'd thought she remembered having felt the tender brush of his lips in the aftermath of their ordeal at the hands of Red Cell, but she'd pretty much persuaded herself that this badly fragmented "recollection" was based on fantasy, not fact.

The notion of Michael playing protective Prince to her unconscious Beauty was absurd, she'd told herself over and over and over again. Psychologically twisted, too, given the contempt she'd spewed at him just before she'd been shot. Indeed, she'd sensed the resonances of her intended-to-wound words when he'd visited her in MedLab shortly after she'd woken up from her drug-induced slumber. His manner toward her had been the essence of Section-style correctness. He'd been kind, after a fashion, but very cool. He hadn't even come close enough to touch her, for heaven's sake.

So. By her reckoning--and leaving aside the issue of what kind of caresses had been given by whom during their interlude on the barge--she'd received only two completely voluntary kisses from Michael.

The second of these had occurred during the mission involving Operations' son, Stephen. Exactly what had prompted her one-time trainer to feather his mouth over hers and advise her to behave herself in his absence, she still didn't know. Whatever the reason, it hadn't been part of the mission profile!

The first kiss Michael had bestowed on her had followed the Alec Chandler debacle. He'd come to her apartment ostensibly to apologize for yet another round of manipulations. Goaded by a nasty mix of anger, hurt and disgust, she'd pulled a gun on him and demanded to know whether he could come up with a single reason why she shouldn't shoot him then and there.

He hadn't protested her action. Nor had he attempted to persuade her that the bitter sense of betrayal she'd felt was misdirected. Rather, he'd rejected the opportunity to justify himself and moved forward into point blank range. His gaze had stayed locked on her face the entire time. He'd seemed utterly unafraid. Almost indifferent to the possibility that she might put a bullet through him.

She hadn't backed up as he'd approached, although the impulse to do so had been there. That she'd stood her ground was a matter of pride, but only up to a point. Deep in her heart, she wasn't certain whether she'd remained where she was because it had been the right thing to do or because she'd feared that her body might not respond if she ordered it to move.

Nikita's breath hitched in her chest as she remembered how Michael had reached up and clasped the hand in which she'd been holding her ready-to-fire weapon. She could see in her mind's eye the way he'd dipped his head and wondered, as she'd wondered so many times before, how such a simple movement could have been made to seem both insolent and supplicatory. She recalled the shock she'd felt when she'd realized his intention. A moment later, she quivered at the memory of how he'd pressed his lips against her knuckles.

While she'd been innocent of the crime that had led to her involuntary induction into Section, Nikita had been a long way from sexually untouched. She'd received an unpleasant introduction to the facts of life at an early age. She'd also let her blossoming adolescent body be handled by more than a few members of her mother's seemingly endless parade of boyfriends because the cost of resisting their advances had involved bruises, blood and broken bones.

As for her behavior during her time on the streets...well, although she'd never sold herself for money, she had bartered access to her flesh for affection several times. There'd been nights when she'd felt so desperately alone that she would have done just about anything with anybody in exchange for a few minutes of cuddling and a couple of kind words.

Still. "Experienced" though she was, she'd been unprepared for the scalding rush of reaction she'd felt when Michael had touched his mouth to her clenched fingers. Her blood had buzzed in her ears. For an instant, she'd thought her knees might buckle.

After Michael had made his exit, she'd picked up the cat he'd told her to get rid of and cradled it close. Then she'd studied the hand he'd kissed. She'd been oddly surprised to find it unchanged by the contact. At some primitive level, she'd expected to discover that she'd been branded for life.

She'd told her Section mentor once--in reference to an entirely different matter--that she would love to know how his mind worked. Even at this late date, she would have given a great deal to learn what had been going on inside his head as he'd walked into the barrel of her gun and practically dared her to kill him. And had she been offered the chance to discover what he'd been thinking as he'd turned his back on that same loaded weapon and left her apartment...

Nikita felt her mouth twist. She'd love to get a few insights into what Michael had been thinking during the past six days, too. On the surface, he'd been all openness and affection. Underneath, he'd been stubbornly inaccessible. It seemed to her that the nearest they'd come to genuine intimacy since they'd begun this mission had been back in Section when she'd prodded him about the reason he'd selected her to play his wife. As subject to multiple interpretations as his ultimate answer had been, the expression in his eyes had been searingly direct.

That she'd started this assignment with extremely mixed emotions, she couldn't deny. The professional attunement she'd established with Michael had been badly jangled by a series of events--and individuals. She honestly hadn't known what to expect from him. Even more unnerving--she hadn't known what to expect from herself.

This uncertainty had prompted her to ratchet up her defenses. To strengthen her guard against her own very real vulnerabilities.  I won't let myself be hurt again, she'd vowed.

So wary had she been of being manipulated, that nearly three days had elapsed before she'd become aware of how much situational control Michael had ceded to her. While the mission was "his" in the sense that responsibility for its success or failure rested with him, he'd apparently decided that how far they went in their marital masquerade was up to her.

Exactly how her recognition of this dynamic had come about was rather difficult to describe. Suffice to say, it had gradually dawned on her that Michael's husbandly attentions to her were remarkably free of sexual urgency. Even last night's fondling beneath the marital bed-sheets had been a lot less provocative than it undoubtedly had looked to those who'd been watching.

He hadn't pushed her. Not once. If she gave him her cheek rather than her mouth when he moved to kiss her, he accepted what was offered. If she showed the slightest hint of wanting to be free of an embrace, he made no attempt to prolong it. What's more, the "injured back" explanation for their failure to make love had originated with him. He'd feigned a muscle spasm the first night they'd been under surveillance.

Nikita had experienced an instant of panic when she'd seen him wince and stiffen. Given Michael's almost super-human tolerance for pain, she'd assumed that he must be in the grip of indescribable agony. Then she'd seen the expression in his eyes and figured out the truth. She'd also realized the intention behind his little performance.

She'd felt intensely relieved at the "out" he'd provided. It was pointless to pretend that she'd hadn't. And yet...

She'd experienced twin stabs of resentment and rejection, too. Neither of which had been very rational but which probably helped explain what had precipitated her rather perverse behavior the previous night. She'd wanted a little...quid pro quo. She'd also felt extremely safe in seeking it. To put it bluntly, she'd known that Michael wouldn't retaliate if she led him on, just a bit, then left him high and dry.

She'd felt guilty immediately afterward, of course. And more than a little ashamed. To what degree these emotions had prompted her utterance of the words "I love you," she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure how much it had influenced her interpretation of Michael's response, either.

Nikita flexed her feet beneath the bed covers, her thoughts reverting to her earlier reflections about her mission partner's apparent "passivity" in sexual matters. Maybe his current restraint was just another mind game. Maybe she was deluding herself that she was the one in control. Maybe--

Stop it! she told herself fiercely. This was Section-think at its most insidious. It would destroy her if she succumbed to it. While she couldn't willfully blind herself to unpleasant truths, she had to trust her own instincts!

And every instinct she possessed told her that Michael wasn't attempting to seduce her with reverse psychology. Rather, he was trying to protect her from ensnarement in a situation that they both knew--he, probably better than she--Section would have no scruples about exploiting in the cruelest possible ways.

So...

************

Be careful what you wish for.

The cliche intruded, once again.

No, Nikita decided after several seconds. Forget about wishing. She had to think carefully about what she wanted. About what she might realistically hope to have, given the life-and-death parameters that defined so much of her existence.

What she wanted was another night with Michael. That she would prefer it not happen under orders and on camera went without saying. But since those were the circumstances that fate had dealt her, she'd accept them.

She wanted--needed--to know what, if anything, remained of the bond she felt she and Michael had forged in the searing consummation of their long-repressed passion. She also wanted--needed--to find out whether what she'd experienced in Michael's arms had been the aberrant product of desperation-fueled desire, or the first step toward something...real.

Nikita pushed the bed linen away, swung her legs over the side of mattress and stood up. She reached for the bottom hem of her sleek white night dress, tugging the garment up and over her head. In the space of a single heartbeat, she was naked except for a skimpy pair of panties.

Although she knew precisely where the surveillance equipment was positioned in the bedroom, she made no effort to shield herself from prying eyes. She spared a brief thought for Birkoff, then resolutely closed her mind to the fact that she had an audience. All that mattered for the rest of night was a single man.

He was the man to whom she'd once surrendered her body. The man to whom she'd entrusted her life--perhaps her very soul--more times than she could count. The man to whom she'd said "I love you," barely twenty-four hours ago.

Nikita smoothed out the covers, then lay down on top of them. She was sharply conscious of the shift of her hair against her upper back and shoulders. Likewise, the teasing feel of the blanket as it rubbed against her newly bared torso and belly. Her body began to tingle, as though her veins had been transfused with electrified champagne.

She took a deep breath. Expelled it on a slow sigh. This was her choice, she told herself. This was what she wanted. And whatever the consequences, she'd deal with them.

"Michael?" she called. Although her voice was huskier than normal, it was perfectly steady. "It's getting late. Come to bed."

Birkoff didn't watch.

This dereliction of duty wasn't premeditated. He'd fully intended to monitor through the end of his shift. But when the interaction between Michael and Nikita turned intimate, he discovered that he had to turn away.

He couldn't look.

No. It was more complicated than that. Something inside him told him he shouldn't look.

It wasn't that he'd never played Peeping Tom on Section's behalf. He had. In fact, one of his first real-time intel analysis assignments had involved a tryst between Michael and the apparently insatiable mistress of a narco-terrorist.

Although he'd downloaded some pretty raunchy stuff from the 'Net over the years, what he'd witnessed that night had rocked him down to his socks and sent his adolescent hormones raging into hyper-drive. He'd been boggled by a few of the maneuvers he'd seen. Who would have thought that anyone other than a couple of prepubescent world class gymnasts could twist into such positions without sustaining permanent physical damage?

He'd also gotten several full-frontal views of Michael's...er...endowments. Geez. Talk about a guy getting more than his fair share of the goodies!

He'd still been pretty torqued up about the whole assignment the following morning when he'd encountered a cold op named Chuck in the corridor outside his living quarters.

Birkoff had made a point of steering clear of Section's killer elite as much as possible during the early stages of his "career." He'd been okay dealing with them professionally. But when it came to anything resembling personal contact...no way, Jose! Whether they'd meant to or not, members of the cold ops cadre had made him feel like the poster boy for Geeks Anonymous.

Michael, oddly enough, had proven an exception to this almost from day one. He'd never condescended. An occasional cuff to the head aside, he'd always dealt with him colleague to colleague, not grown-up to pain-in-the-butt kid. While Birkoff couldn't say that the older man had been nice to him--Michael doing "nice" was a pretty unnerving proposition--he had gone out of his way to wise him up about the way Section operated. Michael had also stepped in and taken the heat for some of the mistakes he'd made, although Birkoff hadn't discovered this 'til several years after the fact.

As for Chuck...well, he'd been different, too. Lethal, but surprisingly light-hearted. And gutsy? The guy ragged on Michael every chance he got, for Pete's sake!

Birkoff had nearly choked the first time he'd heard the two ops talking to each other. His initial thought had been that mocking Michael was akin to draping oneself with lamb chops and leaping in front of a starving tiger. He'd figured Chuck was going to get himself ripped apart.

Then he'd realized that Michael was genuinely amused by his comrade-in-arm's raillery. And he'd barely begun to assimilate this astounding concept when he'd been knocked further off balance by Michael's deadpan delivery of a very witty comeback to one of Chuck's choicer wisecracks.

"Hey, Birkoff!" Chuck had greeted him as he'd stepped out of his assigned room. "I hear you got stuck watching Michael hit the mattress with Serrano's nympho arm ornament last night."

He'd felt himself turn beet red. The reaction had infuriated him. "Yeah," he'd snapped, barely restraining himself from mentioning that the couple in question had fucked on the floor, up against a wall, and in a damned Jacuzzi before they'd finally landed in bed. "So?"

Chuck had seemed unfazed by both the blush and the belligerence. "So...I'll bet you started out getting horny and ended up depressed as hell."

Birkoff had opened and shut his mouth several times. "H-huh?" he'd finally stammered.

The cold op had given him a crooked grin. "Don't sweat it, kid. Michael makes most of us feel inadequate."

He'd gulped, unable to accept that the older man was actually talking about what it sounded like he was talking about.

"Still," Chuck had gone on. "You know what they say."

"Well--" They said a lot of stuff, he'd reminded himself. And a significant percentage of it was a load of hooey.

"It ain't the size that counts. It's what you do with it."

Birkoff had blinked rapidly, feeling his face get even hotter. "Ri-i-ight," he'd managed after a moment or two, hating the fact that his voice had risen about an octave.

"Of course, you-know-who seems to score in the top percentile in both categories," Chuck had added with a wink. "Which explains why Ops tapped him to do the wild thing with the Columbian She-Cat."

"I, uh, suppose." He'd cringed inwardly, remembering the way the voluptuous Latina had scratched and screamed in the throes of orgasm. He'd wondered fleetingly whether there was such a thing as distemper shots for human beings. Then he'd tried to imagine himself being ordered to get it up and get it on for Section as Michael had been. He'd found the idea was more repulsive than arousing.

Chuck apparently had divined the direction of his thoughts. "Not to worry, Birkoff," he'd said mildly. "The only joystick Section is likely to expect you to use in the field is the one connected to your computer. One piece of advice about what you saw last night, though..."

"Don't try it at home without adult supervision?"

The cold op had seemed surprised by this sarcastic riposte. He'd been surprised by it himself. Surprised...and a wee bit nervous that he might have crossed the line into unacceptable territory. He'd been relieved when Chuck had let loose with an up-from-the-belly guffaw.

"Yeah, kid," the older man had agreed, his eyes bright with laughter. "That, too. But my personal word to the wise is Don't tell Michael you were the one who pulled surveillance duty while he was doing the horizontal mambo."

Birkoff had hesitated, suddenly wary. "Why...not?"

"You'll make him self-conscious. Deep down, he's a real shy guy."

Birkoff started to grin at the memory of Chuck's characterization of Michael as a shrinking violet. The smile contracted into a grimace as he recalled that Chuck was dead, the victim of an arms dealer's diabolical booby trap.

Over the years, he'd trained himself not to attach names and faces to Section's constantly expanding list of personnel losses. But in Chuck's case--

Put it away, Birkoff ordered himself. And he did.

Shifting his attention back to the situation at hand, he entered a series of commands on his keyboard. Then he checked the synch between the tape Section had patched into Armel's surveillance loop and the live feed coming from the set-up house. Looking good, he decided. It was just about time to make the switch.

"Nikita, stand by," he instructed in a crisp, clear voice. It gave him a funky little charge to see the beautiful blonde snap into mission-ready mode. He'd once confessed to Walter that there were moments when he really, really got off on telling cold ops what to do. The weapons' master had studied him without speaking for about ten seconds after listening to the admission, then dryly advised that he keep this particular on-the-job pleasure to himself.

He did another synch check. After making a quick calculation in his head, he tweaked the video output--just a scosh. He eyed the monitor again. Perfect, he judged.

Ready.

Set.

Go!

Birkoff tapped the keyboard once, mentally supplying a dramatic sound effect as his finger struck its small plastic target. An instant later, he cut his eyes toward the screen that showed what Armel's team was receiving.

Bingo! he thought triumphantly. Birkoff shoots! Birkoff scores!

"Okay," he announced, keeping his voice calm. "They're watching the live feed now."

He remained ultra-vigilant for another minute or so, ready to react to even the slightest hint of a glitch. Zero defects, he finally concluded.

He treated himself to a Twizzler and relaxed in his chair. While he was still very much in the loop, he understood that he'd been relegated to support status--or lower--for the rest of the night. Nikita and Michael were the ones on point and in play.

It had been...interesting...observing them the past six days. He had to admit that he'd wondered whether the two of them could pull off playing a normal couple. Well, no. That wasn't quite right. He hadn't worried about the couple thing at all. Having gotten a gander at the videotape Perry Bauer had made when they'd pretended to be a pair of hot-to-trot mercenaries named Peter and Sage, he'd figured they had that angle nailed--no sweat. But when it came to the "normal" aspect of this assignment equation, he'd entertained some significant doubts.

They seemed to be managing, Birkoff conceded with an odd twinge of emotion. Indeed, had he not been privy to the facts behind the fiction, he was ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent certain he would have bought their husband and wife act from start to finish.

Even knowing the facts...oh, man. What could he say? There were moments when the way Michael and Nikita related to each other seemed so damned real it almost hurt him to watch.

Birkoff snagged another Twizzler and stuffed it into his mouth. His thoughts straying to the night Nikita had dragged him out to a bar and tried to fix him up with a girl. Any girl. And what had he done? God. He'd responded to her well-intentioned gesture by hitting on her!

He shook his head, reliving the episode in ego-shriveling detail. Mr. Dork-O-Rama trying to put the moves on the best babe Section had ever seen. He'd been pathetic, cubed. It was a wonder Nikita hadn't hauled off and decked him. Or worse, fogged up his glasses by laughing in his weenie face.

She'd rebuffed him so gently, he recalled with a pang. Because she truly did care for him. Just not "that" way.

Which was for the best, when all was said and done. Because once he'd had a chance to think things through, he'd realized that what he felt for Nikita was a lot more significant than a sexual itch. He liked her. She was his friend.

What she was to Michael--and what Michael was to her--remained two major question marks. He'd be the first to admit that he'd been wa-a-a-y behind the learning curve when it had come to interpreting the vibes between the two. Hence, his doofus pass in the bar. Had he had the vaguest inkling that Michael regarded her as something more than material, he wouldn't have smiled at her!

Birkoff slumped further down in his ergonomically-designed chair, contemplating the surveillance screen through narrowed eyes. Nikita was still in bed. Still alone. She looked a little anxious.

He checked the amount of time that had elapsed since they'd gone back to the live feed. That long? he thought, clicking his tongue.

Hmmm. Maybe he should give Michael a verbal nudge through his com link.

Nah. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

It wasn't that he was worried about how Section's top op might react or anything like that. He simply hadn't been clued in on what kind of scenario Michael and Nikita had decided would play most effectively in the wake of Armel's home invasion and snatch. Psych sequencing wasn't his area of expertise, after all. For all he knew, they could have settled on the idea of projecting a hint of marital estrangement. Some kind of...disagreement...over Nikita's capitulation to Armel's demands that she use her "psychic" abilities to help him contact his son.

Birkoff squirmed around, trying not to think about the source of the intel he'd fed to Nikita during that morning's session with Armel. He also shut his mind to what probably would happen to that source once Section achieved closure on this mission.

Not his department.

Not Nikita's, either. But he didn't think that would stop her from sticking her nose in if she found out the truth. Which meant it would be better for all concerned that she didn't.

"All" except young--

He jammed the brakes on this train of thought. Forget it, he told himself fiercely. Just...forget...about it.

Okay. It was forgotten.

Birkoff sighed heavily and shoved his glasses up. He rubbed his eyes.

Maybe they intended to put a new spin on the injured back thing? he speculated, lowering his hands and letting the wire rims drop back into place on the bridge of his nose. He could see that kind of scenario working. They could pretend that Michael had suffered some additional hurt when he'd been knocked to the floor by Armel's goons.

Birkoff munched on his licorice, mentally replaying the scene in the kitchen and the comments he'd overheard two cold ops make in the wake of it.

"I don't think I could have pulled it off," one of them had said.

"Me, either," the other had agreed.

Birkoff hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but the novelty of listening to a pair of cold ops voluntarily admit to being less than 100 percent, performance-wise, had made it impossible to resist doing so.

"You know how fast Michael's reflexes are," the first speaker had elaborated. "The guy operates on a hair-trigger. He moves, it's all blur. To control himself the way he did--unbelievable. I watched the whole sequence in slo-mo. I swear, there wasn't a muscle twitch out of character. He wimped all the way."

"Still, you gotta figure he was taking the a--holes apart in his head."

"Mmm. Probably imagining letting Nikita have a piece of the action, too."

"Speaking of action--"

"Don't you mean the lack of it? I had three nights ago."

"I had before breakfast on the second morning."

"I heard Sinjin bet they'd do it an hour after they crossed the threshhold!"

"Is anybody left in the pool at this point?"

"The Asian dude from Housekeeping, I think. And one of Madeline's little--"

A sudden movement on the surveillance screen yanked Birkoff out of his reverie. He straightened with a jerk, gaping at the monitor. I'm hallucinating, he told himself. I did not see what I think I just saw.

But he knew he had.

Flushing hotly, Birkoff glanced around his work area. It was deserted except for Simon. And Simon--being Simon--appeared oblivious to everything but what Simon was doing.

He looked back at the screen, buffeted by a host of contradictory emotions. She'd flashed the camera, he fumed, tugging at the metal chain that encircled his neck. Nikita had yanked off that white lingerie-thingie she'd been wearing and she'd flashed the camera! And now she was lolling around on the bed like some...some..bimbo on a porno website!

Birkoff thrust his fingers back through his hair, his agitation escalating. Damn them, he thought angrily. If they'd decided they were going to go all the way with the husband and wife thing tonight, they should have given him a heads up. He was part of the team, too. How the hell did they expect--

He froze, an appalling possibility invading his brain. Geez. Oh...geez. Supposing this wasn't a "they" kind of development? Supposing Nikita was pulling a unilateral?

Shit. It wouldn't be the first time she'd gone off profile.

Birkoff reached out and smacked the com key that switched him into one-on-one contact with Michael. He hesitated for an instant once the private channel was open, then went with his impulse.

"Nikita's down to her underwear, Michael," he hissed. "Get out there and do something!"

Birkoff regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth.

Damn, Seymour, he berated himself. Think you could have phrased that any worse?

A moment later, he heard Nikita call to Michael, urging him to come to bed. Something about her tone told him that his suspicion about her having gone unilateral had been correct.

He took a deep breath, struggling to regain his emotional equilibrium. He'd done the right thing by alerting Michael, he decided. Yeah, he'd done it in a totally lame fashion, but he'd still saved a mission leader from being blindsided by a subordinate. That was what counted. That was his job!

Keeping his eyes fixed on the surveillance screen, he yanked open his desk's lower right-hand drawer and rooted around until he located a pack of double-stuffed Oreos. While Twizzlers were sufficient fuel under normal circumstances, this particular situation required a serious sugar fix.

He exhaled in a rush when Michael finally walked into view. The cold op looked okay. A little out of character, given that he wasn't wearing black or armed to the teeth, but basically cool and collected.

Nikita said something about a meeting as Michael shucked his bathrobe. He responded by telling her he'd postponed it, then went on to talk about being unable to concentrate on anything until they got "past" their current situation.

So far, so good, Birkoff thought, scarfing down an Oreo.

Michael lifted the coverlet and slipped into bed. Nikita shimmied up a few inches, closing most of the distance between them. She placed a hand on his tee-shirted chest. "Don't worry..." she said throatily.

There was a kiss. Him to her. Pretty much a "'night, honey" kind of thing except for the way Michael stroked Nikita's bare shoulder before he disengaged and reached over to switch off the lamp on his side of the bed. Birkoff experienced an odd jitter of emotion as he saw how Michael's fingers lingered on Nikita's skin.

The young computer whiz frowned, his eyes flicking back and forth, back and forth. This isn't just for the mission, he thought. This is...is...

Michael said something about exhaustion and a need for rest. An obvious turndown of Nikita's equally obvious come-on, was Birkoff's first impression. He reconsidered a bit when he saw the intense way Michael was looking at Nikita. He reconsidered a lot when he noticed the way Michael kept toying with Nikita's hair--stroking it, straining it through his fingers.

He wants her, Birkoff told himself. Geez. He wants her. Big time.

And Nikita plainly wanted him back.

So why the heck didn't they--?

Birkoff shook his head, trying to reconcile the very mixed messages he was picking up. There was a whole lot of sexual energy coming down the line. But it was tempered by strange kind of first-time tentativeness. It was almost as though--

He stiffened. It was pretty much accepted around Section that Michael and Nikita had broken protocol and succumbed to the urge to merge. But what if this conventional wisdom was wrong? What if the two of them had never actually--

HUH??

An incredulous laugh tickled its way up Birkoff's throat. Had Michael just asked Nikita if she needed to...relax?!?!

Sheesh.

He'd heard a lot of euphemisms over the years, but he'd never heard that one! In fact--

Nikita responded to Michael's inquiry with a yes.

Well, no. What she actually said was "yeah." Her voice quavered just a little as she uttered the syllable.

Birkoff saw Michael's hand tighten in Nikita's hair. He saw him start to pull her toward him...

A kiss. Feather light. Eyes still open.

A second kiss. A little less teasing. Eyes starting to close.

A third kiss. This time, lips didn't just meet. They mated.

Birkoff gulped.

Michael rolled Nikita onto her back, straddling her hips. She tugged at the stretchy fabric of the tee-shirt he was wearing. The garment came off and was tossed aside.

A nebulous feeling of queasiness stole over Birkoff as he watched Michael lower his head to claim Nikita's mouth. It coalesced into an acute sense of self-directed shame as the action on the monitoring screen became more and more passionate.

His mouth went dry. His palms started to sweat.

He'd never thought of surveillance as violation. Until this moment, it had simply been a fact of life. Section watched.

Just about everybody did, given the chance.

But not him, he abruptly decided. Not this time. Not with these two people. Even if he couldn't turn off the camera, he could damned well turn away from what it was showing.

"Simon!" he said sharply, glancing over at the self-absorbed techie.

Simon looked up from whatever it was he was doing. "Yeah?"

"Take over for me." Birkoff rose to his feet.

"Why?"

"Because I need a break."

Simon grimaced but got to his feet. He ambled over to the monitoring station. His eyes widened as he got a look at the surveillance screen.

"Holy...wow," he breathed. "So Madeline's little helper wins the pool."

"Yeah, yeah," Birkoff snapped. "Look, just keep an eye on things, okay? And hands off my keyboard. You reconfigure a single function and you'll be writing maintenance codes for the next six months."

Simon plopped himself down, his gaze riveted on the monitor. "Uh...what about the com links?"

Birkoff glared. "What about them? You think Michael and Nikita are going to need you to give them instructions on what they're supposed to do?"

Simon looked abashed, but only for a moment. That was typical Simon. Putting him down was a cinch. Getting him to stay there was just about impossible.

"No," he allowed. "Of course not. I just thought--"

"Don't think, Simon! Shut up. Sit still. Watch."

"Can I download?"

"What?"

"I want to make a copy of this. For my...collection."

Birkoff's stomach roiled. Great. Just great. He'd forgotten about Simon's little hobby.

"Oh, sure," he responded grimly. "Download 'til you drop. And I'll make sure Michael knows you appreciated his performance enough to want to relive it over and over and over again."

Simon blanched. "B-Birkoff." His Adam's apple bobbed up and down. His eyes Ping-Ponged back and forth. "You...wouldn't."

"Yes, I would."

There was a pause.

"Okay," Simon finally muttered, pouting like a little kid. "No copies."

"Good decision," Birkoff congratulated him. "I'll be in my quarters."

"Fine."

Birkoff pivoted away.

"Uh--"

Birkoff pivoted back, gritting his teeth. "What?"

Simon nodded toward the monitor. "Why don't you want to--?"

There was no way Seymour Birkoff was going to tell the truth. So he did the "Section" thing. He looked his colleague straight in the eye and lied.

"Because it's nothing I haven't already seen."

************

Joaquim Armel's security chief didn't need to see a surveillance screen to know what the couple he'd been monitoring for nearly a week was doing. The avid expression on his subordinate's slack-jawed face was a dead giveaway.

"Dom," he said sharply, contemptuous of the other man's undisguised surrender to voyeurism.

Dom jerked in his chair, clearly startled. The color in his fleshy cheeks darkened. "Shit, Tonio!" he exclaimed. Then he started to smile. The curve of his full-lipped mouth went from sly to salacious in less than a second. "C'mere. You gotta check this out."

Tonio stayed where he was. Not because he had any moral qualms about watching a husband and wife getting it on in what they thought was the privacy of their own bedroom. He didn't. What he did have was some serious business on his plate and not much time to scrape it off. Armel's decision that First Flag was going to go after diplomatic personnel in their homes meant that he had some heavy-duty planning to do. To hit multiple targets in multiple locations more or less simultaneously--Jesus. Unless the logistics were absolutely right from start to finish, it would turn into a cluster fuck.

"C'mere," Dom repeated. He transferred his gaze back to the bank of monitors in front of him. His eyes widened. His nostrils flared. He leaned forward eagerly, running his tongue over his lips. "Man. These two are hot."

Tonio waited a moment more, then crossed to the console. All right. He was curious. It was his job to look. Besides. Although the supposed psychic and her yuppified French husband had passed every security check he'd run, he still harbored a few vague reservations about them.

Maybe it was nothing more than his professional paranoia working overtime. Maybe it was the backwash from his firm conviction that so-called "paranormal" phenomenon was a bunch of crap.  Then again, maybe his subconscious was picking up on something and "looking" would help drag it to the surface of his mind.

He focussed on the image that had Dom licking his chops and drooling. What he saw impacted like a sucker punch to the gut. Christ, he thought, feeling himself start to harden. Forget hot. These two looked as though they were going to spontaneously combust at any second!

"I guess his back's healed," Dom commented with a lewd snicker.

"What?" Tonio asked blankly, still staring at the screen. The husband--Michael--was on top, his arms braced to support most of his weight. The wife--Nikita--had her long, sleek legs locked around him, knees bent, her heels pressing against the underside of his butt. Their movements were perfectly in synch. There was no hesitation. No holding back.

"The first night, he said something about hurting his--"

"Oh, yeah," Tonio interrupted, recalling the remark. He frowned. The powerful lines of the husband's body surprised him. He hadn't expected that the guy he'd seen cowering in the corner of his own kitchen would turn out to have the physique of an Olympic athlete. That a target he'd pigeonholed as a business-suited wimp looked to be in better shape than he was triggered a definite sense of unease.

The security chief fisted his hands against his thighs, mentally reviewing that morning's pick-up operation. Something about the way the scenario had played out bothered him. He wished to hell he could pinpoint what it was.

More than that. He wished to hell that Armel had never ordered the snatch in the first place. It had created an unnecessary risk. And for what?

He'd tried to talk the attorney out of this pointless quest to communicate with his dead son. Louis had been a good kid, as kids went. But he was stone-cold gone. In the grave, for God's sake!

Tonio shook his head. If only Garin weren't behind bars. Had he been free, he would have pulled the plug on Armel's morbid obsession. He would have kept the lawyer focussed on the business at hand.

The couple changed positions in a seamless roll. The blonde levered herself up, straddling her partner. Her creamy skin was sheened with perspiration. She arched back, balancing herself with a dancer's grace. Her supple spine curved like a bow.

Tonio shifted his weight in an involuntary movement as he watched the husband clasp his wife's hips. Lean male fingers flexed against resilient female flesh--part caress, part wordless command. The feverish pace of mating seemed to slow.

The woman swayed forward, her fair hair cascading over her shoulders like a silken waterfall. The man lifted his right hand to cup the nape of her neck, pulling her head down for a long, deep kiss. His left hand explored the subtle curves of her buttocks.

"Too bad there's only one camera," Dom observed thickly. "She's got a gorgeous ass. But her tits--man! They're prime, Tonio. Absolutely prime."

"You've seen them?" Tonio suddenly realized that as uninhibited as the coupling on screen was, he'd only gotten a couple of fleeting glimpses of the woman's breasts. The sexual maneuvering had been such that she'd either been positioned with her back to the camera or been shielded from view by her husband's body.

"Oh, yeah." Dom drawled the affirmation, plainly relishing the memory. "It was a couple minutes after you left. She was sitting in bed, looking kind of unhappy. He was still in the bathroom and something. All of a sudden, she throws off the blanket, pops up and peels down to her panties! She was square on to the camera. I saw everything there was to see. Then she spread herself out on top of the covers like she's the main course at some all-you-can-eat buffet. A few seconds later, she called for him to come to bed. Ten, maybe fifteen seconds after that, he did."

"And then--?"

"The guy never missed a beat. They started talking about some business meeting he was supposed to have, for chrissake. He acted like finding the missus stripped for action was the most natural thing in the world."

Maybe it was for him, Tonio reflected with a strange mix of lust and envy. Tame though most of the by-play between these two had been until tonight, he'd detected a hell of a lot of heat beneath the PG-style domesticity. And the heat had been anything but one-sided.

Shit. Maybe that was what troubled him about the snatch. He'd subconsciously expected that a husband who felt about his wife the way this guy obviously did would put up some genuine resistance when two ski-masked goons started dragging her away.

So, okay. Maybe he'd figured wrong. Maybe this Michael was a lover, not a fighter.

"How did they get from talking business to...this?" he asked after moment, jerking his head at the screen. "She came on to him?"

"Kind of. But he came back at her, pretty damned good. Could barely keep his hands off her once she squirmed up next to him." Dom snickered again, rubbing his palms together. Tonio was sure he would have been rubbing something else had he been alone. "She said something about not being sure she could sleep. He asked her whether she was telling him she wanted to get relaxed. Relaxed? Get screwed into a stupor, more like."

The couple reversed positions again, the sweat dampened bed linen tangling around their intimately joined bodies. The husband had his wife's hands pinned down against the pillow and he was thrusting into her with a relentlessly primal rhythm. Her head was thrashing back and forth in a nimbus of fair hair. She was sobbing out his name, begging him for release. But her partner didn't seem inclined to heed her pleas. At least, not quite yet.

Tonio prided himself on his stamina in and out of bed. But this--Jesus! He was about ready to come in his pants. And if glassy eyes and heavy breathing were any indication, Dom was even closer to the edge. Either that, or he was about to have a heart attack.

"How the hell is he keeping it up?" he heard Dom mutter.

"Michael..." the blonde whimpered. "P-please. Michael. Oh. Oh! Michael...I...I c-can't..."

There was a potent ripple of muscle as the man she was addressing adjusted his position. Tonio flashed on the image of a panther he'd spotted years ago, during a training exercise in the jungle. His gut tightened.

The husband's next thrust was hard and to the hilt. It was accompanied by a gutteral exclamation. Not English. French. The thrust that followed was deeper still.

His wife arched up beneath him, a keening cry of ecstasy breaking from her kiss-bruised lips. The man preempted the sound with his mouth. At the same time, he freed the blonde's hands.

She clutched at him as though he were the only stable point in an unraveling universe. He tangled his fingers in the wild disorder of her hair, bracketing her head with his palms. He seemed bent on devouring her mouth.

A third thrust.

Delicately polished nails raked strong shoulders, drawing a drop or two of blood.

Nikita evoked Michael's name on a shattered moan, almost beyond the point of speech.

He uttered hers in three gasping syllables, his control finally snapping.

Dom swore and wriggled in his chair like a worm on a hook.

Tonio expelled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been. He felt wrung out. Had he smoked, he would have reached for a cigarette. A shot of booze would have gone down pretty well, too. He'd been a lot of places. Seen a lot of things. But what he'd just witnessed...

Something about the situation still seemed off-kilter to him, he acknowledged after a few shaky seconds. But until he determined precisely what it was--and whether it had any real significance--he wasn't going to raise an alarm. If Armel questioned him about tonight's surveillance, he'd give him the bottom line on what he'd seen

The psychic and her husband fucked like there was no tomorrow.

*************

Madeline watched.

Twice.

Her initial viewing of the amorous interlude between Michael and Nikita took place at her desk, in real time. Anyone observing her as she monitored the two operatives' lovemaking probably would have thought her indifferent. Unmoved. She was not. She was intensely pleased by what she saw.

She was also--in the darkest corner of her soul--bitterly pained by it. The passionate connection she witnessed on the surveillance screen seemed to underscore the sterility of her own existence. It served to remind her of unwitting choices, untaken paths and options no longer open. It made her think of what she'd once shared with a man and why it had failed to endure.

She knew that she'd been thinking about both those things far too frequently in recent days. Indeed, they'd been lurking in the back of her mind when she'd queried Michael about his decision to select Nikita to play his wife during the Armel mission.

"You think this is wise?" she'd asked after reviewing his impeccably prepared profile.

"We're convincing as a couple," he responded, his hands clasped loosely in front of him. "And her...empathy...will help defuse Armel's suspicions."

Madeline had silently substituted "compassion" for "empathy." She'd been aware that Operations had resumed pressuring Michael about this aspect of Nikita's operational development in the wake of her early promotion to team leader. The pressure was a mistake, in her judgment. The promotion...well, that remained to be seen.

"True, on both counts," she'd acknowledged, lifting her gaze from the file she'd been examining. "Although neither one of them answers my question."

Michael had met her eyes steadily, seemingly untroubled that his effort to sidestep had been blocked. That was typical. If Plan A failed, he moved on to Plan B.

"I'm not certain what 'wise' is, Madeline," he'd said quietly, his eyes more gray than green. "It's my opinion Nikita is the best choice for this mission. If you disagree..."

She'd been torn between irritation at--and admiration for--his deft turning of the tables on her. Mixed in with these contradictory emotions had been the grim recognition of what his being able to trip her up so easily implied about her state of mind.

She'd lost focus.

Again.

"No, Michael," she'd returned after several seconds. "I don't disagree."

There'd been a long pause. Unusually tense, given how comfortable both of them were with silence. Her head had started to throb. Too little sleep. Too much stress. She'd had to fight down the urge to start massaging her temples.

"Is...that all?" the younger man had finally asked, an odd note in his voice.

She'd nodded once, schooling her expression into blandness. Michael's tone had hinted at genuine concern for her condition. Encouraging it was a luxury she'd known she couldn't afford.

"For now," she'd told him.

Madeline had come away from this verbal fencing match believing that she understood Michael's intentions--insofar as she *ever* understood them. She'd been compelled to reevaluate this assessment the first night of the mission when she'd watched her prize pupil pretend to be suffering from a back injury. It seemed he was playing a deeper--and potentially more dangerous--game than she'd realized.

That Nikita hadn't known what he'd planned to do had been obvious to her. She'd found the implications of this...unsettling. Similarly complicated The beautiful blonde's subsequent behavior.

Madeline's decision to intervene in the situation had not been lightly made, nor carelessly acted upon. And it had been motivated by more than a desire to ensure a positive outcome for a single mission. Operations' reservations notwithstanding, she was still firmly convinced that the bond between Michael and Nikita should be strengthened, not severed. As valuable as they were to Section individually, the synergy they created as a team was unique. If the promise of their pairing could be fulfilled...

*Fulfilled,* she'd emphasized to herself as she'd mulled the various scenarios she might employ to bring the two operatives together. *Not forced.*

She'd quickly concluded that nothing short of an absolutely unambiguous command from her or Operations was going to prompt Michael to initiate intimate relations with Nikita. That he'd obey a direct order to bed his one-time trainee she was almost--but not entirely--certain. That leaving him no choice but to violate a limit he'd very clearly imposed on himself would be counter-productive, she was totally sure.

And so, she'd turned her attention to Nikita. A strikingly more mature--and significantly less malleable--Nikita than the Nikita who'd been tossed into sexual play against Perry Bauer or Alec Chandler. Unfortunately, her handling of the younger woman had been...problematic. When their meeting had come to an end, she genuinely hadn't known whether she'd achieved her objective.

Hence her decision to monitor the sixth night of Michael and Nikita's marital masquerade personally, rather than relying on a surveillance summary.

The sight of Nikita getting out of bed and baring almost all caught Madeline by surprise. Her first reaction was that it was too overt a move. Then she reflected for a moment. Maybe "overt" wasn't such a bad thing, she decided. Especially give Michael's embedded-in-concrete mind set. If he detected *any* hint of ambivalence in his partner...

The possibility that Armel's surveillance team might wonder at Nikita's sudden brazenness didn't trouble Section's chief strategist at all. She knew the watchers were male. She also knew that men given an unexpected opportunity to ogle a beautiful pair of breasts weren't likely to question whether the female displaying the breasts was behaving in character until long after the fact. Assuming they ever got around to examining the issue at all.

Madeline steepled her fingers as she tracked Michael's entrance. He seemed curiously unsurprised by Nikita's near nudity. Recalling that Birkoff was running in-house com for this mission, she made a mental note to inquire whether he'd taken it upon himself to provide Michael with a little advance intel.

She watched Michael get into bed, observing how he maintained a few inches of distance between his body's and Nikita's. She felt an odd twist of emotion as Nikita obliterated the inches with a wriggle and a reach.

"It'll be okay," the blonde murmured, stroking her partner's chest. "I promise."

Michael lifted his right hand and cupped Nikita's neck. The gesture was very, very careful. After a moment, he leaned in, angling his head slightly to the left, and placed a quick kiss on Nikita's half-parted lips. Then he withrew his hand--his fingers sliding over the curve of her shoulder as though mapping its shape--and reached right to switch off the bedside lamp.

Madeline crossed her legs. The subtle sexual maneuvering--advance, retreat, offer, avoidance--continued.

"As long as I've got you..." Nikita said, her ripe mouth starting to curve at the corners. Her smiled deepened with a hint of very feminine satisfaction as Michael's left hand came up to caress her. She leaned forward and kissed him. "...I can make it."

There was a pause. Madeline could feel Michael's yearning. There was a faint overlay of desperation to the way he kept touching Nikita. As though he literally couldn't stop now that he'd allowed himself to make physical contact. She knew the loss of control that this suggested was something he deeply feared. She wondered whether Nikita had any inkling how much this fear affected his dealings with her.

"You should get some rest," he said finally. "You must be exhausted."

Madeline tensed, recognizing that what Nikita said and did next was critical. If she took Michael's statement as a rebuff...

"Not...really..." Nikita replied, her voice throatier than it had been. She glanced down, as though feeling a little shy. But when she looked back at Michael a moment later, there was a decidedly come-hither expression in her clear blue eyes. "I mean...I don't know if I'm going to be able to sleep unless..."

That Michael didn't force her to finish the sentence told Madeline a great deal. That he held himself in check and offered Nikita one last chance to reconsider what she was on the verge of committing herself to told her even more.

"If you need to relax tonight..." he said huskily, bringing his right hand up and slipping it beneath the soft tumble of her bright hair.

The delicately-worded proposition netted him a tremulously excited smile of assent. Madeline watched him feather his fingertips against Nikita's throat and suspected that he was seeking one final confirmation of her williness by checking her pulse rate. For better or worse, Michael had been trained to evaluate ever nuance of human sexual response. There were few men who could not be deceived in bed. He was one of them.

"Y-yeah..." Nikita breathed, quivering.

Madeline closed her eyes, air leaking from her lungs on a long, slow sigh. A painfully familiar ache suffused her. She placed a palm against her belly, conscious of a terrible sense of loss.

When she reopened her eyes and looked at the monitor again, Michael was naked to the waist and straddling Nikita, holding her hands down on either side of her head. Madeline read an assertion of dominance in his position. She wasn't surprised. She'd anticipated that Michael would feel the need to stake a very primal kind of claim on Nikita in the aftermath of her apparent defection to Jurgen.

She'd anticipated that he'd feel the need to do something else as well, given his awareness that what should have been a very private moment was anything but. And it was plain that she'd been correct in her expectation. Because as masterful as Michael's manner was, it was also supremely protective.

***********

Madeline's second viewing of Michael and Nikita's lovemaking took place several hours later, in her private quarters. She'd been unable to fall asleep. Loathe to turn to medication in her on-going battle with insomnia, she decided to do something constructive. After updating a series of psych evaluations and skimming the transcript of what struck her as a singularly unproductive interrogation session conducted at Section's substation in New Delhi, she returned to the task of assessing the precise status of one of the most complicated personnel challenges she'd ever taken on.

As she waited for the surveillance file to load, Madeline thought back to the decision that had set in motion a sequence of events which was still being played out. It had been made a little more than a year after Michael's recruitment. That he was something...unusual... had been recognized very early on. To say his special talents had been carefully cultivated was to understate the case. They had been forced to premature fruition by ruthless design.

It was not Section's concern that this process had left portions of Michael's already-wounded psyche twisted and stunted. The facets of him which mattered to those who'd taken charge of his existence had flourished. So much so, that he'd been judged operationally qualified for probationary status at the mid-point in his training period. His readiness for transition back into the "real" world had been deemed less complete.

All of which had led to a first-of-its-kind candidate evaluation session involving Operations, herself, and Michael's trainer, Jurgen.

She'd offered her assessment of Michael at the beginning of the meeting, then retreated into watchful silence as the two men had mercilessly dissected one of the most promising pieces of material Section had ever had. Eventually, she'd decided it was time to redefine the discussion.

"I have a question," she'd quietly announced.

"Yes?" Operations had responded, stubbing out a cigarette.

"What's Michael done for sex during the past year?"

Jurgen had been seated next to her. She'd felt him stiffen. She'd also seen something very close to shock streak through Operations' pale eyes. He'd frowned at her.

"Madeline--"

"Please," she'd interrupted, anticipating his objections. For all that he'd experienced of life, the head of Section One was remarkably straitlaced. She'd developed a number of strategies for accommodating his rather Puritanical sensibilities. But in this instance, she'd opted to be blunt. "We're all aware of the rules regarding trainees and intimate relations. We're equally aware of the realities. I've checked the surveillance logs. There's no record of Michael having had sexual contact with *anyone* since his induction."

There'd been no record of his having sought physical release through self-gratification, either, but she'd refrained from mentioning it. It was one thing to be blunt. Something else entirely to be deliberately provocative. She'd made her point.

Operations had exhaled on a short, sharp breath, then looked at Jurgen. "Well?" he demanded, brows raised.

"I...don't know," the trainer had answered after a few moments. He'd looked extremely uncomfortable. Madeline had taken a degree of pleasure in that. Despite Operations' high opinion of him--an outgrowth of their shared military background, she'd judged--she hadn't liked Jurgen. And while she'd never denied the efficacy of them, she hadn't liked his methods, either. They'd suggested to her a fundamental weakness of character.

"You...don't...know," Operations had echoed, his diction very precise. "He's your material."

Jurgen had glanced at her then, a hint of hostility in his eyes. Madeline had understood why he'd been disturbed, although she'd doubted that he had. To truly understand the source of his emnity, he would have had to consciously acknowledge something she was willing to wager he'd denied 'til his death.

That something had been his sexual attraction to his remarkably gifted trainee.

"The choke leash approach isn't particularly effective with Michael," he'd finally said. "I've allowed him some...maneuvering...room. Maybe too much."

"I see." Operations' expression had been stony.

"He's had offers." There'd been an edge in Jurgen's voice. Jealousy, Madeline had thought. She'd wondered, not for the first time, whether Michael was aware of the volatile feelings he aroused in his mentor. The surveillance tapes she'd reviewed had been inconclusive on this point. They had, however, made one thing crystalline clear. If Michael *had* detected Jurgen's vulnerability, he'd made no attempt to exploit it.

"Propositions, you mean."

"Yes."

"And?"

"And...I'd assumed he'd accepted at least one of them."

Operations had studied Jurgen without speaking for several seconds, then shifted his gaze. "We've all made certain 'assumptions' about the parameters of Michael's potential usefulness based on his psych profile, Madeline," he'd said flatly. "To say nothing of the responses he's evoked from a large percentage of the females he's encountered since arriving at Section. Are you telling me we have a problem?"