She began to unbutton the front of his jacket. No mean feat, considering the unsteadiness of her hands and the haziness of her vision. When she finally finished her self-appointed task, she shoved the front of the severely tailored garment open. One less barrier to be breeched...

Michael kissed his way along the line of her jaw. Nibbling. Nipping. A gentle tug on her hair tilted her head back, offering him access to the vulnerable line of her throat. A primal thrill shot through her.

He brushed his lips against the spot where her pulse pounded, then laved the delicate skin with a predatory lick. Nikita gasped at the exquisitely careful--yet explicitly carnal--exploration. Her fingers flexed involuntarily as the world seemed to tilt in several different directions simultaneously.

He said her name again. The syllables were low and harsh, seemingly driven up from somewhere deep inside him. His breathing was ragged.

"Please..." she entreated.

They kissed again. Harder. Hotter. A sultry fog ungulfed her as Michael traced the outline of her lips with the tip of his tongue then slid into her mouth with a rough-velvet stroke.

She pressed against him, lifting one of her hands to cup the back of his head. Her fingers spasmed in the crisp thicket of his chestnut hair. A fleeting instant of mourning for his shorn locks was swept away by a molten rush of pleasure.

Whether they would have taken each other there, standing in her kitchen, was a question that was fated to go unanswered. Because a few seconds later, one of them knocked into something that careened into something else that sent Michael's nearly emptied wine glass tumbling to the floor.

The glass smashed into several dozen pieces.

It was one of those moments that underscored the gap between a Class Two operative with three-plus years of field experience and a Class Five operative who'd been honed to lethal brilliance by a decade-and-a-half of relentless testing. Nikita barely registered the sound of breaking glass. But Michael...

She couldn't fault his reaction. Intensely resent it and those who'd engineered it, yes. But not fault it. Or him. Because she was painfully aware that under different circumstances, her former trainer's reflexively professional response to a potential threat could have saved both their lives.

Michael had already gone through the whole cycle--from snapping to full operative alert to easing back into a marginally less dangerous mode--before Nikita started sorting out what was going on. It was the expression she glimpsed in his eyes that clarified the situation.

There was desire swirling in those compelling hazel depths. Desire as consuming as hers. But where her instinct was to embrace the emotion and the person who'd evoked it, Michael's was to deny. To draw back.

No, Nikita thought, her heart clenching in protest. She grasped hold of him to prevent a physical retreat. If he wanted to be free of her, he'd have pry her hands off and shove her away. NO!

"This...is what Section wants of us," he told her, his voice raw and tight. The control he was exerting over himself was palpable. Almost painful.

"So?" She tossed the word at him like a gauntlet.

He blinked, clearly taken aback by her defiant demeanor. "Nikita--"

"What are you suggesting, Michael?" she interrupted, her own marrow-deep fears fusing with a very high degree of sexual frustration. "That we deny ourselves something we both know we both want for the pleasure of pissing off Operations?"

She would have given a great deal to have been able to take a snapshot of Michael's face after she finished this admittedly outrageous question. He looked...stunned.

"Well?" she prodded.

Michael glanced away, his jaw clenching.

"They'll use us," he said after a moment. "Our...feelings."

"More than they already have?" she riposted.

His eyes returned to hers, blazing green. "Yes."

The unqualified affirmative triggered an ugly jitter in the pit of Nikita's stomach. She understood that she was hearing the voice of brutalized personal experience. When it came to being "used" by Section--

"I don't want you to be hurt again," Michael added in an aching whisper.

Nikita swallowed hard, struggling against the sudden needling pressure of tears.

"I don't want that either," she answered, astonished by the steadiness of her voice. "But I'm willing to risk it."

Michael said nothing. He didn't need to. The tormented expression in his eyes was eloquent enough.

Nikita moistened her kiss-bruised lips and took a deep breath.

"You told me once that we shouldn't fight what's between us." The stricken look that streaked through his eyes made it plain he remembered the context of the comment very clearly. "That we should take what we can for as long as we can. Whether you actually meant it at the time, I don't know. I don't know if you know, either. But whether you were telling me something you genuinely felt or making up a lie...you were right, Michael."

"Nikita--"

She shook her head vehemently, her hair shifting around her throat and over her shoulders. She knew she'd be lost if she permitted him to speak before she finished making her point.

"There's only one person who can stop us from being together," she doggedly declared. "It isn't Operations. It isn't Madeline. It isn't me. It's you, Michael. All you have to do is say 'no.'"

There was a long silence. Then, finally:

"I can't."

Nikita's heart turned over. The tears she'd had battled to dam up overflowed.

"G-good," she replied shakily, lifting up on tiptoe so her mouth was even with his. "Because I wouldn't have believed you if you did."

And then, holding nothing back, she kissed him.

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

The quarters the Alter had been assigned were in an area of Section that didn't show up on any schematics. They were also equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance monitors.

On them, he could see...everything.

The reckless joy with which the incandescently lovely blonde embraced her darkly compelling lover.

The protective way her lover swept her off her bare feet and into his arms a split second before she stepped on a jagged shard of broken glass.

He could hear everything, too.

"Yes, Michael. Oh...oh yes!"

"Ni--kita--

That that two lovers deferred the consummation of their mutual passion until they reached the blonde's second-level sleeping alcove rather than having at it against a wall or on the living room sofa was illustrative of...of...something. An astonishing degree of self-restraint, perhaps. Or possibly an acute understanding that anticipation can be a very potent aphrodesiac for two people who know precisely what they want and from whom they want to get it.

Whatever the case, the pair didn't rush. They dallied, just a little, en route to their ultimate destination.

Kissing.

Caressing.

Adding fuel to a blaze that was blissfully capable of consuming them both.

Nikita was nude save for a pair of plain white panties by the time they reached her bedroom. Her assessment of Michael's state of dress at that point was simple:

"Too many clothes," she declared huskily, reaching for his belt buckle. The smile that curved her lush pink lips would have aroused a dead man.

Less than a minute later, Michael was completely naked. Uninhibited, arrogantly at ease with his physicality, he was the embodiment of masculine allure. She--shielded to a degree by pale gold hair and a chaste span of cotton--presented a glorious portrait in unstudied eroticism. She was all creamy skin and sleek feminine curves.

They stood for a few breathless seconds, studying each other with electrifying intensity.

Relishing.

Ravishing

Very likely, remembering.

There was only a small distance between them. Michael obliterated it with a single graceful stride. He gazed deeply into Nikita's brilliant blue eyes, causing her cheeks to bloom a heated, hectic rose. Her delicately carved nostrils flared. The jump of her pulse at the base of her slender throat was clearly visible.

Wordlessly, he sank to his knees. It was an act of adoration, not abasement.

Nikita touched the top of his head with unsteady fingers. The gesture had the look of a blessing. It also hinted that she needed to reassure herself that what she perceived was happening was real.

Michael's hands came up, palms curving to fit the back of his partner's smoothly muscled calves. He pressed a kiss against her right thigh. A second, against her left. Then, with great deliberation, he began to stroke upward.

Nikita caught her lower lip between her teeth, clearly trying not to cry out. Her head tilted back, causing her hair to slide away from her pink-tipped breasts. Her fingers curled inward, clenching tightly.

Although the urgency of Michael's desire was obvious from the hard rise of his erection, he didn't hurry. He caressed Nikita's bottom through the pristine fabric of her modest lingerie for several searing moments before hooking his thumbs beneath the elasticized waistband and finally beginning to ease the garment off.

Slowly.

Very...slowly.

As though he had all the time in the world and intended to savor every single second of it.

"M...chael..." Nikita moaned as he brushed his mouth over the tight cluster of curls at the newly-bared apex of her thighs. Oh...G-God..."

Michael leaned forward. Teasing. Testing. Then his tongue flicked out in bold assertion of intimacy.

Another woman might have remained passive in the face of this sensuous onslaught. Another woman might have accepted without thought of reciprocation the wave upon wave of pleasure being given her by a man who'd been trained to dominate a situation even when in a supplicatory position.

Another woman.

Not Nikita.

With Valkyrian determination, she realigned the balance of power when Michael finally rose to his feet in a swift, seamless movement. She encircled his neck with her arms and pulled his head down for a long, sizzling kiss.

She was fierce.

Unfettered.

Elemental in her feminine aggression.

They went down on her neatly made bed in a tangle of arms and legs. Gasping. Groaning. Grappling for advantage. It was a contest between opposites but equals. Equals who knew each other very, very well.

Better, in many ways, than either one of them fully recognized.

It could have been bruising. Almost brutal. But everything--from the rake of Michael's teeth against the taut bud of one of Nikita's nipples, to the scratch of her nails down the length of his suavely muscled back--was buffered by trust and an ineffable kind of tenderness.

Like, summoning like.

Matched.

Mated.

"Now..." Nikita demanded, her hands searching greedily over sweat-slick skin. "Need you...now..."

They rolled over amid the wreckage of her bed linen. Hard to soft. Male to female. Sex...to sex. She--possibly by chance, possibly by design--came out on top.

Michael gripped her hips as she knelt up. Passion-clouded hazel eyes locked with desire-dazzled blue ones in a heart-stopping moment of silent communion as she balanced herself.

Then...

Nikita cried out his name as she took him deep into her body. He invoked hers on a shattered moan, lifting up, thrusting hard.

They moved.

Point.

Counterpoint.

Utterly attuned.

Absolutely unconstrained.

Nikita shuddered first, cresting the peak with a keening gasp. She gave herself without reservation even as she took in fullest measure. A split second later, Michael reversed their positions, bringing her beneath him. He grasped her thighs, pulling her legs high up on his hips. Her ankles locked at the base of his arching spine, heels pressing down in convulsive claiming.

The world broke apart.

But the two of them remained whole.

As one.

Intact.

Together.

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

Formidable, the Alter thought as he switched off the surveillance screens. Tres...formidable.

The strength of his adversary pleased him. There was no...satisfaction...in besting an unworthy enemy.

The Alter rose, disciplining himself to ignore the throbbing heaviness of his cock. He stretched slowly, considering what he'd just witnessed. He wondered at the Other's behavior. It had been...different...from what he'd seen on the Armel mission tapes. Not at all what he'd expected.

He would have to assess this difference carefully, he told himself. Evaluate the Innocent's response to it, too.

The Alter forked a hand through his wavy chestnut hair. His handlers had ordered it cut, without explanation, some time back.

A mistake on their part, he reflected, his hazel eyes darkening with loathing. One of many.

The Alter smiled coldly and stretched again. His time was coming, he assured himself. But until it arrived, he would be patient.

He knew how to wait.

He knew how to watch.

And in the end...

...he would know how to win.

THE END

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