He wanted to sleep next to her, but he was afraid he'd jar her arm, so he bunked in his old room down the hall. He had to do 300 push-ups before he could wind down enough to sleep. When he settled on his bed, his arms were throbbing, but the terror marathoning through his blood had calmed to a dull roar.
Hell with sleeping beside her, he wanted to sleep inside her. Under her, around her. He wanted to lay there for so long her hair grew around his skin and entrapped him. He kept seeing Strickler standing in front of him, smug and smiling and refusing to tell him where Fiona was. He would have beaten him to death singing, run him through the glass windows, to save her.
He concentrated on the feel of the sheets, the smell of the cheap detergent his mother had always used, until he finally fell asleep.
She woke him with a hand on his back. He didn't know how long it had been. He turned over, coming awake immediately, one of the best parts of being a spy. Her hair was loose around her face and the bandage on her arm was still stark white, meaning her wound hadn't re-opened and started bleeding. He relaxed against the pillow. There was enough light through the windows to see her eyes, pupils huge in the dark, glinting with tears. He slid his hand up her uninjured arm to the back of her neck.
"Fi." His voice was low, barely an interruption to the night.
She kissed him, shifting over him on the bed and pressing their bodies together. She thought one single thing so ferociously that she was sure he could feel it through her lips. She wanted it to bore into his stubborn, prideful, hard-headed mind.
Thank you, Michael.
He felt the tears on her cheeks and moved his head back into the pillow, but she followed him. Fiona Glenanne was a hard woman to say no to. He bit her upper lip, their old "Enough, Fi" signal, and she turned her back to him abruptly. He could hear her breathing hard, gulping. Even in sadness, there was nothing calm or easy about her.
She felt the heat of his body behind hers and fisted the hand on her good arm to keep herself from crawling on top of him again. He was always so warm; it was one of the first things she had loved about him. No matter how cold it was wherever they were, he seemed to have a roaring furnace inside him. She used to think it was that strange inner goodness he had, the light no crime or betrayal he committed seemed to dim.
"Why?" she said, rubbing the wetness from her cheeks and squeezing her eyes shut. "Why was Strickler going to do this to me? Because I tried to stop you from working with him?"
He stared at her back, her knobby spine and the loose skin on her elbows. Why did he find that so sweet, so strangely endearing? Why did he want to taste them, suck her into his mouth again and again? "No. It was because-" his voice fell off. "He didn't think I would let go of you," he breathed. "He said I couldn't have you and the job." The fear, the horror, Fiona on the auction block, her skin, her perfect skin, what they would have done to her, because of him, because of him, because of him-
He put his hands over his face and reconstructed his reality. She was here. She was next to him. Her shadow was falling over his face. He could smell her. Her musky-sweet Fiona smell that seemed to stick to his skin and his lips and his sheets.
"I said I was angry and loud when she- when my sister died." She put her tiny hands over his, to keep his face hidden while she said this. "At night, I would go home from the pubs with different men. It was always lady's choice," she said with that old Glenanne swagger in her voice, and she felt his lips curve against her palm. "I made it like that was just another one of the crazy things I did, blowing things up and bedding whoever I fancied. But it was because of her. Because we had shared a room." She was quiet for a long moment. "Our flat was so tiny, my brothers lived on top of each other, and Claire and I got a little closet at the back, with a double bed. In the mornings, I hated to wake up for school, and she would tickle me and have all our brothers pile on, and we'd lay there laughing. I couldn't go back to that.
"She was good. Claire. A really good person. And when she was 16, some soldier, some 19-year old soldier shot into a storefront window. An IRA bust gone bad. She was caught in the crosshairs. Collateral. She got shot in the gut, and they left her to bleed to death like a dog."
He laid there another moment, seeing Fi at 18, drinking whiskey at the wake, standing next to a gaping dark hole in the earth with her sister's body inside it. He reached up and pulled her hands away.
She kept shifting her eyes around the room, unwilling to meet his, and finally he slid his hand around her neck again, squeezing her nape, warm under the weight of her hair. "I don't want to die, Michael," she whispered, at last really looking at him.
"I wouldn't let you anyway." She sneered at that, but he continued. "I will do anything to keep you safe, Fi, even from yourself. Even if you hate me for it after." Some of the terror came back into his eyes, and she caught his fingers in hers. "I have to, do you get that? I just- I have to."
"I know," she whispered. She pulled at his hair, an old and typically messed-up Fi way of soothing him. "I don't know why it's always been you for me, Michael, but it has." She smiled ruefully before admitting, "I've yelled out the wrong name in bed more than once. You've broken men's hearts from Dublin to Tokyo."
His eyes darkened and he pulled her down onto him again, careful of her arm, and they laid in silence for a long moment. He kissed her head, the part of her hair, again and again until she sighed. He felt himself drifting off again, all the terror gone. He could keep her.
She woke in the same position. It was early dawn, but she had long ago lost her distaste for early risings. She could hear Maddie shuffling to the kitchen, muttering under breath about the goddamn Florida humidity and her arthritis. She looked up the lovely line of Michael's neck into his face, calm and still as the light against the pillows. He slept like a rock when he finally went down. She smiled and turned her face into his chest, pressing kisses on his skin. She darted her tongue out and began to lick down his body.
He murmured and fought the desire to awaken, unsure if the pleasure searing through him was real or a dream. He moved his hand and touched her stomach. He grinned and pulled her shirt off, slitting his eyes open to catch one of his Top Ten All-Time Favorite Sights Ever Thank You God for Irish Women. "Morning, Fi," he muttered and she glanced down to take in his face, smiling delightedly that she had won out over his weariness. It was always lady's choice, she smirked to herself again, easing down his sweats with one hand and finding him hard and ready with the other. He arched up into her hands. Luckily, they had lots of practice at quiet fucks- not so quick, but always quiet.
She alternated wet open-mouthed kisses and sharp nips to his well-toned thighs, working up and then down again. "I do believe that if death came calling for me, we could take him, the pair of us, Michael." She sucked the head of him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it as he fisted his hands in her hair.
"Oh, fuck- fucking right, we could," he grunted, thinking about all the countries he'd ever travelled to, alphabetically, to keep from coming in her wet scorching mouth. It was more difficult than it sounded for two reasons: he was a spy, obviously, and more importantly, Fiona Glenanne wasn't just an expert at combat and explosives.
He pulled harder on her hair and she responded by taking him deeper into his throat. She began to hum, vibrating his dick to the point of explosion. He levered himself up with his stomach muscles and slid his fingers into her mouth, groaning with he came in contact with his own flesh. She let him slide out, then bit his invading fingers hard. "You never let me have any fun," she pouted, giving him those innocent doe-eyes that always made him throb, well, everywhere that was already throbbing.
He pushed her over and began devouring her mouth, her throat, her tanned breasts down to those hard, achy little pebbled points. "You're going to wake them all up," he grinned as she thrashed her head about and started panting, step one in the wonderful process that led to banshee-screaming at the end. "Shh," he kissed each hip, her thighs soft as water. "Shh," as he kissed her core. He savored the first taste of her wetness on his lips. He could never get enough of it. She liked to scratch and scream and thrust to the finish, so he rarely got time to indulge himself the way he wanted to. He settled in now, remembering how much he loved the way the taste of her thickened and warmed as she came aganst his open mouth.
At the top of the bed, her face turned into the pillows so she could breath in their spicy Michael smell from the night, Fiona drug her feet up his ankles to his thighs. "Michael," she whispered, just to say his name. She was alive. She arched her back and felt the pure pleasure and power of movement all through her. "Michael, Michael, please."
He flipped her over him again before entering her. She was so wet, still throbbing, arms and neck floppy with pleasure. He cupped her perfect heart-shaped ass in his hands, moving her up so that he hit her g-spot with every stroke. She ran her hands over his chest, up his neck to his face, and he kissed her fingers. "Fi," he whispered as he came inside her, and she slid down to bury her head along his throat.
Maddie shuffled down the hall again, just then, and they both went dead silent before the absurdity and the joy of it hit them, and they started giggling.