I hadn't pegged MacTavish as a romantic, but neither had I had considered the possibility that he was a devious bastard with his hand in the till. In essence, I was a terrible judge of character. Therefore, it took me by complete surprise to discover that he had made arrangements for us to not only dine at a remote but exceptionally well-appointed coastal inn, but a room to go with it, complete with a bottle of champagne chilling on arrival.

I don't know quite when it happened, when the switch inside my head just flipped, but suddenly I wasn't myself anymore: Stacey Wolf, Russian analyst and cyber nerd, didn't go from nought to a hundred with any man in less twenty four hours, never drank champagne outside of wedding receptions and certainly demanded less between the sheets. I looked down on MacTavish as he lay back on the pillows from my vantage point straddling his hips, feeling his burgeoning erection beneath his jeans, pressing between my legs. I looked at him, strong and handsome, utterly fuckable and morally vacuous, and thought why the hell not? I grabbed at the disgust I felt at his betrayal, and moulded it into a sharp-edged sexual aloofness, regarding him as if he were nothing. He loved it.

I made him kiss me, made him trace his lips across my bare skin, revelling in the sensation of his hot breath against me. He couldn't quite manage the delicacy I liked best, but made up for it with resolute attention to detail, burying his face between my thighs at my command. He seemed to take particular delight in showing off how he could make me squeal, his steely eyes lighting up with a new, playful spark as he pleased and teased me, subtly eroding my dominance by holding me on the edge of very edge of climax until I demanded, rather desperately, that he fuck me, immediately.

Being a complete bastard , he acted like he hadn't heard for what felt like an eternity before heaving himself upright and ploughing between my thighs like a man possessed, until he finally bellowed and toppled over on top of me in a tangle of sweat-soaked limbs and sheets.

"I like it when you're a bitch." He whispered, nuzzling into my neck as I caught my breath in the delirious, post-orgasmic haze. "Is your bark worse than your bite though?"

"Maybe you'll get to find out next time." I replied, loosening myself from his grip and plucking the champagne bottle from the melting swamp of ice in the bucket. I made a solemn vow to pay him back in kind as soon as I'd adequately digested dinner, and mused for a few minutes on the pros and cons of tying him to the bed frame whilst I was at it.

I considered this rather arousing image in my mind as I sipped the champagne from a glass he'd poured me, whilst he just swigged it straight from the bottle, something I found weirdly attractive in its brutish simplicity. I lay back, pressed against his thick, muscular chest and trailed my fingers through the dark brush of hair whilst the great pounding of his heart pressed against my cheek.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, after a few minutes of silence.

I gave him a sidelong look, wondering what kink was about to be confessed.

"I'm not doing it if it involves animals." I said.

He snorted back a short laugh. "No. About…" He gestured with the champagne bottle in the air "..work."

I raised an eyebrow. "What, now ?"

He sighed, his lips pressed together.. "It's… private."

"Go on." I replied.

He shifted uncomfortably against the pillows he had propped himself up with and then asked "What happened to Price?"

I managed not to jump, and fortunately, as he could only able to see me from an awkward angle above, I don't think he caught the microexpression of surprise and fear that must have whipped across my face before I brought it under control.

"Who?" I said, trying my best to sound completely ignorant.

He frowned, "Don't you remember?" . He went on. "He was my commander, in that business with… you know… back then."

I traced a shape in the area, outlining a 'z', for Zakahyev. He nodded.

"What about him?" I asked. Technically, it wasn't against the rules to ask about Price, and the chances of us being overheard was pretty low, unless this was one of MacTavish's regular haunts, and our sojourn here had been anticipated, which I felt was unlikely. But bringing up the context of why he needed to ask would have been linking him with secrets classified with extreme prejudice, and terminally bad practice.

"After… all that went down. We were still… abroad. Recovering. One morning, I woke up and he was gone."

I shrugged. "New orders?" I suggested. He shook his head.

"We were in the same room, and I never heard anything, don't remember anything from that night."

I considered this, and made a play for time as I dreamt up a decent lie "What do you think happened?" I asked.

"I think I was drugged. Maybe both of us were." He picked distractedly at the label of the champagne bottle, turning it round in his hands as he spoke. "There's no way I wouldn't have heard anything. I barely slept and he was in no fit state to be charging about. Christ, we were both still half-dead and that was an improvement on the state we were in when arrived. Afterwards, it was like speaking to brick walls about it. Suddenly, everyone's ability to comprehend English vanished overnight and then, when I finally found someone who wasn't prepared to pretend not to understand they just shrugged it off as being for our own good."

"Seems reasonable." I shrugged, pretending indifference.

"Yeah, well. He never came back, and that brick wall is still up. It was heavily implied that I needed to stop asking questions if I wanted to progress in my career."

"Sounds like wise advice." I said, and drained my glass. I jerked the bottle free of his fiddling grasp and poured myself another. I knew that I shouldn't get drunk, but two glasses would give me enough pleasant buzz to get through the whole awkward charade that dinner was going to be after this conversation. I gritted my teeth, hoping that he would get the message.

"I think I got fast-tracked into the 141 because it got me out of town."

I snorted. "That's bullshit. You're selling yourself short, and you know it."

"Do you know how hard it is to rise from the ranks?"

" Exactly ." I countered, hoping that flattery might get him to change tack.

"Yeah. You've got to be connected, and I was just a nobody when I started. I think they helped me up the ladder, just gave me a wee punt in the right direction, so that I was too distracted to keep asking."

"Look," I said, firmly. "If Price was up to something dodgy, they haven't told you for a reason. I can't give you classified information." I said, anticipating where this was going.

"I'm not asking that." He sighed. "But sometimes there's classified and stuff we just don't want to talk about. But looked, if you had to speculate…"

I sighed, feigning indifference "Best case scenario: He went to work embedded with allies, and is still knocking about helping them in some way. Worst case: He was separated from you for security reasons, and died somewhere in the confusion. Maybe, it would be best if you settled on believing something that was in the middle, and left it at that."

He took another swig from the bottle, considering this.

"Anyway" I said, finally changing the subject. "I'm fucking starving, John."

Finally, he left it at that.

An hour later, the kitchen produced a serviceable steak for me, and an oversized burger for MacTavish only held upright by a commando knife rammed through the middle. I blanched slightly at this, because whilst I had no qualms about eating meat, I wasn't crazy about the idea of utensils that had potentially been inside other people. MacTavish on the other hand, had no such ethical objections, and tucked in. At least the end result, between mouthfuls, was a potted history of military knives, and the explanation that the pub was owned by an ex-Para who occasionally traded on military chic for financial gain, all of which was a welcome distraction from our awkward conversation before.

After we'd finished MacTavish absolutely excelled on the romantic front by dragging me out of the front door, and over the road to a gate. By torchlight, he pulled me by the hand over the rutted ground, and I stumbled behind him, swearing occasionally as I blundered into a hole he'd failed to warn me about. With each step, the light breeze that had caressed my skin on the terrace evolved into a stiffer breeze, bringing the salty tang of the shoreline with it, and the sound of waves breaking ahead.

Five minutes later, I missed the edge of the grass where it gave way to soft sand and landed on my knees.

"Shit! Sorry." I felt MacTavish grab my arm and haul me upright.

"Where the fuck are we going?" I asked, finally. I sounded petulant, but I had dragged my pleasantly full stomach over at least two fields in pitch darkness without complaint and I felt that demonstrated more patience than a lot more women in the same position.

He didn't answer, just kept pulling me further across the sand until he found a space just before the tide line and flopped down.I was about to ask him what the hell he was playing at, until he pulled my hand sharply and I landed on top of him in a pile of flailing limbs, my shriek echoing out across the water.

"What the fuck-"

" Look !" he said, cutting me off. Spitting sand I followed his gesture and then I saw it. Above us the sky was clearer than I had ever seen in my life, with thousands upon thousands of stars glittering above us, filling every inch of space, and right above us, just off centre, a sweeping brush of colour clove the night in two.

"Holy shit !" I exclaimed. "What the hell is that?"

"Milky Way." he replied.

"Holy shit!" I paused "I didn't even know you could see that."

"I know, right. It's fucking incredible."

He wrapped one of his big arms around me, holding me close as I lay in the crook of his arm, the warm skin of his body against mine, a startling contrast to the cold sand.

"Yeah… It's amazing." I replied.

The sheer beauty of the sky above, the press of his warm skin against mine and the note of excitement in his voice, the first sign I'd seen of anything likeable living beneath the surface of him all compressed and melded together into one nebulous cloud of sensation and I felt suddenly dizzy.

All the lies and secrets I held inside me, and the enormity of what I was doing, the sheer force of willing it was taking just to keep it all hidden beneath suddenly hit me, for the first time. Loneliness welled up inside me as if a dam had burst and in a moment, I felt tears prick my eyes. I wanted MacTavish to be a complete arsehole, without merit, but he'd brought me to this place, to see this wonder, and in that moment the shield of hate I'd kept up between myself and him shattered. I bit my lip hard and gripped his arm tight around me, trying to blink back the tears that formed and trying with all my might just to get a fucking grip , Stacey!

"It's so beautiful." I said, sniffing, hoping to conceal the maelstrom of emotion behind a simple lie.

"I'm not just a hard bastard." He said, and I knew he'd be smiling, pleased at having finally caught me off my guard. "I appreciate a bit of natural beauty." He squeezed me, and I rolled my eyes.

We lay there in silence for a few moments, and I pretended to marvel at the wonder of the night whilst inside I chased the emotional sludge that had sloshed out into my mind and tried to force it back down. Eventually, and just in time, I took a long, slow breath and exhaled, feeling the calm descend as the doors I was forcing closed inside finally click shut, the frustrated scream of rage I'd wanted to yell into the empty night suddenly cutting off . I felt the shift then, into that other version of me when he reached over and touched my neck. I rolled over, felt the dry, cold sand I'd pushed aside trickle back into the depression I'd lain in as I looked at the shadow of his face. I gathered my mental disguise around me, this time, when I kissed him, I hardly felt anything at all.