The first light of morning lit the room with a golden glow, streaming in through the window. Nat blinked, awake with a practised ease. She stretched, relishing the feeling of the strong arm wrapped around her. She was achy and sore in some very intimate places, her ass and thighs still red and sore though healing fast. But it felt fitting, help in this mans arms, his marks on her skin. This was new and it was – she paused, pondering the best description – nice. Yes, This was nice.

She wraps the trailing end of the belt around her neck about her finger. She'd not felt like this in a long while.

She feels him stir, waking from the sleep of the well spent.

She smiles a cheeky smile and ducks under the covers.

Steve wakes to the delicious sensation of a warm mouth sliding up and down his cock. Before he's fully awake he's already achingly erect. He lifts the bedsheet to see a familiar shock of red hair moving rhythmically in his groin. A shudder of pleasure runs through him and he looks down to see her looking up at him, mischief in her eyes and both his balls in her mouth. She sucks and swirls her tongue on them then pulls back to let them pop free. She straddles his cock, poising herself over it

"When you wake up naked and sticky, what else could I do?"

He looks up at her washed red gold in the dawn light and is awe struck for a moment, her skin glowing like it's almost on fire. He reaches up and cups her breasts, stroking them as she lowers herself onto his cock, letting her weight slide her down onto him, arching her back and pushing her breasts into his hands.

"Gods yes!" she breathes, slowly rocking her hips

He starts to gently move with her, thrusting up as she moves forward to lift her then letting her slowly slide down him again. He can see the muscles on the inside of her thighs work to lower her, tensing until they quiver. Her hands reflexively go up to cover her face as she gasps, then she knits her fingers behind her head and stretches out, on display. She bites her lip and keeps moving, struggling to keep a steady pace as he gets faster and more forceful. As he feels he's getting close he sits up, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her down as he thrusts. She gasps then buries her head in his shoulder, feeling him throb and spurt inside her. Pumping her hips she whimpers, close but needing "Can I come? Sir? Please? Can I come?"

He grips her hair, knowing she needs to feel the power as he grunts "Come for me, girl. Now!"

That pushes her over the edge, the tension exploding into a wave of pleasure.

They lie together, sweaty and sticky and spent, then he gives her a reassuring squeeze and gestures to the bathroom. "We need to get up and moving. Shower first?"

She sighs as he takes the belt from around her neck "I guess we have to. I'll call for breakfast" she rolls over and presses a button on the old style telephone by the bed.

In the shower she washes him first, quiet and servile as she soaps him all over with deft hands. He struggles to accept the way she's acting, it seems so different to her normal persona; but he relaxes and lets her work, sensing it's almost a meditation for her, an act of service that needs no worry or second guessing, a simple task that she can do for him to prove her devotion. As she rinses him off the sight of a naked woman on her knees at his feet washing him with a cloth, her hair plastered to her head, her face calm and focused is insanely erotic in ways he can't describe. She smiles as his cock swells from the experience. She kisses the head reverently.

"Food will be coming up soon, I'll dry you off"

He stops her "No, I'm going to return the favour first" he takes a clean washcloth and motions her to stand. Taking his time he soaps her all over, examining every inch of her body, carefully smoothing the bruises and welts he's left on her skin. Many are already fading, like him she doesn't bruise much and heals fast.

Out of the shower she towels him off with a huge fluffy white towel and he again returns the favour, drying her with a gentle kindness that contrasts with the strength she knows he has.

There's a tap- tap on the door and she throws on his shirt and skips to the door, the open shirt concealing little. Steve sits at the rooms small round table, remembering the quote about A woman wearing only a mans shirt in the morning being like "a flag on a captured ship". It's very true, she's certainly flying his colours.

As she bends forward to pull the trolley into the room she flashes him the curve of her ass, still striped with red from last night.

The trolley is piled high with covered plates and pots.

She starts to uncover plates and transfer them to the table "I took the liberty of getting us the Full English breakfast, in case we burned off too many calories with last night's exertions"

She picks up the tea pot "you take you tea British Army standard? Milk, two sugars?"

He nods, watching her busy with the cups "do you take yours the Russian way"

"Of course, with lemon and honey. It's the proper way, but at least the English are almost as tea obsessed as the Russians and know how to make good strong tea"

He looks over the plates and starts piling things onto his plate. "I have to admit I'm starving all of a sudden"

She offers him a large mug of strong tea, holding it in both hands and presenting it handle towards him.

There's an element of ritual to it that interests him, watching her flick her eyes down as he takes it.

She smiles once he's tasted it then fixes her own and starts on the food "We have back bacon, what you'd call Canadian bacon, link sausages, fried eggs sunny side up, fried bread, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes, black pudding, baked beans and hash browns."

"I can never get the English thing about eating beans for breakfast"

Word is those centipede soldiers were ex-military, both dishonourably discharged.

A HYDRA front security firm recruited them, the firm is based in an industrial park on a disused airfield north of Paris.

So how do we get to Paris without them seeing us coming? Quinjet and just drop in?

"well, we could" she draws it out "but I've an idea that could be fun. How would you feel about an nice morning jog?"

"Sure, I normally do 15 miles in the morning. Where you thinking of running?"

"To France"

"France!?"

"You know they built a tunnel from England to France, right?"

"I think I'd heard that. But isn't it for trains only?"

"Yes, officially. But that's only if we ask them for permission"

"So you want us to sneak into a train tunnel and run to France?"

"Sure, it's only 30 miles; we should be able to do it in about an hour and a half."

He thinks for a moment then nods "yes, shouldn't be a problem. The question is why?"

"Practise. Look Steve, Moving round the world is easy with money and influence as long as you don't ring alarm bells." She pantomimes a model pose, looking glamorous.

"If you're filthy rich, good looking and well-dressed your papers just get a cursory check. HYDRA use that with private jets and an agent in the ground crew to move arms and drugs to fund their other activities. The heavy stuff is usually moved by truck with a few bribes, usually by claiming it's a low level crime like cigarette smuggling to avoid customs tax. Big crimes hide as Small crimes."

"But just walking through customs is easy enough with the right papers and attitude, as long as you're not got a famous face or something unique and distinctive. Your shield for example, it's not exactly hand luggage or easy to smuggle. Once you came on the scene most national intelligence agencies secretly added metal detectors tuned to pick up vibranium to all the ports and international travel hubs, watching for you or any illegal vibranium trade. And you and I are now pretty famous. People, you can fool. People see what they expect to see, if they saw you on TV they won't expect to see you on the street, so you don't give them a chance to think about it or do a double take, you keep moving and they'll forget. Wear a disguise, a simple obvious feature for them to notice and remember. Hat. Glasses. Scars. Tattoos. Bright lipstick. You can wear disguises, stick on moustaches, make up – a little dark shadow under the cheek bones makes your face thinner. Light makes you face fatter. But all that won't fool trained observers or the cameras.

"SHIELD have advanced disguises, masks that fit like a second skin to change your face, voice modulators to shift your voice. But for this mission we can go old school and just practise stealth and avoidance."

She brings a map up on her tablet computer and starts flicking through the plan she's put together.

"We take a car to here, Folkstone in Kent. The main terminal is heavily watched, but there is a service shaft here which we can use to bypass the security. It's locked and guarded, of course, but not as heavily."

"Then we just Jog through the channel tunnel between trains?"

"There are several rail tunnels and a service tunnel between then, we go down that"

"And at the other end?"

"I know a way out through the cooling tunnels. The whole area is pretty suspicious of strangers due to the refugees from the camps, but money can smooth the way. I'll order luggage and useful sundries of shopping to pick up from the local super Marché, we can get a café in town here, get a taxi to the shop, pick up the shopping, I'll arrange to buy a car from a local showroom and we get a second taxi to drop us off there. Our fake ID will be good enough for the car paperwork so we just fill up with gas and away we go."

He scrolls back through the plan, looking upset. "Refugee camps? In Northern France? In this day and age?"

"Yes, lots of people displaced by war or economic troubles are trying to get to Britain, but hit the border and are stuck."

"Why won't they let them in?"

"Politics, as usual. Most of the Right wing politicians in Europe have learnt to profit from the chaos Hydra loves to create and use the similar strategy. Wars to the East and economic collapse in Africa has created a lot of refugees who get blamed for economic ills and then shuffled from country to country, being blamed for claiming benefits or taking people's jobs as a cheap scapegoat."

"what can we do to help?"

"We do what we do. We can't fix it directly. But this mission pulls a few of HYDRAs teeth, taking out their super powered enforcers weakens them so they have less influence, plus we may get enough intelligence to catch some HYDRA high up. Take them out and their puppet politicians and copycats loose some power so have to compromise more with the middle ground and so on. Small steps, but in the right direction."

Steve makes a fist, face earnest and filled with a righteous indignation "we need to stop HYDRA once and for all! Do we even know who's running them now?"

The intensity of his emotion gives her a positively indecent shiver. She's suddenly aware that she's naked apart from his shirt, sitting so close to him. Part of her wants to jump on him and kiss him, part to drop to her knees and kiss his boots and swear to follow him anywhere. She crosses her legs, squeezing her thighs together as she sips her tea and tries to focus on the mission plan.

"HYDRA learnt long ago to not rely on one person or location, as it gave their enemies a target. They have a Council of Heads, varying in number, skill and power but all dedicated to HYDRAs goals. They have many goals as well, always changing though the overall one is always power and world domination."

Steve frowns "Cut off one head…"

"Two more take its place" She brings up the HYDRA file on the screen.

"But it was defeated in the myth"

"Hercules task to kill the Lernian Hydra? He had his lover Iolaus burn the stump with fire after he cut off each head to stop it regrowing. But the last head was immortal so he settled with trapped it under a great stone monolith"

Steve ponders. "If some myths have root in fact could something like that have really happened? "

"Several agencies have swept the Lake of Lerna and the caves around the area but not found anything. Strangely I've Never heard of an actual HYDRA project there. Maybe they value the metaphor?"

"Or maybe they already found it? Any cases of HYDRA weapons using immortal snake venom?" Steve stops and reviews what he just said, how crazy it sounds. Then his jaw almost drops at her answer.

"Seventeen i know of that use unusually potent snake venom, but most are attributed to either bioengineered vipers from a secret Hydra base somewhere in the Amazon or a band of Chinese assassins known as the Brides of Nine Venoms."

Steve sighs. Every answer raises more strangeness, more questions.

"The hydra emblem, did SHIELD ever work out why is it not a snake? Why is it a skull octopus thing? It's like the SS Totenkopf but with tentacles."

"No one is sure; it has given SHIELDS symbolic semiotics unit a real headache for years. The deaths head skull has been a military symbol for centuries, but none use tentacles like that, it's usually long bones. One current idea is the emblem symbolises the six powerful members of the HYDRA council who originally infiltrated the SS.

"So what was it before HYDRA infiltrated the SS?"

"I'm not sure. You need to talk to our symbols people, they may have answers"

He nods, looking at the HYDRA emblem on the screen and frowning.

She puts her hand on his, breaking him from his reverie

"Steve. We'll get them. It's just going to take time"

"There's a quote from John Adams about building a better world. "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, in order to give their children a right to study painting and poetry "

He looks at the plan and nods

"I need to know all this, how they plan, how they think, so we can find them and beat them once and for all."

She nods, swept up in his passion. "I'm with you, all the way"

Steve turns, focusing his gaze on her. Taking her hands he pulls her into his lap, asking in a much softer tone "So, how will this work?"

There's suddenly a lump in her throat. She's lost for words. Then she stutters "if you want me…"

He opens the shirt, wrapping his arms round her naked body as he answers "I do"

Again, that Earnestness fills her stomach with butterflies. Silently she scolds herself that she's behaving like a giddy schoolgirl, but then she exhales. It's more like throwing a rope to a drowning man.

"Then I'm yours. Always honest. Always available. Always eager. Whatever you want to know or to do, your word is my law. All I ask is you never stop being you. Being resolute. Being true."

"You know I always try to do that. But I promise, I will"

She looks him in the eyes "Thank you. The red room teaches you to not care about the people you kill. To dehumanise them. It cushions the trauma. But I'm trying to be a better person, to only kill if i have to, to protect people.

If you don't give the job an emotional weight you can just forget it. A lot of my early jobs are just a blur, I've no real way to telling how many I've actually killed. The Red Room purged a lot of early records as they changed sides over the years. I've had to unpack a lot that I've done."

"You help me cope. Hold me to the lofty ideals i wish for even when i think i can't go on... When i want to give up"

He smiles "You know I never give up. But you don't need me to tell you how to be a good person. The fact you want to do better shows you already are. I just need to show you that." He stands, easily lifting her into his arms, and turns back to the bed

"Let's make it an afternoon run"

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."

― Niccolò Machiavelli

"The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife