Silence again.
Helena was quite sure that she hadn't heard Myka correctly.
After all, it was impossible that the woman she had been standing in her kitchen thinking about in just those terms was asking for what she herself had been wanting since Tamalpais. Too long she hesitated in her incredulity.
Predictably the agent interpreted Helena's stunned silence as deferral.
"Okay, no, I get it. I'm famous for reading too much into things…"
She disengaged her hands from Helena's sides and drove the heels of her palms into her eyes as she stepped away from the vehicle, the perceived rejection stinging. This was turning out to be weirder than she had anticipated and she had only herself to blame for the weird. Hadn't the Victorian just told her that she had purposely avoided contact with her?
And as the supposition of her unrequited desire took hold, it was Myka who was being drawn back against the warmth of the other woman. Helena had pulled her hands from her face and redirected them to her own sides again. There was no last coherent thought in Myka's mind before the smaller woman had tugged her lapels forward and pulled the agent down to touch her lips with her own. Even if she had been capable of cogent thought prior to that time, such capacity was surely gone now.
The slow softness of Helena's mouth on her own made wishing that she could suspend time itself the only thought possible. It was everything she had expected and yet not at all like anything she had ever known. She had watched intently in the past as the author and inventor talked, smiled, laughed, and sipped her ever present cup of tea. But all the direct and indirect staring at, and quite frankly fantasizing about the contours of Helena's mouth, had not prepared her for the first-hand experience she was having now. The butterflies were gone, replaced by something which tightened like a knot in her abdomen and sent tendrils of fire into her extremities. All the kisses before this time she dismissed as perfunctory—and instantly obsolete. Made worse by the fact that being so close to Helena was itself intoxicating—like the warmth of an unexpected beam of sunshine on an otherwise uncomfortably cool day.
But this was immeasurably better than just sharing space with her, sitting next to her on the steps, or even being lashed to her by the ropes of the Mary Celeste. She never wanted to be away from Helena's warmth again.
The Victorian broke their kiss frequently but never strayed more than a few millimeters from Myka's face, preferring instead to stay close enough to gently brush the agent's features with her lips or nose, the fine eyelashes tickling the agent's sensitive skin as they skirted her jawline again and again.
Myka was finally able to utter a few intelligible syllables when Helena denied her the escalation of their kiss into truly passionate territory. She parted herself from the inventor and once again warmed her forehead against the author's, sighing her frustration. The stoic Englishwoman had been using her hands as ballast to support herself against the car window, bracing her weight there so as not to put the pressure she desired too much on the Warehouse agent. But want got the better of her and she moved her hands to Myka's face instead.
There could be no doubt about who was in control of their direction in this second act. Though Myka had chosen the starting point, it was Helena who led, cradling the agent's face and stroking her temple as she kissed her deeply, pulling back in an effort to discover her effect on the other woman. As she wound her fingers in the curls at the base of the agent's neck and stroked the thin material of the shirt under Myka's collar, she simultaneously glimpsed and grazed the familiar.
Her intent was only to let her lips trace the edge of the agent's ear until Myka winced away from the inevitable tickle there. But she had discovered so much more. Under Myka's collar was the chain she knew better than to hope to see again. She was wearing the locket. Her fingers traced the shape of it under the agent's shirt.
"I kept it for you," mumbled the Warehouse agent before Helena could ask. "There never seemed to be a good time to return it to you after Sykes."
As she said this, she used the distraction to reverse their positions. Myka now towered over the woman she needed desperately to hear and see her, pinning her against the side of the vehicle. It was her turn to brace herself against the car and attempt to hold herself away from the slight woman she wanted so much to push into.
"The truth is that I kept it so that I would always have an excuse to see you. I could have returned it to you—I planned to a thousand times—but I was afraid that I would lose you to the dark places and I wouldn't have a tether to hold you by or drag you back to me. And then you left so abruptly and I forgot that I had it." Myka squelched the rambling she felt welling up in her and reached up to her own neck to hold the locket as if she were afraid that Helena might snatch it away from her.
Helena was quiet. Her hands were still at the agent's neck. It appeared to Myka that she had decided what to say and then discarded the idea before seizing on another response, and then discarding that one too. All the while she looked into Myka's eyes with a directness that the agent found unsettling but familiar. Censure felt like a foregone conclusion. Myka braced herself for it.
"I want you to keep it."
"What? Why?" Myka whispered loudly, taken aback by the sudden metaphorical thrusting of so much responsibility onto her shoulders.
"You don't have to keep it if you don't want to. After all darling, I don't want you to think of Christina and I as your wards."
"Of course I don't feel that way," responded the agent, her brow instantly furrowing at the suggestion. "It makes me feel closer to you is all."
"Myka, I trust you to keep it safe. There are not many things in this life that I can say that about but this is surely one of them."
That was all it took. Myka could only manage a breathy hum before she turned her attention back to seducing the woman who had been no farther than the back of her thoughts for the past three years. "What if I asked to keep your heart the same way? Could you trust me with that too?"
She was impossibly close to Helena, exhaling hot against the shorter woman's temple. She was breathing in the silky strands of ink and had begun to thread her fingers through them at the back of Helena's head. The Englishwoman wanted to answer but found herself needing desperately to recapture Myka's lips with her own and drink the agent in. She had fought against her desire for Myka for so long and now that the dam had broken, maintaining her control was exponentially more difficult with each passing minute.
Only one thing could turn her aside from her goal and it was a question that she now had to ask the woman wrapped around her. She broke again from the kiss.
"Can I ask you a question now, darling?"
"Anything." Myka was so close that the answer reverberated between their chests.
"Can you help me pack?"