"Hey Mykes, whoa…you look like ass. What happened? Been up all night crying over HG? I'm sorry…was that insensitive?"
Myka directed her best withering glare into the Farnsworth. It wasn't easy considering she couldn't argue with Pete's logic. He couldn't help it if he was way off base. His vibes were clearly failing him. True, she did not look her best, but that was largely a product of bed head and the too-quick bid to find her clothes when the Farnsworth blared to life. Answering the damnable thing had required a surfeit of cool and a bit of creativity. Having initiated her fair share of calls, she knew that the key to not giving away her circumstance was to crowd the video screen. Unfortunately for Pete, that meant a close up look at the haggard visage she couldn't help at this early hour.
"Give me an hour Pete, and then come get me. I'll be at the diner on Main Street."
"You okay there, pardner?" Pete was attempting a John Wayne impersonation and failing miserable in this too.
"I'm fine Pete," she managed a hint of smile before dismissing him, "see you in an hour."
She unceremoniously clapped the Farnsworth shut and glanced around the motel room—a task easily accomplished by just looking up. Myka contemplated missing her connection with Pete and returning to the warmth of the sheets but incipient dehydration made that an impossible dream. It was time to get up and put things into some semblance of order. She pulled her shirt from the floor and dowsed for the underwear she suspected she would find in a ball at the foot of the bed under the covers.
"Eureka," she muttered to herself when she felt them with her toes.
Ancient Greek for "I've found it", the uttered phrase transported Myka back to her college days when she was in the habit of saying such things in front of others without embarrassment. Her fellow teaching assistants in the classics department were nothing if not affable and quirky themselves. Here, in the empty motel room, there was no one to judge her love of dead languages. Even if Helena had been in the room, her nascent curiosity about and appreciation for all things linguistic, and all things Myka especially, would have made it unlikely that the barely audible exclamatory would have excited comment from her. And as the agent pictured Helena's quirked eyebrow and gentle smirk at her inability to reign in her nerdiness, the floodgates of memory opened and the events of last night washed over her.
Helena was waiting for her.
Because it was midnight she made quick work of the registration process, and yet it felt glacially slow. Myka failed to see how writing down the tag number of a rental on the form made sense when hers was the only vehicle in the motel parking lot. But rules were rules and the agent could appreciate the necessity for them. It was just unfortunate that this particular rule was keeping her from something which was making her nerves hum with anticipation. Someone.
They hadn't touched since they had parted in the driveway, stepping back from one another awkwardly, and now the contact of Helena's hand at the small of her back as she used the laughably ancient key lit a fuse she hadn't known lay just under the skin there. The heat traveled along her limbs and radiated outward so that by the time she had closed the door behind them she had no choice but to drive Helena back against it with her weight. There were only a couple of inches of height separating them but those inches fired in Myka a protectiveness and possessiveness she had rarely felt before. She wanted to curl around the dark beauty and shield her from the hostile present and her own sad past.
Before she could analyze her response to Helena, her hands were on the Englishwoman's jaw of their own volition, cradling her face again and drawing her into the fire so that she wouldn't burn alone. Kissing had never been like this and Myka couldn't help reveling in it a bit. She drew out every contact with the other woman, letting her lips linger and her tongue paint slowly over the contours of the other woman's mouth. What Helena and she were doing to each other made remembering Sam's kisses very difficult. Her former partner inspired a sense of comfort in her, but never the white hot bolts which shot through her when she contemplated what else she and Helena might do to each other in the sanctity of this cheap motel room. She had the vague feeling that the Victorian had that effect on all her lovers.
By the time that thought occurred to her, the author's hands had traveled to the buttons of her own shirt and Myka realized how close to the edge of the precipice she was standing.
"Wait."
Myka hardly believed that she had said it. The words hung in the air, almost tangible, making her realize that Helena was no doubt reading a hesitation in her words which she had not intended.
She clarified.
"I want to…" …and Myka's hands replaced the author's at her shirt.
Helena seemed to understand that the agent needed to control what was happening between them. Not because she was apprehensive about making love with a woman for the first time, though she was, but rather because she needed to retain some sense of power so that the experience felt real for her. This was not going to happen to her. She was not going to wake up and wonder if it had been a dream. The agent in her wanted a record of what transpired. And Helena could deny her nothing.
As the buttons slipped through her fingers one by one, Myka's attentions migrated to Helena's collarbone and she stooped to place her lips on the indentation there. Helena had slipped out of her leather jacket and as it dropped to the floor at their feet, the agent became suddenly and acutely aware that the likely end of this scenario was one or both of them standing in the doorway sans clothing. Myka didn't want that.
She took Helena's hand from its place on her hip and led her to the edge of the motel bed.
"I have no intentions of sleeping tonight," Helena warned as she looked past Myka to the shambles of a mattress and box springs behind her.
Myka's response was somber when compared to the playful lilt in Helena's words.
"What are your intentions?"
NB. I think it quite likely that, as we have skirted the edge here, my next chapter will be accompanied by a rating change. Forewarned is forearmed.