Watching way too much tv series, love reading

Kate felt the answer in every unpleasantly sticky movement. Suppressing an exasperated sigh, she offered a brief mental farewell to her Ralph Lauren blouse. One unpredictable extraterrestrial later, and a thousand pounds’ worth of tailoring was effectively beyond salvation. Not even dry cleaning would be able to remove the disgusting scent from the fabric. It was such a shame, really; the blouse had done wonders when discussing budgets in Westminster. 

Now, nearly every single person she passed more or less successfully managed to control their features or at least put in an effort to seem unaffected by the stench clinging to her, and Kate was glad that her role meant her subordinates wouldn’t be able to go out of their way or treat her any differently, even though her reapplication of Armani’s Sí fought a losing battle. There was something to be said for instilling enough fear and respect in everyone, even if it was solely for her ego in this moment.

Kate was halfway to the communal kitchen to keep herself going with some caffeine, and oh, how her mouth watered at the thought of the sound of Brazilian ground beans, when her mobile vibrated in her trouser pocket. 

“For fucks’ sake,” she muttered, a frown etching itself into her forehead right where the migraine was already pounding insistently. 

Whoever wanted something from her now would have to join the back of the queue. She really didn’t have the nerve to deal with her landlord or—God forbid—her daughter-in-law. Lisa was really lovely, but Kate had been up since three in the morning. A chat with Gordon’s wife and the thought of the zero chamber and a bottle of wine certainly sounded like a splendid use of her time.

A sceptical eyebrow joined the frown when Kate saw the unknown number, though it quickly morphed once a red manicured finger tapped to open the message. 

“Now, now, Kitty, who did you shag for that office view? x”

Kate’s steps fell into a slowed saunter, then a fully distracted stop in the middle of the hallway. 

There were perhaps four people on the planet who still called her Kitty. Three of them had known her before she was twenty, playground friends and one high school crush, right when Kate found out why exactly she found herself drawn to pretty girls in thigh-high socks and skirts and with brightly laughing pink, sticky cherry lipgloss lips. The fourth one was the only one with the audacity to break into her office right under Kate’s nose and to sign whatever message from the latest unknown number with a kiss, without being dragged in on their knees with the help of Kate’s cybersecurity support.

A quick smile tugged at the corner of her mouth before she caught herself. Damn you.

Fifteen years of disappearing acts, classified operations and inexplicably impeccable timing, and you still had an uncanny habit of materialising in Kate’s life as though you’d only stepped out for milk. MI6 had trained you to vanish without leaving so much as a fingerprint. It had evidently neglected to teach you that you could easily ask for Kate at reception without having to break into secure government facilities.

Or other people’s offices.

Your arrangement—if it deserved such a dignified description—had never survived sustained exposure to reality. There were some dinners, lots of shared drinks, and always mind-blowing, sensational sex. The weekend ended with one of you boarding a plane or being recalled to a crisis neither of you could discuss. Months passed. Sometimes years, though Kate rarely wanted to think about those longer times; the longer you disappeared for, the more ludicrous the list of possible reasons for your silence became. Then another message would arrive from an untraceable number, crashing into Kate’s life without regard for wherever she was.

“On my way to London and there is a table for us at ‘Carlotta’ for 8 pm. Should I wear a necklace, or will your fingers do the trick? x”

“I went back to that bar just off Rue Cortot. They still have our Polaroid hanging up. Still can’t even sniff a glass of pinot without gagging. Happy birthday x”

“Heard you’re in San Sebastián as well. What a coincidence. Want to watch a sunset together and come on my fingers? x”

Kate had long ago stopped pretending she knew what to call whatever existed between you. Friendship seemed dishonest. Romance implied a consistency neither of you possessed. Convenience ignored the inconvenient truth that Kate always found herself smiling before she’d quite realised she was doing it and would trace every love bite, every bruise, every nip of teeth on her body every night until they were gone from her body like you from her life. At least for a while. The thoughts stayed longer.

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. The erratic, unrelenting flutter beneath her ribs battered against the careful walls she’d spent years building around herself. Her hand drifted to the centre of her sternum, palm pressing lightly there, as though she could soothe the restless thing back into a sensible rhythm.

All it took was the knowledge that you were here.

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

Tracing your fingers over the photograph of a stoic-looking man in military uniform and with a formidable, very attractive, near Daddy-issues-evoking upper-lip moustache, you took a sip of Scotch and threw a wink and two-finger salute towards the frame on the desk next to your propped-up boots. 

“Don’t worry, Ali,” you raised your glass towards the Brigadier, “I’ll take good care of Kitty.” With her legs over my shoulders, if all things go the way I’d love to, you added mentally and grinned into your glass, Scotch on your tongue and a reminiscing throb between your legs. 

It’s been a couple of years since you last dropped into Kate’s life; a destined side-effect of your occupation, and the chance and prospect of feeling your favourite blonde’s claws in your heart and body again had you almost giddy on the flight back from Toronto. Your latest cover hadn’t left any possibility of sneaking off for a cheeky reconnection with the Commander of UNIT, though you were looking forward to it all the more. 

You heard the sound of heels on metal stairs, a measured stride echoing through the steelwork and clicking closer, drawing nearer. Letting the rhythm pulse through your ribs, you smiled into the glass, imagining the swing of her hips, the curve of her arse, that look of determination on her face.

God, you’d missed that sound of expensive heels.

Not because of the shoes. 

Because nobody walked like Kate Stewart. 

The first time you had seen her, she’d walked out of the Tower of London and had given you a right bollocking for wandering around the grounds unaccompanied, all beige long coat cinched tight around a small waist, clipped-back blonde hair and a stiffness in her slim shoulders that spoke more of overplaying certainty than really wearing it. After you had flashed her your ID with a wink and “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not here to steal something. I don’t think the crown jewels go with my shoes!” she’d dragged you inside, away from the inquiring eyes of early-bird tourists, and you couldn’t take your eyes off her shoes and the stride with which she marched you around. 

Ever since that dewdrop-kissed morning, you were revelling in the sight or sound of Kate walking towards you.

You took another sip, letting the smoky warmth settle, roll over your tongue, before licking a stray drop from your lower lip. Not bad, she was still buying the eighteen-year-old. Some habits refused to die. Leaning back farther in her chair, it gave a protesting creak, and you crossed one ankle lazily over the other. 

The footsteps reached the door and didn’t pause for a single second before the handle turned.

“About time,” you called without moving an inch. “I’ve already started on your good Scotch.”

Nothing could ever prepare you for the sight of Kate.

It didn’t matter how many photographs you unearthed from classified archives, how often you found yourself typing her name into a search bar after one glass of wine too many, or how many grainy security stills you quietly borrowed from MI6’s databases under the guise of operational necessity. None of them prepared you for the way she stole the breath from your lungs.

Even now, however determined you were to remain composed in her chair, your pulse plummeted as your eyes drank her in with quiet greed.

Kate closed the door behind her and rested against it, her hand still curled around the handle. You caught the tiny rise of her chest, the minute swallow that followed, the way her fingers tightened once around the brass handle before relaxing again while a rosy blush coloured her cheeks. 

She sighed, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her. “Clearly.” Heels on the floor, a prowling stroll across the room. Kate unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off, and you eagerly raked your eyes over her willowy shape. Arching an immaculate eyebrow, Kate pursed her lips and pointedly looked at her desk. “And you couldn’t have done that without your boots on my desk?”

You shrugged and grinned, delighted to hear her voice. “Come on, we’ve done far worse things to your old one.” 

Like the time she’d spread you out on top of it—back in the tower—sitting comfortably on her chair and sank her head between your legs, fingertips digging bruises into your thighs as she worked you apart with her mouth until you’d lost count of how many times she’d wrung you through it, unrelenting and unhurried, her tongue drawing patterns, her chin glistening with slick. Or one of the earlier times, when she’d been all sharp-tongued impatience, snapping at you to get on with it, until you’d finally given her what she wanted—your hand between her legs, fingers knotted tight in her short blonde hair, while you fucked her mercilessly against the sturdy wood.

A whack to one of your shoes ripped you away from the memories. 

Kate glared at you from the other side of the desk, her unfinished paperwork shuffling underneath the sole of your boot as she waited for you to give in and lift your legs back to the floor. Only then did she walk around it, one hunting kitten-heel-clacking step at a time. 

That invisible rope around your heart drew tighter the closer she came, and your pulse forgot itself. A thundering soundwave ricocheted through your veins, deafening, drowning out reason. It was always like this—an adrenaline rush of blood pounding, heating up, and a free-fall of emotions incomparable to the most dangerous mission you had under your belt, washing away the self-composure you were known for and trained for, all because Kate was near you again. Close enough to see that time had been kind to her. Close enough to notice it had been cruel, too. The silver kissed into pale blonde hair. Closer, to notice the command that hummed under her skin, that directed UNIT soldiers with the wave of a hand and coursed through her into every swing of her hips. Closer, to smell—

“Oof! What’s been decaying in your pockets? Did you forget some cat treats in there?” 

You wrinkled your nose, trying to block out the pungent smell. 

“At least I know you aren’t here to charm my trousers off,” Kate observed wryly. She leaned against the desk, arms folded loosely as her eyes wandered over you with undisguised appreciation. You held her gaze, taking your own unhurried inventory. 

You saw each other too infrequently to waste the first few moments looking anywhere else.

You weren’t sure if you wanted to eat her alive or have her devour you first. 

“Who knows?” you smirked and walked two fingers over the armrest of the chair, “I’ve gotten in your knickers with far less effort.”

“You stole my knickers, if I remember correctly,” Kate said dryly, shifting so the long line of her body relaxed ever so slightly. 

“Oh, you still aren’t over that?” 

“I liked them for more reasons than the price tag.”

Your grin grew wider at Kate’s slightly sour expression. “I clearly liked them as well,” you teased, wondering how long it would be before she’d let you trace that frown with your fingers again. 

“You could have asked.” Kate drew out and challenged you with another twitch of her eyebrow. 

“Would you have said yes?” You looked at her and the strand of blonde hair that curled around her chin, practically tempting you to reach out and push it away. You knew you both would say yes to each other thousands of times, in myriad ways that would grant you as much of each other in the shortest amount of times 

Kate tilted her head, pretending to consider it. Her eyes were so narrowed you weren’t sure if the look she threw you was smouldering or reprimanding; your breath quickened all the same. 

“Absolutely not.” She would’ve.

“Thought as much.” I knew you would’ve.

The grin lingered for another heartbeat before you let it soften. “Actually…” You rolled the scotch around your glass, watching the amber catch the light. “I do have an ulterior motive.”

Kate pursed her lips and rolled her eyes. “I’m shocked.”

“You wouldn’t have the time to accompany me to Spain, would you?” You smiled innocently at her lifted eyebrow, which contradicted the way her body swayed slightly toward you. Got you, you thought, waving your hand towards the planner sitting on the corner of her desk. “Well, I know you do, but since you always disapprove of me snooping through your calendar, I thought I’d behave and ask nicely for once!”

“Behave,” Kate repeated in a raspy laugh that skipped from your ears to your heart and sank deep into the pit of heat curling in your stomach. “That’s remarkably considerate of you.”

You nodded solemnly. “I’m trying this new thing called personal growth.”

“Mhm, is that so?” Her fingers deftly ran around the buttons of her blouse before folding the fluttery fabric back to expose her watch and a thin golden bracelet around a slender wrist, and all at once you remember how you bought her that bracelet in the streets of Cairo. Kate’s eyes followed your gaze, and she seemed to reach the same memory as her lips curled around the words.

“I give it another ten minutes.”

“You know I’m quicker than ten minutes when it comes to you.” You shot her a wink and god, you were dizzy with this flirting, with the reality of Kate in all her glorious, sexy existence. 

“My my my,” she drawled. Your eyes instinctively followed the elegant line of her leg as Kate extended it. “Aren’t you presumptuous?”

The pointed toe of her kitten heel caught the underside of your chair and, with an almost lazy tug, rolled you towards her. Your knees brushed her shin, and you withstood the urge to grab her hips and fuck her right there on your lap. 

“It’s been—what? Ten minutes?” Kate asked and looked down at you, “And you’re already talking about sex.” Then, with another last impatient pull, there was nowhere left for your legs to stay. You unfolded them almost instinctively, making room for Kate to cross hers again, one thigh over the other, the tip of her heel resting on the cushion of the chair close to your throbbing cunt. She bent her foot ever so slightly as she leaned forward to rest one elbow on her upper leg, her fingers swirling in front of you. “Neediness isn’t a good look on you, darling.”

“Yeah, well,” you swallowed at the familiar yet devastating petname and how it had sounded when she’d made you ride her strap for the first time, a ‘It’ll fit, darling, trust me,’ ruining you for everyone else. “You seem to inspire me whenever you want.”

Kate’s eyes flashed with an electric charge as she slid off the desk again and stood in front of you. Two fingers found your chin, tipped your head back, hard enough to race a shiver over your spine, forcing your eyes up to hers and keeping them there. Not a request; Kate never bothered with those.

“So,” she smirked and stroked her thumb over your chin. “What makes you think I’m going to say yes to this?”

“An international date?” you spoke, and felt her grip tighten around your face. Your hands found her thighs. You dragged them up slowly, feeling the muscle shift under your palms, over the flare of her hips, until your fingers hooked into her belt loops and pulled—just enough to close the last inch, just enough to feel her breath catch. “Come on, Kitty, if there’s one thing you hate more than not getting your own way, it’s not knowing what I need you for.”

“I can usually suss out what you need me for,” she said flatly. “Though I supposed that you do make things interesting by changing locations, God knows how often.” 

“See?” You licked your lips, watched her eyes track the movement. Let your gaze drop, drinking her in—the line of her waist, the flex of her stomach under her shirt, the freckles on her chest—then drag your eyes back up to hers. “You can’t resist.”

Leaning back and stretching herself in your grasp, Kate reached for her planner. Your fingers roamed over her trousers and to her backside, massaging enough that her hips rolled forward unconsciously, as she checked the month. Her eyes creased in the corners, and while she seemed to be deep in thought, the scent of pure, wet arousal let you know she’d be booking a flight to Madrid within the hour of your leaving. 

“Care to make this interesting, then?” she asked, almost in an unbothered voice.

“Always.” 

You would’ve licked over the golden buckle of her belt if she hadn’t been wrestling aliens. Instead, you nuzzled into the hand that Kate absently dropped into your hair, then to your cheek.

“A wager.” She tilted her head, the silver in her hair catching the light. “You will be on your knees begging me to fuck you before you get whatever work you need to be doing done.”

You grinned. “And if you crack first?”

“I won’t.” The certainty in it should have been infuriating. It was, a little. It also went straight between your legs.

“Bold, Kitty.”

“Realistic.” She stepped away from your touch, giving you room you hadn’t asked for and didn’t particularly want. “Go on, then. Prove me wrong.”

You held her gaze a moment longer before you unfolded yourself from the chair and let your hand trail across her desk as you walked past her. There was the smallest sound of her breath when your fingertips grazed her stomach and slightly pushed, nudged the palm of your hand close enough to her crotch that Kate’s pupils blackened out and she looked at you like she would want to sink her teeth into you. 

You walked toward the wall of glass windows that looked out over London going dark gold in the evening light, shoving both hands into the pockets of your trousers. You didn’t need to look back to feel her eyes on you the whole way, a physical thing, dragging down your spine like fingernails in Greece. 

You stopped at the window, appreciated the view of a blurred, slim figure in the reflection, and waited. A rare thing, you waiting for Kate. 

It didn’t take her long.

The click of her heels was unhurried and unbothered. She came to a stop directly behind you, close enough that you felt her heat before she ever touched you, close enough that the city lights blurred in the glass between the two reflections of you both. It wasn’t enough; you wanted her to melt into you, to sink her clever fingers inside of you and fill you, stretch you, break past any limits so the only shape your body had was one crafted by her.

Her hands found your waist first. Then her mouth found your neck. She didn’t kiss you, not exactly—she dragged her lips slowly along your pulse point instead, open-mouthed, wet, teeth grazing just enough to make your breath stutter, stopping just shy of marking you. Your eyes fluttered shut at the contact, a hum under your skin rising into the chorus of a thousand beehives, before the silence washed over the noise and all that you felt were Kate’s lips sucking on your neck. 

I’ve missed you, you thought quietly. 

Five years of uncertainty whether she was out there, a constant questioning and overthinking, laying in a bed that was neither yours, hers, nor one you would be able to share, and even when your priority had always been your work and the protection of your country, every sunrise that wasn’t shared with her and every sunset burning in the colour of her nails made you painfully aware that it was another day further away from the last time you had seen her. Touched her. Breathed her in with the intensity of astronauts landing back on Earth. You would hear the name the files had given you for the operation and dream about Kate moaning your real one into your skin. Would wander through Canada with new hair that had never been pulled by Kate, with clothes she wouldn’t rip off you to have her way with you, talked about a made-up identity that wouldn’t be able to know Kate Stewart or UNIT and took away any chance of touching yourself to a picture of her. 

“I’m going to win this,” Kate murmured lowly against your skin, her thumb tracing slow circles at your hip. “You know I am.”

Your reflection in the glass betrayed you—eyes fluttering, chest rising too fast. Kate’s smirk was audible even without you turning around. She would be the reason of your undoing, your own femme fatale.

“We’ll see,” you managed, though it came out rougher than you intended.

“Mm” Her lips grazed higher, just beneath your ear. “Ya lo veremos, cosita linda”

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

The Spanish heat greeted Kate instead of you as she stepped out of Madrid airport and pushed her sunglasses back onto her nose from her hair, letting the soft strands fall free when she tugged at her hair tie. 

Her back ached slightly in the way it now just did; not because of any missed yoga classes (which she missed a lot) or wrong posture at her desk (an occupational hazard), and no one ever asked if she’d had a wild weekend (a bottle of Riesling from the Mosel and sleeping in to after seven am.). Instead, she would roll her shoulders back like she did now, and someone would comment, “Ah, that age, huh?” and Kate had to accept that dedicating her life to studying what had been the unimaginable fantasy for millennials didn’t mean that she could outrun time. 

The surprise of you still lingered inside of her in that same ache. No, lingering was the wrong word. You lingered whenever you disappeared and left Kate to fuck strangers wearing your perfume, laughing a little similarly, never tasting the same. You lingered then, in the back of Kate’s mind like a trapped animal, scratching at the iron bounds Kate had to shackle the memory of you into or she would be unable to go through her day. UNIT demanded nothing but her full attention, and you devoured it. 

Now you were back, the image of you sprawled in her chair, drinking her scotch, leaving her on the edge of insanity once more, breathing in the Spanish air and wondering what the fuck she was doing here and why she hadn’t dragged you to her flat that instant, made you scream and sing for her.

There was only the maddening, animal fact of you—your hands, your voice, your body in her reach for Kate to ruin—and Kate hated, loved, resented how completely you unmade her rationality, how a woman who had faced the most terrifying deaths could be reduced to this: aching, single-minded, counting down the hours to Spain like a woman starved, terrified that if she let herself feel the full weight of wanting you, it would swallow her whole and leave nothing recognizable behind.

Kate pressed her tongue against her teeth and shoved the rest of the complimentary ‘barquitos rellenos’ from the airport staff into her mouth, crumbs flying down her white shirt. 

A commercial flight would probably have been kinder to the environment, but the uncertainty of whether you—defying all logic, fuelled by a stubborn pinch of irrational hope—would actually be waiting in the arrivals hall had made the two-and-a-half hours above the clouds nearly unbearable as it was. Add screaming children and a delay at the gate into the mix, and Kate would certainly have lost what remained of her patience. So instead she’d spent the flight running through every possibility of what to expect today, since you, predictably, had given her nothing beyond a time and a hotel.

And yet, here she was. 

She’d gone so far as to log two of her accrued holiday days into the system, enduring her secretary’s repeated “Are you quite sure that’s not a mistake, ma’am?” Was it truly so shocking, so wildly implausible, that even Kate Stewart occasionally took time off?

A warm breeze slid over her skin as she reached for her bag. Fortunately, she’d come prepared. Even without a single clue, without so much as a shred of cooperation from you, Kate was fairly confident she wouldn’t be forced to rely on her credit card for an entirely new wardrobe by the end of it. Though, admittedly, when she thought back to that short trip to Verona—where she’d worn nothing but your love bites for two days straight—your surprises came in all forms. 

“Señora? Katherine?” 

Kate turned to find a clean-shaven, fairly handsome young man swiftly walking toward her, waving a hand in the air in a greeting. Her habitual suspicion prompted her to tighten her grip on her bag. Her other hand moved, seemingly casually, towards her front trouser pocket until she felt cold metal against her palm.

Ah, another advantage of flying privately. She didn’t have to go through the hassle of producing all sorts of paperwork for her handgun. 

“Puedo ayudarle?” Kate asked in a clear voice, pushing her shoulders back and glanced at him over the rim of her sunglasses. 

“Sí, bueno, señora Stewart sends me,” he answered in a thick accent. “Le llevaré al hotel.”

“Señora Stewart?” Kate repeated, confused and slightly incredulous. Then the penny dropped. “Ah,” she laughed out loud. Of course.

The young man nodded fast, clearly relieved that he’d met the right person, and gestured for her to follow him toward a sleek black car idling at the curb.

“How exactly,” Kate asked, falling into a step beside him, amusement pulling at her mouth. “Cómo sabías que era yo?” Not many people had arrived at the private sector of the airport, but still, Kate was curious.

He laughed, a little sheepish, opening the backseat door for her. “Señora Stewart—your, eh, esposa—” he tripped slightly over the word, glancing at Kate as if checking it was the right one, “—she says una mujer hermosa will land. Very beautiful! She say look for—” he frowned, visibly hunting for the English words and staying with the Spanish when he failed, hands gesturing vaguely, “—como un gato?”

“Un gato?” Kate repeated, eyebrow arching. 

“Sí, sí, gato.” He struggled a moment longer, clearly wrestling with his vocabulary, before abandoning words entirely. He lifted both hands to the sides of his head, fingers pointed upward, mimicking a pair of pricked, listening ears.

Kate barked out a laugh, delighted despite herself, and rolled her eyes skyward as she folded herself into the car. “Yes,” she said, placing her bag onto the middle seat. “I understand perfectly.”

Impossible, Kate pursed her lips, putting on her seatbelt. You impossible woman.

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You had a job tonight. You were fairly certain, somewhere in the back of your mind, that the job involved actually paying attention.

You were not paying attention. Not to the music of a string quartet playing in the entrance lobby, not to the ballroom decked out in gold light and waitstaff drifting past with trays of bubbling champagne, nor to the guest list you were meant to be watching. Barely anything registered, except that Kate was wearing the suit trousers.

Not just any, though. The one tailored so precisely, cut close at the hip and thigh, and you knew with the certainty of long, devoted study exactly what they did for the endless line of her legs and the curve of her arse when she walked away from you. Tucked into the high waist, cinched tightly, was a shirt you hadn’t seen on her before, an ethereal, flowy thing in deep wine, with wider sleeves that moved as if she were underwater every time she gestured, unbuttoned enough that her collarbones were bare in the light. Her hair was different too, half pinned up, soft curls left loose to frame her face, a few pale blonde strands already escaping. 

Kate said something to you—you registered the shape of words, the low, easy cadence of her voice trickling down your spine where her hand rested low on naked skin—and you kept staring, tracking the line of her jaw, the curve of her throat where the shirt gapped open, thinking increasingly unprofessional thoughts about how quickly you could get her out of the crowd and mess up her hair even more. 

“—and I said we’d need to speak to him before the toast, which is why I need you to actually listen to a single word I’m saying, darling.”

Nothing. You were still stuck somewhere around the dip of her collarbones, how the perfume she had sprayed on glittered on freckled skin, and the way the fabric shifted with every breath.

It wasn’t until Kate’s arm slid around your waist, fingers finding the soft give just above your hip and pinching sharply, that you stopped trying to get a glimpse of her tits. 

“Ow!”

“Welcome back,” Kate murmured, close to your ear. “I assure you, they’re the same as any other time.”

You blinked. “...What?”

“My eyes.” She held your slightly dazed gaze for one exquisitely smug beat. “Whatever were you looking at?” Her thumb rubbed innocently over the spot she’d pinched.

“You are the most gorgeous woman in the room. I couldn’t help it.” 

When you had imagined the words, they were supposed to come out much flirtier, but Kate’s eyes widened at the sincerity that you poured into the breathy answer and you felt her inhale faintly. 

She seemed distracted for a moment, and you could’ve imagined yourself leaning in to kiss her slightly opened lips, slip the heart you had on your tongue into her mouth and hope that naming the truth aloud wouldn’t break the delicate spell of unspoken understanding you’d both been preserving for nearly two decades.

The hand at your waist had stopped moving, but a little nudge of you towards her and Kate was pressing her nose against your temple, her lips on your skin. “Compliments won’t make up for the fact that you’re losing our bet,” she scolded without any force. “Try looking at the guest list with half the enthusiasm you’ve been devoting to my chest.”

“Easier said than done,” you found yourself saying, steering away from the pond of honesty that would probably lead to drowning, considering the weight of what strapped you both down. You let your mouth ghost over hers, stealing a bit of her exhale to whisper into her ear, “You know how much I love your tits.” 

“Down, girl,” Kate reprimanded you, and you almost laughed. She looked around, eyes sweeping the entrance hall that was nearly empty by now. “Christ, we should really head inside.”

“After you,” you said, gesturing for her to go ahead of you with a small, gallant sweep of your hand.

Kate’s eyebrow arched, clearly not expecting or trusting the sudden manners. “Why, how gentlemanly,” she cooed, already turning, already falling into that unhurried, effortless stride. “Look a you. Chivalrous and everything.”

“No,” you said, and made a show of raking your eyes over her figure, from her heels to her hair. “I just really want to watch your arse in those trousers”

Kate’s expression didn’t so much as flicker, though the look she gave you over her shoulder as she swept past could have stripped paint—or you naked. “Vulgar.”

You leaned back and didn’t bother arguing the point, mostly because your eyes had already dropped again, tracking the unhurried roll of her hips and how the tailored line of the fabric pulled taut with every step. 

“Sure,” you said distantly, mentally tracing the outline of her with your teeth “Whatever you say, Kitty.” 

To no one’s surprise, it was astonishingly easy to find out the information you needed when you were looking to strike up conversations with Kate by your side; no, you didn’t even have to go looking for them; all you had to do was step into the grand ballroom and immediately the men flocked to you. Your companion laughed, cracked jokes, and charmed everyone in a synchronised conversational dance, and although it was more than obvious that the two of you were here together—Kate introduced you both as ‘Stewart’. draped her hand possessively over your arms, your stomach, your hips, your bottom, so that the golden ring on her finger glistened and beckoned—the men told you everything you wanted to know as if doing so would give them a chance. 

After a while, you were separated by the natural tide of the party—Kate pulled toward a cluster of ambassadors; you angled off toward a group of wives who all fawned over the ring on your finger and the way you couldn’t stop catching Kate across the room. A glance over someone’s shoulder. The particular tilt of her head when she laughed at a joke that wasn’t actually funny and her hair curled against her neck. Once, you managed to stop an entire conversation because she caught you looking and held your gaze for multiple seconds, her eyes undressing you from meters away. 

You felt undone, completely and utterly undone. 

The conversations changed, boring you since nothing worth remembering was being said. You’d known this mission wouldn’t be a life-or-death situation, but rather a tentative read of the political climate. As easy and demanding as sitting in the office filling out paperwork was, it was the chance of meeting Kate again that had you practically blackmailing your boss into giving you this assignment. 

You drifted back to her orbit near the dessert table, where Kate had commandeered a small silver spoon and was inspecting something involving chocolate and gold leaves, a blonde lock of hair curling invitingly down her back. 

Spying the freckles there, more prominent than at any other time you had seen Kate, you found it of the utmost importance to inspect them now. There was a slight shift in her posture when you snuck up behind her, an almost flinch that seemed unlike her, but when your hands found her hips, she seemed fine again. Still, you couldn’t help but wonder and question what the years during which you hadn’t seen her had done to her, what she had experienced. 

“Don’t tell me you are already giving in,” Kate said without turning around. “The party hasn’t even started properly.”

“I would never.” 

You leaned in, nosing along the curve of her shoulder blade where the silk had slipped slightly askew, and pressed the first kiss there—featherlight, barely a kiss at all. Your hands slid slowly over her hips, thumbs tracing the waistband of those criminal trousers, and you felt her breath catch under your palms. You kissed higher. The knob of her spine, just visible where her hair had shifted aside. The curve where shoulder met neck, lingering there, feeling her pulse jump against your lips. Kate’s hand stilled on the spoon.

“Have you done anything useful today or have you spent your working hours lusting after me?” she asked, though it came out thinner than her usual crisp diplomacy, and she hadn’t moved away—if anything, she tipped her head, giving you more room, more skin.

“Mm.” You nuzzled along the line of her neck, breathing her in, chocolate and her perfume and, underneath it all, the warmth of her skin that you’d have known blindfolded in a room of a thousand women. Another kiss, just beneath her ear to the spot that could buckle her knees. “I thought you were aware of my multitasking abilities.”

“The last time you tried to multitask, it ended up with you gagging on my fingers and crying for my wand like a slut,” Kate murmured, but her weight had shifted back into you, the whole line of her spine settling against your chest. Her breathing had gone uneven, quick little pulls of air you felt more than heard, and when your hands tightened slightly at her hips, she made a soft, involuntary sound low in her throat. 

“Come on, Kitty—” You opened your jaw to nip at the dip of the shoulder and neck. “Beg for me.”

“Careful.” Kate’s fingernails found your wrist and pinched hard, sharp enough actually to sting, her whole voice dropping into something cold and clipped that had nothing to do with the breathless woman from thirty seconds ago. She barely turned her head, but you saw the glare she sent down to you slice across her sharp cheekbones. “You will behave yourself and stop treating me like something to gnaw on, or I’ll have you following at my heel like a dog for the rest of the night.”

Your mouth stilled against her skin. “That’s not much of a deterrent.”

“No?” Her nails pressed deeper, and a higher-pitched whine got stuck halfway in your throat. Her thin lips curved into a smirk. “That’s what I thought. Now stop mauling me in front of everyone like a needy bitch in heat and focus on your job.”

Your thighs pressed together on instinct, helpless clenching and doing nothing to ease the ache Kate had so efficiently created. No other woman had ever made you this pliable, this possessed with an uncontrollable lust. Ever since you had met her, you didn’t remember a time when you weren’t craving her. 

“Right,” you managed, voice thinner than you wanted it. “Focus. Yes.”

Kate’s smirk didn’t waver. She knew exactly what she’d done, the absolute menace, and she had the audacity to look pleased about it as she stepped out of your hold, much more composed than you, leaving you standing there with your pulse hammering in your cunt and nowhere else to put it. 

You made a hasty grab for the nearest flute of champagne, if only to give your hands something respectable to do, and put the barest sliver of necessary distance between yourself and the blonde currently wearing the expression of a cat that got the canary.

If it hadn’t been for your pride, the increasingly competitive urge to win this ridiculous bet, and the small, stubborn corner of your brain reminding you that you were, in fact, an intelligence officer who had talked her way out of considerably worse situations than being hopelessly distracted by one woman in an excellent pair of trousers, this would have been the moment you embarrassed yourself spectacularly in front of half the Spanish diplomatic corps. 

“So,” you swallowed down the bubbly champagne and cleared your throat.

“Open up,” Kate interrupted, already turning, spoon lifted, one hand coming to rest warm against your jaw. 

You opened your mouth, rolling your eyes. As she fed you the dessert, she watched your lips the entire time, and when you made an embarrassing little sound around the chocolate, her thumb dragged along your bottom lip. “Good girl.”

So help me, you thought and whined again. This game was getting to you. All it did was fuck with your head and prolong the inevitable, stretching this tension between you to an extent it hadn’t even reached in the years you’d been apart and needed to take care of yourself with hands, your own and strangers’, to chase an itch that could only be scratched by the woman dangling your pleasure in front of you. 

Even as you were trying to wrangle your suddenly racing heart back under control, the music shifted, taking on a rhythm that invited dancing rather than merely filling the silence between conversations. 

Your fingers suddenly tightened around the stem of the champagne flute with little regard for how fragile the crystal was, as memories wound themselves around your lungs like the taut strings of the violins. Every breath had to force its way through them, and where the orchestra should have filled your ears, there was only the relentless pounding of your own heartbeat. 

Still, you found yourself drawn towards Kate. 

Though her expression betrayed nothing to anyone else, you could read every unspoken word written beneath its careful composure. She turned to you, one hand held out between you, palm turned upwards. 

“Dance with me.” 

You didn’t even have the capacity to retort; you only reached for her hand and let yourself be pulled into her lead. 

Kate’s hand settled warm at your waist as though it belonged there, because, in every way that mattered, it did, and you rested yours at her shoulder, your thumb reaching out to stroke along her collarbone as you fell into an effortless, fluid waltz. There was no fumbling around, no missed count, no arguing who would lead—Kate did. Kate turned, and you turned with her, anticipating the shift a half-second before it came, the two of you reading each other the way you always had, on rooftops, at beaches, across crowded rooms just like this one, except here the only danger was how much you loved her.

To fall in love with Kate was as easy as recognizing that there was no hope for it to become anything more than this; a half-unspoken romance scattered across a handful of meetings over years where you both could hide behind the lust and the adrenaline of whatever you were diving head and heart-first into, without having to acknowledge any other reasoning than you working well together in every other aspect than a proper relationship. And most of the time you weren’t even hung up on it, because accepting the impossible meant getting a kaleidoscope of Kate, and Kate thinking this arrangement fitted you both—or ignoring any signs that you did long for more—allowed a colourful ray of vulnerability to flash through her mask and walls. 

In other moments, though, when you were no longer drunk on her nearness, no longer dazzled by the want that flashed in her eyes or the slow burn of her touch, when you were falling through the clarity of reality and heard the echo in your heart. 

That was where the ache lived.

And dancing with her once again reminded you so painfully of the time when everything had been so close to imploding in that cavern of greedy, ignorant, and self-destructive desire. 

Kate’s stride lost its easy rhythm, each step landing with a clipped precision, and her ring finger tightened around yours until the pressure bordered on pain. 

You didn’t need to ask where her mind had gone; it had travelled back a few years, to the same place yours had.

You’d texted her from a burner three hours earlier, mid-debrief, a blood-stained thumb moving under the table while your boss had droned on about how your extraction should’ve happened months ago, explaining to deaf ears the unnecessary risks you had been exposed to. 

”Geneva is boring you to death, I can feel it from here. Join me in Berlin? x”

Half an hour later, the world had already begun to spin with a pleasant softness, blurring the edges of bruises and stitches until they’d become little more than distant inconveniences, until there had been hardly any room in your mind for anything except the tall, willowy woman carving a path through the crush of sweat-slick bodies and flashing strobe lights in the dingy club you had disappeared into. You’d found each other instantly. Her gaze had caught yours from the opposite end of the dance floor, and the alcohol in your system held nothing to the lightning strike of exhilarating carnal fever that went straight to your spine and lower.

Kate had looked as though she’d wandered into the wrong universe. She belonged nowhere near the haze of weed smoke hanging beneath the ceiling and in the disco balls, the chemical sweetness of cheap perfume and spilt spirits, the neon glow of lightsticks weaving through barely-there outfits. Stood out like a wet dream of authority that instantly had drawn looks to her. The tightly tailored black suit, the dark-blue-and-white striped shirt that had been unbuttoned to the point where the edges of a lace bra and the swell of creamy breasts shimmered in the flashing lights, already damp at the collarbone. Expensive, red-soled heels on sticky floor, a shot of vodka appearing in your hand that you’d nicked back without saying a single word. A tongue in your mouth, licking behind your teeth to chase the burn of pure alcohol in a form of greeting that transcended the distance of months. You’d have crawled across broken glass for less.

The bass had rattled through your ribs, bodies pressed and swayed around you, skin sliding against skin, sweat mingling with sweat, laughter and music dissolved into one endless pulse. You were more than drunk, letting yourself be pulled by Kate into the middle of the floor where nobody had room to be anything but pushed together, moving in fluency. The lights had strobed red to blue to nothing over Kate’s blonde hair as she moved in front of you—swayed, undulated, rolled—hips finding the beat dirty, spine arching back against you, her arse grinding hard and shameless, circling, pressing, never quite enough. Christ, the drag of her. Your fingers roamed over her stomach and in-between the buttons of her shirt to feel blazing hot, slick skin while one hand of hers reached up and back to grab your neck so she could drawl pure filth into your ear, her breath hot and damp against your throat. “The things I want to do to you. I’ve dreamed about your fingers on me, fucked myself for hours to the image or you. I want to hold you down and make you scream, make you drip into my mouth. I’d tie you up, bind your pretty legs to my bed and make sure you can’t leave until I’ve had my fill of you, over and over again.”

More drinks, her teeth in your bottom lip, everything so loud, so fast and yet languid, so unknown and familiar. 

There’d been your bodies grinding against each other to songs you didn’t understand, a thigh pushing between yours and, God, the pressure of it, Kate’s smug grin against your throat and jaw taking you apart just as much as each roll of her hips at a time. “Are you going to come on my thigh? So needy and desperate…oh look at how gorgeous you look.” You’d grabbed handfuls of Kate—arse, spine, the damp small of her back—pulling her in harder, chasing the friction, needing more of her and her ragged breath, her low raspy laughter vibrating against your ear. More. Always more. Never enough. Her hand had slid lower, found you through fabric, fingers pressing, rubbing, matching the bass and the thrust of her leg to the rhythm until you couldn’t tell the difference between the music and your own pulse, every nerve lit up, drowning, desperate for more of her. You’d clung to Kate the louder the song and crowd got, eyes glazed over and only seeing the pass of time you had been apart on her face, the worry-lines, wondering dizzily what had happened to her, where she was in her life, while you’d thrusted into her hand, into her thigh, in the middle of Berlin. 

You’d come apart with her name moaned into a sloppy, biting kiss, and her slender hand at your throat, a new, golden, engraved wedding ring pressed cool into your skin. 

Neither of you ever spoke of it. 

You only knew that the next time you saw her there had been a picture of a girl around two years old on her phone as she met you in a bar in Paris, her ring finger bare, and a need to prove something in the way she fucked you. 

Now you were both wearing faux-rings, years and versions of yourselves later, changed by all the time in between and still, somehow, caught in the same limbo—two flames that had never once learned how to be anything but an inferno the moment you breathed the same air.

The music swelled back into the present, gold light and violins pulling you out of the memory and back onto the ballroom floor, Kate’s hand warm in yours, her waist solid and real under your palm. You wondered how she saw you, the splinters of every version of you she’d met.

“What happened to you?” you asked, struck with the urge to overcome this boundary of never talking about anything important, and trailed a hand over the buttons of her shirt, inclining your head. “I tried to get a hold of you two years ago, but there was no trace.”

Kate stiffened almost imperceptibly in your arms. Anyone else would’ve mistaken it for her settling more comfortably into the dance. You knew better. You’d spent enough years memorising every minute shift in her posture to recognise the difference.

“I had to disappear for a while,” she said matter-of-factly, her fingers tightening almost unconsciously at your waist.

“I read some files.”

She huffed a fond little breath through her nose, steering you further onto the dance floor. “Of course you did.”

“And no matter which channels I used—official or otherwise—” Kate’s hips brushed yours as she guided another slow step, one eyebrow arching in that familiar, wonderfully disapproving way that only made you want to push a little harder, “—nobody would tell me a thing.”

Apparently, you were compromised. That was the word from all your contacts. Ridiculous.

“Tsk.”

The concern that had flickered across Kate’s face disappeared almost as quickly as it had surfaced, replaced by the crooked smirk she’d perfected over decades of deflection. Her thumb traced a slow arc along your ribs, the touch feather-light, impossibly distracting.

“How sweet,” she purred, close enough that only you could hear. “You were worried about me.”

“I always—” you felt yourself being spun out, her hand gripping yours and for a second she held you there, a step away from her, both of your hearts in your throats, “have you on my radar,” you finished breathlessly and were pulled back so quickly that you almost stumbled. 

Kate’s nose bumped against yours. 

A faint breath passed between open lips, from her mouth into yours, or the other way around—you didn’t know. 

You were spinning in circles, always chasing each other like hands on a clock, and in the mids of dancing with the most beautiful woman, you could hear your time together tick forward, felt the drift of the earth and everything determined to pull you two apart; you couldn’t bare the thought of not using each second to the most with her, the guilt sprouting in your stomach like ivory vines. 

A mouth at your temple interrupted your thoughts and Kate took over the attempt to steer the conversation to anything less emotionally revealing. You heard and felt her inhale against the wispy hairs over your ear, her hand sliding from your waist to the small of your back, fingers spreading, dragging you flush against her under cover of the turn.

“Do you want to know what happened to me,” she murmured low, “or would you rather I tell you what I’ve been picturing since you decided to declare us a married couple?”

Your breath caught. “Kate—”

“I want you bent over the nearest table,” she continued, mouth grazing your cheekbone as the warmth of her hand urged you closer to her once more, keeping you against her, “that ridiculous dress shoved up around your waist, and my hand over your mouth so you don’t embarrass either of us in front of the ambassador.” Her hips ignored the steps of the waltz. “I’ve thought about exactly how I’d take you apart. How many fingers would it take before you stopped being able to stand on your own?” 

“Bold plan,” you managed, and let your hand move to her arse. “Is that happening before or after you give in to our bet and finally do anything other than talk?”

“Oh, darling, I’m nowhere near as close as I bet you are,” she murmured, and you wanted her, wanted her so much it made thinking impossible. Curved lips found the corner of your mouth, not quite a kiss, just heat and the graze of teeth, and her words landed straight between your legs. “I want you soaked through by the time we’re back at the hotel. I want you thinking about my mouth every time the strings hit that particular note, and I want you desperate enough by the time I finally get my hands on you that you won’t last half as long as you’d like to.” She tilted her head, her mouth ghosting over yours. “And then I will fuck you again.”

Your resolve snapped in an instant, the only thought of clarity in a lust-muddled haze to get out of here.

“Kitty.” The name came out wrecked, all pretence gone, your fingers curling tight into the fabric at her hip. “I need you to stop talking and take me somewhere. Now.”

“Say that again,” she rasped, a hand circling hard around your wrist.  

“Take me to the hotel, Kate. Or I swear to God I will finish this myself, right here, and let the ambassador watch.”

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

The taxi door had barely shut before Kate lost the last thread of whatever composure she’d been holding onto since the ballroom, since the dance, since the whole insufferable evening of watching you, levelling her touches to not bleed through the urge to rip into you. 

She caught the front of your jacket in one fist and hauled you sideways, back hitting the door with a thud you’d both feel tomorrow, not that either of you cared, not now, not with three whole hours of pretending stripped away in the space between the hotel’s marble steps and the safety of tinted windows, and Kate’s mouth found yours before you’d even finished gasping at the impact—hungry, open, no finesse left in it at all, just teeth and heat and the low, wrecked sound she made against your lips and made you swallow whole.

She kissed you filthy. Tongue pushing past your teeth, tasting champagne and chocolate and something that was just you, underneath it all, familiar in a way that undid every careful year she’d spent learning to want you quietly; she bit at your bottom lip hard enough to sting, soothed it a heartbeat later, dragged her mouth to your jaw only to come back for more because one kiss had never once been enough between you, not in Berlin, not in that tower office, not now, and God, she thought, dimly, distantly, from somewhere far beneath the roar of her own pulse, she didn’t care that the driver could see the shapes of you in the rearview mirror, didn’t care about your jobs or the end to this, because none of it mattered, nothing mattered beyond the reality of your mouth and your hands twisting into her shirt and the small, desperate noise you made when she pressed her whole weight into you, pinning you properly into the seat, consequences be damned.

Her hand found your thigh, dragged up under the hem of your dress with the same unhurried, entitled deliberation she’d used all night, except there was nothing unhurried left in her now, everything sped up, frayed, a woman running on pure want and decades of practice controlling herself finally, blessedly, giving out—she needed to touch you, needed her hands on skin, needed the small hitch of your breath against her mouth to confirm that you were real and here and hers again, however briefly, however impossibly, and she kissed you again, deeper, gulping the sound you made, thinking nothing coherent at all beyond more and mine and finally, her fingers tightening at your hip hard enough to bruise, chasing every inch of control she could claw back from a night that had spent hours taking it from her one filthy whispered promise at a time.

Madrid’s night and full moon shimmered in your widened eyes, in blown-out pupils, and Kate’s hands gripped you tighter, shoved you back further into the seat with an aggression that made you moan loud enough to have Kate consider paying the driver more, apologising for the ruckus you were causing in his car. Your whimper of Kate’s name had her quickly deciding the man was paid well enough to mind his own damn business and turning her attention back to you.

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

You would’ve loved to say you took your time undressing Kate, getting your hands on her to unbutton playfully, to unzip her trousers with metal between teeth, to treasure the outfit just as much as the woman wearing it but every movement was frantic need, each graceless grasp for any fabric steered under the commands of Kate’s, “Get this off!”

“Missed you,” you managed against her mouth, honest in a way the champagne and the dancing had already stripped the guard from. Your hands roamed over her now naked waist, touching and re-remembering, tracing the moles and freckles and scars. 

Kate’s hands stilled where she was groping your arse, just for a second, something raw flickering behind her eyes before the hunger swallowed it whole again. “Show me,” she said, low, rough, and pulled you down with her onto the bed, the sheets and dip of the mattress cushioning the fall. 

You ended up straddling her like so many other nights before, boxing her head in with your elbows as your hips rolled against her, staring at nothing but her face. The sharp, patrician lines gone soft at the edges, her jaw slack, thin, kiss-flushed lips parted around unsteady breaths. Faint lines fanned from the corners of her eyes—new since you’d last catalogued her this closely, proof of years spent frowning over briefings and squinting into foreign suns without you—and the silver threading her hairline caught the low light when her head tipped back against the pillow. 

Her eyes stayed on yours the whole time, that puppy-brown consumed by darkness, half-lidded, fierce even now, like surrendering control of her body was no reason to surrender the rest of her. A flush had crept up her throat, blooming under her jaw, across her cheekbones. 

“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” you murmured and surged forward, kissing her in an attack, tongue pushing into Kate’s mouth. “Stunning,” you rasped, licking into the hollow of her throat, leaving her entire neck and collarbones—which you can’t not shower with the same attention, with the peppering of kisses that end up being lips more dragged over the sharp bones, desperate to follow and trace it—shining with saliva. Your eyes wandered lower, your hands did too, and when you came face-to…chest with Kate’s chest, your forehead dropped against her sternum, and a broken moan escaped you. “Bloody love these girls.” 

Kate’s hands found your hair, fingers dragging in hard, greedy fistfuls, tugging your head up and along her chest. 

“Don’t stop there,” she managed, breathless, a command trying and failing to sound composed, her hips shifting restlessly beneath you, her back arching to press your face into the swell of her breasts. “Get your mouth on me. Now.”

A delicious pressure built between your thighs, and you lathered your tongue slowly, in a bow and arch, over the flesh spilling out of the lace cups, while you wiggled a hand behind Kate’s back, scratched along her spine on the way to have her breath catch and stifle a gasp, and undid the clasp effortlessly, freeing her breasts to your determined mouth. You knew exactly how sensitive she was, had her writhing in the sheets in her fancy apartment in London years ago through nothing but your teeth at her nipples. Testing the theory again, you flicked your tongue against one nipple, while you took her small, perfectly sized other breast into your palm to squeeze. 

“There,” she gasped, hips rolling up in search of more contact, more of you. “God, don’t you dare stop, don’t you dare—”

“Never,” you mumbled around the flesh feverishly, sucking at the stiffened tip and drinking in the sight of Kate’s hair spilling onto the pillow, nothing can stop me.

You continued her kisses and licks between her breasts once Kate was near incoherent, articulating her wishes and demands in throaty moans and her fingernails scratching at your scalp, hands still fisted into your hair to keep you where she wanted you, and when there was a scattering of marks—teeth, fingernails, blooming bruises where you’d suckled all around her nipples—over her chest, Kate pushed you down further. Agreed to you dipping your tongue into her navel only because you rushed with panting breaths and murmured compliments, kissed the caesarean scar, tugged at the skin of her hips, stroked your hands over her ribs and stomach. Her skin was intoxicating, the feeling of her moving beneath you a drug, this never-ending rush. 

“I need to taste you.” You reached for the matching black lace underwear in almost a trance—if it wasn’t that hectic— and tugged at the expensive fabric that barely covered the patch of wiry dark, glistening curls. “Fuck, Kitty, let me eat you out, please.”

Kate chuckled, resting back on her elbows, curled hair mussed and falling loose from its pins, the dark blush spreading high across her cheekbones as she stared you down with sultry eyes. Her chest rose and fell in uneven, unsteady breaths, “Aren’t you just adorable, darling—” she chuckled and was interrupted by you licking over the drenched underwear, her voice continuing more strained and her brows furrowed, “All those years of you talking a big game—” she rasped shallow, “and you turn into my best girl the second you get your mouth on a cunt.”

Head swimming with her voice, your pelvis rolling into the mattress for friction, you only nodded promptly. You had waited years for this, years, and every one of them collapsed down into this single unbearable moment, thought scattering, unable to hold a single one longer than a breath—years, and here, and finally, don’t wake up, please don’t let this be another one of those nights you dreamed her voice into someone else’s ceiling—and you weren't even sure anymore if you were thinking in words or just in the shape of her name, over and over, an echo with nothing left underneath it but want. 

Your hand stilled after the panties were flung into a corner of the room.

There, just to the side of her patch of hair, was the tiny wash of amber and rose that had once been so much brighter. Time had softened the colours, blurred their sharpest edges, but you would have recognised it anywhere.

A sunset.

Twelve years had passed since the two of you had stumbled out of that ridiculous little tattoo parlour somewhere off the Navigli in Milan, laughing too hard to stand upright, smelling of tequila and summer rain. You’d insisted on getting a matching pair, had stripped down your trousers and pulled down your knickers completely loosing it when Kate nearly tripped over her shoes and proclaimed she’d only agree if you sit on her face afterwards. Ever since then you wore the slightly crooked sunrise on your hipbone and more than once pressed your fingers against it when you brought yourself to a lonely orgasm, aware she was most days the reason you got up and continued.

You kissed it gently, then couldn’t help it and sucked as if to taste the ink, the sirup-golden rays, and Kate mewled, shuddered, raised and bucked her hips ever so slightly and you couldn’t have that, didn’t want her movements to spoil your dinner, and you wrestled your arms around her thighs, pinned her down in an effortless display of your strength and oh, you could see Kate drip at that, saw slick glisten and run to the bedsheet right in front of you; the fabric darkened instantly.  

“What do you think you are doing?” Kate snapped, impatient now that her pleasure was in your hands or on your tongue. It all happens at once: Kate’s grip on your hair tightens; she tugged at your scalp, forcing a moan so loud that Kate pulled even harder; it stung, it seared, your eyes watered. Kate’s voice, her words just as cutting, merciless and leaving you no chance to tease her any further, “Or do you need clearer orders, agent?”

You spread her open with two fingers, thumbed over the reddened, already wet lips and dove in, lapping eagerly and with the drunken hunger, dragged your tongue as wide as you could through the length of her for your first fill of your favourite ambrosia. 

Kate snarled a “Fuck,” through clenched teeth, breathed heavily, roughly, a huff and grunt that’s bestial, and reacted to the first touch in a violent, fully-body twitch, every muscle tensing up and coiling into the touch. All you wanted to do was stay there, Kate’s thighs clamping around your ears in a head-lock, her legs thrown over your shoulders for all eternity, and your lips alternating between kissing her labia and teasing her clit with brushes and the faintest of pressure to the point where Kate’s moans grew louder and louder and surely would draw attention soon, and wasn’t that a thought, that someone came knocking because she couldn’t stop groaning throaty explicits, curses, the entire range of “Yes—fuck, right there, so fucking good, oh god I’ve missed your mouth.”

You worked her further and further, end up cupping her arse and lifting her closer to your mouth, and Kate’s legs stretched higher—when you glanced up through strands of frizzy, messy hair you saw the strained muscles flex and contract under smooth, pale skin, and you were almost out of breath, could still bury your entire face in her cunt and suck on her clit with enthusiasm and deliriously, Kate’s hips jerking against your face when the orgasm finally ripped through the blonde, you thought this was what the waterboarding had trained you for. 

You didn’t even let her recover, manhandled her trembling form onto her stomach, pulled her up onto her knees and pushed her thighs apart to keep going. Kate exhaled sharply when your nose pressed against her arse, swore when you fucked her with two fingers, and came a second time, screaming hoarsely into a pillow bunched up between white-knuckled fists. 

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

Kate had you riding her thigh, your entire body leaned back like you were balancing on a rodeo, and Kate was glad that your hands were playing with your own nipples and supporting yourself with fingers scratching over her shins and nowhere near where you could have felt the irregular pounding of her heart, that stupid muscle going against her will to calm down as she was caught in the fervent need to stay in the present to see how you were rolling your hips, hear how you were babbling out nonsense, save this sight of you spread wide on her leg, while the anxiety of loosing you after this fogged up her perception.

Kate’s mind kept snagging on the window, on the thin grey line just beginning to bleed into the dark beyond the curtains—not enough to call it dawn yet, but close enough to feel like a threat, like a countdown she hadn’t agreed to.

She hated it. Hated the part of her, small and traitorous, doing arithmetic even now—how many hours until a car came, until a flight number replaced your name, until she was back behind a desk pretending this had been nothing more than a pleasant diversion in Madrid. Every time your cunt found her skin she tried to just be there, fully, without the part of her brain that anticipated loss, and every time she nearly managed it, the watch on the nightstand seemed to tick louder, more insistent, a small mechanical reminder that nothing with you had ever once been allowed to simply last.

Not yet, she thought, fierce, almost childish in its want, dragging you back up by the hair when you moaned and rutted against her, slurred her name into the air even though only she deserved to hear you say it, greedy for every point of contact she could still claim. “Not yet, sweetheart,” she commanded gravelly, “Hold out.”

But God, she was unravelling now. Kate could feel it happening in real time, in the desperate clutch of her own hands, in how she kept dragging you back whenever you slowed, whenever either of you paused to catch a breath she resented on principle for stealing time. The sky would lighten regardless of what she wanted. The hours would pass whether or not she’d had enough of you, and she never had enough of you, that was rather the whole insufferable problem, wasn’t it—there had never once been a version of this where she got to keep you as long as she actually wanted. You were meant for this, both of you meant for hook-ups and affairs and endless craving. 

Whenever she looked down at her body and saw the bloody sunset tattoo, she was reminded of how every encounter with you ended just as predictably and unchangeably. You’d laughed yourself into a stupor in Milan, crying a “Did you get this because you’re going down on me tonight?”

No, Kate had wanted to say. No, this is because I can’t let you closer, she had wanted to say. This is because I only bring darkness while you are sunshine. 

So she’d take what the night allowed. Take it selfishly, thoroughly, memorise the weight of you and the sound of your breath and the exact way you said her name, storing it all away in that same locked place she kept the rest of you, because the morning would come regardless, and Kate intended to be entirely too devastatingly wrecked to think about it until it did.

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

The room smelled of pure sex, and not even the open windows carrying in the refreshing night could air out that scent that clung to your shining, sticky bodies, intertwined on the wrinkled sheets, rolling and moving into each other. Foreheads pressed together, Kate’s tongue replicated the same languid pace of her fingers buried knuckle-deep inside you in never-ending kisses, spit between your lips and your arousal smeared onto her thigh and stringing sticky to her fingers as she deepened the kiss and licked over your whimper, rubbed over the spot that had you bucking into her palm like you had done in Berlin, coaxing you ever so closer to ecstasy.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” Kate murmured, basically breathing the words into your mouth, “I know you can give me one more.”

You shuddered, instinctively and uncontrollably when her fingers curled inside you and she never stopped circling them against your g-spot, wrecking you with gentle touches and her tongue caressing your by now nearly numb lips. 

“Kitty.” You couldn’t even remember what you wanted to say, could only clench around her and grasp at her arms and the sodden curls clinging to the back of her neck. 

She shushed you, another soft sound that blew her breath over your face and the tears streaming down your cheeks. “Let go, come on, darling…oh, you can do it.” Another kiss, one that swallowed your cries at the overstimulation of her drawing her soaked fingers over your burning clit in the tender figure eight, tighter and closer, harder and pointed, and the tip of her nose nuzzling yours. “There you go, my good girl, aren’t you just gorgeous?” 

──────────────────𓂃 ོ☼𓂃──────────────────

“Do you think we’re still allowed to order room service or will they throw us out the moment we open the door?”

Behind you, holding you on her lap, Kate snorted into your skin where her lips had been peppering kisses against your shoulder.

“What?” you managed, joining in with a breathless laugh.

“Nothing,” Kate murmured, though the smile against your shoulder blade said otherwise, her arms tightening around your waist. 

“No, really,” you said and turned with a huff, facing her, and immediately Kate’s hand lifted to your cheek, brushing away strands of hair that were fluttering in the gentle breeze. “I can’t believe you made me scream that loudly.”

Kate’s lips curved into a smirk. “I can and I’m sure half of Madrid can write a witness statement as well.”

Rolling your eyes, you still blushed.

“But if you’re that worried,” Kate spoke and leaned in to playfully sink her teeth into one of the many lovebites on your neck, “I will have UNIT buy this hotel and let everyone sign an NDA about this night.”

“Oh, how chivalrous,” you teased, then moaned softly. Kate’s hand had wandered between the fabric of your robe, fingers stroking over the red crosses her nails had scratched onto your skin, and you melted into her with a heavy sigh. 

It wasn’t fair how perfectly you fit together, wrapped up all into each other on the lounger of the balcony, a bottle of wine resting between your legs though neither of you had taken a sip in a while and meanwhile, the sky had turned into the same purple of the stain on Kate’s robe; the sun crawling over what had been an endless field of stars and pushing the twinkles away, thin strings of golden clouds replacing the sheat of night. 

Another day, another sunrise. 

“Kate?” 

“Mmhm?” Kate idly continued her caresses, and you saw how her eyes were trained on the horizon as well, the sun betraying her mask of composure and painting the tears glistening in her dark lashes golden. 

You couldn’t leave her.

The certainty settled within your entire soul. You had always imagined that, when duty and love finally stood opposite one another, your loyalty would instinctively reach for the gun at your hip, for the oath you’d sworn long before you’d met Kate. Instead, the words slipped free as easily as breathing in her perfume.

“I think my time at MI6 is over.”

A gasp that left Kate far too fast to be caught and then she stared at you, brown eyes racing over your face as if she couldn’t believe you.

“What?” It came out in a breathy whisper. 

You shrugged, and every scar you’d collected in the last decades lit up, burned and sizzled, glowed bright and blinded you. 

“I can’t continue,” you said and heard the shake in your voice, felt the tremor when you hoped the grip Kate had on you would never loosen. “I can’t—I love you so fucking much, Kate, it would kill me—”

The rest of your words died in your throat as Kate almost violently crashed her mouth against yours, kissing you like she meant to fuse the two of you into one shape, one breath, salt from her own tears slipping between your lips as she pulled back just enough to press her forehead to yours, both of you shaking, both of you laughing and crying in the same broken exhale, and she cupped your face in shaking hands, murmuring I love you, I love you, you impossible, wonderful woman against your mouth between kisses that kept interrupting themselves, messy and salt-slicked and entirely raw in a way nothing between you had ever been before in such sincerity and open display.