Loving Our Work

He came across the floor so fast that I didn't have time to blink before he had me flat on my back on the bed, full length on top of me, pressing me into the mattress with his weight. Hard, solid muscle pinned me securely although I struggled anyway, twisted and strained and managed to drive a knee into his thigh hard enough to elicit a grunt from him. But, as I had already learned in our first battle in that dreary public bathroom in Germany, I had met my match and more than my match in Peril.

I know that while I am strong, very strong for a man my size and build - deceptively strong - there will always be someone stronger than I am. So I compensate with my cleverness and my dirty tricks, my speed and my flexibility. It has never failed me before, but he is also clever, with an arsenal of far dirtier tricks than any I know, and he is flexible as well. The thought of that flexibility undid me now, and I was no longer struggling against him but struggling to get closer to him, to press our bodies together harder, and more completely.

This was good. Oh, it was good, it was so good - I groaned aloud and came, his hard cock grinding against mine, his powerful thighs clamped around mine, those big hands holding mine over my head. When I had finished and just lay there, panting and, for the moment, utterly limp, he lifted his weight off of me, released my hands. There was a sharp pang of disappointment when he did so. I felt bereft without his body on mine, without his hands holding mine although not in a loverly way, certainly not. There was no love lost between us but there was respect - despite our continual sniping at one another - and there was this passion that we had both tried to hide, and which I would have continued to try to hide if he hadn't made the first move.

He had fastened his father's watch to his wrist. We had discussed the mission in two sentences - missions, actually. My mission, and his. We had looked at one another, and then he had been on me, like a panther, bringing me effortlessly to completion. Now his hands were all over me, unfastening, unzipping, pulling down my trousers and briefs, tossing them aside. He came back down onto me and nudged my thighs apart - not particularly gently, but not painfully either - with one knee. I allowed it, still dazed with pleasure, but when his organ butted against my ass cheeks I stiffened. He stopped and raised up, propping himself on his elbows, looking down into my face with a curious expression. If it had been anybody else, I would have called it tenderness.

"Cowboy? This ... this is all right, yes?"

"Well ..." I began, and he backed off further.

"No? Is all right if no. I will do something different. Something easier. Da?" To prove his willingness he shifted enough so that our cocks were again rubbing against one another. Mine stirred, as if recognizing a friend. Or a comrade, I thought, and laughed out loud. He laughed back at me, blue eyes sparkling.

"It's all right," I said because it was, suddenly, it was very much all right. "But give me a little warning, okay? And some lube wouldn't hurt, either. Just sayin'."

"All right," he said and he was laughing at me again and now it was me laughing back at him. "I will get this bourgeois luxury you speak of. But I am warning you that I will fuck you so completely, so thoroughly, that when you do get back on your horse you will sit quite differently."

"Fair enough," I said and he got up and walked into the bathroom. I lay there and watched him go. He was magnificent. I didn't even remember when he'd gotten undressed - probably while I was lying there trying to gather my wits after that shattering orgasm - but what a sight he was, naked. Long, lean, and all muscle. His ass was delectable as it disappeared through the bathroom door, and I wondered what it would take to get him to agree to being on the receiving end of what he was planning to do to me.

But there wouldn't be time. We would never see one another after today, and that was just as well, wasn't it? The only way we could have such an enormous secret between us, such an explosive secret, was if we never came together again. I knew how my people felt about sexual deviants, and his were worse. I lay there and thought about that, and when he returned, holding a slim tube between thumb and forefinger, I grinned, and beckoned to him. He grinned too and came over, knelt between my thighs. He applied it to himself, first, and the sight aroused me so much that I grabbed the tube, squeezed some onto my hands, and helped him. He gasped and arched backwards as I rubbed it in, pumping him slowly. "Not ... not your first time, cowboy," he managed, and I shook my head.

"No, not my first time. But it's been a while. Quite a while," I added as he brushed my hands aside and put some more cream on his finger.

"I understand. I will be careful. And you will tell me if it is too much. I do not wish to hurt you - not this way."

"Thanks," I said drily. "Breaking my neck during a brawl is one thing, right?"

He looked at me uncertainly, then stroked the hair off my forehead - again, with that curious expression. "That is one thing," he agreed. "But this ... this is another thing." Then his face became very serious. "A thing that no one else can know."

"Or it's the gulag for you, and back to prison for me," I said. "Right, tovarisch?"

"Something like this, yes," he said, as he had said before, when he was trying to work himself up to killing me. I smiled at him.

"In and out," I said. "No mess, and nobody knows you've been here. And we forget all about it in the morning." He laughed. For a moment I marveled at how well we communicated, despite our widely divergent backgrounds; how well we had worked together once we got ourselves sorted out, and in that moment I felt a pang of regret, that it had been so brief, and ended so quickly. But then his finger, coated with some silky perfumy hotel lotion, touched my entrance - so gently that I marveled again that the same hands which had torn the back off of my car could handle me with such exquisite care and skill. His finger probed, circled, withdrew, and I was panting and clutching at him, crying out when his cock took its place.

There was some pain - he's big and I, despite my bravado, new to this, and when I hissed involuntarily he stopped and looked at me hard.

"Cowboy? You wish - you wish for me to stop?"

"No," I gasped, because I didn't want him to stop, and I couldn't quite believe that he had. The effort it was costing him was evident, his whole body quivering. I ran both hands up his arms, shaking where they were braced to support his weight. "Just - give me a minute."

"Only a minute?" he asked. "You have high opinion of yourself, cowboy." Then he bent his head and kissed me, very softly, on the forehead. "Napoleon."

That opened me up, as if he had reached right inside me and pulled my heart out of my chest. "Illya," I managed, wanting to give that back to him, wanting to step aside, for just this brief time, from our roles, from our jobs, from our lives. "Illya - yes. Now." But he was already moving forward, because before my words said it my body had said it, relaxing, drawing him in.

Then - oh, then it was glorious. It was wild and savage, pounding and almost brutal, but still with that care, that exquisite sensitivity to my response. The orgasm ripped through me like a lightning bolt and I screamed. He screamed too, a primal sound and I felt him filling me with himself and I took all he gave and demanded more and somehow he gave more. There was no one in the world besides the two of us, and we needed no one. All that we needed was here, right here, him inside me, me surrounding him, our arms wrapped around one another, mouths clashing in a kiss that was as violent and as tender as the rest of it.

And when it ended, when the throbbing pulsing driving rhythm slowed, leaving us panting and sweating and shaking in one another's arms, there was one more moment of gentleness as he eased out, then he flopped over onto his back beside me and we just lay there, while the pieces of our separate selves slowly coalesced again into reality.

I don't know how long we lay there before he turned his head. I did too, curious about what had drawn his attention, and saw that cursed blue computer disc. Then he turned back and we were looking into one another's eyes. I didn't know what to say, and then I did.

"Burn it," I rasped, still struggling to catch my breath. "Burn it to ashes."

He looked taken aback. "Burn it?" he repeated. "But ..."

"Do you trust your government with it?"

He looked as if he were going to snap back at me; lips parting, eyes flashing, then they dulled. He shook his head.

"No more do I trust mine," I said, and he looked searchingly into my face. "But right now it's in our hands. Burn it." Then I faltered. What would happen to him, if he did that? It was easy for me to say burn it. My people would be displeased, might even send me back to prison to serve out the remainder of my term, but they wouldn't shoot me. His might. "You can tell them it was a mistake," I added awkwardly. "I'll back you up. There was only ever the one copy and it was destroyed with the Diadema. And they'll learn for themselves soon enough that we - my government - don't have it. Their internal apparatus is good enough for that."

"Yes," he said slowly. "I will tell them you lied about having it. Then he grinned again. "I will tell them that you screamed and wept most pitifully under my persuasions, and I am convinced. But you are right. We should burn it."

So we did. We had a private little bonfire, and toasted ourselves for doing it. I told him I had hated working with him, and he told me what a terrible spy I was, and all the while I was wishing that things were different, that the world was different, that we had met as different people in different roles; that this thing we had found could continue. But it couldn't, and there was a relief in that, too. Did I really want to be torn open every time I had sex? Didn't I prefer my pleasures light, and casual, and seldom repeated? Of course I did. So it had been good, and now it was over.

Except that it wasn't. Except that Waverly had shamelessly grabbed both of us from our respective employers, and planned to pair us up. Illya turned away at the news, his back to me as if he couldn't stand the sight of me, and I thought that probably I wasn't the only one who had been ripped open, and that he liked it even less than I did. But I also remembered how it had felt, to see him standing beside Uncle Rudi and know that he had arrived, that I was saved, that the electricity wouldn't surge through my body even once more because my partner had found me, and rescued me. Then he turned back and looked at me, face dark but smiling too, just a little, and I wondered if he remembered how it had felt to be pulled from those cold waters, saved from drowning because his partner had gone after him, and rescued him. I remembered how he had felt pressed against my back on that Vespa, and suddenly I was very glad that he was my partner again. I was glad, and I decided that I couldn't wait to see him naked, except for his hat, his weapon, and his curly whirly shoes.

The End

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