The Perfect Weapon Chapter 2010: Part 4 Section 2 of 2
Chapter 2010 Part 4 section 2 of 2
Ringgg
“I’ll get it!” Dave called out as Sydney’s head popped out of her father’s office to which she’d retreated shortly after her parents had left.
“But-“ Sydney protested, pointing at Dave’s crutch.
“No. I was going to get up to get a salad from the fridge. Do you want one?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry yet.” Sydney smiled and went back into her father’s office. She resumed printing the photographs for her mother and pulled out her father's sketch book once again.
Dave looked at the security panel’s visual screen and blinked. He opened the door. “Vaughn? Are you here to see Sydney?”
“No. I’d like to finish the conversation we really didn’t have at lunch,” Vaughn said quietly.
Dave nodded and closed the door. He had to give the kid points for persistence. “Okay. Why me?” he asked quietly as he went into the kitchen. “Hungry?”
“A little.” Vaughn watched Dave pull out a salad and fork it into two bowls. “As for why you, I think you might understand my ambivalence and be in a better position to advise me.” He took the bowls and when Dave pointed with his crutch toward the deck, led the way.
“I see.” Dave pointed to the chair opposite him and both men sat down. “But don’t you think you should be talking about this with Sydney? Or Sydney and Irina? Or the entire family?” Did the kid want Sydney to overhear the conversation and save him the discomfort of a direct confrontation? Too damn bad, Dave decided and hopped over to the sliding door and slammed it shut.
“Yes. Do you only call her Irina when she’s not around?”
“Of course. What’s the point of annoying her when she’s not here to annoy?”
“There’s logic in there somewhere, if I look hard enough.”
“Ah. Looking hard enough...” Dave nodded, sat back down and held up the bowl. “Chip?”
Vaughn smiled tightly in return and picked up his salad, waiting until Dave had done the same before beginning to eat. “No thanks.”
“Drink?” Dave asked as they sat there for a very long time, the only sounds that of the ocean and their eating. What had happened, he wondered, to his patience? He used to have so much patience. He clenched his hand around his fork and tapped it on his good knee. Patience, he told himself. Or find a way to use your impatience to break through this wall Vaughn had erected.
“No thanks.” Vaughn looked over his shoulder at the view.
“Enema?”
“No...what?” Vaughn spluttered.
“Well, you look like you have something stuck up your butt and-“
“Geez!” Vaughn rubbed his forehead and plunked his salad bowl down on the table. “Do you ever give up?”
“Not really. Or else I’d be dead by now,” Dave said softly.
“True.” Vaughn sighed and hunched over, his forearms resting on his thighs.
Dave waited again, debating which tack to take. Finally, he decided on comparisons - it had seemed to work at least slightly at lunch. “You’re as annoying as Jack.”
“What?” Vaughn asked sullenly.
“You know...You and Jack share certain qualities-“
“I do not want to hear this!” Vaughn jumped to his feet.
“Of course you do or you wouldn’t be here. You seem to have a problem with that, don’t you? Denying what you want. So sit down.” Dave pointed toward the chair. Vaughn sat. “You and Jack share certain qualities. One potentially-negative quality is being introverted.”
“And why is that potentially negative?”
“Because sometimes it causes you to spin your wheels, figuratively speaking, inside your head. You keep going around and around the same idea, never getting off the track because you’re not conveying your thoughts or emotions to anyone else as a sounding board.”
“I’ve talked...”
“Have you really talked to anyone?”
“I’m here talking with you.”
“Well, you haven’t really begun talking yet. And I’ll be happy to talk with you or even to pull the words from you, if that’s why you’re here. But am I the one who matters? No. It’s Sydney. Or have you convinced yourself that by keeping silent you’re not hurting her?”
Vaughn stared back at Dave. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
“Agreed. You’re the guy in a bad position. The point here is, Michael, that you need to start talking about your options. It can be me, but ultimately it needs to be Sydney. We’ll start here. I’ve got the time and...it’s not necessarily a long conversation. You don’t have a lot of options.”
“No...it doesn’t appear that I do.” Vaughn looked up at Dave. “I can either...”
“Stay or go. Choose to stay and work at it or choose to leave and move on.”
“If I stay, I need to know...” Vaughn clenched and unclenched his hands.
“Start anywhere. Just start,” Dave urged softly. “I’m sorry if I was impatient before. Possibly I’m too close to it-“
“But that’s why I need you.” Vaughn looked up hopefully into Dave’s now-patient eyes. He had to remember that the man was just three months out of a cave and have some patience of his own. And after all, it wasn't Dave's responsibility to devise answers to Vaughn's life problems. Only he could do that and...he'd better start. After Sydney's comment at lunch today about second chances, he had the feeling he was running out of time. “I need your opinions, your insight, your knowledge of the past. Do you...believe that she really did care for him as early as she says she did?”
“Yes.”
“You have no doubts about that?”
“Not now, no. I can understand why you would doubt it. Hell, I doubted it and I was there, so no one would blame you for doubting it. And initially, when I first discovered the truth, I did. But then...” Dave reached for a chip. “I thought about it and thought about it and I went back to the place where truth lies.”
“In your heart?” Vaughn asked, trying to keep the sneer from his voice.
“No. Something deeper. My instincts.” Dave touched his abdomen. “My instinct when I first met Laura was that she saw Jack and wanted him. You could feel that want. Always could.” Dave dropped his voice until Vaughn had to lean forward to hear the deep rumble over the sound of the surf and scavenging sea gulls. “Have you ever met someone and maybe it happened at first, maybe it happened later, but it happened? That tug that’s almost impossible to resist?”
“I...yes.” Vaughn nodded and looked down at his hands.
Dave spoke quietly again, forcing Vaughn to look back up into his face. “You know what? Other people can see it too. I saw it with Laura. And...Weiss saw it with you and Sydney. Didn’t he?”
“How-“
“There is no substitute for background research.” Dave smiled as Vaughn rolled his eyes. “And it was real between you two and it was real between them.”
“Okay, if I buy that it was real, IF, even still how do you forgive and trust again?”
Dave nodded. “Good question. But is that ‘you’ meant as a general or-“
“No. I meant you. How did you do it? I heard that your notes were quite...”
“Pointed. I was furious. I would have killed her without a second’s thought if I had encountered her during Jack’s incarceration or illness or his early recovery.”
“You’re serious.”
“Deadly serious.” Dave picked up a chip, looked at it for a moment, then slowly began to eat it. “Or given her own skills, I might have been the one to die.”
Vaughn shook his head. The combination of the utter assurance of killing a close, albeit former friend combined with the utter prosaicness of eating chips as if there was no tomorow was... their life. “So...what changed?”
“I got over my first flush of anger. As a point of record, it’s never wise to take irrevocable actions in the first flush of anger. And once I did and started to try to understand how we’d all been fooled...” Dave shook his head. “I realized that... well, many things. I realized that Jack was just too good at what he did to have been fooled for that long. And even if he weren’t, the odds of fooling that entire gang of friends, who were almost all agents and game theorists, to boot?
“Impossible. Especially when you consider how young she was at the beginning. So, I began to consider that perhaps, just perhaps, her feelings were as real as the game she’d been playing. Because when you eliminate the impossible--”
“All that’s left is the improbable. Improbable but true?”
Dave nodded and said gently, “Strangers things have happened than a swallow agent falling in love with her mark, Michael.”
Vaughn blinked as he acknowledged the gentle lob of truth into his court. “That’s true. Such as a man falling in love with the daughter of his father’s killer. A man in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones. ”
“Yeah. Life is weirdly circular sometimes. Karma, Zamir would call it.”
“But...didn’t you need proof?”
“Oh, that. My instincts were sufficient. But if proof was necessary, I had proof. I had photographs. Photographs Laura took of Jack.” Dave looked down into his salad bowl to hide his grin.
Irina smiled as Jack argued with her, “I do not want stones in the garden. I want mulch.”
“You just want to start an argument with me,” Irina pointed out, poking Jack’s shoulder in retaliation for his eyes sliding down her body with such a hopeful gaze that she almost burst out laughing at the look of little-boy mischief in it. Then with a mental shrug, she gave in and did just that.
Jack wrapped his arm around her waist, wanting to hold her happiness as close to him as he could. “You can read me like a book.”
“Well, read this. There is no place for us to do anything with my irritation, since there are no window coverings-“ Irina pointed toward the house.
“How about the attic? No one could see up there.” Jack raised his eyebrow.
“How true...” Irina murmured, as she began to devise a plan of her own. She felt the familiar thrill of the excitement of a game rush through her and nodded. She was back on track. This time, however, it was the right track. This time she was grounded. She knew who she was and what she wanted.“But another time. Let’s finish arguing about the ground cover.”
“Must we?”
“You started it. Stones are more economical and efficient,” Irina argued. “It takes so much time and trouble to put down mulch every year.”
“It’s better for the soil. It helps fertilize it.”
“It’s a lot of work. I remember...” Irina slid her hands up the center of Jack’s chest. “That one year you fell asleep while we were putting out the mulch.”
Jack picked up Irina’s hand and brought it to his mouth. He lightly kissed each fingertip, before planting a soft, warm kiss in the center of her palm, then tickling it with his tongue. “I fell asleep because I nearly killed myself and the team rushing to get back home to you.”
“I remember...” Irina smiled softly as Jack kissed her wrist. “I took a picture of you sleeping because...well, because you looked like a little boy sleeping there, the little boy I wanted.”
Jack nodded and pulled Irina into his arms. “I’ll let you take a picture of me asleep in the mulch again.”
“Thank you.” Irina pulled back to look into his eyes. “Will you let me take a picture of you naked on the bed-“
“For the love of god!” Jack shook his head. “Let it go.”
“You let me do it before!” Irina wrapped her hands around Jack’s biceps and held him close. She was not going to let him evade this conversation.
“I was young and...No.” Jack’s mouth twisted. He didn’t want to say no to her, but... He closed his eyes and remembered his promise to Judy to operate on faith and not on fear.
“Don’t you...” Irina paused. “Trust me?”
Jack froze. He wanted to give her what she wanted, but... “Yes. I do. I just...” He nodded slowly. “Give me some time. Okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Irina said quickly. He had given her so much time to try and find her way, it was the least she owed him, especially since those pictures had been transformed from a visual reminder of a private moment into public humiliation. And there were other, much more serious repercussions as well. “I shouldn’t have asked. Aside from everything else, those photos...they were how Dave was removed from your case and sent to DC, when he should have been here, helping you.”
“What do you mean, you found photos?” Vaughn asked.
Dave waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “It’s not important.” It’s not important unless I can’t find the damn photos. He’d promised Jack he’d destroy them and...Well. He’d removed them. Which some might argue was close to destroying them. Yeah, right. Dave winced. He was going to be so very dead when Jack discovered the truth. Irina would be ecstatic. Maybe they would be his wedding present to her. Yes, good idea. Jack wouldn’t kill him then. Later, maybe. But not then. “What’s important is what I saw in those photos corroborated what I suspected to be true.”
“So...you went after her when Sloane told you about the message he intercepted, believing it really was for real?”
“I thought it was a distinct possibility. And if it wasn’t? Then I’d kill her.”
Vaughn nodded and stared at Dave’s hands. He could still kill, even with one finger missing. He looked up into Dave’s face. Still too thin, but no longer gaunt. The resolute look in his eyes had no doubt always been there. “So...here we are now. I know you had problems for a while. Trusting her? Do you trust her?”
“The better question is do I trust her the way I once did?”
“Oh.” Vaughn frowned. “I didn’t....”
“You didn’t think about that? I do trust her. Now. Do I trust her the same way I once did? No. The innocence in my trust of her is gone.” He looked down and handed Vaughn the bag and motioned for him to hold it open.
Vaughn nodded and held the bag open while Dave carefully poured the remaining chips back into the bag. Regardless, chips fell to the deck. Vaughn picked them up and tossed them over the side of the deck, watching the seagulls descend upon the sand beneath to scavenge. He said nothing for a long moment before turning around. “If... Does Jack feel the same way?”
“Ask him.” Dave folded the top of the bag of chips over. “But....let’s imagine this. If Jack has also lost that innocent trust he once chose to give to her, why is he with her now?”
“Sydney says it’s for love. Because he loves her. But...”
“But...?”
“But...why bother? Wouldn’t it have been easier...” Vaughn sat back down in his chair, but leaned forward, looking at Dave intently.
“Yes. Even if she’d wanted to turn legitimate for whatever reason, he didn’t have to choose to try and make a new life with her.”
“Then why?”
“Because he decided it was worth it.” Dave looked toward the ocean. Endless. Love never ends, he remembered from that wedding service. “They work at their relationship every day, because it’s worth it to them. I honestly admire that-“
“I don’t think you should have to work that hard at it,” Vaughn blurted out.
“What bulls***.”
“Excuse me?”
“Life is hard.” Dave looked down at his right hand, then held it up. “Or rather, living is hard. Death is easy.”
Vaughn opened his mouth and shut it as he saw the pain in Dave’s eyes. The man had lived through hell. He must have had a thought or two about ending it all. Who wouldn’t have? Choosing to go on in those circumstances was more than survival instinct. It required strength. And something more. Hope? Faith? “But still...isn’t part of wisdom knowing when it’s best to give up?”
Dave nodded slowly. “You know...there are times when leaving is your best option.”
“Are there?”
“Yes. When there’s no hope. If you’ve reached that point, then go. And quickly. But let me ask you this. If you love Sydney, then what is best for her? Are you what’s best for her?”
“Can I make a commitment and live with her without making her feel as if I’ve conferred some great honor on her by forgiving her for a sin she never committed?” Vaughn asked slowly.
Dave sighed in relief. “Yes. You have a choice ahead of you.” Dave looked down and grabbed both forks. He laid one down on Vaughn’s left and one down on Vaughn’s right. “I like visual demonstrations. You face a fork in the road. One choice will lead you to Sydney and the complications which follow. One choice will lead you to an easier life, but one without Sydney. I’ll leave you with a question only you can answer. But it’s a question that may haunt you forever. So be careful and most of all, honest in your choice and your answer. What is Sydney worth to you?”
“Jack, is that house a money pit?” Irina asked, as they drove away from their new house.
“Who cares? You have more money than God, anyway.” Jack pulled the car into a U-turn and drove down the street.
“I know, but...” Irina looked back at the house. They’d just had another argument about the pool. She straightened her shoulders. Jack loved to argue and so did she. She touched his arm, then his cheek, feeling the smile on his face. “Well, are we going to kill each other renovating it?”
Jack turned his head to hide his smile as he turned the car right, toward the his destination. “I’m anticipating with glee and delight-“
“Only two word choices? Are you ill?” Irina gasped in mock shock.
“No, I’m-“
“You could have added joy to glee and delight and then had your magic number three.”
“I’m ignoring you,” Jack told her in a sing-song voice.
“No , you’re not.”
“Yes. I. Am. As I was saying, I’m anticipating with glee and delight and unfettered abandon the -“
“Unfettered abandon? Mmm. Polysyllabic words that are somewhat sexual in nature are the perfect foreplay, you realize.”
“Words as foreplay?” Jack put his hand on his chest. “I’m shocked. What is wrong with you?”
“We haven’t had sex in two days-“ Irina pulled Jack’s hand away from his chest and replaced it with her own.
Jack looked down at her hand as she traced the contours of his chest. This would work much better if they were naked. He pressed down harder on the gas pedal. “Well, take away my union card!”
“Your union card?” Irina smiled. She did love it when Jack was snotty.
“Yes, Comrade, native of the home of socialism. My union card. You know. From the men’s union. The card they gave me when I wrote the manual-“
“The...WHAT?” Irina gaped at him. “You, you... Do you want to be punished again?” She pinched his nipple.
“Ow. Or was that, oooh! Do it again.”
“Jack...” Irina laughed and did it again.
“Definitely, oooh!” Jack looked over at Irina and smiled. “As I was saying. I’m anticipating with glee and delight and unfettered abandon the innumerable arguments and endless irritation with each other...” Jack sighed happily and in a swift blur of movement reached out and tweaked Irina’s nipple through her shirt.
“Jack!” Irina shrieked. She reached up and clasped his hand to her breast, smiling when he took the cue and began to fondle it. “You just want to fight so that we can make up.”
“You want to fight so that you can find a way for me to channel my anger into something sexual.” Jack looked over at Irina, wondering when she was going to notice that they were not on their way back home. Or maybe she had and didn’t care.
“I...Well, yes,” Irina admitted.
“Not going to happen, honey.”
“Oh yes, it will.” Irina looked around. Where were they? Damn it, he had distracted her again. He was probably taking her to some nursery that specialized in that stupid cottage-style garden he was so eager to try. It sounded like an unrestrained mess to her. But wait. Would a nursery be open this late? And be this close to the ocean?
“You sound quite self-assured.” Jack peered ahead and breathed a soft sigh of relief when he caught a faint flicker ahead and carefully dimmed his lights for a brief second.
Irina put her hand on Jack’s thigh and squeezed until he looked down to watch her hand move up his leg. “I am. After all, Jack, didn’t you promise me that in the game between us there would be no limits?” She reached between his leg and palmed him, reveling in the gasp of surprise followed by a groan as her fingers moved against him.
Jack abruptly pulled the car over to the side of the road. “Yes. I did. Let’s start exploring the infinite nature of our game right now.”
SnickSnick
Went two safety belts being ripped from their locks and flung aside as a man and a woman reached for each other.
Jack lifted his mouth and gasped for breath. “We need to move this somewhere private.”
“Da!” Irina agreed, pulling her shirt back down. “But as I recall...” She frowned in concentration as she looked around, knowing that the spot where Jack had proposed was not far away. Was he avoiding going there or...Oh, who knew? She was not going to obsess about the past. She was just going to enjoy this moment in the present.
“There’s a little dirt dead end up here for parking...” Jack told her, starting the car and making a turn Irina hadn’t noticed before, hidden as it was behind some scrabbly but overgrown trees.
“Let’s get out of the car...” Irina suggested, flinging open her door. As Jack came around to her side of the vehicle, she grabbed him and pushed him against it.
Thud
“Honey!” Jack protested with a grin as Irina captured his wrists and held him against the SUV. Oh, wait. Was he supposed to struggle? He obligingly pushed forward and was rewarded when she pushed back, her softer body obligingly curving into his.
Irina licked the base of Jack’s neck. She smiled when she felt his hands immediately pulling her closer. “We haven’t done this in a long time-“
“What, embarrass ourselves?” Jack laughed as Irina pulled his shirt from his jeans. He stopped laughing when she unbuttoned the button on his jeans. “Irina-“
“Excuse me, sir...” A deep voice interrupted. “But I believe it’s illegal to do that in public.”
“Oh s***,” Irina swore and looked up carefully, hoping her clothing was still largely intact. Then she began to laugh as she saw who stood before them.
“I heard a thud and had to investigate...”
“Weiss...” Jack groaned and held Irina up against his front. “Your timing is...”
“As per my training, my timing is precise. Sir.” Weiss tipped his imaginary hat. Susan peered around from behind him and rolled her eyes. Weiss grinned as he said, “I’m just here to tell you to move along. Sir. Madam. You’d be happier down around the bend of the road.”
“Would we?” Irina asked, as she looked in the direction Weiss was pointing, but which she could not see for the trees. What game were they were playing? With Weiss and Susan? She looked around and put her hand on her hip. “Okay, Jack. This isn’t the way home.”
Weiss grinned again and pulled a folded square of parchment-like paper out of his pocket. “Why, no. It’s not. Would you like a map?”
When Jack made no move to take the map but instead merely tucked his shirt back into his jeans and rebuttoned them, Irina shrugged. Apparently she was supposed to take the map. She held out her hand and then frowned as she looked down at the paper. She rubbed her thumb across the uneven surface. Heavy with rough edges...handmade...With roses or what appeared to be roses pressed into the paper... Other than the roses, it was empty. No words. No compass or orientation. No key. Just the roses. She turned it over and her eyes widened. In Jack’s distinctive leftward scrawl were the words, ‘A true place.’
“Do you see?” Jack asked softly.
A game! Irina nodded and touched the words with her fingertip. She swore she could feel the heavy and excited pulse of her heart in the place where her finger touched his words. “So...how do I find my way in this game?”
Weiss smiled, then bit his lip. “Sir. I must also inform you that you may be ticketed for littering.”
“Littering?” Irina repeated with a glance up at Jack.
“Littering? Who, me?” Jack put his hand on his chest.
“Yes, you’re the absolute image of innocence, you idiot,” Irina grumbled, even as she looked around eagerly.
“Why, where is this littering, alleged littering, Officer?” Jack asked.
“Just a sec!” Susan interrupted. “I’m concerned about this verbal abuse here.”
“Verbal abuse?” Irina shoved her hair over her shoulder impatiently. “I need to look for-“
Susan held up her hand. “You called him an idiot and back where I come from-“
“In New Jersey, calling someone an idiot is...” Irina smiled. “Exactly what it is here. Just a synonym for sweetie.”
“I see, ma’am.” Susan tipped her imaginary hat and struggled to control her giggles. “The accent must have thrown me off.”
“Ah. Let me try again.” Irina nodded, took a second and then fluffed her hair.
“What are you doing?” Susan asked.
“If I’m going to do it in a way you’ll understand, I should probably make my hair bigger, shouldn’t I? Just to complete the picture?”
“That’s so Eighties...” Susan sniffed. Jack sighed as he’d ever wondered why he thought he could control this game. Weiss rolled his eyes. “Besides you don’t have any mousse with you. And I bet you can’t do the accent, anyway.”
“I can.” Irina glared. Pretending to chomp on gum just to annoy Susan, she smacked her lips and repeated in her best imitation of Sark’s accent, “Yeah, hon. You’re the absolute image of innocence, you idiot.”
Jack and Weiss began to laugh. Susan frowned as she contemplated what she would owe Irina for winning that bet - nothing had been mentioned, but she had no doubt Irina would call it in. “You are good,” she admitted.
“Yes. As I’d like to discover for myself, if no one minds...” Jack rolled his eyes. “If we could move along....” Dave had been right to warn him not to overplan it this time. This memory would be a good one for Irina. Hell, for them both. Different and yet similar. Perfect.
Irina nodded and held up the paper. “So, no real map. Just...” She looked at the paper again. “Roses?”
“Roses are everywhere along the beach path!” Weiss grumped. “And it’s really not permissible.”
“I’m not interested in what’s permissible,” Irina noted with a sly smile in her husband’s direction. “I’m interested in sticking to rules only when they prove useful.”
“Well, what would be useful...” Jack interjected as he tried to get them moving. Irina was having a great time with these two people who liked her, but the sun would set soon and this entire game would not work in the dark unless they had both developed the ability to see in the dark. Geez! “Is if we searched for these roses. I’m sure, we should look this way...” Jack pointed south.
“Should we?” Irina almost laughed at the look of exasperation on Jack’s face. And from sheer happiness. He’d had a plan, apparently. She bit her lip and nodded. “We should.” She walked around the trees and scanned the ground. She groaned. How had she missed them before? The path that gradually wound down to the beach as well as twisting along the beach head was strewn with roses. “Red roses...” She whispered, feeling her heart thud in her chest. “My favorite.”
“I hoped they were still your favorite.” Jack smiled as Irina darted forward and snatched up the first rose and held onto it tightly. Still a firm grip. If only she didn’t break the stem. Oh well, flowers were to be enjoyed in the moment.
“I just follow this trail...” Irina pointed ahead to the next rose.
“It’s just a hint. A suggestion.” Jack shrugged. Irina smiled. His nonchalant pose might have worked if it weren’t for the excitement in his eyes that he made no effort to hide. He was no longer hiding. Her Jack again.
“No map needed?” Irina bent down and picked up the rose gingerly. She smiled. No thorns. Of course. Every detail taken care of.
“Not for me.” Jack gently tugged Irina to a stop. He leaned down, cupped her face with his hands and kissed her gently. Against her mouth, he whispered, “I don’t need a map. I’ve already found my treasure.”
“Oh!” Irina gasped. This man was her Jack again, sweet and romantic. And hers. She began to tremble in anticipation.
“That was goooood,” Weiss whispered under his breath. He’d have to remember that line.
“Remember that line,” Susan whispered. “It’s a good one.”
“Go away, you two...” Jack smiled.
“Iit’s time to go and patrol the perimeter?” Weiss asked. With yet another smile, he saluted and he and Susan set off.
Jack shook his head and called out, “Thank you!” He turned around and walked at a long lope to catch up with Irina, busily gathering her roses at a fast clip.
They came around the bend and Irina stopped as she saw the trail of roses leading down from the path to a small protected niche she already knew. “I’ve been here before.” She gripped the roses tightly. She had known where they were, but now that they were here... “Jack...What is this?” Irina asked slowly as she took in the scene. The large blanket carefully anchored to the sand with candles. A picnic basket. It probably contained wine. More roses peeking out of the corner of the basket. More candles. It was...the past, come to life in the present.
“Do you like it?” Jack asked. “Is this what you wanted?”
“I hadn’t...Oh, you’ll appreciate this. I hadn’t even imagined you would do something like this.” Irina blinked back tears and looked up at Jack. In her watery gaze, she could see the young man he had been and the older, wiser man he had become. “It’s...perfect. You’re blending the past with the present for us, aren’t you? Giving us a new memory, based on the old?”
“I hope.” Jack bent down and picked up the next rose and handed it to Irina. “In the past this page in your memory book had always been important to you and you told Judy more than once about the night we got engaged, so I thought it was still important.”
“It was. It is. Any tense, past, perfect, pluperfect!” Irina smiled. “It’s one of my favorite memories.”
“Mine too.”
“Now it’s one of your favorite memories. Before, I’m sure it was a difficult memory,” Irina said softly. They had promised each other honesty. And here in the place where in the past they had planned a future, a place to which they’d returned in the present, honesty had to be found. Or rather, active tense, they had to find honesty by being true.
“Yes, it was. But now....” Jack shrugged and gestured with an open hand to the ocean before them. “I have peace. And with you here...” he traced the edges of her face. “So much more.”
“Here.” Irina looked at the protected niche and then off toward the cliff. There was another memory here that needed to come full circle. If Jack could give her this, she could give him something too. Irina carefully put her bouquet of gathered roses and the map that was no map down on the blanket. “Will you come with me? Will you let me lead the way this time?” She held out her hand.
“Always.” Jack nodded and took her hand.
Irina turned and walked forward, avoiding rocky outcroppings and prickly shrubbery on their way to the edge. She looked out at the ocean and then back at Jack. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on tightly, smiling as he held her close in return. “It’s a true place.”
“Yes. It is.”
“What I felt, what you felt, it was real and true here. I loved you and wanted to marry you. You do know that, don’t you? Do you feel it, here...” Irina touched his chest. “That was real and true.”
Jack nodded and agreed softly, “I know. This place holds happy memories for us both.”
“Now it does. But then, the later then, after you found out the worst truth, which...oh, if only I’d realized that the game was the least important truth of all...” Irina stopped and held up her hand. “No, no if onlys. We are here now. Starting over. But then, you threw the key from the chain from here, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” Jack admitted. He leaned forward and pointed down at the curling waves crashing against the rocks below. Why was she worrying about the key? He had something else he needed her to think about. “Sometimes I wonder if those pieces of gold are still down there. Just waiting for someone to find them.”
“Do you?” Irina smiled and touched Jack’s cheek. “That’s fanciful. Pieces of gold - like pirate treasure.”
“I’ll get you a new key, if-“
“I wear the chain?” Irina teased. “I’ll get my own key, this time.”
“You will, will you?” Jack teased gently back.
“Wellll....” Irina tugged Jack’s shirt from his jeans. “I still remember the three keys - ask for what I want, tell you I love you and say please. Remember?”
Jack smiled and caught Irina’s hands. “I love you, Irina. I’d like you to look down off of this cliff and tell me if you remember what we both threw off of it that night. Please?”
Irina’s lips parted in surprise. “You just gave the keys back to me.”
“So I did. Happily, gladly and freely.”
“Happily, gladly and freely.” Irina nodded slowly. “That is the way this night should have been, back then. How I wished it was.”
“Stop looking back and look down. Please.”
Irina blinked and then laughed as Jack bent down and kissed her. “One blink for a kiss. I remember. How about two blinks or three or four?” She smiled and pulled off her shirt and tossed it carelessly aside. With the swift movements that had always served her well in the field and the bedroom, she quickly tugged off her other clothes and tossed them away from the cliff and toward the safety of dry land.
“I...wow.” Jack blinked in surprise and then sighed as Irina leaned up to kiss him and swallowed the sigh into her mouth. Dave had been right. Overplanning was a mistake with this woman who constantly surprised him. “For the love of-“
“For the love of you, I’m naked. Had you noticed?”
“Uh, yeah.” Jack gulped and hoped Weiss really was patrolling the perimeter and not looking their way. He put his hand on Irina’s waist and turned her so that her back was to the cliff and he was between her and the road.
“Which makes me wonder-“
“You’re wondering, you’re thinking?” Jack asked in astonishment, wondering why he was still able to talk. His wife was standing there in front of him. Naked. At the edge of a cliff while the sun set behind her. It was probably a spectacular sunset, but he didn’t notice for seeing Irina. She was...She was glowing with love and anticipation and triumph too, he realized.
“Why yes, I am...” Irina slid her hand up from her legs, over her torso, along the tip of her breast, stopping there when Jack’s tongue touched his bottom lip, and then skimmed over her collarbone to touch the necklace. “I’m wondering why you’re still dressed. All I’m wearing is this favorite necklace of mine. You do remember this necklace, don’t you? You still like it on me.” Her eyes dropped down to the bulge in his jeans. “I see you do.” She smiled, that feline smile that had always made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and other body parts come to attention as well.
Irina was standing there, naked, at the edge of a cliff. Standing tall and straight and proudly meeting his gaze. The glint of determination and excited confidence in her eyes was matched only by the sparkle of the diamonds at her throat and in the diamond studs in her ears.
“Perfect,” he whispered. “You are so beautiful, so strong, so rightfully proud. So....perfect for....me.” He swallowed and committed the image in his eyes to his own memory book, one he hadn’t even known he possessed until this moment, or perhaps it was created in this moment when the past and present and the future intersected to create something entirely new, yet familiar. “I will never, never forget how you look in this moment.”
Irina nodded, hoping that this memory would supplant the one he held of breaking that key and tossing it away. She looped her arms around his neck and in a move that reminded them both of the past and made them forget everything that had come before in favor of the need of the present, took his mouth in a kiss, the first kiss of the future.
“Oh!” Irina gasped, as the familiar thrill of the kiss that always surprised her made her heart pound and her knees grow weak. She lifted her mouth again, taking his lips in a needy pull of unslaked passion that only expanded with each brush of his fingers along her back, cupping her buttocks, then sliding around to touch her breast, make circles around her hardening nipple while his other hand made circles around another hard point. Feeling the need overwhelm her, too fast, too fast, she thought in protest, wanting to make it last, she shook her head. “Jack, lie down...” She pushed at him and succeeded only in pulling off his shirt. “I want you and...”
“No. It’s really too rocky. Just let me do what I want...” Jack whispered, his hands taking away her will to resist. He bent his head and licked her bottom lip, then repeated the motion, endlessly, she thought, as he traveled down her neck, over her collarbone and to her breast. Then he bit her soft flesh and she was lost to anything but what she felt right now.
“But I don’t...” Irina shuddered as his mouth began to make those circles on her flesh that always...Oh no, another little bite. “I’ll fall down.”
“I’ve got you,” Jack promised, tightening one hand around her waist.
“But...I want to hold you up,” Irina protested, trying to hold on to her goal. “It’s my turn, isn’t it-“
“Some other time...We can take turns...” Jack whispered, sliding his finger inside her damp folds and pressing in the way he knew she loved. “Let me have what I want. I want to make love to you like this. Here. Please?”
“As you wish,” Irina whispered. The power didn’t shift this time, she knew, by uttering the word please. No, this time, in the game between them, the power was in them both, between them, around them, surrounding them. The game had changed. But some truths did not, she knew, as Jack’s mouth and hands told her of the feelings that had always been there, past, present and future.
TBC at Chapter 2011 Part 1