Michael opened the front door and stood there in shock. His entire family, or what looked like half of the neighborhood, seemed to be gathered in the entryway, some of them spilling into the dining room and kitchen.
“Um...hi.”
“Michael!”
“Daddy!”
“Hey, man!”
Everyone started speaking at once, and finally, Michael couldn’t make out a single word anyone was saying. He held his hands up for silence, but no one paid a bit of attention. He glanced helplessly at his wife, who grinned cheekily before placing two fingers in her mouth, producing an ear-splitting whistle.
Now everyone was staring at Nikita. But at least they were quiet.
Nikita came forward, her arms outstretched. “Welcome home, Michael,” she said for the benefit of onlookers. Leaning close to kiss him, Nikita murmured into his ear, “Thank God you finally came home. I think Declan called out the troops.”
Michael drew back, a bit startled. Glancing over the crowd of family and friends, he quickly picked out Declan. Giving Declan a significant look, Michael let him know that his concern had been registered, and not incidentally, was not unfounded.
Offering a gentle smile to his children, who even now were latching onto various parts of his body, making walking impossible, Michael said wryly, “I should come home late more often.”
Faith pulled her father’s head down for a kiss, sounding surprisingly adult when she announced, “We’re just ‘preciating you, Daddy.”
“Thanks, petite.” Wrapping an arm around Nikita’s waist, he whispered to her, “Would I be very ungrateful if I asked you to feed me before addressing the troops?”
“Not at all,” she whispered back. “McDonald’s okay?”
“Brat,” he said, borrowing one of Walter’s pet names for Nikita.
Nikita melted against him, letting him feel every inch of her body welcoming him home. “Are you okay? You look tired.”
“I am.”
“Hey, Dad, no fair whispering,” exclaimed Chris.
Declan moved through the assembled people, cutting a swath directly to Michael’s side. “We need to talk,” he said in a low voice.
“I know,” Michael agreed. “But you can stand down. It’s been taken care of,” Michael said, realizing that no one but Declan would understand what he meant.
Declan nodded sharply, then clapped his hands. “Hey, if we can clear this room, we can get dinner on the table.”
“Yay!” shouted Faith exuberantly. Not knowing when Michael might arrive home, Nikita had already ensured that the children were fed. But that didn’t stop Faith. Nikita was beginning to think that the little girl was undergoing yet another growth spurt.
Sey waited until everyone began moving away from Michael before he approached him. “Glad you made it back in one piece,” he said quietly.
Michael smiled faintly. “Thanks.”
“Dec has a surefire cure for low blood sugar, Michael.” Sey grinned at his lover, knowing that when Declan couldn’t find out what was holding up Michael’s return, he threw himself into cooking with a vengeance.
Declan wrapped an arm around his partner’s shoulder, pulling him close to give him a gentle squeeze. As much as Sey regretted the altercation that nearly drove them apart, that was how much he enjoyed Declan demonstrating just how possessive he could be. “We should fight more often, you get so deliciously touchy-feely,” he whispered against Declan’s chest, hearing the answering rumble of laughter.
After successfully disengaging the twins from Michael’s weary body, Nikita led Michael by the hand into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. Once there, she pulled him into a chair, settling herself on his lap a few moments later.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Not before you eat. You look much too tired.”
“Mmm, I’m never too tired for you.” His mouth found hers, and then, before he knew what he was doing, he had buried his face in her hair, whispering, “I missed you.”
“You weren’t gone that long, Michael,” she said flippantly, immediately regretting the remark once it left her mouth. Suddenly she could feel emotion thrumming throughout his body, and she knew that something else was going on. Whatever happened, it had nothing to do with staying to grade a few papers.
“Tell me, Michael. Declan didn’t want me to worry. He wouldn’t say a word till you got home. Of course, that just made me worry anyway. But I’ve been telling myself it was nothing. It was...nothing, wasn’t it?”
He kissed her neck, inhaling deeply of the scent of her hair, his breath lightly ruffling the long pale strands as he then exhaled slowly. “It’s nothing now.”
"But it *was* something.”
He sighed against the base of her throat, forcing himself to break away. “It could have been bad. But...it wasn’t.”
She gave a tiny whimper, winding her arms around his neck, so that she could pull herself as close as humanly possible. She needed to feel him, touch him. She knew what she smelled on him when he finally walked in the door. It was danger. Coupled with fear. Oh, not for himself. He wasn’t afraid to die, in the real sense. He had faced death head-on too many times not to get used to that feeling of dread, that feeling of being so close to losing what really mattered. But he would have been afraid of leaving his family. Undefended.
Her husky voice reduced to mere breath, she kissed his ear before saying, “I love you.”
His arms unconsciously tightened around her as he slid his cheek along hers. “I love you, too, doucette.”
Declan stopped in the doorway, noting the two lovers, hopelessly entwined with each other, contemplating the tableau they made. The dark knight and his bright angel. Still and forever, all these years.
Michael stood up slowly, taking Nikita with him. Softly exhaling, he breathed into her hair, his lips caressing her ear. His hands slid down her back, pulling her hips into line with his. Inch by inch, they moved down a bit further, until he could feel bare skin against his fingers. “You feel so good,” he groaned.
“And you’re exhausted, Michael.” She gave him a quick kiss before darting away. All at once, she noticed Declan standing in the doorway. “Are we in your way, Declan?”
“Not at all, I’m sorry if I disturbed you two. The troops were getting a bit restless.”
Nikita smiled, raking a hand through her long blonde hair. “I’ll bet the littlest ones are the worst, too.”
“Well….” Declan was too polite to agree, but Nikita was right. Despite the fact that the children had already eaten, they were making the most noise about dinner being late.
Michael pulled Nikita back into his embrace and nuzzled her neck. “I don’t want to let you go yet.”
Aware of their audience, Nikita struggled briefly, albeit weakly. “Mi-chael….”
Michael glanced at Declan, his eyes more light grey than green now. “I wanted to talk to you about what went down at the University.” Nikita started to move away, but Michael wrapped his arms securely around her waist. He swung the pale curtain that was her hair, exposing her neck, pressing a light kiss to her nape. Abruptly, without speaking, Michael managed to communicate somehow that he needed to touch her, feel her. Right there. Not halfway across the room.
Close calls did that to him. His little brush with death that afternoon still echoed painfully in his mind. Nikita was…. Well, she was life. Light. The exact opposite of everything he felt clinging to him in the aftermath. “Please.”
“I wanted to talk to you, too.” With that, Declan explained how he came to encounter Pam, and he detailed their subsequent meeting. Finishing up, Declan said, “That possessive little squeeze she gave me freaked me out. I dunno what she was up to, but—“
“I do. That’s what I wanted to tell you.” Declan cocked his head intently. “Go on.”
“Cherise is the one who saw you with Pam. She made the phone call that nearly drove you and Birkoff apart.”
“But I’ve never met the woman!” Declan protested.
“Doesn’t matter. Cherise is sick.” Michael went on to explain why Declan and Birkoff should be careful for the next few weeks. “She’s under observation, but undoubtedly headed for a major psychiatric facility.”
“What about Pam?”
Michael smiled wearily. “Pam’s with Interpol. She was actually trying to protect you.”
Declan raised an eyebrow at that. “I knew she was trying to get close to me. I just couldn’t imagine why.”
Nikita laughed. “You haven’t looked in a mirror lately, have you, Declan?”
Michael pulled Nikita’s head against his chest, kissing her hair lightly. “You’re not allowed to notice that anyone else is attractive, doucette.”
Nikita made a distinctly unladylike noise in her throat. “Unless you’ve got the key to the chastity belt on you, Michael, you’ll just have to trust me.”
Declan looked askance. “Please don’t even joke like that, Nikita. Between Michael and Sey, there wouldn’t be enough left of me to mail home on a postcard to Ireland.”
Nikita snorted, poking a tiny space between the buttons of Michael’s shirt so that she could touch bare skin. At Michael’s involuntary tremor, she chuckled and pressed her mouth against the same spot, letting the tip of her tongue flick out at the last moment. Michael jumped, his eyes darkening, and he quickly found Declan gazing bemusedly at the two of them.
“Jesus, you two are together what? Seven, no, eight years? You act like a couple of teenagers!” But Declan’s voice was warm and kind. He understood exactly how they felt. When it was right, it was right. It didn’t make a bit of difference how many years passed. Time had no meaning. Not for true soulmates.
Nikita sighed and lay her head on Michael’s shoulder. “Can you get dinner on the table, Declan? I want to grab a plate and…feed…Michael.”
Declan laughed. “Hey, I just cook the food. I have nothing to say about what you people do with it.”
“Declan!” Nikita chided him. “Are you implying I might let Michael go hungry?”
“Never crossed my mind,” he said, shaking his head enthusiastically.
Michael pressed Nikita up against the door to their bedroom. His eyes were half-shut, but it was hard to say if this was from fatigue or concentration on the task at hand. “I want you,” he whispered, brushing his lips against her throat.
“Mi-chael…there are people downstairs in our kitchen and dining room.”
“Eating, doucette. What does that have to do with me making love to you?”
“We’re in the hallway, Michael,” she said with a chuckle. “Shouldn’t we go inside?”
Michael made a moue of disappointment against her neck. “You don’t like to live dangerously anymore, love.”
Nikita gave a startled laugh and backed away, her head colliding softly with the door. “I think having four children is dangerous enough, Michael.”
He stared at her, dark green eyes glinting in the low light of the hallway. “Let me,” he said, lowering his head to kiss her deeply, intimately.
Despite her apparent misgivings, Nikita found it difficult not to become aroused. He was still the man she loved more than life. And the fact that he knew exactly what excited her most made him irresistible.
“What if someone comes?” she asked huskily.
“Trust me, they won’t.” He dipped his head to nibble at her mouth, almost politely.
“But what if they do?”
Michael drew his head back, looking intently into her light blue eyes. “No one comes up here but us, Kita.”
“Exactly.”
Michael gave his wife a puzzled look. “What?”
“The kids come up here, Michael.”
Heaving a longsuffering sigh, Michael all but collapsed against Nikita’s shoulder. “Why would they come up here, Kita? They’re eating…again.”
“They’ll finish eating, and then they’ll come upstairs.”
“Nooo, Ki-ta…they’ll stay downstairs to play with each other, or watch television, or run next door to see Connor and Kady, but they won’t…come upstairs.”
“You’re just saying that, Michael.”
“You’re using up what little energy I have…on talking.” Michael slid his cheek along the side of Nikita’s face, grasping her earlobe in his teeth, sucking it into his mouth.
She closed her eyes and sank back against the door. Resistance was futile.
***
A frisson of excitement ran down Nikita’s spine. Her T-shirt pushed up under her arms, her breasts lay open and vulnerable to Michael’s tongue. His ardent licking quickened her nipples into tiny, gem-hard pebbles. “Mi-chael…” she moaned, biting her lip.
His hands stroked her sides, up and down, back and forth, their slightly roughened surfaces a delicious contrast to the satin-smooth skin beneath them. His tongue swirled around her navel even as his hands moved to unsnap her jeans. Her hands reached out and covered his. “What if—“
He moved back up her body to capture her mouth in a punishing kiss that stole her breath away. Without releasing her mouth, he slipped a hand inside her jeans, cupping the warm, wet triangle between her legs.
“Umm…” she protested, only to have him swallow whatever she might have said.
She could still hear voices, loud and distracting, coming from downstairs. But the threat of discovery no longer frightened her, but excited her. Her hands over Michael’s, together they pushed her jeans down her long, muscular legs. Kicking them off her ankles, she turned for a moment, to open the door and throw the offending article onto the bed. Clad only in her T-shirt now, she closed the door behind her again. “Do it,” she whispered, passion overtaking reason.
With that as encouragement, Michael buried his face between her legs, pushing her thighs apart to gain greater access. When his tongue slid into her silken heat, she arched her back, her hands grasping at the doorknob behind her for support. Again and again, he teased and coaxed her closer to completion. “Unhh…no, Michael, no, I don’t want to go without you.”
He didn’t need to hear another word. Stripping off his jacket, he threw it onto the floor beside them. His hands pulled at the buttons on his shirt like claws, and finally, he was bare-chested. Deciding that taking off his pants was both unnecessary as well as time-consuming, Michael freed his arousal from the fabric that held it prison.
In seconds, he sank his hardened length into her warm, wet depths, literally pinning her against the door, unable to move. Hooking both her legs around his waist, he ground against her, entering her deeply.
She was so close to climax, she shuddered at his rugged entry. Mere moments later, Michael followed her over the edge, spilling himself deep within her. She groaned contentedly as he relaxed against her, his rapidly softening erection still embedded inside her.
Kissing him tenderly, Nikita said, “Mmm, that was…so good.”
When Michael didn’t answer, she stirred herself to see what new preoccupation had seized her husband, only to discover that…
…he was asleep. On his feet.
Far from feeling slighted, Nikita chuckled softly under her breath, in an effort not to wake him up. He sagged against her, completely dead weight, and once she opened the door, she pulled him over the threshold, dumping him onto the bed. She ran back to the hallway, picked up the rest of his clothing, and shut the door. Depositing the clothing in a pile on the floor next to the bed, Nikita then rolled her husband over onto his side. Wrestling with the covers for several moments eventually produced the desired result.
Michael would undoubtedly wonder how he had gotten into bed when he awoke. She wrapped her arms around his chest, pressing her face into the long curling hair at the nape of his neck. “I love you, Michael,” she murmured sleepily.
“Love you,” Michael echoed without really awakening.
Even in his sleep, he knew Nikita.
It had been a long wait, but it was finally here. Well, it seemed like a long wait to someone like Sasha. In reality, it was perhaps a month, maybe more since his attempted abduction.
Sasha’s birthday. To a child who spent his earliest years in Section’s sub-basements, literally living hand to mouth, that phrase had meaning far beyond the obvious. It meant that he had survived another year. It meant that something very special was in the works.
But just what, Declan refused to say. In fact, Declan hadn’t even told Sey what his plans were. But this was not an easy decision for him to make. It was damn hard, really. But he knew it would truly surprise everyone.
***
Sasha struggled to get through the school day. Now and again, someone would call “Happy Birthday!” but Sasha felt curiously distracted. He couldn’t wait to get home.
Skye scampered eagerly to catch up with Sasha, her long, blonde ponytail bobbing back and forth playfully. “Hey, wait for me!”
Sasha turned and faced his beloved angel girl, a smile of welcome on his lips. “Sorry, Ange. Guess my legs are in a hurry to go home.”
Skye giggled. “That’s okay. Did Uncle Dec tell you what he got you for your birthday?”
Sasha shook his head. “Nah, it’s s’posed to be a surprise.”
Skye’s clear blue eyes twinkled mischievously. “That never stopped you from finding out before.”
“Yeah, but I have a feeling this is big. Really big.”
Skye gasped. “Like a bike?”
Sasha grinned. “Maybe. That would be pretty cool, huh?”
Skye’s delicately beautiful face fell. “Then you could ride your bike to school everyday,” she said sadly. “You wouldn’t have to go in the car with Grandpa.” And us, she added silently. Me.
Sasha’s insouciant grin abruptly disappeared. “I’m not trying to get away from you, Ange. Honest.” He reached out to touch the little girl’s hand lightly. “Besides, Da and Daddy would never let me come this far on my own. Especially not after what happened.”
He smiled shyly at Skye. Every day she seemed to grow more beautiful. He knew she worried about him finding newer, better interests. He was, after all, a couple of years older than she was. But he could have reassured her with only one glimpse into his young heart. She was embedded deeply there. He couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. And sometimes, he wondered if he might not be the one to lose her someday.
But that just didn’t bear thinking about. As far as he was concerned, this was his day, and nothing bad could possibly happen.
***
“We’re what?”
Sey’s voice rang in Declan’s ears, making him wince. The cake was ready and waiting in the refrigerator. The ice cream was in the freezer. Everyone was assembled in Michael and Nikita’s dining room, anticipating the arrival of Sasha and the other school-age children. James had dismissed class early. Connor and Emmy were hopelessly preoccupied with Sasha’s seventh birthday celebration, and as a result, they were getting little actual work done. So he gave in gracefully, inviting Smoke to join the gathering family.
At Madeline’s raised eyebrows, Sey pulled Declan into the kitchen, away from the others. Declan sighed. “Christ, I thought you’d love the idea, Sey. Once you…um…got used to it.”
“Move? You want us to move?” This was not going as well as Declan expected. Sey seemed to be stuck on the initial part of his announcement, and from the way things looked, Declan had a feeling he might never get over it.
“Please don’t get excited, Sey.”
“Excited? You tell me that you want to move all of us out of here, and I’m not supposed to get a little bit excited?”
“Keep your voice down, baby,” Declan admonished his lover.
“Oh, right. Now you don’t want anyone to overhear us. God knows why that would be, since they’re all going to know in a few minutes anyway, and where the hell did you come up with this freaking idea?”
“Sey…come on. You must have noticed how cramped we are here. We’re living in a couple of rooms.”
“Sasha and Emmy have their own rooms,” Sey pointed out.
“Aye, but what have we got? A tiny sitting room? An even tinier bedroom?”
Sey bit his lip anxiously. “You don’t have enough space? You feel like we’re living on top of each other? I—“
“Dammit, Sey, that’s not what I’m saying. I can see your bloody mind running away with you. You think I want to be alone, you think you’re in my way. Well, you’re not. I love you, for Christ’s sake. If I didn’t want to be with you, I wouldn’t be.”
“This is about you finally graduating, isn’t it, Dec? Moving on?”
“Something like that.” Declan gathered his partner into his arms, pressing his lips to the silky brown hair on the top of his head. “Michael’s graduating in January. I’m graduating next May, baby.”
“They accepted your final project? Dec, you never told me!”
“I wanted it to be a surprise, Sey.” Declan pulled back to look intently into Sey’s dark brown eyes. “You know that decision I’ve been trying to make for the past couple of years? Well, I made it. I’m going to stay on at the University and teach.”
“That’s wonderful! What did they offer you?” Sey was genuinely happy for Declan. He loved him so much, he wanted him to succeed at what he had chosen to do.
“Full instructor, to start. After all, I’ll just have my baccalaureate. But once I have my Master’s, they’ll make me a professor.” Declan seemed almost shy about voicing this. It had been a long time coming. It was hard to believe it was almost here.
“But I need…a place to work, Sey. A studio. Light. Space. I’ve been making do with what little room I have at the University, but…”
Now Sey understood Declan’s dilemma. Always putting his family ahead of himself, Declan so rarely asked for anything for himself. But Sey could see just how much he desperately wanted this.
“Okay.”
Declan blinked. “Okay? Just like that? Okay?”
“I love you, Declan. I want you to be happy. More than anything. If this is what you need….” Sey’s voice trailed off meaningfully.
“Thank you, baby. It’s not just that.” Declan kissed Sey lovingly, stroking his long dark hair back from his face. “I haven’t been able to give you much—“
Sey frowned and pressed his fingertips to Declan’s mouth. “Not given me much? You love me! You support me! You’re helping me raise two kids!”
Declan’s face softened as a tremendous wave of affection swept over him. Sey, his most ardent defender. God, he loved him.
Declan took a deep breath. “I know I won’t be making much as an instructor. But I want to get us a house. It’ll have to be a small house. But it’ll be ours.”
“Oh, Dec,” Sey cried helplessly.
“You deserve it,” Declan said, catching the warning glint in Sey’s eye. “We deserve it.”
“Damn, Declan, you know I’d follow you anywhere, but this. It’s a little bit scary, y’know?”
“Like we’re really and truly grown up, Sey?” Declan asked softly. “Like we’re really and truly married, acushla?”
Sey leaned forward, resting his head on Declan’s chest. “We’ve always been really and truly married, Dec. It’ll be hard to leave here, though….”
“Aye,” Declan agreed. His heart hurt a bit at the thought of leaving, but he couldn’t deny that it seemed like a good thing. He, who often disliked change, was evolving.
“What do you think Sasha will think?”
Declan closed his eyes. Sasha would take it hard. Being separated from Skye would be the most difficult thing Declan had yet asked his son to do.
Sasha knew there was something wrong. He could feel it. He could see the tension in Sey’s face, and he could hear the lack of genuine enthusiasm in Declan’s voice. Still, the announcement, when it came, stunned him.
“Happy Birthday, kiddo” and “We’re going to move” were two sentences that Sasha could not seem to connect with each other. A deep furrow forming between his brows, Sasha asked, “What do you mean, Da?”
Declan wound an arm around Sey, but it looked curiously to Sasha like he was seeking moral support, not affection. “After I graduate next May, we’re going to find a new place to live.”
Ignoring the cries of surprise echoing all around him, Sasha shouted, “What’s wrong with this one?”
“Look, kiddo, I know you’re upset, but—“
“I want to stay here!”
“I know you do, but—“
Visibly agitated, Sasha was a blur of hyperactive motion. He paced, he gestured. He yelled until he was hoarse. And Declan let him. He’d known it was going to go down hard for Sasha. Perhaps harder than for any of the rest of them. This was a kid who had never had a real home. Until now. And Declan was taking it away.
“Sasha, we’ll be together. We’re taking you and Emmy with us,” he explained painstakingly.
Tears stood in Sasha’s eyes as he wrestled with the enormity of what Declan was saying. Legs wide apart, arms crossed, he looked like he was ready to take on the entire world, if need be. “You promised I could stay here with you and Daddy! You promised I would be your real little boy!”
“You are, Sasha! Nothing’s going to change!”
“I hate you!” Declan expected that. Really, he did. But he felt the force of the words as if they were physical barbs aimed directly at his heart.
The seven-year old launched himself at Declan then, and Declan flew backwards and into the wall, groaning softly. Sey and Michael reached Sasha at the same time, struggling to pull him off Declan. But it wasn’t the fact that Sasha attacked Declan that scared Sey. It was the fact that Declan wasn’t putting up any resistance. At all.
Sey grabbed Sasha around the waist, but the young boy was relentless, kicking and screaming and totally out of control. “Sasha! Sasha!” Sey called to him, to no avail.
Eventually the boy slumped forward, as if all his energies were spent. But Sey was too smart to be fooled by a move like that, and he refused to release him. He pulled Sasha hard against him, and suddenly he felt the almost violent vibration shaking his small frame. Sobbing. Tearing both of them apart.
All at once, Sasha wrenched his body away from his father’s, running furiously for the front door. Sey took off after the boy, but he didn’t give much for his chances of reassuring Sasha.
Declan still sat on the floor, his back to the wall, looking somewhat dazed. Michael offered Declan a hand, and Declan managed to pull himself into a standing position. “Thanks,” Declan said hoarsely.
“Don’t mention it,” Michael said softly. “Would you like to tell us where this came from? I had no idea you were unhappy here.”
“I’m not! We’re not! We love it here! Christ! This is such a mess!”
Declan looked miserable. His face bore a huge bruise, right over his left cheekbone, but it was unclear if this was from contacting the wall or Sasha’s surprisingly strong fist. He rubbed absently at the area, wincing when he realized just how tender it was.
“Come,” Michael said, indicating that Declan should follow him.
The friends and family gathered for Sasha’s seventh birthday party slowly and reluctantly dispersed. Nikita sighed and turned to survey the aftermath. What should have been a happy family celebration had become ugly. Violently so.
Suddenly she noticed that the twins were still there. Chris looked like a poor little lost soul. He wasn’t crying or shaking, like Sasha had done, but in some ways, this was worse. He was silently grieving the loss of his beloved Emmy. He looked so stoic, so emotionally shut down, he was like a stone-faced little soldier. And that just broke her heart. Because she knew where she had seen that look before. On Michael’s face.
“Chris…” Nikita began, but she never finished. What ensued was so touching, she couldn’t speak.
Faith wrapped her arms around her twin brother, apparently attempting to absorb his pain. She wasn’t talking so much as murmuring, almost hypnotically, in a curious manner that Nikita only knew to describe as “twinspeak”.
Chris was listening, but he wasn’t calming down. His fists were clenching and unclenching, the sole visual cue that everything was not right in his world. Nikita had never seen him like this.
Afraid to interrupt, Nikita nevertheless wanted to offer all her children the support they needed to get through this unexpected turn of events.
Abruptly aware that Declan would be fighting an uphill battle trying to win this one over, Nikita said, “Chris…you’ll see Emmy again.” She knew that registered when she saw the startled look on his face. Good, now he would have to give his mother credit for being more than a little intuitive.
“But she won’t be here,” he said, his voice the only part of him that betrayed all that carefully leashed emotion. Faith shared an empathetic look with her mother before turning back to her brother.
“She’ll forget me.”
“No,” Faith stated with utter clarity. “Emmy loves you, Tosh. She’ll remember.”
“Always?” he squeezed out the word even as a tear leaked out from under his tightly closed eyelids.
“Always and forever,” Faith declared, unconsciously echoing her uncles’ vow to one another.