Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (23 page)

Raguel sighed, threading his fingers together where he leaned over his own thighs.

“Yes,” he said only.

“Yes, what? You think this is all just to implicate us?”

Again, his eyes shifted towards the surface of the coffee table.

The same part of the table where Ilana saw a glass key.

“I do not know,” he said only.

Ilana frowned, wanting to yell at him for some reason. “So what do we do?”

He met her gaze. “I don’t know, Ilana.”

Exhaling in frustration, she took another swallow of wine as she paced back and forth in front of the couch. She’d drank most of the whole bottle of wine by herself.

So much for keeping her mind sharp.

“Ilana.” When she didn’t look over, Raguel raised his voice, but kept it patient. “Ilana... there is nothing more we can do tonight. You must stop.”

She barely heard him.

After another minute of pacing and thinking, she shrugged.
 

“I do not even know his political beliefs,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “Karkoff and I did not talk politics. Not in relation to anything other than what I needed to know to complete my assignments. I always thought he was fairly moderate, for KGB.” She stopped pacing briefly, looking at Raguel. “Most in KGB who are his age and who have attained his rank are more bullish in their stances.”

Raguel nodded.

He patted the couch next to him then, his eyes more serious.

Exhaling in frustration, she realized he was right. She needed to calm down.

Sitting next to him heavily on the couch, she exhaled again.

He shifted closer to her, studying her face. Using one hand, he stroked the long, dirty-blond hair off her cheek. She didn’t move away or try to avoid his touch, but she flinched, more from the current of tension still vibrating her skin.

“I’m okay,” she said, looking at him. She stroked the hand he had on her face, trying to reassure him. “It’s okay, Raguel. I’m okay.”

“When did you last sleep, Ilana?”

She shook her head, averting her gaze from his. “I cannot sleep now.”

She started to take another drink of wine, but he plucked the glass from her hand, turning his body to set it on the glass coffee table behind him, and out of her reach. They had already wheeled the cart with their mostly-empty plates out into the hallway.

“You cannot continue to do this, either,” he said, softer.

Sighing, she looked up at him. “Please. I need to think about this.”

“You are not thinking, you are worrying.” He studied her gaze, his gray eyes as still as a windless sky. “We have no new information, Ilana,” he said gently.

He was right. Her mind stubbornly refused to let it go, however. “Are you thinking this has to do with the Americans? About them wanting to put more weapons in Germany? Do the children have anything to do with this at all?”

Stroking her hair, he her gaze. “I do not know. What do you think, Ilana?”

Sighing, she looked at the glass key on the table, then back up at him.

“I am thinking you are wishing you are an angel again,” she said. “I am thinking I can’t help you anymore, comrade... that my usefulness is at an end.”

Nodding, he laid a hand on her thigh, rubbing it slowly.

Swallowing, she turned once more, meeting his gaze. He continued to massage her leg while he studied her expression.

“Being an angel would make some things easier,” he conceded. His voice remained calm, gentle. “It may not seem obvious to you, but I could protect you from there, Ilana. I could influence those who would hunt you, at least, while I looked for whoever is behind this.” He glanced back at that spot on the coffee table that held the key. “I feel... helpless here. It is difficult, I admit. But I am very glad to be here with you.”

She nodded, exhaling again.

She thought about answering him in some way, then didn’t.

“I think this will happen soon, whatever it is,” Raguel added. “They got me out of the way. Now you are out of the way, as well. And Karkoff is clearly converted. Knowingly or not, he is working for whoever the demon is possessing now. Whether the children have anything to do with that directly, I don’t know. But I suspect not.”

Thinking about this, she found herself nodding, her jaw firm.
 

It felt true. All of what he said felt true. The children weren’t a part of this, not really. It was just horror. Misdirection. A way to set her up. A way to set both of them up.

And it worked.

She nodded, feeling defeated. “Yes.”

“We cannot do any more tonight, Ilana.”

She nodded to that, too, turning her head to look at him once more. She really was exhausted. She also knew she would not sleep. Not right away, anyway. Not now.

He returned her gaze, silent.

After a few more seconds passed, she nodded again. Then she rose from the couch, moving out from under his hand. She felt his eyes on her as she walked over to the bed. She stared at the phone, a part of her wanting to call Obnizov... Karkoff... even Uri. Some part of her wanted to yell at someone, to vent her anger and frustration at someone as she felt her life crumbling down around her. Less than twenty-four hours had passed.

It took less than twenty-four hours to destroy her life.

But she couldn’t think about this now.

She knew the wine was making all of it worse. And Raguel was right. They could do nothing more about this, not tonight. They had no new information.

Turning, she faced Raguel, who still watched her from the couch.

“Tomorrow, we could try one more time,” she said, folding her arms. “If they have not yet revoked my clearance, perhaps I can talk to people who trusted me at KGB, convince them to look into Karkoff.” Hesitating, she met his gaze. “What is more likely, of course, is that I will be taken into custody as soon as I am seen near the building. If Karkoff has already turned them against me... which he likely has... then I will simply disappear. They will hunt you next, thinking you are an American spy. All of this without us doing anything whatsoever to stop what is coming. Assuming it has not already happened.”

She paused, letting her words sink in.

“...Or, we can run,” she said. “We can try to leave Russia, using my contacts.”

Raguel watched her, silent.

When he didn’t say anything, she shrugged.

“But that is tomorrow,” she said. “We will decide which it is then. Tonight, you are right. There is nothing more that we can do.”

She met his gaze, feeling her face warm, and not only from the wine.

“You said before that you wanted sex with me. Is that still what you want, Raguel?”

He only sat there after she first asked the question, looking at her.

Then, in a single gliding movement, he stood.

He walked to her. Fear washed over her as he approached––time seemed somehow to slow in the seconds before he reached her. Some part of her was terrified. She couldn’t make sense of that fear at first, or the overwhelming sense of vulnerability that came along with it.

It wasn’t the thought of sex itself. It wasn’t even that things with Uri had ended so badly, or that it had been so long since she’d been with anyone but Uri... or even that it had been so long since she’d been with anyone at all. It wasn’t even because her life was over now, at least the life she’d known for as long as she could remember.

It was him. She was afraid of him.

Raguel stood in front of her now, and she found herself looking up at him, at the inhuman, stone-like planes of his face, and she knew it wasn’t his beauty she reacted to, either.

He kissed her before she could get much further in her thought process.

The kiss was warm at first, sensual but so much lay behind it, Ilana found herself lost there. That fear that nearly overcame her as she watched him approach melted the longer they kissed, until she could barely remember the feeling at all.
 

When he finally raised his head, he cupped her face in his hands. She felt enveloped by him, even before he stepped closer, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing her again, deeper that time, with even more behind it. When he paused that time, he was breathing harder, and she found herself pulling him with her, tugging him backwards towards the bed.

He followed her easily, moving with her even as he kissed her again.

He didn’t raise his head until they’d reached the edge of the bed, and that time it was because she had broken off the kiss. Leaning down to turn off one set of lights with the switch by the headboard, she began unbuttoning the front of her long-sleeved blouse once she turned back in his direction. When she had it most of the way undone, he pulled his own shirt over his head.

She found herself staring at his form in the low light from the remaining lamp by the couch.

“You’ve never done this?” she asked.

Her voice came out unsteady, once more showing her nerves.

He smiled, shaking his head.

“Because you seem like you’ve done this...” she said, her voice lower still. “With the kissing, at least. You seem like you’ve done it before...”

“I’ve watched it done.”

“Is that the same?”

Still smiling, he shrugged one shoulder. “No.”

“How much have you watched?” Remembering what the demon accused him of that morning, she sharpened her voice. “...And who, exactly?”

He laughed, wrapping his arms her and pulling her tightly up against him.

He kissed her, his mouth warm, soft, wanting.

His arms tightened around her the longer he kissed her.

In her mind, Ilana briefly saw them as wings. Long, white, shadowy wings, wrapping around her in the dark, enveloping her... making her forget everything she’d been worried about, all the bad things that happened that day.

Before she could dispel the image from her mind, he kissed her again.

He finished taking off her clothes and then his... and then they were both lying on the bed. She lay on her back while he touched her all over, exploring her with his hands. He took his time, going slow, massaging and kneading her muscles and caressing her skin. When he turned her over and began doing the same to the other side of her, she let out an involuntary sound, gripping the embroidered bedspread on the top of the bed.

He finished undressing himself, then turned her over again, and Ilana found herself losing control, curling her fingers into his hair as his hands wrapped around her waist.

Both of them were sweating by then. His skin was hot, still pearly white but glossed by a faint sheen in the dim light of the room. She was looking at his face, marveling at the perfect angles and lines, tracing his mouth and lips and his long neck––when he slid up her body so he was more or less lying on her.

He looked down at her, not quite a question in his eyes, but an urgency she couldn’t help but see. She wrapped her legs around him and he let out a low sound.

He positioned himself over her, and she helped him, using her hand.

That urgency on him grew more pronounced, even as his weight got heavy.

...Then he glided inside her.

She was so ready for him it shocked him. It shocked both of them––her as much as him.

She let out a heavy sound, totally involuntary.

He cried out too, half-crushing her against his chest. He cried out again when she made that heavier sound again, unable to help herself when he arched into her harder.

She’d never made a sound like that before––not in sex, not for any reason.

It felt so good she almost couldn’t stand it. She cried out a third time when he reached the end of her again, and then she was gripping his arms, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist. He held her down as he let out another broken groan of his own.

He began moving for real––slowly, excruciatingly slow at first.

In minutes both of them were gasping. He let out a heavier sound then... right before he began arching into her harder, his hands holding her flush with his body at the deepest point, his chest tilted up so he could get further inside.