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Date Posted: 23:30:25 01/23/09 Fri
Author: Odelle
Author Host/IP: CPE0013f7f24246-CM0013f7f24242.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com / 99.234.121.213
Subject: When A Time Comes (Chapter 14)
In reply to: Odelle 's message, "When A Time Comes" on 13:16:05 01/08/09 Thu


The swish of the rotating glass doors had ushered Nikita and her entourage inside his building. Michael watched in stoic silence while the building was searched with remarkable efficiency. The black drones were gone as quickly as they had come, the leader nodding once at Nikita before exiting to the procession of black SUVs surrounding the building.

Michael and Nikita were riding the elevator alone, silently, within minutes. He watched her profile with practiced eyes during their ascent, and saw clearly her defences in ruins about her – and yet she was making no immediate effort to rebuild. None. She seemed trapped in time, in a moment that he feared may be inaccessible to him.

They walked into the vacant dark space of his apartment, and the tension followed them inside like a thick fog. The air in the space held a coolness only possible by the utter lack of fabrics or rugs. Without the woven intermediaries, sound became theatrically enhanced, and it smelled faintly of the outdoors.

Nikita mechanically surveyed in front of them for a moment. Then, her eyes hard and meeting only his chest, she turned to him and walked into him.

His arms opened for her instantly, and wrapped her like a warm blanket on an autumn night. She didn’t curl into him immediately – she was like stone at first. Her anxiety had made her muscles feel like tree bark, caging her mobility. Slowly, like the melting of icicles in the gradually rising dawn, she began to fade into him. Her feet shifted her closer. Her hands wrapped around him. Michael held her tighter, and put his face into her hair at her neck, breathing her in.

Eventually, she took a full steadying wash of air into her lungs, and released it. She shifted her head from his shoulder and rested her eyes against the steady, warm pulse at welcoming join of his neck.

They had stayed that way for an infinite time. Neither speaking as they eventually made their way to the empty mattress on the bedframe to sleep. Michael stayed awake, though, pondering her. He wasn’t sure who had suggested their current rest, and he didn’t care. Nikita clearly had needed it desperately. When they had fitted together, back to chest, her head on his arm as a pillow, she had taken only two breaths and fallen deeply asleep.

He wondered where her intense anxiety had come from. She had seemed remarkably steady the night they had first met. Contained, but present and very much at ease with him. At ease with her life. Yet as he had wrapped his arm around her when they first lay down, and taken hold of her arm to fit his thumb intentionally over the gentle pulse at her wrist, her heart was alternately racing and skipping. The erratic tension of it had eased as she had slipped deeply into a peaceful sleep, but he was concerned that she would have something to react so physically to in her life.

He sighed slightly, but stopped when he saw it gently rustle a few of the golden hairs in front of him. Once again, he found himself wishing he had more words for her – ways to tell her that she could trust him, could tell him anything. As it was, he could think of no words that could begin to offer her comfort.

He hoped that sleep would bring her the peace she needed. Perhaps she would wake and be released from some of the demons chasing her tonight. And then maybe they could talk and he could start to be the kind of man that he had dreamed he could begin to be for her.

************

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