I had slept alone in bed for years. But the feeling of empty space beside me was unsettling enough to wake me up.

I stared at the crinkles in the sheet beside me where she had been sleeping. Her perfume was folded in with the sheets. The scent of her shampoo lingered on the pillow. But she was gone. I blinked in the darkness for a moment and waited to see if she might come back from the bathroom. I pricked my ears for evidence that she may be downstairs making cocoa, as she sometimes did when she woke up with a ‘perfect sentence’ in her head that she absolutely needed to write down and sleep could wait.

But nothing. The thought developed slowly in my mind: she’d left. For good.

I didn’t need to check the house to understand that she was well and truly gone. I just felt it. She wasn’t here, and it was in a sleepy daze that I hurried downstairs to throw on a coat and shoes and let the thought catch up with me: I had to find her. I was already in the car when I could stop for a moment and think. Where the hell was I going?

I started the engine and pulled out the driveway. She had spoken constantly about getting rid of the house one day, of running off into the sunset. I wracked my brains now, mining those memories for clues about where she could be now. I had no idea. I tried her phone a half dozen times with no success. The only thing I could think of was to make for the airport.

I pulled into the main terminal parking just as the sun began poking over the horizon, looking pale yellow and liquid. Had she only stuck around to get the story? Was she really just going to disappear now that the whole plan had come to nothing? I couldn’t believe it.

I parked, leapt out the car and raced inside, fully realizing just how ridiculous I was being, but unable to shake the feeling that this was where I’d find her. I found myself in the middle of a busy airport terminal, easily thousands of people streaming around me in all directions. I glanced around and tried to think, then settled on walking briskly up and down the check in counters for any sign of her tall, slender frame.

It was madness. I was suddenly playing out the cheesy final scene in the most predictable romantic comedy. But hadn’t it always been like that with Kay? Hadn’t every moment I’d known her felt a little crazy, a little dangerous? I passed queue after queue, my eyes slipping easily over everything that wasn’t her. I was about to give up hope and kick myself for thinking something like this cold work, when I saw her.

The elegant lines of her body. The way she seemingly towered over people, on another plane somehow with dark glasses, angular hair, aristocratic shoulder bones…. I froze and stared at her for a moment, unseen, and tried to understand what the hell I was looking at. She was actually leaving. And she had done it without even saying goodbye.

I hesitated but then approached her, and her face fell the instant she saw me. She backed away a little, shook her head, and looked panicked.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she hissed under her breath.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I said and looked at the pile of bags at her feet.

Her expression immediately melted into concern.

“Jack, I… I’m so sorry…”

“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

She looked around nervously but I didn’t give a damn about who overheard me.

“Look, this is for the best. It’s hard to explain, okay,” she mumbled, and I saw her knuckles whiten around her bag handle. I grabbed her upper arm and yanked her from the line and off to the side. She was shocked enough not to resist.

“Tell me. Now. Where are you going?” I said and glanced back at the sign above the check in counter.

“Belgium,” she said with a pout. The situation still felt unreal somehow.

“Belgium?”

“Belgium.”

“But… why?” was all I could say.

She took the longest, deepest sigh, looked mournfully into my face and then extended her hand to graze her fingertips to my cheek.

“Jack, the article is going to get published. In a few hours it’s all going to be out there.”

I sputtered to find words.

“You what? But the guys—”

“You don’t need to worry about that. There’s nothing they can do anymore in any case. You aren’t named and neither are they. And in a little while they’ll have such a shit storm on their hands they won’t be in any position to retaliate. They came to my house, Jack. I have audio of them bribing me, of them clearly admitting what Operation September was all about. By the time they realize what’s happened I’ll be in Europe and the millions of readers of The Times will have read about everything. There’ll be a court martial. The thousands of people they were trying to screw over? The evidence in those documents they tried to destroy? The public will be baying for their blood by lunch time, if not looking for a full blown impeachment.”

I stared at her, astonished.

“You did all this…”

“I had to,” she said plainly. “I guess I always knew you and the guys would back out. But it needed to be done. So I did it.”

“You put yourself in danger,” I said quietly, still hurt that she could walk away so easily.

“It’s what I do, Jack.”

I couldn’t tell if I felt a swell of pride for her, or alarm that she had done something so breathtakingly stupid.

“And us? You just left without saying anything?”

She peered over her shoulder and watched as the line moved.

“I didn’t want you to try and stop me.”

We locked eyes.

“But… I don’t want you to go.”

“It won’t be forever. I’ll lay low for a while, I don’t know how long. I’m sacred too, Jack, but this has become bigger than both of us right now. Much, much bigger.”

“You’re not listening to me. I need you, Kay. Doesn’t what we have mean anything to you? What am I going to do without you? Fuck the story, what about me? What about—”

“Then come with me,” she blurted.

Her gaze was hard and penetrating. I was taken aback.

“Come with you?”

“You know why you’re attracted to me, Jack? Because I live by the principles you’ve abandoned. What are you scared of, anyway?”

My face burned hot.

“I’m not scared of anything.”

“Then buy a ticket and come with me. Right now.”

“Okay, but what about the guys? When are you going to tell them? And my daughter?”

Her only response was to keep staring at me, with those same piercing, unwavering eyes. I looked away.

“Kay, you know how I feel about you.” I could still feel her eyes on me. Go to Belgium? And then what? It was madness. Before I could think again she stepped close to me and pressed her lips to mine. I kissed back in shock. The crowds streamed around us, but all the noise, all the madness disappeared as I touched my tongue gently to hers. I looked down as she reached to take my hand in hers, glanced briefly around and then yanked me behind her as she skipped off.

“Kay, where are you…?”

We dashed together through the airport, me hurrying after her as she made her way through the crowd and led me to the bathroom. I blushed hard as she simply pulled me through the door, despite the two women at the entrance who proceeded to give us both appalled looks. Despite my hesitance, she pulled me into an open stall, slammed it shut and locked it, then turned to face me, more than a little confused. I heard shocked giggles from outside, but she scarcely gave these a second thought. Instead, she stood before me with that look in her eyes.

“Kay…” I said, but her finger went to my lips to shush me. The harsh lighting overhead reflected in her dark eyes as she looked me up and down. Was she really going to try and…?

She removed the finger and slowly leaned forward to almost-kiss me, tracing hot lips over my jaw and lower lip. I staggered back and steadied myself against the stall, unable to stop myself flopping down onto the closed toilet seat. Like the most elegant spider, she came forward to straddle me and settled herself silently onto my lap, never breaking eye contact for a second. I had carried the burden of the September Mission with me for so long, I now felt naked at the thought that it would be lifted soon.

Her hands came down to rest gently on my shoulders. She was right. I admired how willing she was to act according to her principles. I admired everything about her.

Her lap felt deliciously warm against mine. She trailed her hands down from my shoulder and onto my chest, then back again, slowly, like she had all the time in the world to do it and like we weren’t holed up in a public bathroom at the airport. She undid the first button my shirt almost as though it was an accident. She undid the second. My own hands rested on her upper thighs, and I watched her intently. No, she certainly wasn’t anybody’s housewife.

She slipped a graceful hand into the opening of my shirt and rested it there, her eyes filled with meaning. When she leaned forward to offer me her lips again I couldn’t resist reaching up to kiss her passionately. She smiled and stroked her hands all over me – my arms, my chest, my face – and they soon found their way lower down, and lower still. I lifted my hips up to her wandering caress and we locked eyes. Why not?

She reached out her arms and propped against either wall, then leant back, flicked her hair and gave a suggestive rock of her hips. I watched her. It didn’t take much to feel myself pressing rock hard against her. We weren’t exactly the type to be this naughty… but these were desperate times. The thought of her leaving now was overwhelming and made me want with her a strange urgency.

She unzipped my pants and carefully slid out my already stiff cock. My breathing deepened. Everything was silent in the cubicle, and outside it, all the normal everyday sounds of the hand dryers, running water…

She looked down with concentration as she held me in her hands, the soft swell of her belly a mere inch from my cock. She slid her hands over the veined surface, swirled a fingertip over the wet tip, then slid down again. I bounced in her grasp, and she stroked faster. Hidden in our secret stall like this, there was nothing to do but dig my heels into the floor, bite my tongue, and relish how amazing it felt to let her do precisely what she wanted to me.

As I grew more and more swollen in her hands, she quickened her tempo, never tearing her eyes from her caresses, completely engrossed in stroking just the right place, in just the right way. Her touch was magic. I was putty in her hands. When she dropped to her knees and carefully lay my shaft neatly down on her extended tongue, all I could do was close my eyes and let my head loll back.

I never quite knew how she did it. How she somehow felt like she was everywhere at once, like she had a hundred tongues and her throat went on for days… Kay didn’t just suck cock. She feasted on it. She teased and licked and led me down into the most blissful torment, where nothing existed but her hot little tongue and the feeling that I could explode in her mouth any minute.

My hands found their way to her head and my fingers weaved into her hair, pulling and releasing with each stroke of her gorgeous mouth up and down my shaft, up and down, over and over again till I was in a frenzy. She worked in silence, her expert lips neatly sealing all the way down to the base of my cock and then up again, to tease the most delicate tip with a quick flick of her wet tongue, to kiss me there once, twice, then back down again to swallow me whole.

I was so hypnotized by this that I scarcely noticed when she stood up and noiselessly wriggled her jeans down off her hips. She pulled them down only as much as she needed to, then turned her back to me, spread two wide hands on the bathroom stall door and backed up onto me until the head of my cock met with the wet slit of her pussy. I extended my hands to guide her down gently onto me and I watched as her head flopped back as she arched her spine. I slid inside her quietly. I swear I could feel her pounding heartbeat inside. Her bare skin was warm against my hands. I could still detect the faint taste of her lips on mine. The faint, sexy scent of her turned on body was like a drug.

The upside-down heart of her perfect ass bobbed sweetly in my lap for a moment, inching me inside. I fucking loved this part. I couldn’t believe that we were doing this, here of all places, and now. But there was something about Kay’s body that felt like home. I pressed up, the dark brown coils on my lower abs grazing softly against her body. She was still balancing herself against the stall door, on her toes, grinding her shapely hips in my lap slowly, deliciously.

I knew not to make a peep, but it was getting hard to ignore the desperate deepening of my breath and hers. A naughty thought occurred to me: maybe I should try make her cry out. Fuck her till she couldn’t handle it anymore, till she couldn’t help but whimper out loud so that all those strangers just on the other side of the bathroom stall could hear just exactly what my cock could do to her…

I reached forward and grabbed one of her firm breasts, the other still guiding her hips now in a quicker rhythm, so she bounced slickly in my lap, her body drenched and completely open. It was a little dirty. A little trashy. This quick, furtive bathroom sex wasn’t totally our style. But fuck it. When I heard her breath falter as she tried to suppress a moan, it only made me want to pound up into her even harder.

And I did.

Her head flopped forward onto her hands. I watched as each thrust seemed to ripple all through her, up her long elegant spine, up her shoulders, till the very tips of her hair seemed to shake with each fuck. I watched with satisfaction as she bit down on her thumb and sucked in her breath. Fuck yes. Let her come then, like the naughty little whore she clearly was. Pulling me into a bathroom like this? Looking at me the way she looked at me? Walking around like that when I knew what a beautiful little cunt she was hiding under these fancy clothes? Well, of course this was going to happen. Of course I was going to screw her hard till she whined and shook in my lap like a little slut.

I sunk into that quivering hole deeper and deeper, feeling how turned on she was getting, feeling her wetness slipping down onto me. And I was getting close too. Something about knowing that there was nothing but a thin wooden door separating us and the rest of the world was surprisingly hot. I loved how outrageously sexual she was, underneath her icy-cool exterior. And I loved how all of that was lavished on me, like I was the luckiest guy in the world.

I reached forward and pulled her weight back against me so I could penetrate her more deeply now. When she gasped silently, my hands caressed her neck and I slipped a finger into her opened mouth. She kissed it. With her back against my chest, both my arms wrapped snugly around her waist, I ground against her with abandon, and she returned my enthusiasm as we both rode each other to the edge of an orgasm.

I crumpled my face down onto her neck and breathed in deep as I felt her get close, quiver, then burst on my cock. I held her hard as she shook in my arms, her feet coming up off the floor and her back arching and curling into my chest. I could never hold on long after seeing her like that, and a few moments later I followed, spurting hot into that soaked little pussy and biting down on her shoulder to stop myself from crying out loud.

“Fuuuuck,” I whispered into her hair.

I didn’t realize how hard I was digging my fingers into her thighs until I stopped to catch my breath, heart pounding in my ears. She twisted around in my lap and looped her hand round my neck to kiss me deeply, my cock still in her. I drank up that kiss like a starved man, and pulled even deeper inside.

“Now I’m going to ask you one more time, Jack,” she said, voice so airy I was almost unsure whether I’d heard it at all. “Are you coming with me?”

It was a surreal moment. The chatter outside, the distant hum of airport announcements, and here, in my arms, the single best thing that had happened to me for a long, long time. I rocked and cradled her there, pressing against her neck, smelling her hot skin.

“Yes. Of course,” I breathed.

“Hey, you guys? There’s a line out here, okay?”

A sudden banging on the door had us both nearly leap out of our skins. Kay looked at me with the biggest grin on her face and then said, “I’m so sorry, I was feeling sick, we’ll be out in just a second,” she said, sounding nothing at all like a woman who’s just been thoroughly fucked only a minute ago. She gave me a naughty wink and in the next few minutes we both fumbled awkwardly. I slid softly out and she set to work with a clumsy clump of white tissue to mop everything up, both of us suddenly not finding much room for our half-dressed limbs in that tiny stall.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes we’d been in there. But then again, that was all it took. When she finally unlocked the door and we crept sheepishly out, Kay cleared her throat and walked out head held high. But I couldn’t keep a straight face, not with the half dozen horrified women looking at me as I skulked by. I shrugged.

“She was …sick,” I said, which was a hard lie to pull off when Kay seemed determined to march out there like that cat that had gotten the cream.

When we finally snaked our way to the exit and out, I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. We beamed at one another and laughed again, not quite able to believe what we’d just done. Just then, a commotion off to the side caught our attention and we spun to look as two security officers came trotting our way with deep frowns on their faces. My heart skipped a beat and I reached for her hand instinctively. But in the next second I followed the officers’ gaze up to the ceiling and realized what they were after.

Two black flashes disappeared swiftly over our heads, accompanied by sounds of surprise from the crowd below. We looked and saw two crows who had obviously flown into the main terminal and gotten trapped inside. Each so black they were like empty spaces, and as they flapped chaotically this way and that way, the security guards waved their arms in an attempt to get them towards the main exit.

“Get out of here!” one cried and rushed past us. The handful of women leaving the bathroom were no longer interested in the spectacle of Kay and I – everyone now had their heads momentarily lifted to watch the crow drama unfold.

“I said get out already!” the officer cried again and disappeared into the crowd after the birds.

I turned to Kay.

“Well, you heard the man,” she said with a mysterious smile. “Let’s get out of here.”