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"Red dress, ten o'clock," says Gaby.
In the lounge chair next to hers, Solo takes a sip of his martini. "Too neat," he says after a moment. "Too controlled. And see how she keeps her eyes on the food when the waiters are nearby, but doesn't order anything herself? I'd give her an excuse to misbehave. A temptation to give in to."
"Mm," Gaby says. "Not bad."
"Black moustache and loud shirt," Solo says. "Go."
Gaby watches the man for a minute. "He keeps moving his wrist to draw attention to his watch," she says. "He's impressed with his own wealth. He wants someone who'll be even more impressed than he is. Wide eyes, admiration, I'd have him like that." A snap of her fingers.
"This is stupid game," says Illya.
"Darling, did you hear something?" Solo says, turning to her.
"No, nothing at all," Gaby says. "I do not know this large person sitting behind us. He is a complete stranger. It would be very rude of him to be listening to our conversation like some kind of spy."
Illya mutters something in Russian, only just audible over the small thunder of the waves further down the beach, and Solo grins.
"Is that--no, too tall," Gaby says. "Still no sign of Robledo."
"So we might as well amuse ourselves while we wait," Solo says. "Can't you find a challenge for me?"
Gaby brushes sand from her tanned calf with the sole of the other foot, and Solo's eyes follow the movement. Gaby might as well be a gold necklace, for how impersonally hungry he looks. How does the English rhyme go? Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes.
"Green bathing shorts, white belt," she says.
A pause.
"I said a challenge," Solo says.
"Well then?"
"He's too sunburned to be anything but English," Solo says at once. "And rich enough for this resort, so: public school, as they say. Repressed and nostalgic. I'd just have to get him alone and remove my shirt."
"What sacrifices the CIA requires of its agents," Gaby says. She can almost feel Illya's accusing stare on the back of her neck, hot like direct sunlight.
Solo makes an amused noise and drains the rest of his martini. "Sure," he says. "Sacrifices."
***
"Who's a beautiful little thing?" Gaby cooes to the poodle. "Who's my gorgeous boy?"
"Why are we walking a dog," Illya says, "if you are going to hold it in your arms for the whole time?"
Gaby presses a kiss to the small dog's nose and sets it down again. It scampers ahead at once, and the lead looped around Gaby's wrist goes taut.
"The dog wants us to move too fast," she murmurs. "We will be out of the park by the time Solo is finished flirting."
Solo is sitting on a nearby bench, offering half a sandwich to its other occupant, a skittish banker who's being blackmailed to channel vast sums of money into the accounts of a criminal organisation. Perhaps he is being watched, and perhaps not. They are not taking any chances.
Illya shifts in his jacket in a way that means he is reassuring himself of his weapons. He slows his step even more and Gaby slows hers to match. The poodle cooperates by investigating a pile of leaves.
"Where did this dog come from?" Illya says suddenly.
"Spy dog," Gaby says solemnly. "Specially trained for covert operations. He looks cute, but if you whistle he will kill a man."
"Stop it."
"Illya. I advertised," Gaby says. "Dog walker, very cheap. I said yes to the first phone call, and here he is. We have to take him back in the evening."
Illya blinks and then smiles down at her. He still smiles like he is learning how, like he is surprised by it, every time. Gaby wets her lips and smiles back at him. She is thirsty and very aware of his body; she is still surprised by how much she likes that, the certainty of another person to lean on, after being alone so long.
Solo laughs, an unforced and easy sound that carries. He bends to tie his shoe and knocks over the banker's bag with his foot as he does so. Gaby flicks her eyes on the park's other occupants: a black-clad woman with a pram. Another couple, middle-aged. None paying any obvious attention to the men on the bench.
"He should not wear that colour," Illya says. "Too bright. American. And no good with those shoes."
"All the secret agents in the world," Gaby says, "and I am stuck with the two peacocks. Pfauen," she adds, at his blank look. "Russian? I do not know."
Illya's confusion clears. Apparently his German stretches further into the animal kingdom than his English; God knows why. He tugs at the cuff of his leather jacket and looks as though he is considering taking offense, but then, his face often looks like that.
"He is taking too long."
"Easy," Gaby murmurs, and keeps her hand linked through his tense arm. They walk on.
When she looks over at the bench again, Solo has his arm stretched across the back of it, and the banker is lighting cigarettes for the both of them with a hand that only shakes a little.
"Did he get the file?" she asks.
"Yes," Illya says, grudging. "It was good lift."
"It's all right," Gaby soothes. "Maybe they are waiting to attack Solo on the way back to the hotel. Maybe you will still get to fight someone."
Illya sighs and moves to covers her hand with his own. Instead he flicks her with his fingernail, precise.
"You think you are funny," he says.
***
Naples, in summer, and a thunderstorm turns the sky an oily black. Thunder rattles the windows, and lightning eventually cuts the power. Apologetic hotel staff light candles in their suite. It's hot and the air is damp and loud. Gaby's restlessness is unbearable. Her feet stick to the wooden floor and make small tacky sounds as she closes the curtains, creating an afternoon cave of flickering gold. She tugs her dress off over her head, walks right up to Illya and lifts her hands to the sweat-slick sides of his neck.
"Down," she says, and he sits, right there on the edge of the sofa where Gaby can climb into his lap and tug his face down to the the warm hollow between her breasts.
It's not the first time, but there's a roughness to it that she hasn't been able to coax out of him before. Illya has a fight beneath his fingernails, a storm in his heart to rival the one raging outside at the moment. Until now, with her, he has kept them both contained. It is important to him that he can be gentle.
Gaby likes gentle. Sometimes.
Sometimes she likes to fight.
He fucks her against the wall by the window, holding all of her weight, his hands huge and firm beneath her thighs. Lightning finds its way through a crack at the side of the curtain and illuminates the both of them in quick snatches, like a camera. Gaby's bare back slides against the wallpaper and she gasps, almost sobbing, as thunder follows hard on the lightning's heels. Maybe the crack of it vibrates through her. It would be hard to tell. Illya is inside her, outside her, everywhere.
She doesn't hear the knock, if there was one, and she doesn't hear the door open, but she's facing it, so she sees Solo step into their room with a cone of gelato in his hand. Of course he's been outside, in this weather. Of course he's found someone to serve him sweets. He's drenched, his shirt clinging to his body, his hair flat against his head and his eyes almost unreal in the candlelight, like glass marbles.
Gaby tightens her grip on Illya's shoulders and waits for Solo to leave. But he sweeps his gaze blatantly up and down both her and Illya before closing the door behind him, silent, and leaning against it with one leg crossed over the other. A gentleman of leisure, taking his time, finishing his treat. Gaby doesn't reward him with her attention. She has better things to do with it.
"That's it," she whispers in Illya's ear, in her roughened voice. "Fuck, please--" and Illya groans and shoves hard with his hips, almost too much. Gaby's lightheaded, needy.
When she next looks at Solo the cone is halfway to his chin, but motionless, and gelato is melting in a yellow trickle down his wrist. Their gazes meet. Solo blinks, looks down, and then licks himself clean with a quick swipe of his tongue.
Gaby comes soon after that, clenching her legs in a spasm around Illya's back. She feels like the force of her pleasure has left bruises on her skeleton.
When she looks again, Solo is gone.
***
"Third from the left," Solo says. "No, my left. That one."
Gaby plucks the spindly gadget from the leather roll and places it in Solo's hand.
"When I worked on my own," she says, "I did not have to break into nearly as many safes."
Solo has his ear pressed against the metal as turns the dial and angles his gadget in the lock. He casts her a quick glance and smiles.
"Now you have me," he says.
"Now I have Illya," Gaby says, provoking.
"Yes, and Waverly's putting us in the way of all sorts of people for him to punch," Solo says. "And all sorts of safes for me to break into. I think we're being deployed appropriately, don't you?"
Gaby holds up another of his lockpicks and turns it between her fingers. "You are dying to make a joke about blunt instruments, aren't you?"
"Come on, it's too easy," Solo says. He chalks something on the safe and twists the dial again. "You have to admit, I'm more like that thing in your hand. Much more--"
"Small?" Gaby says sweetly.
"Delicate."
"Yes, because that would have saved your life when you were strapped to a torture chair," Gaby says. "Delicacy."
Solo's mouth quirks. "Never said we didn't need him."
"We?" Gaby lowers her lashes and glances up at him through them. "What am I, in your toolbox?"
"You are a snake charmer," Solo says. The innuendo is so transparent that perhaps it's not there at all. "Your eyes, and your chin. Christ, you could hold all the venom in the world at bay."
Gaby doesn't know what to say to that. She feels like he needs slapping down, but...she's not sure that he wasn't absolutely serious.
"Here," Solo says, and beckons her over to the safe. He puts a warm hand to her cheek and guides her, moving her ear to lie flat against the door. "Listen," he says. His lips are slightly parted as he works, his eyes gone distant. Again he looks unreal, like a character on a movie screen.
The tiny metallic thuds and clicks seem to be coming from the bottom of an ocean or the end of a railway tunnel. This is just another language that Solo speaks and she does not.
"Every safe is like a person," he says. "Like a mark. You just have to find out what makes them tick, find out what they want, their own special lullaby. And sing it to them."
***
Here's the thing about Napoleon Solo: he only values something if he's stolen it. If he broke in with his own two hands.
***
"Gaby!" Illya shouts. "Behind you."
She spins, crouches. Even through the sound of yelling and of a man's body hitting steel and then the ground, she can hear the buzz of fabric ripping; she caught the knee of these trousers on barbed wire and now the tear gets wider every time she moves.
Her attacker doesn't hesitate in rushing a woman, but he's clearly not fought many before. He has no idea what to do with his height, his weight, when trying to take down someone whose centre of gravity is so different to his own. Gaby throws herself sideways and catches herself painfully on her hands, sweeping out an arc with her legs that catches the man in the knees.
Illya has a knife in one hand and an attacker's shirtfront in the other. As Gaby watches he uses his pinned man to knock out another, by banging their heads together, and then ducks under a sharp blow and comes up with the knife at a different angle, silent and unstoppable. He buries the blade in the man's jaw and there's a horrid gurgling sound. Gaby winces and looks away, looks at--
"Illya, gun," she screams.
It's in the hand of a man struggling upright from where she'd assumed he was stunned against the wall, swaying on his feet but holding his weapon steady. Gaby's shout draws first his attention and then the barrel of the gun.
She looks frantically at Illya, Illya's looking at her, and she sees in an urgent flash the next few seconds as clearly as if they're actually happening. Illya trying to put himself in between her and the bullet. Illya failing. Or: Illya succeeding.
Above their heads there's a metallic sound and a vent panel falls, with a violent clatter and clash, from the air duct.
The man with the gun looks sharply upwards just in time to get a faceful of Napoleon Solo, who falls through the gap like a fluid shadow in his matte black burglary gear. Solo manages to gets the man's head between his knees, twists with his hands even as the man is falling under his weight, gets one hand in place to catch the gun as it falls from limp fingers, shoves backwards in an awkward leap and then lands, somehow, on his feet.
The man, who in the space of three seconds has become a corpse, finishes toppling forward.
It's better than the Moscow Circus. Gaby wants to break into applause.
They stand there, the three of them, looking from one face to another. All of them are bleeding from somewhere, all of them breathing hard. Gaby has joy in her stomach for the first time since her father died: a blown glass bubble of joy, both delicate and strong.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Solo says finally, "were you two saving that one for later?"
Illya laughs, low and clear and true.
***
"Good lord, Gaby, what an odd question," Waverly says. "Is it some kind of code?"
"What do you think?" Gaby says. She wraps the telephone cord in idle loops around her wrist.
"And you want me to play along. All right," Waverly muses. "Well, they both have their charms, don't they? As Her Majesty's faithful servant, I--and by extension, you, I suppose--should be casting a vote in favour of the canine breed. Given the corgis. Do you know, last time I was at the palace one of the little beasts peed on my shoe?"
"You sound like a cat person," Gaby says. She gives the cord a speculative tug, pulling it tight. Her skin goes white on either side of it. "Cats need less from you. Which can be good, can be bad."
"Why am I having this conversation with you?" Waverly says plaintively. "I am an important man."
"It is an important conversation," says Gaby.
"I have a meeting with the Prime Minister--"
"We are your elite intelligence unit."
He sighs. "And I care deeply about the cohesion of your group, of course I do. If there's tension, can't you appeal to their better natures? Professionalism? Set aside differences in the name of your shared higher purpose, et cetera."
"Better natures. Yes." Gaby doesn't bother to point out that's not the kind of tension she's concerned with. She picks up the body of the telephone in her other hand and, stepping daintily over the cord as it tries to tangle itself around her ankles, carries it out into the main room of the suite, where she points the receiver in the direction of her partners and raises her voice. "Can you please tell our director why you are in law enforcement?"
Illya's brows lower. His fingers tremble near his leg. "To show I am worth more than my father."
"To avoid prison," calls Solo.
Gaby nods in thanks and returns the receiver to her ear. "War criminals took my father from me."
"Right. So," Waverly says. "My elite intelligence unit is in fact comprised of daddy issues, more daddy issues, and a sociopathic underwear model."
Gaby raises her eyebrows and lets the silence agree for her.
"Well," says Waverly, sounding bizarrely heartened. "I've worked with worse."
***
"You are crazy," Illya says.
"No," Solo says, "I have eyes."
Gaby pulls her stockings up her legs, enjoying the slow roll of silk, careful with her fingernails. Taking her time. It's easy to ruin a brand new pair if you're too impatient, if you don't handle them with the care they require.
"I can choose. My own tie."
Solo throws a line of ties over his arm like a fisherman expertly laying herrings out to dry: flop, flop, flop. He holds this arm at the height of Illya's neck. "Yes, Illyusha, and you insist on wearing a hat that I am waiting to see incinerated."
Illya makes an angry sound; Illya, who mistrusts feather pillows as decadent and corrupting but can still spot Dior at ten paces. Gaby bites gently down on her own lip. She will have to reapply her lipstick.
"I show you Illyusha," Illya growls, losing his grammar in annoyance, but Solo taps two fingers against the snarl of his mouth and he goes quiet. Gaby watches from the corner of her eye, fascinated. She can't tell if it's fury-quiet or aroused-quiet, or even if Solo knows enough to find the slim difference between the two.
"This one," Solo says, and hands Illya a patterned tie of dark green, shot through with mustard and red. Gaby wouldn't have picked it out herself, but she looks from the tie to the dirty gilt of Illya's hair, and wonders.
Illya stares flatly at the back of Solo's head as Solo goes to put the rejected ties away, but his hands are already undoing the knot of the grey tie he's currently wearing.
Solo rummages in his bag and then crosses the room again, heading straight for Gaby this time.
"For you, Fräulein," he says. "To match the dress."
Gaby's dress is a deep peach, flaring out from her waist in frothy layers, with chiffon draped across the front from shoulder to shoulder. She has white shoes with silver buckles, and silver hoops in her ears. She snuck out with Solo to buy this outfit two days ago and Illya has yet to forgive her for the betrayal.
Dangling from Solo's grip is a bracelet of pink diamonds strung together, a slender thing, and all the more luxurious for it. Delicate is the word Gaby is obstinately trying not to think.
He fastens it around her wrist and Gaby remembers--ice cream, melting. The flash of his tongue like light sparkling off gems.
"How beautiful," she says.
"Wide eyes and admiration, Agent Teller?" says Solo. "And here I've barely been showing off my watch at all."
She smiles. "You play games with me, I play games with you."
Illya comes to stand beside her and lifts her forearm. He runs one finger beneath the bracelet, all the way around, a slow caress that makes the hairs rise on Gaby's arms. "It is lovely," he agrees. "From where did you steal it?"
"Don't be jealous, sweetheart," Solo says. "I got you something as well."
"I am not your sweetheart, Cowboy," Illya says.
Solo raises his eyebrows, already halfway to congratulating himself on a needling well done.
"Believe me," Illya goes on, slow and amused, a voice he doesn't bring out very often. It took Gaby nearly a month of sleeping with him to know it existed at all. "You would know."
Solo's expression freezes in place.
Gaby manages not to laugh.
***
Here's the thing about Gabrielle Teller: she's been elbow-deep in enough cars to know that paint means nothing and papers can always be faked. The truth is in the grease and the guts of the engine. The truth requires a little...dismantling.
***
She's never managed to truly surprise Illya again, now that he knows she can drive him to the ground with her shoulder planted in his solar plexus, but she loves that sometimes he lets her do it anyway. He chooses his moments. He likes, for example, when there is a plush rug for him to fall onto.
Gaby has already kicked off her shoes. She looks down at him and plants her foot in the centre of his chest.
Illya lifts a hand to the back of her calf and smiles up at her, and Gaby smiles helplessly back. She wriggles her toes a little. His steady heartbeat nudges at the ball of her foot. There's so much weight to him, all of him, his devotion and his strength and his drive. And his KGB handlers did nothing but slice him slowly to ribbons with the knife of guilt. Gaby feels fierce just thinking about it: that he was wasted like that, for so long. He's out from the box that held him now. She's out from behind the Wall. Solo is--well, Solo moves happily in a labyrinth of his own making, but Gaby's going to find the end of that thread and knot it around herself, around Illya. Nobody goes out alone. That's what a team is.
"Are you going to stand there all day?" Illya says. His hand makes slow, purposeful sweeps, ticklish at the back of her knee. He could pull her to the ground; he could throw her against the wall. He could snap her ligaments and barely even try.
He watches her with parted lips. Gaby's skin is too hot and she's losing her train of thought.
"Give me your hands," she says.
He reaches up. She slides her fingers through his, all ten of them. When she was a child she would do this with her father, hover over him like this, put her hands in his; he would put his socked feet against her stomach and lift until she was flying, her legs held straight, making aeroplane noises and giggling.
She takes her foot from Illya's body and kneels down, one knee on either side of him, until she's seated on his chest.
"Gaby," Illya whispers. His hands are a haven, huge and secure.
Gaby leans down and brushes her lips against the scar beside his eye. Gets her thumb underneath the strap of his father's watch and runs it all the way around.
***
"Do you have to sit on my preparation space?" Solo says.
Gaby reaches into the bag of dried apricots and steals one, not fast enough to escape a rap with the wooden spoon. His hands are quicker than hers.
Waverly wants them all in Istanbul for long enough that they've rented a flat, which means that Gaby has a ring on her finger again, though no bells on her toes. Perhaps she will buy some at the markets, from which Solo has started bringing home absurd amounts of food: cinnamon, lamb, aubergines, strings of garlic, bottles of olive oil with the green glow of the sea.
Gaby sits on the bench of the kitchen, kicking her bare feet and stealing pieces of chopped carrot from the board before they can be tipped into a pot. Solo grinds pepper, tastes, grinds again. His hair is neat, his apron a disaster; he looks both fussy and relaxed, just like he does when safe-breaking. It seems bizarre, now, that Gaby's first impression of him was of someone who would wedge a car strategically between two buildings, climb through a window, and then glide over both a minefield and the Berlin Wall with Gaby in one hand and a gun in another.
Delicacy, Gaby thinks. Finesse. A word with a hiss at the end.
"I cannot believe you sent Illya out to find saffron," she says.
"I can't believe he went," says Solo.
He sucks a splash of sauce from the side of his thumb, and meets Gaby's eyes as she's doing the same, belated, where the spoon left a red-orange streak like fresh blood on the skin of her wrist. Solo's eyes darken and go teasing.
"Do you want another taste?" he says.
Gaby kicks out her legs, draws him closer with a bossy nudge of her heels, and lifts her chin.
"I don't know," she says. "I don't think much of American cooking."
"Really." Solo puts his hands on her thighs, unruffled. Trying to force her bluff. "I bet I could change your mind."
Gaby hooks her fingers over the top of the apron and pulls him in. The bench is tall enough that their faces are level, their lips so close that she can feel his indrawn breath.
"What do you bet?" she whispers.
Solo kisses her like the next volley in an argument, light and sharp. Gaby wraps her arms around his neck and doesn't let him pull away. She was sure this would be good and she wasn't wrong. Solo tangles a hand in her hair and kneads at the back of her neck so that she moans into his mouth. She can smell rosemary on his skin, taste pepper on his tongue, and when she pulls back she licks her lips deliberately.
Solo watches her with his blue thief's eyes. His flirtation has transformed into something hotter, a lot more careful and a lot less impersonal. It makes Gaby's pulse race and her feet tingle; her body in his arms feels like a rope pulled taut.
"Then again," Gaby says. "Perhaps it is unfair. Illya and I, we have not talked about this. He might have--expectations."
Solo says at once, "I can think of a solution. A way to make it fair for everyone."
"How do you know he will agree?" she says dubiously. "How do you know he wants you?"
Solo steps away and makes a face at her that says, clearer than words: don't be absurd. He turns back to the pot where it is simmering over the stove's flame.
"He is easily spooked," says Gaby.
"I can think of a solution to that, too," says Solo.
***
"You like your women strong," Gaby says. "Tell me, how do you like your men?"
"You put him in handcuffs?" Illya says.
Gaby slides her arm around his hips, rubs her cheek up against his shirt.
"You know," she says, sneaking a look up at Illya, "he is much more appealing when he keeps his hands where you can see them."
Illya licks his lips, gazing at Solo. Who is, yes, handcuffed to the bed. Illya's eyes have the focus that usually comes when he's waiting in the shadows for a guard to approach, or when they're fixed on the road as his foot slams down on the accelerator. When he inhales, she feels the depth of it, the unsteadiness.
Solo gives a kind of wriggle that speaks mostly of an ache in his shoulders, but comes out seductive anyway. He's got that kind of body. Hell, he's got that kind of personality.
"Might I point out," he says, "that I am overcoming years of instincts not to break out of these, and I think I deserve some recognition for that. Or a blowjob. Either one, really."
Illya goes still and tense at the word blowjob and Gaby imagines a lit match being touched to the end of a fuse.
"But you could break out," Gaby says.
Solo eyes her with the hint of a suspicious furrow in his brow. "Now, now, don't you use that voice on me, that--stroking a man's ego voice. I've heard it too many times."
"Oh, Agent Solo, you're so clever, you're a master of escape."
Solo rattles the handcuffs. Bends his fingers down towards his wrists, then gets his mouth close to one of the metal locks. Then, impressively, his toes.
Gaby watches, feeling Ilya breathe ever more quickly beside her. Heat is building in her belly. She had those pairs of handcuffs made for her, at a fair expense. She can break out of them. There's a trick to it.
"You look ridiculous," Illya notes.
"I have no bad angles," says Solo, muffled, and Gaby has to admit that folding himself in half like that certainly creates a perspective that's rife with possibilities. She gives the solid, almost vibrating muscles of Illya's side a squeeze.
"Having problems, my friend?" she enquires of Solo.
Fzzzz, goes the fuse in her mind.
Solo lowers his legs to the bed, panting, and subsides. His fingers uncurl and his palms look somehow more bare, more vulnerable, than before.
"Gaby, my dear," Solo says. "Would you mind coming over here so I can kick you very hard?"
"He really cannot escape," says Illya. His voice is almost a growl.
"No," says Gaby. She leans up on her tiptoes and kisses him on the jaw. "He can't."
"Fuck," says Solo. His whole body tenses again, tendons standing out in his arms; then, abruptly, he relaxes. He looks right at Illya and his mouth is soft, wicked, promising a reckoning and much, much more. "Illya. Um."
***
Here's the thing about Illya Kuryakin: his walls are thick, but his tumblers will one by one fall sweetly into place if you know the right song to sing.
***
"Jesus," Solo gasps. "Gaby, we should--Christ," as Illya finally buries himself all the way inside.
"Yes?" Gaby says.
Solo has to breathe in and out, a few times, through pursed lips. The skin of his wrists is white and red where the metal digs in.
"We should retire from the seduction game. All we need to do is have Illya fuck them. That's a sizeable concealed weapon we've got on our--fuck. On our side."
"You talk--too much," Illya gasps.
Gaby, lying on her side, obliges. She's propped up on one elbow, but she teases two fingertips of her other hand against Solo's mouth until he sucks them inside.
Illya is quiet but for the grunt of his breath, his hands generous and commanding, angling Solo's hips up or adjusting the angle of his knees. There is so much in this bed, so much maleness and banked heat and pressure like springs kept wound too tight. Gaby thought she'd prepared herself for it, but she's still stunned. Still has to stop her hand from shaking when she pulls it away, with a final caress of Solo's slick and panting mouth.
"I can do better," Solo says. He gives a rough laugh that sends heat spiking sharply between Gaby's legs. "Illya. You don't believe me? Let me out of these cuffs, and I'll ride you into the floor."
Illya pauses with a stutter of his hips. His chest is heaving now.
"Illya," Gaby says, fond. "It is a trap."
Illya pulls himself higher on his knees and bends to touch his forehead to Solo's, spills a stream of Russian almost against Solo's mouth, and shoves into him hard enough that Solo cries, "God," and screws his eyes shut.
It doesn't take Illya long to come after that. By the time he pulls out, Solo's looking both wild and petulant, his cock red and wetly bobbing against his stomach.
Illya, once he's caught his breath, looks faintly disappointed. Solo gives a shaky laugh.
"Don't take it as a mark against your performance, my very large Russian friend," he says. "I've always needed more of a helping hand. So to speak. And mine are--occupied."
"I can take things from here," Gaby says.
She's been happy to watch and touch up until now; she had enough wine with dinner that her own need was less urgent. But she's wet and aching and feeling pleased with herself. She's ready to take what she wants.
She strokes Solo's cock gently as sits astride his thighs. His head thumps back on the pillow and he bites his lip, looking impossibly debauched.
A thought occurs to Gaby.
"Solo," she says. "Tell me there has been someone on this cock in between the woman who killed my father, and me."
"Darlene," Solo says at once. "Maggie--or was it Meggie? And the bartender at the Savoy when we were in London, didn't catch his name. Gloria. Marcus. The Brazilian ambassador's secretary--sorry, should I keep going?"
"You," Illya rumbles disapprovingly, "are slut."
"I am promiscuous in the service of world peace," says Solo. "I am--ah. Jesus."
Gaby lowers herself onto Solo, bracing herself like a gymnast with her hands flat against the warm, trim plane of his abdomen. His cock is smaller than Illya's, differently shaped, with a smooth upwards curl she finds very promising.
"I agree with Illya," she says.
"Thank you," says Illya.
Gaby sits back, settles herself carefully on Solo's hips, stretched and satisfied. She feels herself clench reflexively around him and enjoys the way his eyelids flutter closed and his chin jerks sideways.
"Yee-haw," murmurs Solo.
Gaby slaps him across the mouth, chiding. She realises her mistake when he turns his face back to hers and she sees the sparkle in his eyes, the way his lips have parted; Gott in Himmel, of course. His wrists have been chafed past the point of blood by those handcuffs, and he hasn't said a word about it.
"You little witch. You snake charmer, you," Solo says, and bends his knees up in a sudden shove so that Gaby falls forward and has to catch herself, the fingers of both her hands buried in the dark hair of his chest. Her fingertips digging hard into his muscle. The change in the angle of him inside her is--is something.
Gaby exhales a sound that is horribly like a mewl and leans all the way down, presses her lips to the base of his throat to hide the noise there. She feels a warm hand, huge and gentle, glide up her spine and bury itself in her hair.
"Illya," she says, into Solo's skin.
Illya lifts her head up, still so gentle; there's barely a sting of pain in her scalp even though he is manoeuvring her by the hair. He turns her head and kisses her, deep, sending new shivers down Gaby's neck. Gaby leans into it gladly, and her lips feel swollen by the time he releases her to breathe hot and ragged against her cheek.
"Don't mind me," Solo says.
"Oh, you want a kiss too?" Gaby moves her hips in small circles. Pleasure sighs down her legs. She's not in any hurry.
"If it's not too much trouble," Solo says. The suavity has been sanded from the surface of his voice, exposing the need beneath, and he gazes up at her with almost no blue left in his too-charming eyes. It's good. Desperate looks good on him.
"Illya," Gaby says, inviting.
She wonders if it will be angry, forceful. The equivalent of fists and bullets. But Illya is an ocean, and the furious waves on the surface are little more than tiny bumps in comparison to the depths of stillness beneath: once you've calmed him properly, taken him all the way down, he stays calm. And it turns out that Napoleon Solo firmly fastened to a secure frame is a very soothing sight.
So Illya stretches out beside Solo and makes himself comfortable, leans over with serious eyes, and kisses him like he kisses Gaby: with patience and with passion.
"Fuck," Solo gasps, when he's given a chance to breathe.
"Yes," Gaby agrees, and starts to ride.
***
Solo washes the deep grazes at his wrists in the bathroom. He dabs iodine over them afterwards and so there are dark yellow rings there, like old bruises, when he finishes and goes to pour himself a drink from the decanters by the window. He hasn't bothered to dress at all; Illya is draped across the bed on his stomach, chin on folded arms, watching him. The view is certainly an excellent one.
Gaby waits until Solo is about to take a sip before she says, "Underwear model?"
The glass pauses at his lips. "It was for a job," he says.
"Lie," says Illya, lazily.
"Hm," says Solo. He hides the start of a smile in his drink. "How did you know?"
Illya shrugs. "You have a tell."
"You take that back," Solo says, but lightly. He looks at Gaby. "And how did you know about--oh, Waverly. Damn, that man's good at digging up dirt."
"I should hope so," Gaby says. She wraps herself in most of a sheet and props her feet on the muscled expanse of Illya's back; he turns his head and gives her a smile, slow, like the signals down his nerves are working with a delay. Gaby smiles back and braces herself. Deep breath. She's a spy; confessions don't come easily. "You must remind me: when we see him in person, he owes me fifty pounds."
"Oh?" says Solo.
"I did tell him I could make you think it was your own idea." Gaby gives an elaborate sigh. "He recruited me. You would think he would have more faith."
They are both smart men, in their way. It is testament to the brain-loosening orgasms recently enjoyed by everyone in the room, Gaby figures, that it takes nearly ten seconds for that to sink in.
"You conned us?" says Illya, indignant.
"You conned me?" says Solo.
Gaby laughs in her throat and gives a lazy two-fingered salute, flicking her wrist with a flourish. "You're welcome, tovarischi."
Solo's mouth twitches and he pours himself another generous measure of scotch. Anger never sticks to him long. Nothing sticks. That's the point: you've got to get yourself square in his palm, right beneath his fingers, and then persuade him that he wants to tighten his grip.
"You actually bet Waverly fifty pounds?" Solo says. "No," he answers himself, watching her. "That was you easing us into the idea."
Gaby shrugs; can they blame her? One of them's vain and one of them's volatile. Handling them like the tangled wires of an explosive device is working so far.
"It just seems unnecessary," Solo says. Unspoken is the implication that he'd have fucked either or both of them, much earlier than this, at the vaguest invitation.
"You steal things," Gaby points out. "It is what you do best. It is what you enjoy best. You liked it better this way."
"I steal statues, jewellery, art," Solo says. "I steal beautiful objects."
"Are you telling Illya he is not beautiful?" Gaby says, pressing a hand to her heart and swooning back amongst the pillows. "You're saying that to his face?"
Solo coughs around his mouthful of alcohol. He turns a nonplussed expression on Illya.
Illya turns a thunderous one on Gaby.
"No, you're right," Solo says. "Look at that chin. Look at the glowing light of murder in his eyes. Gorgeous."
"Gaby," says Illya. "I am not a poodle."
"No?" says Gaby. "You would kill a man if I whistled."
"He would kill the man anyway," says Solo.
Gaby looks at Illya, then over at Solo. She crosses her legs, releasing Illya from beneath her feet, and smiles.
"Fetch," she says.