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She wasn't five steps in to her flat before she could tell he was there.
It wasn't because there was any obvious disturbance; the entry was how she left it too many hours ago. There were no lights on, no noises to be heard beyond the traffic far below and the ticking of the big grandfather clock. The panel on the alarm system flashed patiently, waiting for the code. She knew he was there because he could smell him. When one is used to coming home to the smell of fresh cut flowers, polished wood and old books it's hard to miss scent of gunpowder, spent adrenaline and exhaustion. She blithely thought to herself that things must have gone worse than reported in Berlin because this time she could also smell magnesium flares and gasoline.
It didn't take long to track him down. As she entered her darkened study she could immediately make out his silhouette against the city lights outside. He was sitting low in a big, black leather chair, facing away from the entryway. She always hated that thing. It was obnoxiously masculine and took up entirely too much space, but after her husband died she simply didn't have the heart to get rid of it. So it stayed and now another man that she was inevitably bound to til death sat in it.
She crossed her arms and peevishly cleared her throat. "Comfortable?"
That he was there was no surprise to her anymore. Like the neighborhood cat, he came and went as he pleased and she had long since stopped trying to keep him out. But she was slightly taken aback when he didn't respond. Crossing further in to the room she stopped about three feet behind the chair and took in the scene. His arms extended out on the wide rests, a glass of scotch held loosely in his right hand. From the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders it soon became apparent that the cheeky bastard was asleep.
If she was as intelligent as everybody thought she was, she would have smacked the back of his head and sent him on his way. But she was never as bright as required when it came to him and only came up behind to lean over him and take the glass from his hand. It was bad enough she was going to let him sleep off whatever brought him this time but she would be damned if she let him spill her best twenty-one year old single malt on her Oriental rug.
Gently pulling the heavy crystal from his hand, she ventured a look back at his face. Half expecting to see his eyes open at the contact, his face remained soft and his breathing slow and steady. It pulled on something in her that would take far more energy than she had at the moment to explore. There actually wasn't much to explore, if she was to be completely honest with herself. More than a few times after they parted company she had to take a deep, centering breath and would openly wish that she were thirty years younger. But then again she also had to fight the urge to exile him to a permanently snowed-in outpost in Siberia at least once a month so in the end it probably didn't mean much.
Leaning over his right shoulder, warmth seeped off his tired body in to hers. Placing the glass on a nearby end table, she watched herself brush the back of his hand with her fingers. His sleeves rolled up to the elbow, she traced a vein up over the corded muscles of his forearm and lightly skimmed her fingers over the expensive Egyptian cotton dress shirt. There was no change to his breathing, so her hand continued to the hard curve of his shoulder, up over a thick trapezius, nails scratching a light trail up the back of his neck.
Her hand finally stilled atop his head and she was about to take leave when suddenly his head flopped on to the back of the chair and he looked up at her. In the low light of the room, two pairs of blue eyes locked on to each other; one set old enough to definitely know better than to get caught, the other still young enough to not care if he did.
"You weren't asleep, were you?"
The slow grin that spread across his face was all the answer she needed.
She shook her head at herself and held in a long string of obscenities. Her hands dropped to frame his face, a few days worth of stubble scratching her palms, and for her final poor decision on the night, bent over and brushed the very faintest suggestion of a kiss across his lips. It was the closest thing to an apology that he was going to get.
"Since you let yourself in, can I trust that you'll see yourself out?"
He continued to grin up at her. "Yes, Ma'am."
With a final pat to his head, she nodded her thanks and made her way out of the study. Perhaps there was room at the frozen hut in Tunguska for her.