Gulping back the urge to drag him into bed—the slow undressing be damned—she unbuttoned his jeans.
As she reached, he grabbed her wrist. She looked up sharply. And noticed him looking at the ring on her hand.
Five carats’ worth of being another man’s woman.
“We never made love,” she explained. “And Vladimir knew from the start that I was never really his.”
“I feel funny.”
“Do you want me to take it off?”
“No, I guess not,” Austin said. “He is a brother to both of us, isn’t he?”
Tarini nodded.
He unbuttoned his jeans. Then he put his wallet beside the gun. Pulling his handcuffs out of his back pocket, he flung them down on the nightstand. He finished pulling off his jeans and then he stood before her, hard and strong. She leaned back against the pillows, watching him, feeling a mixture of pride and awe.
He was hers for pleasure—if only for the night.
“Come here,” she said huskily. “I can’t wait much longer.” She knew it would be good.
He slid on top of her, holding his weight on his elbows so that he didn’t crush her. His flesh against hers satisfied a longing she hadn’t known was so deep, and ignited a fire she hadn’t expected to burn so hot. She wanted him inside her, wanted to take every inch of him, but she knew from experience he liked to take his time, to draw things out in lingering and exquisite torment.
“I won’t hurt you, will I?” he asked abruptly.
“I’m just pregnant, not an invalid.”
“There’s nothing ‘just’ about it. Don’t let me do anything that will harm the baby.”
She brought him close to her face, but as she led him, he took over. He kissed her, exploring every inch of her mouth with his tongue, sucking her lower lip, and then relinquishing her just as she could bear no more of his sweetness.
She rubbed her hips against him, and still he hung back, holding his manhood inches from her pleasure, his hard thighs entwined with hers but contracted just shy of union.
The touch excited but did not satisfy.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she urged.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded.
And it was as if he were an animal that had been released from its restraints. He took her flesh as his, and though he caressed the core of her womanhood with his palm to bring her to readiness, she stopped him. He had introduced her to many variations of ecstasy in their brief affair, but she wanted only one thing tonight.
She wanted him on top of her, inside of her, between her legs. Taking her as his woman.
“Now, Austin,” she urged again.
She didn’t have to say more, he didn’t ask what she wanted. He knew. They were both fluent in their own language of lovemaking. He joined his body with hers with a deep, powerful thrust. She wrapped her strong, sleek legs around him.
And then he held nothing back.
They came together, in shuddering moans. He buried his head in the base of her neck. She thought she heard him call her name. She wanted him to, wanted to hear him want her and no other woman. She wanted to believe that she had been forgiven for her deceptions and that they had a chance together.
She felt the final concentric spasms of her orgasm. And then came the exhaustion she had denied so long. The quiet was broken by a log dropping on the stove’s grill.
“Tarini, I’m sorry I doubted you,” Austin said, rolling off her and pulling her into a spoonwise embrace. “You were a virgin, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “There’s never been another man.”
“Why didn’t you tell me at the time?”
“I didn’t want you to know because I thought it would scare you.”
“It would have made all the difference in the world. I couldn’t have made love to you.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now I wonder how badly I’ve taken advantage of you. In December. Tonight. Here.”
Tarini felt a cold stillness though he lay snug against her back, his arms cradling her.
“Taken advantage of me?” she asked hollowly.
“Yes.”
Tarini, you are a fool, she thought. His words didn’t sound like love, didn’t mention a future, didn’t hold out any hope. He wasn’t making any promises and he wasn’t asking her for any. That was Austin—how he had been and how he was now.
She had liked that quality in him before, had seen it as hardheaded realism in an uncertain world. After all, where would anybody be in a year, in two, in a decade? Besides, Austin for a husband was unthinkable. He was too independent.
And besides, what American could fathom the odd customs and traditions of Byleukrainian culture? Tarini had enough trouble figuring out all things American and she didn’t doubt that Austin would have trouble understanding anything about Byleukrainia that hadn’t been taught to him by Vlad. Even with the years of practice at tolerance and appreciation of others that diplomatic life gives, Austin could be pretty pigheaded about learning new things.
Still, something had happened to her when the gun went off on that riverbed. When she had killed, when she had come this close to death. When she had a baby to protect and suddenly felt that primal need to find a man’s strength to shield her for the coming months.
Not just any man would do. Only the father of her baby. Only her husband—because that’s what a father to her baby must be.
That’s how traditional my thinking goes in an emergency, Tarini thought wryly. So much for modern womanhood. She felt safety only in his arms.
“You haven’t taken advantage of me,” she said stiffly. “You said it yourself. I’m a survivor. Besides, I’m the one who did the asking. Tomorrow we’ll forget this.”
“Is that how you want it?”
No! Her mind screamed.
But she was proud. She had gone down on her knees to bring him to her bed, she wasn’t going to beg for a ring or a relationship or even for him to buy her a cup of coffee in the morning.
“Fine with me,” she said casually.
He stared at her but she looked away.
So they weren’t headed for the altar. They were headed for some lawyer’s office, where they’d work out weekends and holidays and who would pick their child’s summer camp.
It looked like a fate nearly as terrible as being deported.
“Tarini?” Austin asked softly. “Does it have to be this way?”
She bit back a sharp retort which would have reminded him that “this way” was his choice, not hers. Instead, she rolled over with her back to him and murmured that she was too sleepy to think straight.
The truth was, her thinking was as straight as it had ever been. She had made love to him and it had been physically pleasurable. She should leave it at that.
At last, she felt Austin’s breath still and she knew that the harrowing day had finally caught up with him, even as her nervous energy kept her thoughts racing. She had to know before he fell into sleep.
“What are we going to do next?” she asked quietly, kicking his leg gently to awaken him.
He moaned and stirred. “I have to persuade Karinolov to leave you and the baby alone,” he groaned.
“How will you do that?”
“Either I’ll be on my knees or I’ll have a gun against his forehead. I haven’t really formulated a plan. In any event, you’re not going. You’re taking our child into hiding. I’m taking you into the city. Bob will watch you. Understand?”
“No way.”
“He’s the only man I trust completely, Tarini. He’ll protect you.”
“You’d be putting his family in danger if I stayed at their apartment.”
“Bob will take you someplace safe.”
“And what about Vlad?”
Silence. And then the heavy words that cut into her heart.
“I think we’ve lost whatever chance we had to rescue him—at least for the moment. The baby has to come first. I�
��m sure Vlad would understand.”
But Tarini knew that Austin was the one who didn’t understand. Tarini knew that, against all the evidence, Austin regarded the kidnapping as his own fault, as his failing of a friend. She also knew that relinquishing the hope of finding Vlad destroyed what was most vital about his manhood.
“As soon as Karinolov knows I’m not carrying a Romanov baby, he’ll back off,” Tarini said confidently.
“No, not at all,” Austin replied. “You were engaged to Vlad, however briefly. No matter where you are, no matter how we raise our child, the rumors will always be there.”
“So what will we do?”
“I may have to send you into hiding.”
Tarini suppressed a retort at the assumption that he had to do something about her at all. “Like the federal witness-protection system?” She asked instead. “Forget it. Because I won’t leave my family behind.”
“Your mother would understand the stakes. And your sister is a traitor.”
“My sister is a foolish young girl!”
“Let’s not start that again.”
The air crackled with silent tension. A standoff.
“Tarini?” Austin asked. “You aren’t hatching some kind of plan, are you? Because I’d like to get some sleep before I take on Karinolov, and I can only do it if I know that you’re not going to run off on one of your disastrous escapades.”
Tarini glared at his pillow.
“And don’t swear under your breath at me in your native language,” he warned. He didn’t open his eyes. “You forget, I can understand everything you’re saying. I don’t appreciate being referred to as the underbelly of a cow.”
“Then I’ll say it in English—you’re a controlling, domineering, pigheaded…”
Click.
Tarini stared at her wrist in horror.
He had cuffed her to the headboard in one swift motion and then had rolled over with a pillow over his head as if he was going right back to sleep.
He really was a—
“Don’t say it,” Austin warned.
Chapter Fourteen
“You just cuffed me!”
“Yeah, I did,” Austin groaned from under the pillow.
“You can’t do this to me!”
Though Austin kept his head under the pillow, his words came through loud and clear.
“I can and I did.”
“It’s barbaric.”
“And absolutely necessary if I’m going to sleep.”
“You just made love to me and now you’re making me a prisoner!”
He pulled his head out from under the pillow and looked at her with weary eyes.
“Tarini, maybe I was wrong to make love to you. But while you can ask for my apology, you can’t make me feel guilty enough to take those cuffs off.”
“But…”
“Maybe I took advantage of you, but there are many men who would have done the same in my shoes. You gave me every signal in the world that you wanted to make love as much as I did. I felt good. And, you did, too.”
“I did feel good! But…” Her words faltered, but her outrage did not. “But I didn’t ask to be put in cuffs afterward! You’re acting like a territorial animal. You make love to me and then want to own me.”
“This has nothing to do with ownership,” He said bluntly. “Tarini, I’m warning you. I’ll do anything to get a good night’s sleep. If handcuffs aren’t enough, I’ve got a handkerchief in my jeans pocket to tie around your mouth and I’ve got a length of rope in the trunk of Bob’s car that’ll go nicely around your—”
She shivered. “I get the picture,” she interrupted regally. “Go to sleep, macho man.”
“I’m planning on it, little lady,” he said blithely.
With a frustrated growl, he turned over and jammed the pillow back over his head.
Tarini yanked at the cuff. The headboard was solid. The cuffs were locked.
“You’re not going anywhere tonight,” Austin muttered from beneath his pillow. “So why don’t you just go to sleep? I’m sure you could use some.”
She rattled the cuffs a few times, to show she could make his night hell, regardless. But he didn’t respond. And after a while she got tired of goading him.
She was trapped.
She stared at the man beside her.
“I don’t think I can bring up this baby with you in the picture,” she concluded aloud. “I think the idea of our doing anything so important as raising a child together is ludicrous.”
“Give me the baby when it’s born and you won’t have to.”
“I’m not giving up my own child!”
“Then you’ll have to learn to do what I tell you to do,” he said, pulling his head out from under the pillow. “Starting with this—you’re not getting anywhere near Karinolov. I take care of Karinolov. You take care of the baby.”
He lay down, clearly satisfied with how he had assigned their responsibilities. Within minutes he was asleep.
But as his breath grew quiet and rhythmic, Tarini brooded and fidgeted and swore at herself for having given an inch to this testosterone cowboy.
She stared at the ceiling, spidery with plasterrepair jobs made over the years.
Having a baby with this man was like signing herself into prison. A prison in which the warden had the two most potent deterrents to escape: her child and her own wantonness.
Even now, as he stretched in sleep and rolled over onto his back, she wanted to caress the ladder of muscles running down his stomach, she wanted to stroke the golden curls at his groin, to take in her hand the rising manhood.
“Get a grip, Tarini,” she whispered. “You’re not going to be his serf.”
She threw the sheet over his body and promised herself that she’d never, ever give in to temptation again.
Then she noticed Austin’s jeans lying on the floor just five feet from the bed. Where he had dropped them in the striptease that had been her undoing.
Men never put away their clothes, she thought with annoyance that soon turned into a self-satisfied smile. Now that basic and universal biological fact was about to set her free.
“So I have to learn to do what you tell me, huh?” she whispered to Austin.
But he slept on, oblivious even as she slid the bed out from the wall the bare inches she needed to reach the jeans with her foot. She dragged the jeans toward her with her big toe grasping a belt loop.
Once she had them, she fished his key chain out of his pocket and unlocked the cuffs. Her wrists felt red and raw and her ankle throbbed angrily. She might be in the middle of nowhere, but she was free.
She looked at Austin, a slow smile coming to her lips. A smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“We could have been…” Her smile faltered, and she couldn’t finish her sentence.
It wasn’t any fun to taunt him while he slept. Or when she was walking out on him.
AFTER QUICKLY DRESSING in the clean clothes he had purchased for her, she hobbled toward the pay phone at the side of the roadhouse. She emptied her purse on the ground, pulled out enough change to buy an orange soda and a bag of chips from the vending machine—the rest she used for the call.
A chill went through her when no one answered the phone at her mother’s apartment. At one o’clock in the morning? Where was her mother? Where was her sister? Was Tanya with Karinolov?
On a dreadful hunch, she placed a second call to the mission.
“Ah, Tarini, I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Karinolov’s smooth-as-silk voice answered.
“Look, call off your men and stay away from my sister,” Tarini said. “This isn’t Vlad’s baby.”
“A nice try, but hardly convincing. And drearily expected.”
“It’s Austin’s child.”
There was a sharp breath and then silence.
She hadn’t wanted to tell him that she carried Austin’s child, aware of the deep personal hatred between the two men. Still, she had spoken the truth. And surely
Karinolov would respond to the truth.
“‘A’ for effort, Tarini. Still, I don’t believe you. Austin doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who would allow the woman who’s carrying his child to get out of his grasp. You are the fiancée of a Romanov. You carry his child.”
“Vladimir is sterile.”
“Ha! Much more creative, but still, Tarini, that’s impossible.”
She explained everything and waited for him to digest the new information.
“Tarini, you are to come here immediately,” he said shakily.
“I wouldn’t get near you if—”
“I’ve got your mother.”
“My mother!”
Tarini was shocked. Her sister she could understand being at the mission, but Mama? She clutched the telephone receiver more tightly, willing herself to stay cool and think clearly. “Prove it”
“I don’t have to.”
He hung up.
Tarini stared at the receiver and then, as the dial tone came on, she hung up. She looked at the cabin where Austin slept. She could go to him, tell him that Karinolov might have her mother. But he would charge into danger alone—something Tarini couldn’t bear when her mother’s life was at stake.
She trudged up to the road, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle. Headlights appeared over the distant hill. She put out her thumb and waited. A light blue Nissan pulled to a halt.
“It couldn’t be,” Tarini murmured.
But the passenger-side window slid open, revealing Tanya’s pixieish face.
“Oh, Tarini, I’m so glad I found you!” she cried out. “I’ve been driving up and down these roads for hours. I had just about given up.”
Tarini slid into the car and the sisters hugged each other. As she pulled back from Tanya’s embrace, Tarini shoved away her suspicions at how Tanya had found her.
Tanya was no professional, she was an amateur. But an amateur in love with a dangerous man.
“Tanya,” Tarini said, studying her sister carefully. “How did you find me?”
“I told you! I’ve been driving for hours. When I heard about the shooting, I drove up here,” she exclaimed, reaching into the back seat to produce a torn, crumpled road map. “I’ve been down every one of these streets. Connecticut is the most confusing place I’ve ever been to.”
His Kind Of Trouble Page 13
