by Gennita Low
“You did ask me what I wanted.” She looked at him in amusement. “Dallas, you just have to learn how to slow down a bit. Besides, you always did like to watch me eat.”
John laughed huskily. “You’re the only woman I know who thinks food is foreplay.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “You’re going to have to hurry. This husband is hungry too.”
He needed to calm his raging libido, anyway. There were things more important than sex. Yeah, keep telling yourself that, John, while your brain cells and important body parts vehemently object. Kel Grant didn’t just show up like a desert mirage for no reason; the woman had specifically avoided being physically near him for years. Sure they had one or two conversations on the phone whenever their jobs happened to cross paths, and she’d never hidden the fact that she still found him attractive, but no matter how hard he tried to persuade her, she’d never once agreed to see him.
Not once. Until now.
He wasn’t given the codename Black Knight for nothing. The moniker wasn’t meant to denote some romantic notion of a medieval warrior—his name came from the chess piece. In the game—as this covert group of underground treasure hunters called it--the Knight negotiated a stealthy path, neither straight nor diagonal, hiding motive and purpose from his opponents. He was trained to see what others hid, and Kel Grant, the woman who had haunted him all this time, was hiding a lot.
Part of him accepted that because she was an operative doing her job. Part of him was furious because she’d chosen to play his opponent instead of his sidekick. Every move she’d made so far was a delay tactic. He was, after all, a negotiator in this business, and she was nowhere near capable of hiding anything from him for long.
His eyes narrowed as he watched her walk to the tent’s back entrance. She bent forward to pick up a large tray that he hadn’t noticed before, giving him a tempting view of those bikini briefs that barely covered her ass.
Yeah, some negotiator, Dallas. So far, his wonted steel-trap mind and cool logic had failed to function at all. Things that he’d been trained not to allow to influence him had dominated all the present negotiation—a low cut wisp of a tank top, a pair of long legs he knew were ballerina-flexible. Her tempting mouth. He frowned. How many others had kissed her since they parted?
He angrily jerked up into a sitting position. Let her eat. Let her relax. It’d give him a chance to settle down so he could concentrate on other matters, like getting information about this operation. What she’d told him so far had only led to more questions.
Kel was a courier, not a negotiator, so she had information to pass on, obviously retrieved from that dead pilot. But to whom was she passing it on? And what could be so important that the Temple sent her ahead of him? They apparently had suspected the pilot might not survive. That didn’t surprise him. The Temple seldom executed any plan without a dozen moves thought out ahead; he was, after all, part of that system, and understood very well the strategic lessons of preparation.
However, things had gone through too many unexpected twists lately, and the pattern pointed not to coincidence, but to planning. He studied the woman laying out the small plates of food on the eating mat. How much did she know? Or was she just on a routine courier mission?
At that instant, Kel turned around, her head cocked. “Well, are you going to eat with me, or not?” Dressed as she was, she looked slightly ridiculous sitting on the ground, in the traditionally demure female position, feet tucked sideways. And her smile was anything but demure. “Aren’t you hungry?”
John felt his body responding to her unspoken invitation. There was no way he could hide how she affected him, not when he was down to his underwear. He joined her on the mat with a grimace. Cross-legged wasn’t one of his favorite positions.
He looked into her amused eyes, and the conflicting emotions rose in him again. He wasn’t pleased to see her; he was ecstatic to see her. He didn’t want her around; he wanted her to stay. He needed to question her about the operation; he was dying to talk about the two of them.
He glanced quickly at his watch. Daybreak was his deadline. Accepting a bowl of roasted meat from her, he smiled. “Sure.” Wanting to test her, he continued, “After we eat, I’d like to be entertained with some stories, Scheherazade.”
Kel paused with the food halfway between her bowl and mouth, and then he was rewarded with a rich, husky laugh. And, like the newly married queen from A Thousand and One Nights, the woman in front of him settled back, looking absolutely confident she could keep her husband interested all night long.
John Dallas couldn’t take his eyes off her. He was hungry all right. But not for food.
Enveloping Attack. An attack from behind the enemy forces.
Counter play. The opposite side takes aggressive action. A player who has counterplayed well puts himself on equal footing with his opponent.
CHAPTER TWO
John closed his eyes, relinquishing all control. Her hands touched him. Her lips. Her mouth. Her tongue took over his world, which had rapidly diminished into one burning powerful need as he had somehow ended up on his back after dinner. She explored his body, first with her small hands, gliding all over each part of him so slowly he had to grit his teeth to stop from begging. Her hair was the softest silk—he couldn’t remember undoing that braid—as she bent her head. His muscles tightened wherever he felt her lips following the path of her hands, a sensuous, wet path that stopped to investigate all the right spots. She sucked his nipples, nibbled her way down his stomach…damn if the woman wasn’t hungry still…and he groaned as her mouth hovered over his painfully erect cock.
Take it. Take me. Was he even speaking in English? He couldn’t hear himself amid the roar in his ears. He was so hot for her, he was going to…and then her lips closed around him and he groaned. He was in heaven. And she was the angel of his dreams returned to him. She rolled her tongue and he almost shot off the floor in response. The welcome wetness of her mouth took…everything.
Everything. When she’d left him, he felt she’d taken everything with her, but he could never name what those things were. It was just the emptiness inside that told him she took something valuable.
She caressed her balls as her tongue tortured the whole length of him over and over. He pushed up, wanting to go deeper in her mouth, but the slight squeeze of her hand controlled his eagerness. Her teeth lightly punished him and then her tongue returned, paying extra attention to the underside of his penis, where he was the most sensitive. She remembered. And he was helpless to the growing pleasure enveloping his senses.
A growl escaped his lips in protest when she stopped. Don’t. Stop. She only laughed and came back up to kiss him. God, she tasted so good. He pushed his tongue into her mouth with the ravenousness of a wild man. How many others had there been? The surge of jealousy caused him to kiss her more roughly than he intended, but he didn’t care any more. She was his wife, wasn’t she? She was his.
His. He lifted her off him and was on her immediately. Flesh on flesh. He was going to take back what was his. How dare she leave him?
Her throaty encouragement urged him on as she moved sinuously under him. He didn’t need her to tell him what she wanted—he could feel her wet and ready.
“John.”
How could the mere whisper of his name in his ear make him almost lose his control? It was the way she said it. She never called him John, except during heated moments of intimacy. John—in that husky murmur. John—almost French sounding, the way she sighed it out. She gripped his arms as he guided himself inside her.
Hot. She clenched around him in fierce possession, all sleek feminine eagerness. He pushed and almost lost it again when she arched into him with wild abandon. Stroke for stroke, she drove him higher and higher.
He tried to focus. Her eyes were half-closed, looking back at him. Little pants escaped her parted lips. He couldn’t really see. Or think.
He slowed his thrusts, moving deep inside her and sliding out, wanting more from her. He
reached down between them, reaching for her wetness, searching. She gasped. Ah yes. More, Kel. Wife. More. He rubbed her as he continued his slow ride. Her hands were suddenly holding his buttocks, trying to set a faster pace, but he didn’t relent. Thrust down hard, thumb circling her little clitoris as he slowly pulled out, thrust down hard, repeat as she got wetter and wetter, as her breaths became harder. It excited him to hear her throaty whispers, begging him to go a quicker. He bent down and nibbled her neck, breathing in her unique scent. She groaned louder, and he realized the new position put more weight where he was intimately massaging her. He smiled and as her fingers dug deeper into his flesh, his finger stroked her a little harder, even as he ground deeper into her sweet heat.
“John…john…johhhnn!”
Forget focus. His world exploded into pure heat. And still he kept driving into her, needing her all over again. Her writhing response only rekindled the pleasure that washed his senses in waves.
Sated, John closed his eyes.
***
When he reopened them, everything still looked out of focus. He frowned. His body was stiff, as if he had been sleeping in the same position too long. As the ceiling of the tent became clearer, so did his thoughts.
What time was it? His wrist appeared in front of his eyes and the watch read 0600 hours. Six in the morning? He squinted. He couldn’t remember going to bed. Couldn’t remember a damn thing after he sat down to eat dinner with Kel.
He jerked up as if hit by an electrical current. Images swam in his mind—images way too sexy to be just a dream. He looked down. Oh yeah, he was naked under the sheet over his body. The pillow next to him had an indentation. Her scent lingered tantalizingly on him still.
Something was very wrong. He usually didn’t have sensational sex and not remember doing it. Well, actually he recalled some pretty incredible details, but the memory felt…distant.
A cough interrupted his disarrayed thoughts, and John looked in its direction, ready to demand an explanation.
Except that the woman sitting quietly near the entrance to the tent wasn’t Kel. It was the other one of the woman who had sat beside her in the donkey cart yesterday.
What the hell was going on? John’s eyes caught sight of the previous night’s leftovers sitting innocently on the tray not too far away. A nasty suspicion surfaced. Fury awoke the rest of his half-asleep mind.
“She told me to tell you not to yell,” the stranger in his bridal tent softly said, her accented voice trembling slightly from fear. “She said shouting would only make trouble.”
John glared at the woman, even though it wasn’t her fault he was wearing only his birthday suit in a stuffy tent in the mountains of goat-herding country. And oh yeah, he was the top-notch liaison who was supposed to be in charge of a hostage arms exchange. At current status, he had no hostage and had given away a whole cache of arms.
He scowled fiercely, although cussing would have felt better. A strange woman was less than ten feet away from his naked ass, and she was already looking at him as if he were an ogre.
“Where is she?” he asked, his morning voice huskier than usual.
He cleared his throat and looked around the tent to make sure Kel wasn’t hiding under any of the camel-hair sheets. The other woman’s gasp halted his scan, and looking down he noticed the not-too-big coverlet protecting what was left of his modesty had moved and now he was really in danger of scaring the poor lady. She was, after all, bundled up like a proper religious woman, and he had no idea whether she was for real or not. Her horrified eyes seemed to say she was definitely for real, though.
John sighed, and pulled the sheet higher. Ooops. Too high, judging from her ever-widening eyes. He tugged at the other end of the sheet. Obviously, his wife thought this up as some final joke. His wife. He glared at the woman again, and repeated his question. “Where’s Leiha?”
To his relief, the woman took her eyes off his body, and answered, “I am Leiha.”
Oh, that was all he needed. Morning-after surprises. “I mean Leiha, my wife.” He tried to sound reasonably patient. He could have been crude by explaining about the Leiha who had been naked beside him the night before, but he had a feeling that would only earn him more female problems.
“For now, I am Leiha, your wife.” She stepped closer, in the manner of a person approaching an angry bear.
That was it. John’s patience was definitely wearing thinner by the second. He moved forward and she shrieked, falling back a few steps. “Leiha, or whoever you are,” he told her, wondering whether he had somehow woken up in the twilight zone, “I just want my clothes. Okay? Look, they’re all over the place. If you can just throw me…ummm (skip the underwear, he decided)…the pants over there, I’d really appreciate it.”
She vigorously nodded her head in agreement, and ran to fetch the garment. Staying a few feet away, she tossed the trousers into his arms.
John waited. And waited. Finally, he sighed. “If you don’t turn around, I can’t put them on without embarrassing you.”
It mustn’t have occurred to her, for her face went fiery red. But she still didn’t turn away.
“I have never seen a naked man before,” she told him.
Oh, now he was the zoo animal for display. “Lady, I’m sorry to hear that, but until we’ve been properly introduced, I’d rather not give lessons in anatomy, if you don’t mind.”
He watched in amusement as she finally turned her back with a show of reluctance.
A few minutes later, he was dressed enough to conduct a normal conversation, although there was nothing normal about the whole damned state of affairs. It was barely six-thirty in the morning, and he felt as if time had escaped him somehow.
Leiha, the other Leiha, his Leiha, was still missing. This new one was moving around the tent as if she were really his wife, picking up discarded clothes and putting things away in the small trunks by the entrance. He scratched the back of his neck in frustrated disbelief.
“What else did she say, besides not to shout?”
The woman dug into her robes, and pulled out a piece of paper. “She wrote you this letter.”
John tore the envelope quickly.
Dallas, I know you’ll remember everything I told you last night. This is Zaleiha, your wife, for now. Treat her like a regular H-A-X. Take her with you and hand her over at your next stop. She can’t return to the village now because she is, of course, me, and you and your wife’s journey will be watched over. I’m sorry I couldn’t stay with you, but Leiha must get out of the village as part of the agreement. I know how much your freedom means. If you like, I’ll mutter ‘I divorce you’ three times as soon as I cross the border, once you’ve completed your assignment. Be careful.
Love, Kel
P/S Eat this note when you’ve memorized the deets.
P/P/S Last night was more than fair. Let’s do this info barter again some time.
John wanted to pull his hair out. He’d barely been with Kel for twenty-four hours and already she was driving him crazy. The trouble with her was, he never knew what was going on in her head. She was one complicated package, always with her fingers in ten different projects. She was the only woman who made him want to strangle and kiss her all at once.
I know how much your freedom means. He squashed the note, startling Kaleiha, who was watching him with fear in her eyes again. Just to appease his current bad mood, he scowled at her fiercely and, just like that, the woman dropped the folded garments in her arms and scuttled off heading for the tent exit.
Ah, shit. John sighed, attempting to control his temper. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. “You’re Zaleiha, right?”
She nodded. “She said you were going to be like a drunk donkey when you woke up,” she said, her voice accusing, “and that I’ve to get you a cup of coffee with lots of milk.”
“Donkeys don’t get drunk,” John pointed out politely, as he found his underwear and stuffed them into one of his pockets. He spied the sash for his robe and we
nt to retrieve it. “But yes, coffee with milk. That sounds like the best thing right now.”
As if she had been waiting for his permission, Zaleiha immediately went over to a tray and poured coffee out of a flask. The aromatic brew must be strong as hell because the whole tent smelled of roasted coffee immediately. John took a deep breath, wondering if that might just kickstart his brain cells again.
He accepted the cup from her, looking at the coffee longingly. “You didn’t spike this too, did you?”
“Spike?” She frowned.
“Spiked…as in drugged.”
“Oh.” She nodded in comprehension, then, realizing she might be misunderstood, quickly shook her head. “Of course not. She says you’ll kill her if your coffee doesn’t taste right.” She cocked her head. “You must be a very nasty-tempered man, killing so easily.”
Did she just make a joke? John sipped on his coffee, studying the woman. She had a very earnest demeanor, when she wasn’t cowering. “Well, bad coffee is a serious offense,” he commented, and took another big gulp. “But not to worry, this particular batch is absolutely fine.”
“She made it herself.”
John sighed. Might have known. “Is there anything else she said to you?”
It pissed him off, having been out-maneuvered like that. He knew the Temple was behind it, but why did it have to be Kel? If it’d been anyone else, he wouldn’t have been so easily tricked. He was pretty sure the sex was just Kel’s own way to poke a little fun at him. Okay, so it’d been fun for him too, but surely she knew she didn’t need to drug him for that kind of cooperation? He’d have been more than willing.
“She said lots of things, but I don’t know which parts were meant for your ears.”
John looked at Zaleiha, who resumed putting away things. “Where did you learn your English anyway?” he asked. He rolled up the eating mat after she put the dinner trays into a basket.
“We girls all went to school, you know, until the revolution. Now they no longer allow us to be educated. I was going to go to college but my parents were killed.” Zaleiha shrugged. “But this is my way out. You are my way out.”
