“He has your family?” Elle knew that was a lie.
“No. But if I don’t do what Günter wants, he’ll have them killed. I can’t get them out of Germany.” Joachim drew a breath. “Now you’re going to have to make a decision to trust me.” He paused. “Or shoot me. Because I can’t function with one more damned restriction put on me.”
Elle waited, searching his face, smelling him and feeling him pressed against her body. She was suddenly aware of how little material actually separated their flesh. Struggling against it, she felt excitement rising within her body. There was something intensely erotic lying beneath a man that could snap her neck and kill her in an instant, or that she could pull the trigger and kill in an eye blink.
Erotic, but not satisfying. She cursed the aching emptiness within her that she was suddenly aware of.
“All right,” she said, and her voice was thicker than she wanted it to be. She pulled the pistol from his head.
“I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean to come at you like that. But there seemed to be no other way.”
“Probably not,” Elle agreed.
“Who are you?”
Elle hesitated only a moment. “Russian intelligence.”
He looked surprised. “A spy?”
She nodded.
“What are you doing here?”
“Vasilios Quinn is not who he says he is.”
“Who is he?”
Reluctantly, she shook her head. “If you don’t know, I can’t tell you.”
“Why?”
“What does Günter want you to do?”
Joachim was silent for a moment. “I’m supposed to find out what Beck is doing.”
“He’s working for Quinn.” Elle looked into his eyes. “If I tell you why Beck is working for Quinn, you’ll tell Günter. That will interfere with my mission.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “What do you want from me?”
“You’ve seen me. Beck hasn’t.”
“He may have known who you were before that night in Amsterdam.”
“I have to take the chance that he didn’t.”
“How does this tie in to what happened in Amsterdam?” he asked.
Slowly, she shook her head. After an hour and a half of thinking of the questions she had to ask him, she was surprised that they had nothing to say. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered.
“Why did you come here?”
“To tell you to stay out of my way.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked, lowering his head and kissing her.
“I’ll kill you,” she said, pressing her lips against his, no longer able to hold back the impulses that pushed her into motion. She released the pistol, giving in to the savage need that filled her like napalm, and cupped his face in her hands.
He didn’t try to reach for the pistol. If he had, she thought she could still hold her own. Instead, he opened his mouth and kissed her deeply, pushing her senses over the edge as his breathing turned hoarse. She felt his erection along the inside of her thigh as he shifted in an effort to find some degree of comfort.
His hands grabbed the bottom of her T-shirt and inched it up, baring her stomach inch by inch as if daring her to stop him. She couldn’t. If anything, she wanted his hands on her more quickly. Sliding her hands inside his shirt, she stroked his chest, relishing the feel of the hard muscles working beneath her fingertips.
“We shouldn’t—” he started.
“If you stop,” she warned, “I’m going to break something on you that will take a long time to heal.”
He pushed her shirt on up, found the front clasp of her bra and unfastened it with one hand in a touch that was all too knowledgeable. At the same time she thought that, his mouth closed on Elle’s left breast and her head seemed to explode.
She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close, letting him feed on her flesh. His breath was hot and ragged against her skin. His teeth grazed her nipple and nearly drove her insane. He pulled his head back and she tried to hold onto him. But his attentions were only gone for a moment as he shifted to her other breast.
Moaning, unable to help herself, Elle threw her head back and thrust her hips up against him. He was hard and insistent, and she rocked until she had him in the cradle of her legs, had the pressure exactly where she wanted it.
He cried out then, a short pant that sounded frenzied and rushed. He thrust against her, cupping her bottom in his big hands to pull her more tightly against him. He used the friction of the material of the shorts she wore to completely push her past whatever control might have been left to her. Moving his mouth from her breast, he kissed her again, maintaining the friction against her shorts and the tender flesh beneath.
Without warning, the orgasm swept her away, detonating all through her body, till it seemed that she expanded ten times her size, then coalesced back into a shuddering heap under him.
“Are you all right?” he asked. Worry showed in those gray-green eyes.
“I’m fine,” she replied. She still felt him hard and demanding against her.
He started rocking against her again, and—incredibly— she felt the desire already welling up inside her. There was no doubt that she’d be able to hit her peak again.
“No,” she said.
He froze.
With a quick, lithe motion, she wrapped her right leg behind his left and flipped him over. Working quickly, she slid out of her shorts and undressed him, too. She held his erection in her hand, savoring the hard flesh in her fingers. Before he knew what was going to happen, she took him into her mouth, nipping and biting and pleasing just enough to shove him close to the edge and way past the point of control. It was torture, she knew.
When she stopped, just short of where he wanted to go, his hands gripped her arms.
“Don’t leave,” he whispered. “We’re not done here yet.” He held up a condom, straightforward, no embarrassment.
“No,” she told him with a smile. “We’re not.” She took the protection from him and fitted it to him. Sliding up, she straddled him and guided his erection inside her. It took her a moment to get used to the size. Thankfully, he allowed her the time it took to make the adjustment. Then she began the slow rise and fall that carried them toward the point of oblivion.
Her second orgasm hit her before she’d truly recovered from the first. Somehow they fit together just right, so the friction never seemed to leave where she needed it most.
Before she could move, he flipped her over, gliding on top of her and driving deeply. His hand slid between them and he caressed the core of her as he sought his own release.
Clinging desperately to her senses, Elle waited till he bucked into her a final time and exploded, then she followed him over once more.
Chapter 22
Mykonos Town, Mykonos
The Cyclades Islands, Greece
Sometime later, Elle was never sure when, Joachim had somehow found a reserve of strength that she was convinced could not have existed and carried her to bed. She had gone boneless, unable to stop him or help with her own transport.
Tenderly, he placed her in the bed and joined her a moment later. His heat radiated into her. Gently, he pulled her close and rested his stubbled chin on her shoulder, draping his large body over hers. She wanted to do nothing more than go to sleep in his arms and pretend everything was all right. But she couldn’t. Her mind wouldn’t stop summoning up all the complications that now lay ahead of them.
“This,” Joachim said, “doesn’t make things any easier.”
“No,” she agreed. She kissed his chest.
“If things were different—”
“If things were different we might not have ended up in bed together. We’d probably never have met.”
“Possibly.”
Elle leaned her head back and looked up into those jungle cat eyes. She tried to see something in them, but she wasn’t sure if she couldn’t find it or just wasn’t sure what she was looking for. How
can I ask for answers when I don’t even know the questions I ‘m supposed to be asking ?
“At the end of the day,” she said, “I’m still a spy and you’re still a criminal.”
“I’m trying to change.”
“That doesn’t make the past go away.”
A dark veil fell over his gaze. Even though he hadn’t moved, he suddenly felt miles away. “You’re right.” His voice was cold and flat. He took his arm from her and sat up.
“That’s not what I meant.” Elle wished she knew what to say. She’d never been good at relationships. She’d never found anyone she especially cared to stay with. Every man in her life had been a diversion, nothing more. Some of those diversions had only lasted a night. None of them ever lasted more than a few months, and that had only been when the relationship was spread out over that time.
“Then what did you mean?”
Sitting up, Elle placed her back against the wall, brought her knees up to her chin under the sheet and wrapped her arms around her legs. She tried to think of an answer.
“We just picked a hell of a time to bump into each other,” Joachim said. “Even if things were perfect—” he paused “—they wouldn’t be perfect.” He gathered his clothes in one hand. “I really don’t need this kind of distraction.”
Angry then at the thinly veiled accusation, Elle said, “This wasn’t what I had in mind when I came here.”
“What did you have in mind?”
I don’t know, Elle thought. But she couldn’t even bring herself to say that.
“My family is on the line,” Joachim said. “What are you risking?”
She had no answer.
Joachim picked up her clothes and tossed them to her. He turned and headed for the shower, closing the door.
Angrily, Elle stared after him. Distraction? Is that what I am? She shoved up from the bed, then entered the bathroom.
Steam crawled in lazy wisps from the shower. He was a dim blur on the other side of the glass. He’d left the light off.
“I’m not a distraction,” she told him. “I’ve got a job to do.” That’s just making everything sound even worse.
Without a word, Joachim opened the sliding glass door and reached for her. She took his hand and let him pull her into the narrow confines of the shower.
They kissed again, long and hard and just as hungrily as before, and their hands played knowingly with each others’ bodies as the hot spray needled them. When her senses were reeling again, Joachim gently turned her and placed her hands on the shower tiles. She felt him move in behind her, felt the hard length of him graze her flesh, then he was deep inside her, even more distracting than before.
AFTERWARD, Joachim wrapped a towel around his hips and stood in the bathroom doorway to watch her dress in the moonlight. You’ve got yourself in a hell of a lot of trouble, he told himself. Things were complicated enough before this.
But he knew he couldn’t take it back. Neither could she. Even now, after everything they’d shared and how exhausted he felt, he wanted her again. The towel did little to disguise that fact. The sad thing was they were going to hurt each other and neither of them might be able to accomplish what they needed to do.
Dressed now, everything back in place, she pinned her wet hair up behind her head. He loved watching her back muscles work and the way the slope of her breast looked with her partially turned away from him. Then she picked the pistol up from the floor and tucked it into her waistband under the light shirt.
Joachim thought of all the women he’d had in Leipzig and a few other places he’d gone with Günter. Most of them had been beautiful, exotic and sensual. But none of them had been Elle. Over the years, he’d been captivated by a handful of them, but his interest had quickly waned or Krista had asked him what he thought he was doing, or he thought of having the women around Krista and knew that his sister would never approve.
He didn’t know if that would happen with Elle, and he wondered—if the situation were somehow different—what Krista would think of her. But it didn’t matter. There was no way he was going to have the chance to find out.
He didn’t have the heart to go to the door to show her out. He didn’t want her to leave. If he stood anywhere near that door, it was going to be even harder to watch her walk away.
She looked at him, her chin defiant and her blue eyes fierce. “This hasn’t changed anything.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get in my way.”
Angry and frustrated, he wanted to demand what she’d do if he did. But all he said was, “I won’t.”
Without a backward glance, she let herself out the door and walked away. Letting her do that was one of the hardest things Joachim Reiter had done in years.
“WHAT DID YOU FIND OUT?”
Looking at her father seated at an outside table at the taverna the next morning, Elle suddenly felt guilty. She took a deep breath. “He says he’s here trying to save his family. There’s a man named Günter Stahlmann in Leipzig who has threatened Joachim’s family. Günter sent Joachim to find out what Beck is doing here. Whom he’s doing it with. If Joachim doesn’t, Günter’s going to kill his family.”
The server arrived with coffees.
For a long time, they sat in silence.
“You are…attracted to this man?” her father finally asked.
“Yes.”
“What are his intentions toward you?”
“Two days ago, he helped me get away from Quinn’s people.”
Her father nodded. “I remember.” He sipped his coffee. “Having feelings for an adversary is not unusual.”
“It is for me.”
Surprise lifted his eyebrows. “You have never before…” He paused. “Negotiated a truce with a competitor?”
It was more like a surrender, Elle thought, remembering. But both of them had surrendered, then just as quickly went back to their defenses.
“No,” she answered.
“I have. You need to remember that Joachim Reiter isn’t a competitor. He’s part of the opposition.”
“True. But he is trying to save his family.”
“What are you going to do?”
“My job,” Elle said. And I’m going to get revenge for my parents.
Her father was silent for a moment. “I feel I must warn you, Elle.”
In trepidation, she waited, knowing what her father was going to say. It was what he had to say.
“If this man gets in your way—in our way—make no mistake. If necessary, I will kill him.”
“I know,” Elle said.
Ermoupoli, Syros Island
The Cyclades Islands, Greece
Harsh morning sunlight slanted across the port city as Elle closed in on her quarry.
As the largest city in the Cyclades Islands, Ermoupoli was also the center of business in the area. Paved in marble, Lower Town spread out from the sea on the island’s east side. The grand square was the city’s main meeting place and commercial area. Farther north, in Upper Town, shipbuilders had erected neo-Classical mansions that were more works of art than living quarters. The blue and gold dome of Agios Nikolaos stood out among them.
Somewhere in the Vaporia district, Elle’s quarry had a house. She knew the house would be well secured and protected. Fortunately, her target had a habit of coming to Lower Town for breakfast and business.
It stood to reason that Vasilios Quinn would want someone nearby to handle his international business affairs. It also stood to reason that Quinn would want someone as criminal minded as he was.
Markos Chatzidakis, the man Quinn had chosen to do business with, was such a man. Searching more deeply into Klaus Stryker’s rebirth as Vasilios Quinn, Ashimov had ferreted out the fact that Chatzidakis had managed the various account manipulations that had put Stryker’s money into what eventually found its way into Quinn’s accounts.
Following the money exchange was, in Ashimov’s biased opinion, truly the work of an artist. He’d stated that Cha
tzidakis was a very devious man and that only a man more cunning could follow all the permutations of his elaborate schemes. Then Ashimov had asked for a bonus.
Chatzidakis was also in SVR files and her father had accessed them. When the Communists had surrendered Russia to capitalism, several banking institutions had gone into the country and were used for criminal purposes such as washing money and deferring taxation. They’d been called “straw” banks. Chatzidakis had helped set up several of them, which had drawn the attention of the SVR.
He sat now at a table in a palm-shaded cafe”, tapping his feet in time to a soft rock song from one of the nearby shops. Clean hands with carefully manicured nails flew across the keyboard of his notebook computer. Dressed in khaki shorts and a white crew shirt, he looked like a retiree catching up on e-mail from relatives or friends. He was overweight and soft looking, with white hair and a thin fringe of the same along his jawline, and he wore amber-tinted sunglasses and a Panama hat.
From the information in the SVR file, Elle knew Chatzidakis rarely left the island and kept three bodyguards with him at all times. They sat around the area, all of them wearing loose shirts to cover the pistols they carried. All of them looked capable and efficient.
All of them looked straight at Elle as she walked into the square. The tourist season was in full swing and Lower Town was bursting with business. Wearing a thin cotton dress that flaunted her figure and wraparound sunglasses, with her hair pulled back and a camera case under her right arm, she looked like one of those tourists.
Abruptly, she stopped and looked around as if confused.
Knowing she had the attention of Chatzidakis, his bodyguards and most of the men in the area, she turned and approached his table.
The three bodyguards started closing in.
She smiled at Chatzidakis. The man held up a hand and waved the bodyguards back into their respective positions.
“Pardon me,” Elle said in an American accent that could have come from the Old South, “I do believe I’m lost. Do you speak English?”
“Of course,” Chatzidakis replied.
“Then perhaps you could help me.” Elle reached into the camera bag and took out a guide to the islands.
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