She left his food on the table, the chicken cooling to room temperature, and thought it was good that she had seen him like this before she’d gotten involved with him. That he hadn’t even explained what he was working on made her feel stupid. He’d probably known she couldn’t understand his work, but…
What kind of woman would give up without a fight? “Damn it, Clay. You’ve ignored me long enough.”
He kept typing. “Sorry.”
“So help me, if you don’t turn around and talk to me right now, I’m going to unplug your machine.”
“Huh?”
He looked up and shook his head as if to clear it. “Did you say something?”
“If I’d said I wanted to make mad passionate love, you would have missed it.”
He stretched and gave her a sideways glance. “So that’s what you said?”
Her palm itched to slap him. She’d never had violent tendencies in her life, but he was asking for it. Somehow, she refrained from slapping him. “What I said is that your dinner is cold.”
“No problem. I could use a break.” He stood, rolled his neck to loosen the kinks and stepped toward the table.
While she found just looking at the cold dinner unappetizing, he cut his chicken and chewed with seeming appreciation. “It’s good, thanks. I forget the time and forget to eat when I’m working.”
“You’re lucky you don’t forget to breathe.”
She let him eat and appreciated his economy of motion. Ten minutes and he was done, his body refueled.
“This should keep me going past midnight.”
She should have known. “You’re going back to work?”
He moved from the table back to his computer. “Now that Lolita has all the data, I’ve got to tell her what to do with it.”
She slipped onto his lap, knowing that he could easily see the monitor over her head. “What do you mean?”
“Cryptology is the study of hidden writing. It comes from the Greek word kryptos, meaning hidden, and graphen, meaning to write.”
“I’m with you so far.” She leaned back against his chest as his fingers typed and brought images onto the screen. “Are my mother’s diaries in code?”
“I don’t know yet. A code is a prearranged word, sentence or paragraph replacement system. Unless I can find the system she used, we may never break the code, if there is one. You wouldn’t happen to know if she spoke any languages besides English?”
“Sorry. I thought the computer would find the pattern.”
“It’s complicated. I have no idea which system she used. Julius Caesar used alphabet substitution offset by three letters. The word cat becomes gex. But since her words read in English, she probably hid a message within her words. Perhaps we need to look at only the first letter of the twentieth word on every page to read her message.”
As he typed and brought up different combinations, she realized that even a simple code could have thousands of possibilities. They might be looking for the last letter of the last word on every other page—or any combination in between. Even with a computer, the process seemed hopeless now that she understood just a smidgen of what he was trying to do.
She leaned back and enjoyed his hard thighs beneath her, using his muscular chest as a backrest. “So how do you ever break a code?”
“I usually look for patterns. Letters, syllables or words that repeat or seem awkward. The computer can call up frequency patterns of letters and words and compare them to the norm. I look at the rhythm of words, their placement, their contrast and balance.”
“What’s the most difficult code you ever cracked?” She didn’t mind him working as long as he kept including her. Besides, sitting on his lap with his arms wrapped around her lent a certain intimacy to their conversation and a certain heat as she wriggled on his lap.
“It was a Chinese message. Picture a large curve, then a smaller curve intersecting repeatedly.”
She thought back to her high-school biology class. “Like a double helix?”
“More like a large snake and a smaller one crossing over one another’s paths. The intersections were the key to breaking the code and allowed the president to sit tight even though the Chinese were amassing troops along their border. We knew it was simply a defense exercise as they claimed, because we’d broken the code.”
She wondered how many times he’d stopped their country from going to war. A woman couldn’t fight that kind of responsibility, she didn’t even want to, so she refused to ask how often his job kept him at work for a night, a week or a month. “My mother must have written those words almost thirty years ago. Won’t that make it easier to break?”
“Maybe, but not necessarily. She could have had a key card. Think of a piece of paper with seemingly random holes in it. You place the paper over one page and the letters that show through the holes could reveal the message. Both the sender and the recipient would have the same key paper.”
“This seems hopeless.”
“Have a little faith, woman. I’m good at what I do.”
“So you keep telling me. But I have yet to see any action.” She flicked her hair over her shoulder and let it strike him softly across the face, blatantly flirting and knowing for sure she had lost all her marbles.
He leaned forward, nuzzled her neck. Heat blazed down her spine as he kept typing. So he wanted to play games, did he? She tipped her head back and to the side, capturing his lips, softly, sensuously, nibbling teeny, tiny bites.
Satisfaction filled her as he dropped his hands from the keyboard and wrapped them around her. She twisted in his lap. Kissing him shocked her as heat singed her, blazing pure fire straight into her system.
They’d kissed before. Yet somehow she’d managed to convince herself that the intensity wasn’t exactly as hot as she remembered. She’d been wrong. His heat consumed her.
She yanked back as if burned. “This is insane.”
“Absolutely crazy,” he agreed.
“I don’t want to want you,” she whispered. “But I can’t seem to help myself.” And that’s when the knowledge struck her like a Mack truck.
She was in love with a capital L. Big time in love. And in big-time trouble. She’d fought against going to bed with this man and lost her heart during the battle.
Damn it! Why did it have to be him? Someone inappropriate. Someone who could so easily ignore her for his work.
Her thoughts flip-flopped, making her dizzy. He’d given her little time to contemplate just how badly she’d fallen. With one hand wrapped in her hair, the other stroking her back, and his wondrously clever mouth on hers, she couldn’t draw enough oxygen in her lungs to think straight. Nor could she find the strength or desire to pull away.
Hypnotized by the hunger in his eyes, she drank of his kiss and wanted so much more that she shook in his arms. For the first time, she knew what it was like to give herself over to the moment.
She could only think about him and how much more she wanted. She couldn’t get close enough, tugging his head down, exploring the taste of rich wine on his lips, the scent of masculine heat on his flesh.
“Do you want me?” she asked him with just a hint of tender amusement mixed with genuine need.
“Are you going to make me grovel?”
“Would you?”
“Yes.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her up onto the deck. “I want to make love to you under the stars.”
“Oh, yes, please.”
He set her lightly on her feet, opened a locker and extracted a blanket. He floated it over the deck, and she suddenly wondered what she was doing. Without his touch fogging her thoughts, doubts assailed her. If they made love, how would she feel later after he left her? Did she want to be that vulnerable? But it was too late. She’d already committed her heart.
She would never forgive herself if she turned back now. She wasn’t a tease. And she wouldn’t deny herself what she wanted more than anything else. She wanted him. His mouth on hers. His hands on her
body.
She kicked off her shoes and joined him, standing in the middle of the blanket. Waves lapped against the hull. A gentle breeze blew away mosquitoes. A crescent moon and a cloudless sky lent a hushed, almost reverent atmosphere to their coming together.
She ached to fling herself into his arms, but he held her at arm’s length.
“I’m going to undress you.”
“Ditto.”
“Me first,” he insisted, his hands slipping under her shirt and gently tugging it over her head. “It’s going to be like unwrapping a present.”
“Promise me that you’ll tear through the wrapping paper quickly.”
“Not a chance. Every moment has to be savored.” His warm fingers played with her collarbone, but she didn’t want to delay, not with her skin going up in flames at his slightest caress.
She was more than ready for him. “I want you now.”
She reached for his shirt and he twisted away. “So impatient.”
“Impatient? I’ve been waiting all night, but you were too busy to notice.”
“I noticed.”
“You did?” She would have stepped back in surprise, but his strong palm pressed at the small of her back and kept her rooted before him.
“I couldn’t miss your signals,” he admitted, unsnapping her slacks and pushing them over her hips. “In fact, I snitched this from the car’s trunk.”
From his back pocket, he extracted a bottle of erotic massage oil.
She thought he hadn’t noticed her earlier, and now, after his admission, she didn’t know which was worse—being ignored by him or being put on the back burner. Yet, after sitting on his lap, she clearly knew how badly he wanted her.
He placed the bottle of oil in her palm and closed her fingers around it. “I wanted to let you make up your mind without pressuring you.”
“You did?” She stepped out of her slacks and stood before him in her panties and bra, her heart hammering, her palm sweating around the bottle.
“Waiting almost killed me,” he admitted softly.
“You could have said something.”
“I did.”
Heat rushed through her veins and made thinking difficult—no, impossible.
Letting the plastic bottle of oil fall onto her pile of clothes, she stepped closer to him, unfastening her bra and dropping it to the blanket. She didn’t need oil to enflame her, not when she already felt like singed toast.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured in a husky voice, his gaze taking in her body, clad in nothing more than a triangular scrap of silk.
Fingers trembling, she practically ripped off his shirt, made a mess of unfastening his pants. Somehow the unnecessary clothing fell by the wayside, and they tumbled to the blanket, his arms around her, his chest supporting her.
“Do you like being on top?” he asked, drawing her down until their mouths fused and she couldn’t answer.
Except in her heart, which cried out more loudly than she’d have thought possible. Consumed by heat, carried away in a back draft of fire, she reached out to this man on a level profoundly elemental.
Every caress spread the heat, each touch carried her into a blue-white flame of desire. When she finally gathered enough control to slip him inside her, she felt full everywhere, between her thighs, in the bottom of her heart and in the core of her soul.
Then she rocked over him, taking him, urging him on, drawing him with her. Her hips gyrated and a soft moan came from his throat. His moving hips matched hers in a rhythm as elemental as the swamp around them. Her heart cartwheeled, somersaulting her over the edge.
She collapsed onto his chest, her throat raw, her skin slick, her emotions shattered by what they had just shared. Slowly her ragged lungs drew in the needed air.
Seductively, still hard, Clay turned them over until she lay beneath him looking up at the stars. He nibbled her neck while his hands found the erotic oil, which he opened and dribbled over her breasts.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, knowing she still wanted him, but not yet, not this soon, not before her rioting flashes of heat cooled.
His voice, low and husky with promise, set her to trembling. “Now it’s my turn.”
Chapter Eleven
Clay took a very long turn, several turns, enjoying himself in a way he’d never done before. Exploring the raging inferno between them was like walking blindfolded into a storm with heat lightning crackling all around them, electric, exciting and erotic. Yet the sensual experience was nothing compared to the bombshell of his exploding emotions.
He couldn’t come to grips with what was happening between them, wasn’t sure he should even try to analyze a process so potent, yet somehow tenuous. Figuring out his feelings was like grasping at the wind.
Melinda brought out in him both a tremendous tenderness and a simultaneous and contrasting feral ferocity that he could barely hold in check. He couldn’t seem to get enough of her, losing himself so thoroughly that several times he’d feared he might have been too rough, only to have her urge him on.
He’d fully intended to return to work once she fell asleep on the deck, but for the first time ever, he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Not even for work. He was taking too much pleasure in the way she’d wrung him out and left him satiated, his muscles lax.
Breaking the code could wait. Holding Melinda while she slept, caressing her soft, soft skin was too wonderful to give up for a plastic keyboard and monitor. Her breath fanned his neck as she curled into his heat, one leg thrown over his hip with abandon.
He drew the blanket around them and gazed at the stars. Usually he couldn’t wait to leave a woman after making love. Instead, once hadn’t been enough. The second time barely took the edge off his hunger.
After the third time, he’d lost count, marveling at how he’d reacted to her giving nature. Melinda didn’t know how to hold back. And he’d taken and taken. Even now he had to resist waking her again.
He hadn’t wanted a personal relationship between them, had done his damnedest to avoid it. But once he’d realized that the two of them were ready to go up in flames, he’d set his mind on having her. Only now, what the hell was he going to do?
He lived in Virginia, she in Florida. He couldn’t move down here and quit his job, not without leaving a giant hole in the agency, not without letting down his country. And she had her heart set on opening her business, had been building her client base for years so she could open and operate in the black. He had no right to ask her to give up her dreams or the brother and sister who she must want to meet.
Besides, she’d made it clear she wanted her man at home at night. He let out a long, low groan. He wasn’t the right man for her—except in the blanket.
She stirred softly beside him, nestling her head against his arm like a pillow, her hair’s sweet scent teasing his nostrils, taunting him into tasting her lips once again. He dipped his head to wake her slowly, when a loud beeping sound made her spring upright.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, listening to the electronic page that was calling him back to work.
“Lolita’s broken the code.”
“She has? How?”
“One of the parameters I gave her must have fit the…” His lips claimed hers, tasting and taking more than he had a right to.
Melinda pulled back just a few inches. “Aren’t you going to shut her off?”
“She’ll do that by herself.”
“Good.” She pulled him back for a kiss, her firm breasts jutting eagerly against his chest and making him groan with yearning.
“But she’ll go off again every ten minutes until I…” He reached for his slacks, drew them on carefully over his hips and his semi-arousal. One kiss and she’d had him going again. Another minute and he’d have ignored the page.
Hair rumpled sexily, Melinda stood and pulled on her panties and her shirt. “I’m coming, too. If Lolita is going to interrupt us, the least I can do is find out why.”
Clay didn’t bo
ther turning on the cabin’s lights. The monitor would be bright enough and he didn’t need to see the keyboard to type. He took his seat and Melinda slid onto his lap as if he were an easy chair.
Since he could see over her head, and she was slim enough for his arms to fit around her, he didn’t think she’d have the ability to distract him. He was wrong. The memories of what they’d shared earlier, combined with his uncertainty about any future they might have, made his typing sloppy.
Several times he had to move the cursor backward, hit the delete key and retype his search questions.
“What are you doing?” she asked in her half-sleepy voice that he found utterly charming and way too sexy.
“Telling Lolita to go ahead and use the search parameters she’s set to read through the entire diary and translate the code.”
“What’s the key?” Melinda asked.
“Would you believe a giant letter X.”
“Huh?”
“If we drew an X across every three pages, the word we want is the one where the two lines cross. Simple. Yet difficult to find. Without a computer, I might never have broken it.”
“How did Lolita?”
“Several words in the crosshairs are key words that I programmed her to watch for. She compared their locations and—” he snapped his fingers “—ta-da, a pattern emerged.”
Slowly words appeared on the screen. As they started to make a sentence, Clay’s excitement grew.
Suspect triple agent Bull Dog in our cell has betrayed us all. Going after proof.
Melinda leaned back and looked up at him. “What’s a triple agent?”
“An agent who serves three intelligence services and one who usually withholds significant information from two of those agencies at the instigation of the third service.”
“So he’s a spy?”
“Worse than a spy. If he works for three different agencies, he can feed inside information from the other two to the third service.”
“And the cell is like the group my parents worked in?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of name is Bull Dog?”
Lovers in Hiding Page 14
