The Bane Affair

by Alison Kent

  It had been the next morning when she'd mopped up the mess before she'd even realized it hadn't been closed. Then she'd been more aggravated at herself for not noticing than curious as to why he'd left it open. Now she knew.

  The sense of confinement.

  He hated anything that resembled a cage. How he'd man­aged to make love to her that morning in the elevator. . . .

  She drew a shaky breath at the memory. God, but that seemed so long ago, yet it had been barely more than a week. Time did indeed fly—even when one's fun had been brought to a screechingly ugly halt.

  She hadn't seen Christian tonight since directing Julian Samms to the lab hours ago. Julian was long gone, as were the rest of Wick's guests. She'd waited in her room as long as she could after the last had departed, pacing for what seemed like an eternity until she heard Wick's wheelchair in the hallway and knew he'd retired.

  It was now almost five A.M.

  She stopped outside the open bathroom door, staring down at the wedge of light shining on floor tiles a shade of mulled cider, uncertain whether to announce herself and enter, or wait in the bedroom until he was done.

  "If you're going to come in, then come in."

  She didn't hesitate any longer, pushing open the door into the room of creamy and tawny-soft marble accented in deep chocolate brown. "How did you know it was me?"

  "Because I'm a good spy."

  Grinning to herself, she stopped near the center of the long vanity counter, flattened her palm on the stack of plush hand towels Mrs. Courtney always left for guests. "I dunno. Your door was unlocked, and you're bare-ass naked."

  "If anyone but you had come in, they'd be wearing wet footprints in the middle of their back."

  Thing was, she didn't doubt it for a minute and rolled her eyes accordingly, but then just as quickly sobered. "What was Julian doing here?"

  Christian shifted around beneath the spray, spattering her as he did. "Delivering intel Hank didn't want put in a phone call."

  She frowned at that, brushed the mist from the sheer sleeves covering her shoulders. "I thought you had a secure satellite link or something."

  "We do," he said, and left it at that.

  Natasha moved further into the steamy room, reaching back to close the door on their conversation before she did. "I don't get it."

  "You don't need to."

  Oh, but he was wrong. So very wrong.

  She turned her back to the long mirror, crossed her arms over her chest, and stared a hole through the shower curtain to the man behind. "Then the fact that my godfather thought Julian worked for Spectra is no big deal?"

  "Shit," she heard Christian mumble before sput-tering out water.

  Just as she'd thought. "You weren't going to tell me, were you?"

  "No reason for you to know."

  No reason? Her fingertips bit into her upper arms as she tightened her hold on her sanity. "Jesus, Christian. My life is being screwed all to hell here. Why wouldn't I need to know?"

  "It doesn't change anything."

  "That's a load of crap. Even I know it ups the stakes here." Forget it, she grumbled to herself, kicking off the three-inch heels she still wore to pace the bathroom in bare feet. She wasn't going to stand here and pretend nothing had changed.

  And after another long moment, Christian gave in. "It's upped the time frame, yes."

  And that meant he would be walking out of her life soon because nothing between them was settled. She stopped pac­ing, leaned her backside against the vanity, her hands at her hips on the countertop.

  She wanted to cry and scream and smack him senseless all at the same time. Upping their time frame was not the good news it should've been.

  "Natasha?"

  "What?"

  "Just seeing if you were still here."

  Like hell. "You know when I come into your room but can't tell when I leave?"

  "So I'm not always a good spy."

  And she was in no mood to be soothed with his teasing. "Did you find anything you could use in the lab?"

  "Julian's taking several megs worth of data back to the ops center. I should know something later."

  "And then what?" She brushed the spray of water from her arms again

  "Depends on what Kelly John finds."

  So her future was in the hands of an unknown SG-5 opera­tive in the bowels of some ops center in the heart of the city. Yeah. She was screwed.

  "Natasha?"

  "Still here."

  "Are you still dressed?"

  She rolled her eyes. "Why? Were you waiting for me to leave so you could get out?" Obviously so. He couldn't stay in there forever. And he sure as hell wouldn't be getting out to dry off until she left the room. Couldn't have her seeing him naked now, could he?

  When he didn't answer immediately, she thought he must be thinking of how to kindly give her the ol' heave-ho. So her knees threatened to give way when instead he asked, "Actually, I was hoping you might want to join me."

  Long simmering seconds ticked by before she found her voice to answer. "Join you? In there?"

  "Yeah. In here."

  She waited again, hesitating, thinking he'd change his mind, that the water would shut off any moment and he'd order her out of the room. But he didn't.

  He said instead, "Natasha?"

  "Still here," she managed to reply.

  "Is that a yes or a no?"

  "It's a bit of wondering if you're sure."

  "I wouldn't have asked if I wasn't. If I didn't. . ."

  She held her breath, listening, closed her eyes so she could better hear over the water and over the beating of her heart.

  "If I didn't want you."

  A shudder of emotion coursed through her, a sensation that was not unlike tripping and falling with no chance to catch her herself on the way down.

  She loved him. It was so easy to admit.

  What wasn't easy was holding back when she wanted to say it out loud, wanted to hear the words back from him. With the end they were facing soon, there existed the real possibility of never seeing him again.

  "I want you, too," was what she finally said, reaching back to lower the zipper on her long-sleeved little black dress.

  Twenty-three

  Christian needed something other than slick brown and beige marble to grab hold of if he wanted to maintain any sem­blance of balance. Waiting for Natasha to make up her mind was about to drive him out of his own.

  His invitation had come out of nowhere, yet he'd never considered taking it back. Not when it felt so very right to want her here with him, the way he hadn't wanted a woman in more years than he could remember.

  And even if it meant exposing—

  "Oh God."

  Her gasp when she pulled back the curtain was much as he'd expected, though it didn't hurt that this time he heard concern more than horror.

  A nice change, he admitted, watching her eyes widen, her fingers cover her mouth, from the reactions he'd received in the past. The ones that had kept him in the dark and eventu­ally convinced him that celibacy wasn't any tougher to handle than a woman turning up her nose.

  "Christian. Your legs. What happened?"

  Thailand happened. Malena happened. That six-foot bam­boo cage happened. He shrugged because he couldn't talk through gritted teeth. "I didn't have the luxury of a cinder block wall for marking off the days."

  "So you used your legs?" she asked, her pitch approaching hysteria.

  His thighs, to be exact. They were covered from knees to groin with tick marks. Four vertical, one angled across in a bundle of five. A lot of bundles of five.

  "It got hard keeping track in my head," he finally an­swered, having realized she hadn't run. She hadn't turned and run.

  Neither did she appear to notice that they were both naked, but dropped to her knees in front of him. He, on the other hand, noticed plenty; the spray pummeled his back as he blocked the flow from her face.

  He noticed the curves of her hips, that valentine shape o
f her bottom as she sat on her heels, and wanted more than any­thing to pull her up and fill his palms with that very firm flesh.

  To bury himself inside her body and forget he'd ever had reason to mark his legs, to scar himself permanently so that any woman he was ever with would bring to mind the one who had taken him down.

  When Natasha—Natasha—kissed his right thigh, strands of her hair matted to her face and obscuring her eyes, it was all he could do to hold steady. Clenching every muscle in his body, however, drew that much more of her attention.

  She kneaded and pressed and whispered healing words and tendered kisses over the damage he'd done. By the time she moved from his right leg to his left, he couldn't take it any­more. He reached down, hooked his hands in the hollows of her armpits, and urged her to her feet.

  She pushed up slowly, her fingertips lingering, shaking, the tremors traveling upward, settling into her shoulders. He felt her shudder. It nearly killed him, and he had to let her go.

  "I'm so sorry," she said, her lower lip quivering, tears mix­ing with water drops on her face. "I'm so very sorry. I wish"— she looked down, scraped his legs with the tips of her nails—"I wish I could make you forget."

  He lifted her chin with his hand. Enough was enough was enough. "I won't ever forget. Just like you'll never forget. Betrayal is like that."

  "Who betrayed you?" she asked, her lip still trembling.

  He shook his head. "It's not important."

  "How can you say that? Look at your legs! Of course it's important."

  Once it had been. But standing here with Natasha now, Malena no longer mattered. She didn't matter at all. He felt seven long years of tension seep away, felt peace descend. The tension that for so long had bound the muscles in his neck and shoulders drained until he couldn't remember how it had felt to be unable to move.

  He closed the curtain Natasha had left open, curled the fin­gers of one hand around the rod, planted a palm on the wall at shoulder level. "What's important is that we don't waste what time we still have together."

  She closed her eyes then, slowly shook her head. "Because you're going away."

  "No. Because we're here. Because right now it's just you and me." God, but he wished that was the truth. That he wasn't standing here looking down at her and telling a big fat lie. "And because nothing else but this moment matters."

  She looked up then, and he saw in her eyes that she didn't believe him. She knew the same truth he knew. That this mo­ment was nothing but a stolen piece of time neither of them could afford to spend so selfishly.

  He also saw her make the same decision he'd made when he'd invited her into the shower. A decision to blow off the rest of the world and prove what amazingly adept thieves they could be.

  She settled her hands at his waist; he continued to stand with one splayed on the wall to his left, the other wrapped around the curtain rod. He was surprised he hadn't yet pulled it off the wall, and he gripped it even tighter as his erection began to rise.

  The simple touch of her skin to his and he was ready to go. Well, it wasn't really that simple. Not when her breasts rose and fell as she breathed, the cherry-ripe tips grazing the center of his chest.

  He hooked an arm around her neck and drew her bodily forward. Her lashes, which had drifted down, lifted slowly until she met his gaze, understood his need and intentions, and questioned neither.

  He didn't think he'd ever seen unspoken emotion so clearly in any woman's eyes, and what he saw in Natasha's knocked the wind from his sails. She wasn't here for sex, for comfort, for solace or relief. She was here because she loved him. Him. She loved him.

  And oh, goddamn, but he loved her, too.

  He swallowed hard, once, twice, worked to dislodge the lump burning from his gut up into his throat. And then he closed his eyes to squeeze the building moisture and lowered his mouth to hers.

  She parted her lips. He did the same, kissing her with a ten­derness that came from a place in his soul he'd long since locked away, a place he wanted to offer her, that he wanted her to know. She brought her arms around his waist and kissed him in return.

  It was the softest kiss he'd ever known. It spoke of promises he knew he shouldn't make, ones he was wrong to ask of her. He asked anyway, asked that she trust him, and understand when he walked away that it was what he had to do.

  As if she heard what he was thinking, she tightened her hold and increased the pressure of her mouth until he felt the edge of her teeth. She smelled like warm sweet honey, like spiced harem flowers. He couldn't get enough of her no matter how he tried. His desperation grew.

  He'd promised himself to take this slowly, to savor this time as their last. Her insistent hunger made it impossible for him to do anything but feast. He pressed forward; the water striking the skin between his shoulder blades hit his waist with his first step, the small of his back with his second.

  When he had Natasha where he wanted her, trapped be­tween his body and the wall, only then did he raise his head. "It's going to get ugly from here on out."

  "I know," she whispered, water beading on her lips.

  He licked his own instead of licking hers. "If I seem cold and distant, it's all part of the act."

  She nodded. "I understand."

  Did she? Did she really? And how much of any act was he going to be able to pull off when she looked at him like that? "I don't mean to be all doom and gloom here."

  She brought up her hand, placed it against his cheek. "Christian, please stop talking and make love to me."

  He slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms and wrapped his fingers around her slim wrists, one near his face, the other not quite as close as he would have liked to the place where his blood was beginning to boil.

  And so he took it lower, helping her close her fist around the base of his shaft.

  One of her brows lifted archly while he was staring down into her eyes. "Talking with your hands now?"

  "Women," he said with a smile. "Can't make 'em happy. Can't trade 'em in on a used car."

  "I don't think I've ever heard that version."

  "Glad to dish up a new experience for you."

  "Ah, well, that you've definitely done. I've never had a spy before."

  He fought a broader grin. He was sucker enough already. "And how would you know that? A good spy doesn't broad­cast what he is."

  "Hmm." She let go of his penis, moved both palms to the center of his chest, sputtered as water hit her in the face when he moved. "What he is. Not what he does. Is that how you think of it?"

  The lightness of the mood began to fade, as did the smile he'd been feeling. "I have to if I want to walk away from a job in one piece."

  She shook her head. "I don't know how you do it."

  "Someone has to," he said simply, because that was long since what he'd come to believe. That he was meant to give back, to do for others what Hank had done for him, to use the skills he had to wipe syndicates like Spectra IT from the planet's face.

  He waited a long tense moment for Natasha to respond verbally instead of simply touching him the way she was, counting his ribs, the washboard slats of his abs. If she didn't want to be here, if who and what he was was too much for her to handle, if she wanted to break things off now instead of later . . .

  "Christian?" She looked up at him, her eyes softening to match her tender tone of voice.

  He answered her by cupping her head, stroking his thumbs over her eyebrows, her cheekbones, learning her, memorizing her, outlining her jaw, her lips . . .

  "I love you."

  The last time a woman had spoken those words his life had gone up in flames. This time was no different, only it was. Because this time it was his heart that was burning. And he an­swered the only way he knew how to do. He covered her mouth with his, holding her face still for the words he wasn't yet able to speak.

  She wrapped her arms around him so tightly he could barely breathe, and he wondered if she truly believed he was worth holding onto, that
he could give her the support she needed when he wasn't even sure of that himself.

  She kissed him back with none of the tenderness he'd heard in her words. She kissed him with a sad desperation, with a need that hit him like a fist to the gut. He hadn't been ready for this woman to come into his life. And he feared failing her now.

  He let his hands roam over her back, wanting to touch all of her at once, settling finally on squeezing her bottom, lifting her to her tiptoes so that he could touch her in the only way that mattered right now. The most basic, elemental way man knew to show his feelings to a woman.

  She hooked her knee over his thigh, offering him access to the parts of her body he sought. He slipped his fingers deep be­tween her legs; she moaned into his mouth. Moaned and whimpered when he found her slick entrance and pushed two fingers inside.

  He stroked in and out gently, setting a pace she matched with the responding thrust of her hips. But impatience soon got the best of her, and she demanded more, wrapping insis­tent fingers around his cock, rubbing the head between her sweet folds.

  He would've waited, taken this easy and slow had that been what she wanted, but it wasn't, and he was more than willing, more than happy to comply.

  He did so then, aligning their bodies, pushing up until he found what he was looking for, driving his cock as deep as he was able. Her fingers fluttered on his shoulders where she held him. Or at least that was where she held him until she man­aged to get her hands on his ass and squeeze.

  She gripped him hard, pulled him forward, refused to let him take the time with her he had planned. And so he changed his plans, spreading her wide there where his fingertips gouged her inner thighs, holding her open for his thrusts.

  His face buried in the crook of her neck, his bent knees sup­porting his weight and a whole lot of hers, he let himself go, pumping at the pace she demanded. Her cries of completion weren't long in coming. He followed immediately, blown away by how over-whelmed he felt. By how hard he had to struggle to breathe.