“How do you figure that?”
“You’re afraid if you stick around,” she rushed on, “you might have to admit you’re not the machine you claim to be. You might have to admit you’re human, riddled with vulnerabilities and flaws and damage like the rest of us. You might actually have to feel something. And I think that scares the hell out of you.”
A muscle flexed in his temple.
“Don’t delude yourself, Skylar. How many men have you seen me injure or kill? Do you think I feel a flicker of remorse for any of them? The one and only time I was idiotic enough to indulge in a romantic attachment, at the ripe age of seventeen, my inamorata turned out to be a double agent. She tried to knife me while I fucked her.”
Skylar gasped, but the words kept coming, hard and fast like a hail of bullets.
“For years, I had the scar to prove it—I wanted the reminder, a memento of what happened when I made the mistake of trusting. When I no longer needed that reminder, the plastic surgeon erased it. If memory serves, he threw it in as a free bonus after one of my reconstructive surgeries. I’ve had so many alterations I no longer recognize my own reflection. When I look in the mirror, I see an utter stranger.
“Is this the sort of man you want to be with, Skylar? The sort of man you want to love?”
Not long ago, she would have seized the easy out he was offering, just turned and walked away. Because he was right about one thing.
Love wasn’t in her plans.
He wasn’t the only person in this relationship to be betrayed by someone he’d loved.
If she walked away now, he’d disappear forever. She might not survive the next day or even the next hour. But however long she had, she no longer wanted to live that life alone. She’d been there, done that, and what did she have to show for it?
An empty life in an empty apartment in a strange city among strangers. Was that the life her mother would have wanted for her—the woman who’d died trying to save her daughter from a life in the shadows?
“Well?” His hands tightened on her bare shoulders, a whisper of the deadly violence contained beneath his hard surface. “Am I the sort of man you want to love, Skylar? A monster with a file at Interpol that’s half a meter thick and an ice cube for a heart?”
“You’re not a monster, Nikolai.” She stepped into him, hands curving around his face to hold him. “And the answer is yes.”
For once, she must have gotten the drop on the Maestro. When her lips met his, he did nothing to evade her. His mouth was warm but unyielding as granite. Determination spiraled through her as she pressed into him, breasts crushed against the hard plane of his chest, barely covered by her whisper-thin sarong and two tiny triangles of stretchy fabric. Heat flared in her belly as she deepened the kiss, catching his lower lip between her teeth for a nip, followed by the slow glide of her tongue.
A tremor ran through his lean muscled length. His hands splayed across her shoulders as though he’d push her away. Instead he groaned and pulled her closer, hands sliding down her spine, mouth opening against hers as he took command of the kiss.
Heart fluttering like a candle in the wind, she slid her arms around his neck and held on for dear life.
The bitter perfume of espresso and French cigarettes invaded her senses as she tasted him, their tongues twining, caressing. Shocks of sensual pleasure arced through her, throbbing in her core, dampening the miniscule swath of fabric between her legs.
When his hands closed under her derriere and lifted her, she wrapped her legs around his hips. The tensile bulge of his cock rubbed against her sweet spot, bringing a moan from her throat.
“Nikolai,” she whispered, head falling back. His lips seared a trail of moist heat down her neck. “Is that even your real name?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He carried her inside as she undulated against him, the friction driving her nearly mad. “I wanted you to know who I was, even if I never told you.”
“I do know—who you are.” Without warning, a tiny orgasm rippled through her, wringing a low cry from her lips.
With a curse, he lowered her to the first available surface, which happened to be the gleaming expanse of the cherry wood desk, one hand already fumbling to unbuckle his belt. Skylar curled her fingers around the straining khaki pulled taut over his cock and purred. Blindly she swept an arm across the desktop behind her, sending pen and blotter and an array of small items tumbling to the carpet.
With none of his trademark precision, he shoved his trousers down and dragged her bikini over her hips. She struggled to untangle her legs from the tiny scrap of fabric as he unknotted her sarong with a single tug and the filmy swath of cotton fluttered away. She was shockingly wet, slick and hot and ready, when he thrust inside her.
Pleasure exploded through her.
She arched against him, reaching blindly over her head for anything to anchor her against the sleek surface.
He braced above her, gripping the desk on either side as he thrust, hair falling into his eyes. Already the next climax was building, sweeping her away in a riptide from the shores of caution.
He tugged at her bikini top and freed her breasts. When his teeth closed around her nipple, rapture sparkled like a shower of sparks against her closed lids. The force of her climax sucked her in and pulled her under.
She surfaced from it, panting, to find him still thrusting into her.
“Mio Dio.” She fought for breath. “No more!”
“You wanted me.” He raised his head to peer intently into her eyes. Their bodies rocked together in desperate rhythm. “You still want me. And I find that a bloody damn miracle. You’re brilliant—gorgeous—practically a celebrity—in your world. You could have—anyone—”
“I don’t want anyone else,” she gasped, hands snaking down his back to grip the taut globes of his buttocks. “I love you.”
She hadn’t meant to say it. But the words hovered in the charged air between them.
I love you.
A fine sheet of goose bumps rose against the taupe silk of his skin.
“That’s a mistake, Skylar.”
“I know,” she whispered.
As though she’d touched a lighted match to the fuse, started a stopwatch ticking toward their final farewell, the driving rhythm of their bodies quickened. He might not want her love, but his cock was straining for her body, sliding against her slick flesh, setting off deep shocks of pleasure with every thrust. As he anchored her against his body, his black eyes blazed into hers. She met him straight on, refusing to hide or look away.
“I love you,” she repeated.
“Then God help you.” His face contorted as powerful spasms rippled through her core. They both cried out as his molten heat spurted into her.
She wrapped her limbs around him and held on for dear life.
_____________________________________
His mobile phone buzzed on the bedside table, the distinctive hum of a text message. Sated and languid with sexual fulfillment, sprawled naked over Skylar’s sinuous, long-limbed frame, Nikolai had never felt less like doing business.
But duty called.
Sluggish, he disentangled an arm and reached for the device. At his touch, the screen lit up, a pale glow in the purple twilight that leaked through the balcony doors. Beside him, Skylar stirred and mumbled. She’d already been dozing when he gathered her limp form from the desk—which had certainly served its purpose—and carried her to bed. Since then, he’d let her sleep.
Merely delaying the inevitable, he knew.
After their bout of mind-blowing sex, his brain had checked out. His body had run on autopilot, sweeping the corridor and the cove below, searching her room for bugs or explosives—it seemed to be clean, but one could never be certain—texting the ex-colleague from the Italian intelligence service he’d convinced to drive down from Naples and conduct surveillance on General Krasnov’s yacht with its incoming cargo.
Anything to avoid thinking about the woman beside him. The woman who’d jus
t told him, in no uncertain terms, that she loved him.
She was a PhD scientist—certainly smart enough to know her own mind. He wouldn’t insult her intelligence trying to dissuade her about what she felt. But he couldn’t seem to wrap his brain around it.
It had to be the fact that he’d saved her life. She’d been forced to rely on him completely for protection, given her unusually solitary lifestyle and a shortage of other confidants. As an aficionado of the solitary life himself, he certainly understood those dynamics.
But if he let himself think about it, he’d have to think about his feelings for her. And that was terrain he couldn’t afford to explore—not ever, and certainly not now, with this Krasnov crisis looming over them.
It seemed his time for thinking had just run out.
A glance at the tiny display on his mobile sent a booster shot of adrenaline coursing through him.
“Tell me that’s your sister,” Skylar murmured, fingers gliding across his chest, grazing his nipples with manicured nails. Despite the prod of danger, his groin hardened at her touch.
“It’s Krasnov,” he said gruffly, hating what the news would do to her. “He’s loaded his cargo and he’s on his way—right on schedule. His yacht should make port at Marina Grande in one hour.”
An electric current of tension ran through her body to his, as though transmitted by a telegraph. She untangled herself from him and curled into a sitting position, arms wrapping around her up-drawn legs.
She didn’t ask him how he knew.
“This is it, then.” For a moment she gazed through the balcony doors, framed by billowing swaths of pale fabric from the wind-kissed sheers. She tilted her head to survey him, a gleaming wing of raven hair falling over her sky-blue eyes.
“So where do we stand, Mr. Markov? Are you with me, against me, or out the door?”
She’d managed to state the question lightly, but he detected the brittle undertone. She was afraid he was going to leave her—or try to stop her. He wasn’t certain himself why he hadn’t left her in Capri a day ago.
Because that would require a survey of that unexplored terrain—his goddamned feelings—which was one quagmire he was still determined to avoid.
He was the Maestro, damn it, not some romantic lead in a love story.
“What’s your plan?” he countered. This was safe terrain, familiar terrain. Strategy and tactics he could handle. “You do have a plan, I hope?”
Her mouth softened into a wry smile. Clearly she’d been bracing to watch him walk out the door.
“Considering that I have no allies, no intelligence training or equipment, and someone’s still trying to kill me, my options are somewhat limited. Realistically, I can’t hope to stop Krasnov or prevent the transfer from occurring, no matter how I feel about it.”
“Regrettable, but true—except for one minor detail,” he murmured. “It seems you have the Maestro for an ally. I’ll even do the job free of charge.”
Her face fired with relief and a chemical formula of emotional reaction he didn’t want to analyze. Her relief was all the payment he would ever need for protecting her.
He shut that line of thought down hard.
“You know you can’t stop Krasnov. So what’s our mission?”
She propped her chin on her knee. “My goal all along has been to collect enough evidence of this smuggling network to expose the key players and bring it down under the weight of diplomatic condemnation.”
“Krasnov’s been doing this a long time,” he pointed out. “Possibly since my brother’s time, though the pissant would have been a low-level grunt in the CMA at that time. Diplomatic condemnation won’t matter a damn to him.”
“No, but it will matter to the Kremlin.” A smug smile curved her lips. “Your prime minister—”
“He’s not mine. I may have been a loyal Soviet, but I’ve never been a fan of post-Cold War Russia.”
Briefly diverted, she stared at him.
“You have to be a citizen of somewhere.”
“I’m a citizen of the world, Skylar,” he murmured. “You were saying?”
“An international man of mystery,” she said teasingly. “You probably have a dozen passports. That ought to bother me, as a professional diplomat. But I’ve always considered myself more a scientist than a bureaucrat. I intend to return to the lab and my research when all this is finished. There’s an enormous amount of work still to be done on defensive countermeasures, pharmaceutical treatments and the like.”
She seemed oddly ebullient, sparkling with energy and purpose—a transformation he couldn’t help noticing had followed his declaration of support.
She really loves you, he marveled. However the hell that happened.
“The farther I keep you away from Krasnov, the better,” he said.
She swung her long legs out of bed and jumped to her feet, the tight curve of her tawny ass distracting him all over again. “I’ve already got hard evidence that someone at Khimgorod’s doing business with the North Koreans. What I don’t have is solid evidence that General Krasnov is behind it.”
Deftly she fished beneath the mattress and produced a manila envelope. He accepted it grimly.
He’d been wondering what she’d learned in Khimgorod. His client had paid him an exorbitant sum to make sure the answer was nothing. This purchase order for some incomprehensible chemical formula from the Khimgorod Chemical Combine, signed by a Korean general whose name he recognized from his own shady past, gave him a very bad feeling.
“Christ, Skylar. How did you get this?”
“I have my sources,” she said airily. “My money’s on Anton Belov, the scientist I was supposed to be meeting in Khimgorod.”
“The one who fell on the ice and was airlifted to Novosibirsk?”
The one he’d sent Ilya to waylay. Comrade Belov’s broken arm was therefore Nikolai’s fault.
He switched on the bedside lamp. Its amber light bathed the lemon yellow walls and polished hardwood floors in an intimate glow.
“Anton has a son at the chemical plant,” she explained. “He heads their synthetic chemistry team. I’m guessing Andrei Belov received marching orders from his father—a deeply ethical scientist who has spoken and written about the importance of eliminating chemical weapons—to get this information out.”
In the midst of pulling a brush through her gleaming hair, Skylar hesitated. “I suppose it was you who arranged Anton’s accident? According to my update from the hospital, it was a nasty break.”
“Actually, that was Ilya’s handiwork. He was merely supposed to discourage Belov from meeting you, not land him in the hospital. My former colleague is a bit of a brute, I’m afraid. This wasn’t the first time I’ve had to caution him about excessive force.”
Her blue eyes shadowed.
“The same sort of excessive force your men deployed with me?”
The sight of her fear twisted his gut—another sign he’d been in this business too long. If he was going to develop an emotional reaction for the mark—for this particular mark, at least—it was time to get out.
But he was damn well taking her with him.
“You already know Sasha wasn’t acting under my orders. The CMA got to him.” He slid out of bed and reached for his trousers. “If this chemical formula is what I think it is, you have enough already to sink that stiff-necked prig Anatoly Novikov who gave you the runaround at the chemical combine.”
“As satisfying as that would be,” she said dryly, rooting through the closet, “you know as well as I do that the CMA will disavow any knowledge of his actions and cut him loose. He’ll be painted as a corrupt bureaucrat who acted alone without cognizance or authority from his superiors. Novikov’s cannoli will be cooked, but Krasnov will walk free.”
Her voice hardened. “Six months from now, someone else will be churning out nerve agent on command at Khimgorod or a dozen factories just like it. That’s why I need solid evidence that this deal’s going down with Krasnov’s persona
l involvement.”
She emerged gripping a hanger draped in plastic. A pair of glittering, sea-foam green stilettos dangled from her hand.
Nikolai eyed these preparations warily.
“What are you planning to do—sidle up next to him in the bar and seduce him? Women are not rumored to be among his weaknesses.”
“I don’t think I’d be able to stomach getting that close to him.” Tossing the gown across the rumpled bed, she fished an expensive-looking silver clutch from a shopping bag and added it to the stash. “All I need is a photo of him meeting with his North Korean contact. It would be even better to record the exchange. But that’s a bit impractical, particularly if they’re speaking Korean. I wouldn’t know what I was getting.”
Of course it would come to this, Nikolai thought wryly.
“Finally, a skill the impressive Dr. Rossi doesn’t possess?” he asked. “As it happens, I speak Korean myself.”
At her incredulous stare, he shrugged.
“I studied for a year in Pyongyang under a Communist student exchange program. In my business—or rather, my former business—the North Korean government is one of a hit man’s best customers. In fact, the ex-girlfriend who knifed me turned out to be working for a rival intelligence service in South Korea.”
He wondered if that little revelation would be the one that pushed her away. In fact, he was mildly annoyed to realize he was testing her, feeling out the strength of her so-called love for him.
You’re on a job here, Maestro. Concentrate on the mission, not the woman who’s somehow managed to wiggle her way into your heart.
“You certainly do get around, Mr. Markov,” she said, seemingly unperturbed. “Do you really think we could get close enough to hear them?”
“In my case, possibly.” He strapped his serrated knife to his calf. “They’d recognize you coming a kilometer away.”
“Even if I’m wearing this?” From her shopping bag, Skylar extracted a gleaming wig of red-gold hair, swept into an elegant updo.
The notion of Skylar as a redhead presented another little distraction. A full-blown fantasy sprang into his mind. In it, she was wearing the wig, her fashionable spectacles, those sea-foam stilettos and nothing else.
The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2) Page 26
