The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2)

by Nikki Navarre

  He rubbed her arm, and she couldn’t contain a shudder.

  “You seemed drawn to him,” he went on. “The instrument of your own destruction. The two of you could hardly keep your hands off each other. Hell, he’s probably fucked you six ways to Sunday by now.”

  She made a small sound of protest. If their attraction had been only physical, she could have handled it, and so could Nikolai.

  “How was he, Mrs. Ambassador? You like the taste of good Russian cock?”

  Her stomach churned with nausea. If he kept talking this way, she was going to throw up.

  “You betrayed him for the money, one presumes?” she challenged. “You accepted contracts from the MFA and the CMA both. Aren’t you worried about how that’s going to play on the hit man grapevine? You’ll be known as someone who can’t be trusted.”

  “There’s always work for a man like me.” His grip clamped harder, and she couldn’t swallow a moan. At the sound, his breath grew harsher. “Besides, no one will ever really know what happened to you.”

  As he spoke, they emerged on a narrow crescent beach, dimly lit by the glow of a crescent moon and a heaven full of stars whose light sparkled in a million facets on the night-dark sea.

  Before them, a darkened boat bobbed at a narrow jetty. Her heart sank to the soles of her stiletto heels. Somehow, they’d angled away from the hotel quay where the other boats were moored. Now God knew where they were.

  Eyeing the lone vessel, she hesitated. His words echoed in her ear.

  I have some little toys I’m going to enjoy showing you.

  There was nowhere else to go, no one to rescue her. But Nikolai had to be somewhere behind them in the darkness. She trusted him implicitly, no matter what his former sidekick insinuated. All she needed to give him was an opening.

  When Ilya propelled her forward with a hard shove, she deliberately dropped her clutch, then stopped with a cry of dismay.

  “Get moving,” he ordered. “Or I’ll forego the pleasure of cutting you and put a bullet in you right here. This is a silenced pistol. No one will hear you die.”

  “Please.” She didn’t have to feign a wheeze. The breath was whistling through her lungs. “I just need my inhaler. It’s here in my purse. I can’t—breathe.”

  Praying he wouldn’t blow a hole in her back, she sank slowly to her knees. For a mercy, he let her do it, broad face scowling as he peered up and down the moonlit beach. She fumbled her clutch open. In the darkness, the contents tumbled into her hands: her inhaler and the flat plastic rectangle of the credit card knife.

  Huddled over her clutch, she unfolded the wicked edge and concealed the tiny weapon against her palm. As she uncapped her inhaler with shaking hands and took a hit, her heart was racing, her skin tingling, adrenaline pumping through every limb.

  She abhorred violence of any kind, but her options had become vanishingly few. She had to play for time until Nikolai—

  “Get moving,” Ilya said gruffly. “Or I end this right here, da?”

  Working to project compliance, she voiced a little whimper and let her shoulders sag. Then, her heart in her throat, she dropped her clutch.

  Muttering an obscenity, Ilya bent to haul her upright.

  Fueled by terror, Skylar struck out blindly. She heard the fabric of his jacket tear as the blade sliced across his reaching arm. He howled and reeled back.

  Clutching the knife for dear life, she kicked off her stilettos and launched into a run.

  Behind, her assailant spat out a curse. She heard the crunch of his footsteps as he started after her. Pebbles and tiny shells dug cruelly into her tender soles as she raced along the beach, adrenaline coursing through her system and her heart in her throat.

  The short bark of a pistol made her flinch. One two three—the rapid staccato gunfire of the professional hit man. Expecting every moment to feel lead tear through her vulnerable flesh, she hunched and ran faster, angling her course parallel to the shore Bullets ricocheted from the rocks and whined around her.

  But Ilya had said his pistol was silenced.

  Hope bloomed in her frantic heart.

  Nikolai.

  The harsh scrape of Ilya’s breath sounded behind her, strengthening her hopes, but the footsteps kept coming. She expected more gunfire, but the shooter was silent. If Nikolai was behind them, she realized, he couldn’t fire without the risk of hitting her.

  She needed to get out of his line of fire.

  Stones bruised her bare feet and her Achilles throbbed dully as she sprinted left, right, trying to give Nikolai the clear shot he needed. But her maneuvering room on the narrow, cliff-lined beach was too limited. When she zagged around a jumble of boulders, a rocky wall reared before her

  Nowhere left to run.

  “Merda,” she gasped. The jetty stretched into the cove directly beside her. Wildly she veered toward it.

  As she altered course, she risked a backward glance and nearly screamed. Ilya’s lumbering form loomed no more than six feet behind. She was barefoot on the rough footing, and he had a clear advantage.

  “Bitch!” he growled as he pounded after her. “I’ll gut you like a fucking fish!”

  The gun dangled limply from his hand, and he was clutching his shoulder. His uneven stride told her at least one of Nikolai’s bullets had found its mark. But she harbored no doubt if he caught her Ilya was more than capable of carrying out his ugly threat.

  He wanted to capture her alive. With nowhere left to run, she was headed straight where he wanted her to go.

  She chanced another look back. Thirty feet behind and closing, a slim shadow darted fleetly around the boulders as he raced in pursuit. Her heart spasmed with painful hope.

  “Whore!” Ilya spat. “I’m going to make you scream for this.”

  She vaulted from the rocky beach onto the worn planks of the jetty. The back of her calf gave a warning stab as her Achilles objected. Gasping, she propelled herself down the dock, pain knifing down her leg with every stride.

  As Ilya lurched after her, the boards trembled beneath her feet. His shoes thudded against the boards.

  “Skylar!” Nikolai’s shout sliced through the night. “Get down.”

  On instinct, she veered to the side and dove off the jetty. She caught a fractured glimpse of Ilya nearly on top of her, broad face scowling as he reached for her. Then the shock of cold water encased her and closed over her head.

  Submerged, she struck out blindly, swimming away from the dark slash of the jetty, desperate to put as much distance as she could between herself and Ilya’s silenced pistol.

  Beneath the surface, she heard the muffled triple pop of another fusillade. She dove deeper, arms and legs propelling her through the water, the watery world around her gray and wavering, dimly lit by the moonlight streaming through the depths, until her fingers grazed the slick mossy bottom. The filmy folds of her gown swirling around her, she swam until her lungs screamed for air.

  When she finally surfaced, gasping, she found she’d swum fifty feet or more from the jetty. As far as she was concerned, that wasn’t nearly far enough. Dragging air into her lungs, she shook a fringe of sodden hair out of her eyes and kept kicking.

  “Skylar!”

  As she cut through the water, she snuck a look back.

  Midway down the jetty, a solitary form stood etched against the star-spangled heavens. A dark mass huddled at his feet.

  She would have recognized Nikolai’s graceful, knife-slim silhouette anywhere as he pivoted to search the waves.

  When he shouted, the desperation in his tone brought tears to her eyes.

  “Skylar!”

  She pitched her voice to call back.

  “I’m here!”

  Swiftly he turned toward her. The relief that suffused his voice made her smile in the darkness.

  “Christ. I can’t turn my back on you for a minute.”

  “Sorry.” Cool water swirled around her as she kicked to keep herself afloat. At Nikolai’s feet, the dark form l
ay unmoving. “Um, your sidekick there. Is he…?”

  “He’s not going to trouble you or any woman ever again,” he said flatly. “And I positively enjoyed pulling the trigger. Can you swim in, or should I come out to get you?”

  The knowledge that her pursuer was dead, that Ilya and his dark boat and the open ocean would never loom in her future, filled her with dizzying relief.

  Thank God.

  “I’m fine,” she called faintly. “Would you care to come for a moonlight swim?”

  “In five minutes, this beach is going to be crawling with hotel security, and then the police. If you’ve quite finished your aquatics, perhaps you’d care to come in.”

  Hearing the exasperation in his voice, a smile tugged at her lips.

  Obligingly she struck out for the jetty. With the amount of adrenaline still flooding her system, she felt as though she were floating six inches above the surface.

  When she reached the pier, Nikolai crouched and hauled her bodily from the water. Somehow she gathered her shaking legs beneath her, registering another unhappy stab from her damned Achilles, and collapsed into his arms.

  The vital strength of his lean muscled frame enveloped her, mingling with the acrid bite of tobacco from the cigar he’d been smoking. The butter-soft sleekness of his rock star suede, the artfully tousled hair that brushed his shoulders, and the dark goatee bracketing his mouth lent him an exotic flavor.

  But he would always be Nikolai to her.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and raised her face blindly. The wet heat of his mouth, rich with the smoky darkness of Cuban tobacco, consumed her like an inferno. As his tongue plundered her mouth, relief spiraled through her and pleasure zinged through every molecule. Tendrils of warmth crept slowly through her chilled limbs.

  The distant ring of voices, questions flying back and forth in agitated Italian, made Nikolai stiffen. He raised his head and listened.

  “Sounds like someone has already phoned the polizia,” she murmured into the warmth of his neck. “We’re going to have some explaining to do.”

  “Did he hurt you, Skylar?” His hands slid down her wet arms and the bare length of her back. The heat of his skin against her chilled flesh made her shiver. “Damn! I should never have let you talk me into this crazy scheme.”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “Did we get what we needed from Krasnov, at least?”

  “That depends,” he said dryly. “When you rang me in the bar, he was in the middle of detailing the inventory of VX, sarin, soman and mustard gas he had crated and waiting offshore for delivery to their Asian client. When I turned around and saw Ilya dragging you away, my priorities altered significantly.”

  He grimaced. “No doubt both Krasnov and your uncle Marco vanished at the first gunshot. They’ll be long gone by now.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She sighed. “We weren’t planning to arrest him on the spot.”

  As she said the words, the knowledge broke over her that it was true. Krasnov was free for the moment, but somehow that no longer mattered.

  For all her adult lifetime, she’d sought to atone for the adolescent mistakes that left her father and her lover dead. But they’d made their own choices, just as she’d made hers. The consequences of those choices lay on their own shoulders.

  As for Skylar, she’d more than atoned for her mistakes. In fact, she’d nearly died for them—the missteps of a lonely seventeen-year-old girl trailing after a man she thought she loved. After that fiasco, she’d never thought she would trust or love again.

  Yet somehow, she did.

  She raised her head and looked searchingly into the face of the man she loved. He scanned the dark shore, one arm wrapped protectively around her waist, pistol still gripped in his free hand.

  Rock star, chess prodigy, personal bodyguard and consummate lover. It didn’t matter what disguise he wore on the outside. He would always be her protector.

  At least as long as he was around.

  He’d protect her until his imminent disappearance into some remote archipelago in the South Pacific with a new name and a new face. She’d better not make the mistake of thinking he’d changed his mind about that.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she repeated, more firmly. “We’ll give what we have—the purchase order, the photos, your recording—to my old colleagues at the United Nations. They’ll know what to do. But I don’t think I’ll be returning to Russia anytime soon.”

  His gaze shifted from the rocky path, where flashlights played among the rocks, to search her face.

  “Doesn’t that trouble you? Your work is your life.”

  You are my life, Nikolai Markov or whoever you are. But you’ve made it clear that’s not a message you’re ready to hear.

  “Not really,” she said aloud. “Chemistry, not diplomacy, is my true passion. I’ve always wanted to go back to the bench—to the Army research lab at Edgewood. But now I’m thinking I might look for something in the pharmaceutical industry instead. I’ve had enough of chemical weapons for one lifetime.”

  As a flashlight played over the rocky beach and swept along the jetty, Nikolai released her and stepped protectively before her, pistol concealed against his thigh.

  “Get in the boat, Skylar,” he said low.

  Not on her life. Even with his former sidekick lying dead behind her, discovering firsthand what sort of torture scenario Ilya had spread out on his powerboat would give her nightmares.

  She gripped Nikolai’s arm.

  “It’s the police, Nikolai. Or hotel security. Put your gun away and let me handle this.”

  Before he could respond, the flashlight played across them. She squinted against the blinding beam and spread her hands to show she was unarmed.

  “I’m an American diplomat,” she called to the shadowy form. “This man has just saved me from an attempted kidnapping. Don’t shoot.”

  The beam hovered on her face. Silently she kissed her hope of a stealthy exit from Capri goodbye.

  “My name is Skylar Rossi,” she called into the darkness. “I’m a U.S. Ambassador. Don’t shoot.”

  Abruptly the blinding beam lowered. With a low-voiced command, the shadowy form waved back the pair of flanking figures that had followed him onto the jetty. After a moment, the two shifted left and right to search the narrow beach.

  Nikolai’s slim shadow melted back into the darkness. Apparently he’d scoped the scene and decided to let her do what she did best.

  Not daring to glance back at him, she waited while the new arrival—a tall man in a dark suit, the collar of a crisp white shirt gleaming in the moonlight—strode toward her with a slow, measured stride. Something about the way he moved made her tingle with belated recognition.

  She gasped.

  “A U.S. Ambassador,” he said in fluid Italian. The smooth timbre of his voice made her throat close with remembrance. “Your father would be proud, bella.”

  She swallowed hard and stepped forward.

  “Ciao, Uncle Marco,” she said softly.

  “I noticed you upstairs at the banco.”

  A few feet away, her uncle halted and switched off the flashlight. Under the fashionable salt-and-pepper hair that skimmed his collar, moonlight played over the lean, handsome features she remembered so clearly.

  “I thought you looked like a Rossi, si?” he murmured. “But with that hair, who could say? You’ve stayed away a long time, bella.”

  She’d lost her wig in the ocean. Now she sleeked back her sodden hair and met his gaze squarely.

  “I’ll have to keep staying away. I don’t approve of the family business—especially your smuggling chemical weapons.”

  “What can I say?” Marco Rossi spread his hands ruefully. “It’s just a sideline for your Uncle Tonio and me. We inherited the contacts from your Papà, si? The Orientals came to me to close this deal.”

  “It’s not going to be a good line of business for a while. The U.S. Government is wise to General Krasnov and his North Korean part
ners. It’s going to be quite a bit harder flying under their radar.”

  She only hoped that was true. The extent to which Washington was likely to engage would depend on the quality of her photos and Nikolai’s recording. She wanted to steal a peek behind her, see how he was dealing with this family reunion. But she didn’t particularly want to draw her uncle’s attention to him—not while Nikolai was holding a loaded gun.

  “Si.” Marco studied her. “This moonlight tango’s changed a few things, bella. The polizia are involved—and my niece is involved. You’re still a member of this family. And family comes first. You know that.”

  The sting of tears caught her by surprise, like the lump that swelled in her throat. Her father and his brothers had always been peas in a pod. That was another reason, beyond the family business, why she’d stayed away.

  It was another reason why she’d keep staying away.

  She swallowed down the lump in her throat. But her voice was husky when she spoke.

  “Will you stop peddling nerve agent for General Krasnov?”

  “Not for him, bella,” her uncle said tenderly. “But I will do it for you. We’ve been following your career, your Uncle Tonio and me. You’ve always made us proud.”

  A poignant pain squeezed her chest. She smiled bitterly and looked away. Her uncles might be willing to forego their sideline business for her sake—especially if government heat was likely to ensue. But she wasn’t fool enough to think they’d jeopardize their core interests for her or anyone else.

  “You were always the smart one,” she said softly. “My father could never bring himself to turn down a dollar’s worth of business.”

  “Allora.” Her uncle shrugged. “That was Dane. Pace all’anima sua.”

  God rest his soul.

  When her Catholic uncle crossed himself, she nearly followed suit. But this maudlin stroll through their messy family history was getting them nowhere.

  She cleared her throat. “I’m going back to my hotel, Uncle Marco. I’ll be off Capri by sunrise, and out of Italy entirely by noon.”