With his lips, he traced the lacy rim of her bra, felt her breath flutter and her pulse race. She threaded her fingers through his hair, striving to lead his mouth to the tips of her breasts. Through the soft material, he nipped her lightly.
“Oh, my.” Her voice caressed him with silky hope.
“You like?”
“Yeah. I feel as if…”
He used his teeth again. “As if?”
“I want you to swallow me whole.”
He nudged aside the lace, licked his way back to her sensitive peak. “We’re going to savor this experience by going inch by inch.”
“But—”
“I intend to linger right here for a long while.” He blew on the tip, enjoying with his lips the feel of her nipple puckering even tighter.
She let out a soft moan. “Alex?”
At her question, not wanting to assume anything—no matter how needy she sounded—he pulled back. “You want me to stop?”
“You’re teasing me,” she complained. “It’s not fair. Now, that I finally want…want to have you…you aren’t cooperating.”
He grinned, ignored his throbbing sex and plucked at her other nipple. “I’m always willing to cooperate.”
She clenched her fingers on his shoulders. “But I’m frustrated.”
“Good.”
“And I’m tense.”
“Even better.”
He finally removed her bra, and she let out a sigh that ended in a gasp. “This must be wrong.”
That got his attention. He’d thought she’d gasped in pleasure and that he’d been doing just fine. “Why must something be wrong?”
“Because you feel too good.”
“That’s impossible.” He bit back a chuckle.
She tried to tug his head up. “Are you laughing at me?”
“Waiting is going to be worth the ache. Worth gritting your teeth for. Worth tempering the heat in your veins. Worth holding back.”
“How do you know?” She almost growled the words and sounded as sexy as hell.
This time he didn’t hold back the chuckle. “Because I’m feeling what you’re feeling.”
“Duh.” She clapped her forehead with her palm. “That’s why you didn’t need an aspirin.”
“Now you’re catching on. Surely, in the taxi, you knew I was aroused?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know it felt so…so…odd. Good, but odd. Light-headed. My muscles are taut, as if they could almost but not quite burst. And…”
“And?”
“I can’t stop thinking about where you’ll touch me next,” she admitted.
Leave it to Taylor to try to describe her arousal. While she couldn’t quite do so, he was enjoying her efforts, especially the little pauses and tiny moans that came from the back of her throat. Most especially the way she so obviously had to fight to hold still as he lingered and caressed. “Can you trust me a little more?”
“Are you finally going to get kinky and take off my clothes?” she teased.
“Actually, the thought’s crossed my mind.”
“More than once?” she asked, provocatively lifting her hips to shimmy out of her slacks. She hooked her thumbs into her panties.
He stopped her. “Not yet.”
“Soon?”
He ignored the pleading in her tone. “And for the record, I’ve thought about taking your clothes off much more often than just once.”
He trailed his fingers over the flat of her stomach and the hollow of her hips. She dug her fingertips into his shoulders, again. “This isn’t fair.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. How am I supposed to answer that?”
“Nothing like a woman who knows her own mind.” He ran one finger under the elastic of her panties.
She trembled beneath his touch but she spoke with certainty. “I want a turn to explore you.”
“Greedy girl.” He let his fingers rove to her inner thighs. “You already had your turn in the taxi.”
She parted her legs for him, but tensed. Alex had been watching for the tiniest sign of reluctance. He pulled back immediately, sensing she wasn’t ready for more.
“What?” she asked him. “Did I do something wrong?”
He rolled onto his back, donned the condom, then laced his hands behind his head. “I’m not going to move again unless you tell me to.”
“What?” She sat up and in the dim light he saw her scowl at him.
“I’m all yours,” he told her, not daring to reach out to her. She had to come to him.
“Really?”
She might be confused, but she tentatively ran a finger down his chest, circled a nipple. He bit back a groan. He’d wanted to give her pleasure, and the freedom to go as far as she wanted. He ached for release, but even more, he yearned to give her a safety net, even though he was no longer sure if she required one.
He just hadn’t expected lying still to be so difficult. He’d been aroused for almost an hour. And he wanted her so badly he quivered with the need for her and the release she could give him. But he held still. He didn’t say a word. He barely dared breathe.
And then she continued to explore him with her fingertips, lightly, tentatively, curling her fingers in the dark hairs on his chest. Tugging softly at his nipples. And totally ignoring the part of him that strained for her attention.
He would let her do this her way—even if his blood simmered with desire, even if his mind clouded with lust, even if he died a little every moment that she made him wait. He couldn’t ever remember wanting to hold back this much or the waiting being so difficult that he gulped air into lungs that didn’t seem to work. He couldn’t ever recall reacting so strongly to any woman, couldn’t figure out what was so different about Taylor.
“You smell good,” she told him, skimming her hands along his chest, dipping closer to his waist then trailing over his hips and down his thighs. “And these muscles are from?”
“Riding.” She stopped her caress. And he added, “Riding horses.”
“Someday you’ll have to take me for a ride,” she told him, and from the throaty need in her tone, he had no doubt what kind of ride she wanted. “But now I’m going to do the riding, yes?”
“Yes. You did tell me once that you wanted to be on top.”
“And you aren’t going to move, are you?”
“Not unless you ask,” he promised, praying he could stick to it.
She straddled his hips without touching the part of him that strained for her heat. He waited, not daring to so much as blink.
Still kneeling over him, she leaned forward until her lips remained just a centimeter from his. She whimpered softly, seductively, allowing her breasts to caress his chest. “You don’t mind if I kiss you again?”
Mind? Why would he mind? Just because every atom in his body longed for him to clench her hips and drive into her? Just because it took every wisp of control he had left to hold still beneath her? “Kiss me, Taylor. For as long as you like,” he added, feeling like a man who’d just given his woman unlimited spending on his credit card.
She didn’t just kiss him, that would have been much too easy on his spiraling senses. She ran her fingers through his hair. She let him feel her hardened nipples against his chest. And she practically purred, rubbing against him like a cuddly cat.
Finally, when blood pounded in his head and his ears roared with the thrum of need, she lowered her hips and took him inside her. He’d expected her to take him in slowly. But no, she thrust down in one smooth move that almost undid him.
“Hold still,” he begged. “You feel too good.”
She ignored his request. “You told me that’s impossible.”
He had? He couldn’t think. She was taking control of him, sweeping him away in a tide so strong he could barely keep breathing. Clearly she had no intention of stopping.
“Let me touch you,” he half pleaded, half asked.
She grunted and he took that as a yes. Reaching
between them he slid a finger between her legs, finding her slick and hot. She increased the pace. Despite his desire to hold back, his own hips matched her rhythm. He crested, rolling toward the inevitable, and then she found her own release, her muscles spasming around him, intensifying the pleasure, taking him over the edge.
When he could think again, he discovered that she’d simply collapsed on top of him. He’d curled an arm around her waist, and her cheek pressed against his neck. He waited for the urge to separate, but it never came.
Instead, he pulled the covers over them and fell into a deep sleep. When he wakened with her still in his arms, he had the urge to make love to her again. However, he suspected that after such a long period of sexual inactivity, she was most likely sore.
What surprised him most of all was that he was content to simply hold her as he drifted back to sleep.
TAYLOR AWAKENED WITHOUT one regret. Last night was the first time she’d ever relaxed enough to have an orgasm during sex with a man. Wonder and joy surged through her at her recollections of last night. Sex with Alex had been better than eating chocolate.
She supposed she could thank the playboy’s vast experience with women from three or four continents. However, she couldn’t have been more pleased that he’d known just what to do to reassure her.
But she refused to give him all the credit. She’d felt desire. And it had felt good. No, it had felt great.
She wanted to dance around the room and congratulate herself for this marvelous breakthrough. She’d actually had a good time. A really, really good time. Which to her meant that she’d recovered from a reluctance to date men, to kiss men, to touch and to be touched.
She hadn’t been permanently damaged or scarred by her father’s abandonment of the family or her brother’s abuse or her husband’s cheating. She was now free. And all thanks to Alex.
She would have kissed him, except that she recalled how much he enjoyed sleeping late and didn’t want to wake him this early. Today was Saturday. No need to return to the embassy. So she let him sleep, eased out of the bed and headed for the shower.
After closing the bathroom door and turning on the light, she used the complimentary toothbrush, turned the shower on, adjusted the temperature of the water and stepped in. Humming under her breath, she rotated the shower head until it produced a steady rain. Ducking under the water, she almost wished she’d awakened Alex so he could join her.
Last night in the dark, she hadn’t gotten a good look at his body, and she would have enjoyed marveling over it in daylight. While she soaped and rinsed, she realized that she couldn’t have chosen a better man. To him, she was a woman with whom to enjoy a night or two of passion. He liked her, sure. But he would never feel more than that. She had to expect that a man who was notorious for his sexual exploits would end their time together without a look backward, without any hard feelings or guilt. He would move on.
And she would heal, thoroughly, totally, completely. She was definitely getting the better end of the deal. To her, Alex was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. She found him attractive and intelligent. She knew without a doubt that after he returned to his country and continued his playboy lifestyle, she would open herself up to the possibilities of dating, of finding the right man, and maybe someday having kids.
Meanwhile, she intended to take advantage of his prowess. After the last years of celibacy, she was entitled to a little fun. Knowing up front that Alex would never feel more for her than for any of his other women, that he would never commit to a woman, would force her to guard her heart.
MARK WILLARD’S mistress’s home sat on top of a hill in an older section of Washington where the pace was slow and the streets shaded by huge oaks and elms. Houses perched on well-tended lots, the hedges high and imposing. Taylor had been expecting a seedy area, not this exclusive subdivision.
Instead of going back to the mall to pick up Taylor’s car, they’d taken a cab. Taylor paid the driver, who’d stopped one block away from their final destination.
A roadblock of police cars, fire engines and ambulances prevented them from going closer. When a stranger edged up behind Alex, Taylor stepped between the two men. With her hand in her pocket, her fingers gripping her gun, she looked at the man’s face, then relaxed.
Hunter! The ex CIA-agent had slipped through the crowd and found them, made eye contact with Taylor, nodded for her to follow him, then headed for the park. Beside her, Alex had seemingly missed the entire silent exchange. But when she tugged him away from the roadblock, he came with her willingly enough.
Bending close to her ear, he whispered, “How did Hunter find us?”
So he had noticed. Alex might be a laid-back playboy but he could be extremely observant.
She shrugged and kept walking. “I hope he’s solved the entire case.”
Alex kept an arm across her shoulder as they crossed the street. “Are you so anxious to leave me?”
“I’m anxious for you and your family to be out of danger.”
Hunter led them through a path in the park. They passed one man walking his Boston terrier and a vendor selling ice cream, but apparently the majority of people had left the park to join the curiosity seekers staring through the police barrier behind them.
“What’s up?” Taylor asked Hunter.
Hunter led them from the path into a more remote wooded area. “Mark Willard’s mistress shot him.”
“He’s dead?” Taylor asked.
“He deserved shooting,” Alex muttered with a hard look at Hunter.
“He’s not dead. The police have taken her in for questioning, but the word is that she shot him in self-defense after he tried to strangle her with a garotte. The woman has two black eyes and bruises around her neck. Apparently she missed the region she’d targeted and shot him in the thigh.”
Taylor watched Alex grimace despite his former words that the man deserved what he’d gotten. Men didn’t like to think about injuries in such a sensitive area. But she felt relief that Willard hadn’t died. She still wanted to talk to him about the embassy fire and the garotte—which is what someone had tried to use on Alex. In her book, this was no coincidence. “And Willard had deep cuts in his side,” she said. “Cuts that might match the broken lamp you used to free yourself from the garotte.”
If she and Alex hadn’t gotten distracted last night, she might have already completed the interview and the man in the hospital might be chained and under guard in his hospital bed. Now they’d have to wait until Willard came out of surgery to question him.
Still, they’d have another chance to question Willard and she couldn’t regret last night. It had been too special. Alex had been a marvelous lover and she hadn’t felt so energized in years. Her face must have revealed some of her emotions because Alex tugged her closer under his arm.
Hunter didn’t say a word. Instead he took out color photographs of a silver sedan and handed them to Taylor.
She frowned. “That’s the car that tailed us from the embassy.”
“It belongs to Ira Hanuck,” Hunter informed them.
Alex peered at the pictures, obviously trying to identify the driver. “Is Ira in that vehicle?”
“His aide was following you,” Hunter said. “Possibly it’s a normal security precaution. And it’s also possible someone besides the security chief asked his aide to tail you.”
“Where are Anton and General Vladimir?” Alex asked. Taylor realized that normally Alex would have known, but due to his downgrade in status from prince to handyman, he couldn’t always keep up with everyone’s schedules.
“Anton is currently at the Moldovan embassy, trying to work out details of a new agreement on how your countries will handle Russian refugees. Vladimir is planning meetings with his American counterparts.”
Taylor handed back the pictures. “Any idea why Ira’s aide was following us?”
Hunter shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
Alex reached into his pocket and hande
d Hunter the disks. “We found these in the embassy trash.”
“Moments before General Vladimir could grab them,” Taylor added.
“Perhaps you can find something on them that we cannot,” Alex commented.
“I’ll try. There are several known terrorists in the area. We’ve been unable to determine who hired them or what their mission is.”
“Great.” Taylor sighed, unable to contain her sarcasm. “I feel so much better now, knowing that there are terrorists in the mix.” She’d hoped Hunter would solve the case for them. Instead he’d complicated matters.
“It gets worse,” Hunter warned her. “One of the terrorists is an assassination specialist. The scuttlebutt on him is that he accepts only high-profile targets. We thought he’d retired, but we don’t think he’s here as a tourist.”
Taylor frowned. “He’s in Washington?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who hired him?” Alex asked.
“Money was wired from Bulgaria to his private account in Switzerland. The Bulgarian government is very uncooperative when it comes to revealing information about these kinds of transactions. Our diplomatic corps is pressuring their government; however, realistically, I don’t expect any help from that direction.”
“Are we getting help from anyone?” Taylor asked, needing some good news.
“The Israeli Mossad is doing what they can. It’s to their benefit to have stability in their part of the world. King Nicholas has also received a secret missive from the crown prince of Moldova.”
“The Toad?” Alex asked, using Tashya’s nickname for the man she detested.
The crown prince had wanted to marry Alex’s sister, now Hunter’s fiancée. No wonder Hunter’s voice had turned deadly cold. Obviously he wanted nothing to do with the man who’d once thought of himself a rival for Tashya’s affections.
“The crown prince claims that the newest treaty Anton Belosova has offered has insulted Moldovan leaders and could lead to war between the two countries.”
Alex frowned. “That’s old news.”
Royal Pursuit Page 13
