Hot As Ice

by Merline Lovelace

"Your turn," she said hoarsely, her fingers fum­bling with the snap to his khaki shorts. He kicked them away a few seconds later, along with the or­ange shower shoes and ridiculous purple jockey shorts.

  Whatever doubts had lingered in the back of Charlie's mind about present-day mating rituals dis­appeared the moment he covered her naked body with his. The instincts that gripped them both at that moment were as old as time, as unchanging as the sea.

  His mouth ground down on hers. Her tongue warred with his. He cushioned his weight on his forearms to keep from crushing her, but she locked her heels around his calves, urging him, inflaming him.

  Every muscle and tendon strained when he eased to one side and slid a hand between her thighs. Ea­gerly, she opened for him. One probe of his fingers told him she was ready, so ready that Charlie nearly fired his missile right then and there. Conquering the urge with an act of sheer willpower, he slid an­other finger into her slick depths and primed her even more. He was panting almost as hard and fast as Diana when her hand closed over his rigid flesh.

  "Ho-ly cow!"

  Her hand stilled. For a moment, laughter replaced the daze in her green eyes.

  "Holy cow? Is that good or bad?"

  "That's good, babe. Definitely good!"

  With another gurgle of laughter, she tightened her fingers and slid them upward to cowl the tip of his shaft. Pleasure sliced through him, so fierce and sharp he had to jackknife away to keep from em­barrassing himself. With a wicked smile, she held on.

  Charlie withstood her torment as long as he could before he grabbed her wrist and pinned it to the carpet above her head. Positioning himself between her thighs, he thrust home.

  With an eager lift of her hips, Diana welcomed him. She'd been right, she thought on a gasp. Major Charlie Stone definitely didn't need the latest won­der drug for men. He stretched her, filled her, com­pleted her.

  The idea startled her, but this was hardly the time or the place to stop and examine it. Shoving aside any and all attempts at rational thought, she gave herself up to the incredible sensations Charlie was generating with his hands and his mouth and his body. Soon—too soon!—she felt her climax begin to build low in her belly. Like the ocean outside, wave after wave of delight surged, ebbed, surged again.

  A groan ripped from far back in Diana's throat. Arching, she rode the crest of her wild, swirling pleasure. The waves were just about to crash down when she felt Charlie stiffen. Moaning, she clenched her belly muscles, urging him to finish.

  Abruptly, he flexed his hips and withdrew.

  Diana's eyes flew open. Through a swirling haze, she took in the grim set to his jaw.

  "Charlie?"

  "Don't move."

  Remembering how he'd staggered on the dance floor earlier, she felt a frisson of alarm and tried to wiggle up. "What's the matter?"

  "Don't...move!" Sweat sheened his forehead. His chest heaved. The muscles on his upper arms quivered. "I promise...I won't leave you like this. And I won't...get you pregnant. I...just need...a minute."

  Diana blinked. Good grief! He was trying to pro­tect her. Evidently he had every intention of bring­ing her to a climax, but not himself.

  Something soft and tender blossomed in her chest at that moment. Not love. It couldn't be love, she assured herself. More of an odd sort of affection.

  She just wasn't used to being protected. Or hav­ing doors opened for her, for that matter. If her mother's radical feminism hadn't weeded out any and all inclination toward helplessness, Diana's OMEGA training would certainly have done the trick. Still, she felt the strangest, silliest melting when she cupped his cheeks in her hands and ex­plained that coitus interruptus didn't work. Nor did the rhythm method, which is why they invented the birth control pill.

  "There's a pill now?"

  "Actually, there's something better than a pill. A shot that lasts for several months." "Several months, huh?"

  He thought about that for a few moments, then slid an arm under her hips. With one swift tug, po­sitioned her under him once more.

  "Maybe we should plan on staying longer than one night."

  "Maybe," Diana gasped as he entered her, "we should."

  She drifted out of sleep the next morning, lured into reluctant wakefulness by the nippy air and rest­less murmur of the sea outside the window.

  It was June, for heaven's sake, yet the ocean breeze carried a distinct bite. Thankfully, Charlie's determination to make the most of the latest ad­vances in birth control had—eventually!—landed them in bed.

  A nice, warm bed, with a firm mattress and light­weight covers. Tugging on the blankets, Diana curled into a tight ball. In the process, she felt her knee collide with warm flesh. Poking her head out from under the covers, she pried open one lid. A naked chest rose and fell mere inches from her nose.

  "Hi."

  The rumbled greeting came from just above her head and chased away the last of Diana's morning fog. Uncurling, she rolled onto her back and tucked the blanket under her arms. A quick shove pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes.

  "Hi, yourself."

  Charlie lay beside her in a comfortable sprawl, his head propped on one hand. Stubble shadowed his cheeks. His brown hair stood in spikes. In the hazy light filtering through the curtained windows, he looked rugged, sleep-deprived, and all male.

  And just a little remote.

  A smile creased his cheeks, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Diana hadn't expected a wake-up kiss, didn't want one until she'd made a dash to the bathroom, but neither had she thought that he would be the one to ease back a step or two after the wild intimacy of the night before.

  A little piqued, she cocked her head. "What are you thinking about?"

  "The fellow you said you're dating, for starters."

  Surprised, she gave him a considering look. Was this a guy thing? Did Charlie feel he'd violated some kind of masculine code of honor by sleeping with a woman who might be involved with another man? She had no clue how the fifties male thought about such matters, but evidently was about to find out.

  "Why are you thinking about him?" she asked curiously. "Are you feeling guilty?"

  His smile knifed into a swift, predatory grin. "The last thing I'm feeling right now is guilty. If this friend of yours isn't man enough to hang on to his woman, he didn't deserve her in the first place."

  His woman? Diana's lips curled in a moue of distaste. She didn't find Charlie's chauvinistic ten­dencies quite as endearing this morning. Allowing him to open the door for her was one thing. Hearing him catalogue her as a trophy was something else again.

  "What about you?" he asked, his eyes shadowed behind the screen of his lashes. "Are you feeling guilty?"

  "No," she informed him coolly. "I've already e-mailed Allen and told him we have to talk when I get home."

  "You 'have to talk?' What is that, some kind of twenty-first century code for take a hike, pal?"

  "More or less."

  "I'll remember that."

  This wasn't at all the conversation she'd expected to be having after collecting carpet and/or whisker burns on both sets of cheeks. Humping her arms over the covers, she tipped Charlie a cool glance.

  "You said you were thinking about Allen for starters. Who or what else is on your mind?"

  His pulled in a deep breath, let it whistle out through his teeth. The rise and fall of the naked chest just inches from her nose distracted Diana mo­mentarily.

  "Do you have access to a lab?"

  Her gaze snapped back to his face. ' I have access to several."

  A magnificent understatement, to say the least.

  Her position at the prestigious Harrell Institute pro­vided entree to a host of private and educational research facilities. More to the point, her work for OMEGA allowed her to draw on the resources of highly classified government technical centers.

  Charlie's blue eyes drilled into hers. "Can you request a special analysis? Have it done with no questions asked, and no reports provided to any
one but you?"

  With a sudden pulse of excitement, she sensed he was about to share the secret he'd been guarding so closely.

  "That can be arranged."

  "Wait here. I'll get my gear bag. I want to show you something."

  Only after he'd rolled out bed, dragged on his shorts, and headed for the sitting room did it dawn on Diana that last night had constituted some kind of a test. One she'd obviously passed.

  The air left her lungs on a hiss. She slumped back against the chintz-covered headboard, her ego de­flating at the same velocity as her lungs.

  Smart, Remington. Real smart. Compromise your mission. Forget why you were sent to the Arctic. Jump into bed with the man you're supposed to pro­tect, then feel hurt and used and stupid for doing it.

  What the heck was the matter with her? She'd set out to win Charlie's confidence. That was the plan right from the start. So why should she feel like she'd just swallowed a giant fur ball? Dammit all, anyway!

  Shoving aside the covers, Diana swung out of bed and marched into the bathroom.

  Chapter 9

  He could trust Diana.

  Right now, she was the only one he really trusted in the twenty-first century.

  The thought hammered in Charlie's head as he retrieved his canvas gear from the sitting room. Tan­gled covers, an empty bed, and the drum of the shower against the bath tiles greeted him when he returned to the bedroom.

  Duty clashed instantly, fiercely, with desire. He had to resolve the doubts he'd carried around with him since waking up in the Arctic. Needed answers to the questions that swirled constantly in his head. But a mental image of water sluicing down Diana's naked body short-circuited every instinct but the urge to slide into her warm, slick depths again. And again. And again.

  Tossing his gear bag onto the bed, he started across the room. He was halfway to the bath when the water cut off. Reluctantly, he wrestled his ram­paging lust into submission. He had no idea what morning rituals women performed these days, but he suspected Diana might prefer privacy while she powdered or puffed or whatever. What's more, he acknowledged, scraping a hand along his jaw, he could use a little powdering and puffing himself. He'd take a turn in the shower...after he showed Diana what was in his gear bag.

  Retreating, Charlie straightened the bedcovers, then dragged his flight suit from the canvas bag and laid it on the downy comforter. His jaw went tight as bits of hardened rubber crumbled onto the spread.

  He stared at the dark crumbs for a long moment, then spun on his heel and aimed for the kitchenette to tackle the coffeemaker mounted under the cup­board. When Diana emerged from the mist-filled bathroom wrapped from chin to toe in a thick white terry-cloth robe, he was waiting with a steaming mug and a terse instruction.

  "Take a look at the rubber seals and hoses."

  Finger-combing her damp hair away from her face, she hitched a hip on the side of the bed to study the full pressure suit. The white bubble helmet and steel gray, one-piece body cover were devoid of all markings. No flag on the sleeve, no rank in­signia, nothing to identify the wearer at all.

  "It looks just like a space suit."

  Charlie shrugged. From the material she'd shown him of the Apollo flights, he guessed NASA had adapted much of the gear tested by early high-altitude pilots.

  "Space as a physical environment begins a hun­dred and twenty-five miles above the earth," he confirmed. "As a physiological environment, it be­gins at about fifty-five thousand feet."

  "And the U-2 could cruise at sixty thousand," she murmured.

  ''Our pilots faced the same dangers of hypoxia, decompression sickness, Armstrong's Line, and ex­treme cold as they would in orbit."

  Charlie had learned early in the U-2 program that Armstrong's Line was the atmospheric point where water boiled at 98.6—exact body temperature. The pressure suit was designed to protect the U-2 pilots' blood from bubbling and boiling when they reached that altitude. Since outside temperatures could reach seventy degrees below zero, the suit also protected against hypothermia, frostbite and frozen eyeballs in the event the aircraft lost cabin heat.

  "The key component of the pressure suit is the integrated breathing system," he explained, his voice grim. "When in flight, the system provides the pilot with one hundred percent oxygen at all times—even during ejection."

  Without a full pressure suit at high elevation, a pilot had only about a minute before the lack of oxygen caused blurred vision, dizziness, slowed re­actions and lack of muscle coordination. Charlie had experienced each of those terrifying conditions first­hand.

  Scooping up a handful of the granulated pebbles that peppered the bedspread, he dropped them into Diana's palm. "Those are what I want analyzed."

  Frowning, she rolled the shreds of hardened rubber back and forth in her palm. "We ran tests on all your gear at the recovery site. None of the tests indicated the possibility of equipment failure."

  "How did you explain those?"

  ''The rubber components in your equipment froze when you went into the sea, then disintegrated when they were exposed to air again."

  He opened his mouth, snapped it shut again. The terror of his last seconds in flight came rushing back. He could almost hear the deadly hiss of es­caping oxygen. Feel his mind start to spin. Like a wild beast, he'd clawed at his helmet, sucking des­perately for air before training and pure survival in­stinct had taken over.

  "The rubber started disintegrating in midflight, Diana."

  "What?"

  "I lost oxygen at full cruise altitude, just after entering Soviet airspace."

  Her fist clenched over the pebbles. "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure." A clammy sweat filmed Charlie's skin. The residue of fear left a metallic bitterness in his mouth. "I jerked the stick and brought the air­craft around. I had her on a westerly trajectory when the oxygen system failed completely and I ejected."

  "Dear God!"

  "I lost consciousness on the way down. I don't remember my chute deploying or hitting the water. I don't remember anything after popping the can-opy."

  "Why didn't you tell us about this during the recovery operation?"

  "At first, because I couldn't believe your incred­ible story that I'd spent all those years in the ice. Then..."

  Gripping the nuggets tight in her fist, Diana pushed off the bed. "Then, Charlie?"

  "Then I remembered that we'd tested the effects of superoxygenation during the U-2 shakedown flights. The tests were discontinued when the air­craft went operational—over the strenuous objec­tions of one of the young scientists working the ini­tial program."

  "What young scientist?" Her eyes went wide with shocked comprehension. "Oh, no! Not Dr. Goode?"

  "Bingo."

  Denial rose swift and hot in Diana's chest. She was a scientist to her bones. She lived and breathed research, discovery, unlocking the secrets of the uni­verse that surrounded her. Irwin Goode had achieved an almost God-like status in her field.

  "You can't suspect Dr. Goode of having anything to do with the disintegration of your life support equipment!"

  "At this point, I don't suspect anyone of any­thing. I just want you to run more tests. Without Goode looking over your shoulder this time."

  "He's a Nobel Prize winner, Charlie! One of the most respected names in microbiology. His early work laid the foundation for the whole science of bionetics. The United States Army still uses him as one of their primary resources for questions and is­sues pertaining to biological warfare research, for Pete's sake."

  "All I want is to run more tests," he repeated stubbornly.

  "But..."

  She broke off, her breath hitching. With the res­onating clarity of a bell, she heard Dr. Goode's pro­test that Charlie's cells couldn't possibly be regen­erating protein. He himself had calibrated the laser scanning microscope that was supposed to record any level of life-sustaining activity.

  The same microscope that had delivered the faulty readings!

  Cursing, Di
ana castigated herself as a dozen kinds of a fool. She'd suspected Greg Wozniak's motives for insisting that Charlie be declared legally dead, had even set OMEGA to digging into the cyro-geneticist's background. But her respect for Irwin Goode had blinded her to the possibility that the venerable biologist might have joined the recovery team with an agenda that didn't include bringing Major Charles Stone back to life.

  She didn't like the fact that her personal biases as a scientist had gotten in the way of her job as an undercover operative...any more than she relished the task of digging into Dr. Goode's past.

  Heck of a morning this was turning out to be, she thought savagely. First she'd had to face the brutal truth that her performance in bed last night had won Charlie's confidence. Now one of her all-time idols might just tumble right off his pedestal.

  At least she could pass on the information that the Russians apparently hadn't shot down Charlie's plane. With the president about to depart for Mos­cow, that news would be welcome. What wouldn't be as welcome was the news that one of the United States's most eminent scientists might have some­how been involved in the crash.

  Dammit! This altered everything, including the need for increased levels of security. She'd better contact OMEGA, and fast.

  "I need to think about this," she told Charlie. "Why don't I call room service and order us up some breakfast while you hit the shower?''

  She waited until she heard the water sandblasting the shower tiles before she whipped up the phone. Room service promised two American-plan break­fasts within twenty minutes.

  That gave her twenty minutes to think. Still grip­ping the hardened bits of rubber, she wandered into the sitting room and out onto the deck. The tide was in, she saw at a glance. The wooden stairs zigzag­ging down to the beach ended almost at water's edge. Like gleeful girls in white petticoats kicking up their heels, each wave that crashed against the rocks flung up curls of lacy spume.

  Her mind racing, Diana considered the options. She could bundle Charlie back to Edwards. The controlled-access air force base would provide a ba­sic level of security while OMEGA ran the tests he'd requested. Or she could keep him here, where no one—including Dr. Goode—knew he was.