by Cindy Dees
He was right. Her body was ready for him and accommodated him, if not easily, certainly not painfully. He was thick and huge and filled her so wonderfully that she nearly sobbed aloud. He withdrew a little bit and then eased home again, a bit more forcefully this time. She pushed back experimentally, meeting him halfway.
Oh my. That felt lovely. She did it again, matching his thrust with one of her own. They found a rhythm immediately, slow and languid as if they did, indeed, have all the time in the world.
It was incredible, staring up at him in the filtered morning light, seeing his smile, matching it with one of her own. Gazing deep into his eyes, she saw all the pleasure she’d put in them, and she knew her own eyes mirrored the same back to him.
The magic built slowly between them, and the intensity of their lovemaking gradually built until they both strained toward each other, their bodies crashing into each other, the orgasm building between them growing to epic proportions.
And yet it didn’t come. Taller and taller the wave grew, racing toward shore like a tsunami entering a steep valley. It climbed the walls of her desire, building until she couldn’t believe the size and power of it.
Avi gripped the headboard with his free hand, whether to use it for even more leverage or to stop himself from slamming into her so hard he hurt her, she wasn’t sure. Either way, she gripped his broad chest with her arms and his thighs with her legs, and pulled him into her harder and faster.
He obliged, letting go of all restraint, and she did the same. The sex between them took on a life of its own, becoming a wild thing binding them together in a primal hunt. They raced toward their prey like lions, smashing into the orgasm they sought with complete abandon.
Rebel cried out, her entire body spasming and shuddering as one last, epic wave of pleasure ripped through her, tearing her apart from limb to limb.
Avi shouted with her, his voice hoarse as he emptied his body and soul into her in a massive, thrusting spasm that drove him all the way to her womb. She clung to him, her only lifeline in this moment of exquisite destruction.
Their mutual orgasm went on and on, but finally spent itself with one last shudder shared by both of them.
Avi collapsed, hanging between his elbows, which were planted on either side of her head. She stared up at him in wonder, shocked to the core of her being that sex could be that incredible.
He’d blown her into a million tiny pieces and then had put her back together again, whole and complete, but an entirely new woman.
She slipped one of her hands between them and reached up to brush a lock of his wavy dark hair back from his perspiration soaked brow. His eyes opened, and what looked like awe shone in their clear brown depths.
“Yeah. That,” she murmured.
“Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you?”
“Did I sound like you were hurting me?” she asked humorously. She had not been quiet in expressing her pleasure. She seriously hoped there was no one in the room next door.
He kissed her gently, reverently. “Thank you,” he breathed against her lips.
“I’m the one who should be thanking you. You knew that existed. I did not.”
His lips brushed across hers once, twice. “That was exceptional, even by my high standards.”
“Whew. I’m glad to hear you say that. I was worried that there might be more I’m missing. I’m not sure I’d survive much more pleasure than that.”
He rolled to his back and took her with him. She lay half across his body and relished the thud of his heart beneath her ear. It was still pounding hard, but slowing gradually.
He said reflectively, “I’ve never made love with a woman who was my physical equal before. I have to say, it makes quite a difference.”
She knew the feeling. No guy she’d ever slept with before had come close to him in stamina or strength. And it was lovely being able to cut loose, knowing she couldn’t possibly hurt him.
“I’m afraid, Rebel, that you may have spoiled me permanently for being with any woman other than an athlete of your caliber.”
Hmm. It was just possible she was okay with that. She rather liked the idea of not sharing him with anyone else for a very long time to come.
Her brows slammed together. They couldn’t possibly have a long-term relationship with each other. Not with their crazy schedules. And not to mention, his home was halfway around the world from hers.
And yet...
And yet. It wasn’t possible. No matter how hard she wished for it.
Dammit.
Chapter 12
When Avi emerged from the bathroom after a shower, he still didn’t feel like his feet were making full contact with the floor. Nope. He was definitely floating a few inches above the ground. It was hard to believe the effect that woman had on him.
Rebel was munching one of the bagels he’d ordered up from room service and studying a screen on his laptop computer intently when he stepped into the hotel room.
“Find anything interesting?” he asked.
She glanced up at him, and he couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss her. She passed him a sheet of paper wordlessly.
“What’s this I’m looking at?”
“It’s the docking papers of a ship called the IRAN Jahan. Sails under a Panamanian flag.”
“Yup. That’s how the Iranians get around the sanctions against them. They sail under the flags of other nations. What’s so special about the Jahan?”
“It docked in Adelaide nine days ago. I’ve pulled its manifest, and the cargo offload weight is about two tons light of the onload weight. Plus, part of the crew—the five Iranians on board—disembarked in Adelaide. There’s no record from the dockmaster of them ever rejoining the crew.”
“That’s interesting. Do you have the names of the five crewmembers?”
“I do. I just finished running them through the American and Interpol databases, and they show nobody by any of those names and birth dates existing.”
“Scoot over,” he said briskly. “Let me run the names through the Israeli database.”
It took a matter of seconds for the Mossad database to come back with an identification of two of the names—they were known aliases used by the Iranian MOIS, Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
“I think you may have found the needle in the haystack, Rebel.”
“Great. What do we do next?”
“We run those names through the Australian credit card agencies and see if we can track their movements.”
“We don’t have access to those agencies’ files—”
She broke off, catching his grin. “Speak for yourself, you law-abiding American, you.”
He typed quickly, using a hack the Mossad had developed for moments just such as this, where vital information was needed and time was of the essence.
“Voilà,” Avi announced. “Our boys rented a moving van in Adelaide and turned it in six days ago in Sydney. Now all we have to do is figure out where they drove the van to in Sydney. Since we’ve got full access to the CCTV system, that should be possible, if a pain in the butt.”
“Maybe not so hard...” Rebel murmured, taking back his laptop. She typed quickly and then waited a few seconds for a video to load.
“Let’s go back to, say, six days ago, and check the video for the Olympic Village. After dark, wouldn’t you guess?” she muttered.
“For sure. If I had contraband to off-load, I would absolutely do it under cover of darkness.”
She nodded, and he looked over her shoulder as she raced through four camera feeds simultaneously in blindingly quick fast-forward mode.
“How can you see all that?” he asked.
“Lots of practice.” She reached for the keyboard and hit a flurry of keys all of a sudden. “There. Let me back up to it.”
In a few seconds, the make and model of movi
ng van the sailors had rented in Adelaide came into focus on the monitor.
She looked up at him grimly. “We have a positive link now to smuggled equipment and the Iranian Olympic delegation. Who do we tell about it?”
“The IOC security team, my people and your people,” he answered grimly.
“Then what?”
“Then we hope the IOC takes the threat seriously,” he answered even more grimly.
“Either way, I’m due at work in a half hour. I’ll show the footage to Major T. and let him know you’re going to the IOC with it.”
“Why thank you, Miss Medusa Liaison. How very cooperative of you.” He bent down to kiss her lightly.
She smiled against his lips. “I like liaising with you, Mr. Bronson.”
“Ditto.”
His crotch stirred with interest, and he sternly told his libido to cool it. He and Rebel both had work to do, and now they had proof positive of a credible threat at the Olympics.
What were the Iranians planning? What could possibly take two tons’ worth of gear to pull off? Enough explosives to blow up the central stadium and automatic weapons for all of Mahmoud’s men would weigh half that much.
He didn’t like this.
Not one bit.
His mood went from bad to worse after his meeting with the IOC security team. They said in not so many words that they thought he was being paranoid and tilting at windmills to be tracking down shipments, which might or might not be from Iran, which might or night not have been off-loaded in Adelaide, which might or might not have been smuggled into the Iranian building by sailors who might or might not exist.
Just because his country had an axe to grind with Iranians didn’t make him wrong.
Irritable as hell, he made his way to the American security office to report to Gunnar and his team on the IOC’s reaction.
They all looked up with interest when he entered the conference room.
“The IOC didn’t believe me.”
“Of course they didn’t,” Gunnar said calmly. “I expected as much. But we’ll continue investigating on our own.” He added, “And this way, we’re not beholden to anyone else. It’s all good, brother.”
Avi took a deep breath. Gunnar made a good point. Then he confessed, “Thing is, my internal alarms are going off. Something’s going to happen soon. I can feel it.”
Gunnar nodded. “I’m with you. Something’s in the air.”
Avi leaned forward. “Where do Piper and Zane make their next appearance?”
“We thought we’d dangle them at the Iranian men’s soccer game this evening.”
“Who does Iran play?”
“Germany.”
Rebel spoke up. “We were just going over the layout of the stadium and picking a place to display the lovebirds.”
“Could you guys quit calling us that?” Piper complained.
Avi leaned back and smiled, enjoying the round of ribbing and teasing that ensued. Thank goodness they didn’t know about him and Rebel. He could only imagine the full broadside of harassment Gunnar would launch at him, let alone what Rebel’s teammates would do to both of them.
Rebel asked, “What are the odds that we can distract Mahmoud from his primary objective if he spots Piper and Zane? Would he divert resources from the attack he has planned to come for the two of them?”
Avi nodded slowly. “An interesting hypothesis. It’s worth a try.”
Gunnar leaned forward over the schematic of the soccer stadium. “In the meantime, I doubt this venue is Mahmoud’s target. It’s too big, and there are too many exits. It would be easy for spectators to get away from whatever mayhem he could pull off there.”
Zane leaned forward. “Which means Mahmoud probably won’t have his whole team deployed in the soccer stadium, tonight. We might be able to isolate him from his men and grab him.”
Avi winced. “We have permission from my government to kill him if he launches a terror attack. We don’t have permission to snatch a delegation member from another nation.”
Zane scowled. “So, we have to wait for him to hurt innocent civilians before we can move against him at all?”
Avi shrugged. “I don’t like it any better than you do, but you know the drill. Operational teams have to play by the rules set down by their political superiors.”
Everyone at the table groaned under their breath. It was the bane of Special Forces existence—being constrained by nonoperators—usually politicians—in how to do their jobs. More often than not, that interference caused the only snafus in otherwise smoothly planned and executed missions.
“All right. Is everybody clear on where to be and what to do?” Gunnar asked briskly.
Avi nodded along with the others, and they adjourned to go about their daily duties. This afternoon, he was providing security for an Israeli wrestler in the men’s 97 kg class. Sadly, Rebel was assigned to the women’s rhythmic gymnastics event, and it was going to be hours before he saw her again.
As he scanned the crowd at the wrestling venue, his thoughts kept returning to this morning’s encounter with Rebel. It was strange not having to treat a woman in his bed like a fragile object that would shatter if he let go of too much restraint. He’d felt free with her. Like, for the first time, he could fully be himself and fully express himself sexually and emotionally. It had been exhilarating.
So much so that he was having a hell of a time concentrating this afternoon. Yet again, he had to remind himself to focus on the crowd. To look for body language, facial expressions, eye movement that might indicate someone was planning to do something bad, or even that they were thinking about something dangerous.
In a perfect world, security experts like him would spot a terrorist before they acted and nip attacks in the bud before they happened. In a perfect world, that was. In reality, security people usually were forced to react after the fact to contain and limit damage, rather than preventing it in the first place.
The Israeli wrestler made it to the round of eight before losing to the favorite, a Russian two-time gold medalist who looked like he’d be winning for a couple more Olympics to come. At least the Israeli athlete had the comfort of knowing he’d been trounced and that the match hadn’t been close at all.
Avi escorted the guy back to the Israeli athlete’s housing, where the wrestler cheerfully announced that he planned to spend the next two weeks drinking and getting laid.
Avi snorted. It must be nice to get to break training like that. In his world, he never had the luxury of letting down his guard for long periods of time. Even on vacation, he had to be aware of his surroundings and on guard for a bad guy to come after him.
Truth be told, the most relaxed he’d felt in months had been this morning in bed with Rebel after they’d made love.
And he was back to thinking about her, distracted, and not paying attention to his job. Man, that woman was bad for his concentration!
* * *
Rebel stood at the mouth of the concrete tunnel and looked down at the massive, screaming crowd. The game was just getting ready to start. The referee dropped the ball, and a renewed frenzy erupted in the stadium as the players ran down the field.
She looked around for people in the crowd who weren’t enjoying themselves, weren’t screaming, weren’t fully engaged with the game. Those would be the people like her, here with completely different agendas than watching their favorite team win.
Most of the crowd was on its feet, and honestly, the spectators looked prepared to remain on their feet for most of the game. Which was a bit of a problem for her. She was short enough that it was hard to see over the heads of the people partying and throwing back beer.
Hence, her vantage point up here in the tunnel at the top of the first section of seats. Piper and Zane were due to stroll around the perimeter of the field any minute, and her job was to see if anyone left t
heir seats to follow the pair.
A few latecomers were still making their way down to their seats, and Rebel moved left and right in the tunnel mouth to see past them.
There. She spotted Piper’s blond hair and Zane’s tall good looks off to her left. The pair was perhaps a hundred yards away, moving toward her. She scanned the crowd as best she could, looking for any reaction to the bait.
Piper and Zane walked slowly, talking and laughing with each other, pausing from time to time to watch the game beside them. They paused while a ball got kicked out of bounds a few yards ahead of them, and an Iraqi player scooped up the ball to throw it in bounds.
Rebel watched the pair resume their bait stroll around the field. They’d moved off to her right, and she was just about to key her radio to hand off overwatch to Avi, in the tunnel to her right, when Rebel spied a man in a dark jacket making his way out of a row of seats, pushing past other spectators.
More to the point, the man’s attention seemed to be on Piper and Zane, rather than on the game beyond them.
“Possible catfish,” she radioed. “One man. About twenty rows up, slightly behind the bait, paralleling their course.”
A pause, then Avi’s voice rumbled in her ear. “I have visual on him. Continue on course, lovebirds, for positive set of the hook.”
Really? Did he have to carry the fishing analogy quite so far? Rebel rolled her eyes as she backed out of the tunnel and sprinted around the concourse toward Avi’s position.
Gia’s voice transmitted next. “I have the catfish in sight, as well. Lovebirds, time to make your exit.”
Piper and Zane veered away from the field and commenced jogging up the long flight of steps toward the nearest exit. As soon as they turned, the man following them pushed to the steps nearest to him and commenced climbing toward an exit, paralleling Piper and Zane’s course.
“Oh yeah,” Avi commented. “He’s taken the bait.”
The plan was for Piper and Zane to get outside of the stadium if possible before their pursuer closed in on them. The fewer civilians nearby, the less chance there would be for collateral damage of bystanders.
