by Pamela Clare
A glimpse of nipple. The rounded side of a breast.
The heat in the room seemed to rise.
Nick picked up a piece of ice, touched it to one of the welts on her back, heard her quick intake of breath.
“Mmm. That does feel better.”
“Good.” The sight of her scattered his thoughts, his gaze moving over the curve of her shoulder, the delicate groove of her spine, the flair of her hips.
“That must have been tough for your parents.”
“Mmm-hmm.” What were they talking about? Oh, yeah. “My mother was pregnant with me at the time and already had four little boys.”
Nick told her how his family had been brought to the US by a Georgian Orthodox community in Philadelphia, how he’d been born only six weeks after his parents had arrived, making him the first US citizen in the family. The words came without conscious effort, his mind filled with the woman who sat before him—the sweet scent of her skin, the silky strands of her pale blond hair, the delicate shape of her body. She was so small compared to him. Water trickled from the melting ice cubes down her back as he treated one welt after the next, her body tensing slightly each time he pressed a fresh ice cube against her soft skin.
“Did you grow up speaking Georgian, or did your parents speak English before they came here?”
He almost missed the question. “Georgian and Russian. I learned English in school.”
“I understand now why the Agency recruited you,” she said in flawless Russian.
“Yeah,” he said, stupidly, in English. “My maternal grandmother was Russian. That’s why I’m named Nikolai instead of the Georgian Nikoloz. It honors my great-grandfather. My family calls me Nika.”
God, he was just babbling now.
“Nika. I like that.”
As yet another piece of ice slowly melted in his hand, Nick wanted for all the world to kiss her, to reach around and take her breasts into his hands, to tease those soft nipples into ripe points.
“Should I ice the stings on your back?” she asked when they had finished, pulling her dress up again.
“If you’re okay with that.”
What she ought to do is dump the bowl of ice down your pants, buddy.
“Of course I’m okay with that.”
* * *
Holly watched as Nick slipped his T-shirt over his head and turned his back to her, the sight of his muscular torso bringing back memories of touching him, of lying beneath him, of feeling that hard body pressing against her.
She picked up an ice cube, rubbed it over one of three red blotches on his lower back. “How did you get that scar on your abdomen?”
“I was shot by one of Dudaev’s men during the operation Derek Tower told you about—the one in Batumi that rolled up.”
She had stopped him from giving her the details of that operation on the long drive from Denver, and she knew that his silence now was a way of respecting that request. Although she appreciated that, a part of her wanted to know more. It was impossible that anything that had happened there touched on her in any way, so how had she gotten caught up in the aftermath of it?
She picked up another piece of ice, worked it over the next welt. “How long did you serve in Delta Force before they recruited you?”
“A little more than three years. I was deployed for most of that time, mostly in Afghanistan.”
“Chasing AQ and Taliban fighters from the Haqqani network, I’m guessing?”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Should we be sitting here talking about this? What’s your security clearance?”
“Higher than yours.”
“Oh, yeah?” He grinned. “I met an Agency officer while keeping Al-Zarqawi under surveillance in Baquba in 2006. We talked a bit. She asked about my background, my language skills. A year later, I was working for the SAD. How about you?”
“I was recruited out of Air Force ROTC in my freshman year of college and did my training during the summer months.”
“Your freshman year? How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
He gave a low whistle. “That’s awfully young for that kind of responsibility.”
“Why do you say that? A person can join the military and be sent overseas to fight at that age. Why is my job different?”
“The men you deal with are dangerous.”
“And armed insurgents and Taliban fighters aren’t?”
“Asking a girl of eighteen to—”
“To be a whore?” She picked up another piece of ice, rubbed it over the last welt.
He turned to face her. “I wasn’t going to say that.”
“You already did. As I recall, your exact words were—”
“I don’t need to hear my exact words. You’re right—I said it. But at the time, I didn’t know you were working for the Agency.”
“So it’s not the job description you take issue with, just the employer?”
“I don’t know exactly what your job entails, but I know that whatever you do, you do it in the service of our country. That’s good enough for me.”
“I don’t sleep with most of them. In fact, I try very hard not to sleep with them.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations, Holly.”
Somehow, those words hurt.
He really didn’t care about her at all, did he?
All at once, the rage and hurt she felt came spilling out, her voice cold with sarcasm. “Speaking of whores, how did a nice Georgian Orthodox boy from Delta Force end up having to whore for the SAD with the likes of me? How awful it must have been for you! Did they supply you with Viagra?”
In a single motion, he hauled her up against him, his mouth coming down on hers—hard. She yielded to the sweet violence of his kiss, almost oblivious to the pain in her ribs, her anger melting into need as he punished her for her words with his lips and tongue. One big hand cupped her right breast through the cloth of her dress, his palm pressed against her nipple, the contact sending shards of heat to her belly.
He tore his lips from hers, his breathing rapid, his gaze hard as he looked down at her, still holding her tight. He nudged his hips forward just enough so that she could feel his erection. “I never needed Viagra with you, honey. But, you’re right, it was awful, not because I didn’t want to fuck you, but because I did. It went against everything I believed in, but I wanted you—you, a woman willing to have sex with Dudaev to betray her country. Or so I’d been led to believe.”
He released her, sat back, then stood, his dark brows furrowed, a troubled look on his face. “I’m sorry. I had no right to touch you like that.”
Then he walked from the room, leaving Holly to stare after him, stunned.
Chapter Sixteen
Nick connected the keyboard to the last CPU, started it, and waited for it to boot.
What the hell had he been thinking? He’d promised not to touch her again, and he’d broken that promise. Yeah, he’d been angry as hell, but that was no excuse.
He’d called her a whore during that interrogation, and he deserved to have the word thrown back in his face. She was right. He’d done the same thing—had sex with someone as part of his job.
He knew she must be thinking of turning him in. Any officer worth the title would be. He was surprised she hadn’t tried to contact Langley already. He hoped he hadn’t just pushed her over the edge.
It would serve you right, idiot.
The computer beeped, prompted him to log in.
He entered his password, launched the password-cracking program, cursing under his breath when the machine immediately crashed. This program was buggier than the others, and he didn’t know enough about computers to fix it.
He rebooted, waited, glancing around at his new office. The low-hanging fluorescent lights, exposed pipes, and lack of windows made it look like the hideout of a psychopath—or a spy. It was perfect.
They needed to make a run into town for supplies. If she was going to turn him in, that’s when she’d mak
e her move. He ought to leave her here or find some kind of emotional leverage to restrain her. He didn’t want to have to tie her up, to make her his prisoner again. Then he really would be one of the bad guys.
He had just gotten the last CPU up and running when he smelled something delicious from upstairs.
Holly appeared, carrying two plates. “I was hungry, so I scrambled some eggs with vegetables and cheddar. I thought you might want something to eat, too. There’s salsa upstairs if you want it.”
Surprised that she’d made food for him, Nick took the plate and fork from her. “Did you put rat poison in mine?”
“No. Darn! Why didn’t I think of that?” Her eyes narrowed. “I believe the proper response is ‘thank you.’”
“Thank you.”
She glanced around the floor, and he thought he knew why.
“Relax. I haven’t seen a snake all day.” He stood and opened one of the folding chairs for her. “How are you feeling?”
She sat. “A little better. Still itchy.”
“That should be gone in another twenty-four hours or so.”
She didn’t start eating, something clearly on her mind.
He had a good idea what that might be.
“I’ve thought a lot about my situation, our situation. I’m not saying that I’ll help you. I don’t want to ruin my position with the Agency or find myself on the most-wanted list. If you are what they say you are, if you are a CI threat, you’re going to have to kill me or imprison me because I will turn you in.”
Okay, that wasn’t what he’d expected.
She went on. “If I believe you’re being truthful, I won’t turn you in, and I’ll do what I can to help you, short of breaking the law or compromising myself. But I need to know where I fit into this—why you kept me under surveillance and why your boss ordered my termination. I also want to know why you took encrypted files.”
He took a bite of the eggs and chewed, surprised by how hungry he was. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Why don’t you start with that night in Batumi?”
Between bites, Nick told her how the unit to which he’d been assigned had intercepted a shipment of firearms bound for a Chechen terrorist group. “The plan was to destroy the weapons—mostly old AKs. The Agency brass were under pressure from Washington to play nice and work with Georgian officials. I was chief of security and didn’t want to involve the locals at all. Daniella Baranova, the officer in charge, agreed with me. Corruption is just a part of life there, and the Georgian Mafia has a lot of cops and military officers on its payroll.”
“You worked with Dani?”
Nick found himself staring at Holly. “You knew her?”
Holly’s lips curved in a smile. “We met during training. She helped me with my Russian, and I helped her with cryptography. We stayed in touch until she went overseas.”
Nick found his next words hard to say, regret and grief cutting through him. “We were going to get married.”
“You were dating? Isn’t that against the rules?”
Nick nodded. “It was kind of an open secret.”
“I’m sorry. I know she was killed, but I never found out how she died.”
“She was murdered that night in Batumi. Dudaev killed her—shot her fifteen times in the chest at point-blank range.”
“Oh, God.” Holly squeezed her eyes shut.
Nick realized it was the first time he’d talked about this with someone who’d known Dani personally. Somehow, that made it more difficult to control his emotions.
Holly’s eyes opened, a sheen of tears making them glitter. “What went wrong?”
“I’ve asked myself that question for two long years.” Nick walked over to the white board, which stood in one corner, and rolled it out so that she could see it. “I’ve tried to re-create everything about that night down to the smallest detail.”
He gave her a quick overview of the map he’d drawn. It was too complicated to explain in detail now.
“In the end, Langley had the last word. We needed the support of the Georgian government in dealing with the threat from Chechnya, so we had to work with their military. The plan was to turn the weapons over to one of their intelligence units for destruction. We moved the crates to a secured warehouse on the docks, kept them under round-the-clock surveillance. My team was in position a good three hours before the turnover was supposed to take place. But it wasn’t the military that showed up.”
Holly set her empty plate on the workbench. “It was Dudaev’s men.”
“Somehow, they knew exactly where we were and how my team was deployed.” He pointed on the board to where he’d placed snipers. “They took out my two snipers before I even knew they were there and claimed their positions. We became sitting ducks. I managed to redeploy my men, take a few of their guys out, but then I was shot and pinned down by sniper fire. Most of my men were seriously wounded in the first two minutes.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
“Yeah.” Nick could see it all in his mind, hear it, smell it, as if it were happening now—gunfire, Dani lying dead on the floor, the coppery tang of blood in his mouth.
Nick stood, turned his back to Holly, fought to master his emotions. “Dani hadn’t been hit. She’d managed to take cover behind a forklift during the firefight. Men in uniforms took the crates, loaded them onto a truck, drove away. Dudaev appeared out of nowhere. He walked over to Dani, passing several wounded officers on the way. He said something to her—I didn’t hear what—then he drew his weapon and fired at point-blank range. I couldn’t stop him. I was out of ammo and pinned down. I couldn’t do anything but watch. Afterward, I crawled over to her, but . . . she was gone.”
* * *
Holly knew Dudaev had killed Agency officers. She hadn’t known that one of those officers had been a friend. An image of Dani’s smiling face flashed through her mind, and she found herself blinking back tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Some part of her wanted to go to Nick, to wrap her arms around him, to offer him some kind of comfort, but he was trying to be tough, trying to hide his emotions. She wasn’t sure he would welcome her sympathy just now.
Nick turned around, a bleak expression on his face, shadows in his eyes. “It was my job to protect her, to safeguard the mission. I failed.”
Holly certainly understood why the Agency had launched an internal investigation. Dudaev had been tipped off that night, possibly by an Agency officer, someone who was intimately acquainted with the details of the team’s security plan. She understood, too, that Nick had a strong motivation for killing Dudaev. Taken together, these two facts would make Nick very interesting to investigators.
“This is all classified top secret, by the way,” he added.
“I wasn’t planning on writing an article about it or posting it on Twitter. But now tell me how I came into this.”
He quickly filled in the gaps for her, telling her his side of the story from the day he’d landed in DC to the moment he’d driven off with her lying unconscious in the back of the SUV. “You know the rest.”
She wanted to act like what had happened no longer mattered to her, but listening to him talk so dispassionately about deceiving her resurrected the hurt and humiliation she’d been trying to bury. “So you spied on me for three weeks. That must have been deathly dull—like watching paint dry.”
“Not all the time.” He shrugged. “I learned a lot about the things women say to one another when they don’t think a man is listening.”
She tried to think of what she might have said. “Like what?”
He grinned. “‘It’s the clit, stupid.’”
She felt heat rush to her cheeks. “How educational that must have been for you. I suppose you used what you overheard to your advantage to make yourself more interesting, more satisfying in bed.”
He leaned forward, fixed his gaze on hers. “Believe it or not, honey, I didn’t learn about the clitoris from eavesdropping on you, and I’v
e loved going down on women since I got my first taste in college. What you got is who I am.”
Holly’s pulse skipped, her mind flashing back to the way he’d kissed her this afternoon—the heat, the intensity, the near violence of it.
She changed the subject. “What did they believe you’d overhear anyway? I’m not stupid. It’s not like I chat with my CO on the phone or talk to myself about my missions. ‘Today I think I’ll get a mani-pedi, send a few ciphertext messages, and retrieve some stolen files from Dudaev.’”
“I told them you were clean—just a reporter with bad taste in men.”
“That last part is certainly true.” She scratched at the welts on her arm.
He refused to take the bait. “I felt like I was wasting my time, but Bauer ordered me to stay with you. I figured he’d screwed up and didn’t have the balls to admit he was wrong about you. I had no idea Bauer had some kind of personal agenda where you’re concerned. When I saw you holding that image of me, I had to act. I’m sorry. And stop scratching.”
She balled her hands into fists, pressed them into her lap. “I’m sorry, too.”
“I know you hate my guts, Holly, and God knows you have good reason. But I need to know—do you believe me?”
Nick’s gaze pierced her, tension rolling off him in waves.
Holly’s mind swirled with events, names, dates.
Did she believe him?
She believed Nick’s grief over Dani was genuine. He wouldn’t have done anything to put her at risk, which meant he couldn’t have been the one who’d sold out the Agency that night in Batumi. If he had nothing to cover up, then he probably wasn’t behind the disappearances and deaths of the other agents, most of which had taken place when he was still in Georgia anyway. She knew he’d killed Dudaev without the Agency’s approval—and he’d had a powerful motive to do so.
But whoever had betrayed the Agency to Dudaev and his men had an even more powerful motive for wanting Dudaev dead. What better way to get rid of him then to send the man they wanted to frame to do their dirty work?
As for what he’d done to her, he said he’d acted on false information. Given that he’d stopped hurting her the moment he’d realized she was with the Agency, she was inclined to believe he was telling the truth about this, too.