by Lucy Monroe
Myk opened the door of the room he and Lana shared. Soft Middle Eastern music played in the background, the bedding was pulled back invitingly, but the bed was empty. There was no sign of Lana anywhere in the room, but the door to the bathroom was ajar, light spilling from within.
“Lana?”
“Go out to the balcony. I’ll be right there.” Her voice was different. Lower. Sultry.
Did she plan to seduce him on the terrace? He sure wouldn’t fight it if she did. He hadn’t made going out there off limits because the house had been built with security heightened in every feature, including the balconies off the bedrooms.
They were blocked from above by an impenetrable overhang and looked out onto the ocean with no angle available to a sniper’s bullet unless he was in a boat off the shore. A sonar in the security room sensitive enough to pick up an oversized shark monitored the waters off the beach for just such activity.
He’d been craving her all day, their interlude in her lab only increasing his desire for her, not slaking it.
“Don’t make me wait.”
Soft laughter came from the bathroom. “I don’t plan on it.”
The balcony had been cleared of the two lounge chairs that had been out there earlier. There was a pile of pillows against the wall to the right. He sat down, guessing that was what he was supposed to do. The exterior light was on, bathing the outdoor area in a soft yellow glow. The sound of the ocean mixed perfectly with the music coming from the bedroom and the fresh, salt-laden air made him long to share this bit of tranquility with her.
The volume of the music increased and the lights inside the bedroom went off.
Then she was there, framed in the doorway.
It was Lana, but not. This woman was some exotic beauty from a foreign land. She wore a belly dancing costume of shimmering gold decorated with clear crystal stones and shiny beadwork. Her hair was brushed out in a curtain of strawberry-blond silk framing a face with kohl-rimmed eyes and glossy raspberry-painted lips.
He would never have imagined his Disney-fixated scientist could look like this.
It did things to both his heart and libido. She’d made herself up for him. Not a room full of strangers, or a classroom of women who wanted to learn from her, but for him and him alone.
She stepped forward with one foot, her body shimmying in perfect time to the music. She began to dance and Myk thought he would lose his mind. Her every move was mesmerizing, tantalizing, and looked so damn natural. As if her body had been created to shift, shimmy, and sway just that way. No male fantasy could begin to compare with the reality of his beautiful scientist dancing for him.
She glided across the balcony as if she were floating, rather than using the bare feet he saw peeking out from under the swirling skirt. Unbelievably, she enhanced the fluidity of her movements with a sheer veil that washed through the air like a floating wave around her.
She danced close and then shimmied away, keeping him tense and on edge, waiting to see what this sexy stranger was going to do next.
The music built in crescendo and her movements built with it, her body contorting in dips and whirls that made him dizzy with desire. At one point, her veil landed in his lap, covering a painfully stiff erection. She gave him a sultry little smile, showing she’d seen the evidence of his need before she covered it up.
She continued to gyrate her hips and curve her body in positions that both astounded and delighted until she did a final shimmy and dropped to her knees in front of him, her body arched backward, her arms fluttering to the ground with the final bars of the song.
She held the pose, her arms stretched away from her head, her breasts in prominent relief and the thin silk of the skirt falling between her legs to outline the curves of her thighs perfectly. He held his breath, unable to move, unable to speak.
Finally, he gained control of his vocal cords. “I’m afraid to touch you. Afraid you will turn into a mirage and shimmer away.”
“I’m real.” She did a small shimmy in that position. “Touch me and find out.”
Needing no second invitation, he did just that, his palm reverently cupping the warm skin right below her belly button ring. “You were incredible. You are incredible.”
“Thank you. I wanted to be. For you.” She lifted herself with nothing but her tummy muscles until she was kneeling before him.
He found himself smiling. “Impressive, sweetheart.”
“I told you belly dancing was good training for my body.”
He wasn’t about to argue. He’d never seen such control of each individual muscle in the human body in his entire life.
He reached out and buried his hand in her hair, wanting to kiss her but strangely hesitant. “That was the most amazing gift anyone has ever given me.”
“I want to give you more.”
“Yes.”
She leaned forward and he pulled her into him at the same time so that she ended up on his lap. They kissed.
It was unlike any kiss they had shared so far. It was not merely passionate, though it was that. It was not merely a connection, a way for their bodies to acknowledge one another’s nearness, though it was that as well. It was something deep.
Something beautiful.
“Let me touch you,” he whispered against her lips.
“Always.”
There was something permanent and oh, so beautiful about the way she said that single word.
He started by exploring the parts of her body not covered by the dancing outfit. The perfect slope of her shoulder, the swell of her breasts, her gently curved stomach, the porcelain column of her neck, and her infinitely kissable lips. He did not hurry, wanting to relearn each dip and crevice of this stranger, yet not, in his arms.
When he had caressed every centimeter of her exposed skin easily accessed in the revealing outfit, he kissed her again. This time he put all the passion and emotion watching her dance had engendered in him in it. She responded as if she was the one who had been teased and enticed to her limit.
He did not know how long the kiss lasted, but his desire to be inside her became a burning need, a scorching inevitability.
Somehow he got her top and skirt off, enchanted to find that she had not worn even a thong under the swirling silk. He stripped off his own clothes as well, wanting skin on skin.
She’d hidden condoms in the cushions and covered his cock with trembling fingers while he explored her honeyed depths as she straddled his lap. She was more than ready for him. Her vaginal walls convulsed around his fingers as if trying to draw them in deeper. She was the only woman who did that to him and he’d discovered he loved it.
Then she was lowering herself onto his throbbing dick and taking him into paradise.
He made an animalistic sound that would have embarrassed him in any other situation or with any other lover.
She merely returned it.
She rode him with the same grace as she danced, twisting her hips in a way no other woman had ever been able to do while topping him. He played with her beautiful bare breasts, teasing her nipples and touching her with complete freedom.
It was incredibly erotic. Electrically so. He felt the build of his climax flash through him. He wanted her to come with him. He reached between their bodies, but she shook her head.
“Touch my breasts. Pull on my nipples,” she demanded as she increased the swivel of her hips and ground their pelvises together.
Her body clenched around him as she released a glorious cry of completion, pulling him into his own orgasm, one so intense, his head swam. It was all he could do not to slip into oblivion.
She buried her head in his neck, her lips moving in a silent litany against his skin.
He couldn’t begin to form coherent words, so he remained silent, wallowing in the best sex and aftermath of his life.
Long minutes later, he cleaned them both up with a small towel he found under the same cushion as the condoms.
Then, he carried her to bed.
> The double wedding between Matej Chernichenko and Chantal Renaud and Beau Ruston and Elle Gray went off without a hitch.
Myk was more than a little pleased. Between him, Elle’s partners, and their brother Roman, security was so tight, an unsanctioned Q-tip couldn’t have gotten through.
Still reeling from Lana’s gift the night before, he nevertheless watched for any suspicious activity. There was none.
Whitmore came along with other agents from The Goddard Project. They all manfully refrained from talking shop. Elle’s new business partners had come as guests as well as providing additional security details. Family had come from as far away as the Ukraine. Myk’s parents and baba were in their element.
Baba had dropped several hints about great-grandchildren and the fact she wasn’t so young any longer. Her sister in the Ukraine, she informed both couples, already had three great-grandchildren. Myk thought both couples ought to have a good chance at getting a start on that endeavor with monthlong honeymoons ahead of them.
He and Lana got several speculative looks themselves. Though they had both attended the wedding on their own invite, they were clearly together.
His mother and baba were thrilled.
Instead of being annoyed, he found himself amused by their antics as they dropped thinly veiled hints to him and speculated between themselves on what his relationship with Lana was.
When they started in on Lana, though, he got worried.
She hadn’t had the best familial relationships in the past and his mother and baba could be terrifying. He didn’t want Lana feeling overwhelmed, or to get scared off by them, so he stepped in to finally set the record straight.
He put his arm around his diminutive grandmother and kissed her cheek. He was no fool. “Baba, I think you should know that protecting Lana is my job right now. We’re not a couple.”
Baba looked up at him and got that look she used to get just before her wooden spoon connected in a single swat with his backside. “You listen to me, baby-boy, this girl, she and you are so much a couple even that blind Mrs. Cooper at the senior center could see it.”
“Mrs. Cooper is the coordinator for the center, she’s not blind,” Myk’s mother argued. “But even if it was Bernie the mailman who always delivers packages to the wrong address, he could see it yet, my son.”
Myk frowned at them both. “It’s my job to keep her safe. Aren’t you listening?”
“What she is an illegal immigrant wanted by the mob, or something?” Baba shook her head. “Since when does an INS agent protect somebody?”
“I’m not working for the INS on this case.” He couldn’t tell them who he was working for, but the implication he was working for another agency should be enough.
“What, you got fired?” His mother looked horrified. “No wonder this perfectly lovely doctor does not wish for us to know you are a couple. She should not be seen dating a deadbeat.”
“I am not jobless,” he gritted out. “I am working for a different agency at the moment.”
“Your agency loaned you out?” Baba asked. “This is never a good sign. Are you having, what is that thing they say? Oh, yes, a personality conflict at the office, baby-boy? You send them to your baba and I will set them straight.”
“Things are fine at work.” Though as he said the words, he knew them for a lie. Things had changed for him and he didn’t know if he could continue to work for the government any longer.
“You do not lie to your baba. I know what I know and my baby-boy is not so fine at work. But unlike your mother, I do not think this lovely doctor scientist needs to worry about you keeping a job. You are a smart boy.”
His mother drew herself up in indignation. “I never said I thought my son wasn’t smart.”
It was at that point the older women switched to Ukrainian and he tuned out their disagreement. He had a lot of practice doing that.
He smiled at Lana. “If they couldn’t argue, I think they would both wither away.”
Lana didn’t return his smile. If he didn’t know better, he would think she looked hurt. Really, deeply hurt. But there was nothing here to hurt her. His mother and grandmother wouldn’t continue to grill Lana if he insisted they weren’t dating.
Maybe she was worried something bad was going to happen at the wedding.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” He smoothed the lapel on her smart-looking dress the same color of green her eyes turned when she was excited. “Nothing is going to happen here. We’ve got better security than a UN meeting.”
He’d started lusting the moment he’d seen her in the dress that morning. It reminded him of sex with Lana; that was enough to keep him in a perpetual state of semi-arousal.
“I’m not worried about security.”
He was about to ask what she was worried about when his baba crowed and slapped his arm. “I heard you call her sweetheart. That is not a term from one businessperson to another.”
“I didn’t say we worked together.”
If possible, his mother looked even more gleeful than his baba. “Even bodyguards, they do not call their charges sweetheart. This time I must agree with your grandmother.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but Lana got there first.
“I’m not his sweetheart. I’m not his anything. Just a scientist he’s trying to protect from some very bad people.” Her voice sounded choked, like she was on the verge of tears.
Only he didn’t get a chance to check, because she spun on her heel and headed for the group of revelers that included Casey.
He didn’t need his mother and grandmother’s urging to go after her. He was already on his way. Only when he got there, Lana showed that she was as adept at avoiding a discussion she didn’t want to have as he was.
He did not manage to get her alone again until they were in the car on the way back to the beach house. And then, he was focused on making sure they weren’t being followed. Not that he didn’t try to bring up her remarks, but she refused to talk about it.
He was surprised when she did not give him the cold shoulder in bed that night. She was as responsive as ever, even demanding. And he was more than happy to comply.
They were snuggled in for sleep when he broached the subject again. “What happened at the wedding, doc?”
“Your brother and sister got married,” she said drowsily. “Not to each other.”
“I know that.”
“Why’d you ask?”
“I want to know why you got upset.”
“Who says I was upset?”
“Don’t play games. Why did you say that to my mother and grandmother?”
“I just confirmed what you had been saying.”
“You sounded upset.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does if it hurts you.” Except he still didn’t know what it was.
“I’m fine.”
“You are my sweetheart.”
“You told your mother and grandmother that I’m not.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said.”
Shit. Here we go again, he thought. “No. I said we aren’t a couple. I didn’t want them scaring you off with talk of a third wedding.”
“Sure. I get it. Go to sleep, Mykola.”
He felt like he should say something else, but he didn’t know what. “Good night, sweetheart.” He kissed the back of her head.
She sighed, but a second later, she snuggled back into him. “Good night.”
“You feel good like this.” Right. Perfect. Though he wasn’t about to admit that out loud.
She didn’t answer and finally, he drifted off to sleep—still feeling like something was off, but not knowing what it was.
Chapter 21
Sunday, Myk woke up curled around Lana. It felt so damn right and natural; he realized he had some thinking to do.
He extricated himself from her and she shifted, rolling over to face him, her eyes fluttering open as she did so.
“It’s one of the best.”
Her pretty hazel eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yes.” He didn’t smile. What he was feeling was too profound. Yeah, definitely some thinking to do.
“Why? Did your boss call and say the bad guys surrendered while I was sleeping?”
“Nope.”
“Then why?” That was his Lana, unashamedly inquisitive. It made her a damn fine scientist and an interesting lover.
Memories of waking in the middle of the night with her hands exploring his body warmed him from the inside out. He’d asked her what she was doing. He’d been teasing; he’d thought he’d known. He’d been wrong.
She’d been touching him in his sleep to learn the most sensitive places on his body without extraneous stimuli. He had shown her what happened to women who touched their men like that while lying naked in bed beside them.
It had been slow and tender and incredibly satisfying.
He answered her question with nothing less than the truth. “I woke up next to you.”
She stared at him, her mouth opening and closing, but no words made it out. Her eyes glistened and he felt like he’d been kicked in the nads. Except his cock was harder than he’d ever been after taking a shot like that during a fight.
“Are you serious?” she finally asked.
“As serious as my baba is about keeping the family recipe for tvorag galushki a secret until she dies.” The old woman had informed her daughter it was in her will, but Baba wasn’t parting with it before then. It was a source of one the women’s favorite arguments.
Lana took a breath as if trying to inhale courage. “Mykola, I want you to know that no matter what happens, I’m so very glad to have had a chance to know you.”
Damn it. If he didn’t do something soon, his eyes were going to get misty and he hadn’t cried since he was six years old and his grandfather had died of an unexpected heart attack. He still missed the old man.
Myk didn’t want to think about spending the rest of his life missing Lana.