by Lauren Smith
“We’re American! Help us!” Kenzie screamed as she launched herself at the gate. The Marines rushed to open it, dragging her and Elena behind them.
“What’s going on, ma’am? Who’s firing out there?” a Marine demanded as he raised his rifle.
“It’s Russians. They’re attacking us. One of us is still out there. He’s wearing black pants and a white dress shirt. His name is Dr. Royce Devereaux.”
“Did you say Devereaux?”
“Yes.”
One of the guards got on his radio. “Devereaux’s here, outside the gates. Permission to engage if they reach the gates?”
“Permission granted!” came the reply over the radio. The Marines nearest Kenzie and Elena shouldered their guns and headed through the open fence so they were guarding the entrance to the embassy.
“Get inside, ladies!” one of the last guards shouted before he disappeared through the gates. Several other armed soldiers rushed out to meet them, escorting them toward the safety of the embassy’s interior.
Kenzie held on to Elena, keeping the other girl on her feet as they reached the embassy doors. Medics rushed out to meet them. Kenzie pulled away as the medics took Elena inside. She turned, eyes searching the chaos in the street as several Marines opened the gates again and slipped just outside, waiting. A knot formed in her stomach. They couldn’t save him, not unless he got closer to the gate. They couldn’t risk starting an international incident.
Royce appeared through a gap in the abandoned cars, running, but limping. Blood streaked down his side, but he didn’t stop. Jov was behind him, staggering, rifle still in hand. He fumbled as he changed the magazine, then raised his rifle, taking aim.
“No… No… No, no!” Kenzie sprinted back toward the gates, even though she was powerless to help.
“Weapon down! Now!” the Marines were shouting. Jov ignored them and pointed the rifle at Royce’s back. Only twenty feet separated Royce and American soil. The soldiers couldn’t do anything unless Jov aimed his rifle at them, but with the way Royce was running straight at the American soldiers, Jov would have to fire in their direction.
“Royce, get down!” Kenzie screamed. Royce dove without hesitation, sliding on the embassy lawn like a baseball player diving for home plate as Jov fired. The Marines fired back a second later in a deafening volley of shots.
Jov stumbled and the rifle dropped to the ground, and his body keeled over backward. Kenzie ran, landing next to Royce in the grass, covering his body with hers, hugging him.
“We need to get you inside!” a Marine shouted, and they were lifted up and rushed indoors.
The embassy was in turmoil, people running, speaking on phones, and arguing about what had to be done next. A fresh wave of medics took charge as they led Royce and Kenzie to an infirmary on the second floor. Kenzie was shaking hard, her hands clenching a paper cup of water someone had handed her.
“I’m so sorry!” she gasped and wrapped her hands together, unable to stop the tears. Royce lay on his back beside her, his breathing shallow, and he winced as they pulled his shirt up. The knife wound was deep, and the sight of blood made Kenzie woozy.
“Lie down, honey, you’re turning green.” A female doctor pressed on her shoulder, urging her to lie back. She all but collapsed, and then something sharp pinched her arm.
“Ow! What’s that?”
“Just a little sedative, honey. You’re in shock. Just close your eyes and rest.”
Sedative? The world turned oddly fuzzy around her. Her eyelids became too heavy to hold up.
Royce… She slipped into darkness.
18
Royce came awake slowly, aware that he was in some sort of hospital, probably still at the embassy in Mongolia given the news station flashing on the TV in the corner of the room. Everything hurt like hell. Tubes were in his nose, and an IV bag hung on a pole nearby. His right hand was taped, keeping the IV needle in.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his head falling back onto the pillow. Then he noticed a shape in a chair beside his hospital bed. Kenzie. She was curled up on the chair, her head pillowed by one arm and a jacket covering her. A man’s jacket.
Not my jacket.
“Thank God,” a deep voice said from the doorway. Hans Brummer stood there, a paper cup of coffee in his hand and a relieved look in his brown eyes.
“Give you a few new gray hairs, did I?” Royce’s voice came out a croak.
Hans raked a hand through his scalp. “More than a few. I’ll go full George Clooney in a month at this rate.”
“How did you find us?”
Hans pulled a chair out and turned it around, not waking Kenzie. He sat on it backward with his arms on the backrest.
“Tatiana put a tracker on one of Vadym’s men. Once we knew you’d boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway, we called Cody and he found your destination was here in Ulaanbaatar. Dimitri and I beat you here by just ten minutes. We couldn’t try anything at the museum, but once you left, Cody said you were heading past the embassy. We knew we had to get you there. I didn’t believe it, but fuck if you didn’t make it.” He chuckled and took a long sip of his coffee.
“Morse code on the billboards. The kid is a damn genius.”
“And the pileup? He turned all the traffic lights green. Risky, but effective. It gave you time to get free. We weren’t sure you’d get away if the driver of the car didn’t wreck, but thank God it did.” Hans turned toward Kenzie’s sleeping form. Royce did the same.
“I…” Royce’s voice broke a little. “I honestly didn’t think we would make it. For the first time in all the crazy shit I’ve done…”
“And that’s a lot of crazy shit,” Hans noted.
“Yeah, but I never had…I’ve never needed to worry about…”
Hans gave a nod. “You had something to lose.”
“Yeah. I had everything to lose. She’s everything to me.” The weight of those words in the past would’ve seemed like a curse, one more thing he needed to run away from. But now he saw what his friends had been saying for months. The love of a good woman was what a man really needed to live. And somehow, by a twist of fate, he’d found his woman when he wasn’t even looking for her.
“This means you’re finally going to settle down?” Hans asked as he sipped his coffee.
“I guess that depends on how you define settling down.” He grinned, but winked. “I’m in love, not dead. I won’t stop traveling, teaching, or going on digs. But my days of recklessness are over. Being with Kenzie is the only real thrill I need.”
“Thank God,” Hans murmured. “Now maybe I can finally retire. You boys are all grown up, with lives of your own—kids will be next.” Relief mixed with a hint of sorrow in Hans’s eyes.
“You won’t leave Long Island, though, will you?” The thought of the man who’d been like a father to him leaving left a void he didn’t really want to think about.
“You don’t want me to leave?” Hans’s lips curved up in a grin.
“Of course not,” Royce replied. “Maybe it’s time you settle down too. Bring that sexy Russian Interpol agent over to visit.”
Hans’s face turned ruddy. He looked anywhere but at Royce, who winked.
“Maybe I’ll do that,” he finally said. “By the way, how the hell did you get knifed? The Marines said that Russian man chasing you had an AK assault rifle.”
Royce grimaced. “I jumped him while he was loading up with weapons from the back of his car. He had a knife ready and got me, but I got a few punches in. Just didn’t know I was bringing fists to a knife fight. When I saw his cache of weapons, I bolted, and that’s when he started firing the rifle.”
“Holy shit,” Hans groaned. “Don’t try to jump a Russian, kid. Didn’t I teach you anything? You just run like hell for cover next time.”
“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time.”
“Agreed,” Hans muttered, his disapproving frown so parental that Royce almost laughed.
“Why don’t you rest? Knife woun
ds are bitch to heal. She needs you rested.” He nodded to Kenzie.
“Yeah, good point. Did they catch Vadym?”
Hans shook his head. “No, but Cody has some ideas about how to track him down. Dimitri is keen to handle the matter back in Russia. I think Vadym pissed him off bad enough that he’s ready to go against Vadym openly, and he’s not nearly as nice as we are. He promised to let us know the moment Vadym is…taken care of.”
“And Elena?”
Thunderclouds gathered in Hans’s eyes. “Physically, she’s okay, a little banged up. But emotionally? She’ll never be the same. I was there when she gave her statement to the officials here at the embassy. He’d had his claws in her for months. Beaten, starved, raped… She’s just a kid. Only twenty years old, for God’s sake.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Royce shifted in the bed, wincing as he felt stiches tug at his side, probably from the knife wound from Jov.
“She’s going back to Moscow to get her possessions. Her university where she was studying abroad had her things in storage. Then I think she’s coming home after that. Dimitri said he would make sure she was safe while she was in Moscow. He hasn’t let her out of his sight since he got to the embassy.”
Royce let out a sigh. He hoped Dimitri could handle Vadym. If he succeeded, Royce would owe that man his best bottle of scotch.
“Catch some sleep. The embassy is safe,” Hans promised. “Hell, I don’t even think I could break in here.”
“Thanks.” Royce laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.
It must’ve been hours later when he opened them again because Kenzie was awake and watching him. She had a book in her lap, some romance novel with a couple embracing on the cover. She blushed and tucked the book in her chair.
“Hans found them in the embassy library for me. He must have seen me going crazy, and I needed a distraction. How do you feel?” She scooched her chair closer and carefully curled her fingers around his arm.
“I feel like I was hit by a truck and knifed by an angry Russian.” He turned his hand over and wiggled his fingers in invitation. Kenzie smiled and placed her hand in his. A gentle heat blossomed at the simple contact. How had he been so blind? He’d loved her from the moment he’d spoken to her on the phone, before they’d even seen each other—he just hadn’t realized that until now.
“You still love me?” he asked. He was teasing her, but a part of him feared she would think he was too dangerous, too damaged to settle down with.
She bit her lip, her brown eyes sparkling as she pinched her thumb and forefinger together. “I think I love you a little more than yesterday, and given how much I loved yesterday, I don’t think my heart could love you any more than I already do.” She squeezed his hand.
“That’s a good thing, because we’re going to need all that love to get through the mess we’ll face when we get home.”
“I know,” she sighed. “What are we going to do?”
He tried to sit up, groaned, and lay back on the bed as he stared at her. “You’ll have to file for a transfer to a new professor. People will talk about us, and it could get ugly.”
“I think after everything we’ve been through, gossip is the least of my worries. Funny, it used to scare the hell out of me, but not now. Not after…” She didn’t finish, but he knew she needed a distraction from the darkness of those thoughts.
“We’ll still need to lay low so no one suspects we’re dating. Maybe you can ask for Lionel Bigby as your new professor.”
“No way! He’s ancient!”
“Exactly. You won’t fall in love with him when he makes you work late nights.”
“Possessive much?”
“Very.”
“I am not transferring to Bigby and losing all my research.”
“Okay, But we’ll have to wait until you graduate and your PhD’s in the bag. That means no hot looks in the hall, no working late on the same nights, no public dates. Just secret clandestine meetings.” He waggled his eyebrows and she giggled.
“I’ll be good. Promise.” She flashed him a sexy grin that made him doubt very much he could keep his hands off her. He’d have to, in public. But in private? Oh yeah, he’d be all over his Little Mac.
“Once you’ve gotten your PhD, then you move in with me.”
“Move in?” Her breathless tone made his body harden.
“Yeah. Turns out I’m the marrying kind. You’re it for me, Little Mac.”
Her eyes misted, and he reached up to brush her cheek with the back of his hand as tears started to fall.
“You’ll do it. The right way, right? On one knee, a ring, a call to my dad?” she asked.
“I’ll do whatever you want as long as you know you’re mine and I’m yours.”
Her smile made him feel like he was standing on the edge of the Flaming Cliffs, the bright sun warming his face, as the wind whistled over the rocks. He knew, in the most ancient way a man could know anything, that they belonged together. The sea and the shore. The sun and the earth. What he felt went beyond soul-deep to someplace far stronger, far bigger than his own heart.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, his voice a little rough.
She nodded and leaned in to kiss him. It was an awkward kiss given that his body hurt all over, but it was the best damn kiss a man could ever have because he tasted her love for him in it.
So this was what it felt like to be loved, to love so much it hurt in the best way. A man could get used to this.
Epilogue
Six months later
Kenzie held on to Royce’s back as his motorcycle cruised down the private road toward their home—Devereaux House. She peered at the mansion through her helmet visor and sighed. She never got tired of looking at it. The gabled roofs and endless halls full of priceless paintings and lavish bedrooms and the study where Royce worked. It had all become a part of her life in the best possible way. He pulled up in front of the mansion and killed the engine. Kenzie let go of his hips and slid off. The sight of him astride the bike with his helmet, jacket, and jeans was utterly sinful.
He pulled the visor up. “What’s up, babe? You’re looking at me funny.”
“I’m just picturing how much I want you to bend me over the pool table tonight.”
He took off his helmet, leaving his hair playfully tousled, but his expression was hungry and serious.
“Are you asking me to fuck you, Dr. Martin?”
“Oh, most definitely, Dr. Devereaux.”
He grinned. “That’s too bad, Little Mac, because I have every intention of making love instead.”
Kenzie tugged on a lock of her hair and tilted her head, as if considering the offer.
“Well, as long as you make it dirty…”
“Dirty?” He stepped off his bike and began to step toward her with playful menace. She retreated to the door, which opened behind her. Mr. Lansdown stood there waiting.
“Ah, Dr. Devereaux, Dr. Martin,” the butler said.
“Lansdown, we’ll be in the billiard room until dinner. Make sure we aren’t disturbed.”
“Of course.” The butler tried to hide an indulgent smile.
Kenzie squealed as Royce tossed her over on his shoulder. He gave her ass a little smack, and she returned that with one of her own.
“You’re a caveman, you know that?”
“Never said I wasn’t, babe.” He laughed as he carried her to the billiard room and set her down on the edge of the table. She spread her legs as he stepped closer, cupping her face in his hands. For a long moment he simply stared at her, and she was undone by the tenderness in his eyes.
“I love you, Little Mac,” he said, and claimed her lips with his. It was a kiss that burned, a kiss that made her want to get his clothes off. Tear them off if she had to.
“You still—haven’t—asked yet—” she said between feverish kisses.
“Haven’t I?”
She shoved at his shoulders playfully. “No!”
�
�Well! My bad.” He stole another kiss before he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box.
He slowly lowered down to one knee before her, looking too irresistible.
“I wish I had my mother’s ring to give you, but this will have to do.” He cleared his throat and opened the velvet box. Inside was an elegant princess cut diamond with two small sapphires on either side.
“I chose this back in Mongolia before we came home. I thought it felt right.”
She couldn’t speak. She’d never had a thing for jewels, and she would have worn anything he gave her, but looking at the diamond and sapphires, knowing he’d brought the ring back from Mongolia, when they had almost died…
“MacKenzie Martin, would you do me the—”
Royce grunted as she tackled him to the ground, covering his face with kisses.
“Close enough! Yes, yes, yes!” That was the only word she’d ever want to say to this man, because they were destined for each other. Destined by forces set in motion millennia ago, when dinosaurs still walked the earth.
Their future wasn’t written in the stars; rather, it had been held in the fossils within the bedrock deep inside the earth, waiting to be revealed.
Dimitri Razin studied the crime scene photos showing Vadym lying dead, poisoned in a Moscow restaurant. The ricin had found its way into the bastard’s food with a little help from a cook in Razin’s employ. He should have killed the man a long time ago, but he’d been reluctant to start a turf war that would spill over into his private life. But after watching the hell Royce and Ms. Martin had been through, he owed it to them to deal with the problem.
He pulled up his email on his phone, and through an encrypted link he sent the photos to Royce. That would give the professor a bit of peace now that he was to be a married man and likely soon a father. Dimitri smiled a little, but there was an ache in his chest that he couldn’t seem to fix. After being with Ms. Martin that night at the Black Diamond Bar, he’d glimpsed the way she’d looked at Royce, with so much love and hunger that Dimitri had been jealous. Not because he’d wanted to come between them—he hadn’t. But he’d wanted what Royce had. That intense bond with another person. He’d likely never find it, not with the way he had dark desires pulsing in him. Finding the right woman, the one who would be submissive without fear in the bedroom, was a hard thing.