He started with the black tee that snugly hugged that broad chest she’d wanted to explore. Oh. My. Nina pushed up against the pillow so she could comfortably watch. He was lightly tanned all over, like he spent time outdoors without his shirt, his color stayed with him through the colder months too.
There was nothing sexier than a muscular and fit man wearing nothing but jeans, especially one with molten heat in his eyes, devouring her with that male gaze. Every fiber in her body tingled at that look. She was glad he wanted her just as badly as she did him.
His jeans dropped to the floor and he stepped out of them. Nina stayed very still as he stalked towards the bed, his fierce arousal jutting out. Coming for her. She had never seen anything more beautiful.
“I got to see The Cowboy naked,” she said lightly, her voice sounding unnaturally breathless. She needed to diffuse the tension she felt inside. “I can die happy now.”
He climbed over her. “You aren’t going to die, Nina,” he informed her in a deep voice. “Unless you mean la petit mort. In that case, I can help with that.”
“Mmm, promises, promises,” Nina taunted. She didn’t want to think about serious stuff right now. “Fuck me, Cowboy. Do it right this time. The first one earlier was too quick for my liking. In fact, let me show you how it’s done.”
She pushed against him and he obediently went onto his back. Sitting astride she admired the hard-on between her legs, waiting so patiently for her. It was gorgeous, if she could call a cock gorgeous—golden and smooth, with a beautiful head. She fisted the base of his penis and pulled the skin until it was taut and with her other hand, caressed his balls. He lay there, his lower body straining slightly, his breathing uneven. She smiled sensuously.
“I have a deadline looming and I need to come very badly, so the foreplay will have to wait, darling,” she said.
“Foreplay can be a later option,” he said, his voice gravelly with desire.
Putting her weight on her knees, she slowly guided him inside her, pushing down, all the while pulling gently at his balls. Luke muttered something but she didn’t pay attention, too intent on the feeling of fullness as he slid inside. Letting go, she put her hands on his chest and started rocking up and down.
She could feel his thudding heart. Moving her hips rhythmically, she leaned over and licked his golden skin. Yum. His hand came up on her lower back, urging her down further. Another warm hand guided hers to her clitoris.
“Touch yourself,” he ordered.
She slid her finger against her nub, slick with her own damp desire, rubbing in time with her long slide down. Every glide brought an extra trill of pleasure as she writhed against her finger. He started moving his hips in time with her and it felt like she was riding the best stud in the whole…then his fingers joined hers, pressing down on her clitoris.
The building orgasm that was balling white hot in her stomach burst into flame. It was a double pleasure, teasing herself outside and his cock caressing her inside. She moaned, bucking wildly. She was so wet, her essence marking him. Mine, she thought. Mine, mine, mine.
Nina fell forward, coming hard, calling his name. Somehow she was on her back and he was on top, riding her now, thrusting in deep. Her orgasm continued in waves, her inner muscles clenching and unclenching, milking that hot cock inside her as it slid against her sensitive core.
With a groan, he gave her one hard thrust and came, pushing in so deep, she had to wrap her legs around him and hold on while their bodies shook uncontrollably.
This was what she had wanted to do with him for months and months.
It was worth the wait.
Dangerously Hot: Chapter Seven
They slept, tangled in each other’s arms. Luke woke up several times, thinking of what she’d told him and of his brother, trying to figure out how everything tied together. He watched Nina. She was soft and yielding in sleep, one hand tucked under her cheek like a child. He wanted to keep her by his side.
“Guys, wake up.” Konstantin’s voice called out through the door. “I need you out here ASAP.”
Nina stirred.
“We’re up,” Luke said loudly. “Will be there soon.”
“Hurry up! I’ve got answers!”
Luke caressed Nina’s face gently with the back of his hand. Her eyelashes fluttered and she smiled.
“I don’t want to wake up,” she murmured.
“Me neither.”
She opened her eyes sleepily. “Car chases tire me out,” she said.
He chuckled quietly. She was even amusing in the morning. “And here I thought it was me.”
She cuddled in for a kiss and he obliged. Her mouth was soft under his, but her response was bold and challenging. Her tongue teased his, inviting him to play and he did so. He ran his hand down her body slowly, first cupping one breast, then sliding down the soft womanly curves to rest between her legs. She responded to his touch there too, dampening his hand.
“Hey, we’re supposed to wake up,” she reminded him huskily before gasping softly.
“That’s what I’m doing, waking us up,” Luke said. He really liked watching her slowly going wild while he aroused her with his fingers. He circled her clitoris counter clockwise. “I can do this all day and keep you at my mercy.”
“That sounds kinky,” she whispered. “Can you go faster? Oh. Yes, like that.”
There were a few seconds of silence as he brought her higher. He rubbed her a little faster and she moaned. When she came, he prolonged her orgasm, lightly scissoring that sensitive little pearl and massaging around it.
He decided watching a woman let go and come was the best way to start the day. He’d just satisfied his fantasy woman. Bring on reality then.
It was another half hour before they joined Konstantin in the kitchen. He pointed to the coffee pot.
“Leftover pizza for breakfast. Sorry.” He patted the pile of papers on the table. Next to them was Nina’s procured laptop. “Unlike you two, I’ve been working.”
Luke rubbed his stubble. “About time you do that instead of playing your stupid treasure-hunting game,” he said dryly.
“Ha. You guys are doing the same thing too. All these items?” He patted the pile next to him again. “They are like little bits of clues to some treasure. You’re after some, she’s after some, and there are others in this big game too. What we need to do is figure out what the treasure is.”
Nina sipped her coffee. “Did you really manage to hack into the laptop? You did? What did you find out?”
Konstantin huffed out indignantly. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I have clues to the treasure. We have a set of characters—you, Luke, the terrorists, even MI6, as well as an assortment of others. I’ve been mapping out who is who all night.”
Luke shook his head at Nina’s puzzled glance at him. “To understand Kostya, you have to speak his language,” he explained sardonically. “Everything is about a quest to him right now.”
“But it’s true, she is on a quest! You both are,” Konstantin exclaimed. “She’s trying to free her father and you’re looking for Drei. And these quests are intermingled with lots of black market magic.”
Luke sighed and taking out the pizza he’d just heated up from the microwave, he placed one on a plate for Nina and handed it to her. He sat down beside her.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell us about the black market magic.”
Konstantin smiled. “First, let me show you how those evil wizards track you last night.” He pulled out a cell phone, one Luke recognized was Nina’s. “That’s the magic wand.” He tapped on some keys on the laptop. A page came up. “This is a password-protected key to your phone. Every time you reply to a text from your headquarters, it unlocks your exact location on this map. Your masters have been making sure you were where you said you were, Nina. All you had to do was acknowledged their text.”
“Damn,” Nina said, looking at the screen. “So they know when I was with Drei because I remember texting them. And
last night, I did acknowledge their buzzing me while I was…busy.”
Luke kept a straight face. She’d been busy all right. “When did you do this?” He asked, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice.
She looked back at him with an innocent expression. “When you were carrying me up the stairs. The phone was in my back pocket and I managed to click on it. I knew they would buzz me since I hadn’t contacted them after my assignment. I wanted them to know I was okay.”
“Was he really carrying you?”
Konstantin bellowed out a long bout of laughter. Luke knew he would find that amusing, since he had been acting so coolly whenever the subject of La Niina was brought up.
“Kostya, we need you to hurry this along,” Luke said when the hoots died down a little. “We’re under pressure here.”
“Right. Okay, then, you ready? I think your pursuers were after Nina for her envelope. Unfortunately, you started carrying her up the stairs or something and thus stopped her from going back to her Headquarters where they’d assumed she would be. So, they had your handler find out where you were and by acknowledging his buzz, they have your location through the tracking software. I could show you, except I’ve disengaged the device. I’m not chancing them buzzing it with some other magical program.”
“Good,” Luke said. “Now what about the envelope?”
“I looked at all of Nina’s runs through the last year and cross-referenced them with the times you also made similar runs. There are several reasons why you keep bumping into each other. One, you were both looking for Drei. Two, I was piecing together clues of this quest she is after and passing you what I’ve found out, except that we both couldn’t see what was right under our noses.”
“What?” Luke and Nina asked together.
Konstantin pointed at Nina. “Her. She was your quest all along, not your brother.”
“Okay, you lost me, buddy,” Luke said.
“It’s like this. Drei disappeared while helping her but she and he have been sharing information about things she had been collecting. So everything she was after had a little Drei touch to it. I, the Great Constantinos, was looking for anything connected to Drei to help you out.”
Luke nodded. “Yeah, I see it now. We were both looking for Drei, like you said, Nina was the one with most of the answers because she was working with him.”
“He was just giving me a hand,” Nina said. “But we managed to look at all my little errands and pick out the exact things those terrorist wanted.”
“Oooh, I actually know the answer to that,” Konstantin said, glee in his voice. “You see, all I have to is look at the master file in the laptop indicating the clients. There were five items going to the same guy.”
Nina swallowed her food. “Go on,” she said.
“A political document of some sort. A photo. Someone even made a copy on your file, Nina. It’s some kind of meeting at a café. Three men and a woman. The next was a small notebook with dates inside showing government meetings. Again, someone scanned all the pages into your file. The one before last night was Number Four, a glass with a fingerprint you stole.”
Nina nodded. “Wow,” she said, turning to Luke. “He’s really good at this.”
Luke finished the second piece of pizza. “Not that big a deal. All the time I paid him my hard-earned money, he only found tidbits with no real connections. Now he’s got a laptop with a whole list to cross-reference, sure he’s good.”
“Hey, I was good too,” Konstantin protested indignantly. “I gave you the biggest clue, La Niina herself. You were just too damn interested looking at her.”
“That’s true,” Luke agreed. He’d been looking and looking. And looking. And now, he had her. He could afford to be generous. “Tell us about Number Five then.”
“It’s going to cost you,” Konstantin warned. “It’s big and I feel obligated to make some money for my extra hard work.”
Luke gave a loud sigh. “Kost—”
“I could get MI6 to pay you,” Nina interrupted. “One of those phones belongs to my contact there. He’s very interested in making sense of all these quests too, I bet. With the way the damn agency has kept me in the dark, we’ll make them pay. Let’s ask for top Euros.”
Konstantin nodded enthusiastically. “Wow,” he gushed. “She’s really good at this. She’d make a great quest partner. We exchange clues and information in my online game a lot, Nina. Feel like joining me?”
“There’s this matter of several people’s lives being in danger here,” Luke reminded his friend. Sometimes, Kostya lost his concentration and had to be pulled back in. “Number Five?”
Konstantin rolled his eyes. “It’s the envelope.”
“I know that,” Luke said, “but what is it? Did you see what’s been on the market?”
“Cross-referencing is the new black, my dear friend,” Konstantin mocked, crossing his arms. “I looked at locations and then checked the usual requests on the black market sites. I believe I’ve discovered two things—where Nina’s father is hidden and what those ampoules are.”
Nina had dropped her spoon when she heard what Konstantin said. Her excitement warmed Luke’s heart. He could tell she was trying to hide how much Kostya’s words affected her. Konstantin didn’t miss it either.
“He’s still in England,” he said, the tone of his voice gentler now. “Maybe you can tell that to your contact and they can save him. They need to get the terrorists for sure. They’re after someone big and they mean to kill him. Luke, those ampoules are poisonous and there’s no way to safely get rid of them. The specific black market item wanted by the same group or individual is Pulonium-210.”
Luke stared at his roommate, then at the plastic package in the middle of the table. Pulonium-210 was lethal radiation poison. A very small dose ingested would make a person die a slow and painful death by radiation poisoning.
“Someone in that photo connected to the dates in that black book will be assassinated,” he said with quiet certainty. “We need to contact someone about this.”
Dangerously Hot: Chapter Eight
“Kostya, are you sure MI6 can’t track you at all?” Nina asked. “Because he did not look very happy with our demands.”
She had Luke to thank for Konstantin. The man was a gift. During the last two days, he’d helped send out secret messages to MI6 about her father’s location. Saving her father was Number One, she’d told them. Then they could talk.
It took one day before she received a call on the special satellite phone they’d given her. It was her father’s voice at the other end. He reassured her in code that he was alive and well, but unable to talk too much. No matter. He would get online and they would talk soon. She was just relieved he hadn’t been harmed.
“Mother is fine,” she told him. “Is there a reason why these men kidnapped you specifically?”
“Naya, your father knows many names of powerful men and defectors, and I’ll leave you on that note.”
Her father liked to refer to himself in third person when someone was listening in. It was a private warning to her and her family. He’d sacrificed his freedom so they could live freely. One day, she vowed, she would get him out, and he’d be able to walk anywhere without looking over his shoulder.
Somehow, using her phone, Konstantin also managed to get her and MI6 in a face-to-face conversation via computer. The half-hour negotiation was exactly what she needed to reestablish control. They had the Polonium-210 in their possession as well as all the information on the possible target.
“Your father is safe,” reported the operative in a crisp British accent. “You can see it for yourself.”
Her father, sitting quietly beside him, looked well enough. In front of him was his beloved chess set. He waved at her and moved a piece on the board.
Nina nodded. Her father was urging her to continue with this particular game. “Okay. Now, transfer the money so the digger who saved me gets paid. You know I’m going to need him to find out
whose life is in danger.”
“From your list, we think it’s the Ukrainian president. Presently, we could only warn him of a possible attempt on his life, but he already knows this is likely since the Ukraine is in a state of war.”
The Ukraine’s civil war was taking its toll on international relations between Russia and many NATO countries. Everything was already hanging on a delicate balance. The NATO members didn’t want another international incident that could create more political fallout. The fact that Russia was the main source of black-market Polonium-210 would certainly escalate the tension even further.
“Look, I’ll do as you ask but only if you cover my partner too,” Nina said. She shifted her gaze onto Luke. He had gone very still at her announcement. “He has a missing friend he needs to find, so I need all the correct papers to cover his presence.”
“A partner? When we sent you to Tallinn, we never sent you with a partner,” the MI6 operative said, dryly. “Now we have to cover the cost of your friends too?”
“Do you expect me to enter the Ukraine by myself without a safety net?”
“Polonium-210 has a short half life,” the British man pointed out. “They have a very narrow window to attack.”
Nina felt Luke moving to stand next to her. “Whoever is behind this whole plot has waited a whole year to implement this kill,” he said. “They aren’t going to just stop if there is no polonium. There are other poisons. Your problem is to extract the assassin without causing an international ruckus. On the other hand, I need to enter that country quickly. Nina has no combat experience and you’re asking her to go out there into a war arena. That’s, how should I put it politely, bloody stupid. I’ve been an Airborne Ranger and have experience with war. For the price of two, you get to avoid putting boots on the ground over there. Fair exchange or not?”
Nina enjoyed it when Luke took charge like that. She could see her father intently staring back at the screen, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. He seemed pleased. The operative was looking off-screen for a minute before answering. Obviously, some higher-up was sitting out of camera view.
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