by Cindy Dees
He caught that hint, thank goodness.
His arms swept around her and he dragged her up against him until her feet barely touched the floor. “You’re sure about this?”
She laughed. “I thought you’d never get around to it.”
As his mouth closed over hers, he turned, pressing her back against the wall, thrusting his thigh forward until she rode upon it, rubbing the most sensitive parts of her against his hard muscles in a tantalizing dance. His hand moved between them and her skirt fell away from her heated flesh. And then his fingers were upon her, stroking and teasing while he murmured endearments. The blouse fell away next and then her bra.
Carter turned her to face the mirror, her back pressed against him. She was stunned to see herself in the floorlength mirror, a naked, sexy blonde twisting in the arms of a fully clothed man like some sort of sex goddess. The sight was impossibly erotic. His hands, big and tanned, moved all over her pale slender body, possessing her, marking her. And everywhere they went she burned for him.
She arched into his touch, begging throatily for more and groaning her pleasure when he gave her what she asked for. He wove a magic spell around her that made her vision blur at the edges and colored lights sparkle in her eyes. And then he was inside her, thrusting hot steel into her swollen, velvet flesh.
She’d have cried out if his finger hadn’t been in her mouth, thrusting in and out in erotic imitation of the other act. She sucked his finger, drawing it into the wet depths of her mouth, milking it with tongue and teeth, licking and stroking as his tempo increased in speed and power. Again and again, he plunged into her and she pushed back, reveling in being taken so completely.
It started as a tingling in her fingers and toes and built in scope, traveling down her limbs toward her core, growing like a tsunami as it raced ashore. And as Carter touched the very core of her, the wave broke, crashing over her, submerging her and finally drowning her. Their bodies shuddered violently together until slowly, slowly, the tension drained from them both.
He sank down to the bench, cradling her in his arms until she regained the ability to think and speak.
“Feeling better about the end of the world?” he murmured.
Lily laughed ruefully. “I am feeling better. Maybe not about the whole dying-horribly-at-any-moment bit, though.”
“You get used to it after a while.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” she confessed.
His arms tightened around her, but he made no reply.
Eventually, she asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“I think I like the red lace teddy more than that black leather bustier.”
She lurched and looked up at the hangers on the wall left over from a previous customer. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Guilty as charged. Do you need help, uh, putting yourself back together?”
She pulled on her clothes and retucked her hair up under the wig. But her makeup was hopelessly smeared and she ended up taking most of it off with a tissue she dug out of her purse.
Carter insisted on opening the door and leaving first, so she only heard the pert voice of the sales girl asking him archly, “Did you find something you liked?”
Lily gritted her teeth in humiliation as Carter laughed knowingly. “Why, yes, I did. I’ll take the blonde—oh, and the red teddy.”
Hastily, Lily snatched up the barely there teddy and followed him to the cash register. He paid for the purchase and handed her the discreet bag while she fumed behind him.
When their hotel-room door finally closed behind them, she turned on him accusingly. “You let that girl think I’m a hooker!”
“What do you care? We’ll all be dead in a week. Live in the moment, kid. It’s the trick to true happiness.”
“How can you talk so casually about Armageddon?” she demanded, irritated.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at her intently. “I’m not kidding. None of us have any way of knowing when our number will be up. You or I could be hit by a car while crossing the street tomorrow and never live to see the end of the world next week. Life isn’t a certain thing. The only thing any of us can do is find everything we can to appreciate what’s right around us and enjoy what we can in this exact moment.”
She sat down beside him and stared back at him.
He continued, “If you want to get philosophical about it, neither the past nor the future actually exists. We only have memory of one and anticipation of what the other might be like. All that ever truly exists is the now.”
“But we have the results of the past to live with, and we can shape the future with our decisions now.”
“True. I’m not saying we should ignore the past and future. I’m just saying it’s vital to notice the now. To experience it. To really live each moment—not just float along waiting for some future moment to occur or wishing for some moment that’s already gone.”
Frankly, she was shocked. Who’d have guessed a soldier would take such an existential view of life? Darned if the man wasn’t even more attractive when he was being all intelligent and thoughtful.
“What’s wrong?” he asked suddenly. “Why are you looking at me with pity like that?”
“I was just thinking what a tragedy it is that men have such long recovery times between sexual encounters while we women don’t.”
“Uh-ho. Now those are fighting words, madam.”
She blinked at him, startled. Without warning he tipped her over on her back and pounced. “Guess we’re not going to get to try out the sexy lingerie this time either,” he murmured against her stomach as he shoved her blouse out of the way again. “Recovery time. Ha!”
Well, all right, then. Apparently, her hypothesis that men wanted sex only every few days or at most, once a day, was mistaken. In fact, over the next few hours, Carter showed her exactly how wildly mistaken she’d been.
His life-changing demonstration was only ended when his cell phone rang on the bedside table. Emerging from under the covers, his hair sticking up every which way and a wide grin on his face as she swore at the interruption, he reached across her for the device.
“Baigneaux here. Go.” A pause. “Hi, boss.”
Carter listened intently for several agonizingly long and silent moments. And then he only said, “Wilco,” before disconnecting the call.
“Well?” she demanded as he set the phone down again.
“I thought you were mad at the interruption,” he said innocently.
She tugged on his hair to keep him from disappearing beneath the sheets again. “Okay, fine. So women are insatiably curious. I admit it.”
“When they’re not shopping, that is.”
Laughing, she punched his shoulder lightly. “C’mon. Spill the beans.”
“H.O.T. Watch has arranged some time on the Hubble for you this evening. You’re going to get that closer look at your asteroid that you need to verify its mass and velocity exactly. We need a precise impact date and time.”
“When?” she asked eagerly.
“We don’t have to leave for a couple of hours. Long enough for me to prove to you once and for all that the hyperorgasmic cluster is no myth at all.”
Oh, my. She could get used to his brand of science. Very used to it, indeed.
Chapter 10
It took them nearly an hour to reach the NASA Goddard facility in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., in their armored SUV. Plenty of time for Carter to wonder what the hell had happened to change Lily’s mind about him. Or maybe her mind hadn’t changed at all. Maybe she still thought he was a baby killer and murderer of the worst sort. Maybe none of that mattered in the face of Armageddon. Maybe it all came down to him simply being the closest available male when the world was about to end.
Thing was, she was so much more than merely the nearest convenient female for him. He’d been so damned proud of how she’d handled herself at the Russian Embassy. Not to mention
she was having the darnedest effect on his freeze-ups. It was as if all the laughter she brought to his life was healing him. Either that or the great sex. She was brave and unconcerned for her own safety, and he couldn’t help but admire those traits in her, no matter how misplaced they might be from time to time. And in their hotel room this afternoon…she was one hell of a woman and not afraid to show it. How could he not fall for her? She was everything he’d ever dreamed of and more.
Women all over the world must be laughing tonight that the tables had finally been turned on the ever-charming and ever-elusive Carter Baigneaux. He’d always been the one to leave them pining for him as he moved on to the next hot spot, the next crisis. But would Lily leave him behind if—when, dammit—this one was successfully resolved? God, he hated not knowing.
Getting through the various layers of security at the Goddard facility took a while, and he was blessedly distracted by all the rigmarole. They were finally escorted to the main communications center, which looked like a miniature version of Houston’s massive control room.
An engineer explained that the Hubble was currently on the far side of Earth, and tonight, its information would be relayed to Washington via the International Space Station. Lily nodded, concentrating intently on what everyone told her. Darned if he wasn’t turned on by her display of formidable intelligence as she questioned the scientists around her about the Hubble’s capabilities to image the asteroid and succinctly listed exactly what information she required.
Work, Boudreau. Work. Save the world now. Seduce the girl after.
The asteroid’s estimated coordinates were duly fed to the Hubble, and the space-based telescope began a ponderous turn toward the region of the galaxy from which death hurtled at them all. Lily fidgeted beside him until Carter surreptitiously took her hand in his.
“Nervous?” he murmured.
“Excited. This is every astronomer’s dream—to have one of the greatest telescopes ever created at her personal beck and call.”
He was glad to have made a dream come true for her in case things turned out badly. Good Lord willing, he’d make at least a few more of her dreams come true before the end. Boy, was he becoming a sap! What had that woman done to him?
“Here it comes,” she said eagerly. Every eye in the room turned to the big screen, where a fuzzy image was slowly coming into focus of a pitted chunk of gray rock. “That picture’s amazing!” she exclaimed.
“You said you need spectroscopy of the object to determine its mineral content?” one of the engineers asked.
“Yes. In particular, we need to know its exact density, mass and velocity.”
“The scan will take several minutes,” the engineer replied, already typing into his computer. “It’s a lot like an MRI—we’ll scan the asteroid in slices and then compile a composite image.”
About halfway through the slices stacking up on the screens before them, a loud voice startled everyone in the facility. “Goddard, this is Mir. Acknowledge.” Mir was the Russian word for peace. It was also the name of the International Space Station.
Crap. That voice had a distinct Russian accent.
“Go ahead, Mir,” the duty controller replied.
“We see you make unscheduled move with Hubble. For why you deviate from schedule?”
The controller looked over at Carter for guidance. Carter asked quietly, “Can Mir hear us right now?”
“No, sir. I’ve got us off speaker.”
“This is a highly classified situation. We can’t tell the Russians what we’re doing—”
“Why not?” Lily interrupted.
Carter turned to her. “This is a military crisis. We can’t just share that with everyone who happens to be Russian. We don’t want to create a global panic.”
“Yes, but this is a cosmonaut. He won’t randomly panic,” she said urgently. “What if we tell him exactly what we’re looking at? What if we make it crystal clear that this is incredibly urgent and important? Won’t he report that to his superiors right away? And won’t a bunch of Russians very highly placed in their space program start asking questions about why the Americans are so frantically looking at some insignificant little asteroid that’s about to slam into Siberia?”
“It’s totally against protocol,” he replied doubtfully.
“Protocol, schmotocol. We’re all going to die anyway.”
Gasps around the room greeted that announcement. Damn. He was going to have to make everyone here sign security statements before they left.
“Fine,” he bit out. He turned to the duty controller. “Tell the cosmonaut exactly what we’re pointing the Hubble at and that it’s a matter of highest and most urgent U.S. national security.”
The controller nodded and relayed the message. A long, long silence was Mir’s only reply.
“Ten to one he’s on the horn to the Russian Space Agency this very second,” Lily muttered.
“I wouldn’t take that bet,” Carter murmured back. “You’d win.”
Finally, the Russian’s scratchy voice filled the room once more. “Say why small asteroid is emergency, Goddard.”
Carter looked up at Lily. They made eye contact and understanding flowed between them. This was an all-or-nothing situation. The same kind he’d faced in the Sudan, and the same kind she’d faced up on that bluff.
He leaned forward and punched the transmit button on the comm panel. “Do me a favor, Mir. Ask your superiors to turn off the doomsday machine located at ground zero where this asteroid is projected to impact Earth. On behalf of mankind, we would all love to live out the week.”
“Uh, roger, Goddard. Copy.”
“What the hell’s going on, Captain?” the senior controller demanded. “What’s this about doomsday?”
Carter sighed. “I’ve just breached every security procedure ever enacted by our country. I really can’t say any more. In fact, when the dust settles from this whole mess, assuming any of us are still alive, there’s probably going to be a hell of a stink about what I just did. You might want to just arrest me now to cover your behind.”
The guy frowned, thought for a minute. “Is there more you two can do to prevent this doomsday thing?”
“Maybe.”
The man looked around the control center, making eye contact with each of his people. “Then I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear anything at all about any doomsday device. I was asked to relay some data on a chunk of rock to some scientist, and that’s what I did.”
There were nods all around.
Carter nodded back gratefully at the man.
“Carter?” It was Lily, speaking from the computer she’d sat down at the minute the cross sections of the asteroid were complete. And she was as white as a sheet.
“What’ve you got?”
“We’ve got a problem. A huge one. Our asteroid is, indeed, comprised totally of heavy metals.”
“Which means?” he asked.
“We’re not looking at a week. We’re looking at more like two days.”
He gasped, appalled. Finally, he cleared his throat and ordered, “Print it all in hard copy and then save it to the flash drive.”
She got to work. While she did, the controller sidled up to him. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Yeah. Say a prayer when you go to bed tonight that saner heads prevail. And hug your kids.”
“Amen,” the guy murmured.
“Okay, I’ve got it.” Lily brandished a sheaf of papers.
“Thank you for your help, gentlemen,” Carter said to the room in general. “Let’s go, Lily. We’ve got a world to save.”
He herded her into the SUV and told the driver to take them back to the hotel.
“Now what?” she asked him.
“Now it’s time for H.O.T. Watch to call in the big guns.” He pulled out his phone and reported the revised impact date grimly to Brady and what they’d said to the Russian cosmonaut. Lily was watching impatiently when he disconnected the call. “Brady says to get
some rest while they make some calls. This could take a while. It’s getting late and people can be hard to reach at this hour.”
“Rest?” she exclaimed. “He’s joking, right?”
“No, he’s not. And he’s right. We have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Best to sleep now while we can. We may not get another chance.” Ever. Cripes. That was a sobering thought. He might never sleep again after tonight. Might never lie down with Lily and make love to her again. He wasn’t prone to wallowing in maudlin emotions, but the notion was enough to choke a guy up a little.
“You okay?” Lily murmured. “You’re going tense.”
“I was just thinking about how I like being alive.”
“Me, too.”
The rest of the ride back to the hotel passed in silence. They made love slowly and sweetly and cuddled in the dark together for a long time afterward. Although they didn’t speak, he could tell from her breathing that she wasn’t asleep either. Being this close to the end of everything sure put a man’s life in perspective. He didn’t think about career accomplishments or stuff he’d like to have owned. He thought about his family. Friends he’d like to see one more time so he could tell them how much they’d meant to him. About the kids he might have had. How much he’d have enjoyed having Lily for his wife.
After a while, she reached up and flicked at her cheek like she was dashing a tear away.
“I know the feeling,” he said quietly.
“This sucks,” she mumbled.
“Tomorrow morning, call your parents. It’ll make you feel better.”
She half laughed, half sobbed, “What would really make me feel better would be to call Bill Kaplan and tell him to go suck an egg.”
“Then by all means do that, too. We’ll both make some calls tomorrow.”
She nodded against his shoulder. It wasn’t long after that she drifted to sleep. At least one of them was getting a little rest. But then, she probably had a clear conscience about her life. He had a whole lot of faces in his noggin. Faces of the children he’d killed. Children he had a reckoning with. Soon.