by Misty Evans
Down to her shoulders, sides, rib cage, and once again, those marvelous breasts. “I can’t believe how lucky I am to be in the same room with you, much less touching you. Kissing you.”
She might have been a virgin, but she wasn’t shy when it came to using her hands and mouth. While he unzipped her pants, she did the same to his. He burst out of the opening and into her hand like a heat-seeking missile. She stroked him with finesse.
All the usual platitudes swam through his testosterone-fueled brain. He should take it slow. Make it last. Her first time should be special. They needed a condom…
Birth control. Damn.
Her hand was smooth, stroking, stroking, stroking, and he was so gone, but he managed to step back from the edge. The only way to slow this down was to disconnect her hand, disconnect her body.
And why the hell would he do that?
“Anya.” He lifted her off his lap and stood her up in front of him. Took a deep breath. “I don’t have a condom.”
Trying to shift gears, she gave him a perplexed look. “That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. While I’d love to throw caution to the wind one more time, I won’t risk getting you pregnant on top of everything else.”
She stepped toward him, but he held up a hand to stop her from climbing back in his lap. She laughed and grabbed his hand, moving it out of her way. “I’m on the pill. Have been for years.”
Now it was his turn to look perplexed.
Realizing he needed an explanation, she looked slightly chagrined. “Because of my blood abnormality, I have really heavy periods. The hormones in the pills help control the bleeding.”
After the longest, shittiest day of his life, his luck had turned around. Behind Anya’s back, the antiquated computer beeped, signaling him it had finally located, and hooked up with, the satellite dish floating miles above the earth.
Yes, sir, lady luck was his.
“As your humble servant, Grand Duchess Anya, let me send out an SOS to Langley, and then I’ll strip those jeans off you, and we’ll do anything your heart desires.”
Already shimmying out of the jeans, she smiled big and Ryan’s heart thudded hard with happiness. “Make it quick.” She kicked the legs of the jeans off her ankles and hopped up on the metal desktop. “A princess doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Taking his eyes off her long, glorious legs should have earned him a star on the wall at Langley because it nearly killed him. His message to Conrad was short and to the point:
Package and president are in trouble. Send help ASAP.
Before he was even done typing, Anya’s hands were on him, pushing down his pants, removing his shirt. There was no way he could have written a longer message if his life depended on it. Which it sort of did. But he’d played his wildcard by including Pennington in the missive, and now all he could do was forget about it. If the Agency came to help, fine, but he wouldn’t sit around waiting for them.
First, he had a princess to please. Then he had to get her the hell out of Moscow.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Ryan was amazing.
Anya sat on the metal desk, her naked butt freezing on the cold, hard surface. She didn’t care. Ryan stood before her, leaning over the keyboard, and concentrating on the computer screen next to her. She couldn’t stop touching him. The muscles in his arms, the scant bit of blond chest hair that tickled her fingers, his flat stomach…she wanted it all.
And lower…
Heat rose in her cheeks from the sight of all that masculinity standing at full attention. She’d read romance books. She knew what was supposed to happen, but really? All of that was going inside her?
Reaching out, she skimmed his erection with her fingers, and Ryan sucked in a breath. He hit a final button, grabbed her wrist, and turned all that focused concentration on her. “Easy, princess.”
Oops. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to touch him like that. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Your touch drives me a little crazy. I want to take this slow and easy and when you do that? Touch me like that? Well, that’s going to get you fast and hard.”
Fast and hard didn’t sound so bad, especially when the spot between her legs ached for release. His gaze was so intense, she nearly exploded right there. “Please, Ryan,” was all she could say.
Leaning over her, he placed his hands on the desktop on each side of her thighs, and caught her mouth with his. He kicked off his socks and shoes, and the jeans around his ankles, while he kissed her, then broke the kiss for a second while he shoved several computer monitors out of the way, stretched the blanket out on the desktop, and kissed her down onto her back.
Their bodies connected in a long line of hot skin, her legs spreading to welcome him in. Shifting slightly to one hip, she felt him, hard and needy, land in just the right spot. Her body arched against his as a wild clash of emotions and craving crashed through her.
He must have felt it, too. His hips jerked against hers, pinning all that hardness even closer against the sensitive area between her legs. Looking down at her, he drew a sharp breath. “Don’t you want to take this slow?”
How could she know when she’d never done this before? She was only reacting to her body’s need, its impulses. She wrapped her legs around his waist and his erection nudged past her slick folds, making her gasp at the sensation. Her hips moved on their own accord, rocking against him. “I don’t think so.”
He moaned low in his throat, vibrating his chest and hers. She rocked again, wanting him to lose control like she was. Willing him to stop thinking and let his body do what it wanted to her.
Running her hands down his back, she cupped his butt cheeks and pressed them down. At the same time, she arched her lower body once more into his.
“Anya—”
To silence him, she grabbed him hard and brought their mouths together. Ground her pelvis against his, taking him in. The fit was tight for a second, but only a second. Another shift and he slid deeply inside, filling her up.
Oh, God.
But then he stopped, not moving except to tease her mouth with his tongue. As she focused on his lips and met his tongue with her own, he fondled one of her breasts, massaging it, and tweaking her nipple.
It was her turn to moan.
A new pressure filled her. Ryan, plus her desire, building again at his ministrations. He nuzzled her neck, stroked her thighs, and soon she was moving her hips again. Small rocking motions that began to build. She needed more of him, needed him moving with her.
He said nothing, just looked into her eyes as he drew himself partially out, and slowly pushed himself back inside. There was a light stinging sensation, but pleasure, too. Pleasure she’d never felt before. Meeting his strokes, she held his intense gaze. He filled her up. Not just her body, but her heart. Her mind. Her very soul. This was what it felt like to fall in love.
A new urgency registered down below and Anya met Ryan’s strokes with determination. Something was building inside her. She needed him in a whole new way.
He shifted his hips, one hand moving into the space between their lower bodies.
“What are you…”
“Trust me.” His thumb slid between her folds and hit an extremely sensitive spot.
Anya gasped. Once, twice, three times, his thumb built its own rhythm, working in time with his long strokes. But before it made a fourth caress, she exploded in a flood of sensation, digging her heels into his butt and her nails into his back. “Ryan!”
He continued to move, taking her to the brink, and over it. Continuing to move inside her until her nerve endings were raw. Whispering in her ear. “Are you all right?”
In the height of the orgasm, all she could do was whisper back, “I love you.”
Ryan hardened even more inside her, his whole body tensing. She could feel his heart pounding against her chest, and his breathing was fast. “Anya, I…”
He detonated, his whole body freezing for a second. Eyes closed, his face a
fierce mask of both concentration and sheer joy. Anya’s heart swelled.
For long seconds afterwards, they held each other. Seconds turned to minutes. Ryan’s deadweight on top of her pressed her into the hard metal beneath the blanket, but when he tried to shift off of her, Anya held him still. “Don’t leave me.”
His breath was warm on her ear. “Never.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ryan came awake with a start, heart pounding, and a riotous blaring noise going off next to his head.
The computer.
Shit.
Anya was on top of him, so when he tried to bolt upright, he didn’t go far. At some point after their lovemaking, he’d shifted them both around so he was lying under her. And then, like a true idiot, he’d fallen asleep.
But, damn, he’d felt so blissed out, and combined with the past week of little sleep, and an overload of stress, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open. Holding Anya after sex had been the best sleep aid in the world.
A red light was flashing in the far corner of the room. The noise—still blaring like a fire alarm—echoed off the glass and stone walls. Anya eyes flew open, confusion and fear on her face. Forget the warning blare of the alarm. The look on her face was all it took to get his brain cells firing. It wasn’t a computer raising a fuss.
Every computer in the room was going off. Every alarm in the bunker.
Which only meant one thing.
Nuclear attack.
That’s not possible.
But as Ryan and Anya untangled their limbs and went for their clothes, still scattered around the floor, Ryan’s logic argued with him. Possible, not probable.
That particular argument didn’t make him feel better.
“Have they found us?” Anya yelled over the alarm. Her fingers trembled as she tried to zip up her pants.
Ryan shook his head, shoving his legs into his jeans. “Something’s set off an attack alert. As if an attack is in progress.” He had a good idea what that something—or someones, thank you Conrad and Del—might have been. “My guess, it’s a false alarm, a distraction we can use, so we need to get out of here. Now.”
Anya pulled his sweater over her head. “What about my grandmother?”
Cad that he was, he’d been so caught up in making Anya’s first sexual experience the best it could be under the circumstances, he’d forgotten all about the old woman. “Right. Okay.”
Brilliant. Just brilliant. Tossing on his shirt, he slipped his feet into his shoes and scanned his memory for possible options. The gun went into the waistline at the small of his back. “Come with me.” Grabbing Anya’s hand, he tugged her after him.
Just off the communications room was a weapons room. Most of the inventory had been stripped, but there were still a few handguns, AK47s, and a ton of hand grenades. What the hell would you use a hand grenade for in an underground bunker?
He led Anya past the walls and crates, around a corner, and pointed to a room filled with rows of lockers. During the height of Stalin’s paranoia, those lockers had held clothes for thousands of military personnel.
If he’d taken the time to scout deeper into the tunnels instead of having sex with Anya, Ryan might have found the actual barracks. As it was, he’d have to work with what he had. “Ivanov’s probably stripped your grandmother of most of her clothes, so try to find a sweater, a coat, anything that’ll cover her against the elements. There should be some items in those lockers. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Where are you going?”
“We need supplies. Food, weapons, money.”
“There’s money down here?”
Not per se, but he was sure he could sell a gun or two topside and make enough to get them traveling funds. “Do you have your passport?”
Her face took on that oh, shit look. “I left it in my room.”
He kissed her before she could bite her bottom lip, and added another weapon to sell to his mental checklist of supplies.
“All that stuff, and more, is in Ivanov’s new bunker. Why can’t we grab some from there?”
“It’s probably guarded, especially with the terrorist attack. And he may even be in there, so our best bet is to find what we can here.”
She nodded, and he took off for the kitchen.
There, he found a military rucksack shoved behind the shelving unit stocked with more MREs. It was filthy, so he shook it out, dust and dirt filling the air. He swiftly cleared an entire shelf with his arm, guiding the canned meat and silver bags into the rucksack. There was no portable water, which sucked, but at least they’d have some food.
Gathering up a few guns and a couple of hand grenades was easy. Locating ammunition, more of a challenge. A few 9x19mm armor-piercing bullets lay scattered behind a garbage can. No doubt a guard had been reloading his gun clip and dropped them. Ryan pocketed the bullets, since they’d work in his GSh-18, but that was it. No clips, no other bullets, nothing.
He rubbed his forehead where a headache was setting up, thanks to the blaring alarms and the tension hardening every muscle in his body in a fight-or-flight condition. The cold, hard fact of the matter was, guns were easy to come by anywhere in Europe. Ammunition was the real gold. Sure, he could still get a few rubles for the weapons, but not enough to buy fake IDs and new passports. Not good ones anyway.
Conrad, you better still have Josh and Del waiting for me on the other side of this godforsaken hole.
The trick was, while Del and Josh could both forge documents, it would take time and proper supplies. And did he really want to involve them in this going-down-in-flames project?
No. He wouldn’t do that to either man. This was his mess. He would clean it up.
From the locker room, he heard banging and swearing over the alarm siren. He yanked a couple of mean-looking daggers from a display, and tossed them in his rucksack. Then he went to find Anya.
What a crappy interruption to his best laid plans to tell her the truth. About him, about his feelings for her. He didn’t want to be in love with her—wasn’t even sure this was love, but it sure felt better than anything he’d ever had with a woman—and maybe he wasn’t. Maybe this was all a stress-fueled infatuation. Didn’t matter. Whatever it was, he wanted more. He wanted it to last forever. If it didn’t—and it probably wouldn’t—he still wanted every second with her he could get.
Dozens of lockers stood open. Here and there, clothing and shoes dotted the benches and floor. “Anya?” he called over the noise.
“Here!”
In the back corner at the last row of lockers, he found her.
She was wearing his coat, but had added an ushanka hat, the type with fur lining and earflaps that buttoned on top when the wearer wanted them out of the way. She tossed a woolen military jacket, complete with two rows of gold buttons down the front, at him, and then another ushanka. Soviet leftovers, like the computers in the other room.
Grabbing a pile of clothes from the bench behind her, she showed him her bounty. “These should keep us all warm.”
The hat was too big for her and canted to one side. She had the earflaps down to try and drown out the alarm. Ryan put on the hat she’d given him, cinched up the rucksack, and hefted it over his shoulder. “Let’s go find Grams.”
According to his mental map, there were only the three main tunnels under Kremlin Palace. They mirrored the public subway tunnels on the northeastern side of Moscow.
But what they hadn’t seen nagged at him. All the stuff Anya had told him about. The lab Ivanov had built, his personal quarters, a high-tech communication center filled with equipment. Where was all that?
Ryan heaved the massive door to Stalin’s room open. Once the place had been decadent. Now it was a sad relic, containing a sitting area, bathroom, and office, the once expensive furnishings covered in dirt and mold. The prison cells were reportedly somewhere nearby, and if Ryan was thinking straight, he figured Ivanov’s presidential bunker was, too.
He shifted the rucksack farther up o
n his shoulder. “Look for a secret panel,” he told Anya, already feeling along the doorjamb. “Like in the Palace.”
Without hesitation, she went to work, sliding her hands over every surface she could reach.
Come on, come on. Time was running out, and they still had to locate Natasha and break her out of whatever cell she was in. With all the alarms going off, it wouldn’t be long before Ivanov’s guards came to investigate, even if they had their hands full in the Palace.
Anya disappeared into the bathroom while Ryan went into the walk-in closet. He was shoving empty hangers and leftover clothes out of the way when he heard her call his name. Her voice held a definite strain, pinging his shit meter. Had she found something?
God, he hoped she hadn’t stumbled onto her dead grandmother.
She called again. “Ryan! I need you.”
And indeed, she did.
The moment he rounded the corner and ran into the bathroom, he knew something was wrong. She stood in front of a floor-to-ceiling armoire. One door was open, and Ryan could see it led to another room, Anya blocking the view. Her hat now sat perfectly centered on her head, but her eyes were wide as saucers, and her face was even paler than normal.
The underground alarm stopped without warning, and in the sudden silence, Ryan’s ears rang with a blaring echo. “Anya? What is it?”
“Not what.” She swallowed visibly. “Who.”
Ryan reached for the gun in the hollow of his back, but a familiar, sadistic voice halted his movement.
“Mr. Jones.” Ivanov pushed Anya forward and she staggered before righting herself. Ivanov followed, stepping out of the fake armoire and pointing a fat, black gun at the base of her skull. “Did you think I would let a common American take my property and destroy my plans for the future?”
Ryan’s shit meter blew.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Anya drew a shaky breath, locking her knees, and forcing her eyes to convey to Ryan that she was okay.