Close Pursuit

by Cindy Dees

  “What did you do?”

  She was going to make him spell it all out. Every last sordid bit of it. Unreasonable anger at her rattled in his gut. Maybe that was why he didn’t pull any punches with her. “I didn’t finish the PhD in cryptography that my father wanted me to get. I went to medical school against his wishes.”

  “Oooh. Medical school. You rebel, you,” she teased.

  He scowled. “I started to party. I drank and used drugs and gambled. Rebellion against my father carried to its logical extreme.”

  “And there were women?”

  “Yes. There were a lot of women. Older than me. Experienced. I sought out women on whom I could work out my many issues and who would not expect any kind of a relationship with me.” He stared into her eyes, willing her to hear what he was leaving unsaid.

  But damned if her eyes didn’t light with interest. Answering lust surged into his loins, but he suppressed it brutally. “Katie, as pleasurable as I might find showing that world to you, you do not want to explore my end of hell.”

  “You can’t possibly know what I want or don’t want,” she retorted.

  “I know you have no idea what you’re asking for.”

  “So show me. Give me a taste of it.”

  He stared. If it were possible for his eyeballs to fall out of their sockets in shock, they would have rolled across the floor then and there. Could he do it? Could he give her a taste of the darkness and then back off when it got to be too much for her? Did he have that much self-control? “It wouldn’t be the same without a fifth of whiskey and a half-dozen lines of coke,” he mumbled.

  “I have a good imagination. Try me.”

  He surged up off the crate and stormed down to the far end of the bunker, swearing luridly in Russian.

  When he finally wound down and swung around to inform Katie in no uncertain terms that he couldn’t do it, she was watching him blandly. Looking as satisfied as a recently fed cat. He eyed her suspiciously.

  “How long until the cavalry comes to rescue us?” she asked mildly.

  “Six hours, give or take.”

  Her mouth curved up in a smile that was pure sin. Oh, God. “No, Katie.” She started walking toward him, her hips swinging provocatively. “I won’t do it. I can’t.”

  “Yes. You can,” she purred. She reached for the hem of her turtleneck, which she’d converted back from sling duty to shirt duty. He darted forward and snatched her hands away from the fabric. He yanked her arms wide, and her body slammed into his. Resilient female curves pressed against him in every place it was wrong for them to press. He groaned in the back of his throat.

  “Mmm. That’s nice,” she reported. “I think I like having my hands restrained.”

  “Stop that,” he ground out.

  Standing with her breasts crushed against his chest, she looked up at him. “I want it. You want it. We’re both consenting adults. What’s the problem?”

  He closed his eyes. Willed himself to be strong. He would protect her if it cost him his sanity or even his soul.

  “Kiss me, Alex. Show me something I’ve never done before.”

  Please, God, give him strength. Talk. If he could get her talking. Distract her. “What haven’t you done?”

  “It’s probably faster to list what I have done. Let’s see. I’ve had sex, of course. But it was pretty boring. Basic missionary position involving some grunting and general messiness.”

  “Did you like it?” he asked unwillingly.

  She looked up at him. “I thought we already established that I haven’t had good sex, yet, given that I prefer ice cream to it.”

  He grinned reluctantly. “Duly noted.”

  “I tried to give a blow job once, but I had no idea what I was doing. The guy mentioned something about deep throating and then passed out.”

  “He passed out in the middle of getting a blow job?” Alex blurted incredulously.

  It was Katie’s turn to grin. “He was drunk.”

  Alex snorted. “Very drunk.”

  “I’ve kissed a fair bit. Gotten a hickey or two. Oh, and I gave a guy a hickey once,” she announced in triumph.

  “Has a man ever gone down on you?” he asked.

  “Like oral sex?” she asked, a faint quaver in her voice. “No.”

  “Ever used any toys?”

  She laughed. “I went online once to see if I could order a vibrator. My best friend said they’re the best way to get an orgasm. But there were so many things to choose from I didn’t know where to start.”

  He shook his head. “Babe in the woods,” he muttered. Cripes. She was practically a virgin. She’d never had an orgasm? Not one?

  She laid her hands on his chest, sliding her palms up to his shoulders and beyond, toying with the short hairs at the back of his neck. “Show me just one thing,” she coaxed.

  “When you’re imagining sex, what do you think about?” he challenged.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you imagine being told what to do? Tied up? Or do you fantasize about being in charge yourself? Telling the guy what to do and how to pleasure you. Do you envision a romantic encounter or wild sex?”

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  He stared down at her, waiting. Two could play the patience game.

  “Umm, I think I’d rather have the guy be in charge.”

  “And?” he murmured, his voice rougher than he would have liked. He didn’t want her getting to him like this! But damned if he’d figured out how to block her out emotionally.

  “I’ve had dreams a couple of times about being, umm, at a man’s mercy. I woke up turned on.”

  “Good to know. Do you imagine it slow and sexy or hard and rough?”

  The pulse at the base of her neck right where her collarbone ended jumped. He’d bet she was flushing, but it would take better light than this to tell if he was right. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, and he all but jumped her right then.

  “I don’t know,” she answered slowly. “I’d have to try both, I suppose.”

  She was a natural-born temptress. Totally unaware of her own sensuality.

  Still holding both of her wrists, he guided them behind her back. “Clasp your hands together,” he instructed quietly. “And don’t let go. Can you do that for me?”

  “Uh-huh,” she replied breathlessly.

  How in the hell had she talked him into this? Why couldn’t he seem to say no to her?

  The position thrust her breasts up and out toward him and lifted her chin to expose the length of her neck. Very slowly, he reached for the hem of her ridiculously pink turtleneck and raised it up until her bra and the swelling cleft of her chest were exposed. He hooked his index fingers in both of the lace bra cups and drew them downward millimeter by slow millimeter, gradually circling the underside of her sweet, firm breasts, exposing them as he went.

  He confessed, “I’ve been thinking about doing this ever since you suckled Dawn.”

  “So have I,” she agreed shyly. “That and how you—” she finished in a rush “—made my nipple stand up for her to suck.”

  Without warning, he flicked both of his thumbnails across her rosy peaks. She gasped and—God save him—lifted her breasts a little more. “Again,” she breathed.

  In minor shock, he obliged. Her entire body strained toward him. “Tell me what it feels like,” he ordered.

  “Electricity is streaking through my whole body. It starts where you’re...flicking me...and goes to my fingers and toes and...and...”

  “And what?” he demanded with gentle force.

  She whispered, “And between my legs.”

  Holy shit. His erection strained against his zipper until he thought the metal teeth might burst. Watching her face for the slightest sign of distress, he reached for her jeans and unzipped them inch by tantalizing inch.

  “Spread your legs a little,” he murmured. And then, “Wider, baby.”

  He splayed his fingers on her belly, and her muscles cont
racted sharply. He named all the muscles of the human abdomen in order from smallest to largest before he regained control of his raging lust enough to slide his fingers down over the flat, silky plane of her stomach slowly, then slip his fingertips under the elastic edge of her thong. The memory of that intensely sexy scrap of lace had him pausing yet again to force his breathing to slow. His dick throbbed insistently, and even his balls got into the act. Gritting his teeth, he continued his hand’s downward descent.

  “That feels amazing.” She sighed.

  His fingers slipped between swollen folds of flesh so plumped with desire they reminded him of a ripe peach, springy and juicy. Katie gasped, and he stopped immediately to let her accustom herself to what he was doing.

  But she was having no part of that. Her hips undulated forward, rocking onto his hand hungrily. He separated her folds and found the slippery pearl nestled in between. He rubbed the pad of his middle finger around it once, twice.

  “Ohmigosh,” she cried more urgently.

  He rubbed the length of his finger against her, probing her passage with the very tip of his finger. He collected some of the moisture there and smoothed it over her hotly throbbing flesh.

  “Alex,” she groaned. “Please.”

  “Please what?” he growled from behind his clenched teeth.

  “More,” she panted. “I want more.”

  “You want me inside you, here?” He slipped his finger a little way inside her tight, hot core. Her internal muscles tightened convulsively around his finger. He withdrew and then slid into her again, a little deeper. She groaned again. Apparently, words had failed her.

  Hell. He was in hell. He couldn’t have this woman. She was not for him. But he’d never wanted any woman worse in his entire life. Satan’s karmic joke.

  Angling his palm so it rubbed her with every stroke, he plunged his finger into her in a slow, maddening rhythm. His entire being ached to be inside her, to slam into her until he was lost in mindless lust, exploding in rage and release. But for once, this was not about him. He watched, eyes slitted, as she rode his finger, head thrown back, throat taut, breasts heaving. Her entire body undulated with more and more urgency.

  In the past, had she been any other woman, he would have taken pleasure in driving her to the brink and then yanking his finger out of her, withholding the release she was so close to. He liked his women frustrated, begging, before he took them. But shockingly, he wanted to give Katie pleasure. He wanted to see her first orgasm, to watch it unfold across her face, to see what emotion flitted through her so expressive eyes.

  Her body flowed with female juices around his finger, and her gasps turned into sharper moans. He matched the increased pace of her hip thrusts, reaching deeper inside her, seeking and finding the spot in the front of her passage where the most sensitive nerves passed close by.

  “Ready?” he murmured, his voice low and charged.

  “Yes, yes. Oh, God. Yes,” she panted.

  He increased the pressure of his palm against her swollen flesh and slammed three fingers into her without warning, stretching her and filling her fast and hard.

  She cried out sharply as the orgasm ripped through her. While she shuddered from head to foot, he continued stroking her, drawing out the orgasm, savoring cry after cry torn from her throat. She crescendoed with a last keening cry that rippled out of her throat and sagged against him, spent. He eased out of her and pulled her shirt down gently.

  And then a strange thing happened. An urge to hold her came over him. He never felt affectionate after sex. But here he was, drawing her close, savoring the aftershocks making her tremble against him so sweetly.

  “Oh, my.” She sighed against his chest.

  He started as something soft and warm moved across his neck. She was kissing him! Women never kissed him. It was too intimate. Too personal. His sexual encounters were purely business; not to mention women didn’t feel like kissing him after he was done using them.

  “I had no idea,” she breathed.

  “Like I said before. You do not know what you’re getting into. I can’t let you go there.”

  She raised her head to stare up at him in the dying glow of the Cyalume stick. “If there’s more of that to be had, I’m all for it,” she declared.

  “I’ve created a monster,” he groaned.

  She growled playfully in the back of her throat, “When can I learn how to do that to you?”

  Her flirtatious question sobered him sharply. “I take my pleasures rather more intensely, Katie.”

  She shrugged. “If the end result is that, who cares how we get there?”

  * * *

  KATIE WATCHED, BEREFT, as Alex pushed away from her and strode to the far end of the bunker, or whatever it was. Her brothers and her father walked away the same way, never pausing, never looking back. They just left. It was like their entire life was divided into neat little compartments they switched on and off at their convenience. At home: turn on the family persona. Off to work: slam that person off and activate the soldier. In danger: switch on the killer. Out of danger: turn that switch off and don’t think about the people they’d eliminated. At a bar after the mission with the guys: turn on the friends-and-buddies person. But in the meantime, the family back home was forced to sit patiently in their little corner, hearing nothing, waiting and worrying, never knowing if their loved ones were ever coming home. Or if they did return, whether or not it would be in a closed casket.

  As a kid, she’d always vowed she would never love that kind of man. She’d had plenty of the stress of it already. And all she had to do was see the toll it took on her mother to know that loving a dangerous man was not for her.

  Alex paced for long enough that she got tired of watching him. Eventually, in hopes of at least bringing him back to the present if not to her, she asked, “What’s in these boxes?”

  “Supplies,” he answered absently.

  “Any baby formula in here? And maybe some diapers?”

  Alex looked up at her quickly. “Probably no diapers, but powdered milk is a possibility. And there are, no doubt, medical supplies. Rolls of gauze and cotton surgical pads...” He commenced moving around the perimeter of the space reading labels on the crates. “Bring me that crowbar, will you?”

  The tool was leaning next to the radio, and she scooped it up, then joined Alex at a stack of smallish crates. He pried one open and pulled out several brown paper packages. “Voilà. Emergency diaper-making supplies.”

  Thank God. She was getting pretty low on clean corners of towels to wipe Dawn’s bottom with. She moved to the baby and, using gauze pads and cloth tape, swaddled her in a reasonably decent makeshift diaper while Alex continued rummaging around. Woken by the diapering process, Dawn was over the whole business of not needing to eat and screamed lustily. No amount of rocking would calm her. She wanted real food, and she wanted it now.

  “See what she thinks of this.” He held out his hand to Katie.

  Katie glanced up in distress and spied him holding a plastic water bottle full of a creamy white liquid. Milk! The lid had been replaced by what looked like the cutoff finger of a surgical glove. She smiled widely. “You’re brilliant!”

  “So I’ve been told,” he replied drily.

  Dawn had to be convinced of the appeal of both the makeshift bottle and its contents, but, eventually, she settled down to drinking her first real meal.

  “We need to get her on proper formula,” Alex commented. “She needs vitamin and mineral supplements designed for babies. But that powdered milk will give her some calories to hold her until our ride gets here.”

  Katie smiled warmly at him. “You take such good care of us. Thank you.”

  He stared, looking thunderstruck. “Me? Take care of anyone but myself? I can already hear people on several continents laughing their heads off at the concept.”

  “Then they don’t know you very well,” she declared.

  He looked like she could knock him over with a feather. She
shrugged. He might not be long-term relationship material, but he was a decent guy no matter who his father was, and she didn’t care what anyone said. Not to mention he’d given her the first orgasm of her life.

  She was getting to him. Bit by bit, he was letting down his guard with her. Eventually, he would let her all the way in. Of course, what she’d do when she got there, she had no idea. But he was a challenge she could not seem to resist. Exhausted by the strain of the past two days, she curled up on a stack of blankets with Katie and dozed off.

  * * *

  IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to tell time in the cavernous dark of the bunker. When Alex shook her shoulder gently to wake her, she was disoriented and struggled to emerge from a delicious dream involving Alex’s hand and her nether regions.

  “Ride’s here,” he said.

  “Oh!” She sat up quickly, disturbing Dawn, who squawked at the abrupt movement. All in all, she was a great baby and had been more than patient with all the traveling so far. Maybe she, too, understood at some level that their lives were on the line out here.

  While she’d been asleep, Alex had rigged a better baby sling made out of a bedsheet. Katie passed it over her head and tucked Dawn into it with a grateful smile for him. After following him out of the bunker, it took both of them to haul the steel door shut, and she heard the tumblers of the lock fall into position.

  “What was that place?”

  “Leftover from the Russian occupation of this area a couple decades back. It’s only for emergencies now. Served us well enough. That’s what matters.”

  Of course, how in the hell he’d known of the bunker’s existence was the big, unanswered question of the hour.

  Alex jogged away from her, dropping red Cyalume sticks in a straight line. He even jumped on the ATV and drove off, continuing to drop red lights in a line that must have gone for a good half mile. What on earth?

  She heard their ride before she saw it. As she stared in disbelief, a small cargo plane descended toward them and landed on the impromptu runway. It had twin propeller engines mounted on high wings and looked like a miniature, skinny C-130. It taxied up to the near end of the marked landing strip, and the rear cargo ramp started to open.