by Diana Palmer
Cord almost shivered as he relaxed his tense muscles. And at that moment, the doorknob slowly turned again and a pale face peered around it cautiously.
Cord rushed to her, opening and closing the door quickly behind him as he went into the next room with her. He crushed her into his body and kissed her hungrily. They’d had a close call, and she didn’t know. He didn’t want her to know.
He nodded toward the door ahead of them and deployed her just behind him.
They moved slowly into the hall. From the schematic, Cord knew that Gruber’s office was upstairs, and protected by various electronic alarms, including infrared. But he had that angle covered. The wooden doors that locked front and back were only window dressing. It was the two inside steel doors, one blocking the entrance to the hall in front, and the other in the kitchen, in the rear, that were Gruber’s real protection. Gruber was certain they were impregnable, and they were—but he’d overlooked the air-conditioning ducts.
Footsteps alerted Cord a second time when they were going up the stairs. He pressed Maggie back against the wall beside him and they waited until the steps died away down the upstairs hall, in the opposite direction from the office.
Cord moved forward again, like lightning this time, and straight down the hall to Gruber’s office. He whipped out a small case, had Maggie hold a penlight for him, and set to work. Barely a minute later, they were inside the door and it was closed behind them.
Cord knew that the room was certainly bugged, and booby-trapped. He positioned Maggie by the door and signaled her to stand there and listen for visitors. He took out a small device and watched it reveal a crisscross of laser beams sweeping the floor. He moved cautiously past them, avoiding a last one that swung neck-high, and went to the big safe behind Gruber’s sweeping oak desk and went to work.
Every sound was magnified. Maggie chewed on a fingernail, absently wondering if Cord still had her shoes. Her feet felt good on the bare floor, but it was going to be difficult to explain bare feet in the restaurant. But there were other concerns just now. She checked her watch and groaned. They had barely ten minutes to finish and get back to the restaurant before the food was served, if they didn’t want to arouse suspicion. How could they possibly break into a safe and get out without discovery and get back in that short length of time?
Her heartbeat intensified. She watched Cord’s quick, deft movements with terror. This was the real thing, she realized. This was what covert operations was all about—stealth and danger. Discovery was behind every heartbeat, death at the trail of every drop of sweat. One wrong move, one accidental sound, and it was all over. She thought of how many times Cord must have done this very thing in his career, first in law enforcement, and then in mercenary work, and she paled.
She wasn’t a coward, but the waiting was unbearable. She knew that her muscles were going to start convulsing any second from being held so tight.
Then, all at once, the safe door swung open gently and Cord was inside, with his penlight, going through sections as if he had all the time in the world. She wanted to go and see what he was doing, but she kept her ear to the door and listened. Far down the hall were footsteps. Slowly, she realized that they were coming closer!
She couldn’t tell what Cord was doing. He didn’t seem to be taking anything out of the safe. He worked quickly and then suddenly closed the safe, just as heavy footsteps came closer down the hall, and sounded as if they were going to make it right to this door! What if it was the guard, and he had a key?
Cord glanced at her, and she motioned furiously toward the door. He nodded, eased cautiously but quickly back through the laser beam pattern to her side, and drew her with him behind the thick drapes that fell to the floor. He held her hand tightly in one of his, while the .45 was now held, with the safety off, against his chest.
There was a loud noise, as if of a key going into a lock. Suddenly the door opened and the light went on. Maggie had steeled herself not to react, not to move, not to breathe. Beside her, she could feel Cord’s tall body still and tensed. Neither of them breathed.
Seconds later, the light went off, the door closed, and the key went into the lock again. There was a whine, as if electronic devices were being reset. Then the footsteps died away.
Cord laughed softly at her ear, but he didn’t speak. He drew her from behind the curtains, handed her the pistol, with the safety on, and listened at the door. The footsteps had droned away and ended.
He went to work again, and seconds later, they were in the hall. He reset the security switches again, eased down the hall with Maggie at his back, listened, and then worked down the steps with her, avoiding one particular one—the same one he’d avoided on the way up. She’d have to remember to ask why.
He led her back into the room adjoining the steel door of the kitchen, put her up into the air duct, removed the chair and waited until she replaced the grate and was moving toward the kitchen. Then he moved to the steel door, positioned the bolt, went through it and heard it slide satisfyingly into place. He tried the door, relieved to find that the bolt was secure.
Maggie appeared in the kitchen duct. He reached up to help her down before he replaced the duct cover and moved her to the door with him. He checked his watch. The guard was due to make the rounds again in three minutes. It would be close.
He interrupted the electric current, put Maggie out onto the stoop and followed her, reinitiated the current flow and reentered the security codes. Then he grabbed her arm and said, “Run!”
They dashed across the driveway, into the bushes, through them, and sprinted down the street. Behind them, they heard no following footsteps, no alarms.
Breathless, they didn’t stop until they reached the courtyard of the hotel. Cord was laughing.
Maggie shook him. “That was terrifying!” she squeaked. “How can you do that day after day…?”
He caught her up in his arms and kissed her so fiercely that he bruised her mouth. She held on for dear life, aroused, hungry for him. The danger had been the catalyst. She wanted him…!
While she was feeling it, she was saying it. He eased them into the little shed where they’d left their clothing and closed the door, shooting the bolt home to shut them in, away from the world. Oblivious to time, danger, threat, he backed her against a cold, stone wall, jerked fabric out of the way and put his mouth hard over hers while he went into her with an economy of motion that left her gasping.
His mouth opened and bit at hers while the rhythm curled her hips up into his with heated abandon.
“Don’t cry out,” he cautioned, his voice clipped and husky with passion. He pinned her there with the weight of his body, the rasping of silk and the quick rush of their breathing the only sound in the confined little space. His body thrust into hers fiercely, his mouth hard, insistent, on her parted lips as he felt the spiral of pleasure build like gas-ignited flames.
“Harder,” she groaned into his mouth, her voice breaking. “Oh…Cord…do it…hard!”
Her body opened to him, incited him. She could hardly believe she was the same inhibited woman of only a month ago. Her nails bit into his shoulders as she lifted into the hard curve of him, her mouth searching feverishly for his as she pushed up to meet the violent thrusts. He was potent, so potent, and she felt him inside her body, filling it, expanding it until she thought she might burst open…!
She groaned piteously into his mouth and clung with her legs as well as her arms as the waves of fulfillment caught her up and convulsed her in his powerful hold. She felt his fingertips biting into her flesh as he crushed her hips under his in one long, exquisite straining together that brought a sound very like a harsh sob from the mouth possessing hers. He shivered with the aching, hot pleasure that riveted his body to hers.
She shivered with him, drowning in the exquisite heat of joy that was so new and so exciting. She felt him deep in her body, throbbing, sated, helpless to withdraw. She laughed secretly and pressed her open mouth to his throat.
/> He moved against her involuntarily, prolonging the stabs of delight, until he was able to get his breath again.
“No,” she protested huskily when he began to withdraw.
He kissed her hungrily, but he didn’t obey. “I don’t want to stop, either. But we have to get back to the table, or we’re going to arouse suspicion,” he said unsteadily, kissing her one last time.
“I don’t want rice and mutton, I want dessert again,” she moaned.
He chuckled weakly. “And I thought you were inhibited,” he drawled.
“Not with you. It’s the danger, isn’t it?” she whispered. “It’s an aphrodisiac…have you done this with other women after a mission?” she demanded jealously.
“In a potting shed behind a hotel with armed men all around?” he exclaimed while he did up fastenings again. “With any other woman but you? Are you nuts? Here,” he added, handing her a tiny package of antibacterial tissue. “It won’t do for an old man and a young woman to come back in smelling suspiciously,” he added with a grin that grew even more wicked when she gasped.
She adjusted her own clothing and put her dress back on. But her feet were still bare. “Cord, my shoes…!”
He pulled them out of his pockets and handed them to her. He also produced a small brush, and smiled while she put her hair back into order.
“There,” he murmured, studying her. “You’ll do.” He put his white wig back in place, reacquired his stoop and his cane, and opened the door.
“But, the safe…you didn’t take anything out of it,” she protested, suddenly remembering his bare hands.
“Didn’t I?” he asked, but he smiled and didn’t say another word as he escorted her slowly back into the restaurant.
The waiter was just bringing the mutton as “Jorge” seated Maggie at the table.
“Just in time,” Cord said in his thready adopted tone. “And I have worked up an enormous appetite in the garden!”
To Maggie’s credit, she didn’t blush or gasp, but she couldn’t quite stop smiling.
13
The return to Ahmed’s house was almost anticlimactic, after the exciting evening Cord and Maggie had shared. She looked back on it with wonder. She’d passed her first test of fire, and come through it relatively unscathed. She didn’t have to ask if Cord was proud of her. The answer was in his eyes.
She was a little uneasy about their passionate encounter in the shed. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, and very satisfying, but it disturbed her that she had so little control over her passions. Was that normal? she wondered. She had no way of knowing. Cord looked at her in a different way now, with possession and pride. It made her heart sing. If only she could stop time, she thought, and keep him from ever knowing about the past that haunted her. If only this tiny space of days could be insulated, packed carefully into a box and held, cherished, forever!
“We must leave in the morning on the ferry,” “Jorge” announced when they were inside Ahmed’s elegant living room. “I am sorry, but I worry to leave Cord alone, in his condition.”
“I quite understand,” Ahmed agreed with a sigh. “But it has been a delight to have you here, and to meet Maggie.” He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers gently. “You are exceptional, mademoiselle,” he added, and with hidden meaning that didn’t escape Maggie, or Cord.
“It has been a great pleasure to see something of your city,” Maggie said. “I hope to come back again one day.”
“You will always be welcome,” Ahmed said. “And, of course, so will you, Cousin Jorge.”
Cord only grinned.
The ferry was supposed to leave at 8:00 a.m. But, as on the trip over, it left at the whim of the operator. It might be nine, it might be ten, and people lined up in their cars, talking and reading and listening to music while they waited. In this part of the world, Maggie noted, hardly anybody rushed.
Her hands gripped the steering wheel hard.
“You must relax, niña,” “Jorge” said, nodding toward the dash and making a sign that it was bugged.
She groaned out loud. Would they never be free of surveillance? She could understand that Gruber would be having them watched. But they’d successfully penetrated his defenses the night before. What they’d accomplished was still a mystery to her, but Cord seemed satisfied. She wondered what he’d learned, and was frustrated that she couldn’t talk normally.
“It’s so frustrating!” she exclaimed, and she didn’t mean the wait for the ferry.
“Jorge” threw up a careless hand and grinned at Rodrigo and Bojo, who were sitting unperturbed in the backseat, listening to a Spanish radio broadcast. “It is so natural,” he chuckled in his disguised voice. “Be patient. It will not be so much longer. Then we can tell Cord about our exciting visit with Ahmed. He is a good man. Simpatico, no?”
“Sí,” she replied without thinking.
“I forget! You speak my language!”
She grinned at him. “Yes, I do, don’t I?” she teased.
Suddenly there was movement ahead, and she began to relax.
“Did I not tell you? And here we go!” “Jorge” said contentedly.
They crossed on the ferry to Gibraltar again and then on into Spain with appropriate formalities, such as showing their passports and letting the authorities look in the car to make sure they weren’t bringing in anything illegal. It was time-consuming, but Maggie didn’t really mind. She felt safer and safer, especially when they were on the road back to Jorge’s finca and she could drive, relaxed. Well, almost relaxed, she amended, glaring at the dashboard.
When they parked the car, Cord, Bojo and Rodrigo jumped out. Cord immediately motioned to Bojo and pointed to the dash. Bojo nodded, taking a small packet of tools out of his djellaba. Cord said something to Rodrigo in such rapid-fire Spanish that Maggie couldn’t easily translate it. Rodrigo went straight to the barn, where the other men were waiting.
Cord and Maggie went into the house, where Jorge was waiting, pacing.
“Did it go well?” Jorge asked, noting that they were suspiciously silent. He laughed. “It is safe to talk. Your men have gone over the house with, how do you say, a fine-tooth comb. There are no surveillance devices here now!”
“Thank God!” Maggie exclaimed huskily. “I’m so tired of spying eyes! I’ll never feel comfortable again when I think I’m alone!”
“Now you know how it feels, don’t you?” Cord chuckled. He pulled off the white wig and became serious again. “We’re flying to Amsterdam this afternoon,” he told Jorge. “Rodrigo’s going to drive us up to the airport in Málaga, and we’re going from there.”
“In disguise?” Jorge murmured.
“No. Well, in a way,” Cord replied, smiling. “I’ll wear my dark glasses and let Maggie lead me. That disguise. Thanks for the loan of your identity.”
“Did you find the evidence?” Jorge asked.
“Yes,” Cord replied. But that was all he said.
Maggie sat up with the men after supper, but only for a little while. She took a leisurely bath in the elaborately tiled sunken tub and enjoyed the luxury of being submerged in water while the jets shot water against her tired muscles. She was sore from the activity of the night before, not having done as much running and climbing in recent months.
The bathroom door opened and closed. She opened her eyes and watched Cord drop the towel around his waist before he climbed into the tub with her.
“Jorge,” she began in a thin little protest.
“Is a man, as we discussed once before,” he chuckled huskily as he levered down over her and found her mouth hungrily with his.
She moaned and reached up to him, electrified by the contact with his warm, rough skin against every inch of hers. But very soon the water began to splash out of the tub and onto the floor.
With a groan, Cord got out of the sunken tub and reached down to lift Maggie, but the brush of her body against him was too much for his self-control. He dragged towels down onto the wet tile and eased her
down on top of them. Seconds later, his body was crushing hers into them.
The rushing of the jets barely touched her ears as they lay on the tiled floor in a tangle of wet towels and urgent movement.
She arched up to the hard, hungry thrust of his body, watching him watch her as they made love. It was more urgent each time, more passionate, more satisfying. She loved his eyes on her while he satisfied her. She loved the muscular thrust of him above her, the ragged sound of his breathing, the fierce darkness in his eyes as he took her.
“I can’t…get enough,” he whispered roughly.
“Neither can I.” She arched her torso to coax his mouth down to her hard-tipped breasts. She watched him suckle them while he moved on her, and she gasped with growing delight.
His hand was at her hip, clenching. “I’m sorry,” he bit off. “I can’t hold it…”
Her legs curled over his tense thighs. “Don’t even try, darling,” she whispered into his insistent mouth.
The endearment kindled a climax that stiffened him convulsively. She felt his body jerk rhythmically while his mouth groaned into hers.
It was wonderful to feel him throb, to know that he took such pleasure from her. She lifted to lengthen the tremors and suddenly felt her body explode from the movement. She cried out under his mouth, frightened of the surge of pleasure that exceeded anything she’d felt with him before.
His head lifted. Even in the silvery aftermath of his own climax, he could feel hers. He moved, watching her reactions, measuring his strokes to give her the ultimate pleasure he could offer. She was frightened of it, he could see it in her wild eyes, her trembling body.
He only smiled, because he understood. It was difficult to give up so much control to another human being. But she could learn, as he had, to trust.
“You won’t die,” he whispered, as he moved even deeper. “But you may think you have…”
The words faded into frantic, desperate movement as she clenched her teeth and strained up toward him with her last whisper of strength…