There was something seriously wrong with her. Because instead of feeling alarmed by her vulnerability, the thought of letting him come inside her poised her right on the brink.
“Last—chance.” His body glistened with sweat as his hands clenched hard at her hips. “I’m safe, but—you could—”
“No, I can’t.” Her spine arched as the first tremor swept through her. “I can’t get pregnant. Victor—please. I want you to do it.”
“Thank Christ,” he muttered. He levered up to a sitting position, using all those reserves of extreme strength to rock her harder and deeper against him. His rock-steady arms supported her back, as her legs clenched around his waist.
When she felt the unmistakable fireworks of his peak spurting through her, Alexis clung to him for dear life and let go. Felt the carefully-ordered circuits of her mind being blown, and cried out with the terrifying, exhilarating rush of overload.
God, I never want this feeling to end. The realization whispered through her brain. And the knowledge of what that could mean scared the hell out of her.
CHAPTER TEN
Alexis crawled out of the chasm of sleep, her body still heavy and aching from the once-in-a-lifetime orgasms he’d wrung out of her. Jesus…
Outside, darkness still pressed against the icy glass, but she guessed it was close to dawn. Thank God she was alone in the narrow bunk, though she could hear the slow rhythm of breathing across the way. Through the darkness, she could just discern Victor’s shadowed bulk sprawled across his bunk, his powerful body overflowing the cramped space. The blanket twisted around his naked hips, one bare muscled arm hanging near the floor.
And no, she was not going to slither over there and crawl under the blankets with him.
In the end, she’d insisted they sleep in separate bunks, though he’d made it pretty clear he wasn’t happy about it. But she was going to keep throwing every barrier in the book between them. Pure and simple, it was time for damage control. Anything to protect herself from any more exposure, from getting hurt any worse when this landmine blew up in her face.
Aware of a pressing need for the loo, Alexis groped for her boots and shoved her feet into them. She’d wasted no time pulling her clothes back on after their little romp—another barrier she guessed Victor hadn’t liked, judging by his scowl. She still felt groggy when she unlatched the door and poked her head into the corridor’s electric glare. At this ungodly hour, the coast looked pretty clear.
She found the grim, steel-fitted toilet and completed her business with dispatch, since it wasn’t a pleasant place to linger. Paused to run her hands briefly under the sink’s numbing cold water, then hurried to escape the stench.
She emerged into the corridor just in time to glimpse a burly man in a black leather jacket as he ducked out of sight. At the far end of the carriage, the automatic door hissed closed behind him.
Her heart jolted into overdrive, even as she told herself there were millions of dark-haired men with black leather jackets in Russia. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at the guy. Still, her skin prickled with unease as she scurried back to her cabin. Just before she stepped inside, she threw another worried look toward where he’d vanished.
Only to see his scowling face framed in the window of the automatic door, staring straight at her.
Swallowing back a cry, Alexis plunged into the cabin. Victor was sitting on his bunk, tugging on his boots in the darkness.
“What’s wrong?” he said immediately, uncoiling to his feet.
“That man who followed us at the nightclub,” she whispered, fighting for coherence as she yanked the door closed. “I think I just saw him again. He’s between the carriages. And I don’t think he wanted me to spot him.”
“Ok.” Victor tossed her coat at her, and swung down his battered backpack. “Bundle up tight. We may need to get off the train.”
Quickly she buttoned into her coat and checked that her gloves were in her pockets. The last time she’d looked, it was minus forty out there, and a lost glove could mean lost fingers at those temperatures.
A zipper buzzed as Victor opened the backpack and slipped something from the pack inside his coat. Cold metal gleamed in the moonlight, and her blood turned to ice.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Is that a gun?”
“Yes.” He shrugged into the backpack. “To be precise, it’s a Walther PPK standard police issue semiautomatic pistol. Know how to fire one?”
“No! I keep telling you I’m not an agent, Victor.” Old fears rippled through her, and she tried to get a grip. “Is it loaded?”
“Yes. Six rounds.” Poised before the door, he slid her a sardonic glance. “Don’t forget your briefcase, Ms. Castle.”
He thrust his head into the corridor, then hustled her out before him, turning them away from where she’d spotted their possible tail. Fear simmered just under the surface as Alexis gripped her briefcase and hauled ass. They were passing the toilet when, behind them at the other end, the automatic door hissed open.
“Go,” Victor ordered, a hand at the small of her back.
She punched the button, the portal before them slid open, and they plunged into the dark ice-cold rattle of the unsteady platform between carriages. Two running steps and Alexis punched another panel. They dove back into the heated glare of an identical first-class carriage.
Together they pounded down the passageway, toward the far end. They’d nearly reached the exit when, from the toilet before them, a dark-skinned man emerged to block their path.
Trapped! Her brain screamed the warning, adrenaline exploding through her body like the time in college she’d snorted a line of coke.
“Down,” Victor grated in her ear. Moving on instinct, she dropped to the floor. Caught a blur of movement overhead as his foot sliced toward their opponent—a black belt’s perfect roundhouse kick.
The blow connected with a crunch against the target’s head. Groaning, the guy staggered, throwing a blind punch that missed. In a heartbeat, Victor followed up with a sweet sidekick that sent the guy reeling.
Crouched near the floor, Alexis snapped out her foot to sweep the target’s legs from under him. The guy went down like a load of bricks, and Victor pulled her up.
“Ok, I admit it,” she gasped. “You know how to kick—”
Over his shoulder, she saw a fleet of scowling bad guys steamrolling toward them down the corridor, closing fast.
“Three more of them behind you!” she warned him.
“Alexis Castle!” A man’s voice bellowed. Chechen accent for sure.
“Go,” Victor said gruffly, pushing her through the automatic door. They burst outside into a dark fury of whiplash wind and the train’s clattering roar. Particles of snow stung her face, and Alexis’s heart plunged as she realized they’d come to the back of the train. Not even a damn caboose before them, and nowhere left to run.
She shot a terrified glance behind them as the door sissed shut—closing out their pursuers, but only for a few precious seconds. The guys were slowing, more cautious now, certain they’d cornered their prey.
“What do we do?” she shouted over the howling wind. Barely visible in the snow-scoured darkness, the gray-white ground flew past.
Victor closed in behind her, wrapping both arms snug around her chest. Bent to murmur in her ear, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed—no time to think about it—and stared down in terror as the track unrolled beneath their feet.
“Good.” His body clenched around her. “Jump.”
“No, wait! Are you crazy—?”
Her words unraveled in a short scream as he launched them from the platform toward the piled snow beside the tracks. She had maybe a second to remember to keep loose as they plummeted through the air.
Somehow he twisted as they fell, and they hit the ground with his body cushioning hers. Together they rolled, absorbing the shock of impact, as the train roared into the night.
For a moment she could
only lie stunned, eyes blinded by snow, and struggle to suck breath into her lungs. Then Victor brushed the snow gently from her face, his concerned features swimming into focus. He’d lost his hat, and snow caked his disheveled hair and eyebrows, giving him the savage look of an arctic explorer who hadn’t seen base camp in weeks.
“Well, captain,” she murmured, when she could breathe, “I’ll say this much. You definitely don’t bore me.”
“I’m glad to hear this, Counselor.” Amusement flared in his cobalt eyes. Then the blasted man actually laughed—his reaction to the adrenaline rush, she supposed. His mirth rang out against the black wall of trees surrounding them. Already many yards distant, the clattering steel snake of the Red Arrow raced away, its roar fading as the snow swallowed it up.
Difficult as it was to see through the darkness and the swirling snow, she glimpsed two dark shapes jumping from the train before it vanished.
Victor must have seen them too, because he unfolded swiftly to his feet and pulled her up, hands strong beneath her elbows.
“Come on,” he muttered, scooping up his pack. “We need to get out of sight.”
Under the close-bunched trees she couldn’t see a damn thing, but he caught her hand and pulled her forward. The woody scent of pine filled her head as they plunged through the drifts. She strained to listen for sounds of pursuit, but could hear nothing beyond the crunch of their footsteps and their own labored breathing. Every few hundred feet, Victor stopped them for a few breaths, and she knew he was listening too.
After a while her eyes adjusted, and she could make out the sky’s milky light above the trees. Half a continent away, the winter sun was climbing to begin its short, shallow swing above the arctic horizon.
They crunched without speaking through snow and tangled undergrowth, and stumbled more than once on the uneven terrain. Once, a dark shape hurtled across their path, and Alexis barely choked back a scream. Victor’s hand tightened reassuringly around hers.
“Just a raccoon,” he whispered. “It’s all right, Alexis.”
Uneasily, she remembered there were grizzlies in these forests too, and she wished she hadn’t thought of that. But they could only keep pushing forward. Frequently he checked the compass programmed into his illuminated watch, then adjusted their course. The forest lightened around them, pale light spilling through the trees. After a while, the trees seemed to be thinning.
Finally, after a long pause to listen, Victor signaled a halt. Together they crouched beneath the sagging limbs of a massive spruce, concealed by its snow-laden branches, snug in a dry bed of fallen needles. He dug out a handful of trail bars from the pack, and she munched the mixture of dried fruit and honey, knowing they needed to replenish the reserves their bodies were burning.
“Do you, ah, have any idea where we are?” Alexis ventured without much hope, keeping her voice pitched low. They were in the middle of nowhere, as far as she was concerned.
Victor pulled a laminated map from his pack and spread it before them, lips moving soundlessly as he seemed to calculate distances in his head.
“Here,” he said at last, jabbing a gloved finger at a spot well east of St. Petersburg. “We should be a few kilometers east of this village. Kholodnogorsk.”
“How can you be sure?” Doubtfully she frowned at the sparsely-populated expanse.
“Russian trains are never late,” he shrugged, folding the map away. “I know precisely when we departed, the exact speed that train achieves, and I noted the time when we jumped. Submarines have been navigating at depth with no better data than this for decades.”
She thought about this as she caught her breath, hugging her arms around her knees. Her overheated body cooled rapidly as the biting cold seeped through her shearling coat. While she watched, Victor slid a bottle of water from the pack beneath his coat—warming it before they drank, she knew, to minimize the amount of energy their bodies would burn to process it.
“You’re very resourceful,” she noted, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “A useful sort of guy to have around in all kinds of emergencies.”
He shot her a piercing glance, his eyes a brilliant blue against the snowy branches that walled them in.
“Cold?” he asked sharply. When she nodded, he climbed around behind her and sat, pulling her back against his chest. His bent legs formed barriers against the cold on either side, and he wrapped his arms around her to rub briskly.
The warmth and strength of his body seeped through her, and her chilled muscles slowly unclenched. With a sigh she leaned into him, his chin resting on her head.
In fact, he felt way too good for her peace of mind. How could she know he wasn’t actually working with those goons chasing her? That this wasn’t some well-designed ploy to drive her into his arms and keep her there?
“You know this doesn’t mean anything,” she whispered, impelled to take back some modicum of control, raise some barrier between them. “It’s a temporary thing.”
Despite all the layers between them, she felt him stiffen.
“Don’t worry about it, Ms. Castle,” he said coolly. “You have repeatedly assured me that I mean nothing to you. I can confirm receipt of your message.”
Well, that made her feel like a heartless bitch. Especially since it hadn’t stopped her from sleeping with him.
“You know it has to be this way,” she sighed, trying not to feel so guilty. She folded her arms over his. “If it didn’t…if I weren’t who I am…if you weren’t who you are…a girl could get used to having you around.”
“Could you?” he clipped out, obviously still irritated. “Our countries are not direct adversaries at present—at least not yet. But I suppose if you were to fall for a Russian, they would make you leave your prestigious job.”
“Yeah, they would.” Why did she feel like it was her fault? “Just like your side wouldn’t tolerate a guy in your position falling for an American.”
“I can’t deny this,” he murmured, heaving a breath. “Even if someday I leave the ministry, I’ll always be Russian. And I’ll always have the SVR in my dossier.”
So they both knew how it had to be. There was no way she could continue to climb the Foreign Service ladder, fulfill her father’s dying wish, and be with the guy behind her.
“They could…find a place for you.” Hell, the words just slipped out. An ambiguous statement, a suggestion no one without his background would understand.
“I couldn’t do that, Alexis,” he grated. “Christ. Russia is my Motherland—the only mother I’ll ever have. Regardless of what they did to me, the damn pointless loss of my command, I will never betray my country.”
“Then I’ll never ask you to.” She closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. What the hell else had she expected from this useless and futile conversation?
“Patriotism is something I understand pretty well,” she said huskily, “since I feel the same way. So…I guess that’s it, then.”
He exhaled against her hair, and resumed his efforts to warm her. Despite everything they’d just confirmed—that a relationship between them could never go anywhere—he felt like her only refuge, a fortress between her and a frightening world.
Suddenly he stilled, and he didn’t have to warn her to be quiet. Though she couldn’t hear a damn thing except the wind whistling through the trees, she sensed him listening with the fixed intensity of a hungry predator.
“We have to keep going, Alexis,” he breathed in her ear, so quiet she could barely hear him. “Try not to make a sound.”
As they crept out from cover, he slid out the gun.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were struggling through drifts of knee-high snow when Alexis picked up the sounds of pursuit. The land was rising, dense growth dwindling to clumps of trees, interspersed with open ground. When they topped the rise she hunched over, breathing heavily, while Victor scanned the route they’d followed.
In a heartbeat, his face went blank—the inscrutable f
irewall of a captain on the bridge, his goals and tactics classified, all doubts locked up tight. Swiftly he crouched, pulling her down beside him.
Squinting to see through billowing gusts of snow, she glimpsed the bright red flash of a ski parka a hundred yards below. One of the goons had been wearing red, she recalled. Quickly the guy ducked into a cluster of evergreens, where she couldn’t see him.
Victor pulled her back from the bluff, behind a clump of stunted firs.
“Two of them,” he murmured, frowning at his watch as if to calculate how much time they had left. “They’re following our trail through the snow.”
“Let’s use your mobile phone,” she urged. “If we’re close enough to that village, maybe they’ll send someone to help us. The local militsia, or at least a medical crew.”
He dug out the cheap plastic phone and tossed it to her. “Stay hidden while you call. I’m going to take another look.”
Alexis watched him crawl out on his belly while she powered up the phone and immediately switched it to vibrate. The last thing they needed was the damn thing going off while they were trying to hide.
Thankfully he’d charged the phone on the train. But concern stabbed through her when she saw the signal in this low-populated area—all but nonexistent.
After a few seconds of hard thinking, she dialed the Embassy switchboard and asked for the security office, only to be shunted to voice mail. Gritting her teeth, she severed the connection. Then dialed the Ambassador’s secretary, a number she knew by heart.
When she heard the woman’s cheerful greeting, Alexis fought to hold it together. Hoarsely, she identified herself and asked for the Ambassador, on an urgent basis.
“Alexis?” Stuart Malvaux’s warm caramel voice was sharp with concern. “Where are you? Candace said you didn’t come in today, and you’re not answering your phone. I was about to send someone to your townhouse.”
“It’s kind of a long story. I’m near a little village called Kholodnogorsk, with, ah, Victor Kostenko.” Keenly aware of the seconds slipping past, she sketched in the highlights, their current situation, and their goal of reaching St. Petersburg.
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