The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2)

by Nikki Navarre

  She was hoping he’d filed a flight plan with air traffic control—or else hoping no Russian air defense jockey started scrambling fighters when a private jet with no bona fides popped up on his scope.

  Rolling her shoulders to loosen the rigid tension, Skylar took stock of her surroundings.

  A soft amber glow flooded the cabin. The recessed lighting gleamed against polished mahogany, plush sand-colored carpet and the cream upholstery of a dozen passenger chairs like cushioned thrones scattered comfortably around the cabin.

  All of them empty, of course, except for the seat beside her.

  Nikolai Markov had folded his coat neatly across an adjacent chair. He sat calmly in his Armani suit, every hair in place, pistol resting quietly on his knee. She’d heard him reload it and chamber a round in the darkness.

  The harsh ratchet of metal had made her flinch.

  “Madonna mia, I must look a fright.” She sighed, smoothing her wind-tossed bob.

  Her ivory coat was holding up, but her trousers were trashed—dirty and torn from her fall, still soaked to the knee. Her stylish boots—never meant for Arctic trekking—weren’t holding up much better. Inside their sodden depths, her toes were numb and aching.

  And her bloody Achilles was throbbing. Damn it to hell.

  “You’re a fashion plate as usual, Dr. Rossi,” Nikolai murmured, lids dropping over eyes that smoldered with liquid heat. “Albeit one who is slightly the worse for wear. We should get you out of those wet clothes.”

  Whoa. She felt as though he’d just opened the oven door and hit her with a blast of 350 Fahrenheit. From any other man, it would have been a blatant come-on. From Nikolai Markov, she chalked it up to her own wishful thinking. A harmless little fantasy from an overtired imagination.

  After all, he might be styling himself her bodyguard—but he was still the Maestro. This wasn’t a man with whom to indulge in one of her infrequent sexual liaisons. In fact, he was the last man on the planet she ought to sleep with.

  Then why was she sitting here fantasizing about precisely that?

  She cleared her throat and pulled herself together.

  “Unfortunately, my dry clothes are in my suitcase at the Khimgorod hotel. So I’m afraid I’ll have to go without.”

  “Entirely?” The corner of his mouth turned up. “That would be quite the distraction for Major Vasylko—to say nothing of myself.”

  Was he actually flirting with her? Skylar’s insides turned to butter. Surely she was reading too much into a little playful banter.

  Except that, to this point, the impeccably reserved Mr. Markov had done nothing to suggest he indulged in playful banter. Unless she counted their smoldering byplay at the nightclub…

  “We couldn’t have that,” she said, a blush climbing into her cheeks.

  Ridicolo! She was being ridiculous, behaving like an adolescent girl with a crush. And look where her adolescent crush on the last exciting, mysterious Russian in her life had gotten her.

  “You folks behaving back here?”

  Maxim Vasylko appeared at the cockpit door. He’d stripped off his officer’s jacket and rolled back the sleeves of his crisp shirt to reveal tanned, muscular forearms better suited to a professional wrestler than a Russian—or Ukrainian—stick jockey.

  Curiously, Skylar studied him. His powerful, six-foot-plus frame filled the narrow doorway to the cockpit and then some. Dark brown hair, cropped military-short, framed a square jaw and neon-blue eyes that must mesmerize his girlfriends—of which she suspected there were many.

  He was young too, no more than thirty, his mouth tilted with the cocksure confidence of a man who’d just saved their collective cannoli with some very nervy flying. For that, she was prepared to give him a little leeway, despite the knowing gleam in those keen eyes as they flickered from her to Nikolai.

  “We’re behaving,” she murmured. “Shouldn’t you be flying the plane?”

  “Nah.” He shrugged, reverting to that remarkable Boston English. “She can spare me for a minute. We’ve reached cruising altitude, and our flight plan’s plotted and logged with air traffic control. You can thank our pal Victor and his shady contacts for that. I’m a wicked pilot, but we can’t outrun the entire fucking Air Force.”

  While she digested this information, his gaze shifted to Nikolai and the gleaming silver pistol over his knee.

  “Nice Walther you got there, buddy. Planning to use it anytime soon?”

  Nikolai permitted the other man a tight smile.

  “That depends on you…Max.”

  There it was again, that subtle emphasis that told her Maxim Vasylko was more than he appeared. After all, how likely was it that Victor Kostenko had persuaded a legitimate, law-abiding major in the Russian Air Force to ferry her to freedom? Not with the Chemical Munitions Agency and the MVD hot on her tail.

  Nikolai would have swiftly reached the same conclusion. Behind his shuttered gaze, that clever brain must be humming, scrambling to analyze who “our pal Victor” might be and how the pawns on his chessboard had realigned.

  Maxim Vasylko flashed a white-toothed smile.

  “Well, before you pull the trigger, you should figure I locked the autopilot. If you want to change course or land this baby, you need to know the passcode, buddy. So I’m not too expendable, if you get my drift.”

  Impatient with this male posturing, Skylar shifted in her seat. Now that the adrenaline rush of danger had passed, pain was shooting up her calf, and she was starting to shiver in her wet clothes.

  “Look, gentlemen.” She sighed. “You can beat your chests and play king of the mountain later. At the moment, we have important business to discuss. Beginning with where, precisely, Major Vasylko is taking us.”

  She feared Nikolai wasn’t willing to let it drop. His eyes narrowed as they slid over Maxim Vasylko’s broad-shouldered frame. The pilot wasn’t visibly armed, but that heavy-duty rifle had gone into the cockpit with him. And she was willing to bet that wasn’t the only heat he was packing.

  Still, he’d saved their bacon, at considerable personal risk.

  After a microsecond’s delay, Nikolai tucked his weapon away. The pistol lived at the small of his back, apparently. When he stripped off his blazer, the Walther’s aluminum frame nestled against the black silk-blend turtleneck that encased his lithe body.

  Nikolai might be a slender man, barely taller than she, but his build was long and lean and dangerous, tight with knotted muscle. A ripple of awareness shot through her and simmered low in her belly.

  “Right on.” Max nodded. Seemingly relaxed, he strolled through the cabin to the galley, where stainless steel appliances gleamed against blond marble. “So far, we’re cleared through Russian airspace to Ukraine. Victor’s still working on the rest of your flight plan.”

  “The rest of my flight plan,” Skylar murmured.

  So much for flying back to Moscow and picking up where she’d left off. But she’d known that wasn’t a possibility, not with dead MVD guys smeared across the tarmac back in Khimgorod and that clandestine VX purchase order burning a hole in her waistband.

  What was it going to take, she wondered suddenly, to get the CMA off her back? If she brought them down for clandestine chemical weapons smuggling, the donor governments of ICSI would hail her as a hero. But the Russian MFA would revoke her diplomatic visa. She’d never again live or work in Moscow. Was it worth sacrificing her plum post and the life she’d built there to stop chemical weapons from reaching North Korea?

  It wasn’t even a question.

  She only needed to recall the way her father and his bodyguards had died, heels drumming in toxic convulsions against the concrete floor of that basement in Bangkok where the deal was going down. She could always go back to the bench, to her microscope in the research lab. Go back to working on antidotes or pharmaceuticals. She’d been a scientist before she was a diplomat.

  Filling the galley with his bulky frame, Max pulled out what looked like a high-end espresso machine and
started punching buttons. “Victor says you want to go to Capri.”

  “Capri?”

  Skylar’s hands clenched around her chair.

  She’d spent her childhood summers in Capri, the idyllic Mediterranean island off the Amalfi coast of Italy where Dane Rossi maintained one of his numerous villas. She hadn’t been back there since Bangkok. The island was within spitting distance of Sicily, where Dane’s Mafiosi brothers based their business.

  When her father passed, she’d severed those ties, sold the villa and never looked back.

  Why would Kostenko think she wanted to go there? He’d have to know—and if he didn’t, Alexis would surely tell him—that any contact whatsoever with her father’s family would mean kissing her government job goodbye.

  So there had to be another reason. Chances were, if that reason had anything to do with the CMA and their crooked dealings, it was a reason she didn’t want Nikolai Markov or his MFA client to know.

  “Right,” she said smoothly, lying through her teeth. “It’s as good a place as any to recuperate while ICSI smooths things over with the Russian government. I’ll call Alain Devereux as soon as we land to get started on that. Thoughtful of Victor and Alexis to think of a safe spot where they knew I’d feel comfortable until this mess blows over.”

  Was that overkill? She slanted a cautious glance toward Nikolai. He unfolded gracefully to his feet and prowled toward the galley. He was never easy to read, but she wasn’t fooled for a millisecond by his casual demeanor.

  If it weren’t for Maxim Vasylko’s passcode and his autopilot, she knew Nikolai could draw his Walther and pop two in the back of the pilot’s skull without even breaking a sweat.

  Somehow she thought Max might not make an easy target himself. The two men seemed hyperaware of each other’s movements, both twitching with tension, one ear cocked toward the cockpit for the telltale shriek of a warning claxon. Although they’d both saved her derriere, she still wasn’t certain how far to trust either one.

  They were hardly one happy family cruising through Russian airspace.

  Giving Max his space, Nikolai slipped past the galley and dipped into the head. He emerged with a portable first aid kit and headed for Skylar.

  “Achilles tendon, was it?” he murmured.

  She’d forgotten telling him, but he wouldn’t have lost track of a detail like that. Of course, he could probably tell just by looking at her that the thing was killing her.

  “It’s nothing, really,” she demurred, giving her foot an experimental wiggle. The familiar stab of pain darting up her calf made her swallow a curse. “It’s Achilles tendinosis—an old dancer’s injury that flares up from time to time. Give me an ice pack and a wrap and I’ll be fine.”

  Max emerged from the galley, a steaming mug gripped in one large hand and a crystal tumbler of amber liquor in the other.

  “Ice pack’s in the mini-fridge, wrap’s in the kit, along with some wicked pain meds if you need ’em. Drink up, Doc.”

  As he passed, the pilot plunked down the tumbler on the wide arm of her chair. The butterscotch bite of high-end cognac curled into her nostrils.

  “It’s back in the saddle for me,” Max finished, “in case the Russian Air Force changes its collective fucking mind about our flight plan. You can play doctor with the Maestro here.”

  At the cockpit door, he turned back to flash them a cocky grin. Skylar’s face burned. She couldn’t even look at Nikolai, who stood beside her chair cloaked in his trademark silence.

  When Max ducked into the cockpit and swung the door closed, Nikolai muttered, “I’m really beginning to despise that man.”

  “Never mind, Maestro,” she said tightly. Chess honorific, her ass. “I can do my own doctoring.”

  “Of course you can,” he said silkily, crouching beside her. “But why should you?”

  Slender hands closed around her heel and slid beneath the leg of her sodden trousers. Her breath hitched in her lungs. She could barely feel the deft contact through her knee-high boot.

  Yet somehow she could think of nothing else.

  “Really,” she choked, “I’ve done this a dozen times.”

  “For me, it’s the very first.” The zipper of her boot hissed down, opening a seam of air along her inner calf. “Consider it an educational opportunity.”

  Swallowing a gasp, she glanced down at him. Only the top of his head was visible as he bent over the injury, chocolate hair tousled after the snowmobile ride from hell. She already knew it was soft as decadence, because she’d had her hands wrapped in it when she kissed him…

  He eased off her wet boot, which was a positive relief. She wore nothing beneath but an argyle silk stocking in sheer black plaid—also soaked, of course. His hands skimmed up her calf, and a delicate shiver slid through her. Beneath her coat and cashmere sweater, she was suddenly far too warm.

  She fumbled at her coat buttons, fingers shaking, and struggled out of the smothering garment.

  “Truly, Nikolai, I’m fine. I just need to stay off it for a while.”

  “Sit back and relax, Skylar,” he said softly. “I’m going to take care of you.”

  Relax? Not likely, with you touching me like that.

  His fingers slid under the top of her stocking and eased it down. Tiny frissons of sensation streaked up her leg and danced along her nerve endings. Who would have thought the simple act of removing a wet stocking could be so erotic?

  Her feet had always been an embarrassment—dancer’s feet, toes and joints knobby and calloused, just like her ballerina mother’s. A layer of pink toenail polish did little to camouflage the problem. Then his slim fingers slid beneath her arches and kneaded, applying pressure to loosen the tight-stretched sinews.

  Her eyes drifted closed as a moan slipped out.

  “God, that feels heavenly.”

  Of course, he would know all the intricacies of a woman’s body. He was probably a trained interrogator as well as a hit man, equally skilled at delivering pain or mind-shattering pleasure with a touch. The thought of being touched by a man like him ought to terrify her, not…excite her.

  Skillfully his fingers dug into a sore spot, releasing the accumulated tension she’d been carrying since she started this crazy adventure.

  “Nikolai.” She groaned. “If you ever tire of your current line of work, you can earn brilliant money as a masseur.”

  “Always nice to have a backup plan.” He kneaded her heel and worked up the back of her calf.

  “You’ll have to retire someday.”

  “True.” He pinched lightly around the aggravated tendon—precisely the right spot, she noted without surprise. “There are no elderly men in my line of work. No good ones, at least—only desperate ones.

  “As for my current career,” he went on, “I surmise my fame has spread to your friend Victor—whoever that may be. Am I correct?”

  Cavolo! She was tired of this diplomatic dance of evasion. She was exhausted, cold, in pain and frightened. And she still didn’t know, really, how far she could trust him.

  “You mean,” she said tightly, “does he know you’re a hit man?”

  For a heartbeat, his hands stilled. She wished she could see his face, and crushed the urge to stroke back that silken fall of dark hair until she could. Beneath the hum of the jet engines, the whisper of his breath was level, waiting.

  She tossed back a swallow of the Armenian cognac Max had brought. Smooth and warm as melted caramel, the liquor slid down her throat. It wasn’t her tipple of choice, but the sweet burn revived her. From the pit of her stomach, a soothing warmth spread.

  “Is your friend in a position to know?” he said at last. Which wasn’t an answer.

  She smiled grimly. He’d been itching to ask her about Victor. She could sense the curiosity behind his perennial reserve. It would serve him right if she said Victor was her MVD boyfriend. But why would he care?

  “He’s a disgraced Russian submarine captain with FSB connections,” she clipped out. “Th
e new husband of a close friend. He told me why they call you the Maestro—for the precision and artistry of your kills. What I don’t know, Maestro, is why I’m still alive.”

  Fluid as ink, he uncoiled to his feet. She supposed she ought to be frightened, but the roiling boil of anger in her belly held everything else at bay. When he padded silently to the mini-fridge, she glared at his back.

  “Aren’t you going to deny it?”

  “That seems rather pointless.” His back to her, he extracted a flat blue package from the freezer—her promised ice pack.

  “Nikolai.” Her fingers clenched around the crystal tumbler as she fought the urge to hurl it at his uncommunicative head. “If you’re what Victor says you are, then why am I still alive?”

  “I’ve already told you.” He shrugged. “I work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You’re a high-ranking American diplomat on the eve of a major summit. Until you’re safely out of harm’s way, my mission is to protect you, not to kill you.”

  “Out of harm’s way?” She eyed him as he slipped toward her, silent as a ghost. Her own personal hit man. “That means your job ends when we land in Italy?”

  “Of course.” Kneeling before her, he gazed up at her with eyes as dark and warm as espresso. “You’ll never see me again—after tonight.”

  The words hit her like a promise, low and hard, making her mouth go dry.

  After tonight.

  They could do anything they wanted on this private jet, miles over the uncharted expanse of the Siberian tundra. A pang of raw desire knifed through her.

  His warm hand closed around her ankle and eased slowly up her naked calf.

  She moistened her dry lips. “So you’ve accomplished your mission?”

  His voice dropped an octave.

  “That depends on what happens before we land. A lot can happen in six hours, Skylar.”

  The cold shock of ice against her skin should have jolted her back to her senses. Instead she found herself wondering what else he could do with cold ice and those warm, purposeful hands, so deadly skilled in making a body respond.