She struggled to pull herself together.
“And your so-called friend—Irina? She’ll get the money in time? Your fee for protecting me?”
He slanted a glance toward the expensive, wafer-thin watch that gleamed below his cuff. Well after midnight, she saw. The stillest, most private part of the night.
“Now she has four days until the deadline,” he said quietly. “Her surgeon will have the money in two.”
“For her sake, I’m glad.” She gazed down at him, jacket discarded, hair disheveled, his expensive Italian shoes in no better shape than hers. On impulse, she held out the tumbler. “Here. You look like you could use it.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “You really have no idea.”
As he took the glass, their fingers brushed. His gaze held hers as he took a slow swallow. She still tasted the butterscotch sweetness on her tongue, the slow warmth still unfurling in her tummy. She felt dizzy, her customary reason clouded, her caution blunted, but every sense exquisitely heightened. Perhaps she’d caught a fever in the sub-Arctic chill.
His lids dropped over the dark luster of his gaze.
“Now you.”
Like a woman in a dream, she accepted the glass and raised it to her lips. The buttery smoothness coated her mouth and slid down her throat. Reeling under the effects of exhaustion and alcohol, mingled with the intoxicating impact of his nearness, she could have floated right off the chair.
The soft buzz of a zipper penetrated this golden haze. He’d just unzipped her other boot.
“What are you doing?” she murmured. “My other leg is fine.”
“Your boots are wet.”
This sounded eminently reasonable. She didn’t protest when he eased off the damp footwear and repeated that tantalizing, subtly sexual striptease with her stocking. When his skilled fingers dug into the tight tendons, she closed her eyes.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” she murmured.
“Just relax and enjoy it, Skylar.”
Why not? she thought fuzzily. Slow ripples of pleasure pulsed through her.
In a few hours she’d be baking in the hot Mediterranean sun, and Nikolai Markov would be an enigmatic memory. Which was for the best, really. Because the more time she spent alone with him like this, the harder it became to keep straight in her head why any personal involvement was an exceptionally bad idea.
“I’m sure you must regret,” he said, while his fingers worked their magic, “not having found what you were looking for in Khimgorod?”
Her eyes flashed open. For a few blissful minutes, she’d nearly forgotten the VX purchase order tucked into her waistband—scant feet from the lean, dangerous hands kneading the taut muscle of her lower leg.
“Clearly my timing was bad, given that toxicology conference,” she said carefully. “I’m sure there will be other opportunities to establish those relationships.”
“So Khimgorod goes on the back burner for your organization and its funding governments?”
Gently his fingers kneaded the sensitive hollow behind her knee—which was as far inside her trousers as she intended to let him get. Even having his hands on her knee in this clinical capacity was an enormous distraction.
Still, she wasn’t distracted enough not to notice when a Russian agent was pumping her for information.
“You can tell the MFA not to worry,” she said lightly. “ICSI won’t do anything to upset the apple cart before the G-8 summit next week in Marseilles.”
For a heartbeat he was silent. She wondered if he’d bought her careful misdirection. If he hadn’t, what could he possibly do about it, given the complications of Maxim Vasylko and his rifle?
Nikolai eased her thighs apart and knelt between them. His dark eyes smoldered with simmering heat.
“Then there’s nothing to stop us from doing this.”
His hands closed around her head as he leaned in and kissed her.
CHAPTER TEN
Wild move: A move that is extremely unclear or mind-bogglingly complex.
Kissing Skylar Rossi was just a job. Nikolai reminded himself of that as he closed in for the kill. He’d been seducing her by inches for the past twenty minutes. Her battered defenses were lowered, her reserves of strength and caution depleted. He’d saved her life no less than three times in the past twenty-four hours.
Yet he knew—and she knew—she’d be a fool to trust him.
She’s lying to me. Someone got to her. She learned something in Khimgorod. And whatever she’d learned of Russia’s dirty little secrets could never be allowed to see the light of day—for Irina’s sake.
That was the real reason he leaned in and kissed her. It had nothing to do with the fact that he hadn’t been able to get the taste of her out of his head. Nothing to do with his need to explore the lush curve of her parted lips, the taste of cognac and longing on her breath, the soft aching cry that slipped out as their mouths met.
Ribbons of hair spilled through his fingers like raven silk as he cradled her head and held her. Kneeling between the taut frame of her supple thighs, he gave her no opportunity to evade him.
At the moment, evasion seemed the farthest thing from her mind.
Instead of pushing him away, her legs tightened around his hips. One bare heel dug into his ass as she pulled him toward her. Her mouth opened under his, warm and soft and sweet as toffee. Her tongue met his with a ferocity that had nothing to do with diplomacy, and everything to do with raw sexual hunger.
Moving on instinct, he fumbled for the console in her throne-like chair. His hand grazed the crystal tumbler and sent it thudding to the thick carpet. The sharp sweetness of spilled cognac drenched the air. Blindly he fumbled, pressing buttons at random. The seat hummed like a purring cat as it reclined, taking both of them with it.
He climbed on top of her, heart thudding like a fist against his chest, pulse hammering in his veins as though he’d pounded out a four-minute mile.
He could garrote a man with a wire hanger without so much as a quickened pulse. But kissing Skylar Rossi was giving him a goddamn heart attack.
Urgent and fierce, her hands closed around his shoulders. She pulled him with her as the chair reclined. He braced one arm against the cream leather to maintain some thin shred of control and deepened the kiss. He could feel all of her beneath him, around him: the sinuous length of her dancer’s legs twined around his hips, her soft breasts searing his chest, the molten heat between her thighs where his swelling cock lodged hard against the expensive wool of her utterly ruined trousers.
It felt like coming home.
Beneath him, the floor fell away as the jet—he vaguely recalled being in a jet—hit a sudden pocket of turbulence. Skylar voiced a muffled squeal and clutched at him.
“Sorry about that, folks.” Vasylko drawled over the intercom. “Hit a little rough air there. I’m gonna switch on the Fasten Seatbelt sign.”
Bastard. That cocky Ukrainian was undoubtedly watching his every move from the surveillance camera in the ceiling. Whoever Maxim Vasylko really was—whatever his name really was—he was no friend of Nikolai’s.
Disentangling one arm from Skylar’s clinging body, he folded it behind his back and extended his middle finger for the camera’s benefit.
“Nikolai.” Skylar sounded breathless—an effect he found gratifying. “You’re, um, an amazing kisser—”
“Thank you.” When he caught her earlobe between his teeth, she shivered. A primal sense of masculine satisfaction curled through him.
“But…Nikolai.” Tapered fingers curled around his nape, a sensuous slide that made him groan. “I don’t think we should…”
He nuzzled his way down the supple curve of her throat. Against his lips her pulse stuttered, hard and fast as gunfire. “Are you telling me you want me to stop?”
“God, no.” She gasped out a laugh and arched into him.
The slow, sensuous way she was undulating beneath him was enough to make any man lose his mind. Nikolai fought to keep
a few wits about him, but it was bloody damn difficult. He couldn’t make love to her right here in this chair, with Captain Joystick tracking his every move and running interference.
But there was a stateroom aft. A stateroom dominated by a king-sized bed. He’d seen it when he ducked into the head—a reconnoiter to ensure the absence of any other little surprises, including the mysterious Victor, aboard this plane.
Nikolai uncoiled from the chair. Blinking and disheveled, Skylar stared up at him, her long limbs gorgeously akimbo and her mouth beautifully swollen from his kisses.
Before she could return to her senses, he gathered her into his arms. She voiced a small shriek.
“Cavolo! What are you doing?”
“Keeping your weight off that strained Achilles.”
Without waiting for the inevitable objection, he strode toward the stateroom with Skylar in his arms.
She seemed uncharacteristically submissive. He wondered how long it would last.
Despite her height, her weight in his arms was insubstantial. She was built like a runway model, sleek and effortlessly elegant, with the taut toned muscle of a professional dancer.
He could hardly wait to get her out of her clothes.
He wanted to know everything about her, all the little secrets that had eluded his Skylar Rossi scrapbook. He wanted to know how her gorgeous breasts would feel cupped in his hands, how her nipples would tighten when he tongued them, how she would taste when he ran his tongue along the soft sweet folds of her pussy. He was so hard for her he could barely breathe as he kicked open the lavatory door and strode through the opulent cubicle.
Snug and trim in the tail section, the bedroom’s smooth-paneled walls encased them, softly lit by hidden lamps in the recessed ceiling. The bedspread was some sort of silky gold. When Skylar was naked, the color would look striking against her tawny skin.
He snagged a plush towel from the bathroom and kicked the door closed behind them. Staring straight into the blinking eye of the security camera, he bared his teeth in a savage smile. Then he tossed the towel over the camera and lowered Skylar to the bed.
Beneath heavy lids, she gazed up at him, her aquamarine eyes lambent with arousal. He wanted to slow down and savor the moment. But if he let her think, let that cool scientific brain switch back on, she’d reconsider this reckless experiment.
The first time, he’d take her fast—a pawn storm of passion to overwhelm her native caution. The next time, he would linger.
And at some point during the pleasurable hours that stretched tantalizingly before them, when she was mindless and limp with sexual fulfillment, he would find out what she’d learned in Khimgorod.
Convenient when his personal inclinations and his job demands aligned so perfectly.
“Your trousers are ruined, Dr. Rossi,” he murmured. “We’d better get you out of them.”
He reached for the waistband of her gray wool slacks. One little hook and three inches of zipper, and he’d find out whether she favored lace panties or silk—
Her blue eyes flew wide. The sensual daze that softened her sculpted features vanished as though he’d pulled out a weapon.
“Not on your life, Mr. Markov,” she said crisply.
_____________________________________
An icy splash of sanity dashed over her—an unwelcome shock that dissolved the delicious, dangerous desire pulsing low in her belly.
Diavolo! What the hell was she doing lying on this bed and looking at a Russian hit man with bedroom eyes? Let him unhook her trousers and he’d find the clandestine document tucked against her tummy.
Nikolai blinked, the sole indication her sudden resistance had caught him by surprise. Looming over the bed in his designer threads, his semi-automatic pistol still holstered and tendrils of dark hair falling over his opaque eyes, he looked thoroughly aroused and thoroughly dangerous. Inevitably, her gaze drifted to the hard bulge behind his zipper.
Feeling breathless and far too warm, she looked hastily away.
“Not on your life,” she repeated, sitting up against the headboard—less vulnerable than lying flat on her back.
“Why not?” he said tightly.
Annoyance flared through her.
“Because I don’t trust you, Nikolai! You’ve been protecting me because the MFA paid you to do it. How do I know what other orders they’ve given you?”
He chuffed out a humorless laugh. Firing into motion, he caught her hand and pressed it right against the danger zone.
“Is this motive enough for you, Skylar?”
Her hand was trapped against the searing bulge beneath his trousers, so hard and hot she was suffocating. And her asthma had nothing to do with it. No inhaler in the world was going to cure the damage this man did to her.
Her gaze locked on his, those smoldering black eyes that seemed to burn straight through her. When her tongue swept out to moisten her dry lips, the dark flames in his gaze ignited. With a muffled groan, he bent and kissed her.
With her back against the headboard, she had absolutely nowhere to go. But no meant no, didn’t it?
She kissed him back with a vengeance, breath mingling, tongues tangling, head swimming with his expensive fragrance and the musk of her own desire. He straddled her hips, knees sinking into plush mattress and champagne silk, the electrifying hardness between his thighs pressed right against her sweet spot.
“No means no,” she gasped against his mouth, arms twining around him, fingers skimming the lean hardness of his back.
“With you, no means yes,” he muttered, hands sliding under her cashmere sweater. The shock of his lean hands on her bare skin was electrifying—mere inches from the damn document.
Why the hell had she thought hiding it inside her pants—of all places—was a good idea, with a man like him around?
But he headed north, not south, fingers spanning her ribcage, gliding up her bare back. Tendrils of heat streaked through her. Deftly he unhooked her brassiere, which definitely should have shocked her to her senses.
Instead she moaned and arched into him. Luxuriated in the sensual rush of relief after close to twenty-four hours wearing the damn thing.
“Skylar, let me see you.” Swift, ragged, his breath teased her ear. “Let me really see you.”
Somehow she thought he was saying Let me see who you really are. But that was nonsense. This thing between them, the urgent hunger of this no-holds-barred attraction, was purely sexual.
“You might not like what you see,” she whispered.
“Small chance of that, believe me.”
If she wanted to resist him, she’d missed her moment. He peeled the black cashmere over her head. Her black lace bra went with it. She lay, arms flung over her head like a ravished nude in a harem painting, and met his gaze with head-on challenge.
In high school, her breasts had been the despair of her ballet instructors. She’d inherited Sabrina Rossi’s long legs and dancer’s frame, but her breasts belonged to a porn star. No dancer who wore a 34C was going to squeeze into a sequined leotard without eye-popping results.
Not that she’d ever wanted her mother’s career. Even then, before Bangkok, she’d wanted a career that mattered.
Boldly she met Nikolai’s smoking gaze. When his eyes slid over her, taking her in with a glance, her nipples hardened and rose, as hungry for his attention as the rest of her.
“Incredible,” he breathed.
Then his hands were claiming her, those lean refined hands that caressed and killed with equal devastation. His thumbs teased her tight nipples, bolts of heat zinging through her until the place between her legs was wet and throbbing. She squirmed beneath him, squirmed against the jutting ridge of his cock, and the first tiny orgasm went off like a firecracker.
She gasped at the shock.
“Christ.” He groaned. “This is you telling me no?”
“Yes,” she panted. “No. I just—need—”
She just needed. Needed to feel his mouth on her, for starter
s. Clumsy with need, she wrapped her hands in his hair and pulled him toward her. His jaw was rough velvet, he probably needed to shave, but his tongue was the devil’s torment as he teased and nipped and suckled. Shocks of sexual pleasure jolted through her, exploding like Roman candles between her thighs. She moaned whenever he touched her over-sensitized nipples.
He was slowly blowing her mind.
Never with Alain Devereux or the brainy neurologist she’d dated at Edgewood or any of her scattered lovers over the years had she felt anything this powerful. She’d believed she must be frigid, too wrapped up in her career and her calling, her chemical labs and her chemical journals to have room left over for physical chemistry—the alchemical passion that combusted between a man and a woman.
Now it seemed she’d just chosen the wrong men.
Drowning in a sea of unfamiliar sensations, she tugged feverishly at Nikolai’s shirt. She needed him as naked and vulnerable as she was, because that was the only way this thing between them—whatever it was—was ever going to work. He interrupted what he was doing long enough to unbuckle his belt, set his pistol on the nightstand and peel off his shirt.
His body was a thing of beauty, lean and rippling with understated strength, skin tanned by some foreign sun stretched like taupe silk over the flat tight plane of his abs. The faint star of a long-healed bullet wound stood out against one shoulder. The wicked line of an old knife scar wound around his ribcage. Yet the wafer-thin Rolex gleaming against one sinewed wrist lent a note of sophistication and refinement to a thoroughly dangerous image.
Her fingers trailed along the knife scar. He vibrated—almost a shiver—beneath her touch.
“How did this happen?” she asked.
“You don’t want to know.” His hand closed over hers and raised it to his lips. “You know what I am, Skylar.”
A hit man. A hired killer. The Maestro. She could hardly have chosen a less suitable man to sleep with.
“Did one of your victims fight back?” Her voice quivered.
The Russian Temptation (Book Two) (Foreign Affairs 2) Page 18