Medusa’s Master

by Cindy Dees

  Kat murmured, “Bella, was the focus on that lens just adjusted?”

  The team’s photo intelligence analyst murmured, “Yes. A live camera operator shot this footage.”

  Kat’s eyebrows shot up. Which meant this little ménage à trois was probably a setup. Which meant somebody was out to blackmail this man. Which begged the questions, who was he, and who would benefit by having this guy by the short hairs?

  While she pondered those riddles, the camera zoomed in on the bed and its occupants came into plain view. A middle-aged man, reasonably fit for his age, but his skin loosening and his belly going to paunch, was cavorting with two young, naked men. Who was that?

  The target of this little cinematic project turned his head momentarily. The camera caught a clear image of him, and Isabella sucked in a sharp breath.

  Jeff murmured, “You know him?”

  Isabella answered grimly, “That’s the Russian oil minister.”

  Kat’s jaw sagged. The Russians might be entirely used to their government officials jumping in and out of the sack with women and turn a blind eye to it. But men with men? Her impression of Russian society was that it was not nearly so tolerant of that. Her thoughts leaped to the next obvious question. Who took the video? And what did they want from the Russian oil minister?

  Jeff asked Isabella, “Can you tell anything from this video about who filmed it?”

  “I’d need more sophisticated equipment than this. We’ll need to send the disk to our analysts for that. My first guess is that it’s not Russian. Frankly, their surveillance film quality is better than this.”

  Kat snorted mentally. The benefit of a long and distinguished history of spying on one’s own people, apparently. Aloud, she said, “The next question is who were those guys chasing The Ghost? Is it a safe assumption that they were after this disk? If so, why do they want it?”

  “Who are the possible players?” Jeff asked her.

  Kat shrugged. “The Chinese might have filmed this and want it back. The Russians could be after it on behalf of Romeo, there. Or some other player may want to get their hooks into the Russian oil minister.”

  Jeff huffed in disgust. “So we really don’t know a whole lot more than we did a few hours ago.”

  Kat shrugged. “Sure we do. We know that CD was in the possession of someone the Ghost burglarized here on Barbados. That’s a list of only seven suspects. We know that once word got out that the disk had surfaced, a heavy hitter entered the scene fast to try to get his hands on it. Finally, we know the Ghost wanted to dump the disk—in particular to the U.S. government. The Ghost was obviously worried about what the last owner of the disk was going to do with it, which implies that an enemy of the U.S. had the disk until the Ghost took it.”

  Jeff grinned at her. Even though his voice was teasing, the expression in his eyes was intimate. Personal. “That’s why I love you. You’re smart and optimistic.”

  L-love? She gulped and had to use all her skill to disguise the shock coursing through her. Surely he’d said that purely in jest. He’d sounded like he was joking around, at any rate.

  She managed to respond lightly, “Gee, and here I thought you were captivated by my tree-climbing skills.”

  He laughed. “That, too. You’ve got to show me how you did that trick of running up the tree trunk sideways sometime.”

  She winced. He’d seen that, had he? That was exactly the sort of move she didn’t like to advertise that she knew how to do. If Uncle Sam found out, she’d be stuck teaching ninja wannabes for the rest of her life. And not only would that drive her crazy, it would go against everything Hidoshi had ever taught her.

  Jeff dug out his cell phone. She listened to his call with unabashed curiosity. “Raven, it’s Maverick. Just the lady I wanted to talk to. There’s been a development.”

  In short order, Jeff had asked Jennifer and company back at the Bat Cave to do thorough background checks on all the victims of the Ghost’s robberies on Barbados. Why would one of them have a blackmail video of the Russian oil minister?

  Aleesha commented, “I could get used to having a bunch like the H.O.T. Watch backing me up. They do the drudge work pushing paper while we’re out here having all the fun.”

  Jeff nodded. “I can’t tell you how handy they are. They’ve saved my neck a dozen times and every mission runs smoother with their eyes and ears on my team. Of course, you ladies don’t seem to do too badly for yourselves.” He threw a sour glance over at Misty.

  Kat grinned. “Speaking of which, can I have my shirt back? I’m tired of swimming around in this sack you call clothing, Sidewinder.”

  Misty quipped, “You’re just jealous of the girls.” Then her voice dropped into a more serious vein. “I didn’t ask for them, you know. They were added when I was still out cold from the accident.”

  Misty had been in a horrendous car wreck as a teenager and her mother had decided that during the reconstructive surgeries to follow that Misty should be turned into a walking Barbie doll. Her looks were actually a real sore point with her.

  Karen commented idly, “Too bad we can’t just ask the Ghost where he got the CD.”

  Kat lurched, her mind racing.

  She caught Jeff’s intent gaze upon her and he leaned forward. “Talk to me, Kat.”

  “Is it a good bet that, given enough time, the powers that be at H.O.T. Watch will figure out which of the Ghost’s victims would’ve had a use for, or connection to, that CD?”

  Jeff nodded. “They’re very good at what they do.”

  “But knowing that might not account for the guys who jumped us in the gully, right?”

  Jeff nodded again.

  Kat continued thinking aloud. “We have to assume our commandos reported back to whomever they’re working for. Worst case, even more thugs get sent in to help get the disk. The good news is they have no idea who we are and no obvious means of tracking us if we’ve done our job correctly to erase our tracks tonight. But the hostiles do have one link to that CD whom they can possibly track.”

  “The Ghost,” Jeff said. “But surely after tonight, he’s run for the hills. He’s probably already off the island.”

  Kat shrugged. “You’re most likely right. He didn’t strike me as having a death wish. Otherwise he wouldn’t have taken such precautions when he met me. But our hostiles don’t know that for sure any more than we do.”

  Jeff asked, “What do you suggest we do about it?”

  Kat leaned forward eagerly. Suddenly it was as clear as a bell to her what her subconscious had been reaching toward. “We know of two more paintings that the Ghost was likely to steal—that last two from that catalog here on Barbados. What if I impersonate the Ghost and steal one of them? You guys can set up a trap around me and I’ll act as bait. We’ll draw out the hostiles and grab them.”

  Jeff’s look was one of pure horror. “Absolutely not!”

  Shocked at his response, Kat stared at him. “Why not? It’s a brilliant plan.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. I’m a Special Forces operative. How is it too dangerous? I do stuff more dangerous than that all the time.”

  “You’re setting yourself up as bait for a force of unknown size and skill. It’d be a crapshoot. They might come in with six guys like before, or maybe they’ll come in with twenty.”

  “That’s what I have the Medusas and H.O.T. Watch for. You all can take care of anything they throw at me.”

  Jeff glanced around and a look of chagrin came over his face. Kat looked up to see that her teammates were riveted on the exchange between them. Crud.

  “Take a walk with me,” he ordered tersely.

  She concurred wholeheartedly with his impulse to finish this discussion in private. “By all means,” she retorted.

  Aleesha warned quietly, “Don’t get so wrapped up in fighting with each other that you drop your guard. A team of killers is floating around out there who’d love to get their hands on Kat.�
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  Mamba’s warning checked Kat’s irritation in midstride. Aleesha was right. And the woman should know—she’d fallen in love in the middle of an op, too. Too? Too? Kat jolted sharply. There was no too about it. She had not fallen in love with Jeff!

  He seemed to take Mamba’s warning to heart as well, for he paused just outside the cabin to let his eyesight adjust to the dark and to take a long look at the surrounding foliage before heading down the narrow, sandy path to the beach.

  She stomped along as best she could beside him. Unfortunately, the soft sand didn’t make for good angry stomping. He walked until they’d reached a cove mostly surrounded by cliffs that funneled the waves into crashing surf here. More to the point, the surf was extremely loud. Someone three feet away wouldn’t be able to hear them.

  He turned sharply to face her. “Don’t do this to me, Kat.”

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t make me choose between my head and my heart.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t send the woman I’m planning to marry into a death trap. You may be a ninja to your core, but bone deep, I’m old-fashioned. Hell, a chauvinist, if you will. I can’t send a woman I care about into danger.”

  “Oh, puh-lease. You of all people know I’m not some helpless little thing. I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re not Wonder Woman, dammit!”

  “You’re right, I’m not. I’m real. I can do stuff Wonder Woman’s creators never dreamed of…except for the invisible jet, of course.”

  “Don’t joke around about this,” he retorted raggedly.

  She peered at him in the faint starlight. He was really worried about her! “Jeff, I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be okay. I’ve got a heck of a good team to back me up. We won’t get taken by surprise.”

  He threw his hands up in the air in frustration.

  She tried again. “If I were one of your men and I’d volunteered to do this job, would you have a problem with it? Is my idea operationally sound?”

  His gaze narrowed. Reluctantly he answered, “It’s a little on the risky side, but yeah, I’d give it serious consideration.”

  She glared at him reprovingly.

  “Okay, so I’d go with the idea if you were one of my guys. And yes, I understand that if I’d let one of them do it, I’m supposed to let you do it, too.”

  “But…” she asked leadingly.

  “But…” He took a quick step toward her and swept her up in his arms. He kissed her with such passion that her toes curled into the cool, damp sand, and her knees went suspiciously weak. Ho-lee cow. Their tongues tangled, mouths slanting across one another hungrily, as they strained closer to one another, pressing body to body from shoulders to ankles.

  Eventually, he tore his mouth away from hers. “Can you honestly tell me you feel nothing when we kiss like that?” he demanded.

  Panting, she managed to answer, “No, I can’t. When you kiss me like that, my world tilts on its axis. I’ve never pretended otherwise. But that doesn’t have anything to do with my doing this job.”

  “It has everything to do with it, dammit!”

  “Why? Male operators expect their wives to wait patiently at home while they put their lives on the line and not to question their judgment out in the field. Why can’t I, as a female operator, expect the same of you?”

  He shook his head. “I guess I’m not as strong as you. I’d be a wreck, waiting at home while you ran around out here playing superhero. Is that what you want to hear me say? That you’re stronger and tougher emotionally than me?”

  She couldn’t help smiling sardonically. “All women who wait at home for men who do dangerous jobs know they’re the strong ones. But Jeff, if you want me, if you’re going to have me for your girlfriend or wife or whatever, you have to accept this part of me, too. My job involves taking risks, and you’re going to have to let me do that. I’ve trained my whole life to do this, and I’m not walking away from it now. Not even for you.”

  “Then you admit that you feel something for me?”

  She stared up at him in surprise. “Of course I feel something for you. I feel a lot for you!”

  “Show me.”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Right here. Right now.”

  For once, she didn’t feel like shying away from his challenge. She was just mad enough to grab the bull by the horns. She dragged her shirt over her head defiantly and threw it down on the sand. He stared, speechless, at her bare breasts. She gave him a moment to take that in, and then she yanked off her belt and flung off her pants and underwear. She was already barefoot, and it was a quick thing to pull out the rubber band holding her hair and shake it loose around her shoulders and breasts. The wind blew cool air upon her naked skin, and the night caressed her damply. The waves pounded wild and free, calling to the siren within her.

  “Here I am, Jeff. If you want me, I’m yours. But you have to take all of me—the good with the bad. The whole package.”

  He gaped for a moment more, and then all of a sudden was fumbling frantically, yanking off his clothes in clumsy haste. “You’re magnificent,” he breathed.

  And then his mouth was on hers, his hands on her body, drawing her down with him to the sand, cushioning her body with his. She stretched out at full length upon him, and the sensation of his body cradling hers all but made her pass out.

  “I’ve wanted you since the moment we met,” she mumbled.

  He laughed against her lips, his hands busy as he cajoled her body to a fever pitch of need with hands and mouth and delicious friction of skin on skin. “I thought you hated my guts when we met,” he mumbled back.

  She kissed her way down his neck to the hollow over his collarbone, gasping at the way his thigh rubbed between her legs. “I loved it when you called me baby. Nobody ever calls me things like that.”

  “Why the hell not?” he asked as his fingers dipped into the crevice at the base of her spine and all but made her jump out of her skin at the melting lust that shot through her. “You’re a sexpot. Men must hit on you all the time.”

  That made her laugh, her nose buried against his chest. “Not hardly.”

  “Must be that I’ll-break-your neck-if-you-touch-me vibe you put out.” And then his hand slid down her belly and touched her in ways that made her want to sob in pleasure.

  Gasping as she arched into his hand, she managed to reply, “But that vibe didn’t stop you.”

  He grinned, looking deeply into her eyes. “I was a goner before you even dropped me in the gym. I took one look and I knew I had to have you.”

  She cried out as his finger stroked across her moist heat and swollen flesh.

  “So responsive,” he muttered. “How could anybody miss how sensual you are?”

  That startled her. Sensual? Her? She’d never attached that adjective to herself. But as Jeff played her body like a fine instrument, she couldn’t argue with him.

  His big, warm hands gripped her hips, guiding her down onto him. His heat and size were iron hard and pulsed deep within her, erasing any remaining semblance of organized thought. As her control shattered utterly, her cry of unfettered pleasure rose to mingle with the crashing waves.

  She rode him with abandon, matching the rolling rhythm of the ocean, embracing its grandeur and power, letting it wash through her and direct her movements as she gave herself over completely to the moment. She reveled in driving them both deeper and deeper into the night, in letting go of everything—opening the floodgates of her emotions and letting them gush over the dam of her training, her control, her entire being.

  Everything she’d ever been was washed away as this new being of pure sensation was being revealed within her. She flung her head back, keening a cry of ecstasy as her first-ever climax burst over her without warning. It electrified her in a blinding shower of tingling sparks, streaking through her like chain lightning, ripping her apart with its power, sending bits of her flying in a thousand different d
irections.

  Jeff rolled over then, pressing her deep into the warm sand as she shuddered around his length and steely power. He took over the rhythm of the ocean and the night, finding her pace and matching it with unerring accuracy. He invaded her very core, now slamming fast and hard, now stroking with aching slowness, until she climbed his chest, clawing him urgently as yet another explosion built, even more powerful than the first one.

  “Sing for me, baby,” he crooned.

  And sing she did. Her legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him even deeper within her as she surged beneath him in total abandon. Their love was a wild thing, bigger than the two of them, bigger than the ocean behind them, bigger than the entire universe, forcing them both to surrender to it completely.

  And in that final moment, when they both let go together, they exploded as one, overtaken by an instant of such perfection it stole their breath away. They gazed deep into each other’s eyes in wonder as pleasure rolled over both of them, all but ripping consciousness away from them.

  Kat descended back into herself slowly. She became aware of Jeff’s sand-covered shoulder pressed against her cheek. She reached up languidly to loop her arms around his neck while he pressed himself up onto his elbows to stare down at her.

  “Holy Mother,” he murmured in awe.

  She smiled up at him tentatively. “No regrets, then? All of me, for better or worse?”

  His mouth curved up into a devilish smile. “In sickness and health, until death do us part, darlin’.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think you’re rushing things just a bit? We’ve known each other a grand total of three days. Even I’m not insane enough to leap into marriage on that short a courtship.”

  Of course, if she’d stayed in Korea, she might very well have entered into an arranged marriage whereby she would never have seen the groom, let alone spoken to him before the wedding. Had he lived another few years until she was old enough to marry, she suspected Hidoshi would have been just that old school about it. He’d have married her off into one of the handful of remaining ninja clans. What would he have thought of Jeff? After all, Jeff was a highly trained warrior in the modern tradition. Hidoshi might have found it an interesting match—the meshing of old and new.