“Get her!” Yana’s shriek told me everything I needed to know.
My old sports reflexes commandeered my body, rolling me to my feet. My momentum carried me forward and I ducked under his wide-armed grab, my hands locking onto his arm as I spun.
The arm-bar fell naturally into place with all my weight behind it. I felt rather than heard the deep ripping sound, like roots being torn from the earth. His scream was so sudden and horrible my hands flew off him as though I’d been burned.
He stumbled, falling forward, his useless arm collapsing under him.
His head wedged between two seats, his body still dropping.
A deep pop held the finality I remembered too well from the frozen parking lot only a week ago.
His body went limp.
I backed away panting, scrubbing my hands against my jeans to erase the gruesome sensation of tearing muscles.
When I jerked my gaze away from the fallen man, Yana lay motionless at Kane’s feet, her head twisted at an unnatural angle.
“Clear the back.” His voice was a dry rasp, and he turned to vanish into the forward cabin.
My body obeyed even though my mind still didn’t comprehend. The bathroom and small rear cabin were unoccupied. Beyond them, a king-sized bed flaunted itself in an opulent bedroom, and I mechanically checked closets and corners.
As I turned for the front of the plane again, it occurred to me that I’d have had no idea what to do if I’d actually found somebody.
Lucky I hadn’t.
Still stunned, I tottered past Thomas’s limp form. I couldn’t look at him yet. Couldn’t think about it.
Kane knelt next to Yana’s body, reaching toward her face, and I turned away to give him some privacy.
A moment later, the sound of sudden movement and a shattering crash made me jerk around, fresh terror galvanizing my muscles. Kane strode over to the laptop he’d thrown across the cabin. Snatching it up, he smashed it over and over against the table, gouging the polished rosewood and sending plastic shrapnel flying in all directions. Then he threw the remains to the floor and crushed them under his heel, stomping as if to grind them into oblivion.
As I stared open-mouthed, he crossed the cabin in two long strides and yanked me into a hard kiss.
Shocked, I pulled back. “What…?”
He kissed me again, his lips devouring mine.
I jerked away, my shock fading into angry confusion. “Hang on…”
Kane seized my face between his palms, and his eyes held a desperate appeal I’d never seen before. “Aydan, for God’s sake,” he said hoarsely. “Will you please just shut up and make love to me?”
Yana’s dead eyes stared up at us accusingly, and suddenly I understood.
Kane’s gaze followed mine. When he turned back to me, I could see his anger simmering just below the surface.
I touched his face, my heart breaking for him. “Okay,” I whispered, and led him down the hall.
Chapter 42
In the bedroom I stripped without ceremony, and Kane’s lips tightened as if in pain. When I went to him, the storm still raged in his eyes but his hands were gentle on my shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have-”
I laid my fingertips over his lips. “Shhh.” I kissed him softly, wishing the tenderness of my touch could take away his suffering. “I want to,” I whispered against his cheek.
“Oh, God, Aydan.”
Then his mouth was on mine, his hands moving over my skin. He muttered an impatient oath against my lips and withdrew far enough to tear off his own clothes before pulling me against him again, his erection jammed between us.
His hands slid down to cup my ass and I moved against him, feeding his hardness. He pressed me down on the bed, his hungry mouth finding my breast. I moaned and arched against him, but when I reached down to fondle him he stopped my hand.
“Wait…” He fumbled for his pants, and I scooted further onto the bed, pulling him with me.
When he withdrew the condom from his pocket, we both hesitated.
The condom meant for his wife.
His dead wife.
The anger rose in his eyes again and I pulled him to me, trying to kiss it away. Kiss away the pain, if only for a little while.
His groan sounded like a sob.
A few kisses later, he poised himself above me, his eyes asking the question. I reached to guide him home, and he entered me on a long breath, his eyes closing.
A gasp escaped me. God, I didn’t remember him being so huge.
He rocked into gentle motion, allowing me time to accommodate him. Running my hands over his bulging arms and shoulders, I watched him above me, moving with his rhythm. His strokes deepened, his muscles tightening, and I tried to find my usual warm, sweet tension.
It should be there. I should be ascending on his heat like a phoenix riding a blazing updraft, letting him carry me to that glorious apex right before the freefall of ecstasy…
His muscles flexed under my hands, reminding me of the gut-wrenching sensation of ripping tissue.
What was he thinking right now? Imagining Yana under him, one last time? Trying to forget the sensation of her life falling away in his hands?
His eyes opened suddenly, dark and vulnerable. He went still, looking deeply, seeing too much.
Or too little. Pain flared like fire in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was a rough whisper. “I’ll stop…”
I pulled him to me. “Don’t stop, John. Take what you need. Just take what you need.”
He collapsed, his arms locking around me, his face buried in my neck. “Aydan…” The word wrenched out of him and he drove deep, thrusting again and again.
I wrapped my arms around him, riding his hunger until he stiffened with a hoarse cry. The spasms shook him while he strained me close, his breath sobbing against my cheek.
At last he went limp, his face still buried in my neck, his ragged breathing slowing. I held him, rocking him softly, stroking his back and sprinkling kisses over his hair and temple.
After a few moments, his arms tightened around me. Then he pushed away, rolling over to sit on the edge of the bed. He pulled off the condom and threw it in the garbage as if it disgusted him.
“That was the most shameful thing I’ve ever done.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and hung his head, locking his hands behind his neck.
“John, it’s not shameful.” I traced my fingertips over the puckered scars that marred his powerful back. “It’s just a reaction-”
“Don’t touch me like that.” His voice was like a raw wound. “Not like you love me. Not now.”
I pulled my hand away. “I’m sorry-”
“Don’t!” It was almost a shout. He drew a ragged breath. “Don’t apologize to me.”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My hand hovered helplessly, wanting to touch him but forbidden.
After a moment, I gathered my clothes and left.
In the sitting room, I dressed rapidly under the empty gaze of dead eyes and tucked Spider’s ring back into my bra. Then I knelt beside poor Thomas at last, straightening his splayed and cooling limbs and smoothing his smart uniform. His handsome features were slack, but a ghost of his bright smile still lingered on his lips. I gently closed the lids over his dulling eyes and bowed my head to commend his soul to whatever place of rest he may have hoped for.
When I looked up, Kane stood fully dressed, silently watching.
I shot a glance at Yana’s sprawled body. “John, go back to the bedroom. Let me…” I rose to approach the body.
“Leave her,” he said roughly. “Aydan, we need to talk.”
“Not here.” I spread my hands, trying to guide him without touching him. “In the front cabin.”
He nodded and turned away.
In the cabin, he gestured to a seat. “Please sit down.”
I sat as directed, watching him worriedly while he paced, ch
urning his fingers in his hair.
“Aydan, I owe you an apology,” he said abruptly.
“John, it’s okay…”
“Stop.” He stared at me, tense lines scoring his face. “God, I can’t do this when you look at me like that.” He turned his back on me to stare out the window, clenching his hands behind him. “Aydan,” he said hoarsely. “I need you to listen to everything I’m going to say without interrupting. Will you promise to do that?”
“That depends on what you’re going to say.”
His shoulders sagged. “God help me.”
“John, just tell me. You know you can talk to me.”
“Until you find out what I’ve done. Then you’ll hate me. And I deserve it.”
I locked my hands together so I wouldn’t reach for him. “Why don’t you let me decide how I’ll feel? Just say what you need to say.”
“All right.” He spun to face me, his jaw set. “I lied to you.” The words grated out between his teeth, but his eyes beseeched me. “Yana never meant anything to me. I let you believe I was grief-stricken just to get you into bed.”
My mouth dropped open.
“I knew you were pitying me.” He clenched his fists. “I saw it in your eyes and I tried to stop, but God help me, Aydan, when you looked at me like that… When you said ‘take me’…” He drew a ragged breath. “I lost all control. And all the time, you were just…” His face twisted. “…just… enduring me. Giving yourself to me out of pity and wishing I was Arnie. And I took you, God help me, I took you because I had to have you just one more time…”
He turned away to press his forehead against the window. “I’m sorry, Aydan. I’m sorry.”
“Wait… what…? Seriously?” He flinched as my voice rose. “Seriously, John? I don’t even… I…”
Words failed me and I lurched to my feet to grab him by the arm. “Look at me.” When he turned his face away, I seized his chin. “Look at me, goddammit!”
He met my eyes reluctantly, bracing his shoulders as if expecting a blow.
“In the first place…” I stopped to gather myself. “Shit, I don’t even know where to start! Okay, I was not enduring you and I was not wishing you were somebody else, I was just having a bit of trouble getting into the mood since I’d just killed a guy with my bare hands and I was pretty sure you hated me and you were pretending I was Yana.”
He opened his mouth to speak but I overrode him. “And yeah, it was a pity fuck.” He flinched at the words, and I jabbed a finger into his chest. “And that was your own damn fault for being such a damn good actor and making me believe you were upset. That whole thing with the laptop-”
“There was a listening device,” he interrupted. “I had to make sure we weren’t being recorded.”
“Well, it worked for you, didn’t it?”
His face twisted as though I’d knifed him in the gut, and my indignation faded. He was feeling bad enough already. And he could have just let me keep on believing the lie and avoided this whole scene.
“Goddammit, John...” I sighed. “Look, forget it. We all get carried away sometimes. I’m just going to choose to be flattered it was that important to you. And a pity fuck is nothing to be ashamed of. It just means there’s somebody in the world who cares about you enough to take you to bed even if they’re not really in the mood.”
“But it was shameful to take advantage of your caring. I used you. I’m sorry.” His voice vibrated with emotion and he dropped his gaze. “There’s something else.”
Exhaustion overcame me and I let my arms fall to my sides. “What?”
“I don’t mean this to sound like an excuse. There’s no excuse for what I did. But I wasn’t acting. I truly was… am upset. Just not about Yana.” He looked directly at me for the first time, and I could see the truth in the storm-grey of his eyes.
“Okay…” I swallowed rising fear. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“You know when we cleared the plane? You went aft, I went forward?”
I nodded, afraid to speak.
“You didn’t find anybody alive.” He hesitated. “Neither did I.”
For a long moment, I just stared at him.
“The pilot and co-pilot are dead,” he said gently. “There’s nobody to fly the plane.”
Chapter 43
“There’s nobody…” I had to stop and swallow. “…but we’re still fly… oh. Autopilot?”
Kane nodded.
“But… you know how to fly, right?” I stared at him hopefully. “You’re James Bond. You know how to do everything.”
His hesitation made my heart sink to the bottom of my chest.
He gave me an apologetic grimace. “I’m an army guy. The only thing I know about planes is how to jump out of them. I was really hoping you were a pilot.”
“Oh.”
That seemed inadequate. After a moment, I added, “I’m not a pilot. Sorry.”
“Oh.”
The steady drone of the engines filled the silence.
“So, um…” I cleared the hoarseness out of my throat, holding off panic with details. “Do you know how autopilot works? Is it programmed to just turn off when we get to where we’re supposed to land?”
“I don’t think so. I once heard about a pilot who had a heart attack and the autopilot just kept the plane flying until it ran out of gas and crashed. But that was just a small private plane.”
“Oh.” I thought about that for a moment. “Do you know how much gas we have?”
“Enough to get to Calgary or maybe a bit farther, I assume. We aren’t scheduled to land for another couple of hours.”
“Right.” I sank into the nearest seat when my knees decided to take an unscheduled vacation. “Um… I don’t suppose there’s a manual or something…?” A glance at his expression made my face heat up. “Okay, I know jets don’t come with how-to-fly instructions. That was stupid.”
He dropped into the seat across from me and gave me a twisted smile. “No stupider than me. I already looked.”
I laughed out loud. “Thanks for that.” My laughter died quickly. “So, army guy, I presume jumping out of the plane isn’t an option?”
Kane leaned back, rubbing his hands over his face. “Even if there were parachutes, which there aren’t, jumping out of a pressurized jet from thirty-five thousand feet at four hundred miles per hour wouldn’t exactly work.”
“I guess not.” I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to convince my racing heart that we weren’t in danger. Not until we ran out of gas or tried to land, anyway. “Okay. Well, I guess we’d better go and try to figure out how to use the radio. In the movies there’s always some guy with nerves of steel in the control tower who magically teaches people to fly passenger jets in ten minutes or less.”
I started to rise, but Kane put out a restraining hand. “Actually… I don’t want to do that just yet.”
“Okay… because…?”
“I think Fuzzy Bunny will be monitoring the flight and radio transmissions, and if we call in an emergency, they’ll know something has gone wrong. I don’t want to alert them until it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Why would they… oh.” The snatch of conversation I’d overheard at Parr’s party suddenly made sense. “I bet that bottle-thing is the prototype Parr was talking about. And Yana was delivering it.”
Kane’s head snapped up. “Parr was talking about it?”
“I overheard him at the party. I was just about to tell you when you did your Oscar-winning performance with Yana.” I couldn’t quite suppress a hint of acerbity.
Kane flushed. “I wasn’t trying to play you. I’m not that pathetic.”
“So what’s the story with Yana, then?”
He sighed and leaned back. “I met her when I was undercover in Moscow about sixteen months ago. I was tracking an arms deal. At the time, I couldn’t find any connection to Fuzzy Bunny, but Yana was my suspect. So I got close to her. I couldn’t tell if she was responding to me or butte
ring me up in return, but we had a…”
He gave me an uncomfortable glance. “…relationship. Then just when I thought I was getting close to cracking the whole thing wide open, she died in a car bombing. I thought. Obviously I was getting too close and she decided to disappear.”
He grimaced annoyance. “My leads petered out, and I got recalled to Canada. Then you showed up with the network key in March. After that I went overseas again, chasing down whispers and hints about weapons and technology that all seemed to point to Fuzzy Bunny, but again, I couldn’t find any concrete evidence.”
Kane stared into middle distance for a few moments. “Knowing what I know now, I’m still not sure I could have done anything differently. Anyway…”
He returned his attention to me. “When I got invited to Parr’s party, I thought they’d flagged my name because of my involvement at Harchman’s this summer. Maybe it was that, too, but as soon as I saw Yana, I knew I’d been set up. I had to pick up my old cover story. And I couldn’t do or say anything out of character because when I was with her before, she planted a listening device on me. I had to assume she’d done the same again.”
He frowned. “I didn’t think you’d believe she meant anything to me.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I gave him a rueful smile. “You’re James Bond. A guy like you has a girl in every port.”
“A guy like me…” He trailed off, looking incredulous. “That’s what you think? You think I’m some kiss-kiss-bang-bang action hero who goes around seducing women in between blowing things up?”
“Um… well…” I made a hesitant gesture toward the rear of the plane. “If the condom fits. I mean, seriously, it reads like a Hollywood script. You save my life, kill the bad guy… um, girl, whatever… find out we’re about to go down in a fiery plane crash, and the first thing you think is, you need to get laid before we die? Admit it, danger gives you a giant hard-on. And you’ve been in danger lots of times.”
A flush climbed his neck. “It’s a combat reaction,” he growled. “The body diverts blood flow and all other resources to the muscles during a fight. When the fight is over, the blood goes… back…” His flush deepened. “To other places. And no, I don’t screw whichever woman happens to be handy at the moment. In fact…”
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