by Cindy Dees
Amanda peeled off Taylor’s shirt. His pants followed, along with the rest of his clothes. How her clothes disappeared, she wasn’t quite certain, but she definitely didn’t care. She only knew she wanted to be naked and sweaty with him. Right now.
She ran her hands over his chest and felt his heart jump beneath her palms. Her own body responded wildly, suddenly bathed in moist desire. She dragged his head down to hers, kissing him with all the need that had built up in her since that night they’d first met.
Taylor met her head-on, his tongue wet and hot, swirling inside her mouth. He groaned and she arched up into him, voracious for more. Their teeth clacked together in their careless rush, but she didn’t care. She sucked on his tongue, pulling it into her mouth rhythmically, mimicking the sex act she craved like a bad addiction.
Taylor backed her up toward the bed, breaking her fall with a knee beside her. And then he loomed over her, big and hard and hot. She ran her nails down the length of his throbbing flesh and he grabbed her wrist and pulled it away. She laughed up at him and he growled in response as he quickly slipped on a condom.
She reached for him again, tugging him down to her, and this time he didn’t resist. His weight was glorious, pressing her deep into the mattress. She felt a sheen of sweat on his back as he ground his hips against her, teasing her with the hard slide of flesh against her pulsing core.
She undulated up into him, coaxing him to come inside her, but he slid down her body maddeningly and took her breast into his mouth. She lurched up off the mattress as lightning zinged to every region of her body and wrapped her legs around his hips.
That did it! He surged up over her and thrust into her, impaling her in a single stroke. She cried out at the exquisite sensation of being stretched not quite to the point of pain with his burning fullness. He began to retreat, but she surged upward, sucking him back down with her greedily.
With a chuckle that was half a growl he drove into her again. She shuddered in an excess of pleasure that rolled over her like a Mack truck. Again he pressed deep within her, and again, she gasped in amazement. She could feel him reaching for some shred of restraint, but she wanted no part of it.
She wrapped her arms and legs around him and pulled him to her very core, rocking her hips in an irresistible rhythm as old as time. He needed no further invitation. His mouth captured hers hungrily, and he plunged his tongue inside in rhythm with his body as they feasted greedily upon each other.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, and she hung on for dear life as they rode out the storm they’d made together. It towered around them, a raging hurricane of heat and friction and delirious pleasure. It consumed her entirely, building to a pitch so intense she almost passed out from it. As she spasmed uncontrollably around him, Taylor shuddered and joined her with a groan dredged from the bottom of his soul.
She fell back to the bed, drenched in sweat and satiation so overpowering she thought she might die. They spiraled downward slowly, their breathing ragged, their bodies spent.
Taylor rolled over and pulled Amanda across his chest, holding her close, while they both struggled for breath. Words like shattering and liberating floated, disconnected, through her mind, but she could find no real words to describe her reaction to what had just happened between them.
Gradually, she became aware of his mouth moving warmly against her skin. It traced a lazy path from her ear to her temple. She felt his smile against her flesh.
He began all over to make love to her, but this time so slowly and sweetly she knew she was going to die. And for the first time in her life, peace flowed through her.
“Okay, Xavier, we met our end of the bargain—now it’s your contact’s turn.”
Taylor rolled over lazily and listened while Amanda repeated what sounded like a phone number. His muscles were weak with the residual languor of the greatest night of sex he’d ever had as he looked over at the bedside clock. Almost noon.
He watched Amanda punch out another phone number and reached over to stroke the naked flesh of the small of her back. She smiled at him over the receiver, and the expression went all the way to the back of her eyes. Thank God. He’d been briefly worried last night that the wild abandon of their initial sex would put her off it for good. Lord knew it had overwhelmed him, and he hadn’t brought any big emotional baggage to the experience.
Amanda spoke in English. “A mutual friend suggested I call this number.” A pause. “Yes, he is still breathing, but he is finished. Let’s just say he had an unfortunate exposure to a disease that cannot be cured.” Another pause, and then she snapped, “There was no requirement that he die instantaneously, and I assure you he will be incapacitated for the remainder of his life. I don’t have time to sit around waiting for him to die—it could be a while. But he will never do business again. Will that satisfy you?”
How had the person at the other end responded to that? He watched Amanda listen in silence for some time to whatever the reaction was, her face showing nothing but intent concentration. Then she said shortly, “Got it.” She hung up the phone.
“Well?” he demanded.
“We’re meeting him tomorrow night. He says he’s got the goods on Four Eyes.”
“Is this guy legit?” Taylor asked.
She shrugged. “I suspect he won’t double-cross us now that we’ve demonstrated a willingness to harm someone.”
Taylor frowned.
“Oh, don’t go all worried and analytical on me,” Amanda responded lightly. “I have no intention of turning into a killer for hire. You and I both know Maldonado was long overdue for a comeuppance. And if we can get the information we need, we might just stand a chance of staying alive long enough to have a repeat of last night.”
He had to grin at that one. It was a blatant manipulation, but he indulged her and allowed himself to be distracted. “You’re alive, now, aren’t you?” he asked leadingly.
A slow smile spread across her face. “I am at that, now, aren’t I?”
It was nearly dark the next evening when they finally crawled out of bed and into the shower. They got dressed and had a light supper across the street from their hotel. Taylor hailed them a cab while Amanda watched discreetly for tails.
The pistol holstered under his left arm felt strange, but no way was he going into this meeting without one. He had a second pistol strapped to his right ankle, and he knew Amanda had one in her purse. They jumped into the taxi and pulled away from the curb, Amanda’s attention still focused outside.
“We’re clean,” she announced.
He let out a relieved breath. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d gotten to functioning as though his every move was being watched. Apparently, he’d embraced Amanda’s rule number one of healthy paranoia without noticing it. The squalor of downtown gave way to more prosperous neighborhoods, and their cab began to look downright shabby compared to the ostentatious wealth lining the streets.
He’d picked up enough Spanish to understand when Amanda leaned forward and asked the driver, “How much farther?”
“Not far. One kilometer,” the guy replied.
“Stop here,” Amanda ordered. The guy pulled over underneath a giant mimosa tree, its feathery fronds casting an umbrella of shifting shadow. Something deep in Taylor’s gut was relieved that they hadn’t just driven up to their contact’s home as proud as you please. His intuition screamed that this was a meeting they should approach with caution.
As Amanda counted out bolivars for the driver from the mixed currency wad in her purse, Taylor noted movement down the street. In fact, several movements. “We’ve got company,” he murmured.
She straightened, nodding fractionally. “Let’s take a walk.”
The back of his neck tingled. They were so being watched. They neared the gated entrance to a grand estate, and a man stepped out of the shadows with an easy swagger. He held back a jacket far enough to reveal a leather holster at his hip and uttered a short greeting in Spanish that was clear
ly some sort of a challenge.
Amanda replied fluidly. Whatever she said, the guy relaxed and nodded politely.
They walked past the guard, and Taylor felt the moment when the guy turned away from them and went back to wherever he’d come from.
“Private security,” Amanda muttered.
The estate they’d just passed was far from the most impressive in this area. All of the houses here must have similar setups. “If our contact’s this rich, why didn’t he just hire someone to knock off Maldonado?” he replied under his breath.
“Good question. Let’s ask it when we get there.”
Based on how the house numbers were increasing, they had about a half mile to go. They walked in silence for a couple minutes, and then he asked quietly, “If this is such a safe neighborhood, why do I feel so damned uneasy?”
“I don’t know,” she responded, “but I’m feeling itchy, too.”
Their steps slowed a bit as they peered into the darkness around them. Rolling lawns stretched away into black nothingness behind tall iron fences. The occasional brick wall crowded the sidewalk, and trees towered everywhere.
Streetlights were sparse, coming mostly from decorative lamps at the gates to driveways. They walked a bit farther, and the feeling of being watched began to bother him once more. But this time, no pugnacious guard sauntered out and made himself known.
“I don’t like this,” Amanda mumbled.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her hand drifting to her purse. Casually, he unbuttoned his sport coat for quick access to his pistol. Tension thrummed through him.
“Look relaxed,” Amanda murmured.
“Look sharp,” he retorted.
She grinned up at him. And all hell broke loose. Four men leaped out of the shadows, weapons drawn, shouting for them to freeze. Taylor dived to the right while Amanda leaped left. Their assailants yelled and rushed. He kept rolling, past a tree trunk and out into the street. As his shoulder slammed into asphalt, he ripped his pistol clear.
A dull thud beside his right ear. The bastards were shooting at them! Silenced weapons. He took aim over the top of his head as he completed the roll onto his stomach. Before he landed flat, he pulled the trigger. A sharp cry, and one of the men went down, holding his leg.
A loud report from his left. Amanda. She was functional, then. Another man down. Damn, she was a good shot. He leaped to his feet and zigzagged across the street, drawing thankfully inaccurate fire. He dived for a clump of tall bushes, crashing through the stiff branches with a rending of fabric.
Rolling to a crouch, he braced his pistol in front of him. A black shape dived behind a car about thirty feet down the street on the same side as him. Taylor looked around frantically.
He holstered his pistol and reached up, jumping for a branch overhead. He swung up into a tree and crouched in the crook next to the trunk. He pulled his pistol again and took stock.
No more attackers were forthcoming. One man lay still on the sidewalk across the street and another lay on the ground, grimly wrapping a cloth around his leg. The third guy was being stealthy behind a car and there was no sign of the fourth man.
No sign of Amanda, either. If he had to guess, she’d bolted into the yard across the street and gone cross-country. Probably had the fourth guy in tow.
Nothing Taylor could do for her at the moment. Their unsilenced weapons would no doubt draw a police response in a matter of minutes. He didn’t have all night to sit up here and play hide-and-seek with the turkey behind the car. He thought fast. The pistol in his hand was loaded with Teflon-coated bullets. But the smaller pistol in his ankle holster carried explosive rounds.
He’d get one shot at this; the muzzle-flash would give away his position. He readied himself to jump down and pulled out the small revolver. He took aim at the lower rear end of the car the thug was using for cover and squeezed off three quick shots at the vehicle’s gas tank.
A blinding explosion rocked Taylor, slamming him out of the tree. He fell heavily onto his left shoulder, knocking the wind out of him. He forced himself to his feet while he dragged air into his shocked lungs. Come on, body. Move. A scream from the far side of the ball of flames announced that he’d incapacitated his attacker.
He briefly considered crossing the street and following after Amanda, but that would bring him into view of the two downed men. Just because they were lying on the ground didn’t mean they couldn’t shoot him. There was nothing like a good possum act.
He faded back into the shadows. Dodging from one pocket of black to another, he made his way down the street. Sirens screamed in the distance, and lights were popping on everywhere up and down the street. Screw this.
He jumped up onto the brick wall beside him and dived into the yard behind it. He sprinted across the smooth lawn, making his way behind a sprawling stucco house. A quick trip over the fence and into another property. This place had a pair of barking dogs, but trained killers they were not. The pair of German shepherds followed him as he raced across their territory, leaping and barking as if this were a great game.
Two more estates traversed, and he slowed down to catch his breath. Fortunately, all the commotion in the street seemed to have drawn the private security guards out to the streetside gates. There were a few motion-activated spotlights to dodge, but he jogged, mostly unhindered, toward their original destination.
He crouched inside a wrought-iron fence across the street from the address they’d been given. Their contact lived in a blond, brick colonial mansion resting in a copse of big old trees. A lawn rose gently to its walls and rose beds dotted the expanse. Nice place. Well back from the street. A few lights on. Apparently the fiasco down the road hadn’t alarmed anyone inside. He looked up and down the street. A couple security guards were visible and a police car raced past.
He considered his options for getting across the street unnoticed. None. Well, if he couldn’t hide, he’d blend in. He approached the driveway of the estate he was hiding inside. A guard hovered just inside the gate, his nose all but pressed against the iron bars in an attempt to see what was going on down the street.
Taylor pulled his gun. It was ridiculously easy to creep up behind the idiot and clock him across the base of the skull with his pistol butt. He took off his ruined sport coat, stripped the guard’s jacket off and shrugged into it. It was way too small and there was no way he could zip it, so he pushed it back to reveal his holster. Quickly, he moved over to a digital control pad for the front gate. Crap. Now what?
He pushed the big, round button beside the number pad. The big gates began to swing open. Praise the Lord. He strolled into the street. Stopped to look toward the cluster of sirens. Moved further across the street as if to get a better vantage point. And then he was on the other side and melted into the shadows.
He found a thick clump of bushes beside the fence and flung the jacket up over the iron spikes topping it. He climbed over the fence awkwardly and dropped to the ground on the far side. The coat hung up on the spikes when he tried to tug it loose. No help for it. He left it hanging where it was.
He stuck to the shadows of the trees as far as he could, and then he dropped to his belly. There was enough cover between the beds of roses for him to make his way toward the house unseen.
It was slow going, though. Slow enough for him to have time to wonder where in the hell Amanda was. Was she all right? Had she gotten away from the fourth attacker? Who were those guys, anyway? As he dragged himself foot by foot toward the mansion, one thought crystallized in his mind. He was keeping this appointment come hell or high water. He was going to find out who was managing to stay on their heels like this.
Amanda crouched in the bushes by the street mere yards from one of their attackers. The guy groaned periodically and clutched at his leg wound. Must have hit his femur to be in that much pain. She’d love nothing more than to step out and ask him a few pointed questions about whom he worked for and why he was chasing her, but that would be asking for tro
uble on her part.
Instead she held her position, watching the burning car and waiting for the emergency response that would be forthcoming any minute. Shooting out that car’s gas tank had been an inspired ploy by Taylor. She’d been surprised when she caught the muzzle-flash out of the tree. Good thinking to go vertical.
After her initial dive off the sidewalk, she’d fired a single, lucky shot that dropped one of their attackers cold. Then she’d climbed the fence behind her and taken off running, praying Taylor was still up. Footsteps pounded behind her, and she headed for some shrubbery, dodging in and out of shadows as she tried to lose her pursuer.
Then a stroke of luck. She stumbled on the edge of a hole where someone had dug up something big like a tree. She dived into it, curling up in a ball and clawing at the soft dirt, sending cascades of it over herself.
Heavy breathing passed by. Amanda stayed put, though. The attacker would circle back when he lost sight of her. Sure enough, about a minute later, someone passed by again more slowly. A quiet curse. Uttered in Russian. Her heart slammed into her throat.
She counted to a hundred and then climbed out of her hole. Dirt trickled down the back of her neck, but she didn’t have time to shake it out of her hair or clothes. Moving with catlike stealth, she’d eased back toward the point of the attack. Who were these Russians? Why were they so determined to kill her? And how in the bloody hell were they managing to stay one step behind her and Taylor?
A fire truck pulled up, blocking her view of the burning car. She resisted an urge to shrink back deeper into the shadows as two police cars pulled up seconds later and four officers jumped out. One of them raced over to the two downed Russians. He shouted for a medic and then turned to the Russian with the leg wound. Then, blessedly, the policeman asked who the guy was. Amanda strained to hear the man’s answer.
“Nikko Biryayev. Russian State Security.”