Strangers When We Meet Page 9
“I must be,” he admitted wryly. “With everything else going down, all I could think of this past hour was getting you in my arms.”
Not at all impressed by his admission, she treated him to a stare that would have sent a lesser man running for the door. “This is a dangerous game you play, Dodge Hamilton.”
“Not that it matters, sweetheart, but I’m long past the play stage.”
His gaze roamed her face, lingering on those brilliant blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the mouth he ached to kiss. The individual features were etched on his mind. The woman they comprised, Dodge now suspected, was etched on his heart.
He couldn’t have picked a worse time or place for this. There was too much at stake, too many issues unresolved. Yet he couldn’t hold back a husky confession.
“Every time I touch you, Larissa Petrovna, I want you more.”
He expected her to shove out of his arms and deliver a withering broadside. Instead she let out a shuddering breath.
“I want, as well.”
Dodge savored a fierce satisfaction at the admission for all of two seconds. Then she tilted her chin and blasted his masculine ego all to hell.
“I want to know if this man you spoke of caused the death of my husband and the pain my daughter still suffers. If I must sleep with you to make this happen, I will sleep with you.”
Shock rocked him back on his heels. Fury followed hard in its wake.
“You don’t have to sleep with me to make anything happen. I’m going to stay on this business with Barlow whether or not we get naked.”
“Oh?” Her lip curled. “And you were not thinking to, as you say, get naked when you opened the door to me?”
“No. Yes. Oh, hell!” With another vicious curse, he reined in his anger and fumbled for the truth. “I desire you, Larissa Petrovna. In ways I don’t begin to understand. You fascinate me and challenge me and make me ache to kiss away the lines of strain that mar your face.”
“It is not strain that mars my face,” she countered bitterly. “It is the past.”
“The past,” he agreed, “and the present. I see the worry here, beside your mouth.”
Lara stood stiff as a fence post while his thumb traced a light pattern at the corner of her mouth.
“And here, around your eyes.”
She refused to respond, refused to acknowledge the tiny ripples his thumb caused just under her skin. She couldn’t deny the hunger his touch roused, however. It curled and coiled and came alive within her, stirring desperate thoughts.
Why not give him what he wanted? What she wanted? He promised sex in its most primitive, cleansing form. He would drive into her. Strong and healthy and eager as a stallion, he would fill her and force every thought, every fear out of her mind. Lara needed that oblivion. She craved that oblivion.
“I will not lie,” she whispered, driven to the truth. “I want your hands on me. I want your body on mine. In mine.”
He sucked in a swift breath, but before he could pounce like a hungry bear on her admission, Lara pleaded with him.
“First tell me about this man you spoke of earlier.”
He let out the breath he’d drawn in and nodded. “I made some coffee. You sit, I’ll pour us a cup and we’ll talk.”
It took Dodge only long enough to lace a mug of heavily sugared coffee with milk to make a command decision. Given the number of civilian and military agencies involved in this operation, he probably should clear the release of the information they’d gathered on Barlow to the Russians. But he couldn’t ask Lara to trust him if he wasn’t willing to do the same.
When he returned, she took the mug and closed her hands around it but didn’t drink. Her whole being remained focused intently on him while he gave shape and substance to the voice he knew had come to haunt her dreams.
“His name is Henry William Barlow. He got hit in the throat in a freak accident when he was a kid and had to have his voice box reconstructed. Ever since, he’s spoken with that rasp you heard.”
She absorbed that without blinking an eye.
“At twenty-six, Barlow started a company called E-Systems. Five years later it was a multimillion-dollar operation. Ten years after that, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury appointed him to an international trade commission.”
Her knuckles whitened on the mug. She’d guessed what was coming.
“As a member of the commission,” Dodge continued slowly, “Barlow traveled extensively in Europe and the Far East.”
“And Russia?” she whispered. “He came to Russia?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“He’s made a number of trips.”
Her throat worked. Her eyes lit with blue fire. “One was in June. June of six years ago. He was in Moscow on the sixteenth day of the month.”
She wasn’t asking. She knew it in her bones, just as Dodge knew she was right.
“Is that the day of the fire?” he asked quietly.
“Da.”
“I’ll confirm that. But let’s assume he was there. What was he doing in your apartment building?”
Carefully, very carefully, she set aside the coffee mug. Dodge suspected she was using the few seconds to decide whether to leap the same chasm he had.
Would she trust him? Could she? He didn’t have a clue until she lifted her eyes to his.
“Barlow comes to see a woman named Elena Dimitri. Her apartment is on the same floor as mine.”
Elena Dimitri. Dodge made a mental note of the name as Lara continued in a low, fierce tone.
“The walls are thin. The doors, too. I hear them arguing as I pass by. He calls her a whore.”
“That fits. Dammit, that fits.”
Lara sat back, blinking in surprise.
“Barlow has a taste for high-priced call girls,” Dodge explained.
They were both silent for a moment, each weighing the significance of what they’d learned.
“So he is there,” Lara said slowly. “So he knows Elena. It is not a crime in Russia to use the services of what you term a ‘call girl.’”
“Maybe not, but it does make him vulnerable to blackmail. Especially if this Elena Dimitri was feeding information on a member of the U.S. International Trade Delegation to the FSB.”
“If she was, Bugarin will discover it,” Lara returned with fierce satisfaction. “I told him her name earlier.”
“Good. And while he’s working his sources, I’ll work mine. ’Scuse me.”
Frowning, she watched him flip up his cell phone. He pressed a single number and waited the second or two for the system to verify his biometrics.
“Yo,” Blade answered. “Something else happening out there?”
“Plenty. Right now, though, I need you to confirm Hank Barlow was in Moscow on the sixteenth of October six years ago.”
“Hang on.” A few clicks of a keyboard later, he was back. “Confirmed.”
Dodge met Lara’s intense gaze and nodded. She let loose with what he guessed was a vicious curse in Russian while he laid another task on Blade.
“Now find out everything you can about his relation ship to a Russian woman, name of Elena Dimitri.”
“That might take a little longer.”
“Understood. Get back to me when you can.”
He hung up to find Lara had pushed out of her chair and was regarding him with a frown.
“Who do you speak to that responds to you so quickly? Air Force Special Investigations? The Defense Intelligence Agency? The CIA?”
The chasm opened again. Dodge couldn’t leap it completely this time.
“Let’s just say my contact has sources in all three of those agencies.”
“So…? So you are a spy?” she gasped. “Dear God above, what have I done?”
He crossed the room in two strides. “You can trust me, Lara. I won’t betray you or your mission. I swear it.”
“How can I believe that?”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”
“And I,” he murmured against her lips, “wouldn’t be so damn crazy with wanting you.”
She stood rigid beneath his kiss for so long Dodge thought he’d lost her. Then, just as he was about to admit defeat, her mouth opened under his.
The effect was electric. In an instant, he went from hungry to hard and aching. He brought her closer, felt her lean, supple length press against him. The intimate contact made her as wild as it did him. Her arms locked around his neck. Her tongue found his.
He found the clip that held her hair and worked it loose. The thick, silky mass tumbled free. Groaning, he threaded his fingers through it and drank in the taste of her. Countries, ideologies, cultural differences all melted away, until there was just him and her… and Dodge’s driving need to discover how many layers she had on beneath her navy pantsuit.
Only two, he discovered to his instant delight. The black turtleneck and prim, white cotton underwear. The first layer he eliminated standing up. The second layer he reserved until he’d swept her into his arms, carried her to the bedroom and shed his own layers.
She didn’t say a word when he joined her on the wide mattress. Nor did she try to hide the puckered flesh that stretched from the underside of her jaw to her shoulder. But the soft kiss he dropped on the side of her neck started a shudder that began at her shoulders and shimmied down her entire body.
“Does it hurt when I touch you there?”
“No. But…”
“But what?”
Despite the pride that kept her from covering her scars, Lara couldn’t suppress a wave of shame. Her disfigurement had made her the object of so many embarrassed or pitying glances over the years.
“They are not beautiful, these scars.”
“No, they’re not.”
She stiffened at his ready agreement. The heat lessened in her belly, only to flare hot and bright again when he brushed another kiss along her jaw.
“But you are, Larissa Petrovna. So beautiful you make me hurt.”
His voice was so soft, his touch so caressing, she bit back the denial that rose to her lips. Then he planed his palm down her stomach and she bit back a gasp, as well. His tongue and teeth worked erotic magic on her neck, her breasts, her belly.
“You’re like a winter night.” His breath washed hot on her skin. “Moonlight on snow. Gold on silver. You take my breath away.”
He exaggerated. Greatly. She was too pale, too thin. Her hip bones protruded. Her ribs showed like an old washboard. But her breasts were full and heavy when he freed them from the cotton. And when he suckled like a babe and drew her nipples into tight, aching points, murmuring outrageous gallantries all the while, she almost believed him.
He was so skilled, this cowboy. So incredibly skilled. He knew just where to stroke, where to press. He talked to her all the while he played with her, kissing, nipping, soothing where he stung.
And his hands! She could not believe his hands! Sandpapery rough, his fingers moved over her, slipped between her thighs, slid into her. Within moments, he had Lara arching her back. Mere seconds more, she screamed.
“You feel like silk.” His fingers moved with maddening deliberation. His tongue and teeth tormented her ear. “Hot, wet…”
“No more words!” she hissed, jerking her head away. “I need no more words.”
His grin popped out, so wicked that her breath stuck in her throat. “Fine by me. I’ll save them for next time.”
Rolling to the side of the bed, he scooped his pants from the floor and fished his wallet from his pocket. A moment later, he snapped on a condom with an expertise that left Lara in no doubt he’d done it many, many times before.
Torn between exasperation at his handy supply of contraceptives and relief that he carried one, she could only sigh when he turned back to her. There was nothing of the too-cocky American cowboy in him now.
Only elemental male, primed and ready. He was broad of shoulder. Ridged with muscle. His sack rode tight between his legs. His sex jutted thick, glistening within its plastic sheath.
In one swift move, he covered her and pressed her deep into the mattress. She spread her thighs, gave him entry. With a flex of his buttocks, he pushed in, pulled out, pushed in again. Bending her legs, Lara locked them around his thighs and made the movements her own.
She knew a fleeting stab of sorrow for the husband she’d lost and would never again hold in her arms. She also knew she would pay for this insanity. Bugarin would be waiting for her when she returned to her room, so furious at her prolonged absence that his fleshy jowls would quiver like suet. He’d demand a full report, know if she lied.
At this moment, she didn’t care. For an hour or two or three, she would not let herself think about what had come before or would come after. Right now, for this small atom of time, she would not think at all.
Then Dodge rose on his elbows and tangled his fists in her hair to drag her head back. His eyes gleamed down at her. So intent. So intense.
He flexed his hips, surging into her with such raw power that he pushed her up against the backboard. Gasping, Lara dug her fingers into his shoulders. They bunched under her hands, slick, smooth.
Her release came so fast she barely had time to prepare for it. Like a missile igniting, the first stage engulfed her in a fury of heat that arched her back and ripped a groan from deep in her throat. Two heartbeats later, she shot straight into orbit. Dodge followed with a muffled grunt.
After the first time, he held her cradled against his side. She rested her head on his shoulder and told him of her parents, of her decision to make a career of the military, of Katya. He spoke of his youth, of the absurdity Americans called the rodeo, of his love of flying.
After the second time, they slept.
Only when the night pressed in on them and they rose to dress did they confront the matter that had brought them to this place.
“How long do you think it will be until you hear something from this contact of yours?” Lara asked as she tugged her sweater over her wildly tangled hair.
“Tomorrow. Next day at the latest. How about Bugarin?”
Her nose wrinkled. “He must go through eight levels of bureaucracy. But with the urgency of our mission, it will be fast.”
“Good.” The feral glint of a hunter came into his eyes. “I want all my ducks in a row when I pay our friend Barlow a visit.”
“He is no friend of mine,” Lara said fiercely. “But know this, Dodge Hamilton. When you go, I go with you.”
When he looked as though he would protest, she flung up a hand.
“I am determined on this. Do not even try to deny me.”
“No, ma’am.”
She weighed the response with suspicion. Did he mock her? Would he slip away after he received the information he sought?
She would watch him, Lara decided. During the day tomorrow, while they conducted the next scheduled missile inspection. During the night, as well. The thought sent a shaft of sensual anticipation straight to her belly.
Shaken by the sensation this man roused in her, Lara threw on her coat and stalked toward the door.
“Wait.”
He grabbed his jacket, moving her to protest.
“You don’t need to accompany me.”
“Yeah, I do.”
No way Dodge was letting her walk across the deserted parking lot this late, alone. Whoever planted that bug on her window could be watching, waiting. The possibility hunched his shoulders and kept him on full alert as they exited his building.
The rain had ended at last. The clouds had moved on and a million stars studded the dark sky. Dodge drew in a breath of the sharp, clean air, then pushed it out again when a figure in camouflage BDUs stepped out of the shadows. He carried a Heckler & Koch automatic nested in the crook of one arm. The subdued patch of the 90th Security Forces Group was barely visible
on his cap.
“Looks like Colonel Yarboro’s not going to allow any other unauthorized individual access to your team,” he murmured approvingly.
The sentry pointed his weapon’s muzzle ground-ward and approached. Dodge recognized him as one of the military police who’d guarded the convoy on several inspections.
He recognized them as well, and tipped two fingers to his hat brim. “Evenin’, Major Petrovna.”
“Good evening.”
His glance flicked to Dodge. “’Evenin’, sir. Out kind of late, aren’t you?”
“So we are.”
“Yeah, well, impavide.”
“Thanks.”
When he melted into the shadows, Lara frowned. “What is this impavide?”
“The motto of the 90th Missile Wing. It translates to ‘undaunted’ in polite company. Something different after a few beers. C’mon, let’s get you inside.”
After the sharp night air, the heat of the hallway sucked the breath from their lungs. Their footfalls echoed in the empty corridor. Dodge waited until Lara had unlocked her door and he’d checked the interior of her apartment before sliding his arm around her waist.
“About tonight?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know where this thing between us is going, but…”
“It can go nowhere.”
“But wherever it goes,” he continued with a rueful grin, “it’s going to be one hell of a ride.”
She didn’t answer for long moments. Then she muttered something that sounded very much like the Russian equivalent of “what the hell,” and dragged his head down to hers.
Chapter 9
Dodge checked in with Blade at oh-six-hundred the next morning to confirm OMEGA’s electronics wizards were hard at work dissecting the bug.
“No detailed info as yet,” Blade related. “Mac says the coating on the transmission fiber is some kind of new composite she hasn’t seen before. She has her folks researching recent patent applications to see who manufactured it.”
“If it tracks to E-Systems,” Dodge vowed grimly, “I’m hitting the road for Denver.”