Dangerous to Hold (33 page)

She tilted her head, unused to having decisions taken out of her hands so summarily. After a moment, she put her palms on his chest and pushed him away.

“Fine. We won't risk it. You just sit on that boulder over
there, and I'll show you how the women of Karistan solve a problem like this.”

“Alex…”

“We have a saying,” she told him, shoving him toward the low, benchlike rock. “One passed from mother to daughter for centuries.”

“I'm not sure I want to hear this.”

Hands on his shoulders, she pressed him down.

“A man may be more difficult to trap than a wild goat,” Alex purred, “but he's far easier to milk.”

 

Later, much later, when they had trapped and milked and flown across the steppes to everyone's mutual satisfaction, Nate dragged on his jeans. In no hurry to see Alex's long, slender legs covered up, he dug only her panties and his jacket out of the pile of scattered clothing.

After wrapping the warm felt-lined denim around her shoulders, he settled down with his back against the cliff and took her on his lap. Resting his chin on the top of Alex's head, Nate stared out at the vast, endless vista.

For a while, the only sounds that disturbed the stillness were the occasional shuffle of the horses as they shifted in and out of their sleepy dozes and the distant call of a hawk circling far out over the plains. The sun hovered just above the line of boulders at the edge of the rocky plateau and bathed the grass below in a golden hue.

Alex pulled the front edges of the jacket closer. The thin felt lining carried traces of Nate's scent, warm and masculine and comforting. As comforting as the feel of his rock-solid chest behind her and the arms wrapped loosely around her waist.

She shifted on his lap and felt a stone dig into one bare heel. Wincing, she rubbed her foot along the rocky ground to dislodge the sharp pebble, then glanced around the bare, rocky plateau. The place probably wouldn't rate on anyone's list of the top ten most romantic rendezvous. No soft bed with silken sheets. No dreamy music or chilled champagne. Not even one
of the thick, cushioning wolf pelts the Karistani women had been known to tuck under their saddles when they rode off to bring food and other comforts to their men riding herd at some distant grazing site. But at that moment, Alex felt more bonelessly, wonderfully comfortable than she'd ever felt in her life. She wouldn't have traded Nate's lap and the open, sunswept plateau for all the silk sheets and wolf pelts in the world.

“Just imagine how many people never see anything like that,” he murmured above her.

She lifted her head from its tucked position under his chin and looked up to see his eyes drinking in the vast, empty distance.

“It calls to you, doesn't it?” she asked with a hint of envy.

He glanced down at her. “It doesn't call to you?”

Alex turned her face to the open vista, frowning. “It used to. Sometimes, at night, I think it still does. But…” She gave a little shrug. “But then I decide it's just the wind.”

He tightened his arms, drawing her closer into his warmth. “You were born here, weren't you?”

“Yes.”

“And?” he prompted.

“And I grew up as sort of an international nomad,” she answered lightly. “I spent the summers in Karistan. In the winters, I attended school in North Philadelphia.”

“And now that you're all grown up? Very nicely grown up, I might add. How do you live now, Alex?”

“Until a few weeks ago, I commuted between Philly and Manhattan. With occasional trips to London and regular treks to Paris for the spring and fall shows thrown in.”

“Not to Karistan?”

She stared out over the empty steppes. “No, not to Karistan. I hadn't been back here for almost ten years when my grandfather died.”

He shifted, bringing her around in the circle of his arms to look down into her face.

“Why?”

“What is this?” Alex returned. “Are we playing twenty questions? We don't have time for games, Nate. I need to get back.”

She curled a leg under her, intending to push herself off his lap. His arms held her in place.

“Tell me, Alex. Tell me who you are. I want to know.”

She turned the tables on him. “Why?”

“A man wants to know all he can about the woman he's going to be riding across the steppes with.”

Alex caught her breath at the steely promise in his voice.

“Tell me,” he urged. “Tell me who you are.”

Alex hesitated, then slowly, painfully articulated aloud for the first time in her life the doubts she'd carried for so long.

“I don't know who I am, Nate. I guess I've never really known. I've always been torn by divided loyalties.”

“Yet when the chips were down, you came back to Karistan.”

“I came back because I had to. I stay because…”

“Why, Alex?”

“Because Karistan's like me, caught between two worlds. Only its worlds aren't East and West. They're the past and the present.”

She stared up at him, seeing the keen intelligence in his eyes. And something else, something that pulled at the tight knot of worries she'd been holding inside her for so long.

His thumb brushed the spot just above her eyebrows. “And that's what's causing this crease? The idea of leading Karistan out of the past and into the future?”

The knot loosened, and the worries came tumbling out.

“I know I may not be the best person to do it. I've made some mistakes. Well, a lot of mistakes. Maybe I should have accepted the aid package. Maybe I should have agreed to the conditions that State Department weenie laid out. I've lain awake nights, worrying about that decision.”

“Alex…”

She twisted out of his arms to kneel beside him. “But I couldn't do it, Nate. I couldn't give away the very indepen
dence my grandfather fought for. I couldn't just hand over the trust he passed to me.”

She broke off, biting down on her lower lip.

Nate didn't move, didn't encourage her or discourage her by so much as a blink. With a gut-twisting need that had nothing to do with his mission to Karistan, he wanted Alex to trust him. Not because he'd convinced her to. Because she wanted to.

She chewed on her lip for long, endless seconds, then pushed herself to her feet.

“Wait here,” she told him. “I…I want to show you something.”

Alex scrambled up. Pausing only to pull on her pants and boots, she slipped through the narrow entrance in the cliff wall.

N
ate got to his feet slowly. As he watched Alex disappear through the dark entrance to the cavern, he tried to decide what to call the feeling that coiled through him.

Not lust. He knew all the symptoms of lust, and this wasn't it.

Not desire. Holding Alex wrapped in his arms and hearing her open up had taken him far beyond desire.

What he felt was deeper, fiercer, more gut-wrenchingly painful.

He turned to stare out over the steppes, thinking about what she'd knowingly and unknowingly revealed in the past few minutes. He suspected that Alex herself didn't realize how deep the conflict in her went.

Nate himself had never known a home, as most people knew it. He'd never wanted or needed one. Rattling around with Willie in their old pickup had filled all his needs. Even after the authorities caught up with them and forced Willie to leave Nate with family friends during the school year, he'd
snuck away whenever possible to hitchhike to whatever dusty, noise-filled town was hosting the next rodeo.

He'd never put down roots, and he'd never felt himself pulled in different directions by those deep, entangling vines. Alex had roots in two different worlds, but nothing to anchor them to.

Everything in Nate ached to give her that anchor. She was so strong, so fiercely independent, and so achingly lost in that never-never land of hers. With every fiber of his being, Nate wanted to give her world a solid plane. Instead, he knew, he was about to tear it apart.

His savage oath startled the horses out of their sleepy dozes. Ole Red tossed his head, chuffing through hairy lips as he came more fully awake and threw Nate an inquiring look.

“Hang loose, fella. We'll be heading back to camp soon.”

The words left a bitter taste in Nate's mouth, and he turned once more to stare out at the empty vastness of the steppes.

A rattle of stone at the cave's entrance announced Alex's return a little while later. He swung around as she emerged into the waning sunlight and hurried toward him, his heart constricting at the sight of her.

Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in a dark, tangled mass, and the lipstick she'd worn earlier had long since disappeared. She looked like a refugee from a homeless shelter in those baggy pants and his oversize jacket. But as he watched her come toward him, bathed by the glow of the setting sun, Nate could finally give a name to the feeling knifing through him.

He loved her, or thought he did. The emotion wasn't one he had a whole lot of practice or familiarity with.

The thought of what he was about to do to that love curled his hands into fists. When she stopped beside him, he didn't have to glance down to know that one of the items she held in her hands was a small black box.

“My grandfather passed these to me when he died,” she told him breathlessly.

A small metallic chink drew Nate's reluctant gaze to the
tarnished silver snaffle bit she held up. The D-rings to which reins would have been attached were carved in an intricate design, as ornate as any museum piece.

“This was used by a long-ago
ataman
of our host,” Alex said, her voice low and vibrating with pride. “He led five hundred men against the Poles at Pskov, in 1581, when the steppes were still known as the Wild Country. The czar himself presented this bridle bit in recognition of that victory.”

Her mouth twisted. “The same czar tried to reclaim it not two months later, when he decided the Cossacks had grown too powerful. The plains were awash with blood for years, but the Cossacks held the Wild Country. They chose to die before they would give up their freedoms. No Cossack was ever a serf. Not under the czars.”

Her hands closed over the tarnished silver bit. Nate saw the fierce emotion in her eyes, and for the first time understood the power of the forces that pulled at her.

“Scholars say true Cossackdom died after World War I, when long-range artillery made horsemen armed with rifles obsolete. The Cossack regiments were absorbed into the Soviet armies, and the red bear spread its shadow over the steppes. The hosts disintegrated, and people fled to America, or to Europe, or China. Except for a few stubborn, scattered bands.”

She drew in a ragged breath. “My grandfather's father led one of those bands, and then my grandfather. Rather than see his people exterminated during Stalin's reign of terror, he accepted Moscow's authority. But he never gave up fighting for them, never stopped working for Karistan's freedom. Our men died, one by one, in the last battles with the Soviet bear, and with the wolves of Balminsk, who wanted to take the few resources left to us.”

Nate caught the shift in pronouns that Alex seemed unaware of. In her short, impassioned speech, she'd shifted from
his
people to
our
men. From
them
to
us.
The roots that pulled at Alex went deeper than she realized.

“When the Soviets planted their missiles on our soil, they
didn't care that they made Karistan a target for the West's retaliation. But in the end, those missiles will give us the means to keep the freedom we won back.”

Lifting her other hand, she uncurled her fingers. “This has more power for Karistan than the Soviets or the West ever intended it to have.”

Nate didn't look down, didn't look anywhere but into Alex's eyes. “What do you intend to do with it?”

A flicker of surprise crossed her face. “Don't you want to know what it is?”

“I know what it is, Alex.”

She stared at him, her brows drawing together in confusion. “How do you know? How could you?”

As with most moments of intense drama, this one was broken by the most mundane event.

A deep, whoofing snuffle made both Alex and Nate glance around. Red had ambled across the rocky plateau and was now investigating the articles of clothing still scattered on the ground.

“Get out of there.”

The stallion's ears twitched, but he ignored Nate's growled command. One big hoof plopped down on the braided
nagaika.
Nosing Alex's bra aside with his nose, he lipped at the red wool tunic.

“Red! Dammit, get out of there! Oh, hell, he's after the package of chewing gum!”

Still confused, still not quite understanding the inexplicable tension in the man who had only moments before cradled her in his warmth, Alex watched Nate stride across the plateau.

“Come on, Red, spit out the paper! I don't want to have to shove a fist down your windpipe to dislodge it if it gets stuck.”

As Nate tried to convince Red to relinquish his prize, the sun sank a little lower behind the rim of boulders. A chill prickled along Alex's arms that wasn't due entirely to the rapidly cooling air. Feeling a need to clothe herself, she
tucked the silver bit and the black box in her pants pocket, then shed Nate's jacket to pull on her red top.

Kneeling, she reached for the short braided whip no steppe horseman ever rode without. Her fingers brushed over the handful of loose coins and the old pocketknife that Nate had dug out of his jeans earlier. When she touched the bone handle of the knife, she gave a start of surprise.

The first thing Nate noticed when he finally convinced Red to give up the wadded paper and gum and swung around were the tight, grooved lines bracketing Alex's mouth.

The second was the pocketknife resting on her upturned palm. Although he couldn't see any movement, Nate knew the knife was vibrating against her palm.

“If I thought you were the kind of man to go in for kinky sex toys, I'd say this is another one of your emergency supplies.” Her lips twisted in a bitter travesty of a smile. “But then, I don't really know
what
kind of man you are, do I, Sloan?”

“Alex…”

“This is some kind of a device, isn't it? An electronic homing device of some kind?”

“Close enough.”

“What set it off?”

He met her look. “The decoder.”

“You bastard.”

The way she said it sliced through Nate like a blade. Without heat. Without anger. Without any emotion at all. Except a cold, flat contempt.

“That's what you came to Karistan for, isn't it? The decoding device?”

He hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Yes.”

“That's it?” she asked after a long, deadly moment. “Just ‘yes'? No excuses? No explanations? No embarrassment over the fact that you just used me in the most contemptible way a man can use a woman to get his hands on what he wants.”

“No, Alex. No excuses. No explanations. And I didn't
use
you. We used each other, in the most elemental, most fun
damental way a man and woman can. What we had… What we have is right, Alex.”

Her lip curled. “Oh, it was right. It was certainly right. You're good, Sloan, I'll give you that. If there's a scale for measuring performance at stud, I'd give you top marks. I suspect not even Three Bars Red is in your class. But I hope you don't think that one—admittedly spectacular—performance is enough to convince me to give you this little black box.”

They both knew it wasn't a matter of giving, that he could take it from her any time he wanted. They also knew he wouldn't use force against her. Not yet, anyway, Nate amended silently.

“I'm going to mount and ride out of here,” Alex told him, spacing her words carefully. “I'm going to ride back to camp. You and that damned horse of yours will be out of Karistan by dawn, or I'll shoot you on sight.”

“Then you'd better keep your Enfield loaded, sweetheart. I'll be right behind you. Like a second shadow, remember?”

“Sloan…”

“Think about what happened here during the ride back to camp, Alex. It had nothing to do with that decoder. When you work your way past your anger, you'll admit that. You're too honest not to. Think about this, too.”

There wasn't anything gentle about his kiss this time. It was hard and raw and possessive. And when Alex wrenched herself out of his arms and stalked to her gelding, Nate could only hope that the glitter in her eyes was fury, and not hatred.

He stood beside Red while Alex worked her way down the steep incline. His every muscle was tense with the strain of wanting to go after her. But he knew she needed time. Time to work through her anger and her hurt. Time to get past this damned business of the decoder.

But not too much time, Nate vowed grimly.

 

He was halfway back to camp when the chronometer pulsed against his wrist with a silent signal. Nate glanced at the code and reined Red in.

“Cowboy here. Go ahead, Chameleon.”

Maggie's voice cut through the shadowy dusk, tense and urgent. “I think you ought to know the horse poop just got deeper at this end. In fact, it's over my boot tops at this moment. Hang on. I'm going to code Doc in. He needs to hear this, too.”

The few seconds it took for her to call up OMEGA Control spun into several lifetimes for Nate. His eyes narrowed, he searched the shadows ahead for a sign of Alex.

“This is Doc. Thunder's here, too, listening in. Go ahead, Chameleon.”

The sensitive transmitter picked up Maggie's small, breathy sigh. Nate couldn't tell whether it was one of dismay or relief at the news that Adam Ridgeway, code name Thunder, was present in the Control Center. Nate suspected Maggie was already dreading the debrief she'd have with the director when this mission was over, but there wasn't anyone either one of them would rather have on hand when the horse manure was about to hit the fan. Which it apparently was.

“Okay, team, here's the situation,” Maggie reported. “Cherkoff, Sr., dug up a team of Ukrainian scientists with some radiation-measuring equipment of their own. He had them flown in this afternoon. When their equipment showed no evidence of soil contamination, he insisted on watching while we remeasured with ours. He wasn't too happy when he discovered we'd exaggerated the readings a bit.”

“Fabricated them, you mean,” Thunder put in coldly.

“Whatever. In any event, Richard—Dr. Worthington—was forced to rescind the order closing the borders.”

“Hell!”

“I'm sorry, Cowboy.” Maggie paused, then plunged ahead. “There's more. Since the soil samples showed clear, the White Wolf also insisted that the silos be inspected. Richard and I were the first ones to go down. Turns out we were the only ones. We're, uh, still here.”

“Are you all right?” Adam's sharp question leaped through the air.

Nate glanced down at the chronometer in surprise. As one of OMEGA's old-timers, he'd worked for Adam Ridgeway for a goodly number of years. He knew that the safety of field operatives overrode any mission requirement as far as the director was concerned. But Nate had never heard that level of intensity in Ridgeway's voice before. He wondered if Maggie had caught it, as well.

Evidently not.

“We're fine,” she assured Adam blithely. “We're just sort of…trapped here. Richard's working on the silo hatch mechanism right now. He thinks it's been tampered with.”

“Cherkoff,” Nate growled.

“Exactly.” Her voice sharpened, took on a new urgency. “Look, Cowboy, I don't know how long it will take us to get out of here. In the meantime, I can't control what's going on topside. But I do know the Wolf's fangs were bared last time I saw him. He's out for blood. Any blood. If not that of the capitalist scum he hates so much, then that of the Karistanis, whom he hates even more.”

“Guess it's time we pull his fangs,” Doc interjected. “Your play was more effective than you realized, Chameleon. It bought enough time for me to deploy a squadron of gunships from Germany to a forward base in Eastern Europe. They can be in orbit over Karistan in…one hour and fourteen minutes. Less, if the head winds drop below twenty knots.”

The tension at the base of Nate's neck eased considerably. “Well, now, with that kind of firepower, this might just turn out to be an interestin' night. Sorry you're going to be stuck down in that hole and miss it, Chameleon.”