Dangerous to Hold (36 page)

She didn't move, didn't speak, for long, endless moments. “You'd live here, with me?”

“I'd live in the back of a pickup with you, Alexandra Da
nilova. Or in North Philly, or Wolf Creek, or Parsnippety, New Jersey. I never needed an anchor in this world until I met you. Now you are my anchor.”

Alex felt her separate halves shimmer, then splinter into a hundred smaller and smaller pieces, until the different worlds that had pulled at her for so long disappeared in a shower of dust. With a feeling of coming home, she slid her arms around Nate's neck.

“The decoder wasn't all I gave Katerina,” she whispered. “I also passed her the silver bridle bit, the one the czar presented to my ancestor. The one my grandfather gave to me.”

It was Nate's turn to go still. He stared down at her, his skin drawing tight across his cheeks as he waited for her to continue. This had to come from her, he knew. As much as he wanted to pull it out, or force it out, or kiss her until she breathed it out between gasps of raw passion, he knew it could only come from her.

“Katerina's stronger than she thought she was,” Alex said softly. “She has the strength of the steppes in her, and the wisdom of our people's women. She's of my grandfather's blood. She should be
ataman
of this host.”

“And you, Alex? What do you want to be?”

Her eyelids fluttered for a moment. Nate could count each black, sooty lash, see each small blue vein. Then the lids lifted, and her glorious, golden eyes called him home.

“I want to be your anchor, Nate.”

Alex thought he'd kiss her then. Her heart thudded painfully against her breastbone with anticipation. Her breath seemed to slow, until she forgot to draw in any at all.

Instead, his lips curved in one of those lazy, crooked grins that set her pulse tripping and sent a liquid heat to her belly.

“Which brings us to the point of my little circus act, as you called it.”

Tugging her arms from around his neck, he set her to one side. Dazed, Alex watched as he untied a rolled bundle from behind the saddle. He walked a few steps into the high grass, then knelt on one knee.

Alex raised a hand to shove her hair back. “What are you doing?”

Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Desire, hot and sweet and instantaneous, flooded through her.

“I'm making us a bed,” he replied, confirming her hopes.

She swept the open, windswept plain and endless blue sky with a quick glance. “Here?”

“Here. Katerina told me that when a woman of the steppes chooses a man to take to her bed, she'd best be sure the bed is movable, because it's a sure bet the man will be. I figured it works both ways.”

“Kat—Katerina told you that?”

The leather laces gave, and a thick, shaggy wolf pelt gleaming with silvery lights rolled out onto the thick grass.

“Uh-huh. Right after she reminded me that the Cossacks of old didn't take a whole lot of time for courting. They just swooped down and carried their brides off.”

Tucking the knife back in his pocket, he spread one of the feather-soft mohair blankets that kept the Karistanis warm, even in the bitterest of winters, on top of the wolf pelt. That done, he squatted on one heel and grinned up at her.

“Come here, Alex. Come, shed your clothes and your worries and your inhibitions, and fly across the steppes with me.”

She took a half step, then hesitated.

“Still have some doubts?” he asked with a little twist of pain at the crease that etched a line between her eyes. “Some worries?”

“One,” she murmured, taking a slow step toward him.

“Tell me. Share it with me.”

Her fingers touched his, then slid across his palm and folded around it.

“I'm just hoping you don't have any chewing gum in your pockets. I don't want Red nosing under the blanket at…an inopportune moment, to get at it.”

Laughing, Nate tumbled her to the blanket.

If Alex had thought this joining of their bodies and their
hearts would be a gentle one now that they'd torn down the barriers between them, she soon realized her mistake.

It started easily enough. His hands worked the buttons on her coat with lazy thoroughness, while his mouth played with her, touching, tasting, rediscovering. Her fingers worked their way inside his jacket, planing across the wide spread of his chest. With each outer layer shed, however, their legs tangled more intimately. With each touch, their bodies caused more friction.

By the time Nate tore the last button loose on her tunic and yanked it open, his breath was a river of heat against her skin.

By the time Alex fumbled open the snap on his jeans and pushed them down over his lean hips, her fingers trembled with the need to feel the warmth of his flesh.

Nate crushed her into the mohair, his body hard and urgent against hers. Alex opened for him her arms, her mouth, her legs.

They twisted together, straining against each other, aching with want and with need. Nate buried both hands in her hair, anchoring her head while his mouth slanted across hers.

Alex arched under him, grinding her pelvis into his until at last frustration and need made her twist her hips and thrust him off.

Panting, she propped herself up on one elbow. “The women of Karistan have a saying about a situation like this.”

“Oh, no, Alex…” he groaned, flopping back on the blanket. “Not another one. Not now.”

“Oh, yes, another one.” She slid a leg across his belly, then pushed herself up. Planting both palms against his chest, she straddled his flanks.

“Once a woman decides where it is she goes, she must simply mount and follow the sun across the steppes until she gets there.”

Steadying herself against his chest, Alex lifted her hips and mounted.

 

Later, much later, when Alex had followed the sun until it exploded in a million shards of light and Nate had flown
across the steppes twice, they lay wrapped in a cocoon of mohair and body heat, cooling sweat and warming sun.

Pressed against the shaggy pelt by Nate's inert body, Alex slid one foot along the blanket to ease the ache in one hip joint from her splayed position. Her toes slipped off the edge of the blanket and into the rough grass. She smiled, remembering another rocky bower under another open sky.

“Nate?” she murmured against his ear.

“Mmm?”

“I love you. I'll live with you in the back of that pickup, if you want, or in Parsnippety or Wolf Creek or wherever. But do you suppose we might invest in a bed, or at least a real mattress? And make love on something other than the hard ground once in a while?”

He lifted his head, and Alex's heart contracted at the wicked gleam in his eyes.

“If we're going to do as much flying across the steppes as I think we are, sweetheart, we'll invest in a whole houseful of beds. One for each room.”

He brushed a kiss across the tip of her nose. “One for the attic.”

Another kiss feathered along her cheek. “One for the back porch.”

Alex gasped as he withdrew a bit and bent to reach her lips. “One for the…”

“Never mind,” she breathed, arching her hips to draw him back into her depths. “This wolf pelt seems to be working just fine.”

T
he hazy September sun added a golden glow to the smog hovering above Washington's noontime streets. In offices on both sides of the Potomac, senior-level officials and lobbyists just back from their power lunches shed their tailored jackets and settled down to return their stacks of phone messages before starting their afternoon round of meetings. It was a well-established routine, one respected and adhered to by most denizens of the capital.

In one particular office on a quiet side street just off Massachusetts Avenue, however, the routine had been disrupted. OMEGA's director had called an immediate meeting with two of his operatives.

While she waited for Adam Ridgeway to finish with a phone call, Maggie perched on a corner of his receptionist's desk, swinging a foot encased in one of Alexandra Jordan's supple, cream-colored calf-high boots. The boot, with its decorated tassels edging the top, just skimmed the hem of her flowing umber skirt. A matching tunic in the same burnt orange draped her from shoulder to hip, and was banded at the
wrist and neck with wide strips of corded piping in cream and gold. Maggie rubbed her hands up and down her arms, luxuriating in the sinful feel of the finest, softest cashmere against her skin.

She'd used the transport's tiny bathroom to wash both her eyebrows and her hair in a shallow stainless-steel sink. The shoulder-length brown mass now hung shiny and clean in its usual smooth sweep, and her brows were restored to their natural lines.

But Adam's receptionist, Elizabeth Wells, nibbled on her lower lip delicately as she stared at the kidney-shaped blemish on Maggie's jaw.

“Are you sure it will fade, dear?”

“The guys in Field Dress say it will,” Maggie replied, a little doubtfully. Her faith in the wizards of the wardrobe was severely shaken. The formula that was supposed to dissolve the ink they'd injected under her skin had only dimmed it to a purplish hue.

Forgetting the blemish in view of more pressing concerns, she swung her foot. “Are you sure Adam said he wanted to see us as soon as we arrived at the headquarters? Usually he talks to us after the debrief.”

Kind, matronly Elizabeth sent her a sympathetic look. “He took a call from the president just moments before you and Nate landed. The notes he gave me to transcribe from that conversation include some rather inflammatory remarks from the director of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency. And a highly agitated senior official from the State Department is on the line right now.”

“Oh.”

Sprawled with his customary loose-limbed ease in an antique chair set beside Elizabeth's desk, Nate grinned.

“Maggie, sweetheart, this next half hour might be one of those scenes Willie says looks a whole lot better when you're peering at it through the rearview mirror instead of the windshield.”

Maggie laughed and tucked the sweep of her hair behind
one ear. “I just hope it's only a half hour. Neither one of us has slept in the last thirty-six. What's more, we just shared a twenty-four-hour plane ride with a horse. I need a bath and some sleep, preferably at the same time.”

When Elizabeth's intercom buzzed a moment later, she lifted the receiver, listened a moment, then nodded.

“Go on in, dear. You too, Nate.”

Maggie edged off the desk and smoothed her hands over her hips. The soft cashmere settled around her in elegant, body-hugging lines. She might not have had recourse to her perfumed body lotion to counter the effects of Red's companionship, but at least she looked better than she smelled. A
lot
better.

When Maggie walked into the director's office a few steps ahead of Nate, Adam felt his shoulders stiffen under the wool of his tailored navy wool blazer. With considerable effort, he refrained from reaching up to tug at the Windsor knot in his crimson-and-gray-striped Harvard tie. He stood quietly behind his desk, absorbing Maggie's vivid impact.

Sunlight streaming through the tall windows behind him highlighted the golden glints in her chestnut hair and picked up the sparkle in her wide brown eyes. It also illuminated every one of the soft peaks and valleys of her body, displayed with stunning, sensual detail in a sweater dress that caused Adam's fingers to curl around the edge of his mahogany desk.

He returned the two agents' greetings calmly enough, and waited until they were seated in the wingback chairs in front of his desk before taking his seat.

“I realize that it's somewhat unusual to call you in before the debrief in the control center,” he began. “But there are certain matters that need clarification immediately.”

Opening a manila folder centered on his desk, he pulled out a hand-scribbled note. “Before the president calls the rather substantial campaign contributor who offered Three Bars Red to Karistan in the first place, he'd like to know why Alexandra Jordan turned the stud down. Was his performance unsatisfactory?”

Maggie folded her hands in her lap and waited gleefully for Nate's response. She hadn't had the nerve to mention “performance” matters in front of Cowboy during the trip back, not with Alexandra Jordan curled in his lap for most of the way.

Nate gave Adam one of his easy grins and sidestepped the issue.

“Let's just say Karistan has more pressing matters to attend to right now than horse-breeding.”

“So I understand,” Adam responded, turning to Maggie. “One of which is establishing a science and technology institute at the cost of…”

Maggie swallowed a groan as he extracted a sheet filled with rows of neatly typed figures.

“…of eight million dollars. A price, I'm informed, that was negotiated by a certain Dr. St. Clare.”

She gave a small shrug. “Well, we were asking for ten million.”

“I suppose you have a good reason for entering into negotiations on behalf of a foreign government…against your own.”

Maggie hesitated, then leaned forward, trying to articulate the feeling that had crept over her with chilling intensity during her hours in that silo.

“If a future graduate of that institute finds a way to make nuclear power obsolete, the world will be a safer place for everyone. Eight million dollars will be a small price to pay. That stuff's scary, Adam. Especially when you're locked down in a hole with it.”

“I see. Perhaps that explains why you decided to blow the silo hatch, causing a wave of unsubstantiated reports of a nuclear explosion to ripple across the globe?”

Maggie sat back, nodding. “Yes, that explains it. That and the fact that Cowboy needed me.”

“Our forces were pretty thin in Karistan, Adam. We were real relieved when Maggie and Richard Worthington showed up.”

Instead of placating OMEGA's director, Nate's quiet contribution caused an unexpected reaction. Maggie held her breath as Adam's blue eyes frosted over until they were positively glacial.

“Yes, let's discuss Dr. Richard Worthington.”

He slid the typed list inside the folder and pulled out a faxed copy of a memo. “This is an interagency request for the permanent assignment of a geologist to Dr. Worthington's team. At his own insistence, he's been assigned as the chief inspector for the START treaty provisions. He will be traveling extensively all over the world for the next few years, inspecting silos.”

Maggie shuddered at the thought of Richard—sweet, clumsy Richard—climbing down into an endless series of silos.

“This request has the highest national priority,” Adam added. “Since the geologist in question is one Megan St. Clare, the president has asked me to favorably consider it.”

“I was expecting this,” Maggie muttered.

“You were?”

“Yes. It has something to do with endo—” She glanced at Adam's rigid face and waved a hand. “Never mind.”

“I need an answer for the president,” he reminded her.

“Look, Adam, when you turn this request down would you include a suggested alternate name? I know a geologist who's worked with my father. She's superbly qualified. A widow with no children, so she'll be able to travel. And she's just a couple years older than I am,” Maggie finished, with a private, satisfied grin.

“You're assuming I'm going to turn down a personal request from the president?”

Maggie met Adam's eyes across the acre of polished mahogany that served as his desk. What she saw in them caused a tight curl of pleasure.

“No,” she replied softly, the smile in her eyes for Adam alone. “I'm not assuming that you'll turn it down. I know you will.”

Nate glanced from one to the other. Then his lazy drawl broke the silence. “If that's all, Adam, I need to go upstairs and get with Doc before the debrief. He's got some questions for me.”

Adam stood and tucked the ends of his tie inside his blazer. “That's all I needed you for, but you don't have to rush your session with Doc. He's planning to stand by after the debrief for an extended session with you and Maggie.”

Nate shook his head as he pushed himself to his feet. “Can't do it. I've got to make this debrief as quick as possible. I'm on borrowed time here, folks.”

He hooked his thumbs in his belt, grinning. “Alexandra's picking Willie up at the airport in two hours, and then they're going to put their heads together. About wedding clothes. Unless I want to find myself walking down the aisle in Willie's unique concept of formal wear, all decorated with Alex's thingamabobs, I'd better go protect my interests.”

“Since I'm going to be giving you away, ask her to design something for me,” Maggie begged.

Nate's blond brows lifted. “
You're
giving
me
away?”

“I am. Alex says it's a custom among the Karistanis. The women of her host have a saying, something about only a woman being able to make sure the man is where he is supposed to be when.”

“I might have known,” Nate groaned.

“Oh, by the way,” she added, sailing toward the door, “one of my responsibilities in this role is to call out a list of your positive and negative character traits, so the bride can decide whether she'll accept you or not. I've already made up the lists, Nate. One of them is
really
long.”

She almost made it out the door on the wake of Nate's laughter.

“Just a moment, Maggie. I'm not quite finished with you.” Adam nodded to Nate as he walked around the corner of the desk. “We'll join you upstairs for the debrief in a few moments.”

Nate gave her an encouraging wink and left.

Maggie ascribed the sudden weakening in her knees to the fact that she'd been without sleep for the last thirty-six hours. It had nothing to do with her body's reaction to the controlled grace of Adam's movements or the overwhelming impact of his nearness. Or to the way his eyes seemed to survey every square centimeter of her face before he spoke in that cool Boston Brahmin voice of his.

“You will never…
never
…again attempt to blow anything up when you're locked inside it. Do I make myself clear, Chameleon?”

Since he was standing two heartbeats away and Maggie drew in the spicy lemon-lime scent of his aftershave with every breath, it would've been hard for him to be any clearer.

Still, she wasn't about to let Adam know quite the impact he was having on her hormonal serums. Keeping her voice cool and her eyes steady, she returned a small smile.

“Loud and clear, Chief.”

For a moment, she thought he was actually going to admit that he was furious.

Fascinated, Maggie watched a tiny muscle at the side of his jaw twitch. To her profound disappointment, the twitch subsided.

“Good,” he said quietly.

Well, maybe next time, she thought.

Summoning up a cheeky grin, she tipped him her version of a military salute, the one that always brought a pained look to his aristocratic features.

“By the way,” she tossed over her shoulder as she headed for the door, “remind me to tell you about the interesting uses the women of Karistan have for yak oil sometime.”