Romancing the Alpha: An Action-Adventure Romance Boxed Set (36 page)

“Uh, uh. Not going to happen. Tonight is all about you.” With those intriguing words, he climbed on top of her, kissed her thoroughly, and began a tantalizing descent south.

Each kiss brought him closer to his target. Katy’s clit tingled and her pelvis ached with need. And then he completely ignored the entire area and skipped to her toes. “Not fair,” she said, outraged.

His deep laugh tickled her feet. Trailing kisses up her calves, he paused to tease behind her knee, sending a shock of awareness straight to her groin. She felt wet between her legs—wet, slick, ready.

Dex’s mouth moved north to the tender flesh of her inner thighs. The sensation of his stubbled cheek against her soft skin was almost unbearable. Katy ran her hands through his hair, twisting dark strands around her fingers.

Finally, the torture ended when he claimed her clit, only to start again a second later. Katy pressed her head back into the pillow and moaned. Dex had many faults: arrogance, ruthless ambition, and a tendency to make light of situations she felt ought to be taken seriously. Oral sex was not among his list of deficits.

At first, she was aware of her surroundings but then quickly lost herself in mounting pleasure. Her breathing became shallow, her heart rate rapid. Man, she’d missed this. She’d missed
him
.

Dex used his tongue and stubble to maximum effect, every lick, every movement bringing her closer to the edge. Every time she neared climax, he retreated, only to renew the exquisite torture a few moments later.

“You’re an evil man,” she murmured when he stopped for the nth time. “Just let me come already.”

He buried his face into her neck and tickled her with his laughter. “Hell, no. Torturing you is fun.”

She gave him the stink-eye. “You were totally the kid who made his candy last.”

“On the contrary. I’ve learned patience over the years.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead. “Now, Miss Katy, where’s your vibrator?”

Her attempt at feigning indignation only made him laugh harder.

“I know you have one. I read a magazine article on the plane back from Australia. It claimed that ninety-nine percent of modern women own a vibrator.”

“What makes you think I’m not the one percent?”

He looked her up and down and snorted with laughter. “Are you going to make me search your bags?”

“Oh, all right. It’s in a pink case at the bottom of my backpack.”

His eyebrows arched. “I didn’t think you did pink.”

“Vibrators don’t tend to come emblazoned with the Jolly Roger,” she said dryly.

Dex located the sex toy and returned to the bed. His eyes bugged at the sight of the neon pink rabbit. “Holy crap. This thing is huge.”

Katy pushed herself up on her elbows. “Poor little Dex. Are you feeling insecure?”

He grinned the wide smile of a man who knew he had no reason to worry about his size. “Not in the least. Now lie down.”

She obeyed and struggled not to crack up at his expression of dismay when he caught sight of all the buttons.

“Who knew the female orgasm was this complicated?”

“You manage complex diving equipment on a daily basis, Dex. Don’t tell me you’re defeated by a vibrator.”

“How do I turn this thing on?” He hit the silver button that put the vibrator on maximum power. The pulsating rubber shaft shot out of his hand and flew across the room.

Katy dissolved in giggles. “I didn’t think I’d need to bring the manual on this trip.”

He scrambled to retrieve the still vibrating sex toy. “What’s this powered with? Nuclear energy?”

“Come over here and I’ll show you how to use it.” When he handed her the silky-soft silicone toy, she closed her fingers over his. “I didn’t mean I’d do the work and you’d watch. I’m going to guide you through all the buttons.”

After positioning the vibration the way she preferred, she directed his finger toward the middle setting. “The lower button is better to start, but you’ve already done a fine job at turning me on.”

When the rabbit began to whir, she moaned in pleasure. “Move it around a little.”

“Like this?” The circular motion made her cry out.

“Yeah. Exactly like that.”

With his free hand, he massaged her breasts, tweaking each nipple in turn. The roughness of his palm against her skin made her blood hum.

As the pressure increased, her heart rate accelerated and her breathing grew shallow. When her orgasm hit, she cried out in ecstasy. He kept up the pressure, letting her ride wave after wave of pleasure until she collapsed, sated, against the pillows.

“That was spectacular,” she murmured groggily. “So good.”

He kissed the base of her throat. “I aimed to please.”

“You succeeded.”

He pulled her close and she laid her head on his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her cheek.

He ran his fingers through her hair. “I’ve missed you, Katy. So damn much.”

The feeling was mutual but she wasn’t ready to admit it. Not yet. “This is supposed to be no-strings, remember?”

She yawned and her eyelids fluttered. And then blissful sleep engulfed her.

***

When Dex woke the next morning, Katy was still asleep. Limbs splayed, mouth parted in a delicate O, hair wild. She looked adorable. He’d missed this so much over the last few months. The languid pleasure of waking up next to a naked Katy. The skin-to-skin contact that was so much more than mere sexual attraction. The sense that the two of them—broken, battered, and frayed as separate units—somehow fit together to make a perfect whole.

Katy opened one eye, then the other. A wide smile spread across her face. “Good morning.”

“Morning to you, too.” He kissed her softly on the cheek.

A shadow crossed over her face. “I guess we need to talk about last night.”

“We need to talk about why we broke up.” He pushed a lock of hair back from her forehead.

She scrunched up her pert little nose. “I hate intense conversations.”

“So do I, cupcake, but this one is necessary.” He propped himself up on one elbow and stared at her intensely. “I’m sorry for leaving. I should have canceled the Jakarta expedition and stayed to work things out with you.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Working abroad is part of your job. It was my decision to settle in Dublin and finish my PhD.”

“I know but I can’t help feeling we’d have patched up our relationship if I’d stayed.”

Katy placed a hand on his arm. The warmth of her skin on his felt good. “I was hurting after the miscarriage. I wasn’t behaving rationally.”

For a woman as proud and stubborn as Katy, admitting culpability was a big deal.

“You were depressed and I felt powerless to help you. Everything I said or did seemed to make it worse.”

She bit her lip and fiddled with the edge of her pillowcase. “You were the focal point of my anger. That wasn’t fair.”

“Losing the baby hit me hard, too.”

Every one of her limbs bristled and her eyes flew to his face. “Why? You didn’t want to be a father.”

“That’s not fair, Katy. We didn’t plan the pregnancy. It took me a few days to adjust to the idea of becoming a dad. By the time you went for the first scan, I was excited. And then…” he trailed off, his voice breaking with emotion.

“And then it was too late,” she finished for him.

Tension hung in the air, stretching the seconds into an awkward minute. Eventually, he broke the silence. “Where do we go from here? Were you serious about last night being a no-strings deal?”

“My answer to both questions is ‘I don’t know’.” She leaned forward and ran a fingertip over his early morning bristle. “I didn’t expect seeing you again to have such an impact, but I’m not willing to risk getting hurt again.”

Dex winced but she had a point. His heart was still bruised after their break-up. Whatever happened between them in the future, he wasn’t ready to pass up this chance to start over with her.

“Do you want to stick to the no-strings plan while we’re sharing the apartment?” he asked. “It’s okay if you change your mind.”

“Yeah. Let’s have fun and see what happens.” A wicked grin suffused her face, banishing the shadows beneath her eyes. “Now let’s cut to the important question.”

“Which is?” he whispered, heart beating a rapid rhythm.

Her grin widened. “Which member of the expedition team is the spook?”

Dex’s smile faltered. “What?”

“Oh, don’t play the innocent with me, Dex Fitzgerald. I know why you’re here, and it’s not for the love of the
Lusitania
.”

He laughed and squeezed her hand. “I fucking knew it. Who hired you?”

Katy shook her head. “Not telling. I know you won’t tell me who tipped
you
off.”

“Nope,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Professional discretion and all that.”

She snorted. “Sly, yes. Discreet, no. But to come back to my original question, at least one of our crew has to be a spy. Rumor has it that there was always a spy on previous expeditions in case the divers found anything inconvenient like, say, hard evidence that the
Lusitania
was carrying munitions from America to help the British win the war against the Germans.”

Dex placed a finger between his brows. “After all this time, why would anyone care either way?”

“Because the Americans were supposed to be
neutral
in 1915. And because on previous voyages, the British Navy had
always
sent destroyers to escort the
Lusitania
through the war zone. Only on this particular trip, no escort was sent, despite the Navy knowing a submarine was active in the area and that the German Imperial Embassy in New York had issued a warning to passengers planning to travel on the
Lusitania
not to do so.”

“Wait…are you saying the British and Americans conspired to deliberately let the Germans sink the ship?” He shook his head. “It seems farfetched, even in our jaded world.”

“I’m not sure about the Americans,” she mused, scrunching her forehead. “Woodrow Wilson tried his best to keep them out of the war. However, I think they were secretly supplying the British with guns and explosives to help them win. Given that almost two years passed between the sinking of the
Lusitania
and the Americans declaring war on Germany, my guess is that they had nothing to do with endangering the ship.”

Dex lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling, thinking hard. “Sorry, Katy, but I can’t bring myself to believe that the British would deliberately allow the ship to be torpedoed. That would be taking Machiavellianism to extremes.”

“But no one could have expected the ship to sink within eighteen minutes. Even the German U-Boot commander was baffled that one torpedo had the power to sink the
Lusitania
. It made no sense. They expected it to cripple her, yes, and to humiliate the British. As for the Admiralty, even if they did deliberately put the ship in harm’s way in an effort to persuade the Americans to join the war, they wouldn’t have expected even two or three torpedoes to sink a massive ship in such a short space of time. Given the ship’s proximity to the Irish coast, they could have reasonably anticipated there would be plenty of time for rescue to arrive if the ship was sinking. That the torpedo hit the ship in precisely the right area to cause a massive internal explosion was pure bad luck.”

Her passion for the subject sent a ripple down his spine. Regarding her flushed face and bright eyes was a bittersweet reminder of all the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. Katy seized the moment and wrung every gram of goodness out of each day. She didn’t half-arse a task, nor did she plod through life unsure of her purpose. Whatever she chose to do, she did it to the max. Her quick wits and sassy attitude had hooked his interest when they first met, but it was her enthusiasm and dogged determination to succeed that had captured his heart.

He leaned back and considered her theory. “Why are the British still keen to cover up what happened to the ship? What repercussions could there be a century after the fact? Everyone involved is long dead.”

“I have no idea. National pride? Embarrassment?”

“Perhaps. To bring us back to your original question, who do you think the spy is? You must suspect someone or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”

Katy’s grin was sly. “My money’s on your boss.”

“Rick?” His eyebrows shot up. “No way. I’ve known him for over ten years. He’s a bounder and a treasure hunter, sure, but I don’t see him as spy material.”

“Jeez.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you expect him to show up in a dark suit and sunglasses? This isn’t
Men in Black
.”

“True, but I don’t see Rick being on the payroll of anyone who wasn’t prepared to pay him big bucks and send him in pursuit of something shiny.”

“So who do
you
think our pet spy is?”

Dex turned mental images of their new colleagues over in his mind. “I’m not sure I believe we have a spy, but if we do…Mark, maybe? I only know the guy by reputation, but I’ve never met him in person before.”

“Nah.” Her forehead creased in contemplation. “I don’t think Mark’s a good enough actor to pull off the roll of the flirty tech guy with such aplomb.”

“Who does that leave us with? Jack Huntington is posh enough to attract the likes of MI5 and MI6. Don’t they tend to target the Oxbridge types?”

Katy laughed. “Put it this way—no one’s ever tried to recruit
me
for an intelligence agency.”

“Me neither. Who else do we have? Bill and Moira aren’t likely. We’ve known them for years. Besides, Moira lacks the subtlety required for a covert operation.”

Katy snorted. “Moira lacks a lot of things, and subtlety isn’t top of the list.”

“Now, now, cupcake. Your claws are showing.”

She flipped him the finger. “Moira’s a bitch. I can’t believe you dated her.”

“Long before our time. And I wouldn’t define it as ‘dated.’ We slept together once.” He sighed. They had to tackle the elephant in the room. “You know her Facebook updates were bullshit, right? We worked together on the Jakarta expedition and we took a few team photos. I don’t recall posing for a photo alone with her and I sure as hell didn’t sleep with her. She cropped the pictures and uploaded them to Facebook, presumably to piss you off.”