The Russian Seduction (37 page)

“Be happy for me, Stu.” She managed a wobbly smile. “I’m chasing a dream—one I’ve always regretted letting go. How many people can say they’ve dared that?”

“I’m happy if you’re happy.” Casually, he straightened and wandered to the window, glancing down the tree-lined drive toward the South Gate. “He’s quite the fellow, though, isn’t he? Brilliant, committed, sophisticated, courageous—kind of like someone else I know.”

Ambushed by her old friend’s insistence on pursuing the topic she least wanted to discuss, Alexis squeezed her eyes closed. Her throat burned with the heartache she’d been fighting and losing since she returned from St. Petersburg.

“Yeah, well,” she said harshly. “Captain Kostenko is also tyrannical, manipulative, and a goddamn liar. I—I can’t talk about this anymore, Stu.”

“OK,” he said gently, giving her the space she needed. “You’re the boss now, Alexis. Though I hope you’ll find time to keep in touch with an old friend during your ‘adventures’. I’m interested to see how this voyage of discovery you’ve embarked upon turns out.”

“You can count on it.” Alexis raised her blurred eyes to his. “Thanks again, Stu. For everything.”

_____________________________________

After the Ambassador took his leave, Alexis struggled to focus on crating her beloved paintings—the next big item on her moving list, and a task she always undertook personally. But her eyes kept tearing up for some stupid reason. She really didn’t want to spend tonight the same way she’d spent every other night lately—listening to Tchaikovsky and crying in the bath.

But, by the time the short winter day had darkened, she’d pretty much accepted her fate. Sighing, she uncorked a bottle of syrah. Wine seemed to be her best friend lately. The one she could count on not to betray her.

She was climbing the stairs to run her bath when the doorbell chimed. Briefly, she toyed with the idea of not answering. After the unremitting tension and fatigue generated by a series of eighteen-hour days leading up to the President’s visit—not to mention the emotional roller-coaster she’d been riding—Alexis knew she was a wreck, both emotionally and physically.

But kind-hearted colleagues had been dropping by all weekend to say goodbye, and the flood of thoughtful farewell gifts had touched her heart. She supposed she owed whoever it was the courtesy of a glass of wine, at least.

Hastily, she brushed packing debris off her camel-toned cashmere sweater and pushed a hand through her tousled hair. An apology for her untidy appearance was rising to her lips as she opened the door. The record-breaking cold snap had finally broken, and the night air felt almost balmy as it brushed her skin.

And there on her doorstep, filling her microscopic landing with his larger-than-life presence, stood Victor Kostenko.

For what had to be a good ten seconds, she just stood there, feeling like her feet were bolted to the floor. Clutching the doorknob with numbed fingers, her stomach turning cartwheels and her heart executing back-flips under her sweater.

God, he looked good. Yet another telling example she hadn’t needed to prove that his overwhelming charisma and physical impact weren’t due to the snappy uniform.

Nope. Faded jeans that hugged his sinewed thighs, a North Face parka and black fisherman’s sweater suited his broad-shouldered frame just fine. Somewhere he’d picked up a deeper shade of bronze that made his sun-streaked hair seem lighter. And those ice-blue eyes were locked on her like nothing else mattered.

He looked as though he figured she’d slam the door in his face if he even blinked. Which was probably a pretty safe bet.

Still, she couldn’t deny the relief that whispered through her to see him safe and sound. At least they weren’t sweating him in the Lubyanka prison for his too-close collaboration with an American diplomat. Maybe now she’d sleep at night—

From the pavement behind him, a voice she dimly recognized as her secretary’s piped up.

“Um, hi, Alexis?” On Alexis’s last day at post, Candace had finally graduated to addressing her on a first-name basis. “The Ambassador cleared him in, and asked me to escort him over here. But I can, um, take him back if this isn’t a good time…”

Victor still wasn’t letting her up for air, those Nordic eyes locked right on her. Looming over her, close enough to reach out and touch him. But that definitely wasn’t in the cards. Not when she needed to tell him to get the hell out.

“
Privyet
, Alexis,” he said huskily, his chiseled face unusually sober, with none of the deviltry that normally lurked in his gaze. “I have to speak with you. May I come in?”

So
now
he was asking for permission, instead of firing orders at her like a captain on the bridge? Part of her ached to slam the door in his face.

But she knew she’d never sleep again if she refused to hear whatever parting words he’d come to tell her. If nothing else, the curiosity alone would kill her. For her own piece of mind, she needed to nip in the bud any shoot of unfinished business between them.

“I have a lot to accomplish tonight,” she said ungraciously. “So you’ll have to make this pretty quick.” Tearing her eyes away from him, she called, “I’ve got him, Candace, and I’ll escort him back out. Thanks for your help.”

Not trusting herself alone with him in the confines of her vestibule, she pivoted and walked into the kitchen. Her senses preternaturally attuned to his presence, she heard the scuff of boots as he stomped off snow, closed the door, shed his parka.

Alexis took a swallow from her wineglass and spoke without turning. “The living room’s that way. I wasn’t expecting company, so it’s a mess.”

“Your Ambassador called on me at MFA yesterday,” Victor murmured, filling the kitchen door behind her. “He told me that you’re leaving.”

Stuart Malvaux, I am going to kill you
, she thought grimly. She’d known the Ambassador since she was twelve years old, for God’s sake, and the man chose
now
to turn into a matchmaker?

“My plane leaves for Bangkok in fourteen hours,” she said tightly, keeping her back to him. She didn’t know why she was bothering to be civil after the crap he’d pulled, but she reached reluctantly for a clean wineglass.

“Do you want a drink?” she said shortly. “As you can see, I’m having one.”

“The offer is tempting, but I’d better not.” She heard him stalk into the living room. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

So now you’re asking?
she almost said, but confined herself to a snort. Did he think this Emily Post routine was going to soften her up?

“Go ahead,” she said curtly, refusing to feel remorseful for her brusqueness.

Alexis topped off her wineglass and followed him into the cluttered living room, where she caught him pacing before the fire. Deliberately, she perched on the arm of her wingchair. No sense letting him think she was getting comfy—and she sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere near the couch.

While he propped a cigarette between his lips and lit up, she tried not to notice the way he moved. The same edgy prowl she saw every night in her dreams, that air of danger and vitality barely leashed. Not to mention the same mouth-watering whiff of Beckham mingling with the acrid smoke of high-end tobacco, giving her senses a sensual kick that she
so
didn’t need.

She’d read somewhere that great white sharks were born pure white, but sunlight through the water tanned them gunmetal-gray. It made them harder for their prey to spot when the shark streaked up from below for the kill. Well, the thing might be able to change its color, but it was still a shark. Still a menace to everything else that swam, and still the king of predators.

Abruptly, she broke the charged silence that thrummed in the air between them. “I’m a busy woman today—as you can plainly see, captain. Can I ask why you’re here?”

Victor swung to face her, putting his back to the fire, a golden haze of cigarette smoke unfurling above his head.

“I owe you an explanation,” he said simply, “for everything.”

Oh, so now you’re going to explain yourself?
Alexis gripped her wineglass so hard she almost shattered the stem. But she’d better not lose control here. She’d shown him enough of Alexis out of control during their catastrophic little fling.

“If I said I wasn’t curious to hear your take on it, I’d be lying,” she allowed curtly. “But this had better be extremely good, captain. One lie or even a whiff of evasion, and I’ll take great pleasure in having the Marines throw your ass out of here.”

Briefly, the spark of challenge flared in his narrowed gaze—the ripple of aggressive reflex that she’d always found so sexy. Still found way too sexy, damn it.

But he reined himself in, confined himself to a hard drag on his cigarette, and jerked a nod.

“Very well,” he said tersely. “I’ll start from the beginning. The night we met at the German Ambassador’s residence, I spotted you in the crowd before we spoke. I’d read your dossier, as I would for any new contact. But when I saw you…so focused and driven and so goddamn gorgeous, fending off the advances of some greasy Italian, and looking like you wanted to run the man through with a fencing foil—well.”

For a nanosecond, his stern features creased in a rueful smile. Against her will, she felt the tug of forbidden attraction that had pulled them so dangerously together that night, and every time she’d seen him since.

“When I saw you, fired with purpose, glittering like a knife cutting through that sea of hypocrisy…” His voice deepened, sending an involuntary shiver tingling down her spine. “I more than wanted you. I had to have you. My invitation to the Bolshoi was only about that, a man pursuing a woman. I couldn’t have cared less about your damn demarche. So when I met you at the theater, I had one objective only—to entice you into my bed.”

Despite herself, Alexis caught her breath, hearing the echo of that symphony of desire that had thrummed between them in the intimate darkness. Feeling the way his lips had brushed her nape, the way every fine hair on her body had risen, the way every molecule of her being strained toward him.

“But you were so clearly determined to keep me at a distance.” He scowled. “You were constantly raising barriers between us, pushing me away—and it drove me crazy. I became a bit too overt in my attentions that night. And one of my SVR colleagues saw us. The next morning, I received orders to seduce you. To compromise you, just like Oliver Grey did to Natalia Petrova.”

Alexis gripped her wineglass in trembling fingers and took a fortifying sip of wine. Damn, but it sucked hearing all her worst theories for his behavior confirmed.

“Let me get this straight, captain.” Her voice carried an edge she knew he didn’t miss. “You’re a Ministry of Defense employee, seconded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but in reality still working for the SVR?”

“As I told you before, they recruited me after my father’s accident,” he said gruffly. “Initially, I was reluctant. But I was also desperate to redeem myself for the so-called drawback of my Ukrainian heritage. To prove my loyalty to the Motherland. Undoubtedly, they assumed this motivation would prevail when they instructed me to seduce you.”

He pulled in smoke, his Slavic features tight “At the time, their inclinations and mine were in perfect accord. I couldn’t get you out of my head—I was bloody obsessed with you, damn it. I believed that if I slept with you, this fixation would pass, that it would somehow become…manageable. I’m not making excuses for this, but it’s how I felt.”

Despite her vow to remain detached and unemotional, Alexis felt her cheeks burning. Humiliation churned in her gut, the shame of being used by the man she’d most desired.

“So the day you came to the Embassy party,” she gritted, “the day you kissed me, and convinced me to go with you to the
dacha
. All that talk about giving me the scoop on MFA’s new position. That was all just part of your plan, right? God, you must have laughed when I walked right into it.”

“That was the initial plan,” Victor admitted, his ice-blue eyes locked on her—looking nowhere near laughter. “The agency had written the script and provided a suitable setting for your seduction. But after I kissed you, while I was waiting for you outside, I realized I didn’t care to execute their distasteful little plan. I wanted to seduce you without a goddamn audience. I wanted what was happening to be only about you and me.”

A likely story,
Alexis thought bitterly. Did he honestly expect her to trust whatever he claimed in hindsight his intentions had been? When every nuance of his words and actions that night proved he’d only been using her?

“I telephoned my SVR contact,” he went on grimly, “and told him I’d aborted the plan. Then I took you someplace else: a location I chose myself, which I foolishly believed was clean.”

“But it wasn’t.” Alexis struggled to moderate her voice, but all that buried heartbreak and betrayal was burning a hole in her heart. “The
dacha
is where those career-ending photos were snapped. That photographer must have been hiding in the bedroom before we even arrived!”

“I can’t deny this.” His movements sharp with agitation, he ground out his cigarette in the brass ashtray. “That was my miscalculation. Although I’d used a public telephone to contact my friend’s housekeeper and arrange our evening, I learned later that I’d been bugged, and my instructions had been recorded. This explains how the agency learned our destination and managed to beat us there.”