The Russian Seduction (9 page)

“Very well, if you insist on it. Ah, Victor…” Another intimacy, saying his name like that, and it had to be the last one. “The fact is, there’s nowhere in Moscow the two of us can possibly go.”

“This is untrue. We’re going,” he told her calmly, the bloody tyrant. His entire crew must have been galley slaves. “We’ll discuss the particulars in the car.”

“We need to discuss the particulars now!” Fueled by caution, still turned on as hell, she gathered her legs beneath her and scrambled away from him. There was no way she could possibly regain the initiative while her head was full of Beckham and the scent of her own arousal. “On second thought, let’s just forget it. This encounter was a mistake, so there’s really nothing to discuss.”

Pushing a hand through his blond hair, he locked in on her skittish gaze and hoisted his brows. “You do realize that I’m not leaving this room until you agree to accompany me. Yes?”

“No,” she said stubbornly, putting the conference table between them. “This entire discussion is ridiculous. I’m not an ensign on your submarine, Captain Kostenko! I don’t have to salute you and say
yes, sir
.”

“Don’t get excited, Ms. Castle,” he drawled, all arrogance. “You can tell your superiors that you’re cultivating me. That I’m resentful of the system that took my boat away. That you think you can turn me.”

“I’m not an intelligence operative,” she countered, with a glance toward the door. Although of course the bug was in the light fixture. “It’s not my job to turn you.”

“But they’ll want to use you anyway.” He met her gaze dead on, challenging her to deny it. “Won’t they?”

“And what about you?” She challenged him right back. “What orders did you receive about turning me? I’d have to check, but I’ll bet I’d be the highest-ranking U.S. diplomat your government has compromised since the fall of the Soviet Union.”

“Only the highest-ranking diplomat your government knows about,” he murmured. Joking?

“I’d be quite the coup for you, captain.” Screw the bug, and screw him too. “They’d probably award you another medal for it. They might even forgive you for your father.”

The minute the words left her lips, Alexis wished she hadn’t said them. Victor Kostenko was not a man to be pushed around.

A muscle flexed in his jaw as he pushed away from the wall and indulged in a bit of pacing himself. He prowled before the window, his movements leashed tight against brooding anger. Searching his pockets, he dug out his cigarettes and lighter.

“You can’t smoke in here,” she pointed out. “There’s a Clean Indoor Air Act—”

“Tell me, Ms. Castle,” he muttered around his cigarette, lighting up anyway. “Were you a hall monitor in that elite preparatory school your mother insisted you attend?”

Heat climbed into her face. No doubt about it, the man knew how to push her buttons. Deliberately, she took a breath and modulated her voice. “Don’t go through the ceiling, then, when you set off the smoke alarm. I’m warning you now, it’s a deafening claxon.”

He slanted her a sardonic glance, but at least he swung the window open. An edge of ice-cold air, sharp as a stropped razor, sliced into the overheated room. Alexis was still warm enough—after kissing him like that—to welcome it.

Facing the window as he smoked, his broad back toward her, he spoke abruptly. “You’re going to make me raise the stakes, Ms. Castle. If you want to keep the focus on your damned job, then I can accommodate you.”

“Oh?” She eyed him cautiously. Where was he going with this?

“What would you say if I told you,” he said, exhaling smoke, “that I have new information for your government regarding the so-called aggression in Ukraine?”

Riveted, Alexis stared at his back. He was too damn inscrutable, even when she could see his face. “Are you saying you have documents for my government?”

“I am saying I have oral points,” he said curtly, flicking ash through the window. “Which I am instructed to deliver at an appropriate level of my discretion. I was considering addressing the matter to your former husband.” He allowed a calculated pause. “But what a token it would be of my ministry’s regard, Ms. Castle, if you were to receive this breaking news instead.”

Alexis’s thoughts raced, a current of excitement zinging through her. He was right, of course, and he knew she was ambitious enough to be tempted. Getting the jump on Geoff wouldn’t cost her any sleep either.

But it would be a grave tactical error to react too eagerly. Let him sweeten the deal. Besides, she still didn’t know what was going through his head. She sealed her lips and counted silently to five.

He chuckled under his breath as if he’d read her mind. “I assure you this information will be worth your while, Counselor. Just think of the reporting cable you’ll get.”

“You have my attention, Captain Kostenko,” she said briskly, fishing a pen and notepad from her purse. “What would you like me to convey to my capital?”

He swung around to face her, his gaze shuttered, lounging against the sill as he eyed her through a veil of smoke. “Give me an hour of your time, outside the confines of your Embassy and starting right now, and I’ll brief you in detail.”

“I beg your pardon?” She stared, incredulous, certain she had to be misunderstanding him. Surely, her fleeting sexual fantasy was getting out of hand.

“You heard me.” His eyes locked on hers with laser-like intensity—all but saying
I dare you
.

“If you have talking points to deliver, we can have that discussion right here,” she pointed out, trying to ignore the thrill of challenge that zinged through her.

“Immediately
after
you’ve cancelled your meeting, one presumes, with that senior NATO official?”

Damn it, she wasn’t going to let him provoke her. But he
was
going to make her tackle the underlying issue head on. “If you think that I’ll—that I’d do anything inappropriate just to get the jump on my ex, captain, you’re gravely mistaken. He’s my direct supervisor…at least for the moment. As such, I owe him my full support.”

The support he says I never gave him while we were married,
she finished silently.

“I said nothing of the kind.” Lazily, Kostenko reached without looking to pinch out his cigarette on the snowy ledge. “But the terms are non-negotiable, and they expire in five minutes if you’re not sitting next to me in my car. Do you accept my proposal?”

“I can’t believe you’re serious!” She ran agitated hands over her hair, smoothing loose tendrils behind her ears. Somehow, she had to get this conversation back on track. “We’re talking about the fate of nations here, captain, and you’re treating it like a game of roulette.”

“We are discussing the security of both Ukraine and the Russian Federation, neither of which I take at all lightly.” In the pearlescent gloom of the early arctic night, his features were chiseled granite—a Russian game face, yielding nothing. “Do you accept the terms, Ms. Castle? Tell me now.”

Half-a-dozen practical considerations crowded her brain. But beneath them simmered a wicked excitement that it was imperative she manage. The stakes were far too high to make a decision based on impulse—with the potential to impact global security, not to mention torpedo her own career. Yet this senior Russian diplomat had challenged her directly, and she couldn’t afford to back away.

“I can’t just walk out the door with you.” She worked to remain calm, keep her voice uninflected. “I’d need to lock up my office, tell my secretary where I’m going. I’d need to get my coat, for God’s sake. It’s twenty below zero and dropping out there!”

“I am not preventing you.” He shrugged, not yielding an inch of terrain. “You may perform these tasks now.”

“Before we agree, I’d need to make sure we’re clear, captain.” She made her face as cool as his, as though she dealt with outrageous ultimatums like this one a dozen times a day. “If I were to leave with you, I’d be committing to nothing, ah, physically.”

His eyes narrowed. “Understood.”

“And I can’t go strolling out past the Marines at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon,” she continued in mounting heat, “with a Captain First Rank of the Russian navy. It would be all over the Embassy grapevine before we even cleared the corner.”

“All right.” He tilted his head, listening for her counterproposal. But she could tell by the satisfaction quirking his lips that he already knew he was going to get his way, the smug bastard.

“I’ll meet you at the Uzbek restaurant near the metro station in fifteen minutes,” she conceded, trying to think clearly despite the riptides of anticipation that wanted to pull her out of her depth. “That’s the best I can do.”

“In that case, we’ll need two hours.” He checked the pricey-looking Rolex strapped to his wrist. “To navigate the lamentable rush hour traffic.”

“I can’t imagine what we’re going to talk about for two hours.” She fought down the blush that wanted to climb into her face as her imagination supplied the details. She had to make a stand here, mount some defense rather than give up the fort.

“A word of caution before we leave,” she said firmly. “On your submarine, you may have been accustomed to having everything your way—”

“You’d be surprised.” A gleam of devilry surfaced in his ice-blue eyes. “Although I do prefer it.”

“Well, if you’re going to work with me, captain, you’d better get used to sharing the bridge.”

“I look forward to it, Alexis,” he murmured, and flashed her that bad-boy smile. “I’ll be waiting for you at the
rendezvous
point at 1530. Don’t be late.”

CHAPTER FOUR

To her dismay, Captain Kostenko hadn’t been chauffeured to the Embassy in the MFA’s sedate sedan. Instead, he drove his own high-end sports car: black sapphire exterior, classic star-spoke wheels, cushy leather seats trimmed in ruthenium gray. Low-slung and powerful, sturdy enough to elbow through the rowdy Moscow traffic, and sporting the Holy Grail of Russian traffic talismans: blue government plates that he’d probably bribed someone to get.

The captain shifted gears with a hard, capable hand as they swung tightly onto the
Leningradsky Shosse
and rocketed north. Purring like a satisfied lion, the vehicle accelerated past trolleybuses belching monoxide, grim Stalin-era apartment blocks, and neon-lit casinos crawling with stone-faced security. Then the landmarks blurred as Kostenko kicked the vehicle into light speed, like the
Millennium Falcon
making the jump to hyperspace. But without those nifty deflector shields.

Perched tensely in the passenger seat, with the excellent heater kicking out BTUs against her knees, Alexis slanted him a cautious glance. “I hope you didn’t pilot your submarine like this, captain. You’re breaking every traffic law on the books.”

“Don’t get excited, Ms. Castle,” he said dryly, shifting gears. “The police don’t stop this car—not even for bribes.”

“How convenient for you,” she murmured. “It isn’t exactly your traffic record that I’m worried about—”

She held her breath as the vehicle zipped up to a busy intersection. Kostenko sliced a narrowed glance left and right, then gunned through the red light.

“As I’ve already noted,” she finished, “you’re rather accustomed to getting your way, aren’t you?”

For a few beats he was silent, his stern profile thoughtful under a sable fur cap emblazoned with naval insignia. In the tailored overcoat, his powerful body seemed too overpowering for the space, though she supposed the damn car’d been configured for him.

The stately strains of Tchaikovsky’s
Third Symphony
poured from the speakers. Kostenko’s fingers drummed idly against the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

“You come from money, yes?” he said at last. “Your dossier suggests—don’t take offense—that you descend from the equivalent of American aristocracy. Your father the Undersecretary was heir to one of the so-called ‘robber barons’ of the American Gilded Age. And your mother was linked to one of the great European banking families.”

Alexis shifted uncomfortably in her seat. This was precisely the ‘legacy’ she’d been trying to escape when she ran away to Stanford.

“I’m impressed,” she said lightly, “to find I have a detailed dossier, and that you’ve taken time from your challenging schedule to read it. But yes, those particulars are more or less correct.”