The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove (11 page)

“Soap musicals?” His eyes squinted, deep lines fanning from the corners as amusement reached them. “You mean soap operas!”

“Whatever.”

Leaning his head against the wall, he shut his eyes and smiled, but there was still such anguish in him that it seeped from the edges of his smile like water from a dangerously full dam. Elena caught a soft sound of distress in her throat and slid next to him, her lifelong need to heal anyone who needed her mingling with devotion for him alone.

Murmuring soft words in Russian he didn’t need to translate to understand, she unbuttoned his shirt then slid her arms around his waist and hugged him, nuzzling her cheek against the downy mat of dark hair on his chest.

He put his arms around her convulsively, then caressed her back with long, quick strokes of his hands. Each time his fingers moved from the bare skin of her shoulders to the silk-covered region beneath, the change in texture exploded in her nerve endings. She felt dazed with what he was doing to her and loved the hard, masculine textures she absorbed with her own hands as she rubbed slow circles on his spine. “I give comfort, but I also take
comfort,” she whispered. “Perhaps we can make each other feel better.”

“I must have been very, very good to deserve this,” he said against her hair. “A whole lifetime of good.”

“Some moments are worth a whole lifetime. I have not had many of those, but I’m hoping for more.”

“Maybe I can give you one right now.” His fingers lingered at the top of her shoulders, then slid under the gown’s straps and eased them aside. Her breath shattered as the silk bodice cascaded down her chest, pooling where her breasts pressed hard against his stomach.

Audubon’s hands roamed over her neck and shoulders, then trailed down her arms. She tilted her head back and met his kiss, then traded her muted cry of pleasure for the husky purr of his appreciation. Elena knew the slightest shifting of her body would send the gown to her waist. She reveled in the anticipation for a moment, caught in the delicious exploration that her hands were now enjoying along his outer thighs. Then she flexed her torso just enough to let the inevitable follow through.

He broke away from the kiss as their bodies touched again. His tired, worried mood gentled the urgency, but not the deeper bond between them. “You have choices now,” he reminded her, drawing his fingertips down her neck, then letting them rest lightly over the pulse point at its base. “And privacy. Your body is your own.”

“I know. It’s wonderful to share it with you.”

With a sigh of satisfaction he pulled her onto his lap and bent his head to her breasts. Elena burned with pleasure as he draped her backward over the sweet, harsh vise of his arm. Every pleasurable sensation in the world shot through her as he tenderly explored her with his mouth.

She clung to his shoulder with one hand and stroked his head with the other, weaving her fingers through his silver hair. Looking down, she watched him in a trance of ecstasy. Her breasts were only average in size, with delicate pink nipples that had
never looked large enough to her. But Audubon smiled at their excitement, flirted with them until they were unbearably sensitive, and murmured compliments at their perfection.

Elena lost a smile of wonder in a moan of delight; putting her arms around his head, she shuddered against him and nuzzled his hair. He lifted his head and turned his face against the delicate inner surface of her forearm, placing small kisses in a progression toward her hand. “How do you make flowers bloom?” he whispered, touching the tip of his tongue to her wrist.

“It is … a side effect of … the energy.” Dazed, the cool air enticing her breasts, where his mouth had left the nipples damp and strutted, she carefully shifted herself atop his lap. And she knew when he inhaled sharply and flexed to meet her that she had returned a little of the pleasure he was giving her.

“Does it happen often?” He tilted his head back so that she could dab kisses on his ruddy, parted lips.

“Rarely. Not like it has since I met you.” She kissed his chin, his nose, his tired, lined eyes, and the boyish smile that was growing on his mouth. “I could embarrass myself, if I’m not careful. Or frighten someone, like poor Mr. Rex.”

Audubon looked up at her with an expression of wonder, making her feel no miracle was impossible between them. “I’ll buy you a flower shop. But I insist on being your only customer.”

She made a noise that came out sounding like a dove’s coo—and they both chuckled. The laughter mingled in another kiss, slow and deep, with small, provocative sounds all its own. She stroked his face, and while one of his hands began to tease her breasts with distracting mischief, the other caught her right hand and brought it to his mouth.

She loved the rough-velvet texture of his lips, especially when they slipped across her palm, then brushed her wrist. The air around her shimmered with anticipation; soon there would be no turning back, but she didn’t mind.

“Elena? Elena. What is this?”

Hearing his voice through the pleasant fog of desire, she responded slowly, leaning her head atop his. “Mmmm?”

He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the small bump nestled beside the sinews in her wrist. A rivulet of uncertainty and sorrow crept through her. Straightening, she looked down into his troubled eyes. “It’s a birth control implant.”

After a startled reappraisal of the bean-sized bump, he asked, “I’ve read about these, but they’re not used in this country.”

“It releases hormones regularly, something like taking birth control pills, only there are no pills to take. Once it’s placed under the skin, it stays there for two years. It’s safe.”

“And perfectly acceptable, if it was something you decided for yourself. Was it?”

She looked away. “No.”

His shock and anger hummed through her like sympathetic vibrations preceding an earthquake. He gripped her hand in his. “Were you forced—”

“Not forced really, just strongly encouraged.” She looked him straight in the eye. “All part of the rules for being a healthy, happy, useful research partner.”

“Oh my God.”

The disgust in his voice made her chest shudder with the tiny cramps that come from an immediate need to cry out loud with harsh, unrelenting sobs. She subdued the feeling and spoke with a semblance of normalcy. “This is one secret I should never have told.”

He cursed under his breath, and though she realized he wasn’t cursing at her, but at what had happened to her, still she felt outcast and unsavory, as if she’d told him that she’d been a prostitute. American men were very traditional in some ways, she suddenly recalled being told. Maybe she had the wrong ideas about many things, but she suspected that Audubon was more traditional than not.

But when she pulled her gown straps back into
place and tried to move away, he held her tightly and practically growled at her. “It’s all right. I’m just angry. Hell, not just angry, I’m so damned angry I could strangle Kriloff with my bare hands.”

It wasn’t an idle threat, and she knew it. The compliment of his anger was lost on her as she considered the repulsion in his face and voice. “How many men were there?” he asked.

She froze, disbelieving. “Does it matter?”

He slumped a little, and his voice softened. “No, even one would be too many, considering you had no choice.”

There had been only one boy when she turned twenty-one, a boy her own age, and no one had twisted her arm to make her accept him. But after that she had refused to cooperate, until Pavel came along. And because Pavel was one of the psychologists who worked for Kriloff, she had thought he was off-limits. Falling in love with Pavel—who said he loved her too—was rebellion, she thought, until she learned the truth about him.

She was afraid her explanation wouldn’t make any difference to Audubon. He was looking at her with something she judged to be pity, the last thing she wanted from him.

“It’s not good for us to get so involved, as we did a few minutes ago,” she said as cheerfully as she could, while a huge hollow spot grew inside her. “It will make things more complicated when I leave. I don’t want to remember you as a lover. I probably won’t see you again, so it’s smart we stopped when we did.”

“Yes. I wasn’t thinking when I came up here to see you. I don’t know what’s going on in my mind right now. But I believe you’re right—considering what’s probably going to happen, we shouldn’t let ourselves be foolish.”

She eased away from him, and this time he let her go. “What do you mean, ‘What’s probably going to happen?’ I’m going to get permission to stay in this country, just as soon as Kriloff stops complaining
and goes home. Then I’ll be free, like everyone else. That’s what’s going to happen.”

“Yes. That’s what I meant.” He got to his feet and held out a hand. She ignored it and rose by herself, now feeling exposed in the revealing dress. His polite reserve was worse than having strangers study her.

“Good night,” she said, and circled around him to the doors of her suite. He stepped forward and opened one of them for her, and she started to tell him that she hated a gallant gesture with no heart behind it. But her eyes caught the miniature plant on the hallway table she’d used as an exercise bar. It was covered in small, starlike pink flowers where there had been nothing but green leaves before he’d come to visit her.

He followed her line of vision, swiveling his head and freezing when he saw the plant. Elena knotted a fist under her throat to keep a sob in check. “Don’t worry,” she told him, “that won’t happen again.”

His hard, hurt gaze turned to her, and she absorbed it for as long as she could before she stepped inside the suite and shut the door.

Elena quickly realized that Audubon hadn’t told Elgiva or Douglas Kincaid about her unusual powers. She didn’t know why he’d keep it secret from his best friends, whom he obviously trusted, but she was glad he had. She didn’t know how people on the outside—anyone who hadn’t lived at the institute was an ‘outsider’ to her—would react to her talent. Kriloff had always told her she’d be laughed at and disbelieved, but she was learning that very little he had said was true.

Sitting on the low stone wall of an herb garden a short distance from the main house, she darted a glance past Elgiva, who was picking tiny sprigs off the neat patches of fledgling spring plants. Audubon walked out of the house with Douglas, and Elena’s senses went on alert immediately. She heard nothing
of what Elgiva went on saying about sage and thyme.

It disturbed her that the mere sight of Audubon, standing next to the brawnier, black-haired Douglas like an elegant white falcon next to a hawk, could make her forget good sense and feel a deep ache of longing. After the traumatic encounter last night, she had to be realistic.

She realized abruptly that Elgiva was waiting for an answer to a question. “I’m sorry. What?”

Elgiva, who was kneeling on a flagstone walkway between patches of mint, stood and shook specks of dirt from the skirt of her dress. “I said, what kind of work would you like to do once you’re settled in America, Once you’re on your own?”

The question brought a startling image of living somewhere among strangers, free, yes, but completely alone. She stared at Audubon on the manor’s back patio, watching him talk intensely with Douglas. To be alone. Never to see Audubon again.

“I’ve always wanted to own a little bookstore,” she told Elgiva distractedly. It was true. She loved, the idea of surrounding herself with books and people who loved books. There were so many books that had been unavailable to her in Russia; she could spend years joyfully catching up. But as she continued to watch Audubon, the bookstore idea went from a cozy notion to a wistful one—what if she had nothing but books to love in this large, unknown country?

Elgiva exclaimed softly when she saw her husband and Audubon. “They’ve finally come out of Audubon’s dungeon! Let’s go see if they’ve heard anything new about Kash.”

As Elena crossed the lawn beside Elgiva, Audubon raised his head and turned from his conversation. Sliding his hands into the pockets of pearl-gray trousers, his torso rigid under a handsome white pullover with the sleeves pushed up, he took a deceptively casual stance that radiated his own tense mood. She returned his somber attention without blinking,
but her nerves vibrated. The material of her cheerful spring dress flowed around her like a separate mood, as deceptive as his own.

Douglas Kincaid, large and brutal in his handsomeness, took Elgiva’s hand gently, and, looking troubled, silently drew her with him into the house. Elena’s tension soared as she realized she and Audubon were being left alone for some pre-planned discussion about something she felt certain she wasn’t going to like.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said.

She went with him down a pebbled path into a labyrinth of cultivated trees—ornamentals, willows, fruit trees, here and there a gnarled oak, like a giant, sculpted bonsai. It was a shadowy green area, a private jungle dappled with sunlight and sweet with the scent of jasmine. She glanced around hurriedly, wondering if he’d brought her here to see what would bloom.

But she had that under control now, buried under the certainty that there were too few bridges between hers and Audubon’s worlds. She stopped in an intimate glen beside a rock-walled basin where a spring bubbled from the ground. He halted also, facing her, his closeness and the intensity of his eyes making her want to take a step backward. But she didn’t.

“Tell me,” she ordered softly.

“Do you know what the FBI is?”

“Like the KGB, only with nicer suits.”

“And nicer rules. They’re investigating me, which I expected, but they’re getting a little too close for comfort.”

“You mean they’re trying to decide if you’re hiding me?”

“Yes. I’ve lied. I told them I haven’t seen you since the night of the party in Richmond. I could spend a few years of my life eating prison food because of that.”

She gasped in dismay, then lifted her chin and
said calmly, “I never asked you to get into trouble on my behalf.”

He muttered an ugly-sounding slang word she was glad not to understand. “Your appreciation overwhelms me.”