Dangerous Secrets (7 page)

No more slow, dreamy motions, no more enjoying her with all his senses. Now he had only one sense and that was concentrated between his legs.

Using two fingers, he opened her up, fitted himself to her and thrust, harder than he intended. He gritted his teeth against the pleasure, holding his shaking torso up on one arm so he wouldn’t crush her, breathing hard through his nose.

Jesus, she was tight. Incredibly tight. A little blood drifted back up into his head. He frowned.
Too
tight.

He looked down at her. She looked uncomfortable, almost in pain. Goddammit.

“Charity,” he croaked. “Please tell me you’re not a virgin.”

She looked up at him, appalled. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It doesn’t grow
back
, does it?”

A laugh exploded out of his chest and somehow exited his cock and he collapsed on to her, laughing and coming in equally excited bursts.

Vassily stared into the fire, listening to the silence of the house. Normally, he listened to music at night. Some nights it relaxed him enough to sleep. Most nights, though, he sat in his armchair, hoping to keep the memories at bay.

He didn’t want music or vodka or even the company of one of his men.

He needed
her
, needed to talk to her. Oh how he longed for that connection with Katya—with Charity. That soft female energy wrapped in such a beautiful package, truly a gift of the gods. Katya had been his soul mate; she’d kept him going when he sank into his depressions.

He felt completely bereft, half a creature. He’d thought his heart and soul had died with Katya, but this new Katya revived them. He was whole again. Once Katya was completely his once more, he would turn back the clock. He had the power to do what only the gods could do, bring back his Katya.

Charity.

He cursed. Lately he’d caught himself several times calling Charity Katya. He stopped at the first syllable and Charity though he was calling her a cat.

He covered up by saying she reminded him of a cat. Elegant, self-contained, graceful, with brilliant clear eyes. She smiled every time.

And yet—and yet she
was
Katya. Nothing would convince Vassily that Charity wasn’t the reincarnation of his very heart.

He hadn’t been able to save Katya. She’d been tossed into a pitch-black hole with ravening sharp-toothed monsters at the bottom.

The scene came to him nightly, with a drumbeat of slick sweat and panic. The scene was always the same. The frozen tundra stretching for eternity, gray and featureless, the strongest fence imaginable—ten thousand miles of frozen nothingness. No one had ever escaped alive across that endless, frozen fence.

The prisoners—most sick, dehydrated, half starved, and without enough clothes for the subzero temperatures—had been herded out from the train wagons like cattle. Blinking dazedly in the meager winter sunlight, the first sunlight they’d seen in ten days, they’d tumbled out of the freight wagon on unsteady limbs, half dead already merely from the journey.

Vassily had tried to shield Katya as best he could through the endless journey. He’d given her his coat and had maneuvered her against a wall with his back to the pack to give her a modicum of privacy.

He had no food or water to give her, nor comfort. They both knew what was coming. They’d heard the stories.
Vassily had once interviewed a zek from Stalin’s camps for a newspaper article.

They knew.

Katya knew.

They spoke little through the endless journey. There was little to say.

Vassily had done his best to hide Katya from the guards when they stumbled down the ramp, but it didn’t work—couldn’t work. Katya moved like a beautiful woman.

He’d put his coat over her head and ordered her to walk hunched over, like an old lady. But Katya’s beautiful ankles had been visible. And snatches of her glorious pale gold hair slid out from the tight bun to curl around her shoulders.

Vassily’s heart sank when he heard the first guard cry out, a wolf scenting fresh meat. In a second, the whole pack had descended, ripping her out of his arms, carrying her away, meat for the night.

Vassily could still hear her screams, see her slender white arm outstretched, drowning in a sea of louts. He’d fought, as hard as an intellectual could. But these were brutal men, one step up from the prisoners they guarded, and used to violence. One blow from a guard’s rifle butt and he went down like a felled bull.

He gained consciousness to the sounds of Katya’s screams. They lasted all day and all night. Through a small window in the freezing hut where the new zeks had been herded, Vassily could see the guards lined up, most with their pants open, rigid cocks out. Waiting for their turn to fuck the beautiful Moscow intellectual. Laughing and smoking. Going right back to the end of the line once they’d had their turn.

Some hadn’t seen a woman in decades.

By the second day, the screams stopped.

Vassily had been utterly helpless to save Katya. A zek in a prison camp was nothing, not even worth the air it breathed. Less than the dirty snow on the bottom of a prison guard’s boot. Less than the shit in the latrines.

He’d lost Katya, but now he’d found her again. Katya had come back to him. And he wasn’t a helpless zek now, oh no. He was rich and powerful beyond measure. He commanded billions of dollars, thousands of men and women. He bought the governments of countries and bent them to his will.

He was the Vor.

And soon he would have the power to destroy cities, sweep everything before him in his revenge against the world.

Everything was possible with Katya by his side.

Parker’s Ridge
November 19

Nick woke up in heaven, or at least that’s what it sounded like. Soft harp music played somewhere, as gentle and harmonious as he’d imagined music in heaven would be, not that he’d ever imagined actually making it up to the Big Op in the Sky.

It felt like heaven, too, with a soft down comforter with big cabbage roses resting lightly over his naked body, his head cushioned on an even softer down pillow.

God, it even
smelled
like heaven. Roses and lavender. The scent of clean sheets and furniture polish, freshly baked cinnamon buns, and something light and flowery, utterly feminine. And over it all, the smell of sex. Oh yeah. If there was a
heaven, there’d definitely be sex, just like he’d had all night. Exactly like that.

Nick smiled, swept his hand over the mattress, and opened his eyes when his hand encountered nothing but smooth sheet. Well, almost heaven. Something was missing. Someone.

He threw back the lavender-scented comforter and sat up, looking around him. Last night he’d been too blasted by lust to notice, but how had he missed the beauty of the bedroom when he’d come in on his recon prowl through the house?

It looked like something out of a magazine, only a place where people lived, not an empty stage. Polished hardwood floor. Big high bed with an antique carved wooden headboard, antique chest of drawers polished to a high gloss, two tea-rose-colored small armchairs with a pie crust table between them. Pretty, feminine knickknacks, small rosebuds in a blue vase, some fabulous landscape watercolors, a bookshelf full of books, all neatly arranged.

Still Life of Lady’s Bedroom.

He glanced outside the window. It had snowed all night and there was at least a foot of snow. A big maple tree outside in her garden looked like a big fluffy cloud. Well, of course.

Heaven.

Nick rolled out of bed, lifted up on the balls of his feet and stretched, feeling refreshed, revved even. It wasn’t just the fabulous sex, though there was nothing guaranteed to fire the system like it. Unlike the horrifying sex he’d had with Consuelo, which left him feeling drained and depleted. Sex with Charity was like being inside a rocket, going off.

Plus, he’d slept.
Really
slept, for the first time in what felt like forever. A deep sleep that wiped out all traces of the
grainy fatigue that had been gumming up his head for the past year.

He’d never slept the entire night through in his time undercover with the Gonzalez clan. Each second that passed could bring something that would blow Nick’s cover, something completely out of his control. If Gonzalez decided to come after him, he’d do it at night.

Nick forced himself to nap instead of sleep, and to wake up at regular intervals, scan his surroundings for danger signals, then allow himself to fall back into a sleep so shallow he could become combat ready in a second.

It was the way soldiers slept in the field, under fire. In combat, shallow sleep could save your life. In danger, you’re operational in a matter of seconds. As a way of life, though, it pumped the body full of cortisol, the by-product of stress, sure to waste the kidneys if it went on too long. In Nick’s case it had been going on for a long time—in Afghanistan and the year with Gonzalez. His kidneys were probably shot.

He was going to die young, anyway. It was something he knew deep down, in his bones and blood. He’d always known it. It was what had made him so fearless as a soldier. Might as well go down fighting.

So the sleep he’d had had been like a little gift of life. He knew why he’d slept so deeply and so well, besides the delightful sex. Deep down in his blood and his bones, the part of him that told him to duck a millisecond before the bullet whistled by, that whispered to him to recheck his weapon for the tenth time and to recheck his parachute, told him there was no danger in Charity’s home to him. None at all.

Nothing here to harm him, so unlike the Land of Bad Things where he’d spent most of his life.

At ease, soldier
, he told himself. Though it wasn’t necessary to think the words. His body had told him already. He knew from the lack of muscle tension that he was in a safe environment. Safe and beautiful and welcoming.

No one knew where he was. He hadn’t been tailed, he’d made sure of it. And while Di Stefano and Alexei might suspect he’d seduced the pretty librarian, they couldn’t be certain. So no one knew where he was, and there was no danger to him in this house.

No danger at all. Not even sharp edges. Only soft furniture in pastel colors, pretty music, nice smells, and one hell of a pretty woman. Speaking of which…

Nick eyed his clothes on the floor. He had zero desire to put on his formal clothes. Suit pants, dress shirt, jacket,
ack.
He had jeans and a sweater in a bag in the trunk of the car; he’d wear those today. But right now, he wanted Charity.

A little clatter of noise from the kitchen told him where she was. He padded naked across the living room and stopped at the kitchen door, watching her. She kept her back to him, humming softly.

Nick had been trained in hard places to move silently. Charity had no clue that he was there, so he was able to look his fill.

The CD had changed to a medley of Celtic music. Nick recognized the song that was playing, though he didn’t know the title. Something about green fields and coming home, which was more or less like every Irish song he’d ever heard. The Irish weren’t big on love songs. The music celebrated survival and comradeship, the basic elements of Nick’s life so far.

Charity knew the words and was singing softly under her breath. She had on a pink track suit that hugged her slender
curves, her dark-blond hair shifting on her shoulders as she waggled her head to the music. That pretty ass swayed, too, as she fussed in her kitchen.

The kitchen was as pretty as she was. Cream and peach tiles, a line of thriving herbs in cream-colored pots along the windowsill, light-colored curtains at the window. Big ceramic canisters along the counter against the backsplash.

And the smells—almost better than the smells in the bedroom. The surprisingly rich smell of tea threaded in among the smells of something with cinnamon baking in the oven. A small pinewood table was set for two, with slices of bread, butter, an array of jams and jellies, and slices of apple. Nick could see a fantastic breakfast in his immediate future.

He watched her swaying gently to the beat of the music, listened to her singing. Though her voice was soft, it was surprisingly true.

Everything about the scene was delightful.

Beautiful woman. Beautiful music. Beautiful room. Sheer delight.

Nick felt something odd move inside him, something he didn’t recognize. It rolled right through him, and whatever it was, it left peace and contentment in its wake.

He stood there, mulling that over. Peace and contentment. They weren’t things he’d felt often in his life. He’d never sought them, never even wanted them. His life was one long mission and he did what it took to get the mission accomplished. Peace and contentment simply didn’t factor in.

His mission in the orphanage and then in sometimes brutal foster homes had been survival, for him and Jake. Then as a Delta operator, accomplishing the op, whatever it was. Usually the op meant danger in hellholes. And now, since he’d joined the Unit, the mission was putting away bad guys.

So what was this? Leaning against a doorframe, watching a woman fiddle at the stove? What was it? The mission? An op?

It felt like more. No, it felt like something else entirely. Nick wasn’t completely comfortable with all these…things going on inside himself. He was comfortable in his skin. He knew what he wanted in life and he usually went after it like a bullet to the bull’s eye. This felt…different.

And good. Definitely good. In fact, he felt better than he could ever remember feeling.

Unexpectedly, Charity turned around, as if she’d suddenly sensed his presence, and smiled at him.

In an instant, that supernatural feeling of well-being disappeared, as if it had never been.
Whoosh,
gone. In its place came a burning, itching feeling, a drive to touch her, touch that smooth, creamy skin he knew was underneath the soft pink cotton of the track suit. Put his hands on her and never let go.

“Hi, so you’re up…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze dropped and her face went from the slight flush of someone cooking to stoplight red. Charity’s soft pink mouth made an
O
.

Oh yeah, he was up. Massively. It was as if his cock were trying to stretch its way across the room to her.

It couldn’t, of course, but he could. It took him a second or two to firm up his knees and then he was crossing over to her, eyes never leaving hers. She looked down at him again and heat washed over him, as if he’d walked in front of an open oven door. The heat even pulsed in his veins.

He was clenching his jaws so hard his teeth hurt.

This was sex but it was more than sex. He wasn’t hurting for sex and they’d been at it practically all night. By rights, he should be all fucked out.

Right now, instead, it was as if he’d never fucked before, never even touched a woman in his entire life. This felt urgent, with all the adrenaline of combat in the field, the moves as necessary as ducking under fire or scrambling out of the way of flames or bullets.