Shadow Alpha (13 page)

Her choices were limited. In fact, she really only had that one choice.

She would contact Gregori once she was somewhere safe, of course, and he could hardly go to war once she had assured him that disappearing was her own choice. She was absolutely certain the Orlovs would never reveal the truth to Gregori.

The peace between the Markovic and Orlov family would no doubt be an uneasy one, but it would be peace of a kind, rather than the war the truth would unleash.

She straightened. “We really should eat our lunch before it gets cold.” As an attempt at humor it was pretty poor, but it was all Kat had at the moment.

Because she knew what she
had
to do, she just wanted more.

So much more.

It was too much to ask, she knew that, but she dearly wished that none of the past five years of her marriage had ever happened, and that she and Dair had just met again as adults, with both of them free to explore the almost primitive desire she had seen burning in the depths of Dair’s eyes on the beach earlier, and when he first came into the kitchen just now. The same desire she also felt for him, so deeply it hurt.

Perhaps she couldn’t have what she wanted, but maybe what she
needed
? And right now she needed a few days, even hours, of being wanted and desired. Of just being with Dair. That wild and primitive Dair who could arouse her with just a look.

If she could have that, those hours or days would have to sustain her for a long, long time. The rest of her life, probably.

“Eat up, Dair,” she encouraged brightly. “And after lunch, if you can snorkel, maybe you can show me how to use the gear I found in the pool house down on the beach? Of course you can snorkel,” she teasingly answered her own question. “All superheroes know how to snorkel!”

Dair gave a derisive smile. “If I were a superhero we wouldn’t have needed the plane to fly us here.”

Nor was he fooled for even a minute by Kat’s attempt to change the subject. It was obvious to him that she was living in fear of the Orlovs, and what would happen if/when she went back to Sergei.

And Dair intended to find out what had happened, why things had suddenly changed between Kat and Sergei after she lost her baby.

Losing a baby was a tragedy, granted, and not one Ivan Orlov would have taken well. But Kat was young, only thirty; there was still plenty of time for her to conceive and have a dozen more babies, if that’s what she wanted.

No, something about this situation still didn’t add up—and before he and Kat left this island Dair was going to find out exactly what that something was.

Chapter 8

“That was absolutely incredible!” Kat laughed with joy as she threw herself down onto the white-gold sand.

Dair had never seen Kat this carefree, and all because they had been snorkeling together for most of the afternoon.

Kat had taken to it literally like a duck to water, so much so that after the first few minutes of instruction, Dair was the one following her, as she explored the rocks and caves in the bay.

Not that it was any hardship for Dair to follow Kat, not when she was wearing one of the three bikinis he had purchased for her. This one was comprised of two scraps of stretchy orange material that barely covered the sweet curve of her ass and those tight little breasts.

Dair had been preparing the snorkeling gear when Kat walked down from the villa and joined him on the beach, her short hair shining ebony in the sunlight, her eyes alight with anticipation, her skin like ivory against the bright orange of her bikini, revealing every inch—almost—of that tall and willowy body.

No, it had been no hardship at all for Dair to follow along behind those long and slender legs, or gaze his fill of that deliciously taut and curvaceous ass.

It was a little less comfortable to follow her out of the water with a raging hard-on filling the front of his trunks.

Kat turned to look up at him now from where she sat on the sand, leaning back on her hands, her eyes widening as she obviously saw that telling bulge. It was a little difficult not to, Dair had to admit.

“What can I say?” He gave a self-derisive grimace. “The aquatic life of the Caribbean turns me on!”

Kat eyed Dair uncertainly for a few seconds, not sure if he was joking or not; Dair was always so serious, and she didn’t want to make the mistake of misunderstanding him. Admittedly he looked more relaxed this afternoon than she had seen him since they met again—she fully appreciated avoiding New York crime bosses wasn’t conducive to a lot of laughter—but that didn’t mean Dair had meant what she thought he had.

Although there was that telling bulge in the front of his swimming trunks…

It had been a jolt to the senses to come down onto the beach earlier and see Dair dressed in only black fitted swimming trunks, all of his body tautly muscled and tanned to a light gold. As evidence that he didn’t spend all of his time behind a desk or stalking through the night to rescue maidens in distress.

Kat had drawn in a sharp, shocked breath when he turned away to pick up part of the snorkeling gear and she had seen the scar on his back. A small round scar on the left side of that muscled back, about the size of a penny.

About the size she would imagine a bullet piercing the skin might make…

She hadn’t had the chance to ask him about it yet, was choosing her moment, but there was no way she wouldn’t or couldn’t ask him. When the time was right.

“It is pretty arousing, isn’t it,” she now answered him cautiously.

He raised dark brows. “Had the same effect on you too, hmm?”

Kat moistened her lips as she nodded. “I’ve never been that close to a Grayson shark before.”

“A shark? Impressive.” There was no mistaking the laughter now glinting in those grey-green eyes as Kat joined in the teasing conversation. “For me it was the orange and olive striped tigress fish.”

“Tigress fish!” Kat spluttered with laughter at hearing herself described that way.

She had never had a flirtatious conversation like this with anyone in her life before. Life had been pretty grim growing up around Dimitri Markovic, and to Sergei she had only ever been an asset on his arm, and the mother of the future Orlov heirs. Their marriage had been one of politeness rather than laughter or flirtation.

Dair always seemed so intense, and he was the last person Kat would ever have expected to tease and flirt with her.

But there was no doubting her response to this conversation; her nipples were now hard buds against the wet and clinging material of her bikini top, and she shifted slightly as the heat formed between her thighs.

Dair nodded. “I’m pretty sure I saw a tigress earlier today on the plane.”

Kat felt the rush of heated embarrassment burning her cheeks; she had been desperately trying to forget the way she had behaved with him on the plane.

Her gaze dropped down to where his bare feet were planted in the sand. “That wasn’t the real me.”

“Wasn’t it? It felt pretty damn real to me,” he assured huskily.

Maybe that was because afterwards he’d had to go and clean himself up in the bathroom!

How embarrassing was that?

The first time in her life she had completely lost control with a man and for the main part she had done it in her sleep, while in the throes of a nightmare.

And yet she knew her subconscious had known all the time it was Dair.

Had known and reveled in the fact.

She looked up at him now, tasting the salt on her lips as she ran her tongue across them, the hot sun having already dried off the droplets of seawater from her body. “What’s happening here, Dair…?”

Dair had no idea.

He had begun the conversation initially as a way of dissipating the awkwardness Kat felt at his obvious erection, and instead he had only intensified that sexual awareness, for both of them. Even the air between them now seemed to crackle and pop with that rapidly rising tension, and their locked gazes were blazing with that same sexual heat.

Dair straightened. “Maybe we should both try and remember that you’re still a married woman, hmm?”

“And if I wasn’t…?”

He grimaced. “Not wearing your rings doesn’t make you any less married, Kat.”

Kat wasn’t ‘wearing her rings’ because she had thrown both of them at Sergei during the fierceness of their last argument. After he had returned from Las Vegas, just hours after she had telephoned his hotel and realized just how worthless those rings were.

Which was when Sergei had lost it completely, the two of them struggling as he tried to force those rings back onto her fingers.

Kat been the one who ended up at the bottom of the staircase in the home they shared with Ivan, after which all she could remember was the pain and the blood.

Did she fall or was she pushed?

“Kat?” Dair dropped down onto the sand beside her as he saw the way her face had paled in the last few seconds, her gaze unfocused as she stared off into the distance. “Kat?” he prompted again more sharply; he hated it when she did this, because he knew Kat was reliving the awful nightmare that left her eyes haunted and full of shadows.

She turned to look at him with those liquid dark eyes. “My marriage is over, Dair. Completely. Irrevocably.”

He drew his breath in sharply; Kat couldn’t have told him any more clearly than that how she wanted this conversation to end. Or begin. Because if Dair started making love to Kat then he knew he wasn’t going to want to stop. Not today. Not tomorrow. Maybe never.

She certainly wasn’t the type of woman for the ‘hit and run’ encounters he’d been involved in for so many years.

“I don’t do relationships and forever, Kat,” he warned harshly.

She gave a choked laugh. “The next hour sounds pretty good to me right now.”

He gave a rueful smile. “Oh, I think we could make it last longer than an hour!”

Kat had been a twenty-five-year-old virgin when she married Sergei; there hadn’t been any men willing before then to even risk flirting with her, let alone anything else, considering who her family was. The same had been true when she was Sergei Orlov’s wife; no matter how unhappy she was with him, Kat knew that other men kept their distance because of the Orlov name and what it represented. The thought of death at the hands of the Orlovs had a way of dampening even the most interested libido.

Sergei had never been a romantic or considerate lover, even on their wedding night, and Kat had never physically climaxed with him, or experienced the pleasure she had earlier today with Dair.

Even an hour of lovemaking with Dair, exploring and pleasuring each other, sounded wonderful to her.

Other women found satisfaction in meaningless, unemotional sex, sometimes with a complete stranger—which Dair wasn’t—so why not her?

“Don’t confuse gratitude with desire, Kat,” he warned harshly.

“I think we can both assume I’m old enough to know the difference,” she assured huskily.

His jaw tightened. “I can stop at any time if I have to—I just may not want to!”

Kat’s heart leapt, knowing that such an admission, coming from Dair, a man who was always in control of any situation, was huge.

Being with Dair, making love with him—for however long it lasted—was her teenage dream come true. And she wasn’t a teenager anymore, was determined to match Dair kiss for kiss, caress for caress, thrust for thrust.

She lifted her chin. “Here?”

His smile was derisive this time. “Not unless you want sand where it shouldn’t be!”

Kat had chosen her bedroom in the villa because it had a beautiful white four-poster bed in it, surrounded by white diaphanous drapes, with similar drapes at the French doors that led out onto the balcony blowing lightly in the warmth of the breeze once she had opened up those doors.

She couldn’t think of a more perfect place for her and Dair to make love together.

“Let’s take a shower together first and wash away this sand.” Dair moved to swing her up into his arms and began striding back to the villa. “We can decide when, or if, afterwards, okay?”

Kat had no complaints with that plan, resting her head against the warmth of Dair’s shoulder as he carried her easily. The muscles were bulging in his arms, his chest hot and hard against her bare skin.

With what looked like the scar from a bullet-wound on his back…

No, she wouldn’t ask him about that now, knew instinctively that to do so would ruin the mood, maybe totally. And nothing and no one was going to take this time with Dair away from her. Any regrets she might feel could come later. And they wouldn’t be regrets because she had been with him, but because she couldn’t stay with him.

“You’ve changed your mind already.” Dair had come to an abrupt halt on the pathway back up to the villa.

“I— What? No!” she protested vehemently; if Dair changed his mind now she was surely going to
die
from the disappointment.

He didn’t seem convinced. “You looked sad.”

The heavy weight lifted from Kat’s chest. “If I did,” she reached up and kissed him lingeringly on the lips, her body heat instantly soaring; Dair had the most delicious lips, surprisingly soft and very sensual, “it was because I was thinking of how disappointed I was going to be,” she gave him another slow and lingering kiss, “if
you
changed your mind.”