Page 19 of Dangerous Secrets

The great Soviet scorpion was dying but its poison-tipped tail still had the power to sweep lives away. He would be accused of anti-Soviet propaganda—such a huge joke when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Daily, pieces of it were breaking off, like floes off a huge iceberg, floating away on the tides of history.

He would be accused and sentenced to a prison camp, a certain death sentence. A long, lingering death sentence. There would be no getting out alive.

And now they had Katya. This was beyond his worst nightmare.

He thought being taken away by the KGB would be the worst thing that could happen to him. But he’d been wrong.

Screaming, raging, fighting every step of the way, desperate to shield Katya, he was dragged out of the building on Arbat Street and into a waiting Zil.

The 12th of December, 1989.

The day Vassily Worontzoff died.

Chapter Six

Yes!

Nick had known that the answer to his unasked question would be yes. Letting him come in for coffee was girl code for—do you want to have sex? And the answer was yes.Hell, yes.

Nick thought of nothing else as he drove them back to her house. She’d murmured directions, but he didn’t need them. He’d driven so often to her house on his stakeouts, he could find the way blindfolded.

And now that he’d spent an evening with Charity, he could probably findherblindfolded, by smell alone. She had the most enchanting scent. The whole car was filled with it. Some fresh spring-like perfume mixed with shampoo and soap and warm woman. Unique, heady.

In the car, her scent alone had been enough to make his dick sit up and take notice, not that it needed any stimulation. Good thing he had on his expensive cashmere overcoat.

Nick was a good strategist. He set goals and figured out how to meet them with the tools at hand. This was the staging phase, the one right before battle. This was when his body startedreadying itself for combat. His senses heightened, his heart rate slowed, he saw and heard with unusual clarity.

The next stage was crucial. He had to convince her to trust him. Taking a woman to bed was the best way to do that, he knew from long experience. So he should be moving things slowly around to getting into her pants.

Nick knew exactly how that was supposed to work. Walk her to her door, a light kiss before she opens it, just to break the ice, another kiss after she’d poured their nightcaps. Sitting on the couch, listening to the music she’d put on, idly chatting. Another light kiss, then another, less light this time, with a little tongue . . .

Everything slowly, with style, giving her time to get used to him.

He could do it. He’d done it before, countless times. He always kept his cool during sex. Hell, with Consuelo, he could have recited from memory whole chunks of the Army Field Manual while fucking, trying not to wince while Consuelo’s razor-sharp claws dug into his back. Keeping his cool before, during and in the aftermath of sex was easy, he’d done it all his life.

No matter how heated the fucking, a part of him remained detached and was sometimes even able to comment on the proceedings, as if he were at a show.

He needed that cool right now. This was a job. A pleasurable job, okay, and man, did he deserve it after the shit details he’d been on and after a year in the employ of the Drug Lord from Hell and his sister, Cruella De Ville. He had the moves, all shiny and polished from lots of use. He had the moves, the words, he had it all in his armamentarium. This should be a snap.

Have sex, make sure she was pleasured, gain her confidence, seduce some intel on Worontzoff out of her, gain an invite to the musical evening Fuckhead was organizing . . . that was themission. He’d done harder things in his life, he could do this. Easy.

So why was he finding it so hard to focus on the job while she was in his arms?

He stopped just inside the door, back against it, just for a second. His knees had turned weak when her tongue met his. It was crazy. Maybe it was the bottle of wine he’d polished off over dinner, though he was known for being able to hold his liquor. He was Irish, after all.

So maybe it wasn’t the wine, but her mouth. The taste of her, spicy, sexy, with an overlay of the chocolate and cream desert.

He lifted his mouth for a moment and looked down at her. Her hair spilled over the collar of his overcoat, light against the dark color. Her lips were red, slightly swollen, pale gem-like eyes wide, the pupils dilated. A vein beat against her neck and he wanted, violently, to feel that beat against her breast.

She was watching him, taking cues from him, though the only kind of cue she could get right now was—how fast can I get you into bed?Should he be slowing this down? Her eyes fluttered shut and she lifted her mouth to his in a kiss that was all too short.

Maybe he didn’t have to slow this down. Which all in all, was a good thing, because he didn’t know if he could.

“Do you want coffee?” she whispered finally, pulling back and searching his eyes. Did he want coffee? Shit no, he didn’t need coffee, he didn’t need any stimulants. The way he was feeling right now, he needed someone to hose him down.

“No,” he whispered back.

Christ, she was pretty. No, she wasn’t just pretty. She was beautiful. Not many women were beautiful, magazine articles to the contrary. They gussied themselves up, and a lot of them that were secretly dogs wore so much makeup you really couldn’t tell what they looked like in there, under all the glop. And then ofcourse there was the knife and the needle, giving half the women in America the same thin, upturned nose and big pillowy lips.

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