Dark and intense, Alexei’s gaze latched on to hers as he eased a finger inside her. “You want me here?” he asked hoarsely.
Barely aware of her physical self, Sasha managed a weak nod as she bucked against his probing finger.
He pulled out slowly, slid through her folds to tease her clit again, then delved lower and circled that moist fingertip against her tight rear opening. “Or here?”
The subtle pressure against that forbidden place of entry sent unspeakable pleasure shooting through her veins. She pressed down into the mattress, not necessarily trying to escape his questioning caress, but to do anything to alleviate the throbbing in her womb. Still, the idea that she might like him to take her in such a way wasn’t entirely comfortable. She’d only been exposed to such an intimate invasion once, and wasn’t certain she could do so without a blindfold to hide behind.
“No,” she gasped. “Alexei…God, please…”
An oath tore past his lips. Tinfoil crinkled as he ripped open a condom wrapper. Then he was spreading her, his mouth dancing over hers, his cock sliding inch by blissful inch inside her pussy. Everything inside Sasha opened to accommodate his sizeable girth. She hooked one leg around his waist, needing to be somehow closer, to have him even deeper.
This was what she had waited two long years for. How she could have ever believed it was anyone but him who had possessed her so completely earlier tonight, she didn’t know. No one else had ever fit her this well, ever connected with the core of her being.
She closed her eyes, dug her nails into the small of his back, and lifted her hips off the mattress. “Alexei, more. You feel so right.” A soft blissful cry broke free. She gasped for air and exhaled, “Please…more.”
A
lexei couldn’t give her more—he was already pouring everything he was into Sasha. He couldn’t stop himself. Her pleas pulled something so deep out of him, it left him fighting just to remember how to breathe.
He pulled back, withdrawing from her soaked flesh, feeling his own climax right
there.
Gritting his teeth against it, he pushed in again. Despite the thin layer of the condom, her heat saturated into his skin. He groaned gutturally and willed his body to wait just a little bit longer.
“Alexei,” she murmured, her lips fluttering against his shoulder.
I’ve missed you.
Her voice rang in his head, pushing him further into heady oblivion. It amazed him how she weaseled beneath all his carefully erected walls and tapped into emotions he had spent most of his life burying. The other women, the nameless, faceless memories, hadn’t touched the things Sasha did. Hell, they hadn’t even come close.
But Sasha unraveled him with a mere glance. Fucking her like this? She rendered him completely useless.
And goddamn, that power was terrifying.
He eased back, sliding from her moist sheath. His chest constricted with every clench of her pussy, every tight grip that sought to keep and hold him in place. Like she never wanted to let go.
Another groan rumbled in the back of his throat. He choked it
down. He wasn’t going to last long. Yet he refused to selfishly give over to release before she came. He’d already been selfish enough tonight.
But Jesus, he wasn’t a saint, and he was so dangerously close to coming, so consumed by the need for the all-encompassing sensation that split through him at that moment of release, that the ecstasy roiling through him bordered on physical pain.
“Sasha…
fuck
,” he hissed.
Her sharp mewl zigzagged all the way down to his balls. He felt them pull tight against his body, felt his seed begin to rise. Alexei sucked down air like he’d spent the last six months underground and moved within her harder. Fucked her faster.
She coiled her other leg around his waist, angled her hips, and opened completely to his demanding thrusts. The sound of their skin slapping blended with each soft cry that bubbled off her lips each time he hit her high and hard. He ached to taste the honey of her mouth, but if he touched those satin lips he’d suffocate to death. Instead, he dropped his forehead to the gentle curve of her neck and shoulder and wound one arm around her more tightly.
His body pistoned in and out of hers, need raging through his veins. It boiled to the surface and sweat broke across his skin. “I…can’t…” he choked out. “
Can’t…
”
“Don’t,” she whispered near his ear.
That was all it took to send him plummeting over the edge. No longer in control of his actions, his body moved of its own volition, pumping into her like he might never know this bliss again. Ecstasy stormed through him. It surged down his spine, exploded through his mind, and obliterated all conscious thought. Wave after wave of pleasure pummeled into him, burrowing down deep, sinking into the depths of his soul and waking him from the dead.
Alexei clamped down on the inside of his cheek to keep from shouting while he came. His body quaked as his semen filled the condom.
As the haze of primal lust faded from his brain, he recognized the
flutter of her pussy against his sated cock and the fading sound of her hoarse voice. While he’d been in mindless oblivion, she had sailed over the edge as well. She now lay in his embrace, her body limp beneath his, her unsteady breath falling against the side of his neck.
Alexei nuzzled her cheek with his, then pressed a chaste kiss to her temple. With the last of his willpower, he withdrew from her slick sheath and eased himself off her body. As he rolled onto his back, he tossed the condom in the wastebasket by the bed. He refused to let his mind work. For just a little while he wanted to stay in this heady, unthinking state of bliss.
Curling one arm around Sasha’s shoulders, he drew her against his side. She snuggled into him and flattened a satiny palm over his thudding heart. That tender gesture shifted his heart uncomfortably.
“Sleep beside me,” she murmured.
Alexei’s head dipped into a nod without his permission. To his horror, as he pulled his fingers through her mussed hair, one thought echoed through his mind.
Heaven.
A
bubble of turbulence jarred the jet, lurching Alexei into wakefulness. His eyes snapped open. He glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings, his brain slowly making sense of where he was, of the warm feminine body blanketing his right side. She felt good. Too damned right tucked into his shoulder, her slender leg twined through his. Turning his head, he nuzzled Sasha’s long silken hair.
In the next heartbeat, what had happened slammed into him. He hadn’t just fucked her like he might never touch another woman again, he had drifted off to sleep beside her. The impossibility of that left him rapidly blinking. Thirty-two years, and not once had he ever been able to relax enough, no matter how rigorous the sex, to drift off for longer than a few minutes with a woman in his arms.
The nights he’d spent with Sasha previously, he’d dozed, like usual, but when he finally hit exhausted and might have slept, he’d been faced with the bitter knowledge he would eventually have to drug her so he could steal her out of the country. His mind never gave him peace long enough to test the possibility of whether he could sleep beside her, never considered the likelihood if circumstances had been different. It was so far out of his spectrum.
Yet tonight he had. And judging from the slight downward angle of the hanging light overhead that indicated the jet’s descent, he’d done more than doze.
It had to be exhaustion. He’d crammed all the mission prep into four days, spent the last three traveling, and spent tonight tied up in knots. Nothing else explained why he was waking up beside her.
Still, the impossibility of reality made him restless. He edged his arm from beneath her shoulders and silently rolled off the mattress. The jet bobbled again as he bent to pluck his clothes off the floor, forcing him to catch himself on the bolted-down nightstand. When the topsy-turvy up and down leveled out, he pulled on his clothes, stole one last look at her slumbering form, then pulled the sheet over her body. They might be landing, but she still had another good half hour before she needed to get up. After all he’d put her through, the least he could do was let her rest.
He rumpled a hand through his hair and yawned. Damn. He felt like he’d slept for days. In a good way, not the groggy, leaden head, sluggish thoughts kind of heavy sleep. If the last week had taken that much out of him, he was getting too old for this shit. A year ago, seven days of chaos wouldn’t have bogged him down.
Then again, a year ago, he hadn’t been fucking Sasha. For that matter, he hadn’t really been fucking anyone. Once or twice, when the urge hit, he shacked up with Natalya for a few hours. But that was totally different than the night he’d just spent with Sasha. They both were lonely, starved for a little bit of trustworthy companionship, and
while it had been better than many of his previous encounters, those liaisons didn’t hold a candle to the last few hours he’d spent with Sasha, his little princess.
Little princess.
He’d be smart to remember that was exactly what she was.
Saeed’s
princess. And half of the pleasure Alexei experienced tonight came from the fact Saeed was with them in bed.
Unwilling to explore the path of his thoughts further, Alexei frowned. He strode from the room, all too anxious to escape the nonsensical discomfort that tightened his gut. Grigoriy waited in the cabin, a smirk dancing on his mouth, one eyebrow raised knowingly.
“Twice in one night? She must have made an impact.”
Alexei shot him an unimpressed scowl and dropped into the plush leather chair across from Grigoriy. “Just a little unfinished business.”
“Mm-hm.” Turning his focus back on the magazine he held in his hands, Grigoriy chuckled.
“What?”
Grigoriy gave his magazine a shake to flatten out a curled page. “Didn’t say a word.”
Alexei stared at his partner. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing. I saw how you were looking at her.”
“Damn straight I would have.” Grigoriy lifted his gaze out of his lap and met Alexei’s. “I didn’t though.”
Under the pointed weight of Grigoriy’s stare, Alexei heard what he didn’t say.
I wasn’t invited.
Not that he believed for a moment that Grigoriy
cared.
He wasn’t the jealous kind. Didn’t keep count of who scored and who didn’t. It was the exclusion itself Grigoriy referenced. That Alexei had known Grigoriy’s interest and had deliberately ignored it, when in the past, he wouldn’t have hesitated to share. Which said a whole bunch of other stuff Alexei didn’t care to consider.
Grigoriy looked back to his magazine. “Don’t get in over your head.”
Alexei shot him a frown. “Since when have I ever gotten in over my head with a woman?”
“Maybe since you came out of the palace snapping like a sabertooth.”
Alexei grunted. “I’m not snapping.”
“Right. You’re cheery as can be. A regular Mary Poppins.”
“Go to hell.” Closing his eyes, Alexei leaned his head back on the seat. Mary Poppins—he’d like to see Grigoriy sing and dance after the turbulent night he’d experienced.
“I’ll get there soon enough.” The magazine rustled, followed by the creaking of leather.
Alexei cracked one eye open to see Grigoriy scoot to the edge of his seat and toss the magazine on the corner table. He braced his elbows on his thighs, clasped his hands together, and stared at Alexei.
Great. Time for a lecture. Groaning inwardly, Alexei closed his eye again and asked, “What’s the problem?”
“The problem?” Grigoriy chuckled. “The
problem
is in that partitioned room. Did you pay a damn bit of attention to what she said?”
Peace was evidently not in Alexei’s cards. Sighing, he sat up. “I heard a lot of what she said. Which part do you mean? Where she blamed Saeed’s death on me? Or where she claimed Kadir tried to buy her?”
“You think she’s lying?”
Alexei
knew
she was lying. About a whole lot more than Kadir too. Saying she missed him for God’s sake. He who’d drugged her, kidnapped her, and sold her into slavery. Yeah—Sasha was definitely telling stories. Tall ones.
“C’mon, man, you know Kadir. If he was going to do something, we’d have already known it. We’re sardines in this tin can.”
Grigoriy shook his head. “Precisely my point. It’s too obvious for him to make a move while we’re on this plane. I
do
know him. And I’ve never known him to back down from something he wanted.”
Point—Alexei couldn’t dispute his partner’s arguement. He remained silent, an unspoken sense of loyalty forbidding him to agree with the obvious and taint the man he respected with suspicion.
Grigoriy wouldn’t let it rest. “He’s more apt to try something once
we get off this jet. Her father’s already made it clear he’s not going to give her up. Which puts us smack dab in the middle of two loaded guns.” He paused, dark eyebrows lifted in emphasis. “It puts
you
at the center of their sights.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Damn it, Alexei, would you be serious for a minute?” A heavy fist thumped into the chair’s padded arm. “We’re fifteen minutes from landing, we have no plan, my sixth senses are lighting up all over the place, and if you weren’t in over your head already, yours would be too.”
Though Alexei wasn’t willing to concede the over his head part, he knew Grigoriy was right about being distracted. He damn sure wouldn’t admit it, but he should have been more concerned about lining up their next move than fucking Sasha senseless. Should have been focused on considering Kadir’s position, not which angle would give him the deepest penetration within her tight pussy.
Frowning, he ran the back of his knuckles over his whiskered cheek. “My plan is to go to the rat hole hotel, get some sleep, and deal with this in the morning.”
“Brilliant plan, ace. Try again.”
With a harassed sigh, Alexei sank his forehead into one cupped palm. “I’ve been shot at, my cover’s toast, I killed a man, Clarke’s going to have my ass for that, and I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week.” He pushed his hand through his hair and raised his gaze to his partner’s. “My brain’s fried. You come up with a plan. I’m going to get Sasha up.”