Lie to Me (17 page)

He opened his eyes to find her watching him. Cautiously, as if she anticipated his anger once again, she admitted, “He kissed me only once before. That evening, when he told me about the arrangement. It was the only time there was anything more than a touch of the hands between us.”

Oh, double-fuck. That truth did crazy things to Alexei’s system. He knew she spoke the truth, for in that moment, he realized Saeed had coached her, had walked her through the ménage, offering reassurances, easing her fears. And Saeed’s surprise over her body—a man might treasure the gifts a woman held, but he didn’t act like he was experiencing them for the first time when he knew them well.

The mere thought of the things Saeed had done to Sasha that night set off the unpleasant tenseness in Alexei’s body he couldn’t understand. The same tension struck each time he observed the way Grigoriy—a man he trusted—watched her. It was jealousy. Cold, hard, undeniable jealousy. But that emotion was so unfamiliar, Alexei didn’t know what to do with it.

Her fingers fluttered over his sternum. Her breath whispered at his shoulder. “I’m glad it was you, Alexei. I’ve wanted no one but you since we met.”

He tilted his head to witness her expression, but her eyes were closed, and her hair curtained the side of her face. He wanted to believe. Yet the idea that she could truly want the man who had betrayed her was so far beyond comprehension, he couldn’t give it a kernel of consideration. She had somehow sensed what ate him up inside and was telling him what he wanted to hear. What he
needed
to hear.

For now, the pretty lies contented him.

He smoothed her hair and pressed her cheek to his shoulder. “Why did you run?”

Sasha stilled. Her breath barely registered against his skin.

S
asha knew the question would surface, but she’d forgotten the excuses she’d created on the short car ride here. The desire that quickly consumed them both had eradicated any slight fragment of those fabricated reasons. Now she didn’t know what to say, and she drifted on a wave of such comfort, her mind didn’t want to work right. Words came, then vanished before she could grab them and morph them together.

“Sasha?” Alexei’s voice hardened by a degree. “I’m taking you home. Why did you run?”

No way could she tell him about the bombs, the atrocities her father had forced upon her. He’d shove her out of this bed faster than she could blink. He probably wouldn’t even let her get dressed before he called that man in London and turned her in. The man who believed her father. Hughes, who provided this nest of luxurious comfort she currently bathed in.

She answered with the only truth she could. “I can’t go back.”

“Why not?” Alexei arched away from her, creating an intolerable separation between their bodies.

She snugged her arm around his waist and inched closer, needing the strength of his chest, the shelter of his embrace. But he held himself at a distance, his hips creeping over hers, rolling her onto her back. Both hands braced alongside her shoulders, he frowned down at her. “Why can’t you go back?”

Her mind shrugged off the blissful haze of thought-altering pleasure and snapped into gear. Alexei was an American agent. He had masterminded the downfall of men who’d known immense power for decades. Men didn’t live through those levels of deceit without knowing when to recognize signals, and she knew she was radiating them like Chernobyl. She’d have to tell him something substantial, something more than she’d had a falling out with her father. As if that would explain anything anyway.

Alexei’s job also gave her the perfect opening to tell him only part. His natural suspicions would fill in the gaps. She didn’t have to mention the bombs at all. Not the illegal ones at least.

“I worked for the FSB, Alexei.”

Surprise reared his head back and widened his eyes.

“In a division passed down from the KGB, devoted to internal security.”

His breath hissed past his teeth as his entire body tensed like a belt. “You’re a fucking agent?”

“No.” She hurried to shake her head. “Well, not like that. I’m an engineer. I reverse engineered bombs for the purpose of identifying signature components. Just before I left I was incorporated into a research and development unit where I designed and tested specialized detonation devices for military interests.”

Slowly, Alexei’s body relaxed. His penetrating stare turned thoughtful, and he studied her until a tremor settled into his left shoulder from the effort of holding his weight off her body. She watched as he put the pieces together and came up with an explanation that fit the little she offered.

“You know things.”

Sasha nodded.
Things my father will kill me for.

“Why
did
you leave, Sasha? Why were you stripping?”

Inwardly she cringed. This was exactly what she wanted to avoid. Nothing would make her share those atrocities with Alexei. Instead, she pushed on his locked elbows and brought him down against her body. When he settled in with a contented murmur, she ran the ball of her foot up his calf. “I really don’t want to talk about this. I left to forget.”

His whiskers scraped pleasantly across her shoulder a second before his warm lips graced her skin. “We’re all running from something, aren’t we?”

Yes. She supposed they were. But she also supposed the things that
haunted Alexei, whatever it was that kept his smile tucked far away, didn’t involve killing his family or blowing up thirty innocent strangers.

His cock nestled into the swollen folds between her legs, the warm heat of his stiffening length eliciting from her a delighted gasp.

“Are you sore?” he whispered at the base of her throat.

“A little,” she confessed with some degree of regret. “Not overly.”

What he did next surprised her. Instead of coaxing her body into an all-too-willing state that she’d be more than happy to embrace, he rolled off her and stretched out on his side, resting on one elbow, holding his head in one hand. The other flattened over her belly, long fingers sweeping gently across her skin.

“Why don’t you rest while you can.”

It wasn’t a question. Rather, he issued the order with a hefty dose of tenderness that filled her with unnatural warmth. The light in his bright green eyes spoke of wicked promises. She couldn’t resist the urge to tease. “While I can?”

Sasha’s heart skipped half a dozen beats as Alexei’s mouth curved into a slow, sensual smile.

“Oh, yes, princess. We’re stuck here until Hughes makes the changes in our travel plans. And tonight, I don’t intend to give you the option of sleep.”

A shiver rolled down Sasha’s spine. She liked the sound of that. More than she should, given that he’d also just told her he still intended to deliver her to her father. But she forced the unpleasant truth aside and snuggled into the pillow, closing her eyes with her own contented smile.

S
leep pulled at Alexei, but in his current state of half arousal, he didn’t dare align himself with Sasha’s delectable body. He’d have her awake in a heartbeat, and she had just drifted off. Her shoulders
rose and fell gently. Her expression was soft, revealing ease she didn’t usually wear when she was awake. He couldn’t stand the thought of disturbing her.

If he stayed here a minute longer though, he’d never get his dick under control.

Inching off of the soft mattress, he grabbed his pants from the floor and pulled them on. The scrape of air over his jutting erection had him gritting his teeth and wishing he hadn’t told her to rest. That he hadn’t let what he intended to do to her tonight even register in his conscious thoughts.

He swore beneath his breath and headed for the bathroom and a much-needed shower. He could relieve the pressure there, but even that wouldn’t curb the need to bury himself inside her warm, willing body. Still, it was better than walking around with a hard-on, especially with Grigoriy due back sometime soon. He didn’t need any more of his partner’s badgering.

A step away from the bed, he tripped over the rest of their scattered clothing. With a mutter, he gathered up the mess, dumped it onto the edge of the bed, and began to fold the clothing neatly. When he had two tidy stacks, he set both on the nightstand and tucked his shoes beneath the edge of the bed. As he reached for her sneakers, a flap of loose rubber on the heel of her right shoe caught his attention. If it weren’t for the faint line of yellow glue that didn’t match any of the other seams, he never would have noticed. But that line didn’t belong, and it triggered over a decade’s worth of instincts designed for self-preservation.

Sinking onto the edge of the mattress, he pried the flap back. What he found inside had him swearing oaths in both English and Russian. Embedded into a recession in the rubber honeycomb was a small, round, metallic disk that pulsed with a tiny yellow-green light.

Kadir hadn’t lucked onto their position. He’d fucking known where she was the entire time.

Son of a bitch, he knew where they were now.

As rage poured through Alexei, he fished his pocketknife from his pants, pried the tracking device loose, and set it on the dresser. Then, with the hard heel of his own shoe, he smashed it into fragments.

“Sasha,” he urged as he returned to the bed. Setting one hand on her sloping shoulder, he gave her a firm shake. “Sasha, we have to go.
Now.
”

I
n two days’ time, Sasha had been through enough to know Alexei’s tone meant business. She scrambled out of the bed with merely a questioning look at him and glanced around for her clothes. He pointed to the nightstand.

“You’ve been tracked, princess,” he explained as he slid his arms into his button-down dress shirt that now bore faint touches of dirt on the elbows.

“Tracked?” Sasha pulled on her pants, those too bearing telltale signs of her nearly forty-eight straight hours on the move.

“Yeah. Those shoes Kadir’s housemaid gave you? They were rigged with a tracking device. We’ve got to get out of this hotel. He knows exactly where you are.” Moving across the room, he picked up her shoe and slipped it onto her foot as she worked the buttons down the front of her blouse.

In a strange, surreal way, it felt even more intimate to have him dress her than remove her clothes. She caught herself smiling, then blushed as he lifted his gaze and noticed. Leaning forward to give her a chaste kiss, Alexei chuckled. “A little out of the norm, huh?”

“It’s nice,” she admitted.

Without comment, he hunkered down once more and took gentle hold of her wrapped ankle, carefully easing it into the remaining shoe. “I’ve got to get you a decent wrap. How’s it feel?”

“Fine.” Worse since she’d felt the need to sprint on it, but that wasn’t a discussion she intended to revisit.

Surprising her even further, he reached down and clasped her hand, the first gentle lovers’ touch he had given her outside of the bed. Strong fingers laced with her smaller, more refined ones, his olive skin a delicious contrast against her own. His palm was rough in all the right places.

“Where are we going?” Sasha asked.

“I’d like to get the hell out of Florence, but Hughes will have a fit if I ask him to reroute the plane and crew again. So I’m thinking we’ll go over to the San Michele. See if I can bribe them out of a suite.”

“And Grigoriy?” she asked as he led her out the door.

“I’m sure he’s giving us time to, ah, cool off, after the lunch debacle. He left in the car when we got here. I’ll let him know where we are when we’re settled.”

She followed at his side, her hand tucked securely,
pleasantly
, in Alexei’s, and allowed his simple presence to saturate her senses. As he hurried her through the halls, she noticed several women stop to appraise him, and their obvious appreciation lit warmth in Sasha’s heart. He was handsome. A touch unapproachable, with his short dark whiskers and the sharp attentiveness in his light green eyes. All the same, compelling.

So much so she couldn’t resist pulling her hand from his and tucking it just inside the waistband of his dress pants at the small of his back. Holding hands was nice, but she needed to touch more of him.

Alexei flashed her a brief grin, his eyes seemingly saying he understood what drove her.

Lord in heaven above, she would never get tired of the all-too-infrequent glimpses of his smile. Of his happiness. Such a shame something had driven that joviality beneath the surface. Or was it, maybe, someone?

A startling spark of anger lit at the idea that
someone
had buried
Alexei’s humor so far inside him. She wanted him to smile…and often. He should.

Outside the hotel, he took her hand once more and led her to a taxi stand, where they quickly arranged a ride for the short distance to the San Michele. As they wove through the streets at the first normal speed in days, Sasha admired the sweeping architectural monstrosities of eras gone by. Towering stone looked out over the city, and tourists flocked together beneath hulking shadows. From the octagonal Battistero di San Giovanni, to the skyward-reaching bell tower of Campanile di Giotto, to the colorful Ponte Vecchio bridge with its many shops built upon it, old world charm sucked her in, filling her head with thoughts of how wonderful it would be to experience this city with Alexei under different circumstances.