The Russian Seduction (5 page)

She hadn’t expected him to smile. What rational human being would smile at the imminent prospect of a stiffly-worded harangue on his country’s aggressive conduct? Yet his cool eyes kindled with gaslight fire, raked from her lipstick to her sexy boots as if he didn’t miss a trick. And despite the layers of clothing that insulated her against the coldest Moscow winter in living record, Alexis could
feel
those chilly eyes assessing her at his leisure, one inch at a time. As though stripping her down to her lingerie were just another of the standard operating procedures that kept the nuclear propulsion system of his submarine from blowing the boat sky-high.

Suddenly she was burning in her fur-lined coat, pulse jumping like she’d pounded a four-minute mile, fight-or-flight instincts firing every synapse. Hell, the man hadn’t done more than
look
at her, and he was pushing every button she had. Now he prowled toward her, closing the distance between them with unhurried intent, as though he had all the time in the world to corner her.

The door eased shut behind her, sealing the two of them into this intimate world. Determined to betray not a flicker of nerves, Alexis stood her ground, her overpriced stilettos anchored to the floor. Breathing in the head-spinning aroma of Beckham and high-end cigarettes as the king of predators slipped up behind her and lifted the heavy coat from her shoulders.

“So you decided to come after all, despite your reservations,” he murmured, that impeccable English flavored with Russian sibilants and rolling
r
’s. “I confess to be somewhat surprised…even impressed.”

Firmly, she pulled herself together. This was the adversary, willing to lie, evade or attack her, whatever it took to justify his government’s aggression. She needed to protect herself, keep him squarely at arms’ length. Because Uncle Sam wasn’t paying her to notice the guy’s—limited—sex appeal.

“I’m determined to demarche you, captain.” She managed a dry tone as she hoisted her briefcase. “There’s no escape. Do we have time to finish before the performance?”

“I should apologize for our regrettable Moscow traffic—one of the small drawbacks of capitalism, one could say.” He gave her a tight smile. “You’ve missed the first act, but the intermission has just begun.”

“That’s fine.” She moved briskly away from him toward the pair of empty chairs overlooking the theater. “My message from Washington is straightforward, so this really won’t take very long.”

Attentive, like the perfect gentleman she’d bet he
wasn’t
, he placed a courteous hand against her back to seat her. She tried to ignore the current of electricity that arced from that single assured touch, crackling like static along her skin. No doubt it was a symptom of the antipathy…no, it ran deeper than that…try barely-masked animosity between the two of them.

As she perched warily on her chair, he leaned to murmur in her ear. “Did you leave your minders at home?”

Now a trace of humor warmed his tone, though the exhausting surveillance under which she lived was not normally a matter for levity. She hadn’t been able to shower or use the toilet without fear of being watched for the past two years.

“Is that a sample of your black Russian humor?” she countered. Too aware of him, damn it, as he straddled his chair with the same calm assurance he must’ve brought to the bridge of his submarine. “I can hardly dismiss them, captain, since any minders who might follow me would, unfortunately, be Russian.”

“Are you so certain of your own people, Ms. Castle?” Beneath that perfectly-tailored uniform he shrugged, his profile shrewd as he scanned the opposite tiers. “But this is a public venue—it could hardly be more so, yes?—and we will not be unobserved even for one moment. So you need not fear any reproach or reprimand from your government for this meeting.”

“Nor you from yours?” She studied a scowling patron in a nearby box who appeared to be watching
her
through his raised opera glasses. “In fact, I’m rather surprised your people are willing to tolerate this venue. We could be sitting here discussing high treason. With the noise of the crowd and the performance when it resumes, it’s doubtful any listening devices—ours or yours—would even pick it up.”

“You might be surprised,” he muttered, one corner of his mouth quirking down.

Reminding herself of her meeting objectives, she snapped open her briefcase. “May I ask you, Captain Kostenko—?”

His blond head swiveled toward her, sharp as a barracuda knifing toward its prey. This close to him, she could see the smile lines raying out around his eyes, creasing his suntanned skin. So he did smile, apparently, from time to time. Yet the sharp furrow between his brows suggested a martinet’s severity. Faint grooves etched his forehead from years of squinting through his periscope—targeting her own navy, and she’d better not forget it.

Not a young man, certainly, but one in his prime. Mature and man-of-the-world enough to attract her attention under other circumstances—
maybe
—simply because she’d always been drawn to older men. That was one aspect of her sex drive that her philandering ex-husband hadn’t quite managed to screw up.

Unfortunately, she still couldn’t quell her edgy awareness of the man. If anything, she felt warier and more exposed than before, since tonight the captain was inexplicably exerting himself to be halfway civil. Even if he hadn’t shed that armor of cool aloofness that probably came with the epaulets. A high-ranking Russian officer, a guy who’d made himself infamous in the unforgiving post-Soviet system for his penchant to break the rules.

A guy who—as she knew perfectly well, despite her dismissive words to Geoff—might indeed be an agent under orders to compromise her. He could hardly be more
verboten.

“Captain Kostenko,” she repeated, hands clenching around her briefcase. “I’m obliged to pose this question. Why did you choose this particular venue for our appointment? We could have met at your ministry with perfect decorum and without risk.”

“Don’t get excited, Ms. Castle,” he mocked softly, his electric-blue eyes snapping with amusement. “I am not about to inform you of my intention to defect.”

“What a relief,” she said dryly. “With affairs between our countries at their current ebb, I’m not certain U.S.-Russian relations could survive it if you did.”

“Indeed.” He inclined his head. “The dynamic between our two nations is growing more…complex. All MFA staff have been instructed from the top
not
to accept any official meetings with your government on the Ukraine issue—as a signal of Russia’s insistence that we have committed no offense.”

Startled, Alexis dug in her briefcase for her notepad and pen. “We’ve heard nothing of this, captain. Are you certain?”

He raised a chilly brow. “I
am
the Director of the Security Affairs and Disarmament Department, Ms. Castle. Perhaps you will concede that I’m in a position to know.”

“Of course,” she murmured, face heating as she bent to scribble a note. “But this is new and important information. My capital must be notified immediately.”

“Of course.” He was still giving her the raised eyebrow, but now irony shaded his voice. “What use to send a signal if no one on the receiving end notices?”

“What else can you tell me?” Now Alexis was all business.

“I can tell you that the government of the Russian Federation wishes to maintain unofficial and informal channels of communication with yours on this issue—at my level.” His voice altered, deepened. “So as you see, Ms. Castle, I have now an unimpeachable excuse to entertain you from the most elegant to the most risqué locales in Moscow, on a weekly or even nightly basis…if one were to wish for that.”

Her breath snared in her throat, heart stuttering like a novice Third Secretary fielding orders from the President. Outbluffed and outgunned—damn it, she was better than this. Kostenko had to be mocking her, trying to disconcert her. Or maybe he simply viewed her as another chance to flaunt the rules by implying that some sort of inappropriate attraction sizzled between them.

“Would one wish for such a thing, captain?” She raised a skeptical brow to show him she wouldn’t rise to his bait, but found herself retreating before he could pounce. “Naturally, I can do nothing and commit to nothing without instructions from my capital.”

“Naturally.” A diabolical gleam flickered in those diamond-hard eyes as he shrugged, probably for the benefit of their viewing audience. “Do what you must, Ms. Castle.”

Behind the concealment of the low barrier before them, he leaned in and captured her hand. Alexis lost any semblance of professional detachment when she fumbled and dropped her pen.

Taking advantage of that flicker of hesitation, he tightened his warm calloused grip. The rugged hand of a laborer or an extreme sports enthusiast, exactly the type of rough-edged adventurer that always turned her on. But he was escalating their encounter to the physical for purely strategic reasons, so why the hell was she thinking about guys who’d turned her on?

“Captain.” She firmed her voice and her wobbly defenses. “Would you mind, ah, retrieving my pen?”

Ignoring her request, he turned her hand upward, traced the lines of her palm, feather light. An unexpected shiver of pleasure zinged up her arm, making her entire body tingle.

Escalation or not, this was highly inappropriate. And wasn’t
that
the understatement of the century?
You’re a third-degree black belt, Alexis. Whatever he’s up to here, trying to intimidate you or whatever—just pull away.

“Tell them in Washington whatever you wish,” he murmured in a liquid torrent of Russian that arrested her, head bowed over her hand. The hot brush of his breath on her palm made her shudder as his cobalt eyes seared into her. “Tell them, why don’t you, that the first time I saw you at the German Ambassador’s residence, I burned to discover how you would look and feel and taste in my bed.”

Whoa.
The raw physical shock of those words surged through her. Surely he’d said it to disconcert her, throw her off-stride. Did he guess it’d been years since any man pursued her sexually—all too intimidated, she supposed, by her crisp diplomatic persona and her famous last name?

But Kostenko’s underhanded tactics appeared to be working, because she couldn’t seem to get enough breath into her lungs to challenge him. Consequently, that current of low-voiced Russian kept rolling right over her.

“Tell them in Washington that I’ve thought of nothing else.” His eyes riveted hers like lasers, tracking her every reaction. “Tell them your knees go weak and you get goosebumps when I touch you. Tell them everything—if you require instructions from your capital to know how to respond.”

She sucked in oxygen to roast him for his arrogance—and to rebuff him, that went without saying. She needed to regain control with an unequivocal rejection, for the sake of her career, and for so many other reasons she couldn’t even count them.

“I hardly require instructions from Washington, captain, to know how to deal with a man like you. A woman in my position gets hit on all the time, unfortunately, so your antics barely stir my interest.”

“But you’ll report the conquest to your capital nonetheless, won’t you?” He froze her with an icy smile, shocking after his heated words. “I’m fairly certain they’ll tell you ‘well done hooking him,’ and to reel me in. As that seems to be your government’s current
modus operandi
for its dealings with mine.”

The hell of it was that she couldn’t deny it. Oliver Grey had done exactly that, though her predecessor still claimed he’d fallen in love with his counterpart, and the Russians were furious about it. Still, that hardly gave them the right to pull the same stunt on her.

“Or should I consider it mere coincidence,” the captain murmured, “that the government of the United States has appointed
you
to become my counterpart—the woman they calculated I’d be least able to resist?”

OK, he was definitely playing her, plucking her strings like a maestro with a violin. Kostenko had to know her own husband had proven eminently capable of resisting her, that it was all those models and aspiring film stars Geoff
hadn’t
been able to resist—his coterie of trophy girlfriends. So the captain was trying to manipulate her insecurities, and she’d better not let him think his underhanded ploy was working.

“Sorry, but I’m still unmoved by your charms,” she said blandly. “If you want to disconcert me, I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”

“Is that a request or an instruction?” His mouth nuzzled her palm, shredding every pretense of indifference she’d projected. A deep throb of response rolled through her, shocking her.

Low in her throat, a sound shivered out before she could swallow it. And despite the murmur of half-a-dozen languages rising from the parterre, she prayed he hadn’t detected it—he, whose life had hung on listening and reacting in the ocean’s dark depths.

He shot her an upward look from eyes that flickered with electric heat. “How am I doing now, Ms. Castle?”

The shrill chime of a mobile phone sliced through the vibrating web of tension between them. Must be his phone, since Alexis had switched hers off in preparation for their appointment. She jumped and snatched her hand away.