Extreme Danger Read online

  “Ah…” She swallowed again, hoping desperately that he’d take the lead.

  He pulled her toward him. She almost fell against his body.

  “Say yes,” he said hoarsely. Then he kissed her.

  To his amazement, she kissed him back.

  Chapter

  4

  Her lips were so soft. Cool and silky, yielding to his maurauding kiss with a startled whimper. Delicious inside, sweet. Her tongue retreated from his. He coaxed it out of hiding with all his considerable skill.

  Her trembling body pressed against him. He wanted to jerk his pants down, shove her against the wall. The appetite for sex that had been numbed into mock death was roaring to life.

  At the worst possible time. But, he rationalized, they had the rest of the night. They were safe. He would keep her safe. Zhoglo and crew came in tomorrow…

  She flung her head back, gasping for air.

  Oh yeah. Foreplay. He was forgetting his manners. “Mmm,” he said thickly, nuzzling her damp ear, drawing her earlobe between his teeth. “I fucking love foreplay. How about you?”

  “Sure—”

  He shut her up with another kiss. He couldn’t explain anyway. She’d blundered into his stakeout. She was a deadly distraction, a massive, no-holds-barred fuck-up, but he didn’t care. He had to have this. Had to have her.

  She was going for it. And he couldn’t stop. His body, his hands, were dazzled by her body. She pushed all his buttons, all at once. He hugged her softness closer. Just this felt so good. He hadn’t touched anyone in so long. His arms ached to grab her. His whole body was starved for contact, not just his cock. His mouth wanted to search and lick and taste that smooth, cool damp skin, those sexy curves, succulent pointy tits, all puckered up and ready to be sucked. His hands roved, stroking and probing.

  “I love foreplay,” he repeated, nibbling her throat. “I want to lick you all over like candy. I want to leave no part untouched.”

  “Yes,” she quavered as his hand slid between her ass cheeks, parting them, sliding lower to touch the damp, narrow seam. “Talk to me. Tell me what—”

  “I want to lick you here, too.” He ran a finger across the plump folds of her pussy lips, caressing the inner ruffly bits, slick and wet already. He couldn’t wait to get her on her back, legs wide, so he could study every detail. “I’ll lap up your juice and then suck your clit till the well fills back up and I have to lick it all away again—”

  His voice choked off as she yanked his head back down and kissed him. Her clumsy ardor set off a bomb inside his chest. It was getting worse. He was going nuts, and he could not stop. Could. Not. Stop.

  He kissed her back, ravenously, and let her gulp up air while he nuzzled her ears again. “I want to slide my tongue between your pussy lips and lap at it, top to bottom,” he told her hoarsely. “Then I’ll fingerfuck you while I tease your clit with my tongue.”

  “Ohhh…” she whispered.

  “I’ll keep at you until your ass and your thighs are all slippery, and you’re gasping and moaning and shoving yourself against my mouth. Begging me to give you my cock.”

  She pulled away, breath jerking hard between her parted lips. Cheeks flushed bright, eyes dazzled. “Oh, my. That’s it.”

  “That’s what?” he demanded.

  “What I wanted,” she informed him. “What Justin wasn’t giving me.” She wedged her hand down between their clamped, trembling bodies, and fastened around his cock, squeezing through his cargo pants. “Oh, boy. This is, um, extreme. I might have known. Like everything else about you.”

  He groaned. “You don’t know jack about me, lady.”

  “I’m learning fast,” she offered. “You’re an inspiring teacher.”

  Her fingers tightened around his cock, and the next sound he made was a rasp of mingled pleasure and despair. “You’re trouble.”

  “Wow,” she murmured. “I always wanted to be.”

  He had to concentrate to keep from coming in his pants. The tender squeezing, the curious stroking, the ticklish butterfly pats, it was all driving him nuts.

  He’d always liked lots of fooling around first. He was generously endowed and he’d figured out from the start of his sex life that if he wanted the girl to like it and ask for more, he had to go slow and max out on the foreplay. This necessity had never weighed upon him, however, since wallowing in the juicy intricacies of womens’ bodies for hours was his idea of hog heaven.

  But if she kept petting, he was going to lose it and go at her like a wild boar in rut. He clamped his hand over hers and pried it off his cock for the moment. Then he slid his hand down into the silky wet fuzz on her mound.

  He teased his way inside the damp seam, swirling his finger around in her hot lube, like some slick, delicious oil. His thumb glided around her clit, searching for spots that made her shiver and moan, and thrust his finger right up into the tight clutch of her pussy.

  Her plush, cushiony cunt felt great, clenching and releasing with her upper thighs. Head thrown back, eyes closed, she looked even more beautiful.

  Need clawed at him, but she was too tight, too small. He had to make her come first, till she was boneless, limp, flooded with lube. That took time.

  And he was losing his mind, very pleasurably. Starting to forget why giving this red hot sex kitten screaming orgasms until the sun came up was not a great idea.

  Awareness of the danger only hours away lingered in the back of his mind, but she was about to come and he couldn’t stop himself for going for it. He could feel it building in her body, in her trembling lips, in her pussy, jerking against his hand—

  It hit, a glittering sugar rush of girl pleasure, throbbing through her and back through him by reflex. Her pussy tightened hard around his finger in ripples of warmth, licking and lapping over every nerve.

  They rocked together, heads cradled on each others’ shoulders. His nose nuzzled her wet hair. He felt her sharp teeth against his shoulder and a hot, wet stroke from her pink tongue. That was it. He hoped to God she was ready, because he sure as hell was.

  He jerked his pants down, let his cock spring up against her belly, raring to go. He gripped her ass cheeks and hoisted her up against the wall, tilting his hips for the plunge—

  “Do you, um, have any condoms?”

  The reasonable question penetrated the fog of lust in his head like a fine needle. Sharp and irritating, poking him.

  “Huh?” He shook his head, confused. “What the fuck…?”

  “Looked like you were going for it. Gotta have protection, right?” She licked a sheen of sweat from her upper lip. Her mouth was flushed, blurred from his kissing.

  “I don’t have one.”

  Her eyes fluttered. “Oh. That’s, ah, bad. So I guess we can’t, then. I guess I thought you’d just, ah, pull some latex out of a hat.”

  Frustration built up inside him. “Do I look like I’m wearing a fucking hat?”

  She winced. “Figure of speech. Can’t we do some of those other great things you suggested before?”

  Two startling thoughts occurred to him. One, if he hadn’t thought she was too weirdly innocent to be a call girl, he was convinced of it now.

  The second thought, barely glimpsed through the haze of lust in his mind, was that she had offered him an out.

  He’d been hurtling into the tunnel of doom. She’d just saved him. He should be grateful to her. Hah. Right now all he wanted was to mess with her mind a little, for tying a knot in his cock.

  His grip tightened on her hips. “Nope,” he said. “No condoms here. No drugstore for miles. You take your chances.”

  Her eyes got big. “Oh. Um, that’s not very smart—”

  “No,” he said. “It’s not.”

  “I don’t even know your name,” she whispered.

  He snorted. “Yeah? That just occurred to you now?”

  He wanted to tell her his name. First, last, aliases. He wanted to be naked with her. Inside her. Now, damnit. He could have pounded the flo
or like a baby, but he did not. She had reactivated his self-control.

  His cock had never been so unhappy.

  She reached down, giving his stiff, empurpled boner a tentative pat-pat-pat, like it was a wild animal that might bite her. “Let’s compromise,” she suggested.

  He didn’t answer right away. Do the right thing, Nick, he told himself. Say thank-you and good-bye. But something else came out of his mouth. Something crude and stupid.

  “OK,” he said. “Blow me. Let’s see if you’re any good.”

  She jerked away and her tits jiggled as she came in contact with the opposite wall. She backed towards the door, clearly disgusted by his raging case of testosterone poisoning.

  He felt like he’d kicked a kitten. “Oh, Christ. I’m sorry.”

  Her chin went up. “Forget it,” she said haughtily. “This is crazy. I’m out of here.”

  “Thank God,” he muttered. Then she was gone. He put his hand over his hot face. It shook. His whole damn body shook. His eyes leaked. Nick, the ice man. Melted down to fucking mud. What the hell had just happened to him?

  It occurred to him that Becca was naked in the woods, at one in the morning, with no flashlight. Shit. She had the walkway for a guide, he told himself. But in that moonless dark, she was going to have a painful, unnerving time creeping back to the Sloane A-frame. She wouldn’t die of exposure in the ten minutes that it would take her to get there. But still. Christ.

  He went to the control room and grabbed the thermal imager.

  He winced when he saw the red, rainbow-edged image moving on the boardwalk stumble. She crouched down to feel her way, walking almost on her hands and knees. He was tempted to follow her with the infrared goggles to make sure she got back safe.

  But following a beautiful, naked woman through the dark woods with a raging hard-on like the one he had now didn’t strike him as intelligent. He didn’t trust himself. He’d probably end up carrying her over his shoulder to the Sloane house and nailing her there on the first flat surface that presented itself, if he could find a condom and get her permission in writing.

  She was right. This was crazy. He was crazy.

  He did the next best thing: climbing the spiral staircase to look out the window of one of the back bedrooms, from which the Sloane house could be seen. He stood there, and waited, like a statue, until he saw a light flick on. Home safe. Good.

  Let her go and fucking forget about it. He hadn’t done anything against the law and she wasn’t likely to report him to the local cops for not having a goddamn condom. But the gun, the cuffs—fuck it. Too late now. They would ask her a lot of rude questions about why she was swimming naked in the neighbor’s pool in the first place. No, nothing would come of it.

  He sank down into the bed, humiliated. Goddamn it, he had wanted her, though. With all his heart.

  Being alive again felt truly weird. To think he’d maneuvered, begged, pleaded, cheated, schemed, for a chance to get closer to that psycho vermin Zhoglo. He would have laughed, if he had the energy.

  Nobody could pay a guy enough money to do shit like this. He was dickbrained enough to do it for free. Jesus, look at him. The most important solo op of his life, deadly dangerous…and ta da…a beautiful naked girl waltzed in out of nowhere and made him forget who he was, what he was doing. Made him drunk and stupid with her clumsy kissing.

  He wasn’t a hugging sort of guy, but her arms had felt so damn good. And his finger tingled, thinking of her tight, hot, clinging—

  Stop. He buried his face in his hands, and let out a sound like a wolf’s howl. If he lived through this, he was done. He would spend the rest of what passed for his life building birdhouses.

  Becca’s spell was potent. While it lasted, he felt like a man again, Interesting to know that his tackle still worked. He tried to shove his cock into his pants, but it wasn’t ready to face reality. Like a raised fist at an activists’ rally, it stayed up and stayed high. He wondered if he was going to have to jerk off to get some relief. It had been months since the urge to masturbate had even crossed his mind. Let alone sex.

  He’d been too busy, too focused. Too depressed. The last time he’d had sex offered to him was at an icebound way station for human traffickers in the armpit of Russia, three months ago. Posing as a buyer while he looked for Sveti. Stone cold afraid to find her there.

  One of the traffickers had offered him the use of a piece of his merchandise. Ivana. From Belarus. Couldn’t have been fourteen. Even terrified and traumatized, she was a pretty girl. Destined to be chained to a bed in a brothel, in some sex tourism hot spot in Thailand or the Philippines, until she got used up and sent off to the boneyard.

  He’d given Ivana his bed to spare her having to turn any other tricks that night and slept with the rats on the filthy floor, wrapped in his coat. The cargo had moved on the next morning.

  It had put him off sex ever since. He’d barely managed to eat afterwards, it had made him so fucking miserable. He could have saved Ivana, if he’d been willing to break cover, give up his search.

  But he’d made a promise to Sveti’s mother. To Sergei’s ghost.

  It made him crazy. Thousands of women and children, bought and sold, used and tossed like garbage so that Zhoglo and men like him could get richer. So that sleazy sex tourist assholes from all over the world had a constant supply of fresh meat. Thousands of Svetis, of Ivanas. And he couldn’t do a fucking thing about it.

  Except for this. He would keep it simple, focus on one individual. Just Sveti. If he thought about them all, he’d go nuts.

  He knew in his gut that trying to stop Zhoglo and his kind was a useless effort. Even if he took out one kingpin, a thousand wannabes would hustle to fill his shoes. But he could try to find one single stolen girl and take her back to her mother. Just one. That wasn’t too goddamn much to ask.

  He patted the various pockets of his cut-off cargo pants until he found a lighter and the battered pack of Turkish cigarettes that his alter ego Arkady favored.

  He took a deep, grateful drag of the harsh smoke. He’d acquired the habit when he was a freaked-out, fucked-up teenager and tried to quit several times. Now that he’d wrapped his mind around the fact that he wasn’t likely to be needing his lungs in the long term anyhow, it seemed pointless to deny himself.

  He struggled to remember what Sveti looked like, but after six months, the finer details were gone. He remembered obvious things: long dark hair, hazel eyes, a big smile like Sergei’s. A port wine birthmark on her neck. But when he tried to see her face, a vision of Becca got in the way. All grown up but somehow just as innocent.

  He looked at his crotch, let out a mirthless laugh. Thinking about Sveti and Ivana was a great way to wilt an inconvenient boner.

  Useful discovery: if she kept the walkway boards perpendicular to her naked toes, she could stay on her feet without toppling onto sharp rocks and thorny, bug-and-snake-infested foliage. This was good.

  Sobering reflection: she could miss the turn-off to the A-frame, and keep going in an endless loop around the island until she croaked of exposure, or got eaten for a midnight snack. That was bad.

  Becca’s imperfect solution was to hug the edge of the path and follow the edge of the boards with her toes, which compelled her to go at a slow, limping pace. She clung to her outrage, and somehow that kept her from sliding into screaming panic.

  A bump on the ends of her abused toes made her howl, even while tears of gratitude popped into her eyes. The turn-off.

  She groped for the handrail, and went up the stairs. Thin branches tickled and slapped, cobwebs broke across her face, winged things fluttered against her hair. She swatted them away as she felt her way across the deck and the picture window until she found the door. She turned on every light in her dash for the closest bathroom.

  Forty minutes or so under a pounding stream of hot water took off the edge of the cold, but it didn’t wash away the touch of his hands, his lips. So that was a whole body orgasm. She’d read about them in
romances. The sensation had scared her, it was so intense.

  How pathetic. To be taken by surprise by a real orgasm at the advanced age of thirty. And worse was the way his crude remark made her feel after. Blow me. Let’s see if you’re any good.

  Trust Becca to get a massive crush on an overgrown frat boy. Whose name she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

  Frantic rummaging in the closets yielded up another terry-cloth bathrobe. Becca swathed herself and wandered through Sloane’s house. The place was like the lobby of a ski resort. Big beams, flagstones, cedar paneling, huge fireplace, squishy couches upholstered in ugly plaid wool. A mirror hung on the wall. She stared at her pale face, her smudged mascara. She felt different. Her obsessive thoughts of Justin and Kaia weren’t having their usual effect.

  On the contrary. The penis-chomping debacle, nasty though it had been, was simply not as interesting as what had just happened to her. God knows, Mr. Big next door beat Justin hands down when it came to doggish lewdness. The big difference being that Mr. Big’s doggish lewdness had been directed right at Becca’s own self.

  And there was no doubt that his interest had been real. There was no faking an erection like that.

  Wow, she’d come close to doing the deed with a complete stranger. Her face flamed, remembering his final suggestion. She’d had an image of herself, trying so hard to please, the way she’d tried to please Justin. Failing. Having him judge her, for how clumsy and clueless she was.

  She saw Justin, complaining in his hospital bed, looking pale and martyred and self-righteous. Kaia, in her collar and head brace, a pitying smirk on her pretty face.

  So what are you going to do? Curl up and die? Sometimes Becca wanted to smack herself.

  She pried one of the long fireplace matches out of the box. Some helpful soul had already laid a fire, and it licked to life, newspaper and kindling catching flame. No moping allowed. Doing something useful was her trusted strategy for mood management, so she marched over to the cardboard boxes that sat on the table and started ripping them open.

  The boxes were filled with catered foodstuffs that had been delivered to her office that day, as part of her wedding prep. Her boss and colleagues had urged her to take it all with her to Frakes Island in lieu of groceries. Nobody wanted perishables lying around in the office all week. She and Justin were supposed to have tasted the wines together, to choose what would accompany the various courses of their wedding feast. This was to have taken place on their romantic weekend getaway, this very weekend. She’d planned it all out to the last succulent detail.