Alec's Royal Assignment (Man On A Mission Book 3) (8 page)

Angelina shivered and her nipples tightened unbearably as she realized Alec wasn’t like any other man she’d known in her life. He was...unique. He didn’t want soft and yielding. He seemed to want her just as she was. Tough. Uncompromising. Determined. Strong. He respected those qualities in her, because...because he was the same way.

She searched his eyes, his face, and knew it was the truth. He wanted
exactly
those things from her she’d been afraid would always prevent her from having what most other women had. She would never have to hide her true self from Alec. Never have to pretend to be someone else. It was a freeing revelation.

Then sudden fear whipped through her. Not fear of Alec, but of herself. Fear she wouldn’t be satisfied with one night. That she’d want more. That one night with Alec would only make her crave him like an addict craved a drug. That she would want forever.

But she couldn’t let fear rule her. She never had. She never would. She would take this night with Alec because she wanted it...wanted him. That was all. And she wanted what Alec had promised her—she wanted him to make her scream his name.

Even more, she desperately wanted to make him scream her name. That thought was an aphrodisiac all its own, that a man like him—so strong, so powerful—would surrender control to her, mind and body. Her eyes gleamed at the thought. “Yes,” she promised, running her short, unvarnished nails over his taut muscles, accepting everything he offered...for one night only. “I
will
make you scream.”

* * *

Angelina couldn’t bear it. Not one more minute. She writhed beneath Alec’s tongue, her hands fisted in the cotton sheets, her body arching, arching, as if she could dislodge his hold on her and escape that way. But he held her hips firm, his tongue making forays into her core, then back up to tease and torment the little nub that throbbed and swelled and threatened to overwhelm her desire to hold back, to not let him—

Then she exploded, crying his name, wanting it to be over but also wanting it to last forever.
La petite mort
—the little death—as the French called it. And it was. It
was.

Alec refused to stop until she was shaking and trembling, until she collapsed boneless and sobbing for breath, unable to do anything else. Then he slid up her body, grabbed a condom from the handful he’d placed on the nightstand, rolled it on and thrust deep. Angelina came again almost immediately, her nails digging into his buttocks, pulling him tightly into her body as he flexed and thrust, flexed and thrust. Again. Then again. She came one last time seconds before he came, too—a powerful orgasmic explosion that tore her name from his throat.

Alec lay there for a few seconds, his eyes closed as he dragged one shuddering breath after another into his body. Then he withdrew carefully, disposed of the condom and settled back onto the bed. He tugged gently until she lay with her back against him, one of his strong arms curved around her waist to anchor her in place.

She thought he was dozing because his breathing was deep and even, but then he whispered in her ear in Zakharan. Sexy words. Incredibly intimate words. At first, her body reacted as if he’d caressed her— nipples tightening, a throbbing in her loins—but then she suddenly wondered how many other Zakharian women he’d slept with since his arrival...and which one had taught him those words.

He must have noticed her slight stiffening, must have read her mind, because he said intently—still in Zakharan—“I’ve never used those words in bed, Angel. You’re my first...in that way.”

She believed him. Just as she believed him when he said, “It’s been a long time for me. Longer than a man likes to admit, even to himself.” His hand slid down until it was nestled at the crux of her thighs, fingers brushing lightly. Reminding her of what they’d just shared numerous times. “But that’s not why I’m here,” he told her, his deep voice quiet in the stillness of the night. “I’m here because you’re the only one I want. Tell me you feel the same way.”

She sighed—an acknowledgment and an acceptance of his explanation—and let herself relax back against him. “I do,” she admitted.

“Good.”

Before she realized it, he drifted off. She didn’t mind. She loved having Alec hold her this way, even in sleep, his semi-arousal pressed up against her backside.
Although,
she thought with a quick flare of humor,
he should not be capable of being aroused at all. Not after all the times we...

Stamina. Alec had unbelievable stamina, and apparently, so did she. But now she was exhausted, although she was still too wired to sleep. They’d slept like the dead between bouts of intense sexual pleasure, but never more than an hour at a time. And each time they’d awakened, Alec had given her two or three orgasms for each one of his. Her body was sated—more than sated.

This last time had been the worst—or the best—
depends on how you look at it,
she reminded herself with a satisfied smile. He’d used his fingers, watching her face and deriving pleasure from making her come despite herself. Then, when she’d grasped him firmly, wanting to torment him in return, he’d escaped her hold and slid down her body. Starting with her toes, he’d slowly worked his way up her ankles, her calves, the backs of her knees, her thighs. All this before he really got to work with his tongue at the apex of her thighs.

She sighed deeply at the memories. All good.
If I never have sex again, I’ll die a happy woman,
she thought dreamily.

“Come for me,” he’d told her, coaxing her into letting go with the deep voice that never failed to thrill her—his voice alone had made her shudder. “That’s right, Angel. That’s right. Come for me.” And she had. She’d been embarrassed at how easily he’d been able to entice her first climax out of her with just his fingers. Not to mention how embarrassed she’d felt admitting to him this was only her second time with a man. And the first time she’d enjoyed it.

But he hadn’t let her be embarrassed. Not that first time. Not any time. He’d encouraged her to touch him everywhere. She’d used her hands. Lips. Tongue. Teeth. And just as he said he would, he’d told her what he liked, how he liked it. How long he liked it. And he’d coaxed her into telling him what she liked, how she liked it. How long she liked it. Until they knew each other intimately. Until they no longer had to say a word. Until everything just meshed...every time.

Angelina sighed drowsily again, a sound of pure joy. Pure contentment. She wanted to stay like this forever...remembering. But before she knew it, she’d fallen asleep.

* * *

Alec woke first. He eased himself away, then lay on his side, his head propped up on one hand, watching Angelina sleep. Loving the sight of her, so sleep-and sex-tousled. Her face rosy and satisfied. She’d been perturbed at first that he’d brought condoms with him. As if he’d known they would become lovers tonight. As if he’d
planned
it.

But then he’d told her in all honesty, “I’ve been carrying condoms with me since the first day I kissed you. Not because I planned to seduce you, but because I would never put you at risk. I wanted to be ready if you ever said yes.” Then he’d laughed softly, deep in his throat. “Not that I didn’t want to make love to you—even before I kissed you. Remember when we met at the airport?”

She’d nodded and he’d told her, “I saw you watching me. There was just something about you, something that said, ‘Touch me and die.’” He’d laughed again. “Okay, so you were a challenge, and I could never resist a challenge. But it wasn’t just that. Everything you said, everything you did—even taking me down the day we went jogging—told me, ‘This woman is unique. She would understand.’”

She hadn’t asked him, “Understand what?” But if she had, he’d have told her at least some of what he was thinking. Even if she wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

He and Angelina were dynamite together in bed. He’d imagined they would be, but the reality put even his dreams to shame. She was so giving. Not just in what she was willing to do to and for him—although that had been an eye-opening revelation—but the trust she’d given him. Letting go of her inhibitions. Letting him know how vulnerable she was—but only with him. Letting him see how much she enjoyed everything he did to her.

It was an incredible turn-on to know he was the one giving her so much unbearable pleasure, and making her cry out his name. Knowing, too, he was the first man to tap the vein of intense sexuality that ran so deep in her, so carefully hidden from the rest of the world. God, would he ever get enough of her?

She still pushes all your buttons, Jones. She always will. Just admit it.

That was certainly true. But even as he acknowledged the truth of that statement, he acknowledged another truth—an unpalatable one. Unless he figured out a way to keep Angelina without destroying either her career or his—something that would destroy
them
—any button pushing in the future would have to be done long-distance.

Chapter 8

A
ngelina woke late—too late to go for her normal morning run—having had maybe four hours of sleep total. But the lack of sleep didn’t bother her; she’d never felt better in her life, despite the lingering awareness between her legs that made walking to the bathroom a gingery effort after she slipped quietly from the bed so as not to waken Alec.

The shower tempted her. She needed one after last night...and this morning. She wasn’t even going to count how many times she’d climaxed, although the number ten stood out in big bold letters in her mind for some reason. Not every time had been cataclysmic—but even when she’d told Alec, “I cannot,” they’d both known she could...and did.

She no sooner stepped under the hot spray when the shower curtain was jerked open and a big male body joined hers, taking up more than his share of the available space, crowding her deliberately. Taking possession of her body as if he had the right.
Which he does
,
she acknowledged to herself. She’d given him that right. Just as he’d given her the right to take possession of his body, which she was quick to do now. Stroking. Fondling. Then standing on tiptoe to fit him at the apex of her thighs.

“Don’t, Angel,” he said at last, but his refusal was halfhearted. “I need to be at the embassy in less than an hour, and I still have to go back to my apartment and change. I can’t show up at work wearing—” She tightened her legs deliberately and he groaned deep in his throat. “Oh God, Angel. Not now. I—”

A tiny corner of her mind told her she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t resist. She slid to her knees in front of him, holding his erection in her hands and taking him into her mouth. Alec managed to turn the water off and brace himself against the shower tiles, but that was the last conscious movement he made until she’d wrung a shuddering orgasm from him.

When she finally let him go, stood and turned the water back on to wash both of them, he growled, “You’re a witch, you know that?”

Angelina smiled, for the first time understanding completely the expression
like a cat at the cream pot.
“Five minutes,” she said, soaping his body briskly and moving so the shower spray would rinse him off. “You could spare five minutes.”

“Yeah, but now I need to return the favor, and that will take a hell of a lot longer than five minutes.”

She shook her head. “No time. You must get to the embassy, remember? Besides...” She laughed softly. “I am way ahead of you already. Even after this.” She was out of the shower before he could stop her, and she handed him the towel she’d used on her hair last night. They dried off in silence, but when she wrapped her towel around her and tried to slip past him into her bedroom, he stopped her with one hand on her arm, all banter gone from his expression. “This doesn’t end here, Angel.”

Part of her wanted to tell him it had to. That this was a one-time thing. But another part of her yearned to believe in the fairy-tale ending. And because she knew neither of them had time for the kind of discussion Alec was obviously intending, she compromised. “I must get to work, too,” she told him. “Now is not the time.”

“When?”

He wanted to pin her down. “Tonight?” she offered. “I am off at five. You could meet me here after that. Or I could come to your apartment.”

He hesitated for only a second. “I’ll come here. Five-thirty okay? I’ll take you to dinner, and we can talk.”

She would have agreed to anything that got Alec out of her apartment now. She’d worry about tonight later. “Fine.”

* * *

When Angelina arrived at the palace for her regular duty guarding the queen, she was stopped outside the queen’s suite by Captain Zale and Lieutenant Arkady before she could knock and gain admittance.

“The king wishes to see you, Lieutenant Mateja,” Captain Zale said without preamble. “Lieutenant Arkady will take your duty today.”

This cannot be good.
A sinking feeling swept through her, but she stiffened her spine and asked coolly, “The entire day? Or just until my audience with the king is finished?” She caught her breath as another thought occurred to her, one with devastating impact. “Or am I being relieved of duty permanently?”

“Let us say until further notice. Until we hear what the king has to say.”

Angelina followed Captain Zale down the long corridor, but instead of taking the grand staircase down to the king’s public office suite on the first floor, he stopped abruptly at the door to the king’s secluded private office off his personal suite of rooms and knocked. She didn’t know if this was a good sign or bad—she’d rarely spoken to the king, and never in his private office.

The door was opened by one of the king’s bodyguards, Major Lukas Branko, a man she’d known only by sight until yesterday’s interrogation. The expression on his face wasn’t encouraging, and Angelina’s heart sank further. But she wasn’t about to betray how she felt to anyone. No one would know it would kill her to be relieved of duty. No one would know she would never be able to hold her head up again if that happened.

“Captain Zale and Lieutenant Mateja to see you, Sire,” he announced without letting them enter.

“Thank you, Lukas,” came the deep voice she recognized as belonging to the king. “Please leave us. And take Captain Zale with you.” The king moved into her line of sight. “Come in, Lieutenant.” He waited for Angelina to enter and the two men to leave. Then he closed the door behind them. “Please have a seat,” the king said, indicating one of the chairs in front of his massive desk.

“I would prefer to stand, Sire,” she said, speaking nothing more than the truth. If the ax was going to fall, she’d rather receive it standing than sitting.

“As you wish.” The king seated himself behind the desk, silently observing Angelina standing ramrod straight in front of him, then smiled his faint smile. “It has just occurred to me you might have misinterpreted my invitation,” he said finally.

She was startled into blurting out, “Invitation, Sire? Captain Zale presented it as a command.”

“Ah,” he said, his smile deepening as the little mystery was explained to him. “Let me apologize, Lieutenant. I have not called you here to relieve you of duty. Nor have I called you here to reprimand you. I merely wanted to thank you in person for saving my son’s life.”

Monumental relief flooded her at the king’s words. She wasn’t being relieved of her commission. She wasn’t even being removed from the queen’s security detail, the two things she’d feared most. She closed her eyes and thanked God. Fervently. Then she opened her eyes again and looked at the king. “No need to thank me, Your Majesty. Keeping your family safe is my duty...and my honor.”

The smile that had faded from the king’s face at Angelina’s initial reaction to hearing she wasn’t being relieved of duty—the relief she’d found impossible to keep from her expression—returned. “Very good, Lieutenant,” he said softly, his vivid green eyes gleaming with approval. “That kind of devotion is what I like to see in all my men. Especially those who are assigned to guard the queen. The queen,” he amended, “and now the prince.”

Like every Zakharian, Angelina knew the king would gladly sacrifice his own life to keep his wife and son safe. And like every loyal Zakharian on the three security details, love for their king made them fiercely protective of the entire royal family.

But the king was still speaking, and Angelina forced herself to focus on his words. “I heard everything yesterday from Captain Zale and others. I even had the US embassy’s regional security officer here—at his request.”

Alec? Alec talked to the king about what happened? Why did he not tell me?
“I did not know that, Sire.”

“The US embassy’s RSO was my sister’s guest at the christening yesterday—you probably know he was once her bodyguard. When her husband told her of the danger, she apparently asked Special Agent Jones to assist in any way he could, which is why he... I think
intervened
was the word he used. But his involvement was after the fact.
After
you had spotted the would-be assassins.
After
you had accurately deduced their target and informed Captain Zale of the threat.” The king’s voice hardened. “
After
you had realized exactly what the would-be assassins were waiting for—the precise moment my son would be most vulnerable.”

Angelina suppressed a tiny shiver at the coldness in the voice uttering that last sentence. The king had gone from friendly and approachable to hard and implacable in seconds. “And
after
you had taken one of the would-be assassins prisoner,” he continued without pause, “ensuring he would no longer be a threat to my son.”

It was exactly what Angelina needed to hear. But she didn’t want the king to praise her for something that had been an accident. “I was not looking for threats at that precise moment, Sire,” she confessed. “I was watching the baptism...like most people in the cathedral. Thinking about the religious meaning of the ceremony. One of the cameramen happened to be in my line of sight. That is when I saw the gun half hidden in his camera. And I knew...”

She trailed off and took a deep breath. “When I looked at the other cameraman and saw he also had a weapon in his possession, it all fell into place, and I knew the crown prince had to be the target. Once I realized that—”

“You realized what they were waiting for. Yes, Lieutenant, I had already deduced that.” She watched as the king made a visible effort to relax the tension in his muscles at the thought of what had nearly happened yesterday. “Who can say what guides our thoughts, our actions? Divine intervention? Perhaps. But I have learned to my sorrow that God does not always intervene to save the innocent. He relies on us. And in this case, on you, Lieutenant. You did not fail God. You did not fail me.” He smiled his faint smile again. “So. How do I reward you for saving my son’s life?”

This is why every loyal Zakharian loves the king,
Angelina realized as emotion welled up in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her. She swallowed hard. “That your family is safe is reward enough, Your Majesty.”

“Hmm.” He leaned back in his chair, observing her, and Angelina knew he was seeing more than she really wanted him to see. “I will have to think about this. In the meantime, Lieutenant, please accept my heartfelt thanks for a job well done.” He stood and held out his hand, and when she tentatively offered hers, he shook it firmly, decisively, giving her his trust so completely that she swore to herself she would never let him down.

* * *

Angelina had no sooner exited the king’s private office when Major Branko stopped her. “Colonel Marianescu wishes to see you, Lieutenant,” he said.

“But the king—” she began, almost blurting out that the king had cleared her of wrongdoing. Then, “Yes, sir.”

She headed down the corridor without another word, stopping at the door to Colonel Marianescu’s office. She drew a deep breath, tapped on the door and pushed it open at the strong command to enter.

“You wished to see me, Colonel?” she asked from the doorway.

“Come in and shut the door, Lieutenant.” When she did, the king’s cousin crossed the room to where she stood nervously by the door and offered his hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant, from the bottom of my heart.”

She took the hand but couldn’t help asking, “Sir?” Not really understanding. She knew the colonel and the king were close, almost like brothers, but...

“If anything had happened to the crown prince,” he explained, “there are those who would firmly believe I had a hand in it somehow.” His expression was even more austere than normal. “The way many still believe I had a hand in my brother’s schemes eighteen months ago. Or at least knowledge of them.”

Angelina didn’t know what to say. Like the king, she didn’t believe it. No one who’d ever served under Colonel Marianescu—including all those on the security details—believed it, either, but she knew many Zakharians still harbored the question in their minds.

She didn’t have to say anything, though, because the colonel added, “I owe you a debt of gratitude, Lieutenant. Know that you can call upon me anytime, anywhere, should you ever need anything. This is not coming from the head of internal security. This is coming from me, personally.”

* * *

But that wasn’t the end of her incredible day. No sooner had she returned to duty in the queen’s suite, when diminutive Queen Juliana threw herself at Angelina, her long dark hair curling around a face flushed with gratitude, her violet eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “Thank you, Angelina,” she uttered in a fervent voice as she hugged her fiercely. “I can never thank you enough. Oh, I knew if anyone tried to hurt Raoul or me, you would prevent it. And I was right.” Then she burst into tears.

Angelina quickly seated the queen in an armchair in the sitting room, and knelt on one knee in front of her. “I’m sorry,” the queen said, using the heels of her hands to wipe the tears from her eyes like a little girl. “I wasn’t going to cry. Honestly, I wasn’t. But I can’t seem to help it. If anything had happened to Raoul...” A fresh upwelling of tears overwhelmed the queen’s efforts to hold them back.

A touch of humor speared through Angelina as she acknowledged the queen was one of those few women who looked beautiful even when they were crying, her tear-stained eyes like damp pansies, the delicate color in her cheeks unaffected.
Unlike me,
she thought with an inner smile, remembering her red, swollen eyes and puffy face last night.

But Alec did not care how I looked.
The thought hit her like an avalanche, and hard on the heels of that thought came another one.
All he cared about was convincing me I did the right thing yesterday. All he cared about was making me accept the truth. Not just about killing Sasha, but about the two of us—Alec and me. About how we feel. Not only how we feel physically, but all the things we share...like what motivates us.

She wasn’t going to be able to walk away from him. Not after he’d abolished every sexual inhibition she’d ever had—wiped them right off the map. Not after he’d taught her it was perfectly acceptable to be demanding in bed. Not after he’d taught her just how demanding she could be with the right man. A man who could fulfill every sexual fantasy she’d ever had and then some.