The Russian Seduction (14 page)

Ashen snow was swirling from the sky like nuclear fallout when Victor drove her back. As they cruised toward the city, the megawatt blaze of nightclubs and casinos and all-night lingerie shops flashed into view through the arctic night. Alexis curled in her seat as the sports car poured dry heat around her legs. The spirited strains of
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
filled the charged silence.

An interesting choice, she thought dryly, since the grim Soviet-era opera was about a woman whose illicit affair ended in violence.

Mentally and emotionally, she was drifting, numb to the hot-cold rush of emotions flooding through her. Her body ached in places she couldn’t discuss with her gynecologist. God, she even smelled like him, the heady aroma of vice: a Molotov cocktail of sex, Beckham and imported cigarettes.

For her own peace of mind, she needed to figure out what the hell had happened tonight. In Victor’s bed, she’d thrown away control with both hands—turned into a reckless stranger, a foreigner living in her own skin. A carnal creature living purely for
now
, careless of consequence, daring the lightning of disaster to strike. Ravaged by a raw, pulsing hunger for this man’s passion that she’d never dreamed she possessed.

Since joining the Foreign Service, she’d been functioning like a robot. Briskly efficient, unflappable, politely smiling or grave as her operating instructions required. A woman who’d switched off her sexuality to succeed in a demanding career. A woman whose dead-end marriage had done nothing to recharge her batteries.

For
ten years
she’d been a drone performing safely within parameters, her needles and gauges never swinging to the red. Until tonight, when Kostenko had switched on the rest of her—and short-circuited the whole damn system.

She would’ve felt nothing but contempt, concealed by a veneer of sympathy, for any female colleague who landed herself in this kind of mess.

Abruptly, Victor swung the car from the neon boulevard of
Leningradsky Shosse
into a narrow alley. Clouds of snow gusted through the pallid cones of light from isolated street lamps. Their tires squealed on the damp concrete, then gripped and held.

Tightly the captain twisted the vehicle through a labyrinth of streets—left, right, doubling back. Unease nibbled at her nerves as she snuck peeks at his profile, eyes narrowed into slits as he frowned at the rearview mirror.

Cautiously, she followed his gaze. Through the snow scouring the rear window, the blue-white blaze of headlights stabbed into her eyes.

Just another hopping Friday night in Moscow. Russians never even noticed a good blizzard.

Unconvinced by her own reassurances, she moistened her lips. “Is someone following us?”

“Possibly.” Kostenko tucked their vehicle between two speeding cars and gunned through a traffic light as it flashed red. In the mirror, Alexis saw a gray Lada swerve through the intersection to stay on their tail.

“Is it, ah, normal for them to follow you this closely?” Alexis recalled his ironic references to their “minders.”

The scrutiny was not uncommon, she knew, for MFA diplomats in Russia. With their level of exposure to foreigners and international travel, their own system considered them vulnerable to compromise. So they were routinely dogged by their own security services, who’d been flexing their muscles since an ex-KGB
apparatchik
rose to power.

“Occasionally, I am followed.” Victor switched on the wipers to scrape ice from the windshield. “But this guy is one of yours.”

“Captain, that’s preposterous.” He didn’t miss the mark very often, this formidable sub skipper she’d just inexplicably slept with. But he was way off target this time. “I assure you no one from the Embassy follows me or any other American. That isn’t an Embassy vehicle. No red plates, no 004 on the tag. Anyway, how would you even
know
—?”

“Don’t turn around.” His voice was detached, and he wore his inscrutable Russia face. But she was starting to figure out a few of his “tells”. Like his clipped Moscow accent, always sharper when he was on guard.

“I know he’s one of yours,” he gritted, “because he’s hanging back in our baffles. Our operatives want me to know they’re watching, yes? This guy doesn’t, although I’d wager he’s not accustomed to stealth.”

“My God.” She’d always hated surveillance, considered it the biggest drawback about Moscow on the hefty list of cons she’d weighed before taking the job. Despite the enticing “post differential” they’d added to her salary to compensate, the scrutiny made her skin prickle, like insects were skittering inside her clothes.

Suddenly she was too aware of the frigid air seeping through her door. In fact, she was goddamn freezing.

Victor glanced at her sharply, then dialed up the heater and switched off the Shostakovich.

“Old habit,” he said wryly, to explain the sudden hush. “At a depth of two hundred meters, one avoids detection by running silent.”

She fought the urge to twist around, still hoping the Lada tucked three cars back had nothing to do with them.

“What should we do?” she asked, hugging her knees.

“They’re your guys.” He shrugged, though she doubted he liked being followed. Buried not too deep in his sub captain’s ego, he’d be itching to prove he could ditch them.

“Do you want me to lose them?” he murmured. Despite the tension crackling around them, she swallowed back a smile.

She was only going back to the Embassy, a destination that could come as no surprise. Yet it was hard to stay logical when she didn’t know who the hell was back there, or why. When she was already struggling with a guilty conscience, due to the guy she’d just slept with, and how much she’d liked it.

No one on my side’s going to know,
he’d whispered.

“
Can
you lose them?” she said hopefully, still not certain it was a smart idea. She’d been briefed
not
to react when she noticed routine surveillance. Let the Russians take a look, was the theory. Behave normally, and soon they’d lose interest and go away.

“That’s what the navy paid me for.” With a wolfish grin, Victor twisted the steering wheel to slice across two lanes of traffic. Car horns blared behind them.

A current of contained energy pulsed from him as he pitched his hat with its naval insignia in the back, shrugged out of his regulation jacket. That left him wearing a starched white shirt and black tie, pretty innocuous—unless you saw the cold glint in those arctic eyes.

Beneath his camouflage, like any predator, he was thirsting for the kill.

Even while fretting over their crisis, Alexis couldn’t help noticing the way his shoulders and biceps filled the shirt out. She wondered if later he’d catch a whiff of Coco Chanel and the musk of feminine arousal, and remember—

The mint-green, palatial expanse of the Belarus train station blurred past as he cornered through an intersection like it was NASCAR. A knot of pedestrians materialized through a wall of blowing snow, and he tapped the horn and swerved to avoid them.

Nervously, Alexis checked her cell phone. The Embassy’s emergency hotline was programmed into her speed-dial, and the Marines manned that post 24/7. Here in the center of town, the phone’s signal pulsed strong and steady.

Damn it,
three
messages from Geoff were flashing in her inbox. Well, boss or no boss, she couldn’t deal with him now.

“Get ready to jump out,” Victor told her tersely. She bundled into her coat and gripped her briefcase in her lap.

About five traffic violations later, the sports car peeled onto the incandescent, Las Vegas-like expanse of the New Arbat. The car plunged to a halt before the tropical lightshow of the Mirage Nightclub and Casino, its colorful display blazing through the whiteout. Victor shifted into park, uncoiled from the car, and tossed his keys to a valet.

Alexis scrambled out into the knife-sharp cold, shuddering as a nasty wind razored through her. Swiftly the captain palmed off a wad of rubles to one of the club’s security goons. She glimpsed a rust-colored 5000 ruble note—a good $200 at the current (abysmal) exchange rate—as he fired off a barrage of machine-gun Russian.

“For ten minutes,” he finished curtly, “no one comes inside.”

Then Victor gripped her arm and hustled her into the club. No time to look over her shoulder and check if their shadow pulled up behind them.

“Take off your coat and carry it, or you’ll be conspicuous,” he muttered, ushering her past the magenta-haired old
babushka
at the coat check, past the hired muscle doing face control at the door.

Without his flashy uniform, Captain Kostenko could pass as another hard-faced, rich-as-Midas Russian in gangster-era Moscow. She couldn’t imagine what she’d pass for, with her tailored wool pantsuit and briefcase. God knew she wasn’t sporting the requisite micro-mini and stilettos to be either his Mafia girlfriend or a high-class call girl.

The epileptic pulse of strobe-lights and the galloping beat of techno hit her like a sucker punch, and set her nerves jangling. Though it felt late after the last few stimulus-packed hours with their emotional dips and swerves, her watch claimed it wasn’t even midnight. This meant the Moscow meat market was just starting to heat up.

A herd of supernaturally gorgeous Russian girls, tall and leggy as giraffes, jockeyed for position among the wealthy expats at the bar. Stylish couples lounged in a haze of Cuban cigars at the expensive-to-reserve tables around the fringes. While the dance floor was already crowded with statuesque models—two girls for every boy, just like the old song—who shimmied around the overweight tourists.

The poor bastards couldn’t believe their luck—until later in their hotel rooms, when their new girlfriends quoted the price of a lay.

Victor steered her onto the floor, where the crowd was thickest. As they edged between couples gyrating to the rhythm, Alexis spied their destination: an inconspicuous back door, lettered in Cyrillic
For Club Personnel Only
.

They were halfway home when the door opened. A burly thug in a black leather jacket oozed in, his cold eyes casing the joint. Though she didn’t recognize the guy, her scalp crawled. What were the odds he was searching for her?

Instantly Victor reacted, pivoting away, his big shoulders and towering height blocking Alexis from the guy’s sight. He pulled her against the hard expanse of his chest, crossing his arms behind her head, hugging her to him.

Despite the trouble she knew they were in, her heart kicked into overdrive as his powerful body nudged hers. The crisp white shirt stuck to his chest, damp with sweat, and she breathed in a lungful of her own perfume mingling with his scent.

Which was one hell of a turn-on, damn it. Sex and adrenaline made a potent cocktail she couldn’t seem to stop sipping.

Juggling the cumbersome bulk of her coat and briefcase, she slipped her free arm around his waist. Despite her jitters, his steady strength pulsed through her like a heartbeat: the cool self-assurance his breed was famous for, laced with aggression and sexual heat. He wasn’t a guy who rattled easily, and his confidence kept her panic in check.

Alexis followed his lead as they eased through the crowd. Sneaking a peek under his arm, she saw their pursuer elbowing for the bar, apparently planning to case the room on foot.

Reaching the back door, Victor shouldered it open and urged her through. Now they stood on a steel staircase that zigzagged down under the fluorescent glare of a naked bulb.

“Hurry,” he muttered, shifting to Russian. “There’s a chance we’ll find another ‘friend’ waiting outside. But he’s more likely to be stationed in front, where we left the car.”

Before them loomed the gray steel door marked
Exit
. As Alexis scurried toward it, a menacing figure the size of a refrigerator lumbered into her path.

Lightning-quick, Victor slid between her and the threat, his fists snapping up to fight stance. Her own
dojo
training kicked in as she pivoted, putting her back to his, enough energy charging her nerves to send any of her usual sparring partners scurrying for cover.

The terror would kick in later. And she had to admit she’d been dying to see Victor spar.

“Take it easy, I’m just working here,” the newcomer rumbled, slurring his speech. Despite his bulk, the voice wasn’t young, but he was uniformed security. Possibly he’d been asleep or maybe passed out when their pursuer slipped into the club.

“You aren’t allowed to go out this way,” the guy muttered. “Go back and use the street exit.”

Again Victor broke out his wallet and peeled off a few bills.

“That’s for your trouble, comrade,” the captain murmured. “And this is to borrow your coat and cap. I’ll return them to you in half an hour,
khorosho
?”

Though the guy still seemed pretty befuddled to Alexis, he snapped up the handout quick enough, struggled out of his parka and black knit cap, and passed them over. Victor shrugged into the garments and led her into the trash-strewn alley behind the club.