Shadow Alpha (16 page)

Dair’s hands—those big, capable hands, so strong and yet they could be so gentle too—caressed lightly down her arms to touch the abrasions on her wrists. “If Gregori doesn’t kill him for this then I will,” he grated harshly.

Kat’s heart ached for the fury she could see burning in his eyes. “He isn’t worth it, Dair,” she dismissed. “Besides,” her hand moved up to gently cup the hardness of his cheek, “I hear they make it really difficult in prisons nowadays to slip metal files into home-baked cakes.”

Dair could feel his tension easing. Kat had that ability, to bring him down and out of his darker moods—and he knew he could be a humorless bastard at times—with just the touch of her hand.

Which didn’t mean he had any intention of forgetting what that bastard Sergei Orlov had done to this beautiful woman, only that payback had been delayed. But
not
indefinitely.

“I’ve never really liked cake,” he murmured dismissively as he began to lower his head. “But it’s good to know you would come and visit me, with or without baking a cake.” He claimed her lips with his own.

A possessive and yet also sweet kiss that made Kat’s heart soar in her chest.

Dair proceeded to make love to and with her with the same focused intensity he did everything else, and to Kat their lovemaking was as beautiful as any ballet; slow and graceful, each movement synchronized to perfection, Dair taking her to the heights of pleasure again and again before he moved over her and slid his cock—encased in the cherry-flavored condom—inside her in one smooth and claiming stroke.

He stilled above her, taking his weight on his elbows as he looked down into her face, his hands cupping the back of her head. “Keep your eyes focused on me, Kat,” he began a slow and measured thrust of his hips. “Don’t close your eyelids, just keep looking at me.”

Kat was held captive, mesmerized. By those glowing, light-colored eyes as she met the rhythm of his thrusts. By the pleasure Dair made no effort to hide from her as his breathing grew labored and their mutual groans of pleasure filled the air.

His thrusts grew deeper, faster, touching a place deep inside her with each stroke, until she quivered and shook with the need for the release she knew Dair was deliberately intensifying, by holding it just beyond her reach.

It was almost too much. The intimacy of their locked gazes. The heat between them. The slickness of their bodies moving together. The air filled with the scent of sex. The rapidly escalating pleasure of their joined bodies.

Taking Kat to a place where only the two of them and this intense world of pleasure existed.

Dair had never experienced anything like this, making love with Kat, in his life before. The intimacy. The total connection. Every sensation seeming magnified, deeper, darker, until he couldn’t hold back anymore, thrusting deeper, harder as he felt the heat of his release erupting up his cock with such force it felt as if it came from the very depths of him.

“Now, Kat,” he encouraged harshly. “I need you to come with me
now!
”

He instantly felt the ripples of her climax as her sheath tightened about his cock like a vice, before relaxing and then tightening again, Kat crying out as her orgasm hit her with the same force and she gripped his arms so tightly her nails pierced the skin.

“Sweet Jesus!” Dair groaned as he came in hot, thick bursts of cum that seemed never-ending and carried the heat and force of a volcano erupting, taking him right along with it.

Chapter 10

“What the fuck is this?”

Kat was drifting in a wonderful half-sleep of satiation and exhaustion as a result of hours of making love with Dair. They had even, she remembered with a satisfied smile, tried out that chair by the window, with Kat bent over it and Dair holding her hips and pumping fiercely into her from behind, just as he had said he would. Their joint cries as they climaxed together had filled the night.

And they were getting through the supply of condoms at an alarming—wholly pleasurable—rate.

For a man who didn’t ‘snuggle’ they had done their share of that too, as they lay in bed together and talked softly of those fifteen years since they had last seen each other in between those bouts of heated lovemaking.

Dair hadn’t been too forthcoming about the years he had spent in the army, or the ‘security’ involved in protecting his low and high profile clients, any more than Kat had discussed her ‘marriage’, but they had talked about everything else.

Kat felt closer to Dair in a single night and day than she ever had to Sergei.

The degree of light now filtering through Kat’s sleep-heavy eyelids told her it was dark outside, and she felt too relaxed, too boneless and satisfied, too totally free of worry or cares, to want to deal with whatever the ‘this’ was that was obviously bothering Dair.

“Wake up, Kat, and tell me where the fuck this came from!”

“Stop swearing and being so grouchy and perhaps I will!” She frowned her irritation as she reluctantly pried open her lids, blinking to focus on Dair as he towered over her at the side of the bed.

Unfortunately he was now wearing faded denims and a fitted black T-shirt over that deliciously defined chest.

She reached up to touch him—

“I want an answer, Kat.” He avoided her hand as he continued to glower down at her.

Kat lightly held the sheet over her as she struggled to push herself up against the pillows, her body aching in all the places Dair had made love to her. Some of which now made her blush to think of them. At the same time as she longed for it to happen all over again.

“Damn it, Kat, you have to concentrate!” Dair instructed harshly as he saw the blush in her cheeks, the invitation in her eyes, and guessed the reason for it.

The past three, four hours, had been wild. Off-the-charts wild. Kat really had wanted to try any and everything, and Dair had been there, right alongside her—sometimes above, something below, and sometimes behind—through every pleasurable minute of it.

Maybe if he had been less distracted and more focused on the job he was here to do…

Dair sat down on the side of the bed. “Where did this come from, Kat?” He opened his hand to show her the cell phone he held in his palm.

He had woken up a short time ago, and as Kat was still asleep, had decided to go to his bedroom to get into some clean clothes before going downstairs to get them both something to eat.

As soon as he’d entered his bedroom he had seen the message light flashing on his muted cell phone he’d left lying on the bed earlier today. It had taken only a couple of minutes to listen to the half dozen messages left for him, each one sounding more urgent than the last. After that he had only taken the time to throw on his clothes and boots before running back to the bedroom where Kat was still asleep. Which was when he had spotted the second cell phone on the dressing table.

A cell phone Dair knew he had never seen before.

Just as he knew it wasn’t one of Lucien’s either; he was Lucien’s head of security, and he knew exactly what cell phone his cousin used, Nicky too.

“I—it’s mine.” Kat looked slightly guilty as she snatched the cell phone out of his hand.

“You had a cell phone with you at the clinic…?” If that was the case, then why the hell hadn’t she telephoned her brother during all those weeks and put Gregori’s mind at rest? More importantly, why hadn’t she called someone,
anyone
, to come and get her out of there?

Her gaze avoided meeting his. “I—not exactly.”

Dair’s eyes narrowed. “How not exactly.”

“I—well if you must know, I stole it!” She looked up at him defiantly.

“You stole it,” he repeated slowly.

“Yes!” She eyed him exasperatedly. “After you—after Dr. Law, the man I thought looked like you, left two days ago I—the thing is, once I stopped eating and drinking anything Nurse Palmer gave me, and I was able to start thinking clearly again, and I realized—I realized that if I
had
imagined you, and if you didn’t come for me, then I would need to do something to get myself out of there, and so—”

“You thought you had imagined me?” Dair repeated slowly.

“Yes.” Kat eyed him irritably for grasping on to that part of her explanation. “I was sure you couldn’t be real, that I had only imagined Dr. Law as having looked like you, and our conversation must have been part of my illusion—hell, I wasn’t even sure there had been a Dr. Law at all.”

“You were pretty spaced out.”

“Yes,” she grimaced. “But once the medication started to wear off, I knew that I couldn’t stay in that place a moment longer, not now that I knew exactly what Sergei was doing to me. So—so when Nurse Palmer brought my dinner tray in that night, I stole the cell phone out of the pocket of her uniform.” She looked up at Dair challengingly. “Once the lights went out at bedtime I was going to hide under the bedclothes and call Gregori.”

As a plan it wasn’t half bad, Dair ceded; diplomacy and turf war be damned, Gregori would have been on the next plane to New York.

As an aid to their escape it was the worst thing Kat could have done.

He gave a shake of his head. “How did it get here?”

“In my jeans pocket—”

“Shit!” Dair stood up impatiently as he realized the bulky sweater Kat had been wearing was the reason he hadn’t noticed the cell phone last night.

No excuse, Grayson: second rule of a rescue mission, ensure that the person you were rescuing brought absolutely nothing with them. First rule of the mission, ensure that the person being rescued got out alive. Not seeing through on the second rule could mean that the first rule had been a complete waste of time.

Dair had allowed himself to be so distracted by Kat that he had forgotten the first, second, and every other fucking rule that came after it.

“It’s just a cell phone, Dair.” Kat was still feeling slightly woolly headed after lots of good—really, really, amazing—sex. She certainly didn’t see what all the fuss was about—“What on earth are you doing?” she gasped as she watched Dair dismantle the phone before throwing it on the tiled floor and crushing it beneath his booted foot.

His eyes were icy cold as he looked up at her. “Leaving Sergei a message.”

“Sergei…?” Kat’s fingers gripped the sheet so tightly her knuckles showed white.

“Sergei.” Dair nodded abruptly.

She looked around her, eyes wide with apprehension, as if she expected her ex-husband to come bursting into the room at any moment. “I don’t understand…” she finally breathed softly. “How can you doing that,” she looked at the shattered pieces of the cell phone on the floor, “possibly leave a message for Sergei, when we’re here and he’s—”

“On his way here, with half a dozen of his men,” Dair rasped.

“No!” Kat curled up into a protective ball on the bed, knees tucked up under her chin, her eyes once again huge and haunted in the paleness of her face.

Maybe he would break a leg or two before beating Sergei to a pulp, Dair decided then and there; any man who could put the fear of God into a woman like this deserved to be horse-whipped, at the very least. Or maybe he would just hand the bastard over to Gregori Markovic; he had no doubts Sergei would be begging for mercy within minutes.

No time for that now. “We have to get out of here, Kat.” He strode towards the doorway. “Get dressed as quickly as you can—”

“I still don’t understand.” Kat moved up onto her knees, unconcerned with her complete nakedness when he was fully dressed; there wasn’t an inch of her that Dair didn’t know intimately anyway. “Why would Sergei know to come here? You said this is a private island. That no one is allowed to come here if they aren’t approved by Lucien and you. You also said that Lijah wouldn’t tell anyone where he had flown us to, even if his life depended on it.” She could hear the hysteria rising in her voice at the thought of Sergei on his way.

She would never think of her paradise island in the same way again if Sergei stepped one foot on it. And she couldn’t bear to think about what he would have his men do to Dair when he got here. Dair was tough, but he would be outnumbered six—she really couldn’t count Sergei—to one.

“Lijah would never—” He broke off exasperatedly. “Lijah didn’t tell Sergei where we are, Kat—you did!” Dair’s hand was gripping the doorframe so tightly it looked in danger of splintering beneath the pressure.

“Me?” She stared at Dair incredulously. “You think that I used that cell phone to call Sergei and tell him we’re on Lucien’s island in the Caribbean? What do you think I am, Dair, one of those women who become dependent on their jailer? Do you imagine that I
want
Sergei to find me and take me back to that prison?” Her voice broke emotionally.

No, of course Dair didn’t think that. But what he did or didn’t think wasn’t important right now, getting Kat away from here was. He had given Gregori his word that if he thought Kat was in danger or being ill-treated, then he would bring her home, and he always, always, kept his word.

Fuck his promise to Gregori—after today Dair had no intentions of letting that bastard Sergei get his hands on Kat ever again.

“No, Kat, I don’t think you called Sergei and told him where we are,” he answered her evenly. “You didn’t need to. If Nurse Palmer discovered her cell was missing early enough, then I’m guessing the GPS tracking on that cell phone will have done all the work for him.”