The Impossible Alliance (21 page)

They gasped together.

And then he moved.

He shuddered as he bent over her, nipping and sucking her neck as his hips took up a grinding rhythm she prayed would never cease. Her own moans combined with his erotic suckling, fanning the fire between them until it burned even hotter and brighter. She grabbed on to the gold medallion jabbing into her breasts with one hand, clutching it as she dug the nails of her other into his massive arms, desperately trying to anchor herself to him as the blistering wave inside her gathered in strength, wrenching her along with it. Harder and harder, faster and tighter, he pummeled into her, swirling her senses together in a dizzying inferno of sound and touch until all that existed was Jared's ragged panting, his taut muscles and their driving hot, wet need. She climbed higher and higher as he chanted her name, pleading with her, until his hoarse, “Please, Alex. Now!” catapulted her over the edge, seconds before him.

They hung there together, suspended, for a few glorious moments, before she drifted back down into his arms—drained, secure and loved.

“Wow.” His muffled voice tickled her neck.

Laughing softly, she tried to push at him, but he was too heavy and she was too exhausted.

He took the hint and slowly shoved himself to his elbows, brushing the unruly curls from her forehead and twisting them about his fingers. “Go ahead and laugh, woman, you're not breathing so well yourself.” He looped his arms beneath her, gathering her close as he rolled onto his back.

Alex propped herself on his chest and smoothed a palm over the sheen covering his dusky skin. He groaned, closing his eyes as she swirled her fingers around his nipples before fingering the medallion, wondering if the gold coin had left as many marks on her chest as she'd left on his. Not that Jared seemed to mind. His deep sigh echoed the content
ment radiating through her as she twisted the chain about her fingers.

“You almost killed your partner, you know that?”

She tugged the chain as she leaned down and whispered in his ear, “That's okay, I know first aid, too.”

“Darlin', I'm surprised you haven't been nominated for the Nobel prize.”

She smiled, wondering if he knew that spent passion magnified his subtle drawl, much less what the result did to her still-pulsing insides. “You never know what'll happen now that I've found a research partner to work with. Though in all fairness, I should post notice for the position before I make my final decision.”

His lips twisted wryly as he opened those gorgeous amber eyes. “Sweetheart, I'd kill any man who dared to apply.”

The second the words came out, he regretted them. She could tell by the way the heat in his gaze immediately lost ten degrees. The way the air surrounding them cooled. Froze.

She waited for him to take them back.

He didn't. But he did reach up to smooth the damp wisps of hair from the side of her cheek. “I'm sorry. I had no right to make such a proprietary statement.”

Yes, he did, dammit. Not only had she clearly given it to him, from the longing hovering at the outer edges of the amber, he desperately wanted it. But right now voicing it wouldn't solve anything. She concentrated on unraveling and withdrawing her fingers from the gold chain as she smiled. “No problem.”

It helped. It did allow him to ease out from under her body and then up from the bed entirely. It even allowed him to snag the blanket that had fallen to the floor during their lovemaking and carefully cover her with that, instead. It even allowed him to turn and withdraw the pair of jeans he'd left folded inside the armoire and don them. But it didn't staunch the pain. In her, or in him.

She was certain when he retrieved the laptop and the spiral notebook. Especially when he faced her.

Oh, God, he was leaving.

“Do you, ah…have a plan?” She plowed ahead, desperate to get his attention back on the mission and off them, desperate to get him anywhere but out that door. “Veisweimar, DeBruzkya, the ruby. We have to go back. Tomorrow. We both know it. The only question left is how we're going to manage it.”

He relented, at least for the moment, setting the laptop and notebook onto the mattress between them as he lowered his frame to the edge of what was now an extremely rumpled bed. A bed that also smelled of her and him.

Of them.

She forced herself to wrap the blanket above her breasts and tuck the ends beneath her arms as if nothing had happened, then scooted up to the headboard to brace her shoulders against it. Frankly, she needed the support. Especially when he met her gaze. How could he look at her and not look
at
her?

When his glance fled, however briefly, she saw through the illusion. Somehow, that made it worse. As did the slight, but unmistakable, strain in his voice when he spoke. “We'll need to find a way in that will buy us at least half an hour. My guess is the ruby is still in the lab. Remember the boxes stacked on the opposite side of the room from the gems and the safe?”

She forced herself to concentrate on his words. “Not really.” She'd been too busy trying to locate the ruby amid all the other jewels. “Why, did you see something?”

“A metal box. Given the rest of the boxes surrounding it, I'd assumed it was just another crate for all that equipment.”

“And now you don't?”

“This one was a dull, almost lifeless gray, scratched up in quite a few spots, a corner crushed in where it had obviously been dropped. The metal was definitely soft.”

“Lead.”

He nodded. “I think so.”

“How big?”

“Roughly two and a half by three feet, another two deep.”

She did a rough calculation in her head. Large enough to shield the next scientist from the radioactive decay within.

Thank you, Karl.

But how to get back in and get it? And how the hell did they get it out without DeBruzkya and his thugs figuring out what they were up to? A lead box that size would weigh roughly two hundred pounds. She slid her gaze down Jared's still-naked chest and arms, pushing the memory of how those arms had made her feel minutes earlier as she studied them analytically. He'd hefted the safe, yes. Her, too. But could how far could he carry an oversize slab of deadweight?

“Maybe Orloff can help us again?”

Jared nodded. “He did a good job with those darts. Didn't leave more than a drop of blood between them.”

Blood?

She snapped her gaze back to Jared's arm. To the biceps that hadn't quite healed. To the one she'd tried hard not to grab when they— Stop! Don't think about it.

She voiced the solution instead. “Packed red blood cells.”

“Mikhail.”

Relief spread through her as they breathed the name, the connection, simultaneously. At least they were still in sync on something. For all his visits to the hospital, DeBruzkya had no idea which supplies were in current stock and which supplies weren't. No one had told him about the packed red blood cells. If they played this right, Orloff and Jared's blood supply would become their ticket back in to Veisweimar—and if necessary, the boy could become their ticket out.

“It could work.”

“You know it will.” She saw the regret biting into his gaze, felt it mirrored in herself. “Jared, we don't have a choice. Mikhail will be fine. He'll probably get a kick out of the helicopter ride. DeBruzkya won't even care enough to follow him.” In the end they both knew it was a risk they had to take. If they failed and DeBruzkya succeeded, Mikhail's future would be grim indeed. At least this way, the boy had a chance.

“Agreed.”

Silence filled the room. With the mission set, it seemed they'd run out of things to discuss. Things they could discuss, anyway. Unable to bear the tension any longer, she pulled the blanket tight and turned to scoot off the opposite side of the bed.

His hand snagged her arm, stopping her. “I don't want you to come.”

She turned back, stared into those gorgeous eyes. The burning concern. The desperation.

“Jared, I—”

“Please. It's dangerous. There's a good chance we won't make it out.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“Is there…anything I can say to change your mind?”

“Is there anything I can say to change yours?”

They weren't talking about the mission anymore. He didn't pretend they were. She almost wished he had. Maybe then she wouldn't have gotten that agonizingly slow shake of his head.

“I thought not.” She sucked up her pride. “I love you.”

She'd have given anything to hear those three words come back to her, even whispered from his heart.

But she didn't.

Nor did he acknowledge hers. He stood, instead. “I…need to finish typing Karl's notes. I'll e-mail the file to Hatch, along with the information about the potential
mole when I'm done. In the meantime, get some rest. I'll work downstairs so I won't disturb you.”

The distance already disturbed her and he hadn't even left yet. Unfortunately calling him on it wouldn't help.

Somehow she managed a nod. “I'll be fine.”

But as Jared reached the door, unlocked and opened it, as he stepped through, relocking the knob just before he nudged the slab of wood shut once again, she knew. She wasn't fine.

Nor was she sure she ever would be again.

 

He was nervous.

At first Alex had chalked it up to her imagination. But when Jared had insisted on grilling her on the layout of the castle for the third time and then tried to force a blueprint he'd sketched on her she was certain. The one man her uncle swore never got nervous was definitely on edge.

And that terrified her.

Even now, with her hearing aid turned off because of the rhythmic thumping of the rotor blades atop this rickety bird, she swore she could hear the man's equally rhythmic, far too studied breathing. She glanced across the belly of the Vietnam-era Huey that DeBruzkya had claimed as his following the assassination of the Rebelian royal family years before. Like her, Orloff was beyond nervous. The good doctor was also pissed off.

For all their meticulous plans, DeBruzkya wouldn't even be home. Colonel Sokolov, either. Hell, DeBruzkya's sister hadn't even answered their phony, but frantic offer to double-check Mikhail's red blood cell count or their subsequent offer to transfuse the child on site if need be. It had taken a second phone call and a separate request to speak to the boy's natural grandmother, Helga, before the main guard had released the chopper. She was the one who would be standing by.

Maybe Jared was right. Maybe they shouldn't risk tangling the boy up in all this. She hated the idea that an
innocent child could lose his life for their mission. Jared must have read her mind, because he reached out and squeezed her hand. Alex clamped down on her nerves as she stared into her lap. Until that moment, she hadn't realized how much she needed the strength of those big, dusky hands. How much she needed him. She met Jared's gaze as the pilot's thick German filled their headsets.

“Eine minute!”
One minute.

She squeezed Jared's hand back, once again silently agreeing to the lie: everything would be fine.

She would be fine.

The minute reprieve was over much too quickly. The dense pines of the Hartz forest parted to reveal the massive granite walls and stone turrets in the rapidly closing distance. Soon the razor-sharp coils of concertina wire were in view, then the explosion of a million blinding, fractured rainbows as a blanket of embedded glass shards captured the glint of the early-morning sun. The Huey thumped onto the roof seconds later, and they were out.

Like the night before, she was two steps behind Jared, with Orloff two steps behind her, all three clenching the first-aid cases they'd packed thirty minutes before, though the majority of the supplies fell neatly within DeBruzkya's world, rather than that of emergency medicine.

“This way!”

They followed the guard's terse shout as well as his buddy's frantic wave, bypassing the southern facade of the castle and the direct vertical drop Jared had taken the week before to clamber down the winding stairs in the darkened corner turret. In the end it wouldn't matter. Both routes led to the makeshift hospital room in the basement—and that cache of priceless gems a corridor and a half away.

The guards were breathing heavier than her, Jared and Orloff combined when they reached the bottom step and exited the turret. Jared coughed loudly as they reached the first turn in the musty corridor beyond, distracting both
guards long enough for her to slip her hand into her first-aid bag and turn on her hearing aid.

She blinked thrice as they reached the hospital cell. She could hear the boy, his grandmother and someone else inside. From the tenor of the voice, an older man.

She flicked her gaze to the left.

Jared returned her nod, his barely there whisper filling her ear. “I'll take the blonde and whoever's in the room.”

She nodded again.

Seconds later, the first guard stepped into the room with Jared inches behind. The moment she heard the first knife clear his boot, she spun about, slamming the heel of her palm straight up into the second guard's nose. He grabbed at the shattered, bloody cartilage as he flailed backward. The exact moment his skull smashed into the granite wall behind him, Mikhail's grandmother let out a bloodcurdling scream from inside the room. Alex spun around again, leaving the dazed guard to the mercy of Orloff's needles as he hit the floor, vaulting into the room, instead, to back up her partner, her lover.

He didn't need it.

“Get his boots.”

She grabbed the man's feet as Jared took the hairy arms. Together they dragged the inert body, complete with Jared's favorite knife protruding from his chest, the final two feet into the room so they could close the door. One of Jared's spare knives was lodged directly between a grizzled guard's wide-open eyes, two feet from the farthest gurney. The gurney she'd spent three weeks of her life on. A steady rivulet of blood flowed down the side of the man's whiskered face, soaking into the portable hospital curtain that had once shielded her view.