Frances Housden - Honeymoon With A Stranger

Within two minutes he’d shed his jeans and was slipping into bed beside her.

Tonight, though it might be uncomfortable, he kept his shorts on as a concession to Roxie, the first time he’d worn a stitch to bed since junior high.

He felt her body heat seeping under the covers, calling him closer, or maybe that was the dip in the mattress.

It took him a couple of seconds to realize she had been lying there rigid from the moment he hit the sheets. Time to take up the slack before his macho reputation took a dive with whoever was listening. “Chérie, I want you out of those clothes.”

He sat up making the bed groan and finished with “Now isn’t that better?”

Better for whom, Roxie wanted to ask, but instead infused her voice with steam heat. “Much better. Come closer, I want to feel you against me,” she told him, counting on his promise not to jump her bones. After all, they were in this together.

The gasp he uttered satisfied the devil in her, but she wondered if he felt all that kissing of the back of her hand was worth the effort he put into it.

Then all thought vanished as he moved his lips to the fine skin inside her wrist.

Her pulse raced. Darn, she knew he could feel it hiccup when his lips lingered on that particular spot before moving to the inside of her elbow.

No better. Her skin was so sensitive there that his tongue felt as rough as a cat’s as he licked at it.

His breathing became labored and heavy and all too real, the sound of it making her head swim as her own breaths mimicked the noises he made.

This had to stop. He could forget trying to seduce her, she wasn’t about to roll over and think of England or even France for that matter.

“Oooh, Mac,” she groaned, thrusting off his hand so she could reach for a mental life raft.

Whoa, Mac told himself as he came up for air.

The sensation of her pulse jolting against his tongue was enough to tempt a saint to forget his vows.

It was a small leap from there to remembering the view he’d had through the shower curtain. Blood rushed into his groin.

Instead of sipping, Mac wanted to plunder. Wanted to feel her body under and over his, while he discovered some of the many delights Roxie had to offer.

Thank God one of them had some sense.

But it should have been him who pulled away, not Roxie.

He’d come up against some fantastic-looking women in his time. It was one of the hazards of his occupation. Damn, he couldn’t count the number of bad beautiful women who worked for the enemy.

Only one had gotten past his defenses, though, and he couldn’t let that happen again.

And why would he? He wasn’t a fool, and he wasn’t about to risk blowing his cover by sweeping Roxie into his arms and really making love to her.

Time to get back to playacting.

“How’s that feel, chérie?”

“Wonderful.” The word seemed to tremble from her lips as he moved up higher in the bed. Her breath feathered across his shoulder as the dip in the mattress threw them together. Double damn.

He pushed her away and sat up, but worse was to come. She eased up, elbow resting on her pillow and, in an impassioned whisper that rippled across the last threads of his control, said, “Oh, Mac, take me, take me now.”

Thank God, he felt her shoulders shake. She was laughing.

A small miracle, but he grasped it in both hands.

Action. That’s what he needed. Holding the brass headboard with one hand, he began to bounce. Desperate times called for desperate measures, the occasional grunts from his efforts would have to pass for passion.

When the headboard accidentally banged against the wall, he did it a few more times. Serve them right if he deafened the pervert listening and made Yves of the many hands go crazy with lust.

That thought led straight to another, a brilliant explanation for the bug at the head of the bed breaking.

He heard an odd hiccup from Roxie, somewhere between laughter and tears. He gave her a nudge in reply with his knee and the game was on, Mac thumping the wall while Roxie kept time.

It was he who had trouble muffling his laughter as she did the classic coffee-shop scene of exaggerated moans. And Mac’s body felt exhilarated and exhausted at once, as if they’d really made love.

The headboard hit the wall another couple of times, as he yelled loud enough to deafen anyone listening. Out of breath, he slid under the covers that no longer felt cold. “Was that good for you, chérie?”

Roxie sounded genuinely sleepy. “Mac, you’re the best. Night…” He felt her roll onto her side, facing away from him.

Too bad his performance hadn’t done anything to cull his aching need. Listening to her moan had exacerbated his condition to the point of torture.

But wondering how it felt to be inside her, to be the one who made her sigh and gasp, would be more kill than cure, and his mother never raised a masochist. No sir.

True American patriots, his mother and father had served their country with diplomacy in embassies set in some of the most far-flung countries of the world.

Serving the United States had become ingrained in him from the time he was a small child. That’s what had made him the man he was today, a man of honor. As for the different roles he played, the lies he told, they didn’t count.

At first the pretense had simply been a way to serve his country, but after meeting Jason Hart, they had become a means of keeping the world safe from terrorism.

He turned his back to Roxie.

Sleep wouldn’t find him as easily as it had her. He still had work to do, Thierry to contact. An hour passed slowly in the heavy silence.

Finally, at 3:00 a.m., he slipped from under the covers, hardly disturbing them as he left her sleeping, and dressed in his jeans and jacket, then unfastened his watch to retrieve a fine tungsten lock pick from the back of it.

Mac had checked the door to the attic earlier and been quietly pleased to discover Yves had made it easy for him by removing the key. The lock turned with hardly a sound.

Easing the door open, he slipped out onto the top landing and down the stairs, confident of being back before she even knew he was gone.

As well as contacting Thierry, there was the layout of the house to reconnoiter and an escape route to plan. This time, he would be prepared, and should another gorgeous woman chance to cross his path, he’d step aside and let her go on by.

With Roxie, he was sailing too close to the wind.

Let her believe he was a criminal. He didn’t care. Nor would he let her know that no matter what he’d told her, he wouldn’t stand by and watch anyone harm her.

It took him thirty minutes to reconnoiter the house and talk to Thierry. The question uppermost in his mind had been answered.

The identity of the fourth man.

IBIS had identified the owner of the house, Monsieur Victoire Sevarin, deputy minister of France’s Department of Defense.

No matter how deeply some internal security agencies scrutinized the backgrounds of their employees, one rotten apple always managed to taint the whole barrel.

Sevarin’s had been the hand that controlled France’s biotech weapons research. Who better to acquire Green Shield than the man who was supposed to control its destruction?

One problem solved, a thousand to go.

Already aware of Sevarin, Thierry’s priorities took an oblique angle. “Who was the girl?”

He gave Thierry all the information he had, which didn’t include her surname. How to explain that the blood running hot in his veins had put a little thing like surnames out of his mind.

It wasn’t the type of information Mac wanted to get around.

Back in the attic, Mac locked the door, with no one the wiser that he’d been gone. Quickly discarding his clothes, he padded over to the bed and slid under the pile of quilts covering Roxie.