Hot Intent

Alex’s jaw dropped. How in the hell did Peter know about their secret trip to Cuba? Obviously not so secret a trip, dammit.

Christ. Who else knew about their supposedly secret infiltration onto the island? How dangerous was this trip to Cuba going to be, after all? He glanced over at Katie in alarm. And she was out here in the line of fire with him. On the one hand, he was glad to have her close by where he could personally ensure her safety. But on the other hand, he’d promised her she’d never be in life-threatening danger again if he could help it.

Yeah, he’d bet his Russian spy father had plenty of contacts in flipping Cuba.

Why did the man feel obliged to let his son know that he was aware of this planned junket? What was his father’s ploy? Was Peter worried about Alex’s safety and genuinely warning him that his mission was on the Russians’ radar? Or was the man putting him on notice that his every move would be watched? Or was it merely part of their long-standing pissing contest to show that FSB intelligence sources were better than the CIA’s?

It was always like this with his father: circles within circles. Meanings hidden below layer upon layer of meaning. Sometimes, Alex got so damned tired of it all. Maybe that was why Katie’s directness appealed to him so strongly.

Peter. How to answer Peter? He forced his mind back to the sparring at hand. His father had asked if there was anything he could do to help. Alex replied, “Actually, there is something you can do for me. I’m going to need medical supplies when I get there. Nothing fancy. Sterile needles and syringes. Clean surgical implements and antibiotics. Maybe an X-ray machine.”

“It will be waiting for you when you get to Baracoa.”

The air rushed out of Alex’s gut like he’d been punched. How on earth did his father know exactly where in Cuba he was going? Alex himself didn’t know where he was being sent yet.

Did Peter’s mole at D.U. figure it out, or worse, did the information come from the Cuban government? Either way, it was a stunning display of intelligence power. Russia might be a fading empire, but its legendary spy service wasn’t dead yet.

Not that it mattered at the end of the day. He and Katie would go where they were sent, treat the sick and injured until the two of them dropped from exhaustion, discover what was being smuggled and go home. He would do the job they’d asked of him, but that was it. He was damned well keeping his nose out of any other CIA or FSB business while he was in Cuba. He ended the call abruptly and jammed his phone in his pocket.

To hell with them all. He closed the distance between him and Katie.

* * *

KATIE STOOD BACK from the steamy mirror to inspect herself. Nobody would know she’d just screwed the living daylights out of her boyfriend...she hoped. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkling, but that could be put down to good health and excitement over the trip to come, right?

The water cut off in the shower. “Could you pass me a towel?” Alex asked.

She handed a dry towel into his outstretched hand with its long, strong fingers and dark tan. She would have expected a surgeon of his skill to have more...feminine...hands. Softer. His were anything but. They were more what she would expect of a trained killer. He even had the telltale callus at the base of his right thumb to indicate that he shot handguns. A lot. He’d developed that in the past year.

Her dad and brothers had the same shooting callus. She certainly knew how to handle a pistol—it was impossible to grow up in the McCloud house without knowing how—but she kept meaning to ask Alex to show her how to use a rifle one of these days. More specifically, a sniper rifle.

She tugged her sexy little T-shirt down to the top of her snug jeans. She might not be a doctor, but she knew how to fill out a pair of designer denims. And she could handle herself in a crisis. Compliments of more of her McCloud upbringing.

She took a quick look at the TV. The hurricane was wrapping tighter, intensifying its energy into a tight knot of monstrous strength. Its outer bands were lashing the east tip of Cuba now. By tomorrow morning, the island would be ground zero for the core of the storm. It was morbidly fascinating to wonder just how powerful the winds would get and how bad the damage would turn out to be.

“Ready?” Alex asked from behind her.

“Yup. I’m starving.”

“Vigorous sex has that effect on me, too. Although I have to say you didn’t do all that much work. Next time, you can do the heavy lifting and pleasure me while I sit back and relax.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and he dropped a kiss on the end of her nose. “And she thinks I’m kidding,” he murmured.

“I don’t for a second think you’re kidding. I look forward to having you at my mercy.”

That sent his right eyebrow into an arch and a speculative gleam into his silver gaze. Hah. She dared him to taste his supper now. Not that she was going taste any of hers, either.

His hand landed in the small of her back in the protective, possessive way that never failed to turn her on. Oh, so that’s how tonight was going to be, huh?

She leaned into him in the elevator, pressing her breast lightly against his arm as another couple entered the small space. He didn’t glance down at her, but a faint smirk curved his lips.

He asked for a corner table in the darkest part of the hotel’s restaurant. Pleased to see the long linen tablecloths, she immediately kicked off her heels and planted her bare foot in his lap. While she massaged his groin with her toes, he massaged her calf under the table until she was all but groaning in pleasure.

He murmured over their entrées, “So tell me, Katie. What naughty fantasy is rattling around in your head wishing to become real?”

Her steak knife fell to her plate with a loud crash as it slipped out of her fingers. Embarrassed, she picked it up and risked a peek at Alex. The smirk was firmly in place again.

Her gaze narrowed. “I rather like the idea of you on your knees. Maybe even with your hands tied behind your back.”

“And then what?” His eyes glittered like shards of broken mirror.

“I would...present...various body parts for you to...”

“Make love to with my mouth?”

“Exactly.”

“And if I do this for you? What will you do for me in return? Sex is, at its core, a trade, after all.”

She leaned back against the banquette. “That’s where you and I differ. For me, sex is a gift. Something I give freely to you. I don’t necessarily expect anything back in return. Of course, I generally do get plenty back. But it’s not like I think to myself, ‘Okay, if I give Alex x amount of pleasure, then he owes me y amount back.’”

He asked, amused, “Are you implying that I’m a selfish male?”

“I’m just saying your mind-set is different than mine. I don’t know if all men treat sex the same way you do or not.” She shrugged. “Frankly, you treat everything as a bargain, not just sex.”

“Do I, now?”

Interestingly enough, he didn’t seem offended. Thoughtful, maybe, but not angry. They finished the meal, and Alex ordered chocolate mousse for her without having to ask if she wanted any or not. The creamy dessert was, bar none, her favorite food on earth.

He let her get well into the mousse before he commented, “Sex has always been a transaction for me. I pay a prostitute, she gives me what I want.”

Katie waved her spoon at him. “You don’t want them to like it, do you? You go out of your way to make sure they don’t enjoy themselves.” Alex arched an eyebrow at her in mild warning that she was treading on dangerous ground. But she’d had one glass of wine too many to heed his eyebrow. “I think you’re taking out your anger over your mother’s abandonment on those prostitutes.”

Whoops. Predator Alex went still. Alert. Ready to attack. The scale of her mistake finally cut through the wine buzz to register on her.

“Are you finished?” he asked. His voice was cold. Precise. Controlled.

Crap. She trailed after him in silence to their room when he didn’t slow down to wait for her. He grabbed a couple minibottles of whiskey out of the refrigerator and moved over to the big plateglass window-wall, where he sprawled in one of the armchairs there.

Was their uneasy truce over, then? She knew how much Alex hated the idea of her going with him on this trip. Almost as much as she hated the idea of him going. He’d been mature and quit fighting about it when it became clear he was going to lose the argument. But she by no means thought he’d made peace with the idea.

God knew what else was rattling around in his head and messing with his mind after the past year. She’d read enough spy novels and seen enough spy movies to have an inkling of what he’d been through.

She waited until he’d downed the whiskey and the tension had left his shoulders somewhat to go stand behind him. “I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Nothing.

She might as well not have been in the room with him. Okay, she could deal with him being mad at her for saying something to him he really didn’t want to hear, but she would not stand for him ignoring her. That was just rude. She marched around in front of his chair, wedging herself between his knees and the cold glass at her back.

She put on her best kindergarten teacher lecture voice. “Alex Peters, that is quite enough sulking out of you. It’s not nice to ignore people when they speak to you. So shake out of this snit of yours, right now. Got it?”

His gaze lifted to hers. Had she not already been plastered against the window at her back, she’d have staggered back a step from the utter emptiness in his eyes. Where had her Alex gone? This man was...dead.

Remorse and fear roared through her and she fell to her knees and flung her arms around his neck. She hung on to him like a tornado was trying to tear them apart. At first, he did not respond at all. But eventually, his arms came up around her waist. He pulled her into his lap. They sat like that for a long time. Long enough for the city to grow quiet below them and the streets to empty of cars.

Without warning, he commenced tearing her clothes off her. Some he tore off figuratively. Others that didn’t give way easily enough, he literally tore off her. And when she was naked, he surged to his feet and shoved her face-first against the glass. She heard a zipper rip down, and then he was slamming into her from behind. No foreplay. No words of endearment. No kisses or caresses. Just his hard, hot body invading hers.

Her breasts and right cheek mashed against the cold window. Rain struck it hard enough on the other side for her to feel the tiny impacts. The drops came so close but didn’t touch her. Sort of like her trying to reach Alex’s soul. An invisible but impenetrable barrier blocked her way.

If someone happened to look up at this building and zero in on this particular room, they were getting quite a show. And yet, she couldn’t spare the mental energy to care. Her attention was entirely focused on the agonized man behind her. She wasn’t fooled for a second by his angry outburst. This was pain, not punishment. Anguish, not rage. And if he needed to dump it into her body, she was fine with absorbing it from him.

He was being rough with her, but as always, some part of him held back just enough not to actually hurt her. Relieved that whatever barriers held the beast at bay had worked one more time, she did her best to open her body to him. To relax and not fight the aggressive invasion. To convey an unspoken sense of welcome and acceptance to him.

By arching her back and thrusting back toward him, their bodies fit perfectly. He grasped her hips to pull her back harder, and she groaned her pleasure. He growled under his breath, probably irritated that she was enjoying this. But the harder and deeper he drove, the better it felt.

Finally, as she moaned with too much pleasure to bear, he collapsed against her back, panting in her ear, crushing her against the window. His hands came up to cover hers where they pressed into the glass by her head.

“Come to bed,” he eventually murmured. “You’re cold.”

She was frozen with fear for his soul. Did that count as cold? He tucked her under the covers gently enough, though, and then pulled on jeans and a sweater in the dark.

“You’re not coming to bed?” she asked from her cocoon of warmth.

“In a while, maybe.”

Translation: I’m going to be up all night, brooding. She sighed, rolled onto her side and drifted to sleep wondering what it would take to get him to shed the darkness in his soul and choose to be happy.

CHAPTER FIVE

OVERNIGHT, HURRICANE GISELLE slammed into Cuba with a vengeance. It tore the island to bits from east to west. Even in a region accustomed to tropical storms, Giselle was a monster. Death tolls were unknown, but television commentators speculated that thousands had perished. Always secretive, the Cuban government declined to share details or let any foreign journalists into the immediate aftermath to report on it. What little news did leak out painted a grim picture, however.

Alex turned off the TV. Katie was still asleep, so he used the time to get on his laptop to see if any of the feelers he’d put out on Operation Cold Intent had come back to him yet.

Bingo. An encrypted email from C¥berE¥e, perhaps the top hacker he’d ever seen operate and his anonymous mentor since his first attempts to start hacking.

Alex ran their usual decryption protocol and got gibberish. He stared at the letters and symbols in surprise. He would suspect a failed message transmission were this not from C¥berE¥e. And then it hit him. He ran a secondary decryption protocol the hacker sometimes used.

Sure enough, a short message resolved itself on his screen. He stared at it in dismay.

Blondie and ThrεεWolvεs dead. Looks like murder. What the fuck did you get them into?

He knew the forces behind Cold Intent had killed Blondie. But they’d killed her boyfriend, too? Jesus. Who was doing this? And what in the hell was Cold Intent? Why was someone killing to cover its tracks?

He messaged C¥berE¥e back, asking if the guy had any idea what Blondie and her boyfriend were killed over. Hackers had lots of enemies if they were any good, right?

The reply made him feel ill. It said that Blondie must have been looking into something within the past few days that had triggered the real-world attack. No matter how he tried to rationalize it away, Alex couldn’t escape arriving at the same conclusion C¥berE¥e had. He was responsible for the hackers’ deaths. He sent an email back.

Any idea if someone got their files?

The reply was immediate.

An ABC agency was making a run at them. I snagged everything and wiped the drives before the Man could get in. Some interesting shit here. Who’s Cold Intent?

Aww, crap. He didn’t need dead hackers all over the planet on his account. Alex typed hard, as if he could transmit his emphatic warning through the keys themselves.

Be. Careful. They’ll kill you, too. And no, I don’t know who “they” are. You need to leave it alone.

C¥yberE¥e’s reply was succinct.

I’ll find ’em. You kill ’em.

He stared at the message speculatively. He’d long suspected that C¥berE¥e was some sort of intelligence agent or at least a former one. More than once, the hacker had sent Alex timely warnings about various government agencies being close to catching up with him and some of his more adventurous online activities as a teen.

What was fascinating about that short statement was that this guy seemed to think Alex was capable of killing someone. Hackers were criminals but rarely violent ones. Who was C¥berE¥e, really? Not that it mattered at the end of the day if the guy found Cold Intent for him. Slowly, one letter at a time, Alex typed his response.

Done.

“Whatcha doin?” Katie asked from right behind him.

Alex jumped about a foot straight up in the air.

“Wow. I managed to startle the great spy, Alex Peters?” she crowed. “I win!”

He scowled at her as he stood up, sweeping her into his arms. “We’ll see about that.”

She laughed as he carried her back to the bed. “You always have to win, don’t you?”

“Yup.”

For once, their lovemaking was simple and uncomplicated, just sex. No strings attached. No deep emotional conflicts. No struggles to push past emotional blocks or physical boundaries. It felt good to him, and he was fairly certain it felt good to her.

It was nearly an hour later, and Katie had unequivocally declared him the winner in all things...loudly and passionately...before he finally collapsed to the mattress beside her. His soul felt lighter, somehow.

And that was when fear came calling, deep in his gut. This time, she had blasted past his emotional defenses so easily and smoothly he hadn’t even realized she’d done it.

How she managed to take him out of his head and into a place of pure feeling and emotion, he had no idea. But he had no power to resist whatever it was she did to him. God knew, he wanted to. He hated the loss of control. His entire life was based around the concept of supreme self-discipline. Success rested upon it. Hell, survival rested upon it.

He died a little each time she broke through his mental defenses. But man, it was a good way to go. Seductive. Addictive as hell.

Still. He would give just about anything for her not to be here with him, back in harm’s way. He couldn’t fight them all—André, Peter and Katie herself—but his gut yelled at him that taking her to Cuba with him was a giant mistake.

“I’m hungry,” Katie announced.

He had to smile. She sounded like a little kid who’d just come in from the playground, breathless and happy. “Shower, then food?” he suggested.

She leaped out of bed, laughing over her shoulder. “Last one to the shower’s a rotten egg!”

How could anyone be so damned innocent? Particularly given that she was highly intelligent and by no means naive. And getting less naive by the day around him. She told him once that happiness was a choice. Was innocence a choice, as well? If so, he’d chosen long ago to forsake it. He climbed out of bed more temperately and invaded her shower.

He’d just finished dressing and she was still in the bathroom blow-drying her hair when his cell phone rang. André.

“Hey, boss. What’s up?”

“You’ve got a charter flight to Inagua in two hours. From there, a boat will take you to Baracoa. My contact will meet you at the rendezvous point on shore and take you to the base camp that’s being set up for you.”

Baracoa. He swore under his breath. Peter had been right, after all. A sane man would tell André the Baracoa meet-up was compromised. But Alex was inclined to go ahead and show up where Peter expected him to. Maybe he could spot whatever was going on that had both the CIA and FSB so interested in Cuba all of a sudden.

“Got it,” he replied to André’s more detailed instructions, which he memorized in lieu of writing them down to be found by anyone else.

“Have a safe trip, Alex.”

Yeah. Right. “Thanks.” He hung up before more sarcasm could leak into his voice.

He looked up and spied Katie standing in the bathroom doorway. “Showtime?” she asked.

An urge to lie nearly overcame him. To take her to the airport, put her on a plane and send her home. But not only had he promised never to lie to her, she could also sniff fibs a mile away. He sighed. “As soon as you’re ready to go, we’ll head out.”

Into what, he had no damned idea. But one thing he knew for sure. They were headed into something.

* * *

KATIE WATCHED THE twin prop airplane that had been their ride lift off into the sunny blue sky, and then looked around at Great Inagua Island in dismay. She’d never seen a more barren place. It was nothing but windswept dirt and rocks. “I thought Caribbean islands were supposed to be tropical paradises.”

“Not if all the tree cover is destroyed by settlers and the ecosystem collapses in response and desertifies. Then they look like this,” Alex replied.

She shuddered. “It’s awful. Who lives here, anyway?”

“Workers at the salt factory. About eight hundred of them.”

“Are they okay after the storm?” she asked in quick concern.

“They were evacuated by the salt company. We’re the only people back on the island.”

“Wow. We’re really all alone on a desert island, then?”

He smiled reluctantly. “Yes. We’ve got to make our way to the shore on foot to catch our ride. I hope you’re up for a hike.”

The last time he’d asked her that, they’d been fleeing with an hour-old Dawn stuffed inside her coat and a war raging behind them. “Are you kidding? Piece of cake.” She just hoped no wars were about to break out around them. She had a sneaking suspicion one might, though, before this was all said and done.

Alex took off across the pale dirt. The going was easy for about three minutes. And then they reached a patch of ruined vegetation, twisted and flattened by Hurricane Giselle into a nearly impassable tangle of jagged wood, sharp-leaved foliage and hidden rocks waiting to turn the unwary ankle.

Thank God she’d been working out like a maniac since he’d left. She was panting like a dog, but so was Alex. It took them something like an hour to cover a quarter mile.

“How far do we have to go in this stuff?” she finally broke down and asked Alex.

“Just over the ridge.”

Awesome. They weren’t far from the crest now. Another fifteen minutes of carefully picking their way forward, and they topped the low rise.

The ocean and a blond beach stretched away in front of them. And praise the Lord, this side of the ridge was bare of vegetation until the margin of the beach below. They made their way down the hillside relatively quickly with only sharp stones and treacherous slides of gravel to avoid.

But then they got to a literal wall of destroyed scrub trees, bushes and random vegetative debris. It was easily eight feet tall and looked like a loofah sponge. “How on earth are we supposed to get through this?” she demanded. “Even if we had a machete, it would take hours to hack through all that.”

“That, grasshopper, is why man conquered fire,” Alex answered.

“Isn’t it too wet to burn?” she asked dubiously.

“Only one way to find out,” he answered absently as he commenced laying a fire at the base of the pile. The wind was still brisk in the lee of the hurricane and the fledgling flame blew out twice before it finally caught and held.

In seconds, though, it flared from the size of her hand to waist high, and from there to well over her head. Apparently, enough of the material had been dead long enough that a single day in the sun and wind, posthurricane, had dried it out. The pile went up in a firestorm that swept down the beach at shocking speed. No fire department on earth could put that out. She and Alex scrambled back from the intense heat as the debris burned with a roar of sound.

“My God! What if there are houses down the beach?” she cried.

“No house survived two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds for fourteen hours. And if one did, it was wrecked, anyway. A stone structure might survive the hurricane, but it won’t burn.” Alex shrugged, pragmatic. “Burning this stuff off is how a cleanup crew will get rid of it, anyway.”

She watched the fire rip down the beach in front of the stiff wind with deep misgivings. The good news was the wind was headed out toward the ocean. If they were lucky, they hadn’t just set the entire island on fire. And the salt factory was on the other side of the island, well upwind of this conflagration. Still, the ease with which Alex had taken radical action without concern for peripheral damage sent up warning flags in her head.

The debris burned hard for maybe thirty minutes. Where there were decent-size tree trunks and brush, the fire continued to burn. But here and there, where the pile had been mostly small brush and dead vegetation, the fire started to blow out.