Close Pursuit

Alex pulled a clean towel out of his pack and swaddled the infant in it after a fast examination. Thoughtfully, he passed the baby back to her, and Katie slipped the child back in her coat. It took a minute or so, but the baby quieted in the warm and dark next to Katie’s heart.

“We have to get food for her,” Katie whispered.

“She can go a day or two without eating, actually,” Alex replied. “Most babies don’t take in much nourishment in their first twenty-four hours.”

Huh. Live and learn. “What about us?”

He shrugged. “We’re another matter. We’ll need water before long.”

“Any bright ideas about what to do next?” she asked.

“Go downhill for a while.”

She liked that idea a whole lot better than continuing to scale mountain peaks in the dark. With no climbing gear. And a baby stuffed down her coat.

Trying to stay oriented as to where they were, she pictured the map of this region they’d been showed in the D.U. offices. Another village lay at the head of this valley. Its name was something like Ghan or Ghun. She couldn’t remember exactly. No telling if it was another Karshani clan village or belonged to some other clan entirely. As likely as not, the neighbors hated each other’s guts.

This side of the mountain was more a slope than a cliff, mostly made treacherous by loose, rolling gravel. She made much of the descent sliding on her butt; before long, they stood at the bottom of a narrow valley in deep darkness.

Alex shocked her by brushing off the seat of her jeans and finishing off by giving her ass the briefest of squeezes. So brief she wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it or not. But not so brief that her breathing didn’t accelerate sharply.

“Altitude getting to you?” he murmured.

Yeah, right. Altitude. “Gee, I don’t know,” she whispered back. “Maybe I should feel your butt and see if a sudden case of altitude sickness overcomes you.”

“I dare you.”

Oh, it was so on. She stepped right up behind him and slipped her hands down the waistband of his jeans. He lurched in shock as she slid her palms between his briefs and the denim and cupped strong, well-defined male cheeks that abruptly went rock hard.

“Not bad, Doctor. Not bad at all.”

He whipped around, effectively yanking her hands out of his pants, and stared down at her. Enveloped in darkness and lust that rolled off him like sin, it crossed her mind that, perchance, she was playing with fire by messing with this man.

“Think before you go there with me,” he rasped. “I’m not one of your milk-toast college boys.”

The warning in his voice was clear. Although what, exactly, he was warning her about, she wasn’t sure. That he wouldn’t stand for mind games from her? Or that his tastes were darker than the average college co-ed’s? Or maybe that getting involved with him would be an all-or-nothing proposition.

Was she prepared to go there with him? How far beyond her experience would he take her? Just how intense would sex with him be? Turned on and scared in equal measure, she let out a careful breath as he turned and stalked off into the night.

She’d wanted to be taken seriously. To be treated like an adult. For everyone to quit seeing a sweet, naive kid when they looked at her. But how much innocence was she willing to lose? If she didn’t miss her guess, being with Alex Peters could cost her damn near all of hers.

They’d been hiking for maybe an hour when the baby commenced crying and nothing she could do would quiet the poor little thing.

Alex muttered, “She’s hungry. Nursing after birth is an instinctive imperative. We probably won’t shut her up shy of feeding her something.”

“Any suggestions as to what to feed her?”

“Actually, yes.” He slid his pack off his shoulders and rummaged in it, emerging with an IV bag. He poked a pinhole in one corner of it while she opened her coat and maneuvered the infant close to the opening while keeping the baby mostly inside the garment’s warmth.

They tried unsuccessfully to squeeze some of the IV fluid into the child’s mouth, but the baby wouldn’t swallow it and only squalled louder.

“We’ve got to quiet her down,” Alex bit out. “Once the artillery fire stops, people for miles around will hear her screaming.”

“Any ideas?” Katie asked, frantically rocking the furious baby.

“She needs to suck to trigger her swallowing reflex.”

“I already tried getting her to suck my finger as a makeshift pacifier and she wouldn’t do it.”

“She needs to suckle. As in a female breast.” He threw her an expectant look.

Katie stared. “News flash, Doctor. My equipment is not currently in service for milk production.”

“She doesn’t need to get any milk. She just needs a breast to suck. Once she’s sucking strongly, then we can squirt some IV fluid into her mouth and she’ll swallow it.”

An embarrassed impulse to refuse speared through her gut at the same time intellectual certainty that she would do it rolled through her brain. She tried unsuccessfully to juggle the baby and her coat and her shirt, until Alex’s big, warm hands slipped inside her coat and took the baby. Awkwardly, she raised her shirt, baring her bra, which happened to be lacy and white and practically glowed in the dark.

“Not very practical lingerie for Zaghastan,” he murmured in amusement.

The bastard sounded like he was enjoying the view a little too much. She glanced up, irritated, and muttered, “I wasn’t expecting to show it to anyone while I was here.”

“So you wear sexy lingerie entirely to please yourself? That’s encouraging.”

“How so?” she blurted. She wished the words back as soon as they left her mouth.

“You struck me as too...virginal...for that naughty bra. I’m glad to see I underestimated you.”

Her gaze narrowed at the faint challenge simmering in his voice. She reached for the edge of her bra cup and slowly, deliberately, pulled it down. Alex’s gaze riveted on her flesh as the swell of her breast and its rosy nipple were revealed. His gaze flared like an arc welder, and her pulse spiked hard in response.

Without comment, he eased the infant to her breast. The baby was too mad or too inexperienced or both to know what to do, however.

“I apologize,” he muttered.

“For what?”

“For this.” He reached in front of the infant’s mouth with his fingers and pinched her nipple. Hard. She jumped and would have squawked were they not in the middle of a war zone. Involuntarily, her back arched into his hand, trying unsuccessfully to ease the sharp pressure.

“Oww,” she breathed.

He let go and made a small sound of satisfaction. “Better.”

She ventured a look down and realized her nipple now jutted out, swollen and full.

“Rub it on the baby’s face. Across her mouth,” he instructed.

She did so, stunned at how erotic it was to be doing this in front of him. Without warning, the baby latched on and gave a tug that shot sensations all the way to her groin. “Oh!” she gasped.

One corner of Alex’s mouth curved up knowingly. He reached between her breast and the baby with the IV bag and slipped the pinholed corner into the infant’s mouth. She felt the baby swallow against her flesh.

“It’s working,” she breathed. “Do it again.”

Working together, the two of them got a few ounces of IV fluid down the baby, who fell asleep quickly after that. Alex hooked his finger under the lace and lifted it into place, running the back of his knuckle lightly across her nipple in the process. Damned if it didn’t stand up proud and eager again, pushing impudently through the lace. And damned if he didn’t stare down at it, his eyes ablaze, until her breath came short and fast.

“Zip up,” he ordered sharply. “I don’t need either of you catching a chill.”

She scowled at his back until it occurred to her that it might have been sexual frustration putting that edge in his voice. Abruptly, she felt much better as she tucked the sleeping baby into her coat and zipped it up.

“We need to name her,” she announced. “We can’t just keep calling her ‘the baby.’”

Alex threw her a startled look over his shoulder. “You do it. But, for God’s sake, don’t name her something native. Pick something American-sounding.”

“Why?”

“We’ll need to take her back to the States with us. Which means we’ll need to pass her off as our baby. What would you name our daughter?”

Their baby? The notion was both thrilling and scary to contemplate. “How about Charlene?” It had been her grandmother’s name.

“Slut I went to school with was named that. Try again.”

“Alexandra?”

That earned her rolled eyes and a firm, “No.”

“Catherine?”

“You want to name a baby after a violent, dead queen?”

“Fine. You come up with a name you like!”

“Katrina.”

“Sounds a little grown-up for a tiny baby.”

“She won’t be a tiny baby for long. And you can call her a nickname like Kat or Trina in the meantime.”

“Teeny Treeny?”

He groaned under his breath. “Call her Dawn. The sun will be coming up soon.”

She actually liked the symbolism of a new day after the darkness of night. Goodness knew, this child had been born under the blackest of circumstances. And she couldn’t think of any horrible nicknames other kids might come up with for it. “Dawn, it is.”

“Speaking of dawn, we need to take cover soon,” he commented.

“Why?”

“Given the size of last night’s battle, I expect more drones will patrol the area today.”

“Isn’t the U.S. the only country with attack drones? Why would the good guys come after us?”

He whirled and demanded, low and angry, “Since when is the United States presumed to be the good guy?”

Her jaw dropped. She’d been raised among soldiers and cops dedicated to country and service...to the death. It was anathema in her home to suggest anything other than the United States was right and good and decent.

Alex huffed. “Don’t get me wrong. Democracy is a hell of a lot better than the available alternatives. But spare me the religious fervor for mom, apple pie and the Stars and Stripes.”

“What the hell did Uncle Sam do? Pee in your Wheaties?” she demanded.

Pain. Grief. Rage. Desolation. The emotions flitted through his eyes so quickly she could barely register them, let alone catalogue them. What the—

“Not on the list of approved topics for conversation between us,” he bit out. He turned around and stomped off without waiting to see if she followed.

“If there’s a list of approved topics, how come I didn’t get a copy?” she called after him.

A mumbled retort floated back over his shoulder, “Above your pay grade.”

Her eyes narrowed. She wasn’t about to let him get away with blowing her off. But first she had to catch him, and he was practically jogging toward the head of the narrow valley now. She’d always hated it when her brothers used their superior size and strength to ditch her. In retrospect, she’d probably been an annoying pest more often than not, but she’d just wanted to be included. To this day, she hated being left behind.

Her brother’s cryptic request to watch for signs of something weird with Alex resonated in her head. What was up with this guy?

“Slow down!” she finally had to call to Alex.

Nada.

“Please!”

That did it. He stopped without turning around and waited until she panted up behind him. The altitude was a killer when added to a strenuous hike. As soon as she drew within arm’s length of him, he took off again, but thankfully at a more reasonable pace. In a few minutes, he murmured, “Keep an eye out for movement on that slope ahead. We’re getting close to Ghun.”

Mostly, she was occupied staring at the ground so she didn’t twist an ankle or break her neck. She glanced where he indicated and saw a steep rock face looming. She groaned under her breath.

“I see caves up there,” Alex commented. “It’s too early in the year for shepherds to have brought their flocks up here, though, so they ought to be empty. No grass yet.”

She snorted. Nothing grew up here. She was surprised to spot what looked like an organized network of caves all over the steep slope ahead. How could so many people support themselves off the dirt and dust of this valley? No stream of any kind flowed through the area. In the past two weeks, she’d learned just how critical water supplies were to native peoples.

As the first gray of predawn peeked over the mountains, Alex scrambled up the steep hill while she rested a bit. He came back soon and led her to a cave blessedly not far up the slope. Overlapping slabs of stone mostly obscured the entrance. They slipped past the rocks into the dark, and Alex audibly sighed in relief. Had he been that worried, then?

In the green light of a Cyalume stick, she looked around the high-ceilinged cave. The floor was flat, dry and reasonably clean. A few animal droppings and scattered bones proclaimed the presence of some small predator. Off to one side was a stone ledge about hip high covered with a framework of woven boughs and dried grass that looked like a crude bed. Near the entrance, the stone walls were blackened as if fires had been lit there.

A stack of firewood was piled in a corner, and Alex moved to it quickly. In a matter of minutes, he’d built a fire her Boy Scout brothers would have been proud of. Out of the steady wind, the silence in the cave was palpable. And it got on her nerves fast.

“Where’d a city slicker like you learn to lay a fire like that?” she asked to break the quiet.

Alex didn’t deign to answer and merely shrugged as he pushed a series of smooth, melon-sized rocks close to the fire. The thin, dry wood crackled loudly and burned fast, but it heated up the small chamber surprisingly well. A thin layer of smoke accumulated near the ceiling, seeping sluggishly toward the rear of the cave. Must be a tunnel or vent back there. The back walls, which retreated into shadows—who knew how far back—were pocked with round holes at even intervals, big enough for her thumb to fit in. Maybe those were the vents.

Surprisingly little light seeped in as day broke outside, but that also meant very little cold seeped in, either. Before long, the cave was actually reasonably cozy, enough that she shed her coat and made a nest out of it for Dawn.

Alex unwrapped the infant and, at long last, trimmed the umbilical cord and wiped the last birth blood off her. He frowned down at her, and Katie moved to his side rapidly. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Take a look at her. Notice anything odd?”

She stared down at the pink, chubby baby, who had adorable blond peach fuzz hair. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. Two ears. Limbs of equal lengths. No visible deformities... Whoa. What?

“Blond hair?” she said questioningly. Every baby they’d birthed so far had had black hair. All the locals she’d met were dark-haired.

“Exactly.” He stared at her significantly.

“How did that happen?”

“The mom was an unmarried girl. Good-looking, right?” Alex asked tersely. “What color was her hair?”

“Yes, she was stunning. And she was dark-skinned and dark-haired like all the locals.”

Alex murmured, “Too much pigment in Dawn’s skin for her to be albino. Only way for her to have blond hair, then, is for her father to be Caucasian.”

Katie’s jaw dropped. “Where did a local girl meet a Caucasian?” To her knowledge, she and Alex were the only Caucasians for hundreds of miles around.

Alex snorted. “Soldiers. Spies. Civilian contractors. Drug dealers.”

“And aid workers like us,” she added, appalled.

“The way I heard it, we’re the only aid workers foolish enough to venture into this area in years,” he retorted.

She grimaced. “That’s what the women have been saying to me, too. Okay, so strike aid workers from the list of possible fathers.”

They stared down at the baby, who was settling down to sleep in her warm nest.

Alex announced without warning, “Strip off your clothes. All of them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He was already shrugging out of his coat and pulling the black turtleneck over his head. Lord, that man had acres of gorgeous muscle. He reached for his belt buckle and she squawked, “What are you doing?”

He looked up, and his gaze went from concentration on something worrisome to smoking hot in the blink of an eye. “Worried about delivering on the bet you lost?” he purred.

“No, I’m not worried,” she lied belligerently. “I just don’t think now is the time or place to collect.”

He moved to stand a little too close to her for comfort, and she was abruptly aware of how much bigger than her he actually was. And stronger. And they were so very alone out in the middle of nowhere. Literally. He could force himself on her and there wouldn’t be a soul around for miles to hear her scream.

“Angel, when I collect on our bet, it will not be in a squalid cave, and you will beg me for it.”

Her eyes flashed as she instinctively rose to the challenge. “I don’t beg.”

The corner of his mouth turned up in that sardonic half smile of his. “Wanna bet?”

“No, thank you,” she replied tartly. “I’m already indebted to you. I don’t need to add to it.”

“I still need you to strip. All the way down to your skin.”

“Why?”

“I need to check for tracking devices in our clothes.”

She blinked, shocked. “Excuse me?”

“Tracking devices. I need to make sure none were planted on the gear or clothing we bugged out with. I did a quick check before, but in light of last night’s events, I need to do a more thorough search.”

“Who on earth would want to track us?”

“I can think of any number of candidates, and some of them I’d rather not have knowing where we are.”

“Like who?” It was starting to feel like all she did with him was ask questions.

“Not on the list of approved topics between us.”

She scowled. “I’m not stripping unless you answer me.”

His gaze snapped up to hers, and this time amusement flashed before he banked all emotion. “Fine. The CIA. Their Russian counterparts, the FSB. The U.S. Army. Various mob groups. That’ll do for starters.”

“Why would the mob track you? And which mob? What did you do to them?”

“I relieved both the Russian mob and the American Mafia of substantial funds some years ago and have yet to give them an opportunity to win any of them back. For that matter, the Ukrainians don’t like me very much, either.”

“What did you do?”

“I hung out in casinos they owned. In my rebellious youth, I went on a short-lived, but highly productive, gambling spree.”

Math genius. Master’s degree in probability. Cryptography postgrad... “How much did you take them for?” she blurted.

“A lot.”

Huh. And he still had the money? Well, well, well. So the good doctor was rich, too? It hardly seemed fair given how smart, sexy and good-looking he was.

“Why would the CIA and FSB track you?”

He threw her a stubborn look and merely shimmied out of his black jeans. Dang, that man was built.

“Let me guess,” she said wryly. “Not on the list.”

“Bingo.”

Oh, Lord. There went his underwear. Yowza. The good doctor was blessed in every single department of his life. She spun away quickly lest he catch her looking at his junk. The temperature in the cave shot up at least ten degrees as sexual heat abruptly filled the air.

“I’m not kidding about your clothes,” he said grimly from behind her.

Which would be worse? Getting naked at the same time he was or waiting until he was fully dressed again and forcibly undressed her? Wow. That was about a toss-up. A tiny part of her loved the idea of him tearing her clothes off her.... Maybe it was the whole caveman vibe coming out of her deepest, darkest DNA. But she didn’t have any spare clothing and needed what she had on to stay intact. Practical necessity won out, and she pulled her pink turtleneck over her head reluctantly.

Ohmigod. He was watching her. And he was stark naked. Gloriously, unconcernedly so. He’d already seen her in her bra—less than her bra. This was no big deal, right? Except her heart was jumping in her throat and her hands shook like leaves in a hurricane.

She reached for her jeans and unzipped them slowly. Pushed them off her hips reluctantly. Heat blossomed in her face as her lace thong was revealed. She could literally feel his blazing-hot stare taking in her pert little rear end. Men had been commenting on her derriere since she’d been old enough for it not to be creepy. She knew it was firm and high and lush enough to turn men on without Alex having to tell her so.

“Nice.”

“Could you at least be a gentleman and turn your back?” she blurted.

“Kitten, I’m a lot of things, but a gentleman is not one of them. You owe me sex anyway. I’m eventually going to see you naked, so why not now?”

Because she barely knew him. Because he was naked, too. Because part of her wanted him to take advantage of the situation, and she was a big, fat chicken about that part of herself. Fantasizing about a dark, dangerous man like Alex Peters was one thing. Being naked and alone with him for real was another thing altogether. She didn’t want it to be that way, but it was. She was a fake, and she couldn’t handle a man like him.

Damn.

The promise of sex hanging thick and heavy in the air pulsed between them, pulling her toward him. An urge to run her hands over that magnificent body, to pull him to her, to make love to him, surged within her, startling her. Sure, she felt attracted to guys at work and joked around with her girlfriends about jumping various guys’ bones. But that was all in fun. This compulsion originated low in her belly, deep and primordial. Lust in its purest form. Mindless. Insistent.

“What’s wrong?” he murmured.

She resorted to mumbling, “You’re making me strip in front of you and you have to ask that?”

Something warm and soft dropped around her shoulders, making her lurch. It smelled of sandalwood and spice. His coat. “Sometimes I forget what an innocent you are. Wear this until I check out the rest of your clothes.”

The driving need she’d experienced at the sight of his naked body subsided, and she all but cried in her relief as she tossed her thong and bra over her shoulder to him. An innocent? Was she really, in spite of her best efforts to get people to let her grow up—and then it hit her. Other people weren’t preventing her from growing up. She was preventing herself from doing it. Chagrin roared through her. A real man was within arm’s length, naked or close to it, and she owed him sex. All she had to do was reach out and take it. And yet...

And yet. Fear held her back.

Alex worked in silence, turning each piece of clothing inside out, running his fingers carefully over each seam, examining tags and pockets and anywhere else a burr might be attached.

“How big would a tracking device be?” she asked curiously without turning around to see if he was still starkers.

“Depends on how big a battery it has and how long the person who plants it wants it to work. A short-term device, say, for a single day, could be the size of a pinhead. Something a little longer term, like I’d expect to get used on us, might be the size of a grain of rice.”

“Long grain or short grain?”

He chuckled briefly. “Okay. Your lingerie is clean.” A big, tanned hand emerged over her right shoulder, the lacy bits dangling from his fingertips. She snatched them from his hand and maneuvered into them awkwardly underneath his coat. Who would have guessed two tiny scraps of fabric could make her feel so much better?

Her shirt took longer, and her jeans longer still, to check. But eventually he passed them over her shoulder, and she was safely clothed once more. But no sooner had she pulled the shirt back over her head than Dawn started to fuss.

“She’s hungry again,” Alex announced.

Katie had been around a lot of little kids in her day, but not many infants. She would take his word for it. She scooped up the baby and the IV bag that he held out to her and moved over by the fire with her back to him to coax the baby to drink a little more.