Close Pursuit. Cindy Dees

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.

      It took giving Dawn her breast again to get the infant to swallow, and Katie pinched her own nipple, mortified at how turned on doing it made her, before Dawn could find it and latch on. The sensation of the tiny mouth sucking vigorously at her breast was overwhelming and confusing. It felt good, but not in a sexual way.

      It also felt very wrong. Like she was co-opting a moment that belonged to someone else. That poor dead girl should be doing this. Although, given how much she’d hated Dawn, Katie doubted the mother would have fed the child. More likely, she’d have drowned the baby or suffocated her. Katie clutched Dawn more tightly and fell in love a little.

      “I need my coat back,” Alex said apologetically. “I have to check it.”

      She passed him the garment, and he stepped close to drape her coat over her shoulders. As he did so, he paused to watch the baby suckling at her breast and swallowing the IV fluid Katie was sneaking into the baby’s mouth.

      “Beautiful sight,” he said in a hushed voice.

      She looked up at him in surprise. That was the last thing she’d expected to hear from the dark, sexy bachelor.

      He reached down to cup the baby’s tiny head in his hand for a moment. “Such a rotten start in life, baby Dawn. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save your mother.”

      “You did your best. And if that girl had lived, I expect she would have killed Dawn as soon as they left us. Maybe this is how it was supposed to work out—that the baby lived and the mother did not. Goodness knows, that girl would have had some tall explaining to do if and when she married. Not only would she not have been a virgin, but her body would have shown the signs of having borne a child. She would have been beaten to death if she was lucky. Perhaps a quick end on that mountain was the merciful way for her to go.”

      “God, the barbarism of it,” Alex muttered.

      “If we take Dawn to America, she’ll grow up in a very different world.”

      “There’s no ‘if’ about it. Not with that blond hair of hers. We have to take her with us. She’d be a pariah at best in this society and horribly abused at worst—assuming she were allowed to live at all.”

      Katie shuddered and