Samantha Spencer sat in her office at Langley and stared at the television on the wall. The networks were reporting that Anatoly Levkin had been assassinated by an American military group. She knew which group, though the networks did not.

She threw her pen down and swore. This job was getting worse by the day. Not knowing who was telling the truth and who wasn’t. Not knowing what people were capable of until they surprised you with something so far out of left field that you were still reeling days later.

But she loved what she did. Loved that she worked to keep the world safe for democracy. It often entailed working with people she despised or doing things that she hated doing, but so long as everything worked out in the end, she bore the frustration and disgust, knowing it was for the greater good.

It was getting a lot harder to do, however.

Her secure phone rang. Her heart kicked up for a second. It was not Johnny calling her.

First, he wouldn’t. He hadn’t called her since they’d broken up a couple of months ago, and he wouldn’t do so now. Second, he didn’t have this particular number.

She’d asked herself a million times what she would do if he called—if he asked for her help. She’d been stunned to learn that he’d run when confronted. It had shaken her faith in him pretty badly.

If he were here now, she would do what she had to do for the safety of the country and democracy. That’s what she’d always done. What she’d been doing over a year ago when she’d initiated a relationship with him. She’d wanted to know more about HOT since they’d nearly ruined an operation of Ian’s in Qu’rim. She hadn’t known she’d get tangled up in Johnny again. That she’d want more from him than he was willing to give her.

If he walked in here right now, she’d turn him in. If he hadn’t sent his HOT team to Moscow, he could prove it in very short order. And if he had?

Well, she didn’t know him as well as she’d thought she did.

She snatched up the phone. “Phoenix,” she said, giving her code name. That was the only name she used on this particular phone.

“The veep wants me to go after Mendez,” Ian Black said. “To bring him in.”

Sam’s heart kicked. She read the closed-captions running on the television. Talking heads debating the shocking news that the US was involved in the assassination of a foreign official.

Rogue organization… No official statement… President silent… Rumors of a missing high-level military commander… Russians angry…

“Does he know where to find the colonel?”

“He’s in Russia.”

Sam’s blood chilled. It took her a moment to speak. “Russia? He’s sure?”

“He has photos of the colonel in Atlanta. He bought two tickets to Moscow. Paid in cash.”

Sam felt faint. “Two tickets?”

“He’s traveling with a woman.”

Whatever was left of her heart cracked in two. “Any idea who she is?”

“He didn’t say.”

Sam’s blood began to rush through her veins. She reached for her electronic cigarette and took a puff. The vapor hit her lungs and spread through her body like a calming wave. “Tell me what you need. It’s yours.”

* * *

Kat snapped open the locket and stared at her much younger self. Her heart throbbed. What did it mean that he’d given it back?

She sniffed. Then she closed it and slipped it over her head. The silver was still warm from his body. Confusion set up a drumbeat in her brain. Why had he given it back? Why now? Why, when he’d insisted it was his?

You need to tell him.

She shook her head. No, she couldn’t. Not now. Maybe not ever. She’d never intended to tell him, but the longer she was with him, the harder it got to let him go on believing she was dead. To keep pretending that she was a twin. Yet if he knew the truth, she would never see him again. He’d walk out and try to do this mission alone. He’d get himself killed without someone to watch his back.

She couldn’t let that happen. She might want to confess for personal reasons, but it served no purpose other than to relieve her guilty conscience. She’d given up much more for the sake of keeping the world safe. She could bear the guilt. She’d known coming into this that her heart would take a beating. Nothing about that had changed.

Kat grabbed the comb she’d snagged from the bathroom and ran it through her hair. A trickle of blood slid down her temple and she swore. It had opened back up in the shower when she’d scrubbed her hair, but she’d thought she’d gotten it under control. She went over to the chest of drawers and searched for something to press to her head. All she came up with was a T-shirt.

“What happened?”

She spun to find Johnny standing in the door to the bathroom. He was wearing a towel slung low on his hips, and her pulse squeaked out a cry for help before ramping into hyperspace.

“Nothing—why are you in a towel?”

“Because I didn’t check for clothing like you did.”

“You could put your other stuff back on,” she said faintly.

“Yeah, I could—and I will if I have to.” He stalked over to stand in front of her. He smelled woodsy and clean. She smelled the same since there was only one choice of shampoo in the shower, but it was different on him. Arousing.

She’d calmed down a bit since fleeing the cemetery, but that urge to get naked with him was still there. Still simmering beneath the surface, waiting for the accelerant.

“Let me see that cut.”

“It’s fine.”

“Kat.”

She dropped the T-shirt and thrust her face up. “See? Fine.”

He pushed her hair back with two fingers. Her skin sparked. Her heartbeat slowed and then sped up. The breath in her body felt as if it were working its way through damp cotton. He was so close, the heat of his skin wrapping around her. Making her shudder with need.

“It’s stopped bleeding for the moment, but it’s going to keep opening if we don’t close it.”

“There are bandages in the bathroom.”

“Then maybe you should put one on.”

“I will.”

She shuddered again as his fingers skimmed her cheek.

“You okay?” he asked, frowning.

She dropped her gaze from the raw heat in his. Bad move. Very bad move. There was movement under the towel. Her mouth went dry. Her fingers itched to slide into the top of the towel and unknot it. Oh, Johnny.

“No,” she whispered. “I am not okay.”

Their eyes met. His were dark, dangerous, and so damned hot.

“I’m not either,” he said, his voice gravelly and thick. “I want you, Kat. Maybe it’s because of Valentina. Maybe it isn’t. I don’t have the first fucking clue—but I want to do things to you. Hot, dirty things. I want to make you come. I don’t know how this mission is going to turn out—but the odds are against us, and I’m tired of pretending you don’t affect me.”

She couldn’t breathe.

Simply. Could. Not. Breathe.

“I want that too.” The words came out hoarse and almost too quiet. Was that guilt eating her up inside?

But it didn’t matter because he heard her. Strong, broad hands gripped her forearms and yanked her in closer. Then his mouth crushed down on hers. She opened her lips, sucked his tongue inside, and her body erupted in flame.

A moan vibrated in her throat as his hands roamed her body. Such strong hands. Such competent, pleasure-inducing hands. She’d clutched his bare arms for support when he first kissed her, but now her fingers hooked into his towel and let it drop. She reached for him, and he groaned as her hands closed around him.

So hard. So hot. She wanted to drop to her knees and take him in her mouth, but his grip on her didn’t ease. Instead, he ripped her T-shirt up and over her head. Her bra followed in an instant. All without breaking their kiss for more than a second.

When he swept her off her feet and into his arms, she gasped. She hadn’t expected it, but maybe she should have. Johnny had always been dominant in the bedroom. Whenever she’d taken control, she’d known it was because he let her. Because it pleased him at that moment to allow her to do what she wanted.

Now, however, she knew she wasn’t going to get to do anything he didn’t let her do. And he wasn’t going to let her make him come first. It wasn’t how he was wired. He was an alpha male, all decisive and macho, and his primary goal in any sexual encounter was to make her melt into a puddle of orgasmic bliss.

He dropped her on the bed and reached for the button to her tactical pants. For a second, his eyes searched hers.

“Anything you need to tell me?”

She knew he was talking about the scar. Her pulse thumped. Guilt flared. “No, nothing.”

Her jerked her pants down her legs and stopped cold. “A tattoo,” he said. “A fucking tattoo.”

“Is that a problem?” A full-color dragon wrapped around her thigh. She’d gotten it to remind herself that she was tough and capable and wouldn’t be defeated. That it also covered the site of her childhood scar—which had faded to white in the years before she’d had the tattoo done—was a bonus.

He traced her skin where the scar had been. There was nothing left to give it away, not even a ridge.

He laughed disbelievingly. “I know you didn’t have that done in the past couple of days, but it sure is a coincidence.”

She started to push herself up and reach for the comforter. He stopped her with one word. “No.”

The command in his voice sent a shiver down her spine. And a thrill of anticipation back up the same channel. But she wasn’t as biddable as she’d once been. She sat up anyway. She did not, however, pull the cover over her body.

“You aren’t my boss, John Mendez. If you want to stop this, we can.”

Such brave words. She didn’t mean it, however. She didn’t want to stop. She was far too wet and far too needy to stop.

He yanked her pants the rest of the way off and dropped them. “No, I really don’t.”

He pushed her backward with one hand. She resisted for half a second, just to spite him, but then she obeyed. Her gaze strayed to his cock. It was as beautiful as she remembered. Thick, hard, and capable of giving her the most insane pleasure.

He put a knee on the bed—and then he straddled her, her hips trapped between those knees. She reached for his cock, but he gripped her wrists and shoved them onto the pillows.

“No touching,” he said. “Not yet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Everything. Everything.

“I want your cock inside me. I want to feel you deep and hard…” Her breath caught. “I want to come. It’s been a long time since I’ve come with anyone but myself.”

“Show me,” he commanded, letting her wrists go.

She gaped at him. And then she touched herself, her fingers sliding against her clit. She bit her lip as fire streaked through her. It felt good, but not as good as it would when he did it.

“I could do this alone,” she moaned. “I don’t need you at all.”

“You could. But you don’t want to.” He took her wrist again and stopped her from stroking her pussy. When he sucked her fingers into his mouth, her belly clenched tight. “I wanted to lick you first,” he told her when he finished. “But right now I think I’d rather fuck you.”

“God, yes,” she said, her body trembling with need and anticipation. Because as much as she might like to feel that beard against her tender flesh, to have his tongue lapping at her and driving her over the edge, she had a much stronger need to be connected to him more intimately.

His body inside her body. Face-to-face. Breath mingling, limbs wrapped around each other. Mouths fused together, tongues stroking as bodies strained.

But she should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. He rolled her onto her belly, tucked a pillow under her hips to lift them—and touched his mouth to the back of her neck. She dropped her head to the side, moaning.

Fingers glided down her spine, slipped over her ass, and then around to flick her swollen clit. His tongue continued to do things to her neck. When he bit into her shoulder—lightly, sensuously—she moaned louder.

“So fucking pretty, Kat.”

Kat was her name now, had been for a very long time, but she wanted him to call her Valentina again. Just once. She wanted to hear her true name on his lips the way she once had. She wanted to hear the love and devotion he put into every syllable, the way he dragged out the a when he was whispering to her.

“Johnny,” she said, and he stilled. She panicked. Maybe she should call him John instead. Maybe she shouldn’t say his name at all.

But he moved his mouth over to her spine, glided his lips along the sensitive groove all the way to the small of her back. It didn’t last long. He brought his mouth back to her neck. This time he nibbled the lobe of her ear as shivers wracked her body.

“We don’t have a condom,” he said.

“Bathroom,” she told him. She’d ransacked the drawers out of habit. Yuri had everything in there.

“Don’t move,” he ordered as the weight of his body disappeared from the bed.

She stayed put. He was back in a heartbeat, his body lowering onto hers again, his front to her back. He skimmed his mouth down her spine again while she shivered, and then he gripped her hips and lifted her ass in the air. She started to rise up on her arms, but he pushed her head back down onto the pillow.

She wanted to turn around and tell him no, not like this, not this time. And she wanted it this way worse than she allowed herself to admit. Panic stole into her lungs as his cock slipped against her seam. She wanted him, and she feared him too.

Feared what being possessed by him was going to do to her heart. To her soul.

“You okay with this?” he asked her, the tip of his cock barely penetrating her body.

She loved that he asked. He needed to be in charge, and yet he asked for her permission at the last second before it was too late. Her fears melted away. Her body craved his.

“Yes.”

He eased his way into her, filling her, stretching her. And then he was still, his cock throbbing deep inside her. She began to wonder if he was having second thoughts—was it possible for a man to have second thoughts at this point? Was he capable of pulling out and walking away?

Yeah, he was. He was John Mendez, the baddest-ass warrior she’d ever known. He had more self-discipline than a priest. If he changed his mind, he’d walk. She held her breath, wondering.

And then his fingers strummed her clit and fire streaked across her skin. When he began to move, to pump slowly in and out of her body, she didn’t know how long she’d last. She gripped the pillow and buried her face in it to muffle the sounds she was making. Her heart flew. Her eyes burned. Her throat closed up with emotion.

His hand came down on her ass, a stinging slap that shocked her as much as it sent her arousal into another sphere. She needed that slap. Needed it to shake loose the emotional chains and let her enjoy the pure physical delight of sex with him.

“Yes,” she gasped as he slapped her ass again. “More.”

He didn’t hurt her. He wouldn’t hurt her. She wouldn’t have wanted it then.

He slapped her ass once more, and then he gripped her hips and drove harder into her.

“Oh hell yes,” she moaned. This time she did lift herself up onto her hands, driving backward onto his cock. He didn’t chastise her for it. She wouldn’t have listened anyway.

It felt too good, too amazing. But then his fingers dug into her hips and stopped her from moving. Another moment and he slipped from her body.

“What the hell?” Kat cried out.