Honor Bound h-2 Page 20

  "What?" Cam asked dimly. She was focused on the way Blair's breasts filled her hands and the insistent pounding pressure between her legs building rapidly under Blair's fingertips.

  "Letting me call her," Blair murmured, her eyes closed. She moved her hand back up to Cam's belly, aware of the faint growl of frustration from her lover. She smiled to herself, enjoying the power. She smoothed her palm over Cam's firm stomach and then pushed her hand under the waistband of her underwear, back down between her legs. She slipped a finger on either side of the firm prominence of Cam's clitoris, squeezing her slowly. Cam jerked against her, groaning softly.

  Then Cam's lips were against her ear, her breath ragged, as she whispered, "Do that a little harder and you'll make me come."

  "I intend to," Blair answered, a hungry edge to her voice. She moved her hand away and turned in Cam's arms until she faced her, still between her legs, her breasts exposed through her open blouse. She rubbed her hard nipples over Cam's shirt front, gasping softly at the fine ripple of excitement that ran straight down to her own clitoris.

  "Put your fingers back on me," Cam pleaded, her eyes hazy with need.

  "Not here. Not just yet," Blair whispered, stepping away. She caught Cam's uninjured hand in hers and pulled her upright. "I want you slow."

  "I don't have much time," Cam protested hoarsely, following her nevertheless.

  Blair glanced back, an enigmatic smile on her face. "You have enough time, Commander. The only advantage to our situation is that no one is going to question your presence up here."

  Blair drew her around the corner of the partition into her sleeping alcove, then turned and reached for the buttons on Cam's shirt. "I've never made love with a woman in my own bed. Couldn't find one to pass the security inspection." She stopped long enough to kiss her, a deep languid kiss. She was having trouble keeping her hands from shaking she wanted her so badly, but she continued evenly, "Apparently, you're the one. Stand still."

  Methodically, she opened each button as Cam submitted quietly to the slow torture, her hands clenched at her sides, shuddering with arousal. Blair stripped the shirt off and laid it carefully over a chair, mentioning almost as an afterthought, "It wouldn't do to get this too wrinkled."

  When Blair began to pull off Cam's trousers, Cam's restraint wavered and she hurriedly pushed them off herself. In a minute she was naked. She reached for Blair, who stepped back quickly with a small shake of her head. Blair's eyes were laser bright and focused intently on Cam's body.

  "No, you can't touch me," Blair said thickly. "I don't want to be distracted either."

  Blair drew Cam to the bed and urged her down on top of the covers. Then, watching Cam watch her, she slowly removed her own clothing. As she slid the sheer silk off her shoulders, she drew her fingers down her breasts, lingering on her nipples, tugging them lightly until the exquisite sensation became too much to bear. As she continued down to stroke her abdomen, teasing ever lower towards the curls at the base of her belly, she kept her eyes on Cam's. Cam's eyes were dark and hot and her hands twitched where they lay on the covers. Cam's reaction heightened her arousal as much as her own caresses.

  "I want to do that," Cam said urgently, watching as Blair's fingers slipped between her thighs. When Blair made a small whimpering sound, Cam was afraid that she might come herself. Hoarsely she gasped, "Blair, please."

  Blair shuddered and pulled her hand away, knowing she was too close and not wanting it yet. Nevertheless, she needed contact, something to relieve the throbbing ache between her legs. Hurriedly, she moved onto the bed and straddled Cam's thigh, moaning softly as her swollen flash rubbed against Cam's warm skin. She leaned forward, bracing herself on one arm, and brought the other between Cam's thighs. She entered her smoothly, all in one motion, knowing that Cam was ready for her.

  Cam's throat closed around a cry and she thrust her hips upward to meet Blair's thrust. The suddenness of it took her unaware, and a rolling wave of sensation followed fast upon the initial pleasure. Her eyes opened wide and she stared at Blair, stunned and already lost.

  "Close," she gasped.

  Blair was holding back her own orgasm with every ounce of her strength, but the feel of Cam contracting around her fingers and the tingling in her clitoris as she thrust herself along Cam's leg was too much for her to contain. She bore down, and as she felt herself begin to crest, she pressed her thumb hard along the length of Cam's clitoris.

  Cam jolted off the bed with the first pounding spasm and wrapped her arms around Blair. They pressed their bodies together, groaning softly in unison as they joined in surrender.

  As the contractions subsided, Blair curled up by Cam's side, her fingers still inside her. Cam's arm came lazily around her shoulder and they lay together, breathing hard and drifting somewhere just behind the boundaries of reality.

  Eventually, Cam whispered, "If we keep this up, it's all going to come out."

  Blair pressed closer, moving her hand upward across Cam's stomach. She rested her fingers on Cam's breast, not in passion now but in contented possession. "Yes, I know."

  "It will be complicated."

  Blair pressed her lips to Cam's shoulder, kissing her lightly. "Yes, I know."

  "We'll deal with it, somehow," Cam sighed, her lips soft on Blair's temple.

  Blair closed her eyes, stealing a brief moment of peace, as she whispered, "Yes, I believe we will."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  "Anything new?" Cam asked, standing behind the two people seated in front of an array of computers, voice analyzers, video monitors and other electronic tracking devices. Both swiveled in their chairs and looked up at her. Both of them looked weary but there was also an unmistakable sense of exhilaration about them, as if they were enjoying themselves immensely. The ebony skinned woman, whose bearing was nothing short of regal, spoke first, her voice modulated by a slight accent that belied her European schooling.

  "We've replied only twice since first contact twelve hours ago, Commander," Felicia Davis told her. "As discussed, I've made no attempt to engage him in any way other than a few verbal probes - who are you, what do you want, why are you contacting me. Things Egret would already have said, but the kind of thing someone might ask when they were getting tired of the attention. I've tried to attach a tracking packet to my responses, but he's using some kind of anonymizer program that is preventing me from inserting any kind of bug into his machine."

  "If you could, could we locate him?" Cam asked her newest team member.

  The woman who looked like she might have come directly from a Paris fashion runway shrugged, a small frown line darting quickly between her arched brows. "Theoretically, yes. With what I've been able to gather from the FBI's attempts to do the same thing, he's very well hidden. My guess is even if we get a fix on his machine, it will show up somewhere in Rumania or the like. He's rerouting his messages through a gateway, probably several. It's still worth trying though."

  "This could go on for quite some time," Cam observed. "The two of you are going to need a break."

  Mac protested, "We're fine, Commander."

  Cam appreciated that Mac was reluctant to relinquish his seat as the communications coordinator in the unfolding operation that the FBI had cleverly named Love Bug because he was concerned that his position would be usurped. It had taken a call to Stewart Carlisle along with a threat to go over his head to the Director before Cam could get Mac and her new computer expert, Felicia Davis, online with Loverboy to begin with. She had argued that her team could more easily and efficiently provide the kinds of information that an online encounter would require. Carlisle had agreed with her and had pulled a few strings of his own. So, despite Doyle's objections, Cam at least had her people in on the ground floor of the operation. Nevertheless, the FBI were hovering, and Cam had a feeling they were just waiting for the slightest excuse to take over. She couldn't afford to have her agents burning out in the first few days of what might be a protracted campaign.

  "Rememb
er, Lindsey Ryan told us that Loverboy is very astute, and in all likelihood he's been studying Egret for years. Granted, there isn't all that much information of personal nature available on her in the public domain, but he'll still be suspicious if 'she' begins to behave out of character. She would be very reluctant to have any kind of dialogue with him, and any abrupt change in that pattern is going to tip him off."

  Felicia nodded in agreement. "Understood, Commander, and we have been watching both the length of the exchange and the exact nature of our responses very carefully. Nevertheless, I don't want to miss an incoming."

  "Agent Ryan should be here within the next hour and I would like to conference as soon as she arrives," Cam said flatly. "After that, you're both off for six hours. And I mean 'out of here' off."

  They barely acknowledged her order before they turned back, heads close together, to a stack of printouts, intent on reviewing all of the previous communications from their intended contact. She knew she was going to have to force them out of the command room later.

  "I'll be upstairs in the Aerie," Cam said as she passed the agent who was monitoring the building surveillance cameras. None of them had strayed far from Command Central for the last eighteen hours. Once they had decided to go forward with the FBI's plan to lure Loverboy into a public confrontation, she had put them all on twelve hour shifts, but she noticed that no one was actually gone for more than a few hours at a time. Everyone had a personal stake in catching the man who had cost them all a friend and colleague.

  She glanced at her watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning, and it had been twenty-four hours since she had last seen Blair. She had been at the command center most of the previous afternoon, enduring another meeting with Doyle while they hammered out their respective roles in the upcoming endeavor. She had been forced to accept that the decision regarding Ellen Grant's participation was out of her hands. She had let it go, choosing instead to focus her energy on assuring Grant's safety. If she needed to be on site twenty-four hours a day monitoring events to do that, then she that's where she planned to be.

  It had been close to three AM the previous morning when she had finally headed across the square to her apartment. She had stopped at the corner and glanced up at Blair's window. A faint glow illuminated the double panes of glass. She had wondered if Blair were working, and had wished for a moment that she were sitting nearby, quietly watching, as she used to watch her mother work when she was young. It was the kind of memory that brought a longing for something she hadn't known she missed and couldn't afford to consider now. She had shrugged it away and continued up to her small, impersonal apartment for a few hours of sleep before the battle truly began.

  *

  Blair stood before the canvas, a fine sable brush in one hand, lost in the sensation of color and contour, not thinking of anything at all. It took her a few seconds to recognize the sound at her door as knocking. She put the brush down and glanced once more at the painting, knowing that when she returned, she would have it. She turned and crossed the polished wood floor, glancing at the clock, surprised to find that she had been working for several hours. She hadn't thought she would be able to. She hadn't thought that she would be able to do anything at all except wonder what was happening downstairs. That and think about what she intended to do about being crazy in love with her security chief.

  She glanced through the peephole out of habit and, as it always did whenever she saw her, her heart rate seemed to triple. She pulled the door open and leaned against the doorframe, regarding the tall, dark-haired woman in the immaculately tailored suit.

  "You're early for the briefing, Commander," she commented, blocking the doorway. "We aren't scheduled until three."

  Cam nodded gravely. "I'm aware of that, Ms. Powell. However, I have some pressing matters to discuss with you."

  "Oh?" Blair said with a shrug, stepping back from the door and closing it slowly. When Cam turned, Blair had silently moved very close to her.

  "And what matters would those be?" Blair asked, sliding her fingers under the edge of Cam's jacket, her voice a husky murmur.

  Cam very slowly put her hands on Blair's waist and drew her near. Captivated by the variations of blue in her eyes, she answered deliberately, "Personal matters."

  Then she lowered her head and kissed her. It was a long, slow, thorough kiss that spoke of longing and desire and something else. Something beyond words, at once tender and heavy with need. When Cam lifted her mouth from Blair's, they stood silently, arms around one another, just feeling.

  Finally, Blair stepped back, a crooked smile on her lips. "I'm glad you had them turn off the surveillance cameras in here."

  Cam grinned. "So am I - although this wasn't what I had in mind at the time."

  "Can you talk about what's happening with - all of it?"

  Cam laughed, trying to ignore the insistent throbbing deep in her gut. "Well, my attention is on something different at the moment. I'd better have some coffee if you want me to think."

  Blair took her arm and started to pull her towards the kitchen. Then she hesitated, turned, and grasped Cam's face with both hands. She pulled her head down and kissed her, hard and fierce. When she pulled away her knees felt weak and Cam looked slightly stunned.

  "Well," Blair gasped softly, running her hands over Cam's chest. "Now I guess I'd better have some of that coffee, too."

  A few moments later they sat facing one another at the counter, their hands lightly touching.

  "What's going on?" Blair asked quietly.

  Cam told her about Doyle and Grant and the operation underway.

  Blair watched Cam's face while she talked, listening for the things she wasn't saying. She had spent her life listening to her father and his associates discuss everything from foreign policy to armed intervention, and she knew something about strategy. She also recognized when some things were being glossed over or omitted altogether.

  "You can't intend for Grant to take him on herself?" Blair said when Cam finished outlining the basics of the plan.

  Cam shook her head. "No. Once we establish rapport and convince him that he really is speaking to you, we hope he'll reveal something to help us trace him. Some reference to location, some historical fact -- something to give us a fix on his physical location."

  "And if that doesn't work?" Blair asked quietly.

  "Then we'll set up a meet under the pretext that you don't want anyone else endangered, and lay a trap for him that way."

  "He might just lay a trap for -- me," Blair stated.And he lays his with bombs.

  "He might," Cam allowed. "But we'll have dozens of agents securing the area, and if he's anywhere near the meet site, which Ryan assures us he will be, we'll have him."

  "What about Grant?"

  Cam's stomach tightened but her voice was sure. Uncertainty could not be entertained once an operation was underway. "She'll be wired and armored and hopefully she won't get close enough to be in any real danger. We just need her to leave here as you, in case he's watching the building, and to be visible approaching the meet location."

  Blair was silent for a moment, then she asked, "Who's going with her as back up?"

  "Savard," Cam said. She met Blair's eyes and added softly, "and me."

  Blair stood abruptly and walked to the far side of the loft, her back to the room, looking out the tall windows toward the park. Cam sat for a moment, her good sense warring with an uncomfortable need to make Blair understand. She stared across the room at Blair's rigid back, telling herself that she should simply go back to work and do what needed to be done. But if she did, she knew that she would only be bringing part of herself to the job. The other part would be wondering about Blair, and that fact aggravated her almost as much as the cold silence in the room.

  "Blair," Cam said quietly, crossing to stand behind her. She did not touch her, because the anger was nearly a palpable barrier between them.

  Blair held up a hand, not turning, her voice harsh and clipped. "Don't, Ca
m. Donot tell me it's safe or any other such fairy tale about the brilliant planning of our security agencies. I know the track records."

  Cam did touch her then, because she had to. She was finding that distance between them was harder and harder to bear. She didn't want to think about what that might mean, particularly not now. She rested her hands very lightly on Blair's waist, stepping near but not trying to hold her. "Everyone agrees that the risk is low."

  Blair made a faint choking sound that might have been a laugh, or a sob. She turned abruptly to face her, pushing Cam's hands away. "Just when did you start thinking that I was stupid, Cam? Before or after we fucked?"

  "Goddamn it, Blair," Cam growled, trying hard to hold onto her temper, "I know damn well you aren't stupid. The risksare low."

  "I suppose you think that it wouldn't occur to me that Jeremy Finch is dead and you were almost killed once already? Or do you think I've simply lost my mind?"