Russian Heat by Rhyll Biest Page A

two men backing toward her with rifle points raised.
    Viacheslav
    
    
     Alexandrovich
     Vlasov and Vladislav
     Ivanovich Markov. When she’d first heard their names she thought she’d have to call them V1 and V2, then she’d heard them call each other Slava and Vlad and had stuck with that. The two were military through and through, cocky from boot tip to brush cut, their good looks a warning shot to celibacy. She’d bet her last vacutainer that they’d left a trail of broken hearts all the way from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg. One look at her appointed hostile environment consultants and she’d realised that hob-nobbing through the
    
     Caucasus Mountains
    
     sampling animals for anthrax and other diseases would be the least dangerous part of her job.
    As she shed her body armour and helmet behind the car door, Vlad sank to kneel beside her, rifle point angled at the west ridge. Her heart did a lazy flip-flop because she knew what he would say next--what he always said when it was time to get back in the car.
    “
    
     Sandwich
    
     time, Jane.”
    Oh God.
    Her treacherous nipples hardened and she wished she’d kept her body armour on in spite of the sweat trickling down her back.
    It was that deep as sin voice with its edge of Russian accent that got to her, had her steeling her nerves to meet Vlad’s glinting grey eyes as coolly as possible just to show how not turned on she was.
    “I stink of sheep, sure you don’t want to drive?’ she asked. To her surprise and gratitude, her voice emerged rock steady. She’d missed her calling as an actress.
    “Nice try. In.”
    Swallowing hard, she dropped her vest and helmet on the front seat and wriggled across the vinyl seat to the middle, clutching her samples and sharps bucket. She eyed the equipment piled up on the passenger seat next to Yuri with suspicion. Vlad said it was the safest place to load equipment in the car but a part of her suspected it was all part of a conspiracy to prevent her riding shotgun and spoiling their fun. As a joke, it was the sort of thing her brothers in
    
    
     Australia
    
    
     would do and it gave her a pang of homesickness.
    Vlad
    
     unclipped the web straps of his thigh-holster. After a day of wearing body armour, Jane understood the need for one. Body armour made reaching for anything around the waist difficult.
    Placing his holster on the front seat, Vlad slid in next to her, forced to hunch and twist his tall frame to avoid hitting his head on the roof or digging the vest into his neck when he raised his knees. Of the two men, Vlad was the more relaxed, occasionally shouldering his weapon to help her pin a reluctant animal, claiming to be a sheep-whisperer and other such nonsense. Vlad’s presence was no joke now, though, as the heat of his hard thigh seared hers, and his bicep hovered a warm inch from her cheek, tying her stomach into a bundle of nervous lust.
    Slava’s
    
     fatigue-clad rear appeared at the other door, tight and tempting, a black pistol holster cinched mid-thigh on one leg, a thigh rig on the other. Dropping both rig and holster to pass to Yuri, he ducked into the back seat with fluid grace, rifle barrel all the time pointed westwards. Bang up beside her, hemming her in without a pocket of air for escape, he adjusted his rifle. His elbow brushed her breast and she flinched. Where Vlad was tall and lean, Slava was a six-foot tank of muscle and shared none of his comrade’s easy-going nature or ready humour. He thumped the Zhiguli’s roof and they began to roll downhill, pebbles crunching under the tyres, doors still open. As they passed a bend in the road, each man pulled their rifle in and slammed the door shut.
    And there they were, Vlad on her left, Slava on her right, hard bodies sandwiching hers in the Zhiguli. She felt her skin begin to slowly ignite.
    Don’t fuck the security
    
    .
    It had become a mantra, the subject of a complex catechism she rehearsed daily to fight the erotic by-product of hours