The Russian Seduction by Nikki Navarre Page B

traffic like a shark’s fin splitting the water, he shot her an ironic glance. “And now, Counselor, you’re wondering whether to add an association with the Russian Mafia to my list of questionable connections, and making a mental note to update my dossier.”
    She shifted again in her seat, telling herself it was absurd to feel guilty. “I’m just trying to do my job, captain.”
    “As I did mine,” he mused, gaze fixed on the shifting traffic patterns. “But they took my boat anyway, didn’t they? I was at the pinnacle of my career and my abilities. Fervently devoted to performing my patriotic duty, just as you are today.”
    His mouth curled in a humorless smile. “You won’t like to hear it, but we’re similar creatures, you and I.”
    She shot him a startled glance, ready to lob that hand-grenade right back at him. Then she took the time to think it over. Too warm in her shearling coat, she shrugged out of it. Catching the movement, the captain reached over and dialed down the car’s thermostat.
    If only it were as simple to dial down the heat that simmered between them.
    “One day,” he murmured, “when your joints ache in the morning, and you’re staring sixty in the face, when you’ve sacrificed everything for the cold comfort of your career—they’ll snatch it all away from you.”
    A muscle flexed in his jaw as he shifted gears. The sports car plunged through the narrowing gap between a guttering microbus and a shiny SUV with opaque windows.
    “Then,” he shrugged, “you’ll be shunted off to rot in some backwater post that doesn’t merit half your effort or abilities. Lying awake at night wondering why you made the choices you did. Telling yourself you’d do it all differently, if only you had another chance. And all that bottled-up resentment and regret will gnaw at you like an ulcer.”
    “No.” The word slipped out like a hiccup, propelled by her hidden fears, never discussed or acknowledged. He’d targeted her hangups as accurately as his weapons officer must have, under his captain’s unsparing eye, when he fired the sub’s deadly armaments on enemies in the deep.
    “It won’t be like that for me,” she said softly, hugging herself as she curled in the seat. “How can it be? After ten years of commitment, ten years of skipped vacations and working through weekends, after learning three new languages and acing the proficiency exam for every one, taking every tradecraft course the Department offers—after all that, very few people would claim my Minister-Counselor’s crown was handed to me on a silver platter. Of course, you claimed to think so, the night we met.”
    She floundered in a sea of caution, her secrets cumbersome as cement shoes on a swimmer. They were treading around the edge of fears she hugged close, because telling them to someone else could make them real. But he’d already exposed them, hadn’t he, given voice to all her little demons?
    A lifetime of repressed frustration reared its ugly head. He’d raised the subject, hadn’t he? Well, let him hear what she had to say. Let someone hear her, just this once.
    “I wonder if you can understand, captain,” she said harshly, “how it feels to have your wishes and preferences disregarded, simply treated as irrelevant by those around you. To be allowed to accomplish nothing for yourself, to have every important decision made for you by someone else. To be stifled by the blanket of someone else’s expectations and ambitions, so heavy they wake you up sweating at night.”
    She sucked in an unsteady breath. “Then to hear your counterparts whispering, no matter your own merits and level of effort, that you’ve earned none of what you have. It makes you try harder to prove you’re worthy. Knowing someone will always doubt your accomplishments due to your gender, your youth, and your father’s name. None of which can be changed.
    “One doesn’t even dare to protest.” Her voice sank to a whisper. Maybe