Sleeping With the Enemy

    He groaned, a long, low sound filled with passionate anguish. She shuddered, bucking against him as the next wave hit her harder, crying out. Rolling with her so that she was beneath him once more, he began to drive into her harder and faster, driving her climax until she’d begun to think it would shake her apart.

    A profound sense of bliss rolled over her when he finally ceased to pump into her, shuddering and then going limp on top of her. “I’m sorry, nodia,” he said gustily, shifting his arms to lift some of his weight off of her.

    “Mmmm?” she murmured drunkenly.

    He uttered a half-hearted chuckle. “I should learn not to make promises. It has been a long time for me, nodia.”

    “Mmm? I came twice.”

    He rolled onto the bed beside her. “I was intent upon three.”

    Sybil dragged in a sustaining breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not sure I could handle three.”

    He curled his arms around her, dragging her close. “We’ll see.”

    “My headache’s gone,” she murmured in surprise after a few moments.

    Anka stiffened then began to shake with silent laughter. “I’ve always thought sex had amazing curative powers myself.”

    She smiled against his shoulder. “I took painkiller.”

    “But all you needed was me, nodia.”

    Her throat closed at his quip. She was beginning to think that was too painfully true.

Chapter Nine

    Sybil had never been more thoroughly exhausted in her life… or happier about it. Despite his threat/promise, Anka hadn’t made any attempt to coax her into another round of sex. He’d slept with her in his arms, though, awakened her several times with the light stroke of his hand or his lips in her hair. Regret had filled her when he finally slipped from the bed and dressed in spite of the fact that she’d found it impossible to sleep deeply or stay asleep with him in her bed.

    She hadn’t wanted him to leave even though she’d acknowledged that she couldn’t afford for him to be spotted leaving her quarters. “You don’t have to leave yet.”

    He leaned over her, bending down to nuzzle his face against hers. “I do. Everyone will be stirring soon.”

    She sighed her acceptance and her disappointment, but she didn’t try to hold him longer. For a little while after he’d gone, she lay awake, and then dropped asleep again just before her alarm went off.

    She was a little sore, but even that made her happy, each tiny twinge reminding her of the night they’d spent together.

    “You seem to be in good spirits this morning,” Powell muttered. “You take a happy pill?”

    Sybil felt her face redden, wondering if she’d actually been smiling at her thoughts. “Just trying to brace myself for another tedious day,” she lied, grabbing a cup of coffee and leaving Powell standing beside the urn.

    The congressman’s aid sent her a piercing look as she came in that unnerved her. Surreptitiously, she checked her uniform to make certain she’d put herself together correctly and then nonchalantly checked her hair. She couldn’t tell that anything was askew. She set her cup of coffee down at her desk. “Excuse me. I believe I’ll hit the lady’s room before I get started.”

    The view in the mirror was something of a jolt. She’d been sure she had concealed the dark circles under her eyes, but she looked like a raccoon! No wonder the guy had stared at her! Dragging a concealer stick out of her purse, she applied it carefully and then checked the fit of her uniform and her hair. She still looked like she’d had a long night, but it was the best she could do.

    The aid met her in the doorway on her way back in. “Anything you need to tell me?”

    Sybil stared at him blankly, trying to get her heart rate down to something close to normal. “Not that I can think of.”

    He studied her for a moment and finally moved to allow her to pass, but Sybil was a nervous wreck when she sat down at her desk and booted her system. The tedium she’d expected helped to settle her nerves after a few hours, so much so that by the time she’d had her lunch she was fighting sleep. Shortly after lunch, however, an image flashed on her vid display that brought her wide awake.

    “What do you know about him?”

    Sybil lifted her head and gaped at Phil Meachum, trying to ignore the stares of the others. Anger flickered to life after a moment, chasing her shock and anxiety. “He’s good in bed,” she said baldly.

    He looked taken aback by her frankness. “Besides that,” he said dryly when he’d recovered.

    She blinked at him. “I gave a full report.”

    “I’m not asking about that. I want to know what your impression of the man… uh… ril, Commander Anka l’Kartay is.”

    Sybil’s lips tightened. “If you’ve read the report, you should know we were only at their base camp a couple of days. I don’t know him… except in the biblical sense.”

    “You were there long enough for him to seduce you,” he countered sardonically.

    “Yes, about five seconds after I got a really good look at him… and it took me hours after that to convince him to take me into his bed!”

    “You’re damned defensive about him.”

    “I’m defensive about your line of questioning. Maybe if I understood why you’d brought this up-again-I wouldn’t be so defensive.”

    “Alright. Good enough. I brought it up because his name keeps popping up-enough that we’re beginning to wonder just how powerful a force he is in the Sumpturian political arena.”

    Sybil gaped at him. “He’s a military man. I wasn’t aware that he had anything at all to do with politics. What do you mean his name keeps popping up?”

    “We haven’t made a lot of headway in breaking their language down, but we don’t need to in so far as names go. So, unless there’s another Commander l’Kartay, this one seems to be on a lot of minds.”

    Uneasiness filled Sybil, not the least because he’d come under the government’s scrutiny. “Well,” she said after a moment, “we don’t actually know that there isn’t, you know.”

    Meachum wasn’t the only one that gave her a look of patent disbelief. Powell, Rains, and Kushbu all looked at her as if she’d grown horns and a forked tail. In all honesty, she didn’t believe it either, but she knew it was possible.

    “What I mean is, we don’t even know that l’Kartay is a name as we know them. It could mean anything and there could be any number of Sumpturians with that title, if it was a title. It might be a place name, you know.”

    “I think the law of averages would rule out the possibility of there being two Commander Anka l’Kartays.”

    “Oh.” Sybil struggled with the dismay that comment caused her for a few moments. “Well, we don’t know in what context that they’ve mentioned him, do we?”

    “No, we don’t. But we’re interested in finding out,” he said pointedly.

    Sybil had a very bad feeling that someone had seen him entering her quarters the night before, but she wasn’t about to volunteer the information. “I’m willing to try to figure it out if you’ll just let me study the vids you’re talking about.”

    “They haven’t been released to us yet. All I’m trying to get at this point is a handle on him.”

    Sybil nodded, struggling to gather her wits about her. “It was clear that the men and women under him held a great deal of respect for him,” she said after a moment’s thought.

    “Rils and rilous,” he corrected her. “We feel that it’s important to get a grasp of their language.”