2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
M ax julienne sliced the carrots while he reminded himself all the reasons why the sexy little doctoral student currently studying in the living room was off limits.
One - despite her advanced education, she was six years younger than him. Two - that education disparity was just another reason that nothing between them could work. After barely graduating high school, he’d gone directly into the Marines and learned how to kill people. No amount of reading and online courses since then could bridge the gap between the two of them.
And hell, why bridge a gap for a casual fling?
Which was the next biggest reason he needed to keep his hands to himself. Three - Max didn’t do serious, and Danusia Chernichenko deserved more than a casual roll in the sack, no matter how hot it was. And it would be desert at high noon hot, too.
He wanted to undo the dark brown hair she always wore in either a long ponytail or braid down her back and bury his fingers in the silky strands. Damn if it didn’t make him some kind of walking cliché, but he wanted to see that long dark hair spread out under her while he drove into her small, but curvy body over and over again.
While she shared the rest of her family’s pale coloring with almost black hair, unlike the rest of them, Danusia wasn’t more than average in height. She couldn’t be more than five and a half feet tall with bones like a sparrow.
Too fragile for a man like him, but that didn’t stop him wanting her.
Hell, if she didn’t deserve more than he could ever give though.
The biggest reason, she was off-limits? Four - she was his friend and team leader’s baby sister. A smart man did not play with that kind of fire. It was likely to burn him to ashes for his trouble.
And five – if he needed a five, was that they didn’t even live in the same state. Not that he spent a lot of time here, but it was home.
Which again implied he was thinking long term, which he wasn’t. Because he never did. He’d lived his whole life watching his mom struggle with what amounted to single parenthood while his daddy spent weeks on the road as a long-haul trucker.
Max’s job not only took him away for weeks at a time, but there was no guarantee he’d come back. His missions were dangerous, if necessary.
He wasn’t putting a woman through that kind of pain, or himself through the struggle between his job and his family. His daddy’s weeks on the road had taken their toll on him as well and he’d died young from a heart-attack.
Max wasn’t following that path, no way, no how.
But, damn, he wanted Danusia. Had wanted her at Elle’s wedding and the hot need had only grown since. He might not have seen Danusia in the intervening time, but he’d dreamt about her. A lot.
Which was just plain crazy.
Even crazier, he’d pictured her face on more than one woman’s body as he was screwing them. It didn’t make him proud either. He might not do serious, but he respected the women he had sex with and knew it was wrong to bury his cock in one woman’s body while thinking of another one.
Which went a long way in explaining why he’d gone without sex for longer than he had since his first time with the divorcee who lived across the hall when he was fifteen.
His agitated thoughts did not stop him from noticing the muted sounds the moment she stood up and started moving around in the other room. He knew she’d come into the kitchen before her sweet, floral scent told him she’d moved into his personal space.
She leaned around him. "Looks good. Can I help with anything?"
"I’ve got it."
"I really am a decent cook."
"You’re a Chernichenko. I doubt there’s anything you don’t do well."
She laughed, but the sound was more sad than humorous. "Isn’t it obvious? I’m not like the others."
Sliding the carrots into the steamer, he fought the urge to turn around. And lost. He put the lid on the cooking vegetables and then turned to face Danusia.
She was mere inches away and it was all he could do not to reach out and pull her the remaining distance so their bodies connected. "What do you mean?"
She rolled her eyes and stepped back. "You don’t have to pretend to be nice. I know my limitations."
What the hell? "Don’t you know how proud of you Roman is?"
"Sure. I’m the freak among freaks, right? My siblings are so smart, they scare people and I’m even smarter. That’s really something great, isn’t it?"
"I guess it depends on what you do with that big brain of yours." But he didn’t like her sad, almost weary tone .
"My cranium capacity is no larger than average for a woman of my height."
He shook his head. "That’s not what I meant."
The amusement now lurking in her grey gaze said she knew that and was teasing him. She didn’t dwell on whatever bothered her and while he found that admirable, he didn’t like the idea that she carried a burden like that about herself.
"You are something special, Danusia."
"I’m a freak." She shrugged. "But we take the bad with the good, right? If I can be like Matej and develop something to make the world a better, or safer, or healthier place, then it’s worth it to be such a bad fit with other people."
"You fit just fine with me."
"And you are a good friend to my brother."
"He’s not here now and I still like spending time with you."
"So, give me something to do."
"Tired of studying?"
"You could say that. The latest batch of research I downloaded from Luminescent Pharmaceuticals doesn’t make sense. I think I’ve been staring at the printouts too long."
"Are they one of the companies experimenting with the use of nanotechnology in medical treatments?"
"Yes. They’ve had some breakthroughs too, or so some of their research would suggest. But the reports I’ve been looking at today don’t back it up. I’m not sure exactly what they do say, to be honest."
"If anyone can figure it out, it’s you."
"Right. I’d rather slice vegetables."
"All done, but if you’re intent on manual labor, you can start on the dishes. "
She looked over to the nearly empty sink. "You’re a clean-as-you-go kind of cook, aren’t you?"
He shrugged. He liked order. Nothing wrong with that.
She grinned, as if she knew a joke she wasn’t telling, but headed over to start on the dishes.
He put the red snapper covered in Cajun spices into the melted butter in the cast-iron frying pan. The fish started to sizzle immediately, the scent of chili powder and crushed red pepper seeds filling the kitchen.
"Smells delicious," she said as she washed the pan he’d used for the sauce. "You’re a really good cook, aren’t you?"
"It’s a hobby."
"A pretty serious hobby, by the look of things."
"It relaxes me." Cooking blackened red snapper with mango-lime sauce was a far cry from MRE rations and helped him to distance his home time from that in the field.
"I like to cook too, but my roommate says I’m too keen on experimentation for my own good."
"How can you help it?"
"That’s what I tell Rebekah."
"A fully stocked kitchen’s an irresistible temptation to someone with an intimate working knowledge of chemistry. Or so Roman says."
"Roman experiments in the kitchen too?" Danusia sounded shocked by the prospect. "Rebekah is more into physics than chemistry, but she is more than happy to just follow a recipe, you know? I like to try different things. And Roman does that?"
Max nodded, all serious. "They don’t all turn out either. "
She laughed and this time the sound was pure joy. His cock throbbed in response, and he would have given it a good thump if she wasn’t looking right at him.
He settled on turning back to the stove and finishing dinner, tossing the now cooked carrots in a chicken-butter sauce and plating everything while it was still hot.
She was drying her hands when he finished. "Where do you want to eat?"
He didn’t really care and said so.
She blushed and looked off to the side. "Um, there’s a new show about a superhero family I’ve been wanting to watch. The dad is one of my favorite actors."
"So, we’ll watch it."
"Really? You don’t mind, after all the work you put into dinner?"
"Nope, don’t mind a bit."
It was so worth the grin that lit her entire pixyish face. And the show wasn’t bad. Even better, though, was her reaction to it.
"You’ve really got a thing for superheroes, don’t you?"
She blushed. "With my family, can you blame me?"
"I’d say they’d all consider you more the superhero than them."
"Superbrain maybe, but Elle got the whole package. She’s beautiful, smart and she can kick ass too, just like Electra. Then there’s Matej, he’s not a secret agent like the others, but he’s doing such important work, he might as well be Dr. Bruce Banner without the whole Hulk side-effects thing. Mykola has got the super spy thing going on too and then there’s Roman."
"A scientist for the Army."
" Tchya ." The look she gave him told Max that Danusia didn’t buy the long held cover story for a minute .
"Let me guess. You think being a military scientist has some superhero quality to it too?"
"Maybe, maybe not, but you and I both know Roman doesn’t work for the Army – at least not as a scientist – nope, he’s no more a scientist than I am a cover model."
"Why not a scientist? He’s got the degree and the brains."
"And he carries himself like a soldier, a real soldier, not a lab rat. Roman’s too tanned to spend his days in the lab too. And he’s got this scary aura, almost as scary as yours."
"You think I’m scarier than Roman?" That would be a first.
"Yes, but maybe that’s because I see him through the eyes of his baby sister. I know he’d never willingly or knowingly hurt me." The way she said it made Max wonder if Roman had unknowingly hurt his little sister.
"Who do you think he works for?" The Chief was going to shit kittens when he found out his baby sister wasn’t taken in by his cover.
Not one little, tiny bit.
"He told my parents he was speaking at a symposium on Polymer Sciences in Europe. Funny thing, he’s not listed as a speaker."
"Maybe they didn’t get his name up in time."
"Maybe he’s on assignment somewhere else. My guess is out of country, or he would have told them he was going to be somewhere in the States. And he’s not in Europe because he would never give his real destination."
Hell, she should be working for the Atrati. "Maybe you’ve got an overactive imagination."
Hurt flared in her eyes. "Maybe, I’m not as dumb as my family seems to think. I realized Elle was some kind of government agent before her first husband died. I didn’t tell anyone else. Little sisters find secrets, they don’t share them. I knew when Mykola was working undercover on that drug case. I even knew where he was living, but I’m not about to tell him that. When he couldn’t save everybody, I knew he’d be broken and when he showed up at Elle’s company, it was obvious there was more going on than anyone wanted to admit."
"What the hell?"
"I use my brain for more than studying."
"I think maybe you’re the scary one."
She shook her head. "I’m just a little sister that wants to know more about her siblings than they’re willing to tell her."
There was a pain in Danusia’s voice he understood all too well. He’d heard it often enough in his mother’s tone when his daddy had refused to talk about his weeks on the road, saying when he was home he didn’t want to think about his time in the truck.
"They all love you." He knew that much from things Roman had said.
"They keep secrets. They share with each other, but think I’m too young to know, or something."
"They’re just protecting you."
"They think I’m a security risk."
"You are telling me stuff I doubt they want others to know." Not that he considered her a risk, but she needed to be more circumspect, especially when it came to Roman.
Who was in Africa right now on a black-ops mission commissioned by the Army. But Danusia was right, neither Roman nor Max worked for the military anymore. They were agents for the Atrati, a paramilitary organization that did a lot of work for the government but was not under the government’s official aegis.
"You’re one of them, if not a spook, something super-secret." He opened his mouth, but she put up her hand. "Don’t. Don’t lie to me. Just don’t say anything if all you’re going to do is deny it."
He had an insane urge to tell her the truth, which was absolutely not going to happen. "You sure this isn’t your superhero obsession playing tricks with your brain?" he asked instead.
She stood up, grabbing her plate and his. "Never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything."
"But you did."
"Right. So, I guess I am a security risk."
Well, shit.