Free Shadow Alpha by Carole Mortimer

would be down and dirty, and toe-curlingly, deliciously wicked.
    And Kat wanted it. Wanted him, and the mindless, overwhelming pleasure he was capable of giving her. Just thinking about having those big, capable hands touching her, stroking her, inside her, was enough to make her nipples peak and tighten; she had found that her panties were damp when she undressed earlier for her shower, and the warm rush of want between her thighs now had just made them even damper—
    “How did your call go with Gregori?”
    Kat felt as if she’d just had a bucket of ice water thrown over her. Not because of her conversation with Gregori—her brother had been too pleased at being able to speak with her at last to press her too deeply for details. Yet.
    But thinking of her brother had certainly given her a reality check, and in that reality there was no way her attraction to Dair was going anywhere. Not even as far as the adjoining bedroom.
    “He obviously trusts you,” she answered Dair’s question cautiously.
    Dair raised a mocking brow. “And you don’t?”
    Kat had found it difficult to trust anyone during the five years she had lived in New York, and with good reason. The Orlovs were feared more than they were liked, and Kat was considered as being a member of that family. Not a situation conducive to forming friendships, let alone trust.
    But she had no reason to distrust Dair, the opposite, in fact. “I trust Gregori’s judgment,” once again her reply was guarded; wanting to have sex with a man didn’t mean that she trusted him.
    Dair gave a humorless smile. “Risking my own life breaking you out of that clinic today wasn’t enough to convince you I’m one of the good guys, hmm?”
    Kat felt a guilty blush warm her cheeks. Dair had put himself in danger when he broke into the clinic and took her out of there. More so than he realized. Just as she knew that if someone hadn’t gotten her out of that clinic soon, then Sergei would have tried using even stronger tactics to make her do what he wanted. And if that had failed…
    Kat gave a shudder; she really didn’t want to think about what might have happened next.
    “I’m very grateful for what you did,” she answered Dair. “I’ve said that I am. I just—I don’t know you. You’re nothing at all like the Dair Grayson I remember.” This Dair, in his black clothing and heavy military style boots and that short haircut, was so overwhelmingly male, and Kat had the feeling he would look just as lethal in a tux. No matter what he wore—or didn’t wear, for that matter—the man Dair was now was over six feet of sex on legs.
    That pale gaze moved over her with sweeping intensity. “You don’t look or act much like the little Katya I remember, either.”
    Kat blushed at the criticism she sensed in his tone. “I was fifteen years old and had a crush on you a mile wide!”
    One brow arched in surprise. “You did?”
    “Oh please!” She eyed him irritably. “Only a blind man could have missed it.”
    Dair hadn’t exactly been blind, just completely caught up in his relationship with Karin McLeer. And Kat had had a crush on him then? Not that he would have been interested, even if he had known about it. At fifteen Kat had been jailbait. But he really hadn’t known, had just thought of Kat as a little puppy that followed him around whenever the two of them met.
    Newsflash, Dair, Kat isn’t fifteen anymore .
    No, she wasn’t, but she was still Sergei Orlov’s estranged wife and the sister of Gregori Markovic.
    Had Gregori known of his little sister’s crush on Dair all those years ago?
    Remembering how close the brother and sister had always been, Dair wouldn’t be in the least surprised if Gregori had known, even if he and Kat had never openly discussed it.
    Was it one of the reasons Gregori had chosen Dair to go and rescue her?
    Again, it wouldn’t surprise Dair to know that it was.
    The question was, why had he?
    Because Gregori Markovic didn’t do