"What?" She whipped her head toward him.
His face was closer than she had expected. He had been leaning toward her, and his dark eyes had a reddish glow.
He was excited, and he was waiting for her.
He was waiting for her to either accept or decline, and the choice was hers, but he wanted her to say yes.
A proper Kra-ell female would have made the decision with words. A proper Kra-ell female would have said yes or no clearly, and moved forward, but Drova had been contaminated by human books.
She leaned toward him.
The distance closed slowly. She hadn't been kissed before, and she didn't know how fast a kiss was supposed to happen, and so she did it at the speed her body told her to, which was slower than she had imagined and more careful than she had expected.
Pavel did not move toward her. He let her come the rest of the way, and that was right somehow, that was what she had needed from him without knowing she had needed it.
Her mouth touched his.
Her first thought was that his lips were softer than she would have guessed for a male who looked the way Pavel looked. Her second thought was that the warmth of him was different than the warmth she had felt through their pants on the rock, that this warmth was directly transmitted from him to her and had no fabric to soften it. Her third thought was that her heart had stopped racing and had instead begun to feel as if it might float out of her chest, which was anatomically and physiologically impossible but was happening anyway.
He moved his mouth against hers gently, asking a question.
She answered it by leaning further into him.
His hand came up to the side of her face. His fingers were warm and rough as they curved against her jaw. She made a small sound that she most definitely hadn't authorized. She'd just have to be embarrassed about that later, because right now she couldn't care less. She was being kissed for the first time, and the books hadn't lied or exaggerated.
The books had not even come close.
6
LOSHAM
The convoy left the hotel at seven-thirty in the morning.
The Humvee in front carried four of the Eight. Losham rode in the second vehicle with Rami and two of his personal guards in the front seats, and the Humvee behind carried the other four. The lead and rear vehicles in the convoy were standard troop transports, filled with his personal security detail, the dozen warriors he'd handpicked for competence, and the fact that none of them had ever served directly under any of his three dead brothers.
Losham had always had his own guard, and he'd brought them with him when he'd returned to the island. Each of his brothers had similar arrangements, so no one thought much of it.
Everyone understood that leaders at this level needed personnel that answered only to them.
It took the convoy less than fifteen minutes to reach the tunnel entrance. The central ridge of the island ran the length of the interior, and going over it would have meant hours of switchbacks on unpaved roads, or no roads at all. The tunnelpassed beneath the ridge in a straight line from the resort to the military side, and what would have been a half-day journey by surface was a forty-minute drive through reinforced concrete.
The air cooled noticeably as the vehicle descended into the volcanic rock. The tunnel was wide, allowing for traffic going both ways, and it was well lit. It was also rigged to explode if the island was ever attacked and invading troops made the mistake of using the tunnel to go from one side of the island to the other.
Not that it was a likely scenario since no one knew that this little piece of land in the middle of the Indian Ocean was home to a large army of immortal warriors who would one day conquer the world.
A select group of men in positions of power knew about the resort and the infamous brothel that catered to a wide variety of perversions, but no one invaded islands for a bunch of whores, even if said whores were the finest in the world.
Navuh was just paranoid, and he liked to booby-trap everything, as evidenced by him booby-trapping the glass enclosure in his own basement.
The mansion was still uninhabitable.
Losham didn't mind working from the hotel, but once the island opened up for business again, the suite he occupied would be needed for the celebrity guests the Brotherhood lured to the island. Kings, princes, prime ministers, and presidents – they all had their vices, and the opportunity to indulge far from the public eye was so tempting that they were willing to do risky things to get what they craved and couldn't get anywhere else.
The mansion needed to be repaired before guests could be brought to the resort, but for that to happen, the basement activities needed to conclude first.
Losham shook his head. He shouldn't be thinking about things like that right now. He should be preparing for the meeting, but the truth was that he enjoyed the business part of the Brotherhood's operations much more than the military side of it. That was why he hadn't been to the other side of the island ever since Navuh had disappeared. There had been no reason for him to go.
The military had been Kolhood's territory, and Losham had preferred not to engage with his troublesome brother if he didn't absolutely need to. But now Kolhood was gone, and so were Hazok and Hocken, and Losham had a hard time maintaining the somber expression of a grieving brother when all he wanted to do was grin.
