Her Perfect Stranger

5

After their middle of the night run-in, Mike slept poorly, haunted by visions of his new commander and her cool, cool eyes and even cooler voice.

Damn it, where had all that iciness come from? And why had she refused to acknowledge him and their night together, if only between them? Try as he might to make sense of it, he couldn't.

He understood the obvious. She was ashamed of what they'd shared. But why did that hurt?

As for how he felt, he was having a hard time reconciling the woman he'd held all night in his arms-the woman who'd showed him such passion and hunger-with the cool cucumber he'd been introduced to today.

Giving up on sleep, he got out of bed before dawn, still feeling insulted and angry, whether that was rational or not. With hours to spare before he had to be on site, he paced his room.

Damn it, he'd wanted this opportunity, had worked for it for years. He wouldn't let her ruin it.

He knew how he was going to spend the day- hell, probably the next week. He'd be in the water tank. It would be tedious, time consuming and restricting; they'd be in full scuba gear.

He couldn't wait, but first he had to get rid of some of this restless energy. He could hit the weight room or take a swim, but as he'd be spending every waking moment in the water for the foreseeable future, he decided to run.

Mike had left his room and was walking down the hall when Jimmy's head appeared outside his own door. Looking rumpled and tired, Jimmy took one look at Mike's running gear before he groaned. "Perfect. You're going to make us all look bad for the-" he glanced right, then left, then lowered his voice to a conspirator's whisper "-Ice Queen."

"Who?"

Frank stuck his head out another door, a fierce frown on his face. When he saw Mike and Jimmy, he grinned sleepily. "Hey, just like old times. You're going running? Wait for me-"

"No," Jimmy said quickly, but Frank had already disappeared back into his room. Jimmy sighed. "Damn it, now I'll have to come, too, just to keep the two of you in line."

"Wait," Mike said. "About this Ice Queen thing-" But Jimmy had already shut the door in Mike's face.

He'd wanted to be alone, to burn off this undeniable, restless energy and to think, but he was destined for company now. Maybe that was for the better. Maybe he could stop thinking and just try to enjoy.

Frank and Jimmy were both dressed and ready to run within two minutes, and just as all three men started down the hallway together, yet another door opened.

Dressed in loose running shorts, a baggy tank top and aviator sunglasses that completely blocked her eyes from view, the commander herself emerged. She saw Jimmy and Frank first, both of whom happened to be standing in front of Mike, and she smiled. "Hey, guys. Up for some company?"

Then Mike stepped out from behind them. For lack of a better greeting, he lifted his hand and wagged his fingers at her.

Her expression froze. "Hello," she said flatly.

Hello. That was all she could manage. Not I'm sorry I'm ignoring you. Not I didn't mean to deal you the biggest shock of your life. Not Wow, just the other night you made me come half a dozen times. Can you do it again?

Instead she looked through him, as if only thirty hours ago he hadn't had her every which way but Sunday.

Frank hitched his head toward Mike. "We dragged his lazy butt out of bed, Commander. We're forcing him to run this morning so he can be in as good a shape as you."

Jimmy jumped right in. "He didn't want to come, ma'am. You should have heard all the new words he taught us, even though we asked him nicely."

Mike watched as good humor warred with wariness on Corrine's face. He still couldn't get used to knowing her real name, but it suited her. Just as the team suited her. Evidently, they'd gelled as a group during their time together. Their camaraderie bode well for the mission.

It didn't bode well for him. For one, he hated being the outsider. He didn't mind the work entailed to catch up; in fact he would thrive on the challenge of it. But damn it, he wanted her to like him, not look at him as if he were some sort of deviant.

He didn't understand how she could go from soft, laughing and full of heat to hard as nails, unsmiling and totally controlled.

Oh, and then there was the kicker-she was his commander. He'd seen her naked, sprawled out beneath him and whimpering for more, and she was his damn boss.

"Let's go," he said as lightly as he could. "Let's see who keeps up with who. And just so you know," he added to Frank and Jimmy, "I plan on outrunning both of you."

His friends simply exchanged knowing smiles.

Which only doubled Mike's determination.

They started off at a quick pace. Not that Mike couldn't easily maintain it, but he remembered Jimmy and Frank as not being the most disciplined of men. Curiously enough, they were disciplined now.

Corrine stayed with them, silent and determined, and he wondered how long she could hold her own. Wondered, too, how she would give in. Would she gracefully drop back, or kill herself trying to keep up? He told himself he didn't care. Either way, it would give him great pleasure to see her sweat.

At the twenty-minute mark no one had even slowed, but Mike was starting to sweat. Jimmy and Frank, too, especially since they'd kept up a steady stream of banter all along about the exploits they'd shared with Mike in Russia.

"You should have seen the crowd after we landed in '97," Frank said to Corrine, who might or might not have been listening, as she never slowed her pace or glanced over. "The Russian women couldn't get enough of Mike. He's a huge celebrity. They yell and cry for him as if he were Mel Gibson."

Jimmy snorted. "Yeah, tough job we had, fighting them off for him. And then there was that one who sneaked into his shower in the hotel room. Remember, Frank? Remember how he screamed like a pansy?"

"She scared the hell out of me," Mike said in his own defense, sending a sheepish glance at Corrine.

She didn't so much as crack a smile.

"Oh, you poor baby," Jimmy said, now gasping for air. "Hey, can you still get a different woman every night if you want?"

"Uh…" Another glance at Corrine assured him she was listening, after all; her face had definitely gone a shade redder. What he didn't know was whether she was exhibiting embarrassment or anger. "I never had a different woman every night."

"Right. You took Sundays off."

Definitely anger, Mike decided, as Corrine's face darkened even more.

Frank and Jimmy took great delight in his growing discomfort, but they had no way of knowing they were innocently revealing parts of him he absolutely, positively didn't want exposed in front of this woman.

Apparently he hadn't yet made the switch from Corrine's lover to her teammate. He was going to have to do that sooner or later.

At the forty-minute mark, he started huffing, but refused to show it, distracting himself by watching the commander's tush swing gently to and fro with each stride.

The clothes she wore were a crime, he decided. She had an incredible body, lush and curvy in all the good spots, tough as nails in others. He knew this, as he'd personally kissed and sucked and stroked every single inch of her.

But both yesterday in her stern suit, and now in the loose jogging clothes, she hid it all.

That alone was going to kill him, if not the pace. And then suddenly, mercifully, both Frank and Jimmy slowed to a walk, waving them on

Mike glanced at Corrine, more than ready to let her concede defeat, because there was no mistake to be made here, this was some sort of pissing contest, and he intended to win.

She never even glanced at him, just stared straight ahead, her legs and arms pumping for all she was worth. And she'd hardly broken a sweat.

"Tired?" he asked as casually as he could while sucking serious wind. "Because we could slow down."

"Feel free," she said, and actually picked up speed, starting to leave him in her dust.

Holy shit, was all he could think, kicking into as high a gear as she had.

She was going to kill him.

"Please don't continue for my sake." She actually had the nerve₍to toss that over her shoulder in an even, controlled voice that only fueled his frustration.

He could hardly breathe, much less answer. "I'm fine," he said through his teeth.

"Suit yourself."

They went another mile in silence while he stewed over the fact that at the hotel he'd suggested she rest while climbing a damn flight of stairs.

After a while, she shot him a glance. "Oh for God's sake, Mike. Stop, would you?"

"No."

"You're just being stubborn."

True, but damned if he was going to admit it.

"What if I ordered you to stop?"

"You can't do that."

"Why not?" She shoved up her glasses to rest on top of her head, and her clear, midnight blue eyes stared right at him.

That he could remember when they were cloudy and opaque with lust really ticked him off.

"You can't order me to do anything," he said. Or rather, gasped. "We're not working at the moment."

Her jaw tightened, but she didn't break stride. "I should have known. You're going to be a male chauvinist pig about this."

"What?"

"You can't work for a woman, right?"

"Ha!" he gasped, but then had to go quiet to concentrate on getting oxygen to his poor body. "I can work for a woman. And-" And he was fresh out of air. "I'm…not…a…pig."

"Male chauvinist pig."

Okay, now she was trying to rile him, but before he could accuse her of that, she slowed, then finally stopped. Ignoring him, she went about a series of stretches to cool down, while Mike just concentrated on staying conscious.

He found himself watching her as she spread her legs, then bent over, her palms flat on the ground.

For just a moment, her shorts tightened across her tight, curvy butt and his hands actually itched to touch.

How was it that he hadn't noticed what incredible shape she was in? He couldn't believe it, but she was actually in better shape than he was, and he was pretty damn fit.

"Look," she said, suddenly straightening and looking him right in the eye, somehow managing to stare down her nose at him at the same time, even though she was nearly a foot shorter than he. "I can see you're going to have problems working under me, but get over it. You're our third and last choice. There is no one else. I won't compromise the mission."

He didn't know whether to be flattered or insulted, so he brilliantly stood there like an idiot.

"Your reputation precedes you," she continued, blowing a strand of hair out of her face that dared defy its confines. "Both in and out of the space shuttle. I'm well aware of your profile, but I didn't expect to have problems so soon."

He blinked and straightened, breathing trouble and screaming muscles forgotten. "Excuse me? Problems?"

She just looked at him.

"Are you referring to the fact that we've been naked together?" he asked bluntly.

That chin of hers thrust even higher into the air, and she pointed at him. "And I want you to stop that."

"Stop what, exactly?"

"Referring to… you know."

"Being naked?" he asked, feeling wicked and angry, which didn't make a very good combination. "Or having sex?"

She whirled and walked away.

Because she was moving along at a good clip, and because he couldn't walk without whimpering, he let her go.

But they still weren't finished, not by a long shot.

The team spent the day in the water simulator, working some of the experiments they'd be taking up with them. Although heavy equipment was weightless in space, it still wasn't easy to move around.

Corrine knew the general public had no idea how strong an astronaut had to be. To relocate a large mass, which described all of their equipment, you had to apply a large force, taking care to exert it precisely or the object would twist and turn uncontrollably. An equally large, well-directed, controlled force was required to stop any motion.

In other words, brute strength.

Even something as simple as trying to screw a bolt into a piece of equipment required finesse. That sort of maneuver couldn't be done while floating in the cabin. Anchors were needed, or footholds, in order to apply force, which required special techniques, special tools, special processes, and often the coordinated efforts of a teammate. Everything, even the easiest of tasks, had to be practiced over and over and over again.

One of the biggest challenges they faced was that a true space environment couldn't be simulated exactly on earth. Hence the "SIMs" in large bodies of water, with astronauts in scuba gear. It was the closest they could come to the real experience, even with today's vast technological advances.

Corrine climbed into bed that night, thinking things had gone well. That is, if she discounted the dark, questioning looks she'd gotten at every turn from her pilot, Mike Wright.

She still couldn't believe her rotten luck. How was it that she couldn't even manage to have an anonymous affair?

If Mike had his way, it wouldn't be anonymous at all! She couldn't have that, absolutely could not let the others on the team know what she'd done with him in a moment of selfish weakness.

And what she'd done was still interrupting her sleep. She couldn't close her eyes without feeling his body brush hers, without remembering how he tasted, or the incredibly sexy sounds he made when he-

She flopped over in bed yet again and stared at the ceiling, but an almost unbearable sense of loneliness came over her. Why now? This was the life she'd willingly chosen. She'd known it would be a dog-eat-dog world, that she'd be forgoing any indulgence of her femininity to make it. She'd known that, had even craved it-she who'd never quite mastered being…well, a woman. So what was this sudden longing to be just that, to let someone in, to be vulnerable, soft? Giving. Even loving.

With Mike.

Wow, that thought came from nowhere and extinguished any amount of sleepiness she might have mustered. She flipped over again, but the damage had been done, Mike was back in her mind. And all she could think of was how he'd looked coming out of the water simulator earlier, when he'd stripped out of his cumbersome gear down to nothing but a pair of wet, clingy swimming trunks.

Sleek, wet and muscular, that had been Mike, standing there on deck.

She'd taken one look at him and had lost every thought in her head. He'd known it, too, damn him; she could still see the slow, baby-here-I-am smile he'd sent her.

This had to stop. She'd had him once and that should be enough. It should be over.

But it wasn't.

She couldn't even look at him without having that stupid, adolescent, weak-kneed reaction, and it was really making her furious.

She'd read his personnel files, shamelessly soaking up his private information. He had four brothers, all in the military. His father, too, was a military man. His mother, a Russian, had died when Mike had been only four, so it was no wonder he was so incredibly masculine. He'd grown up in a house full of Y chromosomes, and then had gone into an industry overloaded with testosterone.

That was a problem, she decided, rolling over to punch her pillow. Because while Mike definitely knew how to treat a woman-he had, after all, made her purr more than once-he had no idea how to do anything other than pamper a female, much less work for one. To work beneath her command was going to be utterly foreign to him, and with both of them needing their control… well, it wasn't going to go smoothly, this mission, she could see that.

What she couldn't see, exactly, was what to do about it.

She wasn't herself around him. She had a hard time sticking to that cool, icy facade she favored, mostly because he saw right through her.

She hated that.

With a sigh, she heaved herself out of bed for her usual middle of the night run to the bathroom. It was annoying, but then again, if she'd just sleep the night through like normal people, instead of obsessing, she wouldn't have to go at all, would she?

The hall was silent, both when she crept into the bathroom and when she came out two minutes later. Which was why she nearly screamed when she ran into a solid rock wall of a chest.

Even as those big, warm hands came up to steady her, she knew. "Mike," she said in a breathless whisper, blinking through the dark.

"Fancy meeting you here."

"You have a weak bladder, too?"

"I don't have a weak anything."

"Everyone has a weak something."

"What I have," he said softly, reaching up to tug on her ponytail, "is a weakness for long dark hair flowing wild and free, and dark-blue eyes melting with desire when they look at me, instead of two icicles."

"I'm going back to bed."

"Not until we talk."

"It's late."

He flicked the light on his watch. "Actually, it's early. I've been listening for you, Corrine. We need to get this over with."

"Maybe you'd rather try to beat me at my morning run again."

He scowled. "So I underestimated you."

"You thought me nothing more than a fragile doll."

"This isn't what I wanted to talk about."

"I bet. Look, Mike, this is never going to work. Surely you can see that. You have a problem with me being the commander of this mission."

"What I have a problem with is you pretending you don't know me. You pretending we didn't sleep together, that we didn't make love-"

She slapped his hand over his mouth and whipped her head to the right, then to the left, making sure no one could hear them. "Damn it," she breathed. "Could you stop talking about it? Why do we have to keep talking about it?"

Grabbing her hands away from his mouth, he held them at her sides, slowly backing her up against the wall until she had the cool plaster at her back and his hot, hot body at her front.

She hadn't given much thought to her pajamas-men's flannel shorts and a loose tank top. As they were her favorites, they'd been washed to a thin softness. Thin enough to feel every inch of him, and her body seemed to recognize how much she'd enjoyed those inches, because she closed her eyes in order to better concentrate on the sensations.

"Corrine," he whispered, his voice low and rough now, as if he, too, couldn't help himself. "I don't understand you. Help me understand. Why can't we just…be? Why do we have to ignore this?"

Why? He had to ask why? There were a million reasons, starting with the fact that they had to work together professionally, with no personal hangups between them. The mission depended on it. NASA counted on it. Billions of tax dollars were at stake. There could be nothing dragging them down emotionally. "There is no 'this,'" she said with a finality she didn't feel.

He ran a finger over her jaw, down her throat to the base of her neck, where her pulse had taken off. "Liar," he chided softly as her nipples beaded and thrust against the material of her shirt.

"Mike."

"Yeah."

She let out a disparaging sound. Oh, Mike. Why couldn't she forget? What was it about what they'd shared in the dark, dark of the night with no music and no candles, no romantic devices, nothing but the two of them turning to each other? They'd needed nothing but each other, and that scared her.

Hell, it terrified her. "There can't be a this," she whispered.

"Oh, there's a this." His finger continued its path over her collarbone to her shoulder, nudging the edge of the tank off it. Stepping even closer, he clipped his head and nipped at the skin he'd exposed, while his fingers continued their seductive assault on her senses.

Thunk. The back of her head hit the wall as she lost the ability to hold it up. "Mike-"

"How can you ignore me?" He dipped his head so that she could feel his breath on her skin. "After what we shared?"

"It was…just… sex," she panted as he dragged that clever mouth back up her throat now, feasting as he went, his fingers toying with the edging of her top, and the curve of her breast.

"Yeah. Sex. Great sex." He waited until she cleared her glassy gaze and looked at him. "I made you come, remember?" His hips slid to hers. "Over and over, until you were screaming."

She was going to scream now. "Stop." Since she wanted to mean it, she put a hand to his chest. "I want you to forget all that. If we're going to make this work, you have to forget."

"Corrine-"

"Forget, Mike." And while she still had the strength, she wrenched away. But instead of going back to bed, she went into the bathroom and cranked on the shower.

Cold.

As she stripped and stepped beneath the icy spray, she could swear she heard Mike's soft, mocking laughter.