Page 8

8

MAX

M ax stood in the doorway of their bedroom, watching as Kyra laid the abaya, the niqab, the fat suit, and loose pants and shirt on the bed, but he wasn't looking at the black fabric or the nude-color padded suit. He was looking at the woman who had captured his heart and was now standing in a pair of modest panties and a tank top, looking sexier than any lingerie model on the cover of a fancy magazine.

"I wish this was a vacation, and we didn't need to leave." He closed the door behind him and walked over to her. "Seeing you like this gives me all kinds of ideas." He pulled her into his arms.

Her body was rigid with tension, but when he started kissing her, she melted against him, getting lost in the kiss and the intimacy of the moment.

When they had to come up for air, she leaned away, placing her hands on his chest. "I need to get ready."

He nodded, reluctantly letting go of her.

She picked up the suit. "It's truly ingenious, now that I've had the time and space to properly inspect it." She strapped it around her waist and thighs, and Max stepped forward to help with the adjustments.

He tried to be professional as he helped her hide several items inside the enormous fake breasts, but he couldn't help brushing his fingers against her own flesh through the thin fabric of her tank top.

Talk about a trigger. For both of them.

It was a reminder that despite the night they had spent in each other's arms, nothing had happened, and now they were going to share a bedroom for the duration of this mission, and Max couldn't help hoping that there would be more.

"Can you fit my backup piece in there?" Kyra asked, breaking the sudden tension between them.

Max snorted. "I could fit two handguns and a couple of grenades in each."

Kyra looked down at herself and burst out laughing. "Not exactly how I imagined the first contact between your hands and my breasts."

And…the tension was back in full force.

"I assure you that in my fantasies, there's considerably less padding involved." He sounded husky.

Their eyes met, and for a moment, it seemed like Kyra was ready to drop the suit and tackle him down to the bed, but then a knock sounded on the door .

"Are you about ready?" Yamanu asked.

"Almost there," Max called back. He cleared his throat and took a step back. "You probably want to finish this by yourself."

Kyra nodded and quickly finished adjusting the padding before reaching for the pants and shirt that went over the suit and under the abaya. "This makes me swear that I will never gain this much weight," she said as she struggled to bend down to put the pants on.

"You're immortal. Unless you force yourself to eat cheesecakes all day long, your body is not going to change significantly even if you overeat."

She looked at him with an unreadable expression on her face. "If I ever get pregnant again, it will be just as difficult, but it would be worth it."

Max swallowed and nodded, not knowing how else to react. Did she mean that she wanted to have a child with him, or just in general?

"How do I look?" she asked after pulling on the abaya and niqab.

"Like a perfectly unremarkable matron," Max said. "No one would suspect you're carrying enough firepower to take down a small army."

He couldn't see her smiling, but he could practically feel it.

"Remember, we'll be listening the entire time," he said. "If anything goes wrong, we'll be there in seconds. Did you figure out what you are going to do? "

Kyra shrugged. "I'll knock on the door. If the guard answers, I'll tell him that I'm an old friend from Soraya's high school, and if she answers, I'll tell her that I have news of her daughters." She took a breath. "After that, I'll have to improvise based on her reaction."

"What if she doesn't let you in?" Max asked.

"She will," Kyra said. "She's desperate for news of her girls. If she's anything like me, she will want to hear it even if she doesn't think what I'm going to say is true."

"There are listening devices inside the house, so don't say anything that will give you away. Just show her the notes or maybe lift your face-covering and put a finger to your lips to let her know that she shouldn't say anything."

"Right." She smoothed a hand over the black fabric. "Thank you for pointing that out to me. I'm not thinking strategically like I normally would because it's my family."

"It's perfectly understandable." He took her hand and kissed the back of it. "That's why doctors don't treat their family members and certainly don't operate on them."

She chuckled. "That's counterintuitive. If I were a physician, I would want to take care of my family, and unless I personally knew a better physician, I wouldn't want anyone else taking care of them."