Meet the do-or-die warriors who’ll do anything for justice

Introducing the Mission Medusa series

Years of intense training have prepared Tessa Wilkes to become a Medusa—part of an elite, women-only Special Forces team. But all the mental prep and physical training in the world can’t prepare her fully to take on one of the world’s most dangerous men. The ultimate operative, Tessa teams with trainer Beau Lambert to track her target, but even if she survives, will her heart?

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author CINDY DEES is the author of more than fifty novels. She draws upon her experience as a US Air Force pilot to write romantic suspense. She’s a two-time winner of the prestigious RITA® Award for romance fiction, a two-time winner of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award for Romantic Suspense and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Best Author Award nominee. She loves to hear from readers at www.cindydees.com.

Also By Cindy Dees

Mission Medusa

Special Forces: The Recruit

The Coltons of Roaring Springs

Colton Under Fire

Code: Warrior SEALs

Undercover with a SEAL

Her Secret Spy

Her Mission with a SEAL

Navy SEAL Cop

Soldier’s Last Stand

The Spy’s Secret Family

Captain’s Call of Duty

Soldier’s Rescue Mission

Her Hero After Dark

Breathless Encounter

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Special Forces: The Recruit

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09395-8

SPECIAL FORCES: THE RECRUIT

© 2019 Cynthia Dees

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Beau closed the motel room’s door and turned to face Tessa, who stood in the middle of the room, frowning. “Problem?” he asked.

“Well, yes. There’s only one bed.”

“You afraid to share it with me?” He arched an eyebrow in an open dare. “What are you going to do when you’re bivouacking with a male team and all of you are crammed into a hide like sardines, spooning with each other?”

Her mint-green eyes narrowed. “I’ve got no problem sleeping with you. The question is, are you okay sleeping with me?”

He snorted. “Honey, I’m not sixteen. I’ve got my hormones firmly under control, thank you very much.” Which might not be entirely true where she was concerned. All of the previous Medusas had lived and worked in very close quarters with her male counterparts. She had to learn to do the same. Starting with him. Oh, joy.

“Great,” she said cheerfully. “Then you won’t mind if I take my pants off. They’re still a little wet.”

Well, hell. Give the woman points for calling his bluff.

* * *

Mission Medusa: a fierce team of warriors who

run into the danger zone...

Dear Reader,

I’m beyond excited to welcome you to this, the first book in the return of the Medusas! It has been a few years and times have changed a bit since I wrote the very first Medusa story, The Medusa Project, in 2005. Back then, the idea of women in the Special Forces, let alone the idea of an all-female team of special operators, was pure fiction.

Now, some fourteen years later, women in the US military are allowed to serve in any job whose qualifications they can meet, including all of the Special Forces. The US Army uses women in Cultural Support Teams (CSTs) that work side by side with elite male Special Forces units. The first women have completed Army Ranger training, and news outlets are reporting on a few brave women Special Forces operatives serving alongside their male counterparts in irregular roles.

Furthermore, both the Norwegian Army and the Afghan Special Forces have fielded all-female Special Forces teams. Which is to say, the Medusas have become real.

I would like to think that adds even more excitement to these ongoing adventures of the Medusas. So, as always, pour your favorite beverage, sit back, relax and get ready to rock and roll with the baddest babes in combat boots and the men strong and brave enough to work with and love them...

Happy reading!

Cindy

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Dear Reader

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Staggering a little as she ran, Tessa Wilkes spied the finish line maybe a half mile ahead through waves of heat and dust. Whatever bastard had decided to call a twenty-mile run carrying a forty-pound rucksack a “sprint” should be shot. Right now. She volunteered to pull the trigger.

Her body hurt in every way it was possible to hurt. Three months of grueling, around-the-clock physical training had taken its toll on her. She’d reached the end of her rope, and her fingers were slipping off the last bit of said rope with every agonizing step.

She’d known going in that just because it had become legal for women to begin Special Forces training, it didn’t mean any were going to be allowed to finish the program and play with the big boys. The male instructors would keep doing BS like this run until they broke her. They were never going to back off.

Only she could make the pain stop. By quitting. By giving in. By accepting that she was never going to be one of them. She was sorely tempted to give up on her futile dream when she reached this one last finish line.

But no sooner had the impulse come to her than a wave of sheer, cussed stubbornness slammed through her. She was that horse who would die in the harness, still straining to pull its load.

Her face was on fire. Her lungs were self-combusting. The heavy pack hammered her feet into the ground with every step she took. But onward she staggered. Step after miserable step. At this point any reasonably fit person could walk beside her faster than she was running.

But she. Did. Not. Stop.

She’d asked for this insanity—begged for it, even—which made her misery even worse. It stripped away her right to complain. All she had left was anger.

She reached for her old friend, Fury. Born of rage at being powerless to control her life, it rose from her determination someday to become a strong, independent woman whom no man would ever push around.

Her steps stabilized. Her stride stretched back out into a full run. Less than a quarter mile to go now.

“Damn. Thought we had you there, Wilkes,” a male voice said sardonically from behind her.

She didn’t bother turning around to look. Lambert. A recently arrived instructor, he always wore mirrored shades and a baseball cap, which meant she had no idea what her latest tormenter actually looked like beyond that lean, chiseled jaw. And a physique modeled after the great masters of sculpture, of course. He never participated in harassing the trainees. He just watched. Mostly her.

He’d been hanging around pretty much continuously the past few days. Either he was studying her for who knew what inscrutable reason, or he was stalking her. Whatever. They could throw their best head games at her and run her till she dropped. When she got back up, she would just keep on going.

“Ahh, well. We’ll break you next time,” he murmured from just behind her. “Or the time after that. If you won’t quit coming after us, we won’t quit coming after you.”

His lightly delivered comment sent a chill through her. He was not lying. They would keep coming after her until they destroyed her.

The finish line of today’s “sprint” loomed ahead, and she pushed herself to reach it by envisioning a big glass of ice water waiting for her. She crossed the finish line and stopped cold, not taking one more running step than necessary as she panted in the oven-like heat.

She’d done it. One more time they’d failed to break her. A stone-faced instructor looked at a stopwatch and recorded her time on a clipboard without comment. She caught Lambert looking over Clipboard Guy’s shoulder. Both men pulled disgusted faces, then Lambert peeled off to head for the instructor’s building.

Screw them. She’d given it everything she had. Just because her triumph was their failure didn’t make it any less of a triumph for her. She bent over, planting her hands on her thighs, sucking in great, awful lungfuls of parched, scorching air.

“Wilkes!”

She looked up sharply at her barked last name.

“My office. Now.”

Crap. That was Major Torsten summoning her. No one knew exactly what he did around here, but even the instructors treated him with deep respect. Frankly, he scared her to death.

In an act of bald-faced defiance, she forced her protesting legs to run to the door of the Quonset hut Torsten loomed in. One corner of his mouth quirked up for just an instant before settling back into its usual tight, disapproving line.

Torsten disappeared inside the building as she trotted up the steps after him.

“Sit.” He pointed at a wooden chair in front of the desk he’d moved behind.

She slipped off her pack and sank into the chair not a moment too soon. Her legs felt entirely boneless. They would have collapsed on their own in a few more seconds. In fact, her entire body felt like a marionette’s with the strings cut. She was going to hurt like a big dog in a few hours. Cool air-conditioning wafted down on her, as blissful as angel’s breath.

“Enjoy the run?” Torsten asked drily.

As if she would give him the satisfaction of showing even a hint of weakness. Not a chance. She shrugged. “Nice scenery. And I’ve done worse.” Which was a total lie.

He opened a cabinet behind his desk and tossed her a bottle of water. She snagged it neatly midair and downed it greedily. Meanwhile, he opened a brown manila folder on his desk and lifted out papers one by one, glancing through them at his leisure. She just enjoyed being still and letting her body temperature return to something resembling normal.

At length, he closed the file and stared at her long and hard enough that she had to consciously tell herself not to squirm. She’d gotten used to the mind games they played around here and had learned not to break awkward silences unless she had something specific to say.

“You’re out,” Torsten announced without warning.

Out? As in out of training? Her mind went completely blank. A single word took shape and popped out of her mouth. “Why?”

“You are underperforming. Your run and swim times aren’t coming down fast enough and your physical fitness test scores are not coming up fast enough for you to stand a chance in the remainder of this course. You’re out.”

Shock slammed into her, wiping her mind clean.

Ten years. Ten grueling, miserable, painful years she’d been training in hopes of one day having a shot at the Special Forces—practically around the clock. God, the things she’d sacrificed for this. A normal social life. The relationships she’d let pass her by. The friendships lost. Jobs turned down. She’d geared her entire life around this.

It simply couldn’t be over.

Besides. She already met all the minimum required scores to pass this training! And just like that, she was out?

“Are Jones and Peterson out, too?” she blurted. They were men in her class. Men whom she consistently outperformed and outscored.

“I’m not discussing any other trainees with you, Wilkes.”

She looked up at him, then. Stared into ice-blue eyes that did not for a second flinch in the face of her silent outrage. Arguing with him would be useless. Both trainees and instructors called him the Iceberg behind his back because the bastard never thawed and never budged.

The Special Forces did not want her. They had tested her and found her wanting. And they were not going to debate the decision with her. Just, “You’re out.” Done. Pack your stuff and leave.

Anger exploded abruptly in her gut, knocking the air out of her lungs, and leaving her panting with fury. This sanctimonious bastard dared to hide his misogyny behind her performance numbers? Why not just call it what it was? These male chauvinist pigs just didn’t want to let a girl into their little boys’ club!

She pressed words past her clenched teeth. “I get why you are resisting allowing women into your hallowed band of brothers. But it’s a mistake. Not many women have what it takes, but a few of us do.”

He leaned back in his leather executive chair and merely continued to stare at her, his entire demeanor cold and emotionless.

She warmed to her subject and ignored his body language shouting at her to shut the heck up. “We have talents and skills that would be an asset to the teams. You guys are weaker because of our exclusion. Other countries are already figuring that out, and you’ll end up scrambling to play catch-up. But by the time you catch on, the women you need will be so pissed off we’ll have moved on to other jobs. Other lives. You’ll be poison to the very women you need.”

“Are you done?” he snapped.

She crossed her arms defensively over her chest and pressed her lips tightly together, the rest of the rant she so badly wanted to throw at him barely contained. Silently, she flung the worst names at him she could think of.

Out of good names, she reverted to her Venezuelan mother’s native tongue for more.

He said more mildly, “You’ve got orders.”

“To where?” she demanded. God, that was fast. He’d already gotten her assigned to some other base? The man didn’t mess around when he tossed someone out of his unit.

“Phoenix.”

What on earth did the Army have for her to do in Phoenix, Arizona? The only military base nearby was Luke Air Force Base in Glendale. She wasn’t being cross-posted to the Air Force, was she?

“Lambo!” Torsten called.

Lambert of the gorgeous jaw poked his head in the door, hat and sunglasses gone for the first time, and she did a no-kidding, wrench-her-neck double take. She’d seen some beautiful men in her life, but behind the disguise, this one was in a class all his own. The guy was a walking recruitment poster. The motto on it would be, “Join the Army and become a living god.”

His American flag–blue gaze took her in coolly. Thoroughly. And everywhere his scrutiny touched her, she abruptly felt naked. On fire.

He looked away from her like she was about as interesting as a cockroach. She sagged in her chair and let go of the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“Sir?” the god asked in a smooth, confident voice.

Oh, man. Her ovaries just melted.

Lambert stepped fully into the doorway and liquid heat pooled in her groin. The guy was hotness personified. Raw sex appeal rolled off him in waves that made her feel as if she was drowning in lust. Cripes. There should be nothing the least bit attractive about this guy. She wanted to be a Spec Ops warrior, not do a Spec Ops warrior.

“You have your orders, Beau. Direct orders.”

Lambert scowled fiercely at Torsten, and she looked back and forth between them. What was she missing? Why the emphasis on the words direct orders?

Torsten continued, “Escort Wilkes to the airfield. Put her on a plane and get her off my base. You know what her orders are. See to it she follows them.”

Torsten didn’t have to be nasty about it. He’d already won.

Lambert frowned thunderously, clearly not pleased—at all—at having to babysit her. He glared at Torsten, who glared back. If she didn’t know better, she would say they were communicating silently through some secret warrior mind powers.

Lambert made a sound of disgust, and Torsten replied, “Your objections are duly noted. But we’re doing this my way.”

“It’s a mistake—” Lambert started.

Torsten cut him off, snapping, “We’ve already had this discussion. Report back to me after you’ve gotten your head out of your ass.”

Lambert spun on his heel, scowling. “Let’s go, Wilkes. I’ve got places to go and things to do.”

She hefted her pack wearily over one shoulder and headed for the door after “Lambo.” She would lay odds he got that handle not entirely because of his last name but also in honor of a Lamborghini—the sleek, sexy Italian sports car.

“Hustle up, Wilkes,” Torsten said sharply. “Your ride’s already waiting. You’re late.”

She scowled. She couldn’t very well be late for an appointment she didn’t even know she had until ten seconds ago. “What about my gear back at the dorm?”

“It’ll be shipped to you.”

Wow. He really had it in for her, didn’t he?

She paused in the doorway and looked back at him. She spoke with quiet certainty, not by way of a whine, but stating a fact. “You’re making a mistake, Major.”

“I’m absolutely certain I’m not. And someday you’ll come to agree with me,” he retorted.

Never.

Tears burned at her eyes and she blinked them back furiously. She would be damned if she cried in front of these jerks. They didn’t deserve her tears. And she didn’t deserve this rude treatment. She was a freaking Army officer with a distinguished career behind her and ahead of her.

The walk of shame from the Quonset hut to the parking lot with Captain America at her side like a jailer was perhaps the worst hundred yards of her life. She felt the eyes on her. Everyone...everyone...noted her departure. She could physically feel on her skin the satisfaction of the boys’ club as it closed ranks against her. It was all she could do not to vomit up Torsten’s bottle of water in her humiliation as she climbed into a Hummer, her head held high.

It was a fight, but she wrestled back another bout of threatening tears as Lambert started the Jeep’s engine. She wasn’t going to cry for this jerk, either. A girl had to have a little pride, after all.

Lambert backed out of the parking spot and headed for the airfield. She commented sourly, “I knew folks around here hated the idea of women special operators, but this dramatic show of expulsion is a little excessive.”

“Take it up with Torsten. I’m just following orders.”

Orders he sounded irritated as heck over. What did he have to be mad about? He wasn’t the one being publicly humiliated. She had to get her mind off what was happening or she was going to break down and sob in front of all of them, and she would never give them that satisfaction. Searching desperately for a distraction, she mumbled, “What’s in Phoenix?”

Her escort merely shrugged. Even that casual gesture of his shoulder, fraught with rippling muscle under smooth, bronzed skin and a tight black T-shirt, was sexy as hell. At least Torsten had given her one last piece of eye candy to enjoy before he dashed her dreams and ended her life.

Lambo drove her straight to the airfield without saying a word. But disapproval rolled off him in tangible waves. All these guys were flaming jerks. Too bad she was so wasted from the run she couldn’t think up any better epithets to call him in her mind.

She spied an airplane, apparently waiting for her, and stared. It was a twin turboprop plane that would carry about eight passengers. Except there didn’t appear to be any other passengers milling around waiting to go. Surely, Torsten hadn’t ordered up an entire airplane just to get rid of her.

Lambert came around to open her door for her as she stared back and forth doubtfully between aircraft and man.

He smiled wryly at her. All the oxygen in her vicinity disappeared, and she caught herself swaying toward him slightly. Dang, that man was attractive. Like a giant, man-shaped electromagnet. The pull of him crackled through her individual cells, realigning them into his orbit whether she willed it or not.

Maybe she was reacting to him so strongly because she was frazzled from the run and her abrupt ejection from the Special Forces pipeline. Whatever the reason, being this close to Lambert was throwing her seriously off balance.

She took a step out of the vehicle—or tried to, at any rate—and pitched forward, straight into her escort.

Impressions assailed her from every direction. His stomach was as hard and ridged with muscle as it looked. Heat poured off his body. He smelled like a forest on a lazy summer day. And he made her think of hot, sweaty sex.

He grabbed her by her upper arms and dragged her up his body deliciously. An unmistakably hard, impressively large bulge pressed against her belly. He acted as if he barely noticed her weight. His strength was breathtaking. Literally. She had trouble inhaling properly as her entire body melted in a puddle of unwilling lust. Oh, who was she kidding? It was totally willing lust.

* * *

Beau Lambert stared down at the smoking-hot woman plastered against him. Her skin was a totally edible shade of café au lait, her hair wavy and dark, coffee brown. But what really stood out were those eyes of hers, mint green and practically glowing against her darkly tanned skin. She wasn’t model material unless modeling agencies went for exotic types, not quite beautiful but undeniably unforgettable. He would 100 percent buy her a drink if he saw her across a crowded bar.

At the moment her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide with surprise. His nostrils flared at the sudden sexual awareness he sensed in her.

Dammit, this was exactly why he hated the idea of women special operators.

His stare dropped to the neck of her tank top and the curves of her upper breasts. How was a woman as buff as she was that bountifully endowed? Talk about winning the genetic lottery. This woman had hit the mega millions jackpot in that department.

Get your head out of your crotch, man. Tessa Wilkes was an Army officer, not a sex object. But he couldn’t resist a last glance at that swelling cleavage. She checked pretty much every box on his hot female checklist. She even had the cocky attitude and sassy mouth he secretly loved.

He murmured, “If you can’t stand on your own two feet, this little adventure is going to be over before it ever gets rolling.”

“What adventure? What are your orders?” she demanded. “Let me guess. Put me on that plane and make sure I don’t bolt before it goes airborne.”

If only. He would love nothing better than to toss her on a plane and send her anywhere far, far from him. He’d argued stridently against the assignment Torsten had given him, but the bastard hadn’t budged. Torsten was convinced that he, Beau Lambert, was the only man for the job.

Wilkes tried to stand on her own, grimacing in pain, but her legs weren’t cooperating yet. He wasn’t a complete ass, and he held her upright. Which, of course, meant more belly-to-belly, sex-fantasy-conjuring contact.

She hung in his arms like a rag doll devoid of bones. He remembered that level of exhaustion from his own initial training. A frisson of shared sympathy passed through him. But he shoved it aside. He had no time for sympathy for this woman. Not if he was going to prove Gunnar Torsten wrong.

She mumbled, “First a public humiliation, and now this. I’m so sorry.”

She was right about the public part. His orders were to make sure everyone in the program saw him haul Wilkes out. There had to have been at least a hundred witnesses to her departure, all silently gleeful. But she was wrong about the humiliation part. Torsten had other plans for her altogether. If the other trainees and instructors knew what the boss was up to, they wouldn’t be so smug to see Wilkes go.

He commented, “You’re closer to the truth than you know.”

She looked up at him quizzically, but he offered no explanation. All would become clear to her soon. And frankly, he was too ticked off at what came next to get all talkative with her about it.

He shifted his weight onto his bum leg, and a bolt of white-hot agony shot through him. He sucked in a sharp breath and froze, terrified he’d done something to wreck his knee even worse than it already was. He swore colorfully to himself.

When he’d leaped forward and caught her under the armpits, his right knee had given a mighty shout of protest, shooting daggers up and down his leg in retaliation for the stunt. He tuned in to that pain now, breathing through it until it gradually subsided.

Wilkes made no move to stand on her own. Probably couldn’t. He knew all too well the agony of the human body transforming into one giant cramp.

His pain lessened until he was able to register once more the galvanizing sensation of a woman’s body snuggled up close to his. She was curvy. And springy in the right places. Sex in a bottle.

“Aww, hell,” he muttered. “You really are a girl, aren’t you?”

She glanced down at her chest mashed against his. The display of cleavage above the neck of her olive drab tank top was impressive, to say the least. “Last time I checked, I’m still a girl,” she declared.

An unwilling crack of laughter slipped out of him before he was able to bite it back.

She felt soft and feminine in his arms. Which went against everything he knew about her. He’d seen her PFT scores and run times. She was a beast by female standards. Best they’d seen in a long time. All the more reason to ignore the blood surging into his loins. She was a job, not a date. But day-umm, she was hot.

The light green in her eyes was overtaken by black as her pupils dilated. She must have registered his wholly male reaction to her. Not much he could do about that. But then her gaze, peeking up through long, dark lashes, went a little languorous and a whole lot sensual.

Uh-oh. One of them had to be responsible here and do the right thing. At the moment it was going to have to be her because his pulse was pounding through an erection hard enough to hammer nails with.

Instead, she didn’t do a blessed thing to stop every sexual part of her from pressing against every sexually corresponding part of him. Worse, she looked ready to have hot, sweaty sex with him this very second. All he had to do was say the word. And the word was hovering right on the tip of his tongue.

It took every ounce of discipline he had to force his feet to take a cautious step back. His knee held. Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes.

He continued to grasp her upper arms until her legs steadied. Or maybe it was his leg he was waiting on to settle down and accept his weight. Or maybe he was waiting for his hard-on to calm down enough that he wasn’t on the verge of doubling over in pain around it. Either way, something primal and hungry roared through him as she stared up at him, her huge, green eyes more huge and more green than usual.

“You good?” he asked gruffly.

“I’m great,” she breathed back. Lord, she sounded like Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK.

He would bet she was great in bed. Out of bed. Against a wall. In a shower. In the back of a car. On the back of a car...

Stop.

Reluctantly, he set all of those smoking-hot curves and smooth muscles away from him. He had to get control of himself, and fast, or this assignment was going to go to hell in a handbasket of his own weaving.

His hands fell away from her, and something possessive inside him growled at the absence of her heated skin. As for her, she abruptly looked too tongue-tied and, truthfully, too obstinate to thank him. He couldn’t help but be amused at her stubbornness. It was a quintessential Special Forces quality. Pigheaded was a term that got applied to him frequently, in fact.

He reached past her into the back of the vehicle for her pack. He slung it over his shoulder and led her over to the airplane as she stumbled along after him. He trotted up the unfolded steps and turned around, reaching a hand down to her.

“I can do this myself,” she stated.

“You didn’t leave everything you had out on the course earlier?” he asked in disappointment. Hell, her run time had been respectable even for a guy. Surely, she hadn’t run that far, that fast, carrying that much weight, casually.

She stared at his outstretched hand for a long moment. Long enough that he wasn’t sure she would accept help from him. Of course, that had been the big ding against her in her training file. She didn’t trust men. Had trouble working in a group with others. Tended to be a loner.

But then her palm touched his, and just like that, lightning zinged through his hand and up his arm. It had nothing to do with resentment and everything to do with something else altogether. Man. All she needed was a crack of thunder to go with all that sexual lightning.

Her gaze lifted to his. They stared at each other for a second that stretched out to infinity. Whoa. The moment snapped back into real time sharply, like a rubber band, with the same painful slap against his skin.

He tugged and all but launched her airborne into the plane.

“Crud, you’re strong,” she breathed under her breath.

He didn’t think she’d meant for him to hear it, but he replied, nonetheless. “All special operators have to be.”

“I’m the first to admit that no woman will ever be as strong as a guy at the top of his fitness game. Not even someone like me who’s ridiculously strong relative to most other women.”

“Then why put yourself through the misery?”

“Just because I won’t ever be as strong as a man doesn’t mean I’m not strong enough to do the job. Strength comes in many forms.”

She was right, of course, but he wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of saying so. “Take a seat,” he ordered.

“No other passengers? This bird is just for me?” she asked.

He moved forward to a small cabinet behind the copilot’s seat. He dug out several bottles of water and tossed them one by one to Wilkes. She caught each easily. Good reflexes. That was something, at least.

“Major Torsten is in a hurry to get you out of here,” he replied as he moved back toward her.

She finished chugging a bottle of water, coming up for air and muttering, “Yeah, I got that memo.”

She sounded a shade bitter. Like it was dawning on her that she really was not going to be a Special Forces operator. He knew the feeling. And he was definitely bitter about it, too. He wasn’t about to accept the doctor’s final word that his knee would never be strong enough for him to operate on the teams again.

He’d transformed from a scrawny, picked-on kid into a hard-core warrior, hadn’t he? He could transform one lousy, busted knee into a joint strong enough to do the job. No way was he walking away from his brothers in arms. They were his family. His life. What would he do if he couldn’t be a special operator?

He dropped into the seat across the aisle from her, and Wilkes stopped slugging the second bottle of water to squeak, “What are you doing?”

“You heard the major. He told me to see to it you get where you’re going.”

He realized he was massaging his right leg, just above the knee, and jerked his hand away. No weakness. No pain. His knee was fine.

She snapped, “I’m not going AWOL just because Torsten tossed me out. I’m going to be pissed off for the next several decades, but I’m not going to throw some giant, career-destroying tantrum over it.”

He shrugged. “I’ve got my orders.” As the engines cranked up outside, he leaned his seat back, closed his eyes and settled in for a nap. If she knew what was good for her, she would do the same.

Nope. She was feeling chatty apparently, for she said, “Just how crappy an assignment is Torsten sending me to? Is this punishment for my daring to try for the Special Forces?”

The plane started to taxi. Without opening he eyes, he said shortly, “Operations 101—eat and sleep whenever you get a chance to do either.” Surely, she’d already learned that one. Didn’t she know anything? God almighty, this mission was going to suck worse than he’d thought. And he already thought it was going to suck pretty damned hard.

The plane accelerated down the runway, and he caught her surreptitiously wiping tears away from her cheeks as she stared out the window, her face averted from him. Aww, hell. Now he felt bad for her. And that was the one emotion he couldn’t afford where she was concerned.

Thankfully, she had no more inclination to talk. She reclined her seat and went unconscious in a matter of seconds. She had to be beat. He recalled his training as if it was yesterday, and saying it had been hell on earth would not be an exaggeration.

Of course, the real misery for her had just begun. Not that it was going to be any better for him. Someday, somehow, he would find a way to get even with Torsten for this.

Chapter 2

Tessa jolted awake as the plane bumped onto a runway. It was dark outside the small window at her elbow. She was disoriented. Groggy. Airplane. Kicked out of the Special Forces pipeline. Orders from Torsten. A god sent along to deliver her to Phoenix.

She peered out the windows and saw the tall, black silhouettes of trees crowding an unlit runway. Trees? In Phoenix?

She’d been to Arizona before. It had been a thousand degrees outside, and all that grew in the sandy desert were rocks and cacti. She peered out her window again. Not only were those trees, they also looked like a mix of moisture-loving deciduous species and conifers. Totally not trees that would survive the hellish heat of summer in Arizona. And the air in the plane was muggy. Humidity in Phoenix often ran in the single digits. It was warm wherever they had landed, though. And the air smelled strongly of...plant decay.

She glanced over at Lambert. “Do you know where we are?”

“Yup.”

The man had the conversational skills of a caveman.

She waited for him to share, but nada. He just stared out his own window, jaw set and a grim expression on his face. “Well?” she demanded. “Where are we? This is obviously not Phoenix.”

“Are you always this impatient?” he asked laconically.

“Guess I am. I have this funny thing about liking to know, oh, what state I’m in.” One thing she knew for sure. This was not Arizona.

His lips twitched, but he didn’t deign to enlighten her. Apparently, he was as stubborn as his boss. Jackasses, both of ’em. Yeah, well, she could play that game, too. She’d be darned if she asked him any more questions.

The jet came to a full stop. Deep silence fell as the engines shut down. The copilot came back to open the clamshell hatch and lower the steps. She smiled flirtatiously at the young Air Force officer and asked him, “Could you please tell me where we are?”

He glanced up at her in surprise. “Louisiana.”

What on earth was there for her?

At least she’d caught what felt like a couple hours–long nap. If only she felt better after it. Not that anyone in the history of aviation had ever napped comfortably in an airplane seat. She hoisted herself out of the chair, every bit as stiff and agonized as she expected. Bent over in the low-ceilinged cabin, she hobbled to the exit.

She eyed the stairs warily. There were only four steps, yet that was enough to be problematic in her current state of pain. But no way was she going to ask Lambert, waiting impatiently at the bottom of the steps, for help. She made it down the first couple of steps, but her entire right leg cramped on the third step and collapsed out from under her. She pitched forward, straight into the arms of her SEAL babysitter. Again.

Dad gum it.

He growled in her ear, low and sexy, “Do you always throw yourself at men like this?”

His low voice sent a thrill rippling down her spine and vibrating deliciously through her lower abdomen before she remembered he was a jerk and she hated his guts.

His chest was hard, slabbed in resilient bulges of muscle, warm under the soft cotton of his black T-shirt. And he still smelled good. Which ticked her off to no end. She smelled like a landfill on a hot day, but there wasn’t a thing she could do about it until she crossed paths with water and a bar of soap.

It never failed. She always ran into the sexy guys when she was a total mess or being a complete dork. She was not one of those girls who managed to be pulled together, poised and make positive first impressions on men. Ever.

“Are you done trying to face-plant?” he asked.

Crud. She was still plastered against him. She yanked free of his strong, supporting arms and forced her legs to bear her weight no matter how much they protested. The copilot passed her rucksack down to Lambert, and she didn’t have the strength or give-a-crap factor to take it from him. She was already kicked out of training. She didn’t have to try to impress anyone with how tough and self-sufficient she was anymore.

Which scared the bejeebers out of her. Her entire life had been devoted to convincing herself and everyone around her that she was the real deal. That she could hang with the big boys. That she was tough. Invulnerable. Safe from harm or abuse.

What was she supposed to do now? Trade in her combat boots for flowered dresses and aprons? Who was she supposed to be? She had no idea how to be a regular woman. Knowing Major Torsten, he’d seen to it she would be stuck in some secretarial job fit only for a June Cleaver wannabe, in his misogynistic estimation.

If she had to make coffee for anyone, she swore she was going to poison the stuff.

Waterworks threatened again, and she breathed deeply, repeating over and over to herself, I will not cry. I will not cry. But hopelessness washed over her, anyway. What had all the years of work and sacrifice been for in the end? God, the time she’d wasted on a hopeless dream.

Lambert took off, striding toward an open-topped Jeep parked at the edge of the tarmac. He limped the tiniest bit on his right leg. Had he not been moving directly away from her like that, she probably wouldn’t have spotted the subtle anomaly in his motion. Not that the knee brace showing under his camo fatigue pants made him any less lethal.

She looked around the airfield, and the place was deserted. It was just a strip of asphalt in a clearing among the towering trees, not even a real airport. There were no buildings, no other vehicles, no people. If this guy was an ax murderer, he was totally going to get away with his crime.

“You comin’? Or are you just gonna stand there countin’ mosquitoes?” he tossed over his shoulder. If she was not mistaken, his voice had taken on a distinctly more Southern drawl.

She hurried after him, sucking in a sharp breath as a thousand hot knives stabbed her body from every direction. One thing the past few months of training with the big boys had taught her. There was sore, and then there was sore.

Lambert tossed her pack in the back of the Jeep and swung easily into the driver’s seat, waiting impatiently for her to catch up and climb in. She couldn’t help groaning a little as she levered her body into the vehicle, using the roll bar to help lift herself. She felt like death warmed over, for real.

“You always this creaky?” he asked.

“Not usually. Training was a little rougher than usual the past few days. No downtime to rest and recover. Nothing’s wrong with me that a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep won’t fix.”

A single chin lift was all the acknowledgment she got. At least he didn’t feel obliged to comment that if she thought initial Spec Ops training was bad, she should try the real deal. Whether he was showing sensitivity to her having just been thrown out of the program or he figured it went without saying that real operations were worse, she was glad for his forbearance. Her patience was way too thin right now to deal with man-snark.

He turned on the headlights and she squinted into the illuminated swath, making out only a thicket of vines, brambles and more trees. “Where in Louisiana are we?”

“Southern Louisiana. Not close to anyplace you’ve ever heard of.”

“What’s here?”

“The next step in your career.”

“What career?” she asked sourly.

He glanced over at her, his expression inscrutable. They bumped across a sandy field and turned onto an asphalt road crowded by towering trees. Cypress, mostly. The night was noisy. Crickets and frogs and God knew what else were audible over the Jeep’s engine.

“Why’d Torsten tell me I was going to Phoenix if your orders were to bring me to Louisiana?”

“Not the city of Phoenix. Operation Phoenix,” was her escort’s only, and cryptic, answer.

Huh? She leaned back to wait and see where he took her.

Lambert drove confidently, his hands moving on the steering wheel and gearshift with the ease and precision of a race-car driver. Bulging biceps flexed under the sleeve of his T-shirt, a sight she never got tired of. It had been one of the best perks of the training she’d just left. The man-candy factor had been through the roof.

Special operators weren’t generally men who packed on weightlifter’s muscle. They focused on stamina and high-repetition calisthenics that moved their own body weight. Their muscle was lean and hard as steel. And hawt as heck.

She’d put on some hard, lean muscle of her own over the past few months of training. But not enough, apparently. Lost in silently delivering the rant inside her head to the icy major who’d thrown her out for no good reason, she wasn’t inclined to engage her taciturn babysitter in conversation.

After about a half hour, lights appeared ahead, and a sad-looking strip of ramshackle buildings that might once have been a reasonably prosperous little road stop came into sight. Lambert turned into the potholed parking lot of a one-story motel that had seen much better days.

He parked at the end farthest from the office and swung out of the Jeep, and she spied him using his hand to give his right leg a little boost. He snagged her pack before she could reach for it, and she was forced to follow him and her gear to a door whose paint was peeling back to expose rusting metal. The night air smelled of brine and rotting grass as Lambert fished a key attached to a plastic paddle out of his pocket. He opened the door and stepped back to allow her to enter first.

How in the hell did he already have a key to a room in this dive? Her hackles leaped to suspicious attention along the back of her neck. “What is this?” she asked, not moving forward.

“A motel room.”

“You’re hilarious.” She rolled her eyes.

“You wanted a hot shower, right?”

Man, that was tempting. But in some guy’s cheap motel room? Even if he was possibly the hottest guy she’d laid eyes on in, well, forever? She said wryly, “I don’t have any idea who you are. Why on earth would I go into a motel room with you in a strange town whose name I don’t even know? You can go ahead and cue up the ax-murderer theme music right now.”

He shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose if you stink. We can head out to your assignment now, if you want.”

Crud. A shower really was tempting. In the flickering red light of the busted neon sign spelling out M-O-E, he was one fine-looking man. His tanned skin was smooth and taut over razor-sharp cheekbones. His nose had been broken before and wasn’t perfectly straight, but the slight imperfection made the perfection of the rest of his face even more pronounced. Even the hint of razor stubble on his jaw was hot.

She was usually immune to men like him. After all, she worked in the Army, which was chock-full of fit, well-groomed men of discipline and energy.

But this guy. He was a stud among studs. There was an aura about the guys operating in the real world—a hardness, a confidence, self-awareness that called to her in some nameless, primitive way.

Not that she was looking to hook up with any man, thank you very much.

Lambert stepped inside, flipped on a light and paused to adjust the thermostat. Downward, hopefully. It was a sweltering night and sticky as sin. He glanced up without warning, catching her staring at his gorgeous profile. “You coming in?”

“Who are you really?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Dang, this guy messed her up. She never blurted stuff out like that.

“Just a guy doing a job. You can call me Beau.”

“Lambo’s your field handle, right? Let me guess. It’s short for Lamborghini and not Lambert.”

“Correct.” His eyes briefly lit with approval.

Hah. She’d nailed it. “You got a rank, soldier?”

“Yes.”

And, on cue, he went all caveman on her and didn’t share said rank. It irritated her enough that she refused to ask him what his rank actually was. Major Jackass. That was his rank.

“With all due respect, Beau, why in the hell are we here? Wherever here is.”

“Torsten didn’t tell you?” he replied sharply.

“Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Come in and close the door. You’re letting in mosquitoes. And if I have to be in an enclosed space with you, please take a shower. You really do stink.”

“Screw you,” she said mildly.

His gaze snapped to hers, hot and willing. Her breath caught. Realizing belatedly what she’d just said, she rolled her eyes and stepped inside.

He held out her rucksack and she snagged it without comment as she passed by him, heading for the bathroom. She locked the door, stripped and turned the water on as hot as it would go. It was strange and disturbing knowing Lambert was right outside while she was in here, naked, like this.

Hyperawareness of her escort skittered across her skin, and it made her jumpy. It wasn’t that she was a prude. Far from it. But she could still feel all those acres of yummy muscle against hers. Smell his deodorant.

No amount of vigorous scrubbing erased the feel of him off her body. And, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she wanted to forget the sensations that had torn through her. They had been...amazing.

Irritated at whatever head game he was playing with her, she blasted the water, letting it pound her muscles until the water ran cold—which actually felt pretty good, too. Only then did she reluctantly pour the freebie bottle of shampoo over her head and scrub her hair blessedly clean. She soaped down her body, rinsed off and stepped out of the shower feeling like a new woman.

She toweled off and then stared down at the filthy mess that was her clothes. There were no clean ones in her rucksack, which held only combat and survival gear. She sighed and used the bar of soap in the bathtub to give her tank top, cargo pants and underwear a scrub and a rinse. God. How did women in the past wash all their clothes by hand like this?

She wrung out the garments as best she could, then pulled and plucked the soggy clothing onto her body. Oh, Lord. Beau was gonna love the wet T-shirt look. It didn’t help that her nipples were puckering with cold underneath her damp sports bra and thin tank top. Bracing herself for his disdain, or at least a rude stare, she stepped out into the room...and was startled to find it empty. Where had he gone? Out for food, hopefully.

She guzzled down a bunch of sulfur-tasting water using the plastic cup by the sink and combed out her hair. She was startled to see in the mirror that it had grown out to nearly her shoulder blades in the past few months. More startling was the deep tan she also was sporting. It made her gray-green eyes look even lighter and brighter than usual.

She towel-dried her hair and pulled it up into a high ponytail. It was going to go full poodle puff on her, but there was no help for it. Without a round brush or straightening iron, no way was she corralling its natural curl.

Using the motel’s blow-dryer, she worked at drying her clothes right on her body. They were still damp, but no longer clammy, when the door opened abruptly behind her and she spun, brandishing the blow-dryer like a six-shooter.

“Gonna take me down with that thing?” Beau asked drily.

Rats. No grocery bags or other sign of human sustenance. She would take calories right now in pretty much any form she could get them.

“I’m de-stinked,” she announced. “Any chance there’s somewhere nearby where I can grab a bite of real food?”

His cell phone rang just then and he fished it out of his jeans, answering tersely with, “Go.” He listened for a moment. Then, “The package is almost delivered. Understood.” He hung up.

She stowed the hair dryer in its wall mount and turned back to him. “Are you a drug dealer, or am I the package?”

“You would, in fact, be the package.”

“Can we please feed the package?”

He jerked his head for her to follow him and headed outside. She noticed this time as she passed him that she was about six inches shorter than he was. She was not quite five foot eight, which made him a little over six feet tall. He probably had sixty pounds on her in weight, even though at a glance he looked lean. She’d developed a discerning eye for the muscle density of special operators in the course of her recent training.

He moved past her with deceptive speed for a guy with a bum leg and reached for her car door just as her hand moved toward the handle. He opened it with a flourish and she looked up at him, startled.

“Don’t get used to it. I won’t coddle you or get any doors for you after tonight. But let the record show my mama didn’t raise a heathen.”

“Duly noted,” she replied, bemused as she slid into her seat and he closed the door. He went around to the driver’s side and in seconds was backing out of the lot. He threw the Jeep in gear and took off down the road. A gas station next to the motel appeared operational, along with a titty bar that looked like a total dive. Oddly, a bait shop was open, too. Apparently, night fishing was a local thing.

Beau turned off the narrow asphalt road onto an even narrower dirt road, and she was pretty sure she would start hearing banjos any second.

They banged along the terrible road for maybe ten uncomfortable minutes before a building on high stilts came into sight ahead with a half dozen muddy trucks parked in front of it. Another half dozen shallow-bottom boats were tied up at a dock behind it.

“We’re here,” he announced.

“Where’s here?”

“At the best steak joint in the Bayou Toucheaux.”

She salivated at the mere mention of steak. He led her up a staircase to a rickety wraparound porch. The weathered building looked as if a stiff breeze would blow it over.

She followed Beau into the dim, smoky interior. Any fire marshal worth his salt would have a stroke at the plentiful cigars and flaming grill filling the wooden structure with smoke. Four rednecks in sleeveless shirts and baseball caps bellied up to the bar, and several couples sat at tables in the middle of the room.

“’Eyy, chère,” one of the rednecks at the bar slurred as he spotted her. The guy strolled over to her, flashing a smile that had about one tooth for every three available slots. “You new come to dee parish, oui?”

Beau took a step forward, injecting himself between her and the drunk. “She new come to the parish with me.”

“Bah. Femme like dat wan’ de real man. Not girlie boy wit’ de pretty face...” The drunk trailed off, peering at Beau closely. “Lambert? Beau Lambert? Dat y’all?”

“Farty Lambert?” one of the other drunks behind the first one hooted? “Y’all done growed up. Got yo’self some muscles ’n’ all. Shee-it.”

Clearly Beau had some sort of history with these yahoos. Based on the taunts, she gathered he’d lived here as a child. Rough place to have come from if the poverty she’d seen so far was typical.

The other three drunks closed ranks behind the first one. “Li’l Farty Lam-bear? I’ll be damned. Never thought to see yo’ face round he-uhh no mo’,” one of them slurred.

Tessa’s entire body tensed. She knew that tone of voice from her own childhood. It belonged to a bully. One pumping himself up to inflict pain on someone weaker than he was. A bully enjoying his victim’s fear. Oh, this was not going to go well.

Anger at a bunch of big, strong jerks picking on someone else rolled through her, hot and sharp. God, she hated bullies. She sized up the four men quickly. She and Beau could totally take them. Teach them a lesson—

Check that. Not only was it strictly forbidden for special operators to lose their cool in public and particularly against civilians, but failure to control anger was also a big, fat disqualifier for joining them. Anger clouded the mind. Impaired judgment. Still. It was hard to rein in the urge to remove the rest of these jerks’ teeth.

As for Beau, he’d gone still and silent beside her. As in totally hunting-predator still and deeply, unnaturally silent. Menace poured off him like sublimated carbon off a block of dry ice. Surely, the four drunks weren’t so far gone that they failed to sense the threat emanating from him.

The first drunk gave Beau a hard shove. Nope. Too far gone to realize Beau was not a man to bait and threaten anymore. Little Farty Lam-bear had grown up into a stone-cold killer.

Beau stepped back up beside her after the shove. He spoke quietly, calmly. “Walk away from me, Jimbo. And don’t ever lay another hand on me. This is your only warning.”

The four drunks hooted with laughter. She thought Beau had gone a little pale, the only indication that these assholes actually bothered him.

“Easy, Beau,” she murmured low. “They’re not worth it.”

“Stay out of this, Tessa,” he muttered back. “This has been a long time coming. If they pick a fight with me, I’m within my rights to defend myself.”

She winced. It wasn’t a good idea for anyone to pick a fight with a trained Special Forces operative like him.

On cue, Jimbo took a clumsy swing at Beau. For his part, Beau dodged the meaty fist in negligent disdain, reaching up casually, gently even, to grasp Jimbo’s fist. The big drunk dropped to his knees, yelping.

Beau leaned down and spoke in a low, almost caressing tone, “You think you can mess with me like back in the good old days, Jimbo? Take my girl? Humiliate me in public? Think again, my friend.”

“Screw you,” Jimbo growled.

Beau just laughed quietly and tightened his grip until the guy on the floor howled with pain.

“Need me to help kill him?” she asked under her breath.

Beau glanced up at her. His stare was flat. Emotionless. He looked like Death incarnate.

Which, of course, he was.

“Maybe you should cut him loose,” she murmured. “I’m starving, and I don’t want to get kicked out of here.”

Beau released Jimbo’s hand, or more precisely, he released the unfortunate thumb bent back nearly to the guy’s wrist. The Cajun surged to his feet, right fist cocking back as he rose.

Mistake.

Beau moved so fast Tessa barely saw him slide past his foe. But all of a sudden Jimbo was facing her, and Beau was behind the guy, forearm around Jimbo’s neck, and the drunk was rapidly turning an ugly shade of purple.

She spoke calmly and slowly. “Beau.” She waited until he made eye contact with her to continue. “Toothless, here, has learned the error of his ways in trying to sucker punch you. Haven’t you?” she asked Jimbo.

The drunk tried to nod within Beau’s grasp but only managed to bug his eyes out a little more.

She glanced back at Beau. “How about you turn him loose so we can eat our dinner?”

He hesitated, but then nodded tersely and turned Jimbo loose.

The Cajun bent over at the waist, gasping and coughing. Tessa leaned down beside him and spoke coldly. “You’re welcome. And for the record, he could’ve snapped your neck like a twig if he actually wanted to kill you. Walk away from Beau and don’t ever mess with him again, or next time, I will let him break your neck.”

Jimbo glared at her, spitting out something under his fetid breath about crazy bitches and their homicidal pretty boys. Whatever. She was more concerned about Beau.

She straightened and turned, coming face-to-face with him. “You okay?” she asked under her breath.

“Yeah. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She stared at him, startled. He sounded utterly normal. Casual. The incident was a stark reminder of just how lethal these guys could be when crossed. They killed with cool, calculated precision. No anger, no emotion, just efficient violence in the blink of an eye.

“How long have you been waiting to do that to that guy?” she asked low.

“Awhile,” Beau replied shortly.

She knew a thing or two about having old scores to settle.

Jimbo stumbled back toward his equally dentally challenged buddies, grumbling about jealous bastards who refused to share the hot chicks. At least somebody thought she was attractive. Of course, she still had all her teeth. By that measure alone, she was probably smoking hot to those losers.

Beau still stood rooted in place. Maybe he wasn’t so unaffected, after all. She reached out to touch his elbow lightly. “Ready to eat?”

He shook himself a little. “Yes. You?”

She smiled. “Show me the meat, big guy.”

His eyes glinted at her double entendre, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

He glanced across the room toward a grill that was actually an oil drum split in half with metal mesh over the two halves. Beds of charcoal filled the drums. “’Ey, Marie,” he called out.

A large woman wearing a New Orleans Saints jersey and standing by the grill turned around, wielding a long pair of tongs. She bellowed back, “Grab a table and yell out what y’all want. Damn waitress didn’ show up t’night.”

Tessa sank into a chair opposite Beau at a table for two, studying him closely. He had reacted the same way she would react if one of her mom’s boyfriends tried to rough her up nowadays. She would go postal on his ass.

Beau scowled back at her as he caught her intent regard on him. Didn’t like being psychoanalyzed, huh?

“Where do you know those guys from?” she asked.

“Everyone in these parts knows the Kimball brothers. I’m surprised all four of them are out of jail at the same time.”

“Are they petty criminals or into bigger stuff?”

Beau shrugged. “They deal drugs. Run guns. Extort protection money from local businesses. Rumor has it they’ve killed a few folks who got in their way or refused to pay.” He added sardonically, “They’re just smart enough to stay one step ahead of the law. The sheriff puts them away for small stuff anytime he can catch them. But so far, they’ve avoided arrest for the more serious felonies everyone knows they’ve committed.”

She eyed the big men across the room, memorizing their faces for future reference.

“How do you like your steak?” he asked, his voice a bit too tight. Predatory intensity rolled off him, and frankly, it turned her on like mad. Not that she would ever admit to him that she was secretly a bit of a Spec Ops groupie.

“Earth to Tessa, come in. Your steak?”

“Rare,” she answered, mentally shaking herself. Get a grip, girlfriend.

“Pink rare or bleeding rare?”

“Marie can just walk my steak past the flame and call it good.”

Beau called out, “Two steaks. Biggest ones you’ve got and rare as a virgin in a whorehouse.”

Guffaws filled the room. The Kimball boys glowered, however. Their heads came together angrily as they muttered amongst themselves. She made a mental note to keep an eye on that bunch as the night progressed and the level of whiskey in the bottle in front of them went down.

Marie came over to their table carrying an armload of plates and bowls.

“It’s been a while, Beau. Been, what? Fi’teen years since a Lambert come ’round these parts?”

“Something like that,” he answered noncommittally.

Fifteen years? Wow. That was a long time to hold a grudge against Jimbo and company.

“Well, ain’t y’all gone and got purty? Picture o’ yo’ daddy, you is. Good to have ya home, boy.”

“Good to be he’uh.” With every word he spoke, Tessa swore his Louisiana drawl got stronger. Why on earth would Torsten have sent the two of them to one of his men’s hometown in the middle of Cajun country? The longer she was here, the more the questions were stacking up.

Marie plunked down a platter of toasted garlic bread, a mess of green beans and ham hocks, and a big bowl of red beans and rice with sausage so spicy it made Tessa’s eyes water. When it came, a huge steak covered her entire plate and was tender enough to cut with a fork. She dug in with gusto.

It took a while for her to lay her napkin down and push her plate back. Another perk of her recent training: she could eat as much of anything she wanted and not gain an ounce. If anything, she’d lost a little weight even with putting on more muscle mass.

Someone fed the decrepit jukebox in the corner a handful of quarters, and twangy zydeco music abruptly filled the place. The talk got louder, the beer flowed more freely and women drifted into the bar and then out with men.

Under the din, Beau leaned forward. “Did Torsten tell you anything at all?”

“About what?”

Beau frowned.

She shrugged. “All he said to me was—and I quote—‘You’re out. You’ve got orders. Lambo, you have your orders. Get her off my base.’ End quote.”

He swore under his breath. “I’m gonna need a drink for this, then, and so are you.” He called for some moonshine and two glasses.

“I don’t like alcohol,” she announced as Marie thunked a mayonnaise jar of the local rotgut on the table along with two shot glasses.

“Tough. Drink up.” He poured two shots of the stuff.

“Are you trying to get me drunk?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “Hey, if you can’t roll like one of the boys, we don’t have to have this conversation at all.”

Scowling, she picked up the glass and tossed back the liquor, which burned like fire on the way down, shuddering at the powerful aftertaste. The alcohol went straight to her head, but at least it dulled the pain in her muscles while it was also dulling her brain function.

“Walk with me,” Beau murmured.

He sounded tense as heck. What on earth was going on with him? He’d actually been reasonably pleasant during the meal. Admittedly, neither of them had talked much as they devoured their steaks.

Perplexed, she followed him out to the porch. He strolled around back to face a narrow canal that stretched away into the blackness. They were alone out here. Citronella tiki torches provided the only light, their flames flickering weakly against the dark. A cacophony of sound wrapped around the pungent odor of the swamp rising from below. Beau propped his elbows on the waist-high rail and stared into the bayou beyond.

Just being alone with him out here in the dark like this was a turn-on. She’d never, ever been alone with a guy so hot, nor so deadly...which made him even hotter.

“You’re right about one thing,” he said low enough that she had to lean down in a similar, elbow-propped pose to hear him. “The military is never going to publicly stand for women in the Special Forces.”

She huffed in exasperation. “That horse is dead. You don’t have to kick it for fun.”

“But you’re right about something else, too. There is a place for women in special warfare. More to the point, Torsten agrees with you that we need women in the field.”

“No freaking way. He hates women.”

Beau snorted. “He hates everyone. But he loves the Special Forces. Wants us to be the best we can be. Male or female, he doesn’t care.”

“Why are you telling me this? He already booted me out.”

Beau didn’t answer her directly. Rather, he changed subject abruptly, asking, “Did you notice how publicly women are being tossed out of the various Special Forces courses?”

She snorted. “It’s hard to miss. Every time a woman fails it practically makes national news.”

“That publicity is intentional. We need the general public, hell, the world, to believe there are no American women operators and there will never be American women operators.”

“Well, yeah. That’s because there are none.”

“That wasn’t true once. There used to be an all-female Spec Ops team called the Medusas. Highly classified bunch. Operated for years and were wicked effective.”

“What happened to them?”

“The original team worked together for about ten years and gradually retired from active duty. The second generation team was lost.”

“As in they died?”

His voice no more than a sigh, he answered heavily, “Yeah.”

“How?” she asked quietly.

“Not my story to tell, and too classified to discuss here.”

Yikes. “And now? What’s next?”

“Next, we’ll try to build a new team.” He glanced at her and then back out at the bayou. “Starting with you.”

She stared at him. “Come again?”

“Torsten thinks you’ve got what it takes. He wants to train you to be a full-blown special operator. Not just a support type. A completely qualified combat specialist. That’s the purpose of Operation Phoenix. To raise the Medusa Project from the dead.”

She laughed in disbelief. “Right.” She added sarcastically, “And that’s why he threw me out of training and sent me across the country to a swamp.”

“I’m serious. Do you want to be a Medusa or not?”

Chapter 3

Beau stared at the stunned woman beside him. Please say no. Please say no.

“Hell to the yes, I want to be one!” Tessa exclaimed.

Dammit. He knew she would say that. He was in no shape to be training anyone, let alone the next Medusa. What was Torsten thinking, throwing him into a scenario like this? The boss knew his knee was destroyed. That doctors said his career was over.

Of course, Torsten also knew Beau was determined to get back in the saddle and back onto the teams no matter how messed up his knee was.

Beau did have to give Tessa Wilkes credit for one thing. She was a good-looking woman. Sexy as wild hellfire. But that didn’t necessarily mean she was cut out for the Medusas. Torsten had been clear. Assume she was not fit to be a Medusa. Test her. Push her. Make her prove she was Special Forces material.

And, as soon as he was done working with her, he could get back to the business of being an operator himself. Which could not happen soon enough for him.

Operation Phoenix. The reference to the mythical firebird rising from its own ashes didn’t elude him. Torsten was resurrecting the Medusas after convincing the world the idea of an all-female Special Forces team was dead. He wondered, though, if Torsten had also chosen the name with him in mind. Was Gunnar trying to resurrect Beau’s career from the ashes, as well?

If so, this was a hell of a strange way to go about it. Assigning him to work with a woman who would do nothing but slow him down.

He’d vehemently protested the idea of a woman operator when Torsten broached the assignment with him. Not that the boss had listened to a word of what he’d said. Just because Torsten thought this woman had the drive and mental toughness to play with the boys didn’t mean she had the physical strength or stamina to hack it.

The compromise they’d reached was that Beau would try to train her. But he also retained the right to wash her out if she couldn’t cut the training.

No way would he let her onto a Spec Ops team if she was going to be the weak link. Any team was only as strong as its weakest member. He wasn’t about to let a woman get his brothers killed just so Torsten—and some wannabe chick—could prove a point.

He swore under his breath. If his boss thought that because his knee was busted up Beau would take it easy on Tessa, Gunnar Torsten was in for a surprise.

Everyone kept telling Beau he could contribute to the teams by training the next generation of special operators. But damned if he was going to accept that his field days were over and settle for playing nursemaid to anyone, male or female.

He was the first to admit it was a miracle he could walk. But the thing was, if he’d made it back this far, well beyond where the doctors had told him he could rehab his knee, why couldn’t he rehab his knee all the way back to operational? One thing he was sure of: no way was he cut out to be an instructor. Torsten—in his infinite bloody wisdom—seemed to think this insane, waste-of-time mission would be good for him. Bastard.

“Why Louisiana?” the waste of time beside him asked, all eagerness now that she knew why they were really here.

“The idea is to keep your existence completely off the radar. We don’t want anyone to know the Medusas are back.”

“Is that why Major Torsten had you march me across camp this afternoon where everyone could see me leaving?”

“Affirmative.”

“So Torsten’s making a big fuss about tossing out the women and then...what? Bringing them here secretly to train?” she asked curiously.

“He’s legitimately tossing out most of the women. But he saw something in you.” He added reluctantly, the words acid on his tongue to even say aloud, “He thinks you’ve got what it takes to be one of us.”

Silence fell between them as they stared at the sluggish black water below. It lapped around the stilts supporting the building, oily and thick. He could feel the mind of the woman beside him working overtime. One thing Torsten had gotten right: Tessa Wilkes was a sharp cookie. Observant as hell. She would need both to make it through the rest of this hypothetical training of hers. Assuming he didn’t end up just shooting himself, instead.

He caught himself rubbing his thigh, as had become his habit ever since surgery to remove the shrapnel that shredded his knee and quad muscle. He jerked his hand back to the railing. No way was he showing weakness to Tessa, particularly if he was supposed to train her.

“When do we start?” she asked.

“In the morning.”

“Is there a hidden training base around here?”

He envisioned the ruin that would be their base of operations for the next few months. He had already humped in the bare basics they would need to survive, and his knee had thought the hard labor of repairing the old dock behind the house and crawling around repairing the roof were terrible ideas. He answered drily, “I suppose you could call it a base.”

“Will you be training me?”

She sounded so damned enthusiastic. He restrained an urge to roll his eyes. She had no business being here. Women didn’t belong in the Special Forces community. Period. The total loss of the second Medusa team had proven that, hadn’t it?

He had no idea how he was actually going to train Tessa. He had no experience as an instructor, and with just the two of them out here by themselves, he couldn’t rely on the same methods by which he’d been trained. “About training you. Here’s the thing. I’m not an instructor. I’m a field operator. Or I was until I wrecked my knee a while back.”

She looked down in quick sympathy at his leg. Sympathy he neither needed nor wanted. His plan was actually to use her training to get himself back into good enough shape to qualify for field ops again. He would drag her along with him until he was field ready—and until he had run her into the ground and made his point—both to her and to Torsten.

“The first part of the Spec Ops training you went through with the boys was mostly physical conditioning, meant to weed out the faint of heart and the quitters. Torsten feels like he’s seen enough from you to know you would actually make it through the physical demands of full Spec Ops training.” He added wryly, “Torsten says you don’t know the meaning of the word quit.”

“He got that right,” she muttered.

Spoken like a true operator. Beau smiled a little in spite of himself.

Torsten had discussed with him at length where to train her. This project needed a challenging, but secluded, environment. Beau had been the one to suggest reluctantly that his abandoned family homestead fit the bill perfectly. The incredibly difficult bayou environment would force her to battle heat, humidity, muck, critters and general squick factor.

“Will my training be like the men’s course?” she asked.

She sounded entirely too naive and eager. Poor kid had no idea what she was in for. Torsten had been clear. Push her right to the edge of breaking. Find out where her limits lay and take her to them and beyond. And while he was at it, figure out how to work with a woman.

Not. Happening.

“I’ll be a real operator, right?”

“Don’t count on it,” he snapped.

“Then what the hell are we doing out here?” she shot back.

Gun, I’m gonna kill you the next time I see you. He straightened to his full height and a hot knife of pain shot through his knee. He clenched his jaw until the pain subsided to bearable. “Assuming you survive, which is not a given, you would hypothetically be a no-kidding operator when it’s said and done.”

He added direly, “Don’t get your hopes up. The odds of you being able to do everything you’ll have to in order to work on an operational team are pretty much zero.”

For a blink of an eye, trepidation shone in her eyes. But in the very next blink, steely resolve filled them. Unwillingly, he was impressed with her mental toughness. Even if it was useless. No way was he graduating her from this training. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers.

“Why Louisiana?” she asked.

“Secret location. No prying eyes. Challenging environment.” He added warningly, “The ocean may have sharks, but we’ve got gators out here. They’re a whole lot sneakier than sharks, and you can’t punch a gator on the nose and get him to back off. He’ll eat your arm if you try it.”

She turned her head to study him more fully, and her ponytail fell over her shoulder in soft curls that begged his fingers to run through them. Her gaze was intent. Focused on him like a laser. In that moment she looked just like a warrior...but with firm, round breasts filling out her T-shirt, a lush behind filling out her fatigue trousers and muscular legs a mile long.

Crap. Talk about messing with his head. A woman operator. And of course, she had to go and look like a freaking Playboy centerfold.

He had to give her credit: not many women looked this good without a stitch of makeup on, wearing combat boots, no less. Even her muscular shoulders and the pronounced veins in her bare arms were hot. Everything about her spoke of strength, confidence and badassery. But it was all wrapped up in a package so sexy he could devour her like his steak earlier.

He shook his head to clear the thought. It didn’t matter how sexy she was. He wasn’t about to let her become a member of the club.

“Let’s get out of here,” he growled. “I owe you at least one decent night’s sleep before we get this ball rolling.” Down a tall hill into a pile of manure.

She was silent on the ride back to the motel, but her excitement was palpable. He just hoped his knee didn’t give out before it was all said and done. He figured it was a 50/50 proposition. His doctors had argued vehemently against him attempting this comeback. They warned him that, if he overdid it on this op, he would blow his knee out, this time for good. But he refused to sit down and give up. He would go down fighting first.

They got back to the motel, and Tessa bounced out of the Jeep before he could get around to her side of the vehicle to open the door. He had to smile a little at her enthusiasm. He recalled all too well his own elation when he found out he’d been selected for special operations training all those years ago. Almost a decade.

Man, he’d been young and naive back then. He’d seen a whole lifetime’s worth of action since. Would she be as jaded as he was ten years down the road, taciturn and tense, living life balanced on a razor’s edge?

He closed the motel room’s door and turned to face Tessa, who stood in the middle of the room, frowning. “Problem?” he asked.

“Well, yes. There’s only one bed.”

“You afraid to share it with me?” He arched an eyebrow in an open dare. “What are you going to do when you’re bivouacking with a male team and all of you are crammed into a hide like sardines, spooning with each other?”

Her mint-green eyes narrowed. “I’ve got no problem sleeping with you. The question is—are you okay sleeping with me?”

He snorted. “Honey, I’m not sixteen. I’ve got my hormones firmly under control, thank you very much.” Which might not be entirely true where she was concerned. All of the previous Medusas had lived and worked in very close quarters with their male counterparts. She had to learn to do the same. Starting with him. Oh, joy.

“Great,” she said cheerfully. “Then you won’t mind if I take my pants off. They’re still a little wet.”

Well, hell. Give the woman points for calling his bluff.

She kicked off her combat boots and stripped out of her fatigue pants right there in the middle of the room, revealing legs every bit as lean, muscular and wrap-around-his-hips-and-hang-on sexy as he’d thought they would be. His gaze slid down to her ankles and back up to her black bikini underwear, which stopped an inch short of the bottom of her olive green tank top.

Was that sweat popping out on his forehead? That strip of tanned stomach was almost more than he could stand. Her waist nipped in sharply, and then her chest flared in Coke-bottle curves that definitely were making him sweat. His palms itched to trace those curves. Memory of them mashed against his chest sent blood pounding to his groin.

Her chest was high and firm, and her nipples poked at the soft cotton of her shirt, taunting him. Daring him to take them in his mouth. To suck on them till she moaned. His hard-on all but doubled him over with its painful throbbing.

She stood there defiantly, staring back at him, daring him to say or do something about her display of general hotness.

Keep your eyes on her face.

Yeah, right. He could no more stop himself from letting his gaze wander down her body and back up than he could stop his body from leaping to attention at the sight of a woman like her standing half-naked in the middle of his hotel room practically daring him to do something about it.

His traitorous gaze traveled slowly and thoroughly down her body once more, taking in every juicy detail of her. Ho. Lee. Cow.

Okay, then. If that was how she wanted to play it... He reached for the back of the neck of his T-shirt and hauled it off over his head. He unbuckled his belt and shoved his pants down, as well. His Spandex sports briefs didn’t do much to conceal his raging hard-on, but if she was going to play with the boys, she would have to get used to their reaction to her.

“Shall we?” he said casually. It took every last drop of his self-discipline to manage that light tone of voice.

Her bravado seemed knocked back a few notches by his matching strip-down. Good. She might as well learn early on just what a bad idea it was to dare an operator to do anything. Filters were not part of their mentality.

He reached for the light switch, and the room was abruptly swathed in darkness. The warmth and humidity of the night wrapped around him. The hum of the window air-conditioner and the thin stream of cold air coming from it teased his skin. The night was made for heavy breathing, sweaty skin on skin and the mindless plunge into hot, tight, female flesh—

Her silhouette slipped under the covers and the bed springs creaked under her weight, breaking him out of his fantasy. He felt brittle. On the verge of exploding. Cripes. And he hadn’t even touched her yet.

Yet. Which implied intent to go there with her.

No can do, buddy, he told his raging erection. Not only was she off-limits, but he would also be damned if he would let her manipulate him into anything. Even if he wanted that thing worse than he wanted to keep breathing.

He moved over to the bed, lifted the covers and lay down beside her, an image of her body swimming in his mind’s eye. Hell’s bells. Her warmth radiated across the narrow strip of mattress separating them, along with simmering sexual tension that made him want to jump out of his skin.

It was a double bed, and they were not tiny people, which meant it was a tight fit. And he was neither a dead man nor a dummy. No way could he miss the fact that her nostrils flared whenever she looked at him and thought he wasn’t looking. Nor could he miss how her pupils dilated anytime he had leaned close and smiled at her during dinner.

She was as hot for him as he was for her. Which was going to pose a massive problem on this op. Almost as massive as the woody tenting the sheets over his groin.

What would it be like to make love with a woman nearly as strong as he was, with stamina to match? A woman who could absorb everything he had to give and give as good as she got in return? If even half of his imagination was accurate, sex with Tessa would be epic. He was sure of it.

Of course, military fraternization rules prohibited instructors from sleeping with trainees. But he wasn’t officially her instructor yet. Not until tomorrow. Besides, he was going to wash her out at the first opportunity, and they would each get on with their regularly scheduled lives. So there was nothing standing in the way of them scratching the itch between them. Right?

He couldn’t find any flaw in the logic. His body jerked eagerly in response.

Nope. There was no reason at all they couldn’t engage in a little extracurricular hanky-panky.

Other than the fact that she was going to hate his guts within the next twenty-four hours or so. And if he washed her out of the program like he planned to, she would hate his guts even worse. He tended to avoid sleeping with women who were going to become homicidal in the near future.

Disappointment coursed through his entire body.

I know, buddy. I know.

The scent of her shampoo drifted across the narrow space between them. It was sweet and floral and caressed him like a lover’s hand, as seductive as hell. His body begged him to change his mind, and he clenched his teeth against its coaxing.

For her part, Tessa lay stiff and silent beside him. Tense, too, huh? Was she as turned on as he was? He would bet his next paycheck she was. He could practically smell her arousal.

The standoff stretched out between them, and with every passing minute, he became more determined not to be the one who broke first. But he couldn’t remember being this uncomfortable since junior high when a hole in a wall had been enough to turn him on.

Their shoulders bumped every time one of them shifted even the tiniest bit, sending him off into a new round of horny speculation, molar-grinding pain and reluctant refusal to give in.

This bed was entirely too small for the two of them.

Finally, in frustration, he muttered, “Turn on your side facing away from me.”

“Why?” she blurted.

“That was an order. Just do it,” he snapped.

She huffed and the mattress shifted beneath him. He rolled onto his side facing her and scooted forward until her warm, sexy body was tucked against his.

“What the hell are you doing?” she squawked.

“Getting comfortable so we can both sleep. Now you’ll know where I am, and you won’t lay there all night wondering if I’m going to jump your bones.” He tucked his knees against the backs of hers, threw his arm over the inward curve of her waist and pulled her back against his front. Wow, she felt magnificent against him. They fit together like two spoons in the same set of silverware.

Of course they did. The torture wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t.

His male parts bulged against her in no uncertain terms, but there was no help for it. He was not going to have sex with her tonight, but neither was he going to treat her feminine sensibilities with kid gloves. If she planned to live and work with men like him, this was part of the deal.

She felt amazing in his arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this platonic cuddling thing with a woman. Normally, he didn’t stop to pay much attention to the finer details. The groupies just wanted to be bedded and then go on their merry way.

Maybe not so platonic, truth be told. His hands ached to roam across her satin skin, to test her curves, to make her moan. He needed to lose himself in her body, to plunge into her mindlessly, to find bliss and then oblivion. His jaw clenched. He could do this. He could sleep with her without having sex with her. It was a hell of a fight not to act on his craving, but he corralled his lust.

“Go to sleep,” he told her tightly.

By inches over the next few minutes, she gradually relaxed against him, which added a whole new set of temptations to his misery.

Get a grip, dude. He’d slept in war zones with mortars flying over his head and the deafening reports of shelling exploding around him. He’d slept with enemy forces closing in on him, and when completely surrounded by hostiles. He could bloody well sleep in a dark, quiet motel room in his hometown.

But he followed Tessa into sleep with great difficulty, ultimately having to resort to his sniper training to force his breathing to slow and deepen, to will himself to slide toward unconsciousness. She felt like a slice of heaven in his arms, soft and warm and relaxed. All the things his life was not.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept with a woman—actually slept with one. Most of his interactions involved horny, half-drunk sex and him leaving the woman’s bed immediately after, before anything more could begin to develop. No attachments, no feelings. Just physical release. That was his mantra.

But Tessa Wilkes had already busted through that boundary in a big way. Even if they were mostly negative, he had definite feelings about being here with her.

Torsten owed him huge.

He eventually surprised himself by drifting off to sleep. Maybe it was the companionship, or maybe it was how damned delicious Tessa felt in his arms.

He did wake up a couple of times during the night, tensing in anticipation of flashbacks from the night he should have died—the mission he’d been lucky to be medevaced away from with a destroyed leg and no future on the teams.

Nightmares were standard issue to men in his line of work. The shrinks said dreams were how guys like him worked out their emotional crap over killing people for a living. Whatever. He didn’t run around spilling tears for his victims. They were bad people in need of killing.

But tonight the nightmares never came calling.

Nothing came to him except the sweet smell and quiet breathing of the woman snuggled up against him, filling the darkness with soft curves and comfort that lulled him back to sleep.

Too bad this was a onetime good deal. In the morning, he was going to unleash holy hell on her, and that would be the end of cuddles in the dark with Tessa Wilkes, wannabe Medusa and soon-to-be former trainee.

Chapter 4

Tessa arched her body in a cat stretch, moaning a little in the back of her throat as a confident male hand cupped her breast, thumb stroking lazily across her straining nipple. An arm was heavy across her waist, pinning her in place, and another heavily muscled arm acted as a pillow under her left ear. The smell and feel of man and muscle surrounded her, cocooning her completely in security.

Protection. A completely foreign concept to her, especially coming from a man. Slaps and fists were her childhood fare from most men. Her whole life, she’d been responsible for taking care of herself. Seeing to her own safety. If she didn’t do it, no one else would. And yet, here was Beau, doing it unconsciously. As naturally as breathing.

Or maybe he was just copping a freebie feel.

Either way, she had never spent a full night with a man before, and certainly not in a man’s arms. It was shockingly...nice. The intimacy of it was staggering. It was something she could definitely get used to. Maybe not with this guy, and definitely not at this time in her life. But someday.

Her decision to pursue the Special Forces had pretty much precluded her having long-term relationships, given the time demands of her constant training. She was confident that, as long as she was on the teams, she would have to dedicate every waking minute to it.

The first new Medusa. Her. Who’d have thunk?

Deep satisfaction settled into her gut, along with a big dose of fist-pumping exultation. She’d climbed the impossible mountain and made it to the unattainable peak.

Although truth be told, she hadn’t climbed the real mountain yet. She had no illusions about how hard her upcoming training was going to be. If the past few months had been a taste of things to come, the main meal was going to be a bona fide bitch. Particularly since her teacher didn’t seem the least bit thrilled at the idea of her actually becoming a Medusa.

And as hard as it was going to be, she simply didn’t have time for a personal life, no matter how nice it felt to snuggle with a hot guy. Correction: a smoking-hot guy who clearly was as turned on by her as she was by him. And yes, that made it worse. Eyes on the prize, girlfriend. Eyes on the prize.

Still. A pang of regret coursed through her. She really didn’t need to have glimpsed this other existence she might have had.

Of course, she could have a life like this if she wanted it. A man to sleep with every night and wake up to every morning. All she had to do was quit. Walk away from Beau and the Medusas. She had no doubt his orders were to do everything in his power to make her give up; he wouldn’t stop her if she decided she wanted this more than being a trained killer.

Thing was, she’d made it her life’s work to become exactly what he was. To be stronger, badder and bolder than any jerkwad man she could ever possibly encounter. It was really no choice at all. She had to go for the chance to become a Medusa.

Her gut warned her, however, that she wasn’t likely to feel this safe and protected again until she left the Medusas for good—either by choice or in a body bag.

Was a life of constant danger really what she wanted? It was all she had ever known growing up. But Beau had unwittingly—or maybe wittingly, knowing him—given her a glimpse of another world. Another way of life.

She lay there, caught between sleep and wakefulness, contemplating the choice. All the while, the big, strong warrior claimed his woman—

Whoa. Wait. What? She jolted the rest of the way to full consciousness with a mental lurch. She was nobody’s woman! No matter that Beau was draped all over her and she was practically purring and rubbing herself against him like a cat in heat.

Apparently, their subconscious minds had no qualms about crawling all over each other. No matter that this man was about to be her trainer in a supersecret and superintense program that didn’t officially exist. And no matter that she emphatically didn’t want a long-term relationship with any guy. Ever. Not in this lifetime.

Obviously, there would be no rules during her training out here in the middle of nowhere. No oversight. No limits on what they could and would do. Did that mean there were no sexual boundaries, either?

She knew there would be mind games galore as part of her training. They were part of any special operator’s training. Was this semiseduction part of it?

Would Beau take this further?

More important, would she let him?

Belatedly, reason kicked in. This was Beau Lambert she was talking about. He clearly didn’t like the idea of her becoming a Special Forces operative, but he’d been nothing but polite to her yesterday. He’d caught her when her strength had given out, holding her patiently until she could stand on her own two feet again. He’d fed her and seen to her needs, getting her water and a shower. Hell, he’d put Jimbo Kimball on the floor when the guy had made a rude advance to her.

Her gut told her in no uncertain terms that Beau Lambert was no creep. And she trusted her gut.

Sure, he was a healthy, red-blooded male, and his frequent, umm, male reactions, in her presence were a dead giveaway that he thought she was hot. But he’d spent an entire night in bed with her and not done a single thing about it.

She trusted him. More or less.

His palm cupped the weight of her breast and she gasped in spite of herself. Liquid lust shot straight from his hand to her crotch. She squeezed her thighs together tightly, but it didn’t help. Her core throbbed hungrily, desperate for this man. It had been way too long since she’d had sex. It didn’t help that she had utter faith he would know exactly how to appease that particular aching need.

She tried to move away from his hand subtly, without waking him. But the mattress was so narrow she had nowhere to go, and his arm tightened with easy strength, holding her snugly against him. Was he awake? Was this her first test?

Her eyes narrowed. She never had been the type to walk away from a challenge. She rolled over to face Beau and insinuated her thigh between his. The guy had an impressive erection going. Not lacking in that department at all, she noted. She rested her palms on his chest, tracing the gorgeous collection of muscles there and letting her hand drift around his narrow, muscular waist to his back. Her nose nestled against the junction of his neck and shoulder, the heat of the man furnace-like.

Abruptly, he came wide awake. He didn’t move in any way to indicate to her that he’d woken up. One minute he was relaxed against her, and the next she was clinging to a deadly predator thrumming with tension, prepared to pounce at any second and eat her alive.

Beau was so appealing to the eye that it was easy to forget just how dangerous a man he was. His pretty-boy looks lulled a person into a false sense of security. She could see how Jimbo had made the mistake. Memory of that cold, flat, killer’s calm in Beau’s eyes last night in the restaurant flashed into her head. She wasn’t just playing with fire here. She was playing with a lit blowtorch.

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