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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.
