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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 (#uf45f6dd5-9c4c-5168-8a80-4d52617fdaee)
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 asheck.
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?”
