by Cindy Dees
“I don’t have my bathing suit on,” she protested.
“I’ll go inside. You can just strip down and climb in.” At her wide-eyed shock, he added hastily, “Or you can climb in wearing your shorts and T-shirt. Go on. I’ll get you a towel.”
He stepped inside, but not before her groan of pleasure and pain drifted to him. The sound rolled through him, ripping away all his careful control. She’d made sounds like that last night. For him. With him. A fresh wave of lust, at least the twentieth so far today, pounded through him.
He bolted for the kitchen. Must stay away from her. Far, far away.
The phone rang, and he picked it up, abjectly grateful for the distraction.
“Report, Riley.”
Hollister. “She held up pretty well, today. Doc says her knee’s right as rain. He told me privately the worst of it will be convincing her of that, though. We baby-jogged four miles and hit the weight room. Not much upper body strength. But we’ll work on it.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the hot tub soaking away her pains and avoiding a protein shake.”
“A Bhoukari language instructor is coming over to the house tonight. He’ll be there in an hour. Get her fed and loosened up by then.”
Riley retorted dryly, before he stopped to consider the quip, “You’ll have to send over some booze for that, boss.”
Hollister snapped, “Don’t even think about it.”
Riley winced. “I got the message loud and clear this morning, sir. No worries on that front. I’m not throwing away my career.” Not even for Sophie Giovanni. Not even if it was killing him not knowing if she had any clothes on right now—or not.
Chapter 8
Sophie was shocked at how much Bhoukari she remembered. She hadn’t spoken or heard it since she was a kid. Yet, in under two hours, a salt-and-pepper-haired Bhoukari gentleman named Samir had her answering simple questions and participating in rudimentary conversation. Best of all, the lesson distracted her from the ominous soreness beginning to set in over her entire body. Where were Brian and those magic pills? He’d disappeared shortly after Samir showed up.
The language teacher had just left and Sophie was pondering the unpleasant prospect of dragging herself up the stairs to bed when the sliding doors burst open on a gust of wind and salt spray. A tall, black apparition loomed there, startling her right up off the couch. She let out a cry of pain and fear.
The intruder pushed back a tight-fitting black neoprene hood and…Brian.
“You scared me half to death!” she accused. “What are you doing?”
“I went for a swim.”
“In the ocean? But it’s freezing.”
“Hence the wet suit.”
They stared at each other for several seconds. She couldn’t help but notice how the tight rubber clung to him like a second—and highly informative—skin. The guy had an absolutely beautiful body. At a glance he might be labeled lean. But on second appraisal, he was the very pinnacle of fitness, one muscle blending into the next, not an ounce of fat on him anywhere. He might not carry the thick bulk of a five-times-a-week-at-the-gym bodybuilder, but he radiated the quiet strength of an extraordinarily powerful man.
Memory assailed her of that body under her hands, of it lying over her, pressing impossibly deep inside her…she looked up, startled.
His gaze was black. Intense. On fire.
Desire zinged between them like a Vandergraff generator, streaks of blue lightning crackling and snapping all around them. She took a step forward. She wanted to peel the neoprene off him, to kiss everything in its wake, to rouse him to the same fever pitch of last night, to rocket into deep space with him….
Their gazes locked. Every bit of the flames that were consuming her burned in his eyes. He took a step forward. Jerked to a halt. Growled, “Leave. Now. Go to bed. And lock your door.”
She fled. Coward that she was, she didn’t even remember to ask for one of the little wonder pills. She just ran. And barely felt her sore muscles protest as she hurried to the safety, or prison as the case might be, of her bedroom.
As exhausted as she was, sleep proved elusive. She listened pensively to Brian pacing downstairs—if the repetitive squeaking of the floor was any indication. Then he burst out with a single, vicious curse, and the sliding doors whooshed open once more. He must be going for another swim in the cold ocean.
She knew the feeling. Her body was on fire, and not all of it was the result of the day’s exercise. In fact, barely any of it was that innocent.
When she finally slept, her dreams were dark and confused, leaving behind images of tangled limbs and heavy breathing and a tingling, restless need in her core.
“Okay, Sophie. In this session, we’ll start learning about unarmed combat.”
Brian eyed her many reflections in the mirrored martial-arts studio’s walls. He stalked across the deeply padded floor toward her. Her eyes were big and apprehensive and made him want to pull her close and draw her into himself. Into the cocoon of perfect safety he fought a compulsion to wrap her in.
Ripping out his own fingernails would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to get through this session without crossing over the line with her. In spite of Hollister’s orders, he was going to have to lay his hands on her today—a lot. And that knowledge sent his thoughts spinning and his pulse and respiration soaring to at least double normal.
Surely the major understood the necessity for touching Sophie while teaching her how to defend herself. Hell, the boss was the one who’d put it in her training syllabus. Hollister might forgive him for touching her professionally in the name of training, but would emphatically not forgive any funny business with Sophie.
“Face the mirror,” he directed her.
She turned obediently to face away from him. Her derriere looked invitingly lush in those gray sweatpants and his hands ached to take that rounded flesh into his palms and pull her tight against him—Stop that! Since when were sweatpants sexy anyway? Apparently since she’d put some on.
He cleared his throat. “I’m going to put my arm around your neck. I won’t hurt you, but I want you to try to break out of my grasp. Okay?”
She nodded and assumed a slightly spread-legged stance. Oh, God. To run his hand down her body, over her smooth belly, plunge into those sexy sweatpants, to cup her hot center, to feel her respond to him, to feel her throb around his finger—Stop. That.
Gulping, he stepped forward and was assailed by the peaches-and-cream scent of her hair. When they got back to the house, he was throwing out her shampoo! He put his arm around her slender neck. Her skin was velvety smooth under his arm and he winced at the thought of the red marks he was about to put on its ivory softness.
He looked into the mirror and she was staring back, her eyes black with intense awareness of him.
“Are there any cameras in here?” she murmured, her voice husky with desire.
He jerked, abruptly aware of her backside pressing resiliently against him. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Control. Focus.
“No,” he answered firmly. “No microphones, either. But we’re still going to behave. This training is important.”
She swallowed hard under his arm and nodded. Both her hands came up to grasp his forearm lightly.
“Ready?” Lord knew, he was more than ready for her.
She nodded, her hair tickling his nose. Ahh, to bury his face in it and breathe in the scent of her—
She ducked fast, yanking him half-over her, then she surged upright at the same time something hooked behind the back of his right ankle. A hard jerk on it and he was sitting on his behind, staring up at her, dumbfounded.
Her eyes sparkled. “Hey, I did it! I dropped the big, bad commando.”
Son of a gun. His bruised pride gave way before her musical laughter and he grinned reluctantly. “I gather you’ve had some self-defense training?” he asked wryly.
“A little bit. My next door neighbor is a Tai Kwan Do instructor and thinks all wome
n should know a few moves to protect themselves.”
“He’s right.” Brian made to climb to his feet, and a hand appeared before his eyes.
“Need a hand?”
He took it, and she leaned back, tugging hard. He shouldn’t touch her. But he couldn’t resist. His palm tingled, sending jolts of lust pounding through him. Their eyes met again, and damned if she didn’t look as hot and bothered as he felt.
“All right, Bruce Lee,” he laughed. “Now that we know you can handle yourself, I’m not going to take it so easy on you. Let’s try that again, slowly. I’m going to counter your move and show you how to counter back.”
For the next half hour, they walked through various self-defense techniques. To the credit of her next door neighbor, Sophie wasn’t half bad at slipping holds and knocking an opponent off balance.
But then she was supposed to twist and pull her hand away from his, and instead of resisting her, he went with the move and let her pull him over on top of her. Were he a bad guy, he’d have let his body weight crash down on top of her, effectively knocking the breath out of her and immobilizing her. But this was Sophie. As they tumbled to the floor together, he threw out his hands and caught himself in a partial push-up so he didn’t crush her.
Her gaze reflected shock as his thigh came to rest between hers, and his chest flattened her generous breasts. Memory of those tempting mounds naked and in his mouth washed over him. Of her body clenching around him, hot and tight. Her long legs wrapping around him to pull him closer and deeper. Her nails scoring his back heedlessly in her extreme pleasure. The way her neck arched when she threw her head back at the moment of release.
He groaned involuntarily.
Her gaze snapped away from his mouth and up to his eyes.
So much for keeping this session innocent.
“Kiss me,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes, experiencing actual physical pain. “I’m trying, here, Sophie.”
“Please.”
“You’re killing me,” he mumbled.
“But you’ll kill me if you don’t. I…I don’t usually feel like this.”
“How do you feel?” He shouldn’t have said the words. He had to keep the fence up between them. But damned if he could stop the question from coming.
“I feel like sunshine flickering through aspen leaves.”
He flinched as desire roared through him. He must not give in. “I feel reborn. Like I walked through fire and didn’t get burned.”
“Stop!” He rolled away from her violently and lay on his back, an arm flung over his eyes. “I can’t have you, Sophie. We can’t have each other!”
“Why not?”
“My boss said he’d court martial me if I stepped out of line again.”
The crackling energy pouring off her ceased abruptly. “Oh.” A pause.
“Can he do that?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Gee. That sucks.”
He smiled in spite of the agony of trying to restrain his need for her. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“But I’m a civilian. Aren’t you allowed to see women when you’re off duty?”
He lifted his arm to glare over at her. “Off duty being the operative phrase. You’re my job, Sophie. I’m supposed to train you. To prepare you for your mission.”
She propped herself up on an elbow beside him. “Then you’re fired. Now kiss me.”
Laughing helplessly, he let his arm fall to the mat. “This is an important mission. You need to take your training seriously. I can’t, in good conscience, distract you from it. We’ve got to stay away from each other.”
“Brian, the way you make me feel when you simply walk into a room distracts me. The fact that you’re breathing and on the same planet as me distracts me.”
Oh, how he knew the feeling. “We’ve got to stop this. Before it goes any further.”
He felt her raise herself up on an elbow beside him and didn’t dare peek out from under his forearm at her.
“It has already gone too far,” she murmured. “We’re past the point of no return, don’t you think?” Her inner thigh touched his leg, sliding up his thigh toward parts of him that leaped to attention. Her hand stole across his chest, and his heart galloped wildly.
He jerked away from her, rolled and leaped to his feet, a violent movement born of desperation. “No! I can’t! We can’t. We mustn’t.”
He strode over to the door and grabbed a towel off the shelf there. “Get your things. We’re going for a run.”
The man started as his cell phone rang. The special one. Prepaid. Untraceable. Wincing, he opened it and said reluctantly, “Hello?”
“What’s the news?”
Fouad.
“Someone saw her get on an airplane.”
“In custody of whom?” Fouad blurted in surprise.
In his experience, it was never a good thing to surprise the Leader. But then, that was preferable to angering the Leader. And his next words would accomplish that. “Someone from Homeland Security. A man took her to Luke Air Force Base and put her on a business jet.”
“Where did the plane go?”
“I’m working on it. We have no contacts who could immediately answer that question. But I’ve met a girl. She works in the base operations center and can get access to the flight logs.”
“How soon? Things are nearly ready to go at this end.” Fouad added in a terse bark, “But I want this problem eliminated before we move. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. I will move with all possible haste.”
“Sleep with your girlfriend, torture her, kill her, I care not. But find out where the Giovanni woman went and get rid of her!” Fouad was all but screaming by the end of the order.
The man practically whimpered in his terror, “It shall be as you wish.”
Fouad disconnected, still muttering as he did so. The man at the other end closed his phone with shaking hands.
Oh, no. It didn’t do to anger the Leader. If he didn’t find and kill the woman soon, Fouad’s scant patience would fail. And then he was a dead man.
Sophie grimaced as yet another stitch stabbed her side like a dagger. It had been three weeks since the exchange in the martial-arts studio. Three interminable, miserable, unbearable weeks. A lifetime, really. Brian crammed so much exercise and training—from unarmed combat to firing guns to surveillance techniques—into every day that each one seemed to take twice the normal time to pass. The world he’d led her into was so radically different from her former life, she hardly felt like the same person. Her apartment, her job, her old friends were a vague and distant memory.
Her reality now was defined mostly by pain, her constant and only companion. Brian had held himself completely aloof from her—grouchy and barely speaking to her except to growl instructions—ever since that fateful self-defense lesson. Other members of his team floated through now and then to resupply the kitchen with food or to provide some special expertise in her training, but mostly the two of them were left completely alone.
Except for the cameras, of course. After her first lesson in electronic surveillance, she’d searched the house and located the extensive network of microphones and cameras throughout it. Whoever’d wired the place had been darned thorough. It made for an uncomfortable threesome—her, Brian and Big Brother.
She took comfort in the fact that Brian was starting to look as haggard as she felt. Which was odd, given that her training barely made him break a sweat most of time. In the evenings when she had her language lessons, he usually went out for a couple hours to get what he called a “real work out.” Nonetheless, the strain on both of them was starting to show.
Despite everything, she knew he still wanted her. The harder he pushed her, the more certain she was of it. Her knee was holding up surprisingly well, but the rest of her was a complete wreck. She ached in places she didn’t know she had muscles. She went to bed sore and woke up even more sore. Were it not for the hot tub and the doctor
’s little magic pain pills, there was no way she’d still be going.
This morning’s run, she hadn’t been quite as miserable as usual so far. Maybe this was the corner the doctor had told her she would turn if she was patient and hung in for the first several weeks of the program. And maybe she was just so exhausted that numbness was setting in.
She stumbled in the sand and fell, catching herself on her hands and knees. Panting painfully, she sat back on her heels to catch her breath
Brian was there instantly, on his knees in front of her. “Are you hurt?” he asked urgently.
Wow. The first sign of humanity out of him in days. “I tripped. I’m fine. Just need…to catch…my breath.”
She huffed and puffed for maybe a minute, and then made to stand up. She stepped on her left leg funny and the brace caught, throwing her off balance. She staggered and Brian’s arms went around her, catching her and gathering her against him in one quick movement.
“Sit back down.” He eased her to the sand, his hands skimming over her knee in concern.
“I’m fine. The brace got some sand in it or something and it hitched for a second.”
“Does this hurt?”
He took her foot in his hands and flexed the toe.
“No. I’m—”
He cut her off. “How about this?” He rotated her foot gently in both directions, then bent her knee and straightened it a couple times.
“I told you. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” he snapped. “I’ve been pounding the living hell out of you, and your body’s close to its limits. I can’t afford to injure you, dammit. If you’re in serious pain or so fatigued you can’t go any further, you’ve got to let me know.”
“But that would involve us talking,” she snapped back.
His gaze jumped up to hers. “Sophie, you can talk to me.”
“Hah!”
“Dammit, I’m worried about you! I don’t want to hurt you.” He waved his hand toward her knee.
“My knee and I are fine, thank you.”
“Then why are you sitting on your butt in the sand?” he shot back.
