Special Ops Seduction

by Megan Crane

  But there was no getting away from the fact that the man was . . . an assault.

  Jonas was inarguably beautiful in a particularly male way. Since she’d met him, his hair had sometimes been long and sometimes been cut to short military precision. Currently it was somewhere in between, but the deep, silky blackness of it only made the dark of his eyes seem more intense. Sometimes he sported a bit of a beard. Today it looked as if he’d shaved, which only accentuated the perfect brown line of his jaw. The sharp blade of his nose and his high, knife-edged cheekbones stood as a counterpoint to the impossibly sensual mouth he tried his best to keep forever in its stern, unforgiving line. So no one would notice.

  But she already had.

  Like everyone in Alaska Force, Jonas was in astonishingly good shape. Rumor was that one part of his deeply classified background was that he’d been a Navy SEAL, which would explain why he was never cold. And worked out on blustery mornings like this in athletic shorts and a T-shirt, seemingly unaffected by the March weather.

  Which was unfair, because it was very, very hard for Bethan—who was a woman despite all the many ways she tried to pretend otherwise—to keep from staring at his muscled arms. His impossibly well-defined abs. The whole of him that was a finely tuned, masterfully honed weapon of destruction that was also, regrettably, as beautiful as it had been when she’d met him long ago. When they’d both been different people.

  Meanwhile, he looked at her with the same disdain he always did.

  Well, a voice in her said. Not always.

  “I don’t have a problem,” Jonas said, and he actually sounded . . . stiff. “It’s not unreasonable to prefer that the past stay in the past.”

  Bethan did not gape at him, because she had control of herself. Barely. “Could you refresh my recollection as to when, exactly, I ever so much as breathed a word of the past to anyone?”

  That dark gaze almost made her shiver. “I don’t like knowing that you could.”

  Bethan looked past him, back down the beach toward the gym and the lodge beyond, as if the cavalry might ride in to save her from this. But no one else seemed to be around. Because the fact that she’d stayed to work out by herself was completely unremarkable, and it would never occur to her teammates to save her from it.

  She jerked her attention back to Jonas because, as usual, she would have to save herself.

  “I joined Alaska Force a year and a half ago,” she said, fighting to keep her temper out of her voice, but not entirely sure she’d managed it. Oh well.

  He looked like a carving of himself. “I know when you joined, Bethan.”

  She would not react to the way he said her name. She pushed on. “Since then, I’ve watched other people come into Alaska Force. So I can compare and contrast the way that you react to new hires. And I can assure you that if anyone has indicated that you and I have any kind of a past, Jonas, it’s you. Because you don’t treat me like anybody else, and you never have.”

  Bethan waited for him to reply. He didn’t. Because he might as well have been one of the cold trees, and she knew all too well that he’d convinced everyone around him that how little he chose to speak was some kind of special ops virtue.

  When all it really meant, in her view, was that every time he opened his mouth his words were treated like pronouncements from on high.

  “Then again, maybe it’s not the past that’s the issue here,” she said after a moment, and for once, did absolutely nothing to curtail the expression on her face. “Maybe you’re just one more boring, run-of-the-mill sexist jerk who had no problem with me when I was in a subordinate, noncombat position, but can’t cope now that we’re on equal footing. You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “This is what I’m talking about,” Jonas growled, and he threw his sandbag on the ground, next to hers. It thudded against the rocky beach loudly.

  And it took Bethan a moment to realize that the thing buzzing around inside of her was a very particular kind of high-octane anticipation. A hit of pure adrenaline, like when she was on a mission and things were about to go down.

  It took her another moment to realize that she was pretty sure she’d just seen Jonas Crow display his temper. Imagine that.

  “I don’t like the reference.” His voice was that same cold growl, his dark gaze stark. “I don’t need anyone on this planet knowing what happened on any of the missions I’ve been on. I don’t talk about them, Bethan. And here you are, referencing one of the worst ones.”

  “No one is here. No one is listening to what I reference or don’t reference.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Both Templeton and Isaac have been on missions with you, and I don’t see you maintaining boundaries and border walls to keep them at a distance.”

  “That’s different.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Why, I wonder? What do both of them have that I don’t? Oh, right. Penises.”

  Something flared in his gaze, and that muscle in his jaw flexed, but he only stared back at her. “If you want to believe that I have an issue with women, go ahead.”

  One of the most maddening things about Jonas was that Bethan did not, in fact, think he was one of those who couldn’t handle female soldiers. She was intimately acquainted with the type. She knew overbearing males inside and out, and no one in Alaska Force had that particular stench around them.

  Especially not Jonas Crow. She had no idea why he wanted her to think otherwise.

  “Catch me up here,” she said after a moment, folding her arms over her chest and resenting him. For . . . everything, including this interruption to her workout, because she could feel the cold again, biting at her in every place she’d sweated. “You’re on a voluntary sandbag carry with me because . . . what? You thought you’d throw in a show of friendship to prove we don’t need mediation?”

  “I don’t put on shows.”

  “Good, because rule number one of a performance is to make sure there’s an audience,” she shot back at him. “Maybe you can tell me why you sought me out, in private and off mission, for the first time since I came to Alaska, to deliberately be obnoxious. What’s your endgame? Do you think that if you freeze me out long enough, or whatever it is you’re doing, I’ll leave?”

  He studied her, and she doubted that she was the only one who felt that kick between them. It had always been there. She suspected it always would. But if he was going to act like he didn’t feel it, she was, too.

  “The window for peak physical performance at this level is small,” Jonas said.

  “Thank you for that non-answer,” Bethan replied. “You’ve had over a year to get used to my presence here. You clearly haven’t. That sounds like a you problem, not a me problem.”

  He took an audible breath, which from a man of his talents and skills was akin to watching him crumble. Bethan froze a little.

  “I never expected to see you again,” he said, clearly surprising them both. “All things considered, I think I’m handling it pretty well.”

  She couldn’t let herself care that this was a huge admission for him. She couldn’t let herself care. It never led anywhere good. “Do you.”

  Her sarcasm hung there between them, like more fog.

  “Bethan.” And the few feet between them seemed charged. Bright, when there was only fog and the crash of waves against the beach. “You know and I know what happened. That’s more than enough.”

  “And here I was, hoping that I could write a book about it. Maybe make it into a Hollywood movie. Definitely do the talk show circuit.”

  “If that means I have to change my behavior, fine. I’m happy to do that.” He didn’t exactly glare. He didn’t have to glare to slice a person in half. “That’s why I’m out here on the beach, carrying two hundred pounds for no reason.”

  She opened her mouth to snap at him, but paused. Considered.

  Jonas was a m
aster strategist. He could manipulate the sun into thinking it was the moon and then thank him for it.

  This did not strike her as an effective strategy, unless . . .

  “Is this . . .” She tilted her head a bit to one side. “Is this your form of an apology?”

  That muscle in his cheek worked overtime.

  “Okay. Wow. I think it is.” There was a fizzy thing inside her then. It seemed to dance around, taking up more space than it should. “I don’t really know where to put that.”

  “I’m not apologizing. I have nothing to apologize for.”

  Jonas eyed her sandbag, then picked his up, letting out a grunt at the effort to haul the thing up off the ground. Bethan made sure to pick up her own bag while making absolutely no sound, because he might or might not have considered this an apology, but there was always a pleasure to be found in petty victories. Another seemingly small truth that had served her well along her chosen path.

  But standing around holding a heavy sandbag was even less fun than talking with him, so she turned and kept going toward the far end of the beach. Because she refused to cut her carry short because he was here, apparently dead set on annoying her even more than usual.

  The next time she dropped her bag, because she literally couldn’t hold on to it another second more, they’d made it down to the end of the long beach and halfway back again. Jonas dropped his, too, and they both stood there, panting.

  And Bethan honestly couldn’t tell if that racket inside her chest was from exertion or from him.

  She definitely wasn’t pleased that after a year and a half of hard work to keep herself from noticing that Jonas was a man, she seemed to have backslid. Right back into that traumatic space she didn’t like to think about, right after that mission where she’d first met him but before she’d decided on a path of action to do something about those memories.

  “This is great,” she managed to get out, still trying to catch her breath. “Is this what friends do?”

  “Pick up your bag,” he growled.

  And the last, long trudge was the worst yet, but she did it.

  Because it was like most things. Or most things in her life, anyway. Sometimes Bethan ended up completing horrendous tasks not because she had such a stellar strength of will, much as she might like to think she did, but because she was entirely too competitive for her own good. And given that the people she was forever competing against were men of Jonas’s caliber, that meant that if she wanted to compete at all, she had to force herself into levels of intensity she would obviously prefer to avoid.

  But that was also why she was in such excellent shape.

  Still, when she got back inside the box of pain, she threw her sandbag back into the pile with far more force than necessary.

  “Well,” she said, eyeing Jonas the way she might any enemy combatant, “this has been delightful. I feel super close. Let’s do it again.”

  She headed for the door of the gym, ready to go back to her cabin and take a breather between her workout space and the briefing. Just a little moment to recalibrate.

  “Bethan.”

  She remembered, suddenly, how she’d reacted out there in that terrible desert to her name in his mouth. It was worse now. It felt more intimate, here in an empty gym with only the fog outside as a witness.

  “I never thanked you,” he said, his voice low.

  Bethan’s hands curled into fists, and maybe it shouldn’t have surprised her that this man, who was the catalyst for so many things in her life—Ranger School, for example, and because of that, Alaska Force—should be the only person who could manage to get to her these days. The only person she saw regularly, that was. She’d been waiting for his hold on her to fade, but it had been years.

  Maybe it’s not going anywhere, she was forced to acknowledge.

  And she didn’t try to hide the fact that she was clearly fighting off her temper when she turned around to face him.

  “You didn’t,” she agreed. “Because you’re not thankful. You’re furious.”

  “I wouldn’t use that word.”

  “And I really hope you’re not about to insult me by thanking me now, as if throwing me some bone you don’t even believe in is going to make me feel better about something that I don’t feel bad about.”

  Maybe he sighed. Maybe he said her name again. Neither was acceptable, so Bethan kept going.

  “I don’t have a problem, Jonas. You do. Maybe that’s something you should figure out, but leave me out of it while you do, because I’m here to do a job. I don’t need to be a part of your therapy sessions.”

  She expected the usual stonewalling. He was Jonas Crow, who could disappear while you were looking straight at him and make you question whether you’d ever seen him in the first place.

  Instead, he nodded. Curtly. “Fair enough.”

  And she wanted to stand there a moment. Express her extreme surprise that he was suddenly being reasonable about something when that was so unlike him. But if she’d learned anything in the military, it was how to spot a tactical advantage when it presented itself. Not to stand around congratulating herself out of that advantage.

  So even though it was the last thing she wanted to do, she turned around again and walked—sauntered, really, because she refused to pick up her pace in case he interpreted that as an emotional reaction on her part—away from him.

  And the fake attempt at a long-overdue conversation he didn’t want to have and she’d given up expecting to have years ago.

  By the time she made it to the briefing, she had all her usual defenses back in place, where they belonged. And she’d made a vow to herself.

  She was done with the Jonas thing. She would quit him the way people quit cigarettes—cold turkey, no matter how it hurt. She would treat him like he was a piece of furniture, or a wall. No need to look at him. No need to worry about him. No need for him to claim all this real estate in her head.

  This needs to be over, she told herself, again, as she walked into the meeting.

  Everyone who wasn’t out on an active mission was crowded into the lodge in the big, lobby-like main room where they entertained clients and gathered themselves. The place was all frontier chic, as Bethan’s friend Everly liked to call it. Comfortable, masculine couches, wood and stone, and Pendleton blankets. Everly was not here today, because while she was married to former SEAL Blue Hendricks, she was not herself a member of Alaska Force.

  Besides, Everly had said once, I work remotely so I don’t have to sit in meetings anymore.

  Bethan smiled at Blue as she took her usual place, standing against one wall. She would have preferred to sit closer to the big stone fireplace, but she didn’t allow herself unnecessary comforts while she was on the job. Too easy to get soft. To melt into complacence, and the moment she was complacent, she risked becoming average.

  And average was unacceptable. Excellent was her average. She viewed it as failure.

  She was aware of Jonas, drifting into the room like smoke and standing apart from the rest of them, as suited the Alaska Force ghost. But Bethan didn’t allow herself to look in his direction.

  Isaac came in from the hall that led to the various offices and command centers, Oz in his wake. Bethan stood straighter, because neither one of them looked happy. Oz sat down in his preferred seat, flipping open his laptop. Isaac frowned at the tablet in his hand.

  And suddenly the big flat screen on the wall was filled with the face of the scientist she’d personally helped deliver to his safe house in Montreal yesterday.

  “Some of you will recognize Dr. Tayo Sowande,” Isaac said.

  Bethan caught herself looking at Jonas and pinched herself on the thigh. Viciously.

  “Yesterday, after extracting his sister from Chile, we picked him up in Portugal and took him to a safe house in Canada.” Isaac looked out around the room, his s
ober gray gaze making Bethan’s stomach drop, because that was bad news. The whole room knew it—she could feel the air go taut. “The extraction team was concerned that the operation was a little too easy. And sure enough, it was. Because he’s gone.”

  Four

  “What do you mean, he’s gone?” Jonas clipped out from his usual position in these briefings—or anywhere else. Back against a wall, egress points identified and in view, and ready to make his exit at a moment’s notice.

  Something he’d learned as a kid and that the service had only refined.

  “The client called in thirty minutes ago,” Isaac said, nodding at the screen. “After hearing nothing from Dr. Sowande or his sister all day, he went over to the safe house to check in on them. His expectation was that following their ordeal, they were both taking some time to recover. But the safe house was empty.”

  “No sign of forced entry or struggle,” Oz said before anyone could ask the question. “It’s as if neither one of them was ever there.”

  Jonas went back over every detail he carried around in his head about this particular operation. “The client is a highly placed academic with ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Could Sowande have decided the safe house wasn’t as safe as advertised?”

  Though he’d been there when the scientist and his sister had walked through the little house. They hadn’t seemed anything but grateful. And deeply exhausted. Their reactions had been in line with what he’d expect to see in individuals who’d been through a traumatic experience and were wrestling with the possibility of hope—not runners.

  But people were complicated.

  “It’s possible something spooked them and they ran,” Isaac said. “But I wouldn’t expect the safe house to have no trace of them at all if that was the situation.”