by Cindy Dees
He blinked, looking startled at the admission.
“For example, my sniper rig is modified to weigh less than a standard model. I sacrifice some range on my shots, but it’s a trade-off. Pass out of exhaustion trying to hump in the weapon to a target, or work my way in for a closer shot and actually make the kill.”
“So you’re a short-range specialist, then?”
She nodded. “I don’t do half bad with a long-range rig. But if I’m hauling my own gear to the kill zone, I usually go short. If I were as big and strong as some of my teammates, I might consider doing more long-range work, though.”
“It’s daunting to consider women stronger than you. I felt you take me down this afternoon. You’re no wimp, honey.”
“Nah, I’m the little, quick one on the team. Python and Sidewinder are a lot stronger than I am.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Six, plus one prospect in training.”
“Any plans to expand the team?”
“You’d have to take that up with General Wittenauer or the president. We’d like to expand the program, though. We’ve been talking about how to recruit and train more women and the sorts of skills sets we’d look for.”
“Like what?”
She smiled. “Well, a big, strong sniper for one. More linguists with a broader range of languages. And—” she broke off. Jeff probably wasn’t ready to hear the next idea they’d been tossing around.
“And what?” he prompted.
“Nothing.”
His gaze narrowed. “And a few high-priced call girls with a penchant for guns, perchance?”
She jolted. How had he picked that thought out of her brain? She schooled her face to perfect stillness. “An interesting idea. What do you think of it?”
He frowned. “My knee-jerk reaction is to hate the idea of asking women, regardless of previous experience, to use their bodies to do my job.”
“And your reaction after you give it some thought?”
He shrugged. “I can see the usefulness of a…skill set…like that. It could certainly open some avenues of intelligence collection that the Special Forces have not traditionally had access to.”
“But it would be controversial.”
He snorted. “As if the idea of women running around in the Special Forces killing people and blowing stuff up isn’t?”
“Well, there is that.”
They traded smiles.
He murmured, “I gotta confess, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my brain around the whole idea of women operatives. Had I not seen you do what you did today, I’d be highly skeptical.”
“And now you’re only moderately skeptical?”
“My shoulder still aches from where you twisted it, my thumb is sore from when you dropped me the second time, and my ego’s definitely bruised. When pain’s involved, I’m a quick learner.”
Hidoshi used to say she would never become a great warrior because she spent all her time trying to avoid getting hit and not attacking. But she’d learned. She could take pain with the best of them now.
She commented. “Lots of male operators get cranky when they first find out about us. They forget we’re all playing for the same team. That we uphold and defend the same Constitution and fight for the same values.” She looked him squarely in the eye. “You’re not going to make that mistake, are you?”
He sighed. “Honestly, I had about as Neanderthal a reaction to the idea of female operators as the next guy.” He looked up at her and grinned. “But then you planted me on my butt. Twice. I guess I’d have to say I’m convinced.”
“I didn’t really hurt you, did I? I was trying not to.”
He grinned ruefully. “I’d hate to see you go at it when you really mean someone harm. Nah, I’m not hurt. Nothing that won’t recover. Except maybe my ego. Sometime I want to go one-on-one with you on a mat…when I’m prepared for you to jump me.”
She grinned impishly. “It won’t help. I’ll still win.”
He laughed. “Oh, really? Care to place a small wager on that?”
Finally. A natural response to her that he might give to one of his male counterparts. She smiled. “Anytime, any place, big guy. Name your bet.”
Chapter 4
When the check came, Kat reached for her purse.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jeff growled. “My mother would tan my hide if she caught me inviting a woman out and then not paying for the date.”
Kat started. This hadn’t been a date—had it? Sure, there’d been romantic candlelight and the ocean and the sexy guy, of course. But a date? She didn’t do dates. She had no time for them.
Wary, she watched as he stood up and came around behind her chair to hold it for her. His fingertips trailed lightly along her bare shoulder, sending shivers shooting through her. Oh, God. He’d given her goose bumps. She silently prayed he wouldn’t notice her reaction to his touch.
“Can I tempt you into a walk along the beach?”
She hesitated to accept the offer. Whatever was happening between them was moving far too fast, slipping out of her control. Caution and control—those had been her mantras her whole life, and they’d never let her down so far.
Jeff coaxed, “I’m pretty sure it’s a felony to visit a tropical paradise and not walk on the beach by moonlight.”
Caution, indeed. This guy was a runaway freight train! “Jeff—” she started.
He effectively cut off her protest by pulling her seat back and cupping her elbow lightly. Caution and control fluttered away on a warm breeze that smelled of salt air and mystery. One touch from this guy and so much for a lifetime of training. She mentally shook her head in disgust at herself since Hidoshi wasn’t there to do it for her.
“Why so quiet all of a sudden?” Jeff asked as they headed toward the water.
She glanced over at him, surprised. “I’m always quiet.”
“You don’t say much, but I can hear you thinking most of the time.”
Startled, she stopped in the act of bending down to kick off her high-heeled sandals. “How?”
“I suppose I’m reading body language. Your eyes are always moving, you’re always assessing everything and everyone around you.”
“Like you’re not? All special operators do that as a matter of habit.”
He shrugged. “It’s more than a habit with you. It’s like you’re always waiting for the next attack. You don’t always have to be on duty, you know.”
She stopped. Turned to face him. The moonlight sculpted his features in pale relief. The man had definitely hit the jackpot in the genetic lottery of looks. “It’s not about being on duty or off. This is who I am.”
If it was possible for a marble statue to convey skepticism, he did so then, staring down at her for a long time in silence. Finally, he said, “You mean to tell me you have no feelings? No desires? No personal life? Just the job?”
Frustration roiled through her. Of course she had those things. But they were private. To be kept to oneself. Never on display for others to see. “I am not, at heart, American. I am Asian. Old school.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was taught not to wear my emotions on my sleeve as you Americans do. I was taught to be…” She didn’t know what word to use next. Refined? That would insult him by implying that Americans were coarse. Restrained? That sounded like she hog-tied her feelings and totally denied them. Repressed? Probably accurate, but not exactly something she liked owning up to.
“Kiss me,” he ordered abruptly.
Rattled to her core, she sputtered, “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me. I’m not convinced you actually have any emotions at all. Prove it.”
“By kissing you?”
“By kissing me.” He braced his feet in the sand, his expression implacable as he stared down at her.
“This is ridiculous. I’m not letting you double-dare me into kissing you like a couple of kids in the schoolyard.”
&n
bsp; “Ahh. So you’re a coward, too,” he commented blandly. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. I pegged you for more courage than that.”
Courage? He dared to question her courage? “Is this the part where I fling myself at you and kiss your lights out to prove how brave and emotional I am?” she retorted scornfully.
“It would help. I’m beginning to have serious doubts over whether or not a heart beats inside your chest or if there’s only a robot ticking in there. Which is it?”
Hurt streaked through her. After all his talk of Cupid’s Bolt and destiny, how could he say something like that? She whispered, mostly to herself, “Sometimes I ask myself the same question.”
He stepped forward so quickly she had no time to evade him. Or maybe something deep inside her didn’t want to evade him. Either way, his arms came around her gently, wrapping her in the warmth and shelter of his body. “Ahh, baby, I’ve looked into your soul. You’re all woman in there. You just have to learn to let her out.”
Easier said than done. A lifetime of teaching said to do otherwise.
Jeff murmured, “It’s not hard. Watch. Like this.”
And before she knew what was happening, he’d put his finger under her chin and lifted her mouth to meet his. Shock ripped through her, followed by a melting warmth that all but buckled her legs out from under her. It was an innocent enough kiss, just his lips, warm and firm and gentle on hers. No demands, no invasions, no assertion of macho dominance. And it was all the more seductive for the lack of aggression.
His hair was silky beneath her fingers—how in bloody hell did her hands get around his neck and into his hair? As quickly as the question exploded in her brain, the answer followed, a soft sigh of surrender deep in her soul. Who cared how they got there? The fact was her arms were twined around his neck, her breasts pressed intimately against his chest, his belt buckle jabbing her belly, his muscular thigh rubbing the junction of her thighs as his right arm drew her up more tightly against him.
Oh, my. He felt so…right.
His left hand slid under the weight of her hair at her neck, cupping her head as he sipped at her, kissing and nibbling until a foreign irritation built low in her gut, a driving need for more—more of his touch, more of his mouth and hands upon her, more skin on skin, more everything.
She raised up on tiptoe, her mouth opening beneath his, her kisses abruptly—and wholly independent of her will—eager and demanding. Something wild within her wanted more than a hint of this unleashed man. She wanted his passion, his body; heck, his soul.
Jeff broke off the kiss, thankfully panting as hard as she was. It was with extreme reluctance that she let him go. Only the threat of seeming obsessive and clingy unwound her arms from around his neck. But damn if her palms didn’t land on his chest, measuring the bulge of his pectorals. A whole lot of push-ups had gone into those.
“See, Kat? There’s a passionate woman in there, waiting to get out.” He spoke lightly, but she guessed at the effort that carefree tone took.
His arms fell away and she stumbled back in the deep sand, appalled. She’d just kissed her boss. With tongue. While squirming against him like a cat in heat.
She swore long and hard at herself in every language she knew.
They stood there an embarrassingly long time, both catching their breath and staring at one another in varying degrees of shock. He looked as shaken by what had just happened as she was. Her thoughts spun frantically. Was that a good sign or a bad sign? Had she been a terrible kisser? Was he having second thoughts about his Cupid’s Bolt? What if—
She broke off her panicked train of thought sharply. These sorts of thoughts were exactly why she’d sworn off relationships entirely by the time she’d graduated from college. She just didn’t need the insecurity and uncertainty of it all.
“I—”
“You—”
They spoke simultaneously, and she was quickest to murmur, “You first.”
He huffed in what sounded like frustration. “I ought to apologize, but the only thing I can think of is to ask you to do that again with me. That was…amazing.”
The tone in his voice on that last word was almost worshipful. Abject relief turned her innards to jelly. “Really?”
He opened his mouth to answer and she waved a sharp hand to cut him off. “Strike that. I’m not sixteen and don’t need the boy to tell the girl he liked kissing her. If you liked it, you’ll do it again sometime. If not, I’ll live.”
He swept her up in his arms before the words had hardly escaped her lips. His mouth swooped down on hers this time with all the aggression—and finesse—she’d expect of a hunky Special Forces soldier who’d had his pick of women for most of his adult life. His body, his mouth, his hands, his essence, surrounded her, drew her in to him until she wasn’t sure where she ended and he began. It was much more than a kiss. It was a blending of souls. She was staggered by the sensations, both physical and emotional, that he evoked in her so effortlessly.
When he finally lifted his head to smile down at her, she could only stare up at him in shock.
He remarked matter-of-factly, “All right then. I believe we’ve established that I like kissing you and plan to do it again. Thoroughly and often.”
Her toes curled into the cold sand, squishing it up between her toes pleasurably. Thoroughly and often, huh? Her pulse leaped at the thought.
He added ruefully, “I promised you a walk on the beach, didn’t I? And I never break a promise.” He gestured at the silver strip of sand stretching away from them. “Which do you want? The ocean side or shore side?”
“Which side would your mother tell you to take?”
He grinned. “She’d tell me to walk on the ocean side where the water’s deepest and coldest and let you dribble your tender little toes in the foam.”
“Well, let’s not disappoint your mother,” she replied lightly.
He laughed warmly. “Honey, when you give her grand-kids, she’ll think you walk on water.”
Kids? Them? The mere thought knocked her completely off balance. Jeff steered her along the water’s edge, mindful of her tender little toes. Which was ridiculous, of course. The two of them regularly swam in water much colder than this as part of their training. They both had experienced depths of hypothermia most people never imagined, let alone suffered through. With her small body mass and low body fat, cold water training was particularly miserable for her.
“What are you thinking about?” he murmured. “You’re frowning.”
She started. She never showed facial expressions if she didn’t want to, and at the moment she wasn’t going out of her way to exhibit a frown, thank you very much. “I am not frowning,” she disagreed.
He stopped and turned to face her. “Are too. I can feel you frowning without even having to look at you.”
If she weren’t consciously focusing on her expression at the moment, her brows definitely would have slammed together in a big frown. “What? Are you psychic?” she asked lightly.
“It’s Cupid’s Bolt. We’ve got a connection, darlin’. I’m tellin’ ya. We were meant for one another.”
“What’s my mood now?”
He grinned. “You’re annoyed that I read you like an open book, but it doesn’t take being psychic to know that. You’re also wildly attracted to me and confused as hell over what to do about it.”
“That’s a pretty good pickup line. I bet you get lots of girls with the whole ‘destined for each other by Cupid’s arrow’ bit.”
One second she was walking down a starlit beach, and the next he’d spun her around to stare up into the face of fury. Although dark shadows shrouded his features, she couldn’t miss the genuine anger rolling off him.
“I’ve never spoken of that to any woman, let alone experienced it with one. It’s a long and honored tradition in my family, and I would never use it as a cheap pickup line.” His gaze narrowed even more. “Trust me. I don’t need a line like that to get laid. I get all the girls I want without
it.”
After that kiss he’d planted on her, she didn’t doubt it. But then a second reaction overcame her. She struggled for a moment to identify it, and then froze in shock. She was jealous. She staggered back from him, stunned that the idea of him sleeping around with women he casually picked up bothered her so much. Something was wrong with her. Her emotions were flying all over the place. She was never like this! Her hormones must be out of whack. Or maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep recently.
Formally, she said, “I apologize if I offended you or your family’s honor.” She made a low bow of apology with her palms pressed together before her.
She straightened, and Jeff was peering at her quizzically.
“What?” she muttered. “That’s how I was taught to apologize.”
“Why the bow?”
“If you wanted to strike me, I was giving you an opening to do it.”
“Why in hell would I want to do that?”
“To save face, of course.”
Comprehension lit his face. “You really were raised in traditional Asian fashion, weren’t you?”
“You have no idea.”
His hand touched her upper arm and then slid down to her hand. He turned, tucking her hand in his elbow and commenced walking. “Tell me about it.”
She never talked about it. Not the grueling hours of workouts, not the secret training methods that elevated her skills beyond what most mortals dreamed of, not the traditional code of honor, passed down for centuries from warrior to warrior. Nor did she talk about the slow death of the ancient way of life that had forced Hidoshi to pass his legacy on to an orphan girl he’d picked up out of a gutter.
Jeff murmured, “I’ll tell you about my life if you’ll tell me about yours.”
To her shock, she heard her voice say, “I was born in Seoul, Korea. My grandfather was from Japan. He raised me on a small farm in the country.”
Hidoshi hadn’t been her blood relative as far as she knew, but he’d adopted her in an ancient, if not legally recognized, ceremony. More to the point, he’d pulled her off the streets where she’d been wandering as a toddler and had likely saved her life. And then there was everything else. Her education, her martial arts training, the affection and respect he quietly gave her. Somehow, calling him her grandfather wasn’t nearly description enough of what he’d meant to her.
