Firestorm

by Rachel Grant

  “I need you, Cal. These men aren’t exactly feminists. An American woman dealing in artifacts and precious metals will be noticed in a way that a cowed sex slave would not.”

  He snorted. “I doubt you can play cowed convincingly.”

  She shook her head, her disappointment evident as she tsked. “Typical chauvinistic military asshole bullshit.”

  “Typical spook.” She had no respect for military personnel who got the job done. He stood. “Find someone else to play master. I only work with trained soldiers.”

  She tsked again. “Taking your toys and going home at one slight? I expected better from you. I’m slighted constantly—by you and everyone on this damn base—but I don’t whine about it. And for the record, I’ve had as much training as you. Plus, I’m trained to work alone.”

  She stood and leaned on her desk. “I’m versed in special weapons and tactics. I can fight and kill unarmed. But unlike you, I’m expected to fuck to protect my cover. And if I don’t, and my cover is blown, our government will disavow me.” Her eyes hardened. “So yeah, I can act. My very life depends on my acting ability. It doesn’t matter if I can’t run ten miles carrying rocks like Special Forces, when my fate can turn on a badly delivered lie.”

  She circled her desk to stand before him. “I can do everything you can do, Sergeant. Backward, while wearing high heels. So you can take your chauvinistic attitude and shove it up your ass.”

  Standing before him was the fierce woman who hid behind a cold façade. There was far more to Savannah James than he’d imagined. And he could—and had—imagined a lot.

  The woman was sexy as hell and pushed all the right buttons. She was danger and desire in one scary, beautiful package. “When we’re in public, you’ll be meek and subservient?” he asked.

  “I never break character.”

  “And when we’re alone?”

  She ran a fingertip down his chest. Her eyes turned liquid with desire. And damn if his heart didn’t react to that.

  “If I think we’re being monitored, I will stay in character.” She traced his neck upward from Adam’s apple to chin to bottom lip, her nail finding the skin under his short beard. “I will do whatever is necessary to get the job done.” She leaned close, bringing her mouth a breath away from his. Her scent was soft, sultry. Sexy. “My job is everything. My reason for living. And I protect it at all costs.”

  Only now, when they stood so close, did he see the true emotion in her eyes, the lie of this husky-voiced seducer. She was showing him one facet of her acting, making him wonder if the surreptitious looks he’d received from her during their months in Djibouti had also been an act.

  He’d egotistically believed Savannah James was attracted to him, and now he couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been playing him all along. Setting him up.

  But why? It couldn’t be for this. No way could Savvy have foreseen the path that took them here.

  Except she was a spook, and the way she connected intel was freaky. And in the case of Drugov, she’d been on the money. Savvy was the unsung hero of that op. She’d identified Drugov as worth watching. She’d convinced SOCOM to send one of Cal’s teammates to Morocco to help trap the man. No one would ever give her credit, but her work had stopped a genocide.

  And she did it all without leaving Camp Citron.

  “So, Cal. Are you…”—she let out a soft, throaty laugh—“in?” Her sex-kitten voice combined with her scent would haunt him when he tried to sleep tonight. Her finger traced a straight line down his chest, over his heart, heading south, stopping just short of his belt.

  He could so easily picture her popping open his combat uniform buttons on the trip down. His erection caused his pants to bulge.

  She was acting. He, clearly, was not.

  In one fast motion, he lifted her and set her on her desk, planting himself between her spread knees. He slid a hand behind her neck. Her breath warmed his lips as he rocked into the cradle of her thighs.

  His erection brushed against her, and her breath hitched, telling him what he wanted to know. The sound, the flash of heat in her eyes, those were real. If anything, she wouldn’t want him to know she was aroused. She’d have masked it, if she could.

  But the queen of control hadn’t been able to hide that reaction.

  Satisfied, he released her and stepped back. They were equally exposed. Vulnerable. Heated up.

  A level playing field for a game in which she would almost certainly always have the upper hand. She was the spook. He was a simple soldier.

  Like her, his life was the job, the job his life. And also like her, screwups meant death—for him or his brothers-in-arms.

  “I’m in.” And he was, no hesitation. But then, he’d always been in, and it had nothing to do with Savvy’s sexy plea. His XO had made it clear he couldn’t turn this assignment down, not without pissing off his command. SOCOM wanted a mole in Savannah James’s operation. They wanted to know what the hell she was up to and why she operated unfettered by superiors in the CIA.

  When Savvy asked for Cal’s help, she’d unwittingly elected him for the job. She was a spy for the CIA. He was a spy for the US Army Special Operations Command.

  2

  “Pretend I’m one of the guys on your A-Team, Sergeant. Let me have it.” Savvy circled Cal on the sparring mat with fists up, looking for a gap in his defenses. He protected himself well, but he was holding back on throwing punches. Going easy on her. That would never do.

  This mission wouldn’t work if he saw her as less capable than him. He couldn’t be soft on her in any way. He’d expressed worry over her acting abilities, but really, his were the issue. He would have to treat her as his property—to use and abuse—and softness toward her could get them both killed.

  He took a swing, and she dropped her guard on purpose, taking the blow from his ungloved hand on the chin.

  “What the fuck, Savvy?” His words came out in an angry growl. Anger was better than concern, at least.

  “Will you look at that, I’m not made of glass. I didn’t shatter. Bring it, Cal.” She followed up by taking a jab at his face, which he blocked, but didn’t follow up with another punch.

  She took another swing at his head. He ducked, then popped up, sweeping her legs out from under her with his. But even as she fell, he caught her and followed her to the mat, cushioning her landing.

  “Dammit, Cal. Fight me.” She pushed at his chest as he lay beside her on the floor, glad she’d commandeered the gym for this training session. An audience would only make this more difficult for him.

  “What’s the point? I know you can fight. You know I can. There’s no reason for us to do this.”

  “To maintain cover, you might have to hit me.”

  His gaze turned hard. “You want me to beat you? That’s a hell of a thing to ask of a guy.”

  She tucked her knees beneath her and sat up. He was going to hate this, and she didn’t blame him. She lifted his fist from the mat and guided it to her chin. “Punching me in the face isn’t even the worst thing you might be required to do.”

  His palm opened, and he cupped her chin before dropping his hand as if her skin burned. He might not like her, but he was attracted to her, and she was counting on that to work in their favor during the mission.

  “You’re going to have to kiss me, touch me,” she continued. “And at times, I might not appear willing. You’ll need to be rough, to show the others you’re teaching me a lesson. You need to treat me as an object. Not a person.”

  She saw the moment her meaning registered. His dark eyes lit with a hard, angry fire.

  “This isn’t a game, Cal. I’m not talking about playing at sadomasochism or bondage for fun. I’m talking about maintaining cover to save our lives.”

  “You’re saying I might have to rape you.”

  “Not rape. I’m giving you consent right now to do what you need to do. It wouldn’t be rape. Not for me.” But what would it be for him? She didn’t want him walking into
this mission naïve about what they faced. What they might have to do.

  His role meant he had to be a savage master. Brutal to his core. That wasn’t Cal. He was a congenial buddy or hard-ass Special Forces operator, but never cruel. He needed to tap into his darker side for this mission. Fortunately, she tended to bring out the worst in him.

  He bolted to his feet and paced a large circle on the mat. “This is fucked-up.”

  “Hopefully, it won’t get that far. But the sexual nature of our cover is going to push us to the limit. These are Nikolai Drugov’s associates. The event will be a sex party with enticements of forced sex and drugs for all the guests. Drugs are out, so we’ll use sex. But you aren’t a fan of sharing or screwing random sex workers, so you brought your own. This gives you an excuse not to partake of Gorev’s offerings, and it protects me. I’m your property.”

  “And you expect no one will grab you the moment my back is turned?”

  She climbed to her feet and gave a slight shrug, not wanting Cal to know how much she feared that. “So you won’t turn your back.”

  “What you’re asking is impossible.” He stalked toward her, his handsome face a hard mask of anger.

  She took a step back, retreating before she had a chance to think better of it.

  He kept coming, driving her back to the wall. Her pulse jumped as he took a lock of her hair and rolled it between his fingers. “You think they won’t take one look at you, with your soft, silky hair and those wide brown eyes, and they won’t want you for themselves?” He ran a thumb along her jaw and over her lips. “You think they won’t take one look at your full lips and have X-rated fantasies about what they can do with your mouth? Fuck, Savvy. You’re one of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen, and you’re going to walk into a den of thugs acting as my whore. You’ll be a magnet for assault.”

  Her heart raced wildly from the moment his thumb touched her lip. It was possible she’d miscalculated in choosing Cal. She’d thought the attraction would make it easier to be close to him, as this job required. But she hadn’t factored in that with one touch, her focus was shot.

  She gripped his tight Under Armour shirt and pulled him even closer, turning his weapon back on him. “Then you’re going to have to be very jealous, Cal. Hurt the first man who touches me. Send a message. Because this”—she took his hand and slid it down her side, starting at her breast and ending on her ass—“is yours. And only yours.”

  He cupped her butt and pulled her against him. His mouth hovered above hers. “There’s one thing you need to know.” His voice was a low whisper. “Anything that happens between us on this op is an act. My body might respond to you, but I don’t trust you. You lie, manipulate, and bend people. So don’t start thinking it means anything if we screw.”

  His words sent ice through her body, as she knew he’d intended. “Hit me,” she said in a hard voice. “Give me a black eye. The uglier the better. Split my lip so no one will have fantasies about my mouth.” She flashed a cold smile. “Shouldn’t be too hard, given that I’m a conniving bitch.”

  He pushed back from her. “Sonofabitch. You’re doing it now. Manipulating.”

  “Hit me.”

  “No.”

  With a sharp kick, she swept his legs out from under him. Caught off guard, he went down. “Then don’t bitch about thugs wanting me if you aren’t willing to do anything about it.”

  He grabbed her ankle and pulled her down. In a flash, he had her beneath him, arms pinned above her head, his body pressed full length to hers. He supported his weight on one elbow, using that hand to hold her wrists together. “Stop baiting me, Savvy. You might have mad super spy skills, but I’m bigger and stronger, and I’ve had more physical training. My whole life is training.”

  She rocked her hips, stroking the growing erection he couldn’t suppress. “I can kill with guns, knives, and my bare hands, just like you.” She let her body go soft and compliant. “With my hands is my favorite. Get them up close and hard. They never saw death coming.”

  He released her hands and laughed. “I gotta hand it to you, Sav, this mission won’t be boring. Dangerous as fuck. Possibly suicidal. But watching you in action won’t be boring.”

  Admittedly, she’d fantasized about seeing Cal in action, but she wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction. She shoved him to the side and rolled to her feet. “Sparring is over. Shower and meet me in my office in thirty minutes. We need to go over the details of our cover story.”

  He stood and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  At least he wasn’t fighting her over command. This op was hers from beginning to end. It was good he understood that.

  Cal studied Savannah. She was all poise and cool control, sitting behind her desk. What would it take to break her icy self-possession? In the gym, she’d been turned on as he pressed close to her, but she never so much as flinched, not even when he insulted her.

  Instead, she’d twisted his own weapon against him. She had the upper hand during their sparring match and knew how to wield it, how to push his buttons. Worse, she hadn’t been baiting him just for kicks. She really had wanted him to hit her. And in so doing, she’d exposed a weakness he might not be able to overcome.

  He stared at her face—which he’d pictured in far too many sexual fantasies in the last few months—and tried to imagine throwing a punch that would blacken one of her beautiful, intelligent brown eyes.

  The thought made him sick.

  She wasn’t a blonde bombshell like Pax’s girlfriend, Morgan, and lacked the glamour and polish of Bastian’s girlfriend, Brie. Savannah’s beauty was subtle. Understated. She tried to fade into the background, like any good spy, but her eyes and those full lips were a car alarm that went off for no reason and couldn’t be silenced.

  She’d never go unnoticed. At least, not to him.

  If she wore makeup, it was understated and imperceptible, and he couldn’t describe a single outfit she’d worn in the months he’d known her—except for the workout clothes, which didn’t hide her full bust and perfect, round ass—because she dressed for invisibility. But no matter how much she downplayed, he saw her. He saw her understated beauty and her keen intelligence.

  He saw her passion for her job and her allegiance to the CIA.

  He couldn’t deny it, her intellect scared him. Not that he feared intelligence—brains were always a turn-on. What he feared was how Savvy used her mind. She made connections invisible to others, then she used what she saw to twist and torment intel out of people. She’d pushed Bastian to get close to Brie without a care for what it would do to the couple when Brie learned the truth. For Savvy, the ends always justified the means.

  No matter how attracted he was to her, that was the sticking point. He’d spent the better part of six months with his emotions on lockdown around her. She would never use him as she had Bastian. And now SOCOM was sending them on a covert mission together.

  Fucking great.

  There wasn’t a person at Camp Citron he liked less or a woman he wanted more.

  She opened a file on her desk, revealing the headshot of Jean Paul Lubanga she’d shown him before. “Operation Zagreus is an intelligence-gathering mission, and this is our primary target.”

  “Zagreus?”

  “Lubanga’s code name. Zagreus was a minor Greek god. From the underworld.”

  Of course Savvy would know the origin. But then, she’d probably assigned the code name. “C’mon. There’s more to it than that. Zagreus isn’t a common name from Greek mythology.”

  “In Greek, a hunter who captures living animals is called zagreus. Lubanga captures children and makes them dig for diamonds, or he sells them.” She shrugged. “And we’ve already used the better-known deities.” She pulled a blue passport from the file and handed it to him. “Your name is Mani Kalenga.”

  He took the booklet, which appeared to be genuine. He approved of her selecting the common Congolese surname that started with K-A-L. He presumed she’d done this because he wa
sn’t trained for covert work, which was fine with him. Less room for error if he could go by Kal.

  “Your father,” Savvy continued, “left Zaire in the early eighties when he married your white American mother, who’d worked in Kinshasa for a US mining company.”

  This was something of a reversal of his real parentage. His mother was from the Democratic Republic of the Congo—then called Zaire—and his father had met her when he worked at the US embassy in Kinshasa. They’d settled in the US not long before Cal was born in the mideighties. He nodded acceptance of this cover story. While he was fluent in Lingala, he was unmistakably American. He’d visited Kinshasa along with the village where his mother was born and the rainforests and jungles in the area, but he could never pass for a local.

  “You were working for Drugov’s organization in South Sudan,” Savvy continued, “providing private security, when you heard the oligarch was dead and decided to move into his business. You’d done some translating for him, which is how you knew about his plans to cut a deal with Lubanga for a diamond mining claim.”

  Again, he nodded. There were Lingala speakers in the southwest part of South Sudan. If Drugov had been seeking to get into the diamond game, it was easy to believe he’d take advantage of muscle that spoke the language of the capital of DRC.

  “I’m a merc, then. Former US military?”

  Savvy nodded. “Yes. Not Special Forces, though. We don’t want anyone digging in that direction. And they’d never trust you if you claimed to be Delta. We’ll leave it at soldier and dishonorable discharge.”

  Cal winced, but he knew it was necessary. His character was anything but moral and upright. Better they believe he was greedy enough to get caught—but not so sloppy he’d served time. He didn’t worry that the men he’d be dealing with would question his lack of patriotism. These men were loyal only to money and power, and found it easy to accept those traits in others. “Okay, then. Now tell me about you.”

  Savvy pulled out another US passport. “My French accent is too American, so I’m a tourist. I was a companion to an octogenarian on a Tanzanian and Kenyan safari. He’d always dreamed of going on safari, and I’d always dreamed of inheriting his money. Unfortunately, his children hired a private investigator to watch over us, and the investigator found me in bed—with you. We met at a hotel in Nairobi before the safari started, then you showed up at Amboseli National Park, which is where we were caught in bed together. I was dumped from the tour with nothing but my passport and clothing. You promised to buy me a plane ticket home from Dar es Salaam but are stringing me along. I have nothing and am completely dependent on you.”