Special Forces: The Recruit

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.