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“W hat the hell was that all about?” Sophia asked.

“A test,” Connor replied. “I think.”

He’d been close, so close to failing that test. The general knew exactly what he was asking of him when he asked if Con would take responsibility for Sophia.

Con alone had survived the IED that blew up the vehicle half of his team had been in. Five men who’d been his brothers in every way but blood. Five men who died, leaving him behind to pick up the pieces of their lives and his own. He wanted another mission that would put him in a position to deal a little payback, and if he got killed doing it, it was a price he was willing to pay.

He’d tried to get assigned to another team, but his temper, so well controlled before the blast, hadn’t lasted past the first battle simulation. He’d beat the crap out of an “enemy” soldier before recalling that it was just a simulation.

Stone was testing him all right, testing to see if what Con needed to pull himself out of shit creek was a protection mission for a woman who needed it more than anyone he’d met in a long time.

He’d be stuck like glue to her for months.

“They were both very adversarial,” Sophia said staring at the door. “Almost as if they were trying to make us mad.”

“No almost about it. That’s exactly what they were trying to do.” Connor looked at Sophia, reined in his anger, and asked, “Bruise easily?”

She blew out a breath. “I had a childhood leukemia. The chemo and radiation therapy resulted in below normal bone density. I also have idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.”

He was going to have to add a new language to his list: Medicine. “In English, please?”

She sighed like it was the fiftieth time she’d had to explain it. “My bones aren’t as strong as they should be. And my body doesn’t make enough of one of the cells in my blood that’s responsible for clotting.”

He couldn’t keep his eyebrows from rising. “Okay, now I understand why Max was so uptight about you learning hand-to-hand. We’re going to start with Tai Chi and a few escape maneuvers that aren’t fancy, but are effective, and with a minimum of contact between you and an attacker.”

“You can minimize contact with an attacker?”

“Yep, ’cause there’s one rule and one rule only that’s king in hand-to-hand.”

“What’s that?”

“The only person you can control without question is yourself. If you know yourself, your strengths, limitations, reactions, and responses, you win the fight.”

“Is that Confucius?”

He couldn’t stop the smile. Did she have any idea how freaking cute she was when she got all serious? “Nope. That’s Connor Button. It means I’m going to teach you how to cheat. I’m going to teach you how to fight with whatever is in the room, no matter where you find yourself.”

“Cool.” She hummed a little. “Okay, your turn. What was General Stone so worried about when it comes to you?”

How much should he tell her? “I had to fight to earn my return to duty. Getting blown up and requiring months of physical therapy doesn’t look good on a soldier’s record.”

“And?”

“And if this assignment hadn’t come along when it did, the best duty I could have gotten was full-time instructor back in the States.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, except my job here isn’t done.” It wouldn’t be done until he’d avenged his dead. He sure as hell couldn’t do that as an instructor.

“Tell me about your injuries.”

Her question was a shot to the gut. The last thing he wanted to remember was the days spent lying on a hospital bed, unable to get up and walk to the can by himself. “You don’t ask for much, do you?”

“I know what it’s like to feel powerless.” Shit, she wasn’t backing down an inch. “To be inside a body that won’t do what it’s supposed to do. I understand pain and I understand how hard it is to rebuild strength in muscles weakened by lack of use. It’s frustrating. It makes you angry. You feel a fear that’s bone deep.”

He might have gotten angry with her attempt to identify with him, except the expression on her face wasn’t pity, it was understanding and acceptance. “I was in a hospital for a month. A bed for three weeks, a wheelchair for one and in therapy for six months,” he said. “How about you?”

“I was in and out for a year. Sometimes for a day or two, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. Chemotherapy was hard. Painful, and I couldn’t keep any food down. That all changed when I went into remission.”

“How old were you?”

“Eleven when I was diagnosed with leukemia. Almost fourteen when they confirmed remission. But I’d been doing school on my own and once I started to feel better, nothing could keep me from devouring knowledge and information like it was candy.”

“Shit,” he drawled. “You never had a chance to grow up normal.”

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Nope.”

Touchy subject. Well, he knew how to get around that. “Neither did I.”

“Oh?” she asked with a disbelieving snort.

“I have four older sisters.”

Her jaw dropped open. “Four?” She burst out laughing. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

He grinned and shrugged. Yup, they were just two odd peas in a pod. Max thought she was high maintenance, but she wasn’t. What she was, was defensive. All that snark was her way of protecting herself. She used her words and blunt honesty to keep men at bay because she didn’t know how to flirt or make chitchat. She never had time for the bullshit as a kid and she probably thought she didn’t have time for it now.

“Tell me about your schedule,” he said to her, getting down to business. She scrolled through a couple of pages on the tablet sitting on her desk before stopping and staring at the screen.

“Okay, I’m free after dinner tonight, unless there’s an emergency where I’m needed.”

He liked her professionalism. “Good. You’ll get your first Tai Chi lesson then.”

She nodded and went back to her microscope, humming under her breath. She looked...happy.

So, why did he feel guilty?

Maybe because he was hoping this assignment would give him the opportunity to kill at least one very bad guy, and probably get killed himself?

“I need to get the info on this Akbar asshole and there’s probably a stack of paperwork with my name on it that needs to be signed. I’ll try to make it back before dinner.”

“Okay,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at him, absorbed by whatever was in view on the microscope.

Shaking his head, but oddly relieved at how fast she’d tuned him out, Con stopped at Max’s assistant’s desk. “How’s my room assignment?”

“Good, sir. It turns out you were beside Dr. Perry already.”

“Eugene,” Connor said, leaning against his desk. “I’m not a sir. I’m a sergeant. Big difference. Plus, I owe you a couple of favors. Call me Con.”

“Favors?”

“Yeah, you clued me in to the fact that all this—” he waved a hand to indicate the drab, unassuming building “—is a lot more important than it looks.”

“How many hours until she decides?” Eugene asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” Con answered. “What do you think my chances are?”

“I bet fifty bucks on you,” the kid said with a grin.

***

S ophia finished her report on the last sample and hit Send on the computer. Usually, she felt tired and only wanted to go to bed or read a book. Tonight she was going to learn Tai Chi. Part of her was excited, the other part was irritated by that excitement.

Dinner was quick at the food court in the Freedom souq , and she ate with Max and Eugene as usual. What was unusual was the addition of Connor. Sitting next to Eugene, Connor looked huge. Now she understood why women called a muscular man’s arms “guns.” His were dangerous. Delicious.

Sophia froze, her fork halfway to her mouth. Delicious? Where had that thought come from? She shoved the fork in, chewed and glanced around the court. There were other female soldiers eating, here and there. More than one of them watched Connor’s big shoulders shake as he laughed at something Eugene said.

As Sophia looked at him, her stomach felt funny in a way that had nothing to do with food.

She choked on the mouthful she’d just tried to swallow. Oh, no way, she was not in lust with him.

She continued to cough and Max frowned at her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and grabbed her glass of water. “Went down the wrong way,” she managed to croak out. A couple of sips of water and the coughing calmed down.

Her blush didn’t. Not when Connor was looking at her with concern on his face.

“What are you thinking about so hard that you forgot how to eat?” he asked.

She almost choked again, but managed to get it down this time. “Nothing.”

Across the room a group of soldiers turned to look at her, one of them with a venomous expression on his face.

The asshole who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Suddenly, she wasn’t hungry anymore.

The asshole’s expression transformed into a sick smile as he stared at her.

She was on her feet and headed toward the dirty tray racks before she’d consciously made the decision to move. She shoved her tray into the rack and shouldered her way into the women’s bathroom to prop both hands on the counter and try to figure out how to restart her breathing through the glacier her chest had turned into.

What the hell just happened?

That asshole smiled at her, and boom she was moving before anything else could register.

“Dr. Perry?”

Sophia turned at the sound of the female voice behind her.

Lieutenant Jones came all the way into the bathroom and let the door swing shut. “You okay?” Jones, a lab tech who often worked with Sophia, came over to the counter and washed her hands in a sink.

Sophia laughed without any humor. “The last day or so has been more interesting than I would like.”

“Ah.” Jones nodded sagely. “I’ve had one or three of those. Anything I can do to help?”

She chuckled, but she could hear the pain in it herself. “Got a pair of steel-toed boots I could borrow?”

Jones’s half grin dissolved. “Someone need his ass kicked?”

“Yup.” Connor’s face, his teeth bared when he’d told her he taught offense, not defense, appeared in her head. That fire burned away some of the ice crowding her lungs. “But I’m working on it.”

“Let me know if you need any backup.”

“I will, thanks.” She was going back out there and she was going to walk through that food court with her head up.

She left the bathroom to find Connor outside the door, leaning against the wall. Wonderful. Not. She didn’t want to need him for anything, yet seeing him waiting for her got rid of the last of the ice.

“Are you lost?” she asked him.

“No, I just thought I’d wait for you.”

“Bodyguarding already?”

He shrugged. “Why wait?”

There wasn’t much she could say to that.

They walked back to the lab building, passing the two checkpoints without talking. They could have been two strangers walking together except for the slight tension in his shoulders and the way he walked half a step behind her.

It made her want to tell him to stop with the secret service routine, but it was part of his job and she had to get used to it. She wasn’t going to admit she kind of liked it to anyone, including herself.

Inside the office’s entry there was an eight-foot empty space in front of Eugene’s desk. Connor looked around and nodded. “Yeah, this will do.” He looked at her. “Have you ever tried Tai Chi before?”

“No, but I’ve seen it in passing on TV and sometimes people did it in the park at one of the hospitals I spent time in.”

“Good, no bad habits to unlearn.” He smiled. “First, there’s more than one kind of Tai Chi. I’m not going to go into the history of it or all the details, but what I’m going to teach you is a form of Tai Chi that’s used for meditation and improving health. It’s one of the simpler versions that’s relatively easy to remember.”

“Okay.” So far so good.

“What I want you to focus on is your breathing. It should come from deep in your diaphragm, balanced and not rushing. Okay?”

She nodded.

“I’m going to demonstrate how you start and then the first form. Just watch the first time.”

He stood in front of her, his knees slightly bent, shoulders relaxed and face calm. When he moved it was as if she were watching water flow through the air. His movements were graceful, fluid, and unhurried.

It was almost a dance.

When he stopped, a disappointed “oh” spilled out of her mouth. She could have watched him for hours and been content.

He blinked, met her gaze and smiled. “It hits a lot of people like that when they see it for the first time up close. Ready to begin?”

She nodded, afraid that if she spoke out loud she’d reveal how eager she was to learn.

He showed her the beginning stance, which she copied, then he moved and she followed him. He stopped several times to begin again, so she could practice the movements correctly. One form seemed to escape her ability to copy and he came around behind her to put his body in contact with hers.

Close contact.

She could feel him spooned up behind her so she was touching him from knees to neck and all the way down their arms.

His body heat penetrated their clothes and she found her breathing and heart rate accelerating.

Normally, if someone came in contact with her for more than a few seconds, anxiety and awkwardness would force her away from them as quickly as possible. There were very few people she trusted to touch her.

Her therapist said it was a result of too many strangers handling her when she was young and sick, some of them associated with the pain and discomfort of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Who’d have thought that a doctor who hadn’t seen a day of fighting outside of her lab would suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Her body seemed to have no problem with Connor touching her. As he moved with her, guiding with subtle pressure cues on her body, she found herself growing hyperaware of him. His nearness set off proverbial butterflies in her stomach and an aching desire to be touched.

Kissed.

She wanted to bury her nose against his skin and lick.

No matter how hard she tried to mentally classify his proximity as work—part of her job—her body wasn’t believing it. She was practically panting.

Could he tell?

She’d never live it down if he was aware of her reaction to him. She let out a breath and tried to follow him, focused on the flow of each action.

“That’s it,” his voice rumbled in her ear. “Let your muscles loosen as you move, as you breathe.”

He moved her into the starting form again and began without hesitation or hitch.

Oh, but she liked this exercise. Despite the intense sexual arousal of being this close to him, she didn’t want to stop.

She let herself fall into the movement, her eyes half-closed, and was disappointed when he stopped guiding her and backed away slowly. Startled, she asked, “Are we finished?”

His lips curved upward just a little. “Do you know how long ago we started?”

“Ten minutes?”

He shook his head. “Thirty minutes.”

No way. “That can’t be right, it feels like much less.”

“Nope, thirty. You’re a natural at this. You didn’t hesitate to follow instructions and very quickly relaxed into the movements. I’m proud of you.”

She was a natural at something physical? He was proud of her? No one had ever been proud of her for something that didn’t involve her brain very much. Pleasure warmed her from the inside out. “Thank you.”

Holy crap, was she blushing?

He stared at her face like someone had zapped him with a Taser.

Yep, she probably looked like a lovesick teen. What was wrong with her? She cleared her throat and looked away. “You’re a good instructor.”

God, she sounded like an idiot.

He swallowed, then gestured at the door and they left the building. “Tomorrow morning I’d like to take you to the shooting range for a couple of hours.”

“I’ve done some shooting, but not a lot.” She winced. “I’m not very good.”

“That’s okay,” he replied with a funny smile on his face. “I’m very good.”

Heat flooded her as her imagination went places it shouldn’t. With his size and muscles, he’d be good at all kinds of things. Especially if he devoted the same focus and physical prowess to sex as he did to self-defense.

She’d derive as much pleasure from touching him, exploring his wide shoulders and discovering where his personal erogenous zones were, as being touched by him.

An image filled her head of the two of them on her bed, naked. For a moment, she wanted that image to come true, come to life so bad she could almost taste him on her tongue, but reality intruded. Bringing cold reason with it.

Her hands curled into fists.

Not possible.

Not for her.

Not without a fucking miracle.