Page 5

C on escorted Sophia to her room half afraid she was going to gush happy words all over him for showing her some Tai Chi. She’d worn a grin nearly the whole fucking time, like he’d given her something expensive or hard to find.

Her gratitude made him uncomfortable, given his body’s reaction to being so close to hers. He had a plan: get back into active duty and avenge his dead. But he wasn’t two days into his new assignment and his head was filled with fantasies of getting his new partner naked and under him.

Her mouth was going to drive him out of his fucking mind. He kept picturing it around his cock.

He needed to get laid. He hadn’t bothered since the explosion, mostly because he’d been so focused on getting back into shape and into active duty. But other needs were making themselves known and he had no business imagining Sophia satisfying them. She wasn’t some easy lay. She needed a man she could trust.

That’s rich, asshole, you’re planning on going Rambo and getting killed the first chance you get. She shouldn’t trust you at all.

He didn’t want this, not any of it. He didn’t want to care about her beyond the scope of his duty, didn’t want to feel something for her beyond professional friendship.

He had a plan and it didn’t include him getting all cozy with Sophia Perry.

Professional. Distant. Hands-off. That was going to be his motto from now on.

They reached her door and she unlocked it, then paused and turned to look at him. The smile was gone and in its place was a thoughtful expression that made her look years underage.

“Thank you,” she said, her tone serious. “For keeping your word and teaching me everything you promised.”

His brows went up. “People break their promises to you?” Was this why she acted so tough? Why she hadn’t wanted a partner, because all the other men who’d been assigned to her hadn’t treated her with respect, had broken their word?

He hadn’t known her long, but it hadn’t taken him long to figure out that what she brought to the team was something unique and valuable.

She shrugged. “All the time. As soon as they find out about my ITP, they treat me like I’m unable to do anything. I’ve learned not to trust people to do what they say until they actually do it.”

“That’s really stupid. No team can function well if you can’t trust someone to do what they say they’re going to do. Promises matter, especially here.”

She smiled at his comment. “I know, right?” She glanced away and shook her head. “There’s not much I can do about it, though. It’s just...irritating.”

“I’ll be irritating,” he told her. She trusted him and for the first time since the explosion, he didn’t want to let anyone down. Didn’t want to let her down. “But in other ways. According to my sisters, there isn’t a man alive who can go ten minutes without annoying a woman somehow.”

She laughed and it washed through his battered heart in a warm wave.

He took a step back, wavering between wanting more and running away from any chance at healing the broken pieces of himself.

“I’m right next door if you need anything,” he told her. “Just hammer on the wall a couple of times and I’ll come running.”

“Thanks. It helps that...” She paused and shook her head.

“What helps?”

“You don’t just pat me on the head.” She lifted her chin. “Thanks.” Then, before he could say anything, she nodded at him shyly, unlocked her door, and disappeared into her room.

Con went into his own room, showered, then lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling for a long time. Taking on this assignment had been his only chance to avenge his dead and find peace for himself by joining them. He’d give everything he could to his new team, but he was only one of many and was easily replaced.

Sophia changed that. She challenged him to prove his worth to her, and in doing so, she’d proved herself to him.

He didn’t want to like her.

He didn’t want to want her.

Con punched his pillow a few times, but it didn’t help at all.

What he thought he wanted didn’t seem to matter anymore, and that tore him in two.

He couldn’t put his dead to rest and fulfill his obligations to Sophia at the same time. He was going to have to choose. Either choice was going to kill him one way or another.

***

S ophia closed the door to her room and leaned against it.

Oh my God. That had been the most sexually intense and frustrating forty minutes of her life. Another ten minutes with him and she would probably have done something to embarrass herself. More than she already had, anyway. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew what a blush on a woman’s face meant.

She had to get him out of her head before this lust for his body drove her crazy.

After a quick shower, she got into bed and pulled out the romance novel she was reading. It was a suspense, with the law enforcement hero and heroine in danger from gun-toting drug dealers. They were holed up in a remote mountain cabin, and after denying their feelings for each other through the first half of the book, had thrown caution to the wind and were about to have sex.

Brad cupped her breasts, licking his way from one to the other to tease her nipples.

Sophia kept picturing Connor in the role of the hero as he kissed, caressed, and undressed the heroine. “Like that, baby?” he asked Jessica, his voice fanning the naughty side of her to life.

It was Connor’s voice she heard in her head.

Sophia slammed the book shut, embarrassment heating her face.

After a moment, she opened the book again.

“If I’d known your wicked tongue was this talented,” Jessica said breathlessly, “I’d have put it to better use a lot sooner.”

He grinned and slid down her body. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” His wide shoulders spread her thighs apart...

Sophia slammed the book shut again, but there was no getting the image of Connor between her thighs out of her head.

She looked at the book and scowled. Was pleasure so bad a thing to want?

No. What she did in the privacy of her room was her business and no one else’s, and right now she needed satisfaction like never before.

She opened the small bedside table drawer and took out a small vibrator, then closed her eyes as she began using the vibrator to stimulate her clit. She restarted the fantasy, but now it was Connor pleasuring her.

Connor’s wicked, wicked tongue flicked across her clit fast then slow, hard then soft, until she thought she’d lose her mind.

“Please,” she panted. “I need you inside me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in that smoky tone that told her he was happy to follow this order. He positioned his cock at the entrance to her body then thrust in all the way, triggering an orgasm that made her scream.

Sophia came, too, but her orgasm wasn’t nearly that satisfying. She groaned in frustration and glared at the wall separating her room and Connor’s. What she needed didn’t come with batteries.

She’d decided a long time ago that she was holding out for love and a man she could count on to be there even if things got tough or painful.

Her ITP had put her life on a countdown, and until now she hadn’t met a man who made her want to change her policy about casual sex. Connor was more than daring. He had her willing to break her rules. Was it worth the risk?

He didn’t really seem the sort that would let himself get attached during a deployment.

Was she really considering asking him to have sex with her?

And what if he said no?

***

A knock at his door woke him.

“Connor?”

Sophia.

He glanced at his clock. It was only 0500. He got up and opened the door. “What’s up?”

Her eyes widened and her gaze took in his nude torso, then dipped to his underwear for a long moment before she brought it back up to his face.

Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry.” She cleared her throat, her gaze bouncing over him like she didn’t know where it was safe to look. “Um, I need to— Can I...?” She looked nervously down the empty hallway before gesturing toward his room.

What had her so worried?

“Come in,” he said, putting a hand under her right elbow and drawing her into his room. Once she was inside, he took a look down the hall, but no one was in sight.

He closed the door and locked it, then turned to find her staring at him with eyes too wide. There was fear there, and something else he couldn’t pinpoint. He found himself herding her toward his bed and urging her to sit down.

He squatted down next to her, putting his head level with hers so he wouldn’t crowd her. “Something scared you.”

“It’s probably nothing.” She gave him a weak smile. “A coincidence.”

“There are no coincidences in war, only unannounced enemy action.”

She tilted her head to one side. “Who said that?”

“Connor Button, though others have said something similar.”

“You say some interesting things.” She blew out a breath. “Well, someone called me, but didn’t say anything when I answered. I could hear rustling in the background and breathing. Someone was there. They just didn’t say anything. I hung up after a few seconds.”

“On your cell phone?”

“No, the landline to the room.”

He grunted. “Could it have been the moron I chased off that first night?”

“I don’t know,” she burst out. “I thought I could read people better than that, but when he put his hands on me and tried to kiss me...” She sucked in a breath. “I didn’t see it coming.” All the air went out of her. “I’m an idiot.”

Con struggled with himself for a moment. She’d come to him at 0500 with her fear. Not Max or anyone else, him . He could play it safe and call in a female therapist, or he could ask Max to talk her through why the phone call had bothered her so much. Alternatively, he could offer her the support she was looking for himself. She’d already put herself out there by coming to him first. Could he turn her away?

“No, you just weren’t prepared for the calculated tactic of a hunter.”

“If you hadn’t come along, I’d have been a victim.” She glanced at him and blushed. “Um, maybe I should go.”

He’d let her, but her hands were fisted in her lap so hard her knuckles were white. “How about you just relax for a few minutes?”

“I might be able to if you put some clothes on,” she muttered as she waved her hand around in front of him. “All this nakedness isn’t helping.”

As much as he appreciated the comment—he did, he was a guy—he couldn’t believe she’d just say it so baldly. “You’re not flirting with me, are you?”

“What?” she squawked. “No. I hate that shit.” She frowned and huffed. “Why can’t people just say what they’re thinking? Why do they have to play mind games?”

She really didn’t know? With her weird history, maybe she didn’t. “People play games to protect themselves,” he explained after a moment. “In order to connect with someone you have to step out of your comfort zone and put your heart on the line. It can be scary.” His heart had been torn apart by that IED despite the fact that it kept beating. The deaths of his teammates, his battle buddies , men he could trust with his life, were open, bleeding wounds in a tired heart that longed for rest. He wouldn’t survive another loss, he knew it, but he had to survive long enough to put his dead to rest. He owed them that.

“I guess that’s the part I don’t get,” she replied on a sigh. “Sticking my emotional neck out doesn’t scare me at all. It’s looking back and realizing I missed an opportunity to do something important or be with someone important to me that’s scary. I don’t have time to play stupid games.”

Wow. That was all kinds of smart, and nothing he could aspire to. Wait a second. “You mean, you didn’t have time when you were a teen to...fool around?”

“Right.” She gave herself a shake. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Your teammates are there for you to rely on. Whether it’s something like this or any other problem. They’ve got your back and you’ve got theirs.” He nudged her elbow. “Eugene and Max have an enormous amount of respect for you.

“I’m going to make your self-defense lessons a priority,” he continued. “I want you capable of dealing with morons.”

“He’s the only one who—”

Con cut her off. “There are plenty of others thinking the same thing. The Army has just as many predators in it as the general population, sometimes more.”

“What do you mean, others thinking the same thing?”

“Less than fourteen percent of soldiers in the Army are female. What do you think happens in a man’s head after he’s been out on a mission, been shot at, and hasn’t seen a woman in weeks?”

“I understand that ,” she said with another eye roll. “What I don’t get is...” She stopped talking to suck in a breath, then stayed silent.

What the hell just went through her head? “What?”

She turned away. “Nothing. I need to think.”

He could continue questioning her or he could give her some time to do that thinking. He knew which one of those options was more likely to work. “Do you want to go back to your room or wait here?”

She glanced at him, her eyes unfocused. “Oh. Would it bother you if I waited here?”

It would, but not in the way she meant. “Be my guest.”

He set the water in the shower to lukewarm and got in. Sophia was mixing him all up inside and what made it worse, she had no idea she was doing it. She was so damned honest it hurt. She also seemed to hate the normal flirtation that most men and women engaged in. No, hate was wrong. She didn’t know what the fuck to do with it, so she ignored it.

That didn’t make it go away.

Ignoring it was dangerous, because she might not recognize another vulture like the one he interrupted the night he met her.

He was going to have to take a page out of her book, and explain with naked honesty, her situation and the dangers he saw in it.

As his partner, she deserved nothing less. This was something he could do for her.

He dressed and left the bathroom to find her sitting on the cot staring at the wall. “Got it figured out yet?”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “There’s a lot of things about people I don’t get.”

“Yeah, like what?”

“Like how anyone can justify any of the evils that seem so common in society.”

“Theft, rape, and murder, you mean?”

“For a start, yeah.”

“I think you have a pretty unique view of life,” he began. “You seem to see the world in absolutes. Useful, not useful. Smart, dumb. Good, bad. Most people are all over the place.”

“That sounds like a psychological analysis.” She glanced at him with a disbelieving expression. “Are you trying to manage me?” She shook her head and answered her own question. “Of course you are. It’s a coping strategy you learned growing up with all those older sisters.” She leveled a scowl at him. “I’m not them.”

Thank fuck.

She wanted the truth. Fine. That’s what he would give her. He crouched in front of her again and met her gaze. “You’ve got an hourglass figure that no uniform can hide, a face that makes a man race to open doors for you, even if that door leads straight to hell, and your hair is the stuff of wet dreams. The only reason you aren’t overwhelmed with offers is because you don’t notice any of them. And if a man gets too pushy you shut him down so fast he doesn’t even realize you’ve castrated him until he’s standing there with his balls in his hands wondering what the fuck happened.”

She blinked. “I assume you’re speaking of my castrating people figuratively.”

“You’re so damned smart when it comes to what you do that Max describes you as a prodigy, but you are completely clueless when it comes to men.”

“I know that.”

“Well, wise up.”

“And just how am I supposed to do that?”

He closed his eyes and wondered if prayer was the only way he was going to get through this assignment.

“I’m not,” she began in a softer tone, “all that comfortable around men in a sexual connotation.”

He opened his eyes and watched her head tilt to one side.

“It’s not that I don’t crave contact with another person, it’s just that I never had time to experiment like all the other girls do when they’re teenagers. So here I am, twenty-four and I don’t know what to do, how to do it, or when to do it.”

“You,” he began, his voice as soft and easy as he could make it, “are very beautiful. Just be honest with the guy you decide you want to be with. Tell him your situation. If he’s any kind of decent, he’ll be happy to let you experiment on any part of him you want.”

Didn’t he sound like the voice of reason when the last thing he was feeling with regards to her was reasonable. He wanted to be that man.

She swallowed. “Oh, okay.”

“Yeah?” he asked, searching her face. She still looked too thoughtful, too anxious. “We’re good?”

She hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Yes. Thank you.” She paused, then said, “And I’ve decided to give you the green light.”

All Con could think of was their proximity to the bed.

“I think you’re the best partner Max could have found for me anywhere.”

She wasn’t talking about sex, asshole .

He cleared his throat. “We need to report in,” he managed to say in a businesslike tone. “And I need you at the shooting range for at least a couple of hours this morning.”

They headed out with her asking him about which weapons he preferred for himself and in what situation would he use them. It was a safe topic and the conversation got them all the way to the lab building.

Max was waiting for them. The colonel looked Sophia up and down, and Con remembered the warning about the bruises.

“Hey, did you get any bruises last night?” he asked her.

“Just a little one here.” She unbuttoned the cuff of her uniform sleeve and pushed it up to reveal a greenish-blue bruise the size of a grapefruit on her arm.

“That’s little?” It looked pretty damn big to Con.

Max leaned in and looked at it. “That’s not bad actually. How did you get it?”

“During the demonstration of how to break a hold.”

Max looked at Con expectantly.

“I gave her a Tai Chi lesson and went over how to get out of the most common holds.”

“Hmm.” Max glanced at her then asked Con, “And today?”

“The shooting range this morning and more Tai Chi tonight.”

Sophia moved away to read some paperwork Eugene gave her.

Max stepped closer to Con and lowered his voice a little. “We’re getting some conflicting information out of a couple different refugee camps. I know you just got here, but I may need to send you both out with a team in less time than I’d hoped.”

“I’ll do my best to get her ready,” Con said. “She’s a good student.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, took to Tai Chi like a duck to water.”

“I’m glad to hear it. She’s one of a kind and we’re lucky to have her.”

“Is that why she’s a civilian contractor and not a member of the military?”

Max took a moment to respond. “Yes, she has an unusual skill. She’s able to understand, and even predict, the rapid shifts in a virus’s genetic code. Those shifts make sense to her in the same way music makes sense to a composer. Some things work well together, others not. We were very lucky to have her join the team.”

Sophia waved at him and headed to her office.

Eugene called Max away then, giving Con a chance to observe everyone for an hour or so. There were at least a dozen different people working in the standard lab and another eight in the airtight lab everyone called the bubble .

Some of the tests were the standard sort any hospital would do, others were much less standard.

The staff in the accessible lab were happy to answer his two questions: How long have you worked here? and If you were a bad guy, how would you get in the building? They all seemed to know he was Dr. Perry’s soldier, like he was some sort of accessory only certain people got.

Eugene said he’d have an updated report on Akbar for him after lunch, so Con went to see if Sophia could spare some time for the shooting range.

She agreed and they left.

“What are you going to have me do?” she asked as they walked.

“We’re going to keep it simple. I want you to practice as much as possible with your Beretta. The chances of you using a rifle aren’t all that great, so let’s stick with your most likely weapon, okay?”

He got her set up, they both put on hearing protection, then he nodded at her to begin.

He let her take six shots before calling a halt and pulling her back from the range where they could talk. She’d hit the target, but her shots were all over the place.

“Your arms are straight with your elbows locked. When you do that, every time you shoot, the kickback moves your arms up and down, spoiling your aim for your next shot. Try keeping those elbows soft, and don’t hold your arms out so far from your body. You want those elbows to absorb the kickback. Make sense?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Good, let’s try it again, another six shots.”

She took up a firing position, but this time Con kicked at her feet until they were shoulder-width apart and pressed down on her shoulders until her knees were slightly bent. She took aim, and he nodded at the improved stance.

She fired, giving herself a full second between shots to resettle her aim. This time her shots were all concentrated below the waist.

Con snorted at the holes in the target.

She grinned at him.

He had her reload her weapon and made more small corrections to her stance. “That’s it, slow and easy.” He had to shout, but it was better than pulling her out of position every time to suggest a correction. “Take your time and aim for mid-chest.”

She sucked in a breath at the same time she squeezed the trigger. The shot penetrated the target’s shoulder.

“Try breathing out and firing just as the air is all gone. There’s a moment then when you’re as still as you’re going to be.”

She nodded, her hair, tightly pulled back into a bun, brushing his cheek. She let the air out of her lungs and fired. It hit dead center.

She let out an excited yip, screwing up her next two shots, but then she settled down and began hitting the target mid-chest consistently again.

By the time they were done, it was lunchtime and Con was hot, bothered, and bad-tempered about it.

Sophia wore a huge grin on her face and preened as they made their way to the food court. As soon as she saw Eugene and Max she rushed over to tell them about her success in the shooting range.

“You’re not a sniper yet,” Con told her, nudging her shoulder with his. “But with some practice I think you’ll be a good shot.”

Eugene gave her a high five, and while Max attempted to look repressive, he also couldn’t hide his pleased smile when he said, “Excellent. Perhaps you could give Eugene and me a lesson or two as well.”

Sophia snorted. “You’d need a lot more than a couple of lessons, Max.” She turned to Con and said, “He doesn’t even hit the target most of the time. Eugene’s pretty good, though.”

“Sounds like you need an intensive refresher,” Con said to Max. “I’m not sure I have time for that.”

“He’s getting his own instructor in a few weeks,” Eugene put in. “But I’d like to ask a few questions about firearms.”

Yup, he was working with a bunch of geeks. And that was okay. They needed him just as much as he needed them.

“No problem, Gene. Do you want time on the range?”

“Not right now. Things are busy at the lab.” The way he said it, with a quick look at his boss, told Con things were moderately shitty at the lab, and were likely to get shittier.

“We can talk shop after lunch,” Con told him.

“Sounds good, Conman.”

Conman . The nickname his old team had given him.

Everything he’d just eaten turned to cold stone in his stomach as he was thrown back to the last happy moment before the blast. His best buddy was telling a joke and Con had interrupted to correct the punch line.

“Don’t you believe the Conman,” Wayne had said, laughing to everyone else.

All he remembered after that was noise, pain, and darkness.