The Stealth Commandos Trilogy

by Suzanne Forster

  The receptionist had left for a break, notifying the message service to take all calls. The phone rang several times before Honor was able to convince herself to pick it up. When she’d realized it was a massage therapist confirming Johnny’s appointment for the next afternoon, Honor had acted on impulse. She’d pretended there was some mistake, double-checking with the woman to be sure she had the correct appointment time, then requesting the woman verify Johnny’s home address. “I’m afraid Mr. Starhawk’s out of town,” she’d said, promising to reschedule. When she’d hung up the phone, she’d laughed out loud.

  But she wasn’t laughing now. She would soon be bluffing her way past the doorman, into the building and onto an elevator that would take her up to Johnny’s condo. The question that truly concerned her was how she would deal with Johnny if she actually got that far.

  Moments later Honor stood in the sleek mirrored elevator, ascending swiftly and silently toward her fate. As the chrome door panels whooshed open, she stepped out into an anteroom that faced the double doors of Johnny’s penthouse. She walked straight over and rang the bell, knowing any hesitation would be her undoing. To her profound relief, a maid answered.

  “I’m from the International Health Spa,” she said with brisk efficiency. “Mr. Starhawk has a four P.M. appointment. Sorry I’m a few minutes late.”

  The maid wasn’t impressed. “Are you new?” she asked, scrutinizing Honor’s features first, then her clothing. “You’re not the one he usually uses, are you?”

  Honor held her leather tote as though it were proof of her authenticity. “His regular massage therapist is ill today. I’m replacing her. Nearly fifteen years of experience.” In a bookstore, Honor added silently. She was getting surprisingly good at subterfuge.

  “This way,” the woman said, leading Honor down a long hallway hung with black-and-white photographs. Honor recognized an Annie Leibovitz print and a Paul Strand landscape, and reminded herself not to feel too sorry for Johnny. He had certainly prospered financially.

  “He’s in there,” the maid said, pointing toward the last doorway on the left. “Go on in. He’s ready for you.” As the woman bustled away, she added over her shoulder, “I’ll be leaving for the evening soon. You’ll have to let yourself out when you’re through.”

  “Thank you,” Honor said, staring at the door the maid had pointed out. As she approached it and reached for the knob, she had the vague sense of a heartbeat pulsing in her fingertips. The pulse echoed in her ears, expanding until it seemed to be both inside and outside her body, resonating in the hallway itself.

  “Go on in!” the maid called.

  Honor started violently. Her fingers gripped the knob and turned it. The sound of the latch popping free created a small explosion in her brain. She gave the door a push and stood back as it swung open, revealing a panorama of spidery high-tech equipment. Not a sauna, she realized. Not even a bedroom as she’d feared. It was a personal workout room.

  She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, aware of the low and soothing strains of classical music. The man stretched out on the massage table across the room from her appeared to be sleeping, his hands folded under his head, his face turned away from her. She knew it was Johnny by the bronze skin and the long hair spilling into the curve of his far shoulder. But other than that, there were no familiar markers. He was naked, she realized. Only a narrow white towel covered his buttocks.

  Dear God. Naked.

  Honor brushed a tendril of hair off her face, forcing it back into the ponytail she wore. Smothering a gasp, she dropped her tote and quickly wrestled free the elastic band that restrained her hair, wincing as she yanked out several strands. The last time she’d worn her hair back, it had provoked him into pulling a knife on her. She didn’t want to risk that reaction again!

  Once she had her hair free, she approached cautiously, negotiating a bewildering array of equipment. She rubbed her hands together in an attempt to warm them, her gaze drawn to the coppery muscles that rippled down the length of his back. They sloped with the curve of his spine and rose powerfully to that most potent of areas on the male body, the part of him that was covered with the towel.

  Honor had never gone in for male calendar art, but she couldn’t imagine any paid model striking a pose half as erotic as the way Johnny was stretched out before her. His muscles were beautifully elongated, sinuously stretching the length of his entire body. Masculine power flowed like ocean currents under his dusky skin, a latent force.

  She clasped her hands in a prayerlike gesture. Maybe he would sleep through the whole thing and never realize she’d been there. Better yet, maybe she could simply wait for twenty minutes and leave without even touching him. If he was asleep, who would know the difference?

  He stirred as if drifting out of a catnap. “Any time you’re ready,” he said, his voice muzzled by his folded arms.

  Honor’s heart nearly dropped to her feet. So much for not touching him!

  “There’s some tension in my neck and shoulders,” he mumbled, sounding drowsy. “Maybe you can work it out.”

  “Your neck?” She tried for a husky tone, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her voice. The vial of oil she pulled from her tote was scented with orange blossoms, and the fragrance seemed to explode with tangy richness as she poured a few drops into her palm and rubbed her hands together, lightly coating them.

  Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling as she anticipated the incredible intimacy of touching him. Why had she thought she could do this? At what point had she abandoned her common sense and lost contact with reality? She hadn’t actually planned to go through with the massage. It was simply a way to get into his condo, to get past all the physical and psychological barriers that his office and the courtroom presented. She’d thought they might be able to talk like two normal people if they were in his personal space, without the formality of business suits, teakwood desks, and watchdog receptionists.

  Obviously she’d been so caught up in her plans for crashing the gate, she hadn’t considered the pitfalls of trying to have a normal conversation with a naked man. Under the circumstances even a momentary massage seemed dangerous, yet she couldn’t help wondering what he would feel like. His muscles looked as hard as steel, and yet they moved so fluidly, she was sure they must be supple to the touch.

  It wouldn’t have to be intimate, she told herself. A body was a body. She could pretend this one belonged to someone else. Some man. Any man. But even she, who was masquerading as a masseuse, couldn’t manage such a wild leap of the imagination. It was Johnny she was about to touch. Johnny, in all his stormy native beauty. The boy who’d loved her. The man who hated her . . .

  She closed her eyes and took a calming breath, laying her hands on him. Several seconds flashed by before she could do anything more than rotate her palms. He was steel. But he was supple too. His muscles were dense, vibrant, alive. His body was cooler than she’d expected, and yet there was a flow of heat beneath the skin that seemed to respond to her touch. Every cell in her palms was alert, as if hungry for the feel of him. Finally, bravely, she splayed her hands over the breadth of his shoulders, aware of the unsteadiness in her fingertips as she worked them into corded muscle and sinew.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, shifting as if to look up.

  Her eyes flew open, and she applied more pressure, ready to hold him down if necessary. “It’s your arms,” she said, making her voice husky to disguise it. “Why don’t you put them down at your sides.”

  He unfolded his arms and did as she asked. Still looking away from her, he rested his head on the mat, giving her a clear view of his profile. It was impossible to avoid noting the sensual curve of his lips or the way his eyelashes lay against the arc of his cheekbones, almost lush in their length and thickness.

  Relaxation brought out the natural sensuality in his features, she realized. But other than his eyelashes, there was nothing soft in his profile. A woman would have to be blind not to notice the arrogant cords t
hat rode his neck and the vein ridging his high forehead. The capacity for retribution lay in his very bones; even his jawline was shadowed with it. He looked quite capable of torturing a woman half to death . . . but not with pain, with pleasure.

  Her pulse rate surged, sending blood into her extremities, heating her thoughts and her actions as she worked at the tautness in his neck and shoulders. As his muscles began to melt under her efforts, his skin glowed warm and alive.

  “That’s good,” he said. “You’re good. Have I had you before?”

  Honor sucked in a sharp breath and forced herself to keep up the pace and the pressure of her movements. A faint film of perspiration broke out on her upper lip. “No, you haven’t . . . had me before.”

  “That can be remedied,” he said, his voice low, husky with male interest. “I want you on a regular basis.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Honor’s imagination caught fire. What was he talking about? Did he mean doing something beyond a therapeutic massage? Did he mean having sex? Was that what he did with the women who came up here? The thought of him with another woman was like a match striking against her raw nerves. The image burst into quick, hot flames, horrifying her, but it was also disturbingly riveting in some way she didn’t understand at all.

  It was easy to imagine Johnny having sex. He was a beautiful, virile animal. He could put a woman in heat just by looking at her. What she couldn’t imagine was his wanting a woman for anything more than that. Not for love. Never for love. A question flared painfully in her mind. Had she ruined him for that? For loving a woman?

  As she stared down at her own hands, pale against his sienna-colored skin, she remembered the moment he’d offered his hand to her. Come on, paleface, be strong. She could still hear the emotion resonating in his voice as he said those words. And his passion in that dingy men’s bathroom. He’d been shaking with it. What if he’d given in to the passion? she wondered. What if he’d taken her right there in that locked room? Would it have been love? Or sex?

  A nerve near her mouth tautened, triggering a deeper, sharper contraction in her stomach. What if he had . . . taken her there in that room? She could still feel his hands on her arms, lifting her to him. She could feel his breath hot on her lips as he bent to kiss her. Taking a deep breath, she let herself imagine that kiss in all its fiery anguish. . . .

  Her head tilted back deeply as his mouth came down on hers. The burning sweetness of his lips caught her soul on fire. It brought a whimper of helpless need to her throat. She wanted more of him. She wanted his teeth and his tongue and his hands. She wanted to be eaten alive by the panther, devoured by his passion. In her mind she could see his hard, hungry body pressing down on top of her, pressing into the tender ache between her legs. . . .

  A low groan of pleasure brought Honor out of her fantasy.

  It was Johnny who’d made the sound, she realized, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. She was massaging his body with incredibly sensual strokes, her fingers undulating like waves, the balls of her palms rotating deeply, wantonly, into his lower back. In a burst of delayed awareness she saw that the heels of her hands were kneading his flanks and—

  Sweet heaven! The towel had slipped off his body and fallen to the floor! A choked sound filled her throat.

  Johnny’s senses registered the distress signal, but only partially. It came to him from the depths of a warm, slumberous state. He shifted, becoming aware of pleasant sensations stirring inside him, of a tingling fullness in his groin. The towel seemed to be slipping and sliding over his backside, and he thought for a moment that she was removing it. Or was she replacing it? Either way she was a woman who got behind her work.

  “Everything okay down there?” he asked.

  She fumbled, then tucked the towel under his hips on both sides, making him up as if he were a bed. “Now it is,” she said, her voice strange and breathy.

  He smiled, wishing he could get a look at her. “My legs could use a little work when you get around to it, especially the inside of my right thigh. I pulled a muscle playing racquetball.”

  She made a funny choked sound again, and this time it got his full attention. What was she doing? He’d said thighs, but she was down around his ankles. And her hands were shaking noticeably. The scent of orange blossoms was rich and overpowering as he lay there, pondering her strange attraction to his feet. There was something about her voice too. He couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but . . .

  “Ahh, that’s good,” he murmured as her hands crept up his right calf. He closed his eyes, relaxing, breathing deeply of orange blossoms. The fragrance was strong, but he kept catching whiffs of another perfume underneath it, something subtler and flowery. He inhaled several more times before he finally was able to put a name to it.

  “Violets?” he said under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Johnny grew very still, aware of every dip of her thumbs, every swirl of her fingers. His brain began to calculate ever so slowly. So what if he’d heard a vaguely familiar voice and smelled some violets. It didn’t mean—

  Oh, no . . . oh, God. Was that Honor massaging him? Were those her hands on his body? He ceased breathing for a second as a shock wave of awareness rolled over him. The circular motion of her fingers was magnified a thousand times in his mind, every delicate touch, every trembling caress. The heat that came off her palms seeped into his veins, firing his bloodstream.

  It was her! Honor.

  He felt a wild surge of excitement, an aching jolt of need, in his groin, and then reality came hurtling at him like a brick heaved through a window. It slammed into his chest with such force he couldn’t breathe. What the hell kind of trick was she pulling now? What was she trying to do to him? Torture him? He’d done everything short of having her arrested, but she wouldn’t back off. Apparently Miss Manners was willing to do anything to get what she wanted, including violating his personal privacy and driving him crazy with lust.

  Anger began to smolder and burn, kindling his male pride, his Apache pride. He’d been sandbagged a time or two in his life, but this woman was the champ. She’d been playing Tiddly Winks on his backside and getting her jollies for twenty minutes now while he moaned and purred like a mangy tomcat. She’d even got him hard, the little witch!

  “My leg,” he said, clenching his jaw against the angry impulses that surged through him.

  “What?”

  “The right thigh, inside. Work it out.” He opened his legs and heard her gasp.

  “You want me to—”

  “Do it, dammit!”

  She sounded as if she were struggling for air. And then her fingers began to creep upward, stealing into the V of his thighs and driving him wild with their fluttering lightness. He clenched his jaw against the sweet riot of stimulation. When she touched the pulled muscles, he groaned aloud.

  “I’m sorry!” she cried.

  He caught hold of the towel and whirled up to a sitting position, snagging her by the wrist. “Sorry?” he said, pulling her toward him. “You haven’t even begun to be sorry.”

  Honor was paralyzed by the surprise attack. Raw panic shot through her. She tried to twist away, but he caught her arm and whipped her back around, subduing her easily. His strength was astonishing. She quieted with a shudder, knowing it was futile to fight, perhaps even dangerous.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “It was a mistake, I—”

  “No, this was no mistake. You don’t have any more mistakes coming. You’re over your limit.”

  His eyes were so black, she looked away. “Please,” she implored softly. “I wasn’t thinking straight. If you let me go, I’ll—”

  He imprisoned both her wrists in one hand and brought her chin up, forcing her to look at him. “What in the hell’s wrong with you, coming up here? Don’t you know what I could do to you? Don’t you know what I want to do to you?”

  She started to shake, and within seconds
the quaking of her body was so pronounced, she could hardly speak. “Yes . . . I know.”

  But she didn’t know. She thought he was talking about sex, and he was, of course. He wanted like hell to be inside her, to violate her golden body with his hard, dark sex. He wanted to take her every way a man could take a woman—a virgin schoolgirl, a blushing bride, a whimpering female animal. He wanted that so badly it hurt. But sex wasn’t enough. Sex wouldn’t heal him. Only justice could do that, biblical justice. An eye for an eye. Her tears for his.

  A skein of her hair was trapped between his hand and her flushed cheek. As he released the white-gold strands, he realized she was wearing her hair loose and free. “Is this for me?” he asked.

  “No! I was afraid you would—I didn’t want you to—”

  “To what?”

  “To go crazy, pull a weapon again.”

  He almost laughed. “Which weapon are we talking about? The knife? I wish I had one handy.”

  “Why? Why do you want to frighten me?”

  He pulled her close, pleased at the tremulous sound she made. “Because I have to do something to you, Honor. I have to do something, for God’s sake. And frightening you seems the safest choice.”

  Angry tears sparkled in her eyes. “Well, you’ve done it, all right? I’m terrified. Now can I go?”

  He hesitated, considering that possibility, wishing he could let her go. How easy everything would be if she simply walked out and never came back. But it wouldn’t work, and they both knew it. This wasn’t over yet. She wasn’t frightened enough. She’d be back.