Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  She rolled on to her stomach, put her palms flat on the floor, brought her knee up under her and sprung to a stand, thrusting a well-aimed knee at his crotch.

  He caught her knee just before it made contact and tipped her back down on her butt. From the floor, she wrapped one leg around the back of his knee and tugged. As he went down, Kim leaped forwards on to her knees. She had to get his head back so she could deliver a death chop to his windpipe.

  His military haircut was too short to grab and use as a handle to pull his head back. Instead, she curled the fingers of her left hand in towards her palm, aiming the heel of the hand at his forehead, intent on pushing his head back, as she prepared to chop with her right hand.

  She surprised him and got his head back, but he was lightning quick. He deflected her death chop and grabbed her hand, tugging her off balance on to her side. As she fell, her left hand lost contact with his forehead.

  Curse his brute strength!

  As she cowered on her right side, trying to recover, he pulled the French twist comb from her hair.

  She growled and startled him enough to grab it from him. Holding it like a claw and channelling her inner wolverine, she swiped it at him. She caught his arm with the comb and drew blood. Swearing beneath his breath, he wiped the blood off on his shirt, giving her enough time to get on her feet and lunge for him.

  He dodged to her right and then back to her left. As she swung her head around to track him, her loose hair and her rage blinded her. Jason seized the advantage, grabbed her and pounded her into the mat. Next thing Kim knew, the comb flew from her hand and clattered across the room. She lay flat on her back on the mat, hair fanned around her, with her arms pinned to her sides. Jason sat on her crotch.

  She wished she could say she hated the feeling, but the man had the goods. Her whole body tingled. For his part, he was smiling and staring at her heaving breasts. Pretending to readjust his weight, he rocked against her ever so slightly and winked.

  Two could torment. She squirmed beneath him just to get him going. But actual escape was futile.

  “Uncle?” He leaned into her so close that their lips nearly met and her breasts brushed his chest.

  Just the tiniest movement would close the gap between them. What would it be like to kiss him here? A woman with less self-restraint would have found out.

  Dead silence filled the room.

  Kim scowled. “You win. This time.” It looked like her pedicure would have to wait.

  He grinned. “The army could use a girl like you.” He sat up and offered her a hand up. “Ready?”

  She nodded, thinking standing wouldn’t be all that comfortable for him. Next round would be hers.

  In the locker room, the other spies gave Kim the wide berth she’d rightfully earned. The fact that she’d botched the job only made her more stand-offish. Her fellow campers took quick spins in the shower to mist off the gentle dew they’d worked up during hand-to-hand combat, before changing into their cocktail dresses for the afternoon.

  Kim was a sweaty mess. She took a real shower and washed her hair, which meant she had to start her beauty routine from scratch. As a consequence, she showed up to lunch perfumed, hair flowing, sultry-eyed and late. She wore a plunging, dark-pink knee-length dress with a skin-tight bodice and flowing skirt, gold stiletto heels, and her camp make-up bag over her shoulder. The only seat left was next to Babette.

  Lunch waited for her.

  Babette passed her the salad dressing and a basket of rolls. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “I am, yes. Thank you.” Kim helped herself to a roll and a pat of butter. She’d earned a treat and she’d be working it off later, anyway.

  “We’ve never had a camper quite as . . . um, zealous as you are.” The perplexed look on Babette’s face said she was trying to figure Kim out, and failing miserably.

  Being a good spy, Kim put on her innocent routine and decided to act as if Babette were complimenting her.

  “Really? Oh, thank you!” She beamed. “I like to win. I’m very competitive. And I love physical activity. I’m just sorry I didn’t beat him.”

  Babette laughed as if Kim’s statement were a silly thing. “That would have been a first! No one beats Jason. Ever. Not unless he wants them to.” She sounded ridiculously proud of him.

  For some reason, that irritated Kim. She kept smiling and playing along anyway and planning her revenge. She shrugged as if she were conceding the point. “I really let out my inner Bond girl, didn’t I? I get points for that, at least.”

  “Well . . . yes.” Babette squirmed, looking as if she didn’t want to encourage any more of Kim’s overzealous behaviour.

  Kim couldn’t resist egging her on just a bit more. “Hey! I have a great idea. I could give you a testimonial for your website.” She flashed Babette her most radiant smile. “All about how the Lipstick Spy School really brought out the Bond girl in me.”

  “Oh, um, sure. Next time we update the website, maybe?” Babette cleared her throat. “After lunch, we have our mixology class. You’re going to love that.” Her voice was unnaturally cheerful and the bright smile on her face patently fake. Beneath the forced good humour, she looked relieved by the thought of a stiff drink or two.

  Kim guessed Babette was thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong during a mixology lesson.

  Guess again, Babette, darling.

  Jason hated wearing monkey suits, even one in the form of a ridiculously expensive Brioni tuxedo. At least the dress trousers were narrow cut, giving them a military flair. As Babette had explained to him numerous times before, a tuxedo may be cliché, but it was what the women considered the quintessential spy uniform. So think of it that way, as a uniform. He wore those all the time, didn’t he?

  Furthermore, what the female clients wanted, the female clients got. His job was less about teaching valuable self-defence lessons and more about giving the ladies a slice of fantasy – he was supposed to be a bit of eye candy and flirt a little. He felt like a gigolo. If this job didn’t pay so well and have such excellent perks, he would have ditched it a long time ago. It was a hell of a way to spend part of his leave time.

  As he walked on to the terrace in preparation for mixology 101, he rubbed his arm where a bandage covered the scratch Tracy had given him with the hair comb. He smiled. Deep as it was, he deserved that scratch. He’d worked her hard and he was proud of her.

  No demure little thing for him. He had one thing in common with Bond – he liked his women bold and dangerous.

  Something about that particular woman turned him on.

  A group of Lipstick spies gathered around a portable bar in the shade on the terrace overlooking the pool. They watched the mix master, a bartender named Mark he’d talked with on occasion at the gym, prepare for class. The day-spies, mostly privileged women in their thirties and forties, wore a variety of obviously expensive cocktail dresses. Only Tracy’s turned his head.

  She sat at the end of the bar, aloof and confident in a deep-pink dress with her camp bag slung over her shoulder. He was no fashion expert, but her dress was hot. As he approached, a pleasant breeze lifted Tracy’s flowing skirt, revealing a smooth, firm, perfectly shaped thigh that made him itch to run his hands down it.

  Mark the bartender was speaking. The ladies hung on his every word as if he were Proust. Like Jason, Mark had been hired as much for his looks as for his job qualifications.

  Mark’s words drifted to Jason on the breeze. “The perfect Martini recipe is a fantasy. Individual tastes differ. Simply put, the ideal Martini is the one that tastes best to you.

  “A Martini is nothing more than a mixture of gin and vermouth in proportions that please the recipient’s palette.” He held up a bottle of French vermouth. “For the novices among you, vermouth is a fortified wine flavoured with herbs.”

  Looking at the women, Jason couldn’t see a novice anywhere from here to the horizon.

  Mark set a silver Martini shaker and a bucket of ice on the bar
counter. “A dry Martini refers to a Martini made with much more gin than vermouth. The less vermouth, the drier the Martini . . .”

  Jason slid on to a stool beside Tracy, turning so his knees nearly brushed her hips as he leaned on the bar to stare at her. “How do you prefer your Martinis?”

  She turned and gave him the sexiest smile he’d ever seen. It reached all the way to her eyes, which were made up to simply smoulder. “A good Martini is like a fine sense of humour – dry. The drier, the better.”

  He leaned in close to her. “If I poured you a glass of gin, would you let me whisper ‘vermouth’ in your ear? Would that be dry enough for you?”

  She tilted her head and laughed. “Almost. Maybe.” She picked up a swizzle stick from a dispenser on the counter and twirled it in her fingers.

  The other women were staring at them now.

  “A Martini can be shaken or stirred,” Mark was saying, trying to draw their attention back on him and the lesson. “There are pros and cons to each method. Both cool the alcohol, which is the main point . . .”

  Jason held Tracy’s gaze. “Ah, the age old question – shaken or stirred?”

  Her coy smile struck straight at his heart. “Stirring preserves the clarity of the liquor.”

  “But?” he asked.

  “I prefer shaken.” The corners of her mouth curled up as if he amused her as no other man ever had. She looked seductively up at him from beneath her long lashes.

  He wished she’d never stop staring at him like that. “Really?”

  “Yes.” As she adjusted herself on the stool, her hips brushed his knees.

  You wouldn’t catch him moving away from her touch. “Because it’s the Bondian method?”

  “‘Bondian’ method! You made that word up.” She laughed again, a beautiful, deep, sultry laugh that made his desire rage. “No, not because of Bond. I love the little ice flecks that float on a well-made drink.”

  “Ah, you like to skate on yours. Hot, are you?”

  “I could be.” Her tone held just the right amount of flirt.

  If he’d been a caveman or in the one of the many jungles and remote locations he’d fought in over the years, he’d have scooped her up and carried her off right then.

  She tilted her head and appraised him. “You look very handsome in a tuxedo. But I bet all the girls tell you that.”

  Before he could answer, she reached over and ran her fingers over his shoulder, sending a pleasant shudder down his back.

  “Beautiful fabric.” Then she ran her hand down his arm and squeezed his forearm, right where his bandage sat.

  He winced.

  “Your arm.” She spoke in a seductive coo. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hey, you two,” Mark called to them. “Try your drinks.”

  Jason hadn’t noticed that a Martini glass had been set before him on the bar. He ignored it, preferring to watch Tracy as she sipped hers.

  “And that concludes the basic Martini,” Mark said. “Now for the variations.”

  Tracy sighed. “Mark looks put out. We’d better pay attention.” Much to his disappointment, she turned around to follow the lecture.

  Mark demonstrated some of the more exotic Martinis – a Sour Appletini, a Chocolatini, a Rendezvous. Each spy, starting at the far end of the bar from Jason and Tracy, tried her hand at mixing a different drink. Even Steve mixed one up after wandering in pulling at his shirt collar, so late Babette should have canned his butt.

  When they got to Jason, Mark asked him, “What’ll it be for you? A James Bond Martini?”

  Jason shook his head. “I’d like to make up my own recipe.”

  “Brave man,” Mark said. “You going to mix it or shall I?”

  “You go ahead. I’ll give you the recipe.” Jason turned to Tracy. “What do you like? Give me an ingredient.”

  “Let me think,” she said as she pulled her bag off her shoulder and set it on the counter. “Hmmmm.” She opened her bag and pulled a tin of breath mints from it. “Like one?” She held them out to him on her open palm.

  He declined, watching raptly as she put a mint in her mouth and replaced the tin in her purse. How in the world did she make sucking on a mint look like a seduction? Something in her eyes, the way she held his gaze. The way she ran her tongue around her mouth and puckered her lips. He’d love for her to be sucking on him. He hoped the mint was enjoying itself.

  She pursed her lovely, glossy lips as she thought. “Tonic water. I love a good gin and tonic. In this warm weather, it sounds like heaven.”

  “You’re making it too easy on me,” he told her before turning back to Mark. “Five parts gin, one part Blue Curacao, one part tonic, and a twist of lemon peel. Shaken and served in a highball.”

  “Coming at you.” Mark mixed it and poured it with the flair of a class-act bartender before setting the drink in front of Jason.

  “Not for me.” Jason handed the drink to Tracy. “For the lady.”

  The other women let out a collective sigh of envy and appreciation as Tracy lifted the glass to her lips. Yes, he’d calculated the romance of it all. Just because he was a kick-butt action guy didn’t mean he didn’t know how to seduce a woman.

  Tracy sighed appreciatively as she pulled the glass from her lips and looked him directly in the eye. He loved the way she stared at him, as if they were the only two people in the room.

  “Fabulous!” Her tone was low, sexy, intimate, just for him. “My compliments. What will you call it?”

  “The Mrs B.”

  She tilted her head as she smiled and studied him. “Not the Tracy?”

  “No.”

  “How about the Mrs Bond?”

  He laughed. She thrilled him to his core. “Too formal. The Mrs B.”

  She nodded and turned from him to hold the glass up towards the sky and ocean and watch the light shine through it. “What a gorgeous drink. I love blue.” She sounded almost wistful.

  Jason could have watched her all day. As it was, it was a good thing he was watching her then. Most people wouldn’t even have seen it, but he’d been trained in observation skills. She’d concealed a small vial of white crystalline powder in her hand. Probably got it when she’d opened her purse to get the mints.

  Using magician-quality sleight of hand, she poured the powder into the glass and disposed of the vial. He watched her swirl the highball slowly to dissolve the addition.

  “It’s a blue horizon in a glass,” she said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  The whole transaction took mere seconds. When she turned around, the powder had dissolved and the drink sparkled, clear blue again. She held it out to him much as he imagined Eve had held the apple out to Adam, all seduction and harm.

  “Have a drink?” Her words were practically a whisper on the wind.

  She was good. She didn’t even falter.

  He took the drink from her hand and lifted it part way to his lips just to watch her reaction. Yeah, she was dying for him to drink. At the last second, he tipped the drink into the tasting spittoon bucket on the bar.

  “Sorry, I don’t drink on the job.”

  Even though she held her sultry smile in place, anger and disappointment leaped in her striking green eyes.

  Why did the beautiful ones always want to kill you?

  Two botched attempts in a few hours were almost more than Kim’s pride could handle. Yeah, the man was good, but she was a better assassin than that. She’d blown her two best shots. A kill during hand to hand could have been written off as an accident. The poison she’d slipped in the drink was slow-acting and untraceable and the tonic water would have concealed its bitter taste. She could have been the heck and away long before he succumbed. But there was no way she could kill him on the dance floor and get away with it. Simply no way.

  She cursed handsome, charming men. There were so few of them and, yet, she had to get rid of a prize one. This one was very rare. He set her pulse going and threw her off-balance where many others had failed.


  She was known as an unflappable woman, and for good reason. Trying to kill him was her job. But her mark was on to her now, big time. Her job wasn’t going to get any easier.

  Fortunately, her intel said that Jason had a room in the hotel for the night. She had his room number and she hadn’t met a lock yet that could keep her out. She’d have to strike him there.

  Her automatic Leverletto should do the trick quickly and without any unnecessary mess. But she wasn’t going to get any extra sightseeing time. And she was going to have to endure tango lessons, she thought as she walked into the Millionaire’s Room, which had been transformed into a studio complete with a dance floor.

  The tango instructors, a handsome Cuban man and a slender, pretty Cuban woman, stood at the head of the dance floor talking to Babette and Vicki. A cluster of young male dancers stood just off from them. Where were Jason and Steve? She’d assumed they’d be here, too.

  Kim joined the group of women hovering at the end of the floor nearest the door and did the maths.

  “There are too many ladies,” she said conversationally to the woman next to her.

  The woman glared at her and spoke coldly, “Someone will just have to sit it out.”

  Kim shrugged her attitude off. She’d never cared whether other women liked her or not. And as often as not, they didn’t.

  Vicki introduced the instructors as Andres and Veta. After being introduced, Andres took over the instruction.

  “The tango is a game of seduction,” he said in his delightfully Spanish-accented English.

  Where did Babette and Vicki find their instructors? They certainly knew how to sustain a woman’s fantasy. Kim gave them credit for a job well done. Now if she could only do hers.

  “Like any seduction, it all begins in the eyes.” Andres held his arm out to Veta as she came around to stand in front of him.

  She looked adoringly, seductively into Andres’ eyes and he into hers. Kim could feel a swoon penetrate the air around her.

  “Now it would be helpful if my male dancers will pair with the ladies.” He snapped his fingers and the young dancers partnered up.