by Julie Rowe
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 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.
* * *
Sophia 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 in the food court in the Freedom souq, and she ate with Max and Eugene like 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.
“Captain?”
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.” Con’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. Con looked around and nodded. “Yeah, this will do.” He looked at her. “Have you ever tried Tai Chi befo
re?”
“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.
No anxiety, but lots of excitement. Her body seemed to have no problem with Con 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. Hello...
Her hands curled into fists.
Not possible.
Not for her.
Not without a fucking miracle.
Chapter Five
Con 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 Captain 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 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 tr
eat 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. 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 and 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.