Special Forces: The Recruit. Cindy Dees

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СКАЧАТЬ to him so strongly because she was frazzled from the run and her abrupt ejection from the Special Forces pipeline. Whatever the reason, being this close to Lambert was throwing her seriously off balance.

      She took a step out of the vehicle—or tried to, at any rate—and pitched forward, straight into her escort.

      Impressions assailed her from every direction. His stomach was as hard and ridged with muscle as it looked. Heat poured off his body. He smelled like a forest on a lazy summer day. And he made her think of hot, sweaty sex.

      He grabbed her by her upper arms and dragged her up his body deliciously. An unmistakably hard, impressively large bulge pressed against her belly. He acted as if he barely noticed her weight. His strength was breathtaking. Literally. She had trouble inhaling properly as her entire body melted in a puddle of unwilling lust. Oh, who was she kidding? It was totally willing lust.

      * * *

      Beau Lambert stared down at the smoking-hot woman plastered against him. Her skin was a totally edible shade of café au lait, her hair wavy and dark, coffee brown. But what really stood out were those eyes of hers, mint green and practically glowing against her darkly tanned skin. She wasn’t model material unless modeling agencies went for exotic types, not quite beautiful but undeniably unforgettable. He would 100 percent buy her a drink if he saw her across a crowded bar.

      At the moment her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wide with surprise. His nostrils flared at the sudden sexual awareness he sensed in her.

      Dammit, this was exactly why he hated the idea of women special operators.

      His stare dropped to the neck of her tank top and the curves of her upper breasts. How was a woman as buff as she was that bountifully endowed? Talk about winning the genetic lottery. This woman had hit the mega millions jackpot in that department.

      Get your head out of your crotch, man. Tessa Wilkes was an Army officer, not a sex object. But he couldn’t resist a last glance at that swelling cleavage. She checked pretty much every box on his hot female checklist. She even had the cocky attitude and sassy mouth he secretly loved.

      He murmured, “If you can’t stand on your own two feet, this little adventure is going to be over before it ever gets rolling.”

      “What adventure? What are your orders?” she demanded. “Let me guess. Put me on that plane and make sure I don’t bolt before it goes airborne.”

      If only. He would love nothing better than to toss her on a plane and send her anywhere far, far from him. He’d argued stridently against the assignment Torsten had given him, but the bastard hadn’t budged. Torsten was convinced that he, Beau Lambert, was the only man for the job.

      Wilkes tried to stand on her own, grimacing in pain, but her legs weren’t cooperating yet. He wasn’t a complete ass, and he held her upright. Which, of course, meant more belly-to-belly, sex-fantasy-conjuring contact.

      She hung in his arms like a rag doll devoid of bones. He remembered that level of exhaustion from his own initial training. A frisson of shared sympathy passed through him. But he shoved it aside. He had no time for sympathy for this woman. Not if he was going to prove Gunnar Torsten wrong.

      She mumbled, “First a public humiliation, and now this. I’m so sorry.”

      She was right about the public part. His orders were to make sure everyone in the program saw him haul Wilkes out. There had to have been at least a hundred witnesses to her departure, all silently gleeful. But she was wrong about the humiliation part. Torsten had other plans for her altogether. If the other trainees and instructors knew what the boss was up to, they wouldn’t be so smug to see Wilkes go.

      He commented, “You’re closer to the truth than you know.”

      She looked up at him quizzically, but he offered no explanation. All would become clear to her soon. And frankly, he was too ticked off at what came next to get all talkative with her about it.

      He shifted his weight onto his bum leg, and a bolt of white-hot agony shot through him. He sucked in a sharp breath and froze, terrified he’d done something to wreck his knee even worse than it already was. He swore colorfully to himself.

      When he’d leaped forward and caught her under the armpits, his right knee had given a mighty shout of protest, shooting daggers up and down his leg in retaliation for the stunt. He tuned in to that pain now, breathing through it until it gradually subsided.

      Wilkes made no move to stand on her own. Probably couldn’t. He knew all too well the agony of the human body transforming into one giant cramp.

      His pain lessened until he was able to register once more the galvanizing sensation of a woman’s body snuggled up close to his. She was curvy. And springy in the right places. Sex in a bottle.

      “Aww, hell,” he muttered. “You really are a girl, aren’t you?”

      She glanced down at her chest mashed against his. The display of cleavage above the neck of her olive drab tank top was impressive, to say the least. “Last time I checked, I’m still a girl,” she declared.

      An unwilling crack of laughter slipped out of him before he was able to bite it back.

      She felt soft and feminine in his arms. Which went against everything he knew about her. He’d seen her PFT scores and run times. She was a beast by female standards. Best they’d seen in a long time. All the more reason to ignore the blood surging into his loins. She was a job, not a date. But day-umm, she was hot.

      The light green in her eyes was overtaken by black as her pupils dilated. She must have registered his wholly male reaction to her. Not much he could do about that. But then her gaze, peeking up through long, dark lashes, went a little languorous and a whole lot sensual.

      Uh-oh. One of them had to be responsible here and do the right thing. At the moment it was going to have to be her because his pulse was pounding through an erection hard enough to hammer nails with.

      Instead, she didn’t do a blessed thing to stop every sexual part of her from pressing against every sexually corresponding part of him. Worse, she looked ready to have hot, sweaty sex with him this very second. All he had to do was say the word. And the word was hovering right on the tip of his tongue.

      It took every ounce of discipline he had to force his feet to take a cautious step back. His knee held. Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes.

      He continued to grasp her upper arms until her legs steadied. Or maybe it was his leg he was waiting on to settle down and accept his weight. Or maybe he was waiting for his hard-on to calm down enough that he wasn’t on the verge of doubling over in pain around it. Either way, something primal and hungry roared through him as she stared up at him, her huge, green eyes more huge and more green than usual.

      “You good?” he asked gruffly.

      “I’m great,” she breathed back. Lord, she sounded like Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK.

      He would bet she was great in bed. Out of bed. Against a wall. In a shower. In the back of a car. On the back of a car...

      Stop.

      Reluctantly, he set all of those smoking-hot curves and smooth muscles away from him. He had to get control of himself, and fast, or this assignment was going to go to hell in a handbasket of his СКАЧАТЬ