“Put the booze down, Hart,” Bodie says tauntingly, calling me by my last name, which is how we usually address each other on assignment. “It’s making you morose.”
I know deep down he’s doing what any team member would do, and that’s to get me to suck it up. It’s not the first mission that didn’t go perfectly, and it won’t be the last. But I think of Joram, our guide and interpreter, who is in surgery right now because he took a bullet high in his chest, and I flush with self-directed anger.
Hot, irrational fury rages through me, and I decide to take it out on my teammate.
“Fuck you, Bodie,” I yell as I turn on him, cocking my good arm back. I let the glass fly at his head, but his reflexes are too good. He just ducks slightly to the side and it sails past, smashing against the far wall. Good bourbon goes spraying everywhere.
And it pisses me off even more that he’s right and I’m wrong. That he easily ducked my glass when I would have probably felt better if it hit him in the face. And mostly because he’s standing there looking at me with sympathy when that’s not what I want or need.
“Fuck you,” I yell again as I take long, angry strides at him. He watches me warily, body fully tense as if he’s playing chicken with a freight train that’s barreling at him.
All of my anger and guilt goes on a nuclear boil, and I wonder at this moment if Joram’s family hates me for the role I placed him in and the danger that got him shot.
“Fuck you,” I yell again as my hands slam into his chest.
Bodie has about seventy pounds on me, but he doesn’t budge an inch. It causes me to see red, since it’s a subtle reminder that I am, after all, just a girl playing at a man’s game. I lean back, pull my arms in to launch another strike, but before I can try to push him again, his large hands come down on my shoulders.
“You need to dial it down, Rachel,” he tells me in a deceptively calm voice.
I want to scratch his eyes out and knee him in the nuts for being so fucking right, but I forcibly try to release my anger instead.
But it’s bottled tight when I remember the sound of the bullet as it hit Joram—a whizzing, thudding combo with a wet smack—and his grunt of pain before he sagged to the ground beside me. Bodie didn’t see it because he was busy detonating his charges, and I didn’t make a sound when the bullet destined for me tore through the flesh of my upper arm.
Rage and guilt and booze swim through my blood. For a split second, I feel like I’m in another world. But then my eyes focus and I see Bodie staring down at me, his eyes soft and almost nurturing, and I hate that even more.
“Fuck you,” I curse under my breath right before I choose to get my release another way.
I jump on him.
That gets the big lug to move since he’s so surprised by my attack. But it’s not to hit him or strike out in my anger. It’s a way to release my emotions in a way that feels good.
My legs spread and go around his hips, locking tight. Hands to his neck, I stare at him for what seems like an eternity but is only a second or two, and then my mouth is on his.
Bodie makes an unholy sound from deep within his chest. For a moment, I think it’s disgust, but then his hands go from my shoulders down to my naked ass, bare since the towel fell away from my body.
We kiss so hard my lips feel bruised and my blood now rages with something other than anger.
Pure white-hot lust.
Digging his fingers into my flesh, Bodie mutters something foul, or perhaps it’s beautiful, into my mouth, but I really don’t care. He spins us around and takes me to the mattress, knocking the breath out of me as his big body pins me down.
My hands slither in between us, working at the belt to his pants. When my knuckles graze against an impressively big erection, I know I’m embarrassingly wet for him right now.
Bodie pulls his mouth from mine and looks down at me, his eyes almost black as pitch. “What are we doing, Hart?”
If I thought his use of my professional team name would quell my raging lust, I’d be totally wrong. It means nothing to me that he’s even questioning this.
“We’re getting ready to fuck,” I pant desperately before leaning up to nip at his lower lip with my teeth. He curses again, and then his hands are on me.
All over me.
In me.
And I forget about Joram for just a little bit.
CHAPTER 1
Bodie
6 weeks later…
“I’m out,” I mutter as I fold my cards and lay them face down on the green felt poker table. Tonight’s just not my night.
Pushing out of my chair, I ignore Kynan’s snicker as he’s been taking most of our money all night.
I make my way over to the bar being staffed by two drop-dead gorgeous waitresses. The blonde I have carnal knowledge of, but the brunette is more to my taste. I wonder if they’d be up for a three-way with me.
I hadn’t intended to get laid tonight when I came to The Wicked Horse. Well, wait… who the fuck am I kidding? People don’t come to The Wicked Horse without the probability of busting a nut, but it wasn’t my primary motive.
No, tonight is about hanging with some of my team and unwinding. I just came off a mission to Riyadh where we provided extra security for a lower-ranked foreign diplomat. Not overly exciting but not all that dull either.
Still, I’m always exhausted after any mission that involves danger, and I suppose it’s the constant hum of adrenaline that percolates every second of every day. The resulting let down after it’s all done is draining.
I’m tight with everyone in the Jameson Group, but more so with the actual men and women I go on high-risk operations with. The bond is deeper, forged in trust and a mutual need to keep each other safe. When we get back to the States, we usually hit up a bar, hang out at someone’s house for a cookout, or chill playing poker in the private club simply known as “The Apartment” at The Wicked Horse. The Apartment is a nod to Jerico Jameson, the founder and former owner of The Jameson Group, since he used to live here full time after he opened The Wicked Horse. Now he’s committed himself to a woman and they live in Vegas suburbia, so this space got converted to a private club within a sex club. Here is mostly where people drink and chat—with all the fucking going on in the other rooms at The Wicked Horse. Doesn’t mean fucking doesn’t go on in here, but it doesn’t happen a lot. There are too many other fun places to get your rocks off within the entirety of the club.
The brunette bartender leans over the counter and places her forearms there for support. This gives me a fantastic display of cleavage spilling out over a black bustier she’s wearing. “What can I get you?”
“Budweiser,” I say, and her eyebrows dart upward.
To be a member of this private club means having money out the wazoo, and I am indeed quite well off because of the work I do. I’m sure there aren’t many private club members that drink domestic, but the great thing about paying loads of money to be a member of the private club means they stock my favorite brew.
“Not a very fancy beer,” she says, leaning to reach into a cooler. She pulls out a bottle and pops the top for me.
“Not a very fancy man,” I tell her as I accept it. I’m a Nebraska farm boy who has been drinking Bud since I was fourteen. Can’t help it if that’s still my thing. In fact, it reminds me of warm summer nights and getting drunk down at the rock quarry while my friends and I swam naked and fucked around with the prettiest cheerleaders available.