Hawk's Challenge. Linda Johnston O.

rather than working on her assignment here. Although Alpha Force was working on a way to prevent shifting during a full moon, it hadn’t yet been perfected. But they had crafted an elixir that allowed shifting at other times—and permitted shifters to maintain their human awareness—which worked amazingly well. She loved that stuff.

      She walked beside Logan, mirroring his slow pace. Their footsteps crunched softly on the gravel. Autumn was glad she hadn’t worn sandals. The narrow-heeled ankle boots she’d chosen made her feel unsteady—a good excuse for holding Logan’s arm.

      He stopped and looked down at her, and she could see those blue eyes of his gleaming in the dull illumination of the lot’s few lampposts. His sensual expression sent small lightning bolts through her until the heat burst into fireworks of desire.

      That wasn’t supposed to happen. Logan Valliere was her assignment, not someone she was supposed to feel real attraction to. She shouldn’t be thinking about what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him.

      But then without warning, he turned to her, encircled her in his arms and drew her close. He lowered his mouth to hers, and suddenly the feelings she had thought were fireworks now felt like the merest birthday candle flame compared with what his kiss was doing to her.

      She couldn’t help but react. She kissed him back, touching her tongue to his and tasting warmed beer and a hot, sexy flavor that was all his.

      She pushed closer, feeling that he, too, was reacting to their embrace—growing hard and large and altogether enticing.

      Whoa. This was not a good idea. It wasn’t that she was forbidden from having sex with a subject. That was neither encouraged nor discouraged, as long as it didn’t interfere with the success of an assignment.

      Reluctantly, she pulled away.

      “If that’s what you write about, I’ve definitely been missing something,” she said breathlessly.

      “There are sex scenes in my books,” he admitted. “Fairly hot ones. But that’s not all there is to my stories.”

      “I’ll bet you do a lot of research for those scenes.” She was only half teasing. Would he admit to having hot sex with other women he didn’t really know?

      Better yet, she reminded herself, she needed to find out what kind of research he really did for his thrillers.

      Logan Valliere had described the secret military organization that his upcoming release followed in national television interviews—one that sounded too much like the highly covert Alpha Force.