Special Forces: The Recruit. Cindy Dees

do we start?” she asked.

      “In the morning.”

      “Is there a hidden training base around here?”

      He envisioned the ruin that would be their base of operations for the next few months. He had already humped in the bare basics they would need to survive, and his knee had thought the hard labor of repairing the old dock behind the house and crawling around repairing the roof were terrible ideas. He answered drily, “I suppose you could call it a base.”

      “Will you be training me?”

      She sounded so damned enthusiastic. He restrained an urge to roll his eyes. She had no business being here. Women didn’t belong in the Special Forces community. Period. The total loss of the second Medusa team had proven that, hadn’t it?

      He had no idea how he was actually going to train Tessa. He had no experience as an instructor, and with just the two of them out here by themselves, he couldn’t rely on the same methods by which he’d been trained. “About training you. Here’s the thing. I’m not an instructor. I’m a field operator. Or I was until I wrecked my knee a while back.”

      She looked down in quick sympathy at his leg. Sympathy he neither needed nor wanted. His plan was actually to use her training to get himself back into good enough shape to qualify for field ops again. He would drag her along with him until he was field ready—and until he had run her into the ground and made his point—both to her and to Torsten.

      “The first part of the Spec Ops training you went through with the boys was mostly physical conditioning, meant to weed out the faint of heart and the quitters. Torsten feels like he’s seen enough from you to know you would actually make it through the physical demands of full Spec Ops training.” He added wryly, “Torsten says you don’t know the meaning of the word quit.”

      “He got that right,” she muttered.

      Spoken like a true operator. Beau smiled a little in spite of himself.

      Torsten had discussed with him at length where to train her. This project needed a challenging, but secluded, environment. Beau had been the one to suggest reluctantly that his abandoned family homestead fit the bill perfectly. The incredibly difficult bayou environment would force her to battle heat, humidity, muck, critters and general squick factor.

      “Will my training be like the men’s course?” she asked.

      She sounded entirely too naive and eager. Poor kid had no idea what she was in for. Torsten had been clear. Push her right to the edge of breaking. Find out where her limits lay and take her to them and beyond. And while he was at it, figure out how to work with a woman.

      Not. Happening.

      “I’ll be a real operator, right?”

      “Don’t count on it,” he snapped.

      “Then what the hell are we doing out here?” she shot back.

      Gun, I’m gonna kill you the next time I see you. He straightened to his full height and a hot knife of pain shot through his knee. He clenched his jaw until the pain subsided to bearable. “Assuming you survive, which is not a given, you would hypothetically be a no-kidding operator when it’s said and done.”

      He added direly, “Don’t get your hopes up. The odds of you being able to do everything you’ll have to in order to work on an operational team are pretty much zero.”

      For a blink of an eye, trepidation shone in her eyes. But in the very next blink, steely resolve filled them. Unwillingly, he was impressed with her mental toughness. Even if it was useless. No way was he graduating her from this training. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers.

      “Why Louisiana?” she asked.

      “Secret location. No prying eyes. Challenging environment.” He added warningly, “The ocean may have sharks, but we’ve got gators out here. They’re a whole lot sneakier than sharks, and you can’t punch a gator on the nose and get him to back off. He’ll eat your arm if you try it.”

      She turned her head to study him more fully, and her ponytail fell over her shoulder in soft curls that begged his fingers to run through them. Her gaze was intent. Focused on him like a laser. In that moment she looked just like a warrior...but with firm, round breasts filling out her T-shirt, a lush behind filling out her fatigue trousers and muscular legs a mile long.

      Crap. Talk about messing with his head. A woman operator. And of course, she had to go and look like a freaking Playboy centerfold.

      He had to give her credit: not many women looked this good without a stitch of makeup on, wearing combat boots, no less. Even her muscular shoulders and the pronounced veins in her bare arms were hot. Everything about her spoke of strength, confidence and badassery. But it was all wrapped up in a package so sexy he could devour her like his steak earlier.

      He shook his head to clear the thought. It didn’t matter how sexy she was. He wasn’t about to let her become a member of the club.

      “Let’s get out of here,” he growled. “I owe you at least one decent night’s sleep before we get this ball rolling.” Down a tall hill into a pile of manure.

      She was silent on the ride back to the motel, but her excitement was palpable. He just hoped his knee didn’t give out before it was all said and done. He figured it was a 50/50 proposition. His doctors had argued vehemently against him attempting this comeback. They warned him that, if he overdid it on this op, he would blow his knee out, this time for good. But he refused to sit down and give up. He would go down fighting first.

      They got back to the motel, and Tessa bounced out of the Jeep before he could get around to her side of the vehicle to open the door. He had to smile a little at her enthusiasm. He recalled all too well his own elation when he found out he’d been selected for special operations training all those years ago. Almost a decade.

      Man, he’d been young and naive back then. He’d seen a whole lifetime’s worth of action since. Would she be as jaded as he was ten years down the road, taciturn and tense, living life balanced on a razor’s edge?

      He closed the motel room’s door and turned to face Tessa, who stood in the middle of the room, frowning. “Problem?” he asked.

      “Well, yes. There’s only one bed.”

      “You afraid to share it with me?” He arched an eyebrow in an open dare. “What are you going to do when you’re bivouacking with a male team and all of you are crammed into a hide like sardines, spooning with each other?”

      Her mint-green eyes narrowed. “I’ve got no problem sleeping with you. The question is—are you okay sleeping with me?”

      He snorted. “Honey, I’m not sixteen. I’ve got my hormones firmly under control, thank you very much.” Which might not be entirely true where she was concerned. All of the previous Medusas had lived and worked in very close quarters with their male counterparts. She had to learn to do the same. Starting with him. Oh, joy.

      “Great,” she said cheerfully. “Then you won’t mind if I take my pants off. They’re still a little wet.”

      Well, hell. Give the woman points for calling his bluff.

      She kicked off her combat boots and stripped out of her fatigue pants right there in the middle of the room, revealing legs every bit as lean, muscular and wrap-around-his-hips-and-hang-on sexy as he’d thought they would be. His gaze slid down to her ankles and back up to her black bikini underwear, which stopped an inch short of the bottom of her olive green tank top.

      Was that sweat popping out on his forehead? That strip of tanned stomach was almost more than he could stand. Her waist nipped in sharply, and then her chest flared in Coke-bottle curves that definitely were making him sweat. His palms itched to trace those curves. Memory of them mashed against his chest sent blood pounding to his groin.

      Her chest was high and firm, and her nipples poked at the soft cotton of her