Chapter One In her life as a covert agent, Rhea Stevenson had done a lot of things she hated: cozy up to cold-blooded killers, make goo-goo eyes at drug lords, pretend to be a Russian mail-order bride, walk unarmed in a low-cut, almost nonexistent dress into a nuclear arms deal.
But nothing in all her years as an agent had ever prepared her to do...
This!
"You want me to do what?" she asked Tee, the managing director of the Bureau of American Defense, or BAD as it was known to most of the people who worked there.
A shadow antiterrorism agency that most of the country didn't even know existed, BAD had a lot of "interesting" people in it, and Tee was definitely one of the more colorful characters. At five feet even, Tee shouldn't have been intimidating at all, and yet the small, beautiful Vietnamese-American woman held a look to her that let anyone know she was far deadlier than any cobra.
And she was.
Tee gave her a flat, emotionless stare. "You're going to be a dominatrix."
Rhea couldn't do anything more than gape as she heard male laughter from the desk in the office cube across from hers.
Her gaze narrowed as a bad feeling came over her. "And whose bright idea was this?"
Ace rolled his chair back so that he could look from the entrance of his cube into hers. He smiled at her like the Cheshire cat.
"Oh, no, no, no," Rhea said firmly as she handed the file folder back to Tee. "Not on your life. Let Agent Hotshot over there go in with studded leather and whips. Then the deviants can hang together."
Ace, who really was sexier than any man had a right to be, gave her a hot once-over. "I can't, love. I don't have the ass for it. But you on the other hand..." His dark blue gaze dipped down to her hips and his smile turned lecherous as if he was imagining cupping her derriere.
Rhea wasn't sure what she hated most, the boldness of that look or the way her body reacted to it. And yet her body always betrayed her with this man. She'd never understood how a woman could be both repulsed and turned on at the same time.
Surely something was seriously wrong with her.
"Is this not sexual harassment?" she asked Tee, even though a part of her was humming in excitement. "You know, I do have friends in the EEOC."
Tee looked rather amused by her question. "'Well, in this case, Ace is right. We need a female agent to pose, and Ace thought you'd be the best one for it."
Rhea directed a gimlet stare at him. "I'll just bet he did."
Ace got up and sauntered toward them to stand in the cube's doorway. At six-two, he towered over Tee. The look on his handsome face was that of a kid at Christmas. An image that was helped by his tousled, dark blond hair and teasing, blue eyes.
He cast a devilish grin at Rhea. "Ah, just think, Rhea. You...me...chains and whips...Recipe for a hot night, huh?"
Recipe for a disaster in her opinion. "Recipe for a nightmare, you mean. I wouldn't do this for all the money on the planet. Sorry, Tee, get yourself another agent for this."
Tee sighed irritably. "We need you, Rhea, you're the only one in the home office who fits the profile. Put aside your personal distaste and work with Ace just this once."
"I am not going to take my clothes off around him even if I do get the benny of beating him."
Arching a brow, he folded his arms over his chest. "But would you do it to stop a known terrorist?"
Rhea paused at his words. That was her one hot button, and everyone in the agency knew it. They just didn't know why. The reason was private and personal, but she had spent her entire adulthood on a crusade to stop such needless violence. That one word could get her to do anything.
Even take her clothes off around Ace Krux, male god, personal demon.
"That's another reason we thought you would be perfect," Tee said solemnly. "We all know how you feel."
No, they truly didn't. Rhea took the file back. "Do I have to work with Ace?"
Tee shrugged. "It's his baby. He's been working on the case for a year now and knows all the ins and outs."
"Don't worry, Rhea," he said. "You'll feel differently after you see me naked."
She snorted at that. "Yeah, someone remind me that I better bring along gallons of Pepto-Bismol, an industrial bottle of Tums, and some bicarbonate."
Ace rolled his yes. "Yeah, right. Like you wouldn't sell your soul for a shot at me."
Rhea pulled her weapon out from the holster at her back, then ejected and checked her clip. "You got that much right." She slammed the clip back in and switched the safety off. "You want a ten-second head start or can I just shoot you now?"
Tee shook her head at Ace. "Why must you always torment her? One day, she really is going to shoot you and I just might authorize it." Tee turned back to her with a warning stare. "Put it away, Rhea."
Grumbling, she reactivated the safety and complied.
"Ah, she wouldn't shoot me anyway, Tee. She's just covering her infatuation for me by being a hard-ass."
Rhea stood up to confront him. "You know, Ace, you're not nearly as irresistible as you think you are."
"Sure, and just how many times have you dreamed about having me naked and in your bed?"
Rhea counted to ten in her head and forced herself not to rise to his baiting. But the worst part of it all was that he was right. She did find him physically attractive, but the minute he opened his mouth, she wanted to gag him.
"Oh, yeah," she said sarcastically. "You set my entire world on fire. Oh, baby; oh, baby. I must have your hot bod. Why don't we just strip naked and do it right here in the cube?"
Hunter Wesley Thornton-Payne stuck his handsome, albeit pompous, blond head up over the wall of the cube beside Rhea's. "Jeez, people. Could you cut the crap? You know some of us are actually trying to work over here."
"Since when do you work on anything other than your stock portfolio, Payne?" Carlos Selgado asked in his accented voice as he popped up over Rhea's other wall to glare at Hunter. "Some of us are enjoying the fireworks."
"My name is Thornton-Payne," Hunter corrected.
Ignoring him as he always did, Carlos looked over at Tee. "If Rhea is really going to get naked, can I bump off Ace and take over his case?"
Tee gave them all a withering glare. "Agents, down, or there will be a vicious virus that attacks the payroll system and locks you all out of the loop. It's called the Pissed-off Tee Virus and it could make it so that none of you get paid for at least six weeks...maybe more."
Carlos and Hunter immediately vanished.
Tee turned back to Rhea and Ace. "You two, play nice."
Rhea scoffed. "Play nice? I'd rather pet a scorpion, bare-handed."
That devilish grin returned to Ace's face as he raked her with an appreciative stare. "I'll show you my stinger if you'll show me yours."
She screwed her face up in disgust. The man was truly a reprobate.
"Hey, Carlos," he called, "you used to do a lot of work with scorpions. How do they mate, anyway? You know they got those stingers and claws and -- "
"Enough with the mating rituals of scorpions," Rhea said from between clenched teeth. "Why don't we discuss the praying mantis instead? You know, the female rips the head off the male. She's a wise woman."
Ace wagged his eyebrows at her. "Yeah, but what a way to go, huh? If you've got to die, it's always best to go out with a good bang."
Tee cast a withering stare at them. "Yo, Marlin Perkins and crew, let's get back on topic here."
Ace leaned nonchalantly against Rhea's desk and folded his arms over his chest. "Okay, we'll get back on the subject now and save the banging for later."
Rhea just continued to glare at him. This was one of those times when she really hated this man.
But then Thadeus "Ace" Krux was a man of many talents. He could scale a building in a manner to make Spider-Man proud. He could drive better and faster than Jeff Gordon and Mario Andretti combined. He could construct a lethal bomb from an empty Coke bottle, a piece of tissue, and simple household cleaners.
Most of all, he could render any woman on the planet speechless at first glance.
It was a hell of a combination that was deadly to any woman's defenses. He had the sleek, seductive movements of a beast in the wild. The smile of Don Juan and the intelligence of Einstein, all of which was packaged into the body of a Bowflex ad model.
He was the epitome of everything she found desirable in the male species....
And everything she despised.
His calm, cool, rationality bordered on dispassionate. His arrogance knew no bounds, and his ego...
Someone really needed to take him down a few notches.
Since he seemed to live for no other purpose than to torment her, he was completely distracting to her peace of mind.
"So has she racked him yet?" Joe asked as he joined them.
Barely in his thirties, Joe was young to hold the position of senior director for such an important agency, and yet Rhea couldn't think of anyone more suited to controlling the motley, often illegal bunch that made up the BAD task force.
For all his youth and handsomeness, Joe was even more lethal than Tee. He never compromised, never took prisoners. Something that was at odds with his pretty-boy features.
He had on a black leather shoulder holster with the ivory handle of a .38 Special peeking up (Joe had once said he liked being cliché on the surface), but it was the stiletto he kept strapped to his calf that he was most famous for using (that was for the surprises he liked to give after someone mistook him for cliché).
His shoulder-length, dark brown hair was worn in a ponytail, and for once he had the sleeves of his blue dress shirt rolled up to show off the telltale colors of the dragon tattoo he had on his left forearm -- a remnant Rhea had once been told by Tee of the days when Joe was a member of a vicious New York street gang.
"Does this mean I have your permission to rack him?" Rhea asked Joe.
Joe gave Ace an amused smirk.
Ace snorted. "I don't think so. Re...
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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