Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Her cheekbones had a sculpted sharpness that had to be Eastern European. She’d have looked too sharp, too severe, like some evil dominatrix, if the sharpness hadn’t been balanced by the softness of her hair. It was dark, I guessed dark brown, and it fell in tumbling waves down to her shoulders. Even in the lousy photo, it seemed to shine and move: I could feel how soft it must be.
And then, finally, I saw her lips. She was scowling, obviously unhappy with whoever was taking the photo, and her lips pouted sulkily in a way that made me forget to breathe. I stared at them, transfixed. I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to pull her close and just kiss that scowl away, or…
Or gather her hair in my fist and guide those lips towards my aching cock. Who the hell is this woman?!
“Tanya Yesh—Yeshev—Yeshevsk—” JD was trying and failing to read the name at the bottom of the screen.
“Yeshevskaya,” said Steward effortlessly.
It was cold and hard, while at the same time elegant and delicate, like ice crystals. So much more exotic and sexy than my last name, Stockburn, which sounds like a wooden gatepost worn smooth with time. I found myself silently mouthing it: Yesh-ev-skay-a. Then I realized what I was doing and closed my mouth quick.
“She’s GRU,” Steward continued. “Russian intelligence. Two days ago, she killed this guy, Castor Barlow.” He showed us another photo, this time a scene-of-crime photo. A guy in a suit lay slumped forward over his desk, a red flower blossoming across the paperwork. “He was a Wall Street stockbroker. A security camera caught her leaving his house, minutes after it happened.” This picture showed Tanya hurrying across a street. She was in skinny jeans and a hooded top, her body lithe but mouthwateringly feminine, with lush, full breasts and flaring hips. She’d put her hood up to try to hide her face but the camera had caught her at just the right angle as she looked furtively to the side. It was definitely her.
The others muttered and cursed. The murder looked nasty: this woman wasn’t to be taken lightly. I should have felt the same, but as I stared at the image, my eyes just kept moving back and forth between her eyes and her lips, like my brain was a skipping record.
“Why’d she kill him?” asked Gabriel.
“We don’t know,” Steward told him. “Neither do the GRU. She wasn’t even meant to be in America. They claim she’s gone rogue and they’ve disavowed her.”
I was still staring at her photo. It was like I was floating off into a dream world where all that existed were those big, pale eyes and those soft, soft lips.
“Do we know where she is?” asked Bradan.
“An apartment in New York,” said Steward. “Your job is to go in and capture her alive, then bring her to a safehouse in West Virginia where we can interrogate her.” He looked at each of us in turn. “I can’t express how careful you’ve got to be with this woman. She’s one of the best the GRU ever had. Off-the-scale smart, utterly convincing in her lies. She can make you believe anything. She’ll try to get inside your heads, turn you against each other…and she’s not above using her body to get what she wants.”
“Danny, don’t get any ideas,” warned Gabriel.
Danny put his hands up in protest. “I’m a changed man!”
Danny used to be notorious for seducing every woman we came across, until he fell for Erin, JD’s little sister. Everyone laughed. Everyone except me. I was still sitting there, entranced. The news that this woman was some sort of evil seductress should have poured cold water on my attraction to her. But it didn’t. It only made me more fascinated.
JD turned to me. “Colton, wrangling prisoners is your specialty. I want you to help plan the op and you’ll be responsible for handling her.”
I nodded, my chest filling with pride. The truth is, however close we’ve all become, I’ve always felt kind of like I don’t belong on the team. Everyone else is former Special Forces but me? I’m just regular Army. This was my big chance to contribute and prove myself. And also a chance to royally fuck everything up. That thought finally cleared my head and I sat up straight. “Don’t worry, boss. I got this.”
It’s a point of pride that I’ve brought in every single prisoner I’ve ever gone after. And no matter how gorgeous she was, Tanya Yeshevskaya would be no different.
We planned and rehearsed all morning. Kian headed off to Washington and we all wished him luck with the President. Then, around noon, it came time for the rest of us to leave. All the women showed up to say goodbye to their men and suddenly, everyone was hugging. It was like one of those diagrams from chemistry class: a whole bunch of stable particles made up of protons and neutrons clinging tightly together: JD and Lorna, Bradan and Stacey, Cal and Bethany, Gabriel and Olivia, Danny and Erin...and then, bouncing around the room like a couple of loose electrons, Gina and me, the only members of the team still single. Fortunately, Bethany had brought their huge German Shepherd, Rufus, so Gina and I ruffled his fur and told him what a good good boy he was until the hugs broke up.