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  Some rules were broken day by day, but while he was in the SEALs, those were the rules he had lived by.

  As the commander of Elite Operations One—the Elite Ops as they called it—, he’d remained true to one rule only. Never let himself get close to his operatives. Only one had been close to him, the nephew he had nearly lost before he’d entered the select, secretive organization.

  And he’d almost broken that rule a thousand times over with this woman.

  He watched her, the deserted communications room, for some odd reason, a perfect backdrop for the fact that she was barely dressed. That she was walking around looking like sex personified.

  They were the only two team members left on the base now, and they both knew it. They had known it the moment the last operative left the base earlier that day.

  She stood proud in the central cavernous center beneath the metal catwalk he stood on now and stared below. She would know she could dress down, dress up, or dress not at all, and no one would be aware of it but him. If he saw her. But he was supposed to be in his suite, not here, watching her from the shadows.

  Not standing here, aching for her, his gut clenched with such need that he felt as though the agony were rocking through him, the denial fucking killing him.

  She was barefoot, dressed in a black silk gown that dropped to her ankles, the tiny straps barely holding it up over her full breasts. She made him so damned hard his dick felt like iron.

  She made him so damned hungry for a taste of her that he actually ached with it. His balls tightened painfully and his cock throbbed in demand. A demand that he go to her, that he touch her, that he take her to his bed and just fuck her. Fuck her until the hellish hunger burning inside him was sated, and the clawing need eased.

  Instead, he forced himself to simply stand there, to do no more than watch her.

  She stared around the room, her gaze touching on the silent computers, the darkened maps, the blank expanse of screen where satellite images had once been displayed.

  And she looked lost. She looked as though she didn’t know where to turn, or where to go now that this part of her life was over.

  Elite Operations One was done. The last agent had fulfilled the eight-year contract he’d signed. Several had been under twelve-year contracts, but they were finished now as well. Five men had gone their own way to live their lives in the sheltering hearts of the women who had ultimately saved them.

  And where the hell did that leave him? Where did that leave Tehya?

  She had dedicated six years to the Elite Operations. Pulled in at the age of twenty-four because of her contacts overseas, her practical knowledge of communications, she had eventually been given the code name Enigma. She’d been a last-minute hire, a decision made more by the agents than by Jordan, and she had immediately completed a team that hadn’t known they weren’t whole.

  If it had been left up to him, she would have never wasted those tender years of her life within this mountain. She wouldn’t have wasted her life staring at computers, or immersing herself in the lives and the missions that had been played out beyond the steel and cement walls surrounding them now.

  She should have been living. She should have gone to college, married, and had a house full of babies instead of hiding on the secretive, secure base of Elite Operations One.

  As he watched her, she pushed her fingers through the long, heavy strands of red-gold hair that fell to her hips. He rarely saw it unbound anymore. For years she’d kept it in a tight plait, or a ponytail.

  Had she worn it loose during the past years as she did tonight, then he wondered if he could have kept his hands off her for so damned long.

  That hair tempted, it teased, it dared. And Jordan wasn’t a man that could turn his back on a dare.

  In the six years she had worked with the Elite Ops, he’d done his best to stay the hell away from her, but he couldn’t deny she had made herself an integral part of the unit.

  Tehya was the backbone of the communications center, along with Kira Richards. She had also acted as his personal assistant, and he’d be damned if he could think of anyone who could have fulfilled that job nearly as well.

  It was Tehya who kept the files intact, mission information flowing, his coffee hot and plentiful, and his dick spike hard.

  It was hard now. His balls tight and throbbing, his muscles tense with the effort to stay the hell away from her, to ignore the silent invitation he saw in her eyes too often.

  It was an invitation he wouldn’t see any longer after the sun rose on a new day. She would be heading out, leaving the base to begin a life of her own. To learn how to simply be Teylor Johnson, a woman who had spent her life working in the back offices of a central database company. One of those nameless, faceless drones that other workers rarely if ever saw, but whom they depended upon for the various files and information she was responsible for. This was her new identity, the safety net Jordan had created for her.

  She would be out of his life though. And hell if he knew how to handle that thought.

  As he stood watching, Jordan’s fingers clenched when she turned, her lush hair moving in a wave of silk that tempted his fingers to tangle in the long, rioting curls.

  Those long strands swayed around her as she slowly shook her head and sighed. A slow, heavy sound of regret before she turned and left the dimly lit room, unaware he that he was observing her, unaware of the hunger that tightened his expression.

  There had only been a few times he had ever come truly close to Tehya. She had gone covert with him several times because of her ability to hack her way into any system and her overseas connections. During those times they had been forced into close proximity, so close that more than once they had been forced to share a bed.

  Needless to say, he hadn’t slept much on those missions. And he wouldn’t be sleeping tonight, knowing they were alone, and he could have her.

  She made him fuck hungry. He lived in a hellacious haze of lust at times, so damned hot for her it was all he could do to keep his cock in his pants.

  He was haunted by fantasies of her naked, her eyes dazed with lust, her face flushed, as he teased and tempted and sated the lust that he knew would explode between them. Imagining her creamy flesh flush, her eyes dilate and darken. Her hips arching, pussy saturated with her juices, swollen and clenched tight, as he worked his dick inside her.

  His nostrils flared at the fantasy he couldn’t ignore as the heavy steel door below slid open. It closed behind her as she passed through it, heading for the resident suites farther up the mountain.

  The communications room was on the deepest level of the base. Ten stories beneath the mountain above them, heavily secured and completely hidden.

  Residential suites were located just a single story beneath ground level, each set of rooms outfitted with a bedroom, bathroom, and small sitting and meal preparation area. The Elite Ops agents were well taken care of. They were the heart and soul of the nongovernment, nonmilitary, secretive group of undercover operatives. Operatives who were now gone with the exception of himself and Tehya.

  Jordan had seen each operative off with a sense of envy that even he couldn’t deny. Despite his determination to remain single and to remain a doting uncle, brother, and son, he’d been envious of the lives his men had waiting for them. The wives, the children. The freedom to laugh and to love.

  It was a freedom Tehya hadn’t sought out, though each year he had lived in fear that she would, wondering if he could let her go when she made the request.

  Hell, letting her go now was something he was finding impossible to do. He was the reason she was still here. He had kept her busy, kept her working, ensuring she had been delayed and the last to leave. Ensuring he didn’t have to release his grip on her until the very last possible second before the new team moved in to take over the base.

  And why had he kept her there? He’d avoided her this entire, final week. He’d watched her from afar, jacked off at night when the fucking lust was close
to breaking his control, and kept telling himself he could let her go.

  And still, he was fighting it. Still, he was trying to find ways to hold her here when he knew he had finally run out of time.

  Shaking his head at the futility of the hunger tearing at his control, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants and finished his final inspection before leaving himself.

  The next morning would see him walking away from the base, perhaps for the last time.

  He had the option of returning and heading the new team, with the new commander working as his second in command. Killian Reece had no problems with Jordan assuming command of the base and operations.

  It was a decision he had less than a month to make. He could go another twelve years or he could back off, find a place for himself within the world as a civilian and find a life.

  The only problem was, he couldn’t imagine life outside this mountain, without Tehya running his life to some extent. Without her tormenting him with her pert smile and sassy-as-hell comebacks that made his dick harder than hell with the need to fuck her into submission.

  Son of a bitch.

  He shifted the hardened length of his cock as he stepped into the elevator at the end of the steel and iron walkway and pushed the button for the residential level. The thought of her leaving had that need ripping through him with a force that damned near cramped his dick. He had the urge to go to her, to jerk her to him, lift her, wrap those incredible legs around his hips and pound into her.

  She would walk out those doors when morning came and he intended to ensure he never crossed her path again. But God help him, would he make it through the night without pouring himself into her?

  He doubted it.

  He had every intention of going straight to his own suite, he assured himself. Every intention of ensuring he didn’t tempt himself further where Tehya was concerned.

  Instead, he found himself at her door. Dick hard, pulse pounding, his body tense, unrelenting, in the pure addictivelike hunger pouring through his body.

  He hadn’t told her good-bye. It would hurt her if he didn’t say something before she left in the morning. He couldn’t do that to her.

  He couldn’t do it to himself.

  Pressing his finger to the button that would announce his presence, he waited. Rather than her voice coming over the small intercom, the metal door slid open instead.

  And there she stood.

  The black silk flowed over her full breasts. The long red-gold hair spilled around the creamy perfection of her face.

  She was thirty years old, but she barely looked twenty-five.

  Vivid emerald-green eyes watched him warily, but the nipples beneath that silk hardened, peaked, and pressed against the material as though reaching for the hungry depths of his mouth.

  Damn, he should have gone straight to his own suite. He should have never stopped.

  He was going to do exactly what he had told himself he wouldn’t do.

  He was going to fuck her.

  “Jordan.” His name was a caress on her lips. The soft, sultry sound was filled with an aching huskiness, a question, a hint of hope.

  “Are you packed?”

  That wasn’t what he wanted to say. He wanted to reach out and rip that damned gown off her body, push her back into the room and thrust into the sweet, hot depths of her pussy.

  Damn, she would be tight. She hadn’t had a lover in the six years she had been with the unit. He knew she hadn’t. He’d kept such close surveillance on her that he would have known the second she had so much as entertained the thought.

  She’d given her life to the Elite Operations, and what did she have to show for it? She had no family, no friends, no connections or roots. He was throwing her to the wolves and Jordan knew it.

  “I’m packing,” she finally answered as she turned away, but not before he caught the flash of hurt in her eyes. “Is that all you wanted?”

  Hell, no, it wasn’t all he wanted.

  Soft, supple leather covered the couch and recliner that faced the wall-mounted combination televisioncomputer screen. A small lap table sat at one end of the couch, the wireless keyboard and computer accessories aimed for the screen.

  A colorful western throw was laid over the back of the couch. A cup of tea sat on the coffee table, still steaming, as she moved back to it.

  A bookshelf filled with books covered one wall. Interspersed with the books were small figurines she’d been given over the years for Christmas or her birthday. Tiny, collectible dragons. Pocket dragons, she called them. It was the only thing Tehya collected. Whimsical, fanciful, the complete opposite of her life.

  She hadn’t packed them. The books were still on the shelves, boxes in front of them with only a few books enclosed.

  “You have a ways to go,” he said as he looked around.

  The room was incredibly neat. Even the packed boxes were stacked in neat little piles awaiting morning and the team that would load her belongings and transport them to the storage facility she had requested they be taken to.

  “I’ll be ready on time.” She shrugged.

  Those wild green eyes flicked over him, making his cock harder, reminding him of all the things he couldn’t have. All the things he refused to allow himself to have.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t have her. He could, and God knew he wanted her until his body felt on fire from the need. But he knew he would only end up destroying both of them if he took her, if he allowed the dominant possessiveness that rode him to have free rein.

  “What do you want, Jordan?” she finally asked as she sat down on the couch, one leg tucked beneath the other as she wedged herself into the corner of the cushions. “You’re standing there as though you should be doing something. There’s nothing left to do anymore.” And the regret in her voice echoed through his entire being. As did the loss. He could hear it, feel it. The loss of something neither of them had been allowed to experience.

  No, there wasn’t anything left to do.

  He felt his jaw tighten as he fought back the need to go to her, to push her back along the leather cushions as he came over her.

  Five seconds, he thought. He could have her laid out on the couch, that piece of nothing gown she wore pushed to her hips and his dick buried between those luscious thighs in less than five seconds.

  And he would be making the biggest mistake of his life.

  She was essentially a coworker. He was her superior, even though the Ops were, for the moment, disbanded. She was a woman that needed more than he could give her, more than he could allow himself to give any woman. She already had more of him than he was willing to admit to.

  “Jordan, if you don’t stop standing there staring at me as though you’re ready to strangle me, then I just may begin to worry.”

  She didn’t sound in the least worried. She sounded irritated, restless, a bit frustrated. But worried wasn’t in there.

  “Do you need help packing?” he finally asked.

  He wasn’t ready to walk away. Come dawn, the transport detail would be here to load her belongings and ship them out. She would be following behind in whichever of the expensive, fast little sports cars was still parked in the base garage. He’d given her a choice of the vehicles, something he hadn’t offered to the other members of the unit.

  “I don’t need help packing.” There was a snap to her voice now, a sense of impatience and frustration that threatened to light a fuse to his already short temper.

  “You’ll leave it to the last damned minute and have the transport detail packing boxes and running late while you bark out orders,” he ground out as that frustration began to eat at him, to get the better of him. “Dammit, Tehya, they’re on a schedule.”

  “As if I’m ever late getting anything done.” Her eyes narrowed, an assessing, curious light glittering in them as she watched him. “Tell me a single instance in the past six years that I have ever been late.”

  He hated it when she stared at him like that.
As though she suddenly glimpsed something in his gaze or in his expression that was another piece of a puzzle she was putting together.

  He wasn’t a damned puzzle. He was a fucking horny man and he was trying damned hard to keep a handle on the lusts raging through him.

  What the hell did she expect from him?

  “Do you want me to help you pack?” His arms folded over his chest as he glared at her now, channeling all the frustrated lust into irritated anger.

  Anger was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than a redheaded little rogue determined to drive him insane.

  “No. Actually, I don’t need your help.” She came to her feet slowly, like a cat unwinding from a favorite bed.

  She didn’t stretch, but she didn’t have to. Laziness wasn’t a part of her demeanor at the moment.

  “You need someone’s help,” he growled as he stared around the living area once again. “What about the other rooms? Are they ready to load?”

  Her eyes narrowed further. “Everything but the living room. Would you like to check, daddy, and make certain I’m following orders?”

  The sweetness of her voice almost had his balls shrinking. Intimidation from a five-foot-four piece of dynamite? It shouldn’t be possible.

  But he knew this little piece of dynamite could pack a wallop when it wanted to.

  Unfortunately, common sense didn’t seem to be his forte tonight.

  “Don’t call me ‘daddy,’ Tehya. I’m well aware of your feelings when it comes to fathers.”

  She distrusted them. She even watched the men she had worked with for years with a suspicious gaze once they’d become fathers.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jordan,” she replied with a cute little drawl that in no way detracted from the danger glittering in her gaze. “I have no feelings one way or the other where fathers are concerned. I never had a father, so how should I know how they’re supposed to act? Sperm donors don’t count.”