Fairchild frowned. Undercover work wasn’t exactly her area of expertise, but if it meant she’d have a chance at the manresponsible for the death of her teammates, she was willing to give it a shot.
“So I go there with these guys, and we act lovey-dovey in front of Slayn so he thinks we’re legit. That the idea?”
“No.”
This time, it wasn’t Barnes who had answered. It was the woman, Lennox. Her voice was a cool contralto. After a beat, she went on.
“You won’t beacting,” she said. “Calyxia’s a hardcore resort. There’s going to be sex involved—realsex—and lots of it.”
She swiped the screen, bringing up the floor plan of an expansive hotel suite. It featured a massive bed, a lavish bathroom, and a balcony overlooking the resort. Fairchild didn’t care about those amenities. Her attention was focused on the numerous cameras that were marked all throughout the suite. There was one in every room. In some cases, more than one. The bed had half a dozen aimed at it from different angles.
Lennox gestured toward the screen. “You’ll be staying in one of the rooms designed for exhibitionists. The footage from the cameras will be freely available to all the other guests at the resort. We’re told Slayn has a voyeuristic streak. If he can see that you’re not sitting around in your room sharpening your claws all day, it should make him far more amenable to a private rendezvous.”
Fairchild swallowed hard. Lennox hadn’t spelled it out, but the implication was clear: instead of sharpening her claws, she would be doing other things in that room—on her back, on her knees, on all fours.
And she would have to make it look like she was enjoying it. That would be the hard part. Slayn wanted a woman he could dominate, and thatreallywasn’t Fairchild’s style.
Still, if it meant getting a shot at Slayn…
“So,” Barnes said, breathing out smoke as he talked. “What do you think, Fairchild? Are you up to the task?”
She hesitated. “It depends.”
“On?”
“The team. I need to know who I’ll be…workingwith.”
The wordworkingtickled her throat on the way out.
Barnes stuck his cigar in the corner of his mouth and nodded. He walked over to the side of the room and pressed an intervox button on the wall.
“Gentlemen, you can come in now.”
A moment later, a door whispered open at the back of the briefing room, and three men stepped inside. Fairchild couldn’t make out their faces within the deep shadows of their hoods, but their size and build let her know they were Mercs, just like her. Their sleeveless tops revealed massive, ripped arms, and their snug-fitting combat pants hinted at the dimensions of the muscles beneath—as well as other details of their anatomy.
Fairchild pushed back her chair and stood as they approached. Even though she was well over six feet tall, the men still dwarfed her. Normally she wasn’t intimidated by other Mercs, but there was something about these guys that made her blood pump a little faster. Perhaps it was because she’d taken too muchtime off. More likely, it was the nature of the mission—and the knowledge of what these men would do to her if she accepted.
Either way, Fairchild did a decent job of hiding her nervousness, right up to the point when the first of the three Mercs was standing right in front of her.
When he pulled back his hood, she gasped audibly.
“Reece?”
CHAPTER 4
Corbyn Reece felt his heart rate spike. It took a lot to make that happen. A HALO jump into an active war zone, for example. Or maybe a one-on-one knife fight with a worthy opponent.
And, apparently, the right kind of woman.
The last time he’d seen Sonia Fairchild, she’d still been a cadet, just barely out of her teens, a tough but gangly young woman who still hadn’t quite grown into her long frame. That memory was a far cry from the soldier who stood before him now in the low light of the briefing room.
She had curves now, and plenty of them. The kind that came from being broken down and reforged into a perfect killing machine. Even in a simple tank top and cutoffs she looked incredible—lean, athletic, yet still undeniably feminine. Her rust-red hair was pulled back in a tight tail, and she wore a camo cap pulled low over her eyes, but Reece could see the augmetics glowing faintly from beneath the brim. A scar lined her left cheek. That was also new.
“Fairchild,” he said, extending his hand. “Been a while.”
She shook his hand, squeezing it harder than most men could do. Reece found his imagination veering off into dangerous territory, imagining how that strong grip might feel on other, more sensitive parts of his anatomy.
He immediately chastised himself for going there. This was no time for such thoughts.
