The Cinderella Mission. Catherine Mann
feet apart, her sweat pants pulling taut across her hips.
Ah, hell. Not her hips again.
He forced his eyes up to her face. Not that it offered his libido any relief. Her swept-back hair revealed high cheekbones models paid big bucks to create with implants.
The Nebraska State T-shirt showed a lot more than her bulky sweaters. Even a sweaty mess, she looked damned good inside that T-shirt—and felt good underneath it.
He wanted to crawl into a cold shower.
Not wise when he still didn’t know who’d followed them or why. His review of the security camera footage from when they’d arrived had revealed zip, nada, zilch. The tail could have been a fluke—except he didn’t believe in coincidence.
“Ethan?”
Kelly’s voice kicked through his thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Are you ready?”
“Of course.” He advanced a step and ignored the perfume of Kelly’s shampoo mingling with perspiration, so close to the scent of sex. “Just waiting for your go-ahead. Let’s try it again.”
Friendship was more important, he reminded himself.
Says who? his libido asked.
“Shut up.”
Kelly looked up. “What?”
“Nothing.” Too much of nothing at the moment.
Friendship did count, especially for a man who didn’t allow many into the inner circle of his life. The fewer people he let in, the less chance he had of losing them.
And no way in hell did he intend to lose Kelly on this mission. He would train her until she dropped. “Envision someone you want to hurt.”
She blinked once and nailed him with her gaze. “Done.”
“No time for sympathy.”
“Got it.”
“Focus. Pull your mind in tight. You have to quit thinking about all those pretty kicks you see on TV or in whatever class you took. This is about street fighting, blending techniques that work for your body.” He’d spent the whole night before putting together a Kelly plan, a mix of women’s defense courses and Krav Maga used by elite forces around the world.
Ethan stepped closer, crowded her space to emphasize the differences in their size. Recognizing limitations was the first step to overcoming them. “No rules. Fight dirty. Fight to win because losing means you’re dead. List target zones.”
“Vulnerable tissue areas—throat, eyes, inner arm, inner thigh. And of course the cro—”
“Yeah, I’ll let you slide by without practicing that one.” Technically, it didn’t qualify as a soft tissue area at the moment, anyway. “Run the strikes.”
“The palm strike, eagle claw, bear strike,” she paused, flexing her hand into the proper form for each, “and my favorite, the double dragon.” She swung her hand forward as if tossing something, two fingers jabbing toward his eye.
He blocked her wrist. “Well done.”
His fingers curved around her and held a second beyond necessary before he dropped her hand.
“I have to admit,” her voice whispered through the air, husky bedroom tones gliding over him as she circled to his back, “the tiger claw seems so violent.”
Her breath stroked across his skin. Ethan swallowed. “That’s the idea.”
“How can I know I’ll be bloodthirsty enough to go for the throat like that?”
The husky catch in her question caressed the skin on the back of his neck. “Instinct to live.”
“But to pinch through the Adam’s apple…” She crossed to his other side, a full-out attack on his senses. Her hand fell onto his shoulder, curved around. “I think I prefer to just—”
His world rocked.
Whoosh. Air abandoned his lungs.
The ceiling stared back down at him as he lay flat on his back.
Kelly leaned over him. “—do something like that?”
Damn. She’d lured him with a pretended weakness and then flipped him. Tripped him, actually, but a minor technicality since either way, he’d met the mat.
“Yeah, Kel, just like that.” He pushed the words out with minimal oxygen left in his lungs.
His head thunked back and he stared at the ceiling. When the hell had someone painted stars up there?
Never mind. The last one faded.
Kelly smiled, hands on both her knees as she leaned closer, nearly nose-to-nose, her ponytail swishing like a pendulum over his chest. “I took you down. Flat on your back. Oh, yeah.”
She swung upright, dancing around him in her victory trot, her eyes laughing as much as her full, luscious mouth.
Ethan just lay on the floor and watched her come alive.
He hadn’t been dropped since early training, only to be taken down by a woman in bobby socks. He wondered if maybe he needed some self-defense courses of his own before those dainty sneakers danced right over his focus.
No more hand-to-hand, body-to-body combat today. “Time for target practice.”
Maybe she’d miss and put him out of his misery.
She couldn’t shoot worth a damn today.
Kelly clicked away on her new computer in Ethan’s loft, the man himself absorbed in his own keyboard three feet away. The locale may have changed, but apparently her role was still the same. Desk jockey.
Aim low. Aim low. Aim low. She chanted the too damned rudimentary advice Ethan had given her every time her arm bucked and her shots went wild.
Her victory in the exercise room had been short-lived once they’d shifted to his private shooting range. Okay, so her poor aiming could have had something to do with the fact that she’d spent the hour prior tangling her body up with his on exercise mats.
Talk about exercise—more like an exercise in self-torture. He’d stood so darned close to her, smelling so damned awesome. Which made her shots go wild.
Which made him stand even closer.
Bottom line, she needed what he could teach her about self-defense. Sure she’d been given entry-level defense courses upon joining the agency, and she’d learned some basic moves after her grab-happy ancient languages professor had started stalking her. Her regular Pilates Method exercise and relaxation training kept her toned.
Not that she planned to let on about those and give away her miniscule edge. Besides, she’d learned more in the hour with Ethan than in her six-week course at the campus community center.
At least here at the computer with Alex Morrow’s final transmissions in front of her, she could be certain of her footing.
She snuck a glance at Ethan at his computer. A miniature ivory elephant perched on top. A gift from his Aunt Eugenie, no doubt. How sweet that he’d kept it.
Kelly shoved the sympathetic thought away. The rat bastard had set her up and hurt her feelings. Twice in one week. One simple flip onto an exercise mat didn’t come close to canceling that debt.
Although it made a decent start.
What was he doing? His computer screen split into multiple images of the mansion grounds. He clicked keys. Angles widened.
Kelly spun her chair for a better look. She hadn’t considered there might be a threat behind Ethan’s fortress walls. She understood the risks involved in setting a trap the night of the embassy gala. But why would there be safety concerns