Captivated By You
Sherrilyn Kenyon
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, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
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.”
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
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 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
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.”