Cindy Dees - Special Forces - The Recruit

Tessa’s entire body tensed. She knew that tone of voice from her own childhood. It belonged to a bully. One pumping himself up to inflict pain on someone weaker than he was. A bully enjoying his victim’s fear. Oh, this was not going to go well.

Anger at a bunch of big, strong jerks picking on someone else rolled through her, hot and sharp. God, she hated bullies. She sized up the four men quickly. She and Beau could totally take them. Teach them a lesson—

Check that. Not only was it strictly forbidden for special operators to lose their cool in public and particularly against civilians, but failure to control anger was also a big, fat disqualifier for joining them. Anger clouded the mind. Impaired judgment. Still. It was hard to rein in the urge to remove the rest of these jerks’ teeth.

As for Beau, he’d gone still and silent beside her. As in totally hunting-predator still and deeply, unnaturally silent. Menace poured off him like sublimated carbon off a block of dry ice. Surely, the four drunks weren’t so far gone that they failed to sense the threat emanating from him.

The first drunk gave Beau a hard shove. Nope. Too far gone to realize Beau was not a man to bait and threaten anymore. Little Farty Lam-bear had grown up into a stone-cold killer.

Beau stepped back up beside her after the shove. He spoke quietly, calmly. “Walk away from me, Jimbo. And don’t ever lay another hand on me. This is your only warning.”

The four drunks hooted with laughter. She thought Beau had gone a little pale, the only indication that these assholes actually bothered him.

“Easy, Beau,” she murmured low. “They’re not worth it.”

“Stay out of this, Tessa,” he muttered back. “This has been a long time coming. If they pick a fight with me, I’m within my rights to defend myself.”

She winced. It wasn’t a good idea for anyone to pick a fight with a trained Special Forces operative like him.

On cue, Jimbo took a clumsy swing at Beau. For his part, Beau dodged the meaty fist in negligent disdain, reaching up casually, gently even, to grasp Jimbo’s fist. The big drunk dropped to his knees, yelping.

Beau leaned down and spoke in a low, almost caressing tone, “You think you can mess with me like back in the good old days, Jimbo? Take my girl? Humiliate me in public? Think again, my friend.”

“Screw you,” Jimbo growled.

Beau just laughed quietly and tightened his grip until the guy on the floor howled with pain.

“Need me to help kill him?” she asked under her breath.

Beau glanced up at her. His stare was flat. Emotionless. He looked like Death incarnate.

Which, of course, he was.

“Maybe you should cut him loose,” she murmured. “I’m starving, and I don’t want to get kicked out of here.”

Beau released Jimbo’s hand, or more precisely, he released the unfortunate thumb bent back nearly to the guy’s wrist. The Cajun surged to his feet, right fist cocking back as he rose.

Mistake .

Beau moved so fast Tessa barely saw him slide past his foe. But all of a sudden Jimbo was facing her, and Beau was behind the guy, forearm around Jimbo’s neck, and the drunk was rapidly turning an ugly shade of purple.

She spoke calmly and slowly. “Beau.” She waited until he made eye contact with her to continue. “Toothless, here, has learned the error of his ways in trying to sucker punch you. Haven’t you?” she asked Jimbo.

The drunk tried to nod within Beau’s grasp but only managed to bug his eyes out a little more.

She glanced back at Beau. “How about you turn him loose so we can eat our dinner?”

He hesitated, but then nodded tersely and turned Jimbo loose.

The Cajun bent over at the waist, gasping and coughing. Tessa leaned down beside him and spoke coldly. “You’re welcome. And for the record, he could’ve snapped your neck like a twig if he actually wanted to kill you. Walk away from Beau and don’t ever mess with him again, or next time, I will let him break your neck.”

Jimbo glared at her, spitting out something under his fetid breath about crazy bitches and their homicidal pretty boys. Whatever. She was more concerned about Beau.

She straightened and turned, coming face-to-face with him. “You okay?” she asked under her breath.

“Yeah. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

She stared at him, startled. He sounded utterly normal. Casual. The incident was a stark reminder of just how lethal these guys could be when crossed. They killed with cool, calculated precision. No anger, no emotion, just efficient violence in the blink of an eye.

“How long have you been waiting to do that to that guy?” she asked low.

“Awhile,” Beau replied shortly.

She knew a thing or two about having old scores to settle.

Jimbo stumbled back toward his equally dentally challenged buddies, grumbling about jealous bastards who refused to share the hot chicks. At least somebody thought she was attractive. Of course, she still had all her teeth. By that measure alone, she was probably smoking hot to those losers.

Beau still stood rooted in place. Maybe he wasn’t so unaffected, after all. She reached out to touch his elbow lightly. “Ready to eat?”

He shook himself a little. “Yes. You?”

She smiled. “Show me the meat, big guy.”

His eyes glinted at her double entendre, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

He glanced across the room toward a grill that was actually an oil drum split in half with metal mesh over the two halves. Beds of charcoal filled the drums. “’Ey, Marie,” he called out.

A large woman wearing a New Orleans Saints jersey and standing by the grill turned around, wielding a long pair of tongs. She bellowed back, “Grab a table and yell out what y’all want. Damn waitress didn’ show up t’night.”

Tessa sank into a chair opposite Beau at a table for two, studying him closely. He had reacted the same way she would react if one of her mom’s boyfriends tried to rough her up nowadays. She would go postal on his ass.

Beau scowled back at her as he caught her intent regard on him. Didn’t like being psychoanalyzed, huh?

“Where do you know those guys from?” she asked.

“Everyone in these parts knows the Kimball brothers. I’m surprised all four of them are out of jail at the same time.”

“Are they petty criminals or into bigger stuff?”

Beau shrugged. “They deal drugs. Run guns. Extort protection money from local businesses. Rumor has it they’ve killed a few folks who got in their way or refused to pay.” He added sardonically, “They’re just smart enough to stay one step ahead of the law. The sheriff puts them away for small stuff anytime he can catch them. But so far, they’ve avoided arrest for the more serious felonies everyone knows they’ve committed.”

She eyed the big men across the room, memorizing their faces for future reference.

“How do you like your steak?” he asked, his voice a bit too tight. Predatory intensity rolled off him, and frankly, it turned her on like mad. Not that she would ever admit to him that she was secretly a bit of a Spec Ops groupie.

“Earth to Tessa, come in. Your steak?”

“Rare,” she answered, mentally shaking herself. Get a grip, girlfriend .

“Pink rare or bleeding rare?”

“Marie can just walk my steak past the flame and call it good.”

Beau called out, “Two steaks. Biggest ones you’ve got and rare as a virgin in a whorehouse.”

Guffaws filled the room. The Kimball boys glowered, however. Their heads came together angrily as they muttered amongst themselves. She made a mental note to keep an eye on that bunch as the night progressed and the level of whiskey in the bottle in front of them went down.