Dangerous Promise Read online

  She bit her tongue for a moment before answering, more gently this time. Leona Smart, the owner of ProtectCorps and Nina’s direct supervisor, insisted all of her employees take courses in sensitivity training. Nina had never been very good at it, although she tried. “I understand how hard that must have been, Mr. Donahue. Believe me, I do.”

  “How could you possibly?” He stalked from one end of the room to the other, pivoting on a bare heel to stare at her.

  She’d read his files and knew he had no martial arts or military training or anything like that. Even so, the man moved like a predator, some kind of big cat, all sleek muscles and rolling gait. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see him snarl. Her heart tried to thump a little faster at what it would be like if he did, indeed, come at her physically. He couldn’t beat her, but he might be an interesting challenge.

  “I was a soldier,” Nina replied simply. “I saw lots of good people die, and sometimes, it was my fault.”

  Donahue went quiet at that. Contemplative. His lightweight pajama bottoms hung low on lean hips, and his sculpted abs flexed when he paced. Donahue had the body of a man who spent a lot of time making sure he looked good. With a small, internal sneer, Nina imagined her own scars on flesh covering muscles, sinews, nerves, and bones she’d worked hard to make strong even before her enhancements. She didn’t have to be pretty. She had to be fierce.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment, surprising her. “I know you were. And I respect the work you did—”

  “Good. Many don’t.”

  She’d been spit on more than a few times. Catcalled. The Second Cold War had been a lot hotter than the first one, and it had not seen a lot of civilian support. In school she’d learned about the Vietnam War, how the returning soldiers had been castigated and reviled. History did have its way of repeating.

  That she could not actually remember most of her time in the army was not something she intended to point out to him. Donahue was already a vocal and public opponent to the enhancement procedures she’d endured to save her life and which had made her the woman she was today. The same woman who could, and would, subdue him in order to save his stubborn, arrogant life a dozen times over, if she had to. She folded her arms across her chest and widened her stance. If he tried to push past her, she would not hesitate to put him down, panther muscles or not. At this point, putting Ewan Donahue in his place would be a pleasure that had nothing to do with how good he looked without his shirt.

  He crossed his arms over his naked chest, drawing her attention to the bulging, shifting, and straining muscles of his pecs and biceps. Was he . . . flexing?

  Nina was neither impressed nor intimidated by this show, although she had no trouble admiring it. “I thought you had to use the facilities.”

  “Look,” he said, his tone conciliatory now. A negotiator. Lobbyist, convincer. “There’s such a thing as personal privacy.”

  Nina wasn’t convinced. “I’m fully aware of that, and of course I’m entirely capable of selective sight, which allows me to pixelate whatever it is I’m not supposed to be seeing. It’s pretty convenient.”

  “Oh. Right. Selective sight.” Donahue’s lip curled.

  “And hearing,” she added with a small smile, even though watching his disgusted reaction stung her in a place she could never seem to shield, no matter how often she was wounded there. It should only matter that he believed she could do the job he’d hired her for, not whatever else he thought about her as a person, but that subtle, invasive sense that Donahue didn’t think of her as a full, real person dug deep.

  “In case there’s stuff I’m not supposed to hear. I mean, it’s all recorded in case someone later needs to access it. But I won’t have access to it.” She added that last bit as a dig of her own, to remind him of not only who, exactly, she was, but also what. She wanted to rub it in his face. Her enhancements, what she could do in the pursuit of his safety. She wanted him to hear it and know and . . . well, to see it. To see her.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not capable of either of those things,” Donahue said. “If you don’t leave my side even for a second or so, what about when you have to use the facilities?”

  Her smile didn’t falter. “I’m sure you’ve read all the materials about the enhancement procedures, Mr. Donahue. So then you know that I’m also capable of maintaining amazing control of all my bodily functions.”

  The man actually blushed this time. A rising flush crept up his chest and throat to tinge his cheeks, and she was able to register the slight rise in his body heat. It was surprising, that reaction, but it made him seem no less a predator than he’d appeared before. “I’m aware of the procedures and results, yeah.”

  “Then you know I can hold it for a long time,” Nina said smoothly. “But seriously, I’m sure you’re about to burst. So if you’d rather continue to argue with me until you lose control . . .”

  “I don’t,” Donahue snapped, “ever. Lose. Control.”

  Another of her serene smiles pushed more crimson heat into his cheeks. Nina stepped aside from the bathroom door with a flourish and a small, deliberately obnoxious bow. “Good. Neither do I.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  He should fire her and demand his money back—it had been an obscene amount of money, even for Ewan, who hadn’t bothered to ask the price of an item or service in at least a decade. The cost of keeping him alive hadn’t mattered to him, but he hadn’t realized the services would come along with such a load of bullshit.

  Selective sight and hearing, she’d said, as though this was news to him. What Nina didn’t know was that Ewan had funded the research that allowed for those functions in the first place, along with most of the others she could brag about. More than funded; he’d invented and programmed the original tech and enhancement software that had transformed her from a normal, human woman into some kind of super soldier.

  Not a cyborg, he reminded himself as he used the toilet, his back facing her but with full awareness that she stood close enough to grab him if she wanted to, or that all she had to do was lean in a little bit to see everything nature had blessed him with. Not a robot. She hadn’t been fitted with metal limbs or artificial organs. Just a series of nanochips connected to her brain and nervous system, the tech running specialized software that allowed her greater than natural control over her bodily functions. Endurance, strength, focus. Special functions that could erase her memories of anything top secret or confidential with nothing more than a preprogrammed series of codes. None of that was supposed to come along with a smartass attitude.

  It hadn’t been meant to come along with that face, either. Pale amber eyes fringed with curling dark lashes and sparkling with barely restrained humor and yeah, right now, mockery. Smooth bronze skin free of any kind of makeup that he could see. A lush, full mouth that wouldn’t quit. And her hair . . . universe help him, even pulled back into the tight, utilitarian braid at the base of her neck, he could see it was thick and silky, as dark as his deepest fantasies.

  Because that what she was, right? A fantasy, something he’d dreamed up a long time ago, when he’d believed the tech would make life better for those who were enhanced. Before he realized how messed up that was. Playing at being the Onegod in a world where religion had become regarded as no more real than fairy tales.

  Nina Bronson was a fantasy, all right, but one Ewan could no longer allow himself to imagine.

  He turned from the toilet, half-expecting to see her smirking, but she was looking carefully uninterested, her gaze settled somewhere to his left. “I need to take a shower. Sure you don’t want to climb in there with me?”

  He’d been aiming for sarcasm, but the second the words came out of his mouth, he realized they sounded less like a threat and more like a sexual come-on. The way her sleek black eyebrows rose made it obvious that she’d thought so, too, but scratch it, that was the last thing in the world he’d meant. Maybe not the last thing, he admitted as Nina gave him another of those frustratingly chilly smil