John
Loughlin, Director of the Department of Covert Ops, is in New York City on a recruiting mission. Cree Forest is a clever fox shifter-and very foxy. John is
keen to hire her brilliant mind onto his team.
But Cree isn’t what she seems. Just as John has been watching her, Cree has
been spying on him. Now John is getting too close-both professionally and
personally. On opposite sides of a lethal game, can they trust each other with their hearts?
She forced herself to focus on something else in a useless attempt to get that
all-too-vivid image out of her head.
“How did you figure out I was special?” she asked, refusing to use any of the
crappy titles his organization seemed obsessed with applying to her kind. “Does the DCO have a big team of experts who pore over hours and
hours of videos and records, looking for signs and tells?”
John shook his head, a small smile curving his lips. “Not really. We still
don’t know enough about shifters for that to be possible.”
“How did you spot me then?”
Her boss had told her to make sure the DCO noticed her, but it would still be
nice to know exactly what they’d keyed in on.
John shrugged. “With some shifters, there are physical and behavioral traits
that give them away—overt demonstrations of strength and speed, aggressive or over-confident attitude. But in your case, it was more
subtle and harder to put into words. It was just a sense I got from watching all the surveillance video. The way you move through a crowd like a
graceful animal, the way you lift your nose just a bit like you’re testing the breeze for a scent, the way you constantly scan the restaurant when
you’re eating. It all told me you were special.”
Huh. She had no idea she even did those things, but those were damn subtle
signs. “It sounds like you and your team spent a lot of hours watching those videos to pick up all those things?”
He gave her a lazy smile. “No team—just me. And yes, I spent a lot of hours
watching you.”
The idea that John had sat in front of a TV or computer monitor for hours on
end gazing at her so intently that he’d been able to pick up the details he had should have creeped her out. But it didn’t. In fact, it was sort
of a turn-on.
“So you’re saying the DCO didn’t peg me as a shifter—you did?”
He nodded. “But no one there knows yet. I haven’t told them. I thought it best
to find out if you were interested before saying anything. Right now, the few who are aware of you think you’re simply a potential operative of
the boring, everyday human variety.”
A grin tugged at her lips—he had a way of making her smile. But what could she
say? This mission was turning out to be more fun than she’d ever imagined. And the fact that John was the only one who knew about her
secret was like extra frosting on an already well-iced cake.
“Are you interested?” he asked again.
That was a loaded question if she ever heard one. She felt a warm rush suffuse
her belly. “I’m very interested.”
“Excellent.” He grinned. “Does that mean you’re joining the DCO?”
She laughed. “I didn’t say that.”
He frowned. “But you just said you were interested.”
She leaned forward in her chair and fixed him with a sexy look, letting a
little yellow-glow flash in her eyes. “I didn’t say I was interested in the DCO. When I said I was interested, I meant in you.”
He tilted his head to the side, giving her an appraising look that sent the
rush of heat she’d felt earlier to pool between her thighs. “I can work with that.”