their important guests.
He laughed. “Thanks, I hadn’t even considered that possibility.”
Sam wasn’t sure if she should feel insulted or flattered by his reaction to her declaration on the state of her virginity, or lack thereof. She decided to let it go. “What I’m saying, sir, is that I’ll do what I have to do, whatever that is, to get the job done. But I’m smart and I’m well-trained, and I’ve even been told by a few people I’m clever. I will get the information we need and get out, hopefully with the virtue you’re concerned about intact.”
Okay, so maybe she was enjoying the blush on the commander’s face at her virtue comment. You couldn’t spend as many hours as she did in such close quarters with all these alpha males without getting a thick skin when it came to matters of sex. But in spite of being surrounded by prime beef all day every day, Sam never partook of any of her Omega teammates, nor would she.
Actually, she’d found herself fantasizing about a guy she’d never even met. Strange but true, her buddy Computer God had provided her with plenty of fantasies on the nights she’d whipped out her trusty vibrator. Her internet skills had even yielded an old photo of him for her to use for her mental imagery.
“Have you…ah, did you visit medical?”
Sam forced her mind back to her red-faced commander. “Yes, sir.”
“And did you get the…um…required implant?” He rushed through the end of the sentence.
She was glad he’d broken eye contact, because she felt herself start to blush too. Commander Anderson wasn’t that much older than herself, not old enough to be her father or anything. But he was her superior, which made it feel kind of like having a conversation about birth control with her father. That made this entire discussion far different than hearing the guys on the team tell dirty jokes or comment on the size of the waitress’s breasts at the local hangout.
Sam composed herself and answered. “Yes, sir. I did.”
She’d lost track of how many implants she’d had put inside her since joining the covert team—communications, tracking—but this was the first time she’d been ordered to get one designed for birth control. Another thing that made her unequal to her male teammates. Although she supposed medical would have handed them a box of condoms instead before they were sent into a harem.
Sam raised her gaze and found her commander watching her again. “Sir. It’s going to be fine. Trust me.”
“I do trust you, Foster.” He laughed, though it somehow sounded sad. “It’s the rest of the world I don’t trust.”
Wasn’t that the truth.
Chapter Three
The compound sometimes used by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed and his numerous family members and guests was impressive, to say the least.
Matt had been driven into the complex passed the horse-training facility. Arabs took the breeding and racing of their horses as seriously, if not more so, than Americans. Matt took a moment to digest the surreal reality that not too long ago he’d been at Jack and Jimmy Gordon’s family horse farm in Pigeon Hollow, and now he was here.
Sometimes his life was just plain strange. Maybe he’d get a tour of the barns and then he could email and tell the Gordons all about it.
The servant led Matt through what should be called a palace but was only one of many residences used by the royal family. The polite but quiet local man, who spoke more perfect English than half the guys on Zeta, escorted Matt through marble and stone hallways.
The first thing that struck Matt as he passed various security points was that the compound was well-outfitted with technology. Unlike some of the ops he’d worked on, there’d be no crawling on rooftops to set up temporary satellite communications, no running wires out of windows. Matt wouldn’t even have to work out of the usual cramped van. No way. Not on this trip. Not when you were the guest of a sheikh.
They ended the tour
Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory