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PROLOGUE

Elite Operations Base

Alpine, Texas

She was a vision of beauty

Too fucking young, but her eyes weren’t those of a twenty-four-year-old They were the eyes of a woer, too much pain

Jordan watched as she went through the strenuous trainingher through and wondered how the hell he was going to say no to her

She wasn’t strong enough to th or endurance, but she was enuity

“She has no place to go, Jordan She’s spent her life running from her father and her brother She doesn’t have the education or the job skills to step out of this life This is all she has” Kira Richards stood beside him, the former CIA asset soer Jordan kneasn’t hiding

He’d arrived at the training facility to check the status of his nephen as Noah Blake, as well as the other operatives that were part of his Elite Operations command He hadn’t expected to find this tiny sprite of a woreen eyes, and a too sad face sparring with the nephew in question

“Elite Operations isn’t an orphanage, Kira,” he reminded her, careful to keep his tone cold, emotionless

He couldn’t show the chink he knew this young woman had put in his defenses the first tio Fuentes operation The operation involving Kira’s now husband, Ian, and his father, Diego Fuentes, had been rife with danger And there the girl had been, desperate to end the life of death andto find her for nearly twenty years

Her eyes had been shattered then, filled with desperation and fear that the plot to bring down the terrorist Sorrel wouldn’t succeed

But she had been ga the identity of the man who had destroyed her mother and who had tried to destroy her

“Elite Operations isn’t an orphanage, but e her,” Kira reminded him forcefully “You knoe do Besides, she would be perfect in base operations She knows cos Give her a chance”

He glanced at the woman at his side It wasn’t a request, it was an order Make it happen That hat she was saying Just make it happen

“You’re a contract asset for the Ops, Kira,” he reminded her “This isn’t your decision to make Nor is it up to thoserooh the tay mirror he stood behind

“The whole team has more or less adopted her, Jordan,” she inforet out of this If you don’t take her, then the backup team will”

He grimaced

Hell, he had very little control over the Elite backup team He couldn’t order Reno or Clint to do shit and he knew it But he owed them, and he knew that as well Just as he knew that if she orking with the confined to the Elite Operations base would be

“She would fit in perfectly as your personal assistant, as well as mine, in communications,” Kira went on to say “We’ve been in operation long enough that you knoe need someone to fill that spot Give her a chance, that’s all she needs”

She would be perfect to make him crazy, that hat he knew The few times he had been in contact with her, his blood pressure had nearly gone through the damned roof, and his cock had nearly burst from his jeans

The need to fuck her had been so da that for the first ti his own rule Never fuck or become close to his female operatives He knew better, just as he knew the outcome if the past remained true

Losing one of them posed the risk of too much distraction It was a distraction he could ill afford when the lives of the entire teaht

She was eight years younger than he was, she was looking for a life, for a battle to replace the one she had fought for soher terrorist father to justice But he knew the dangers of not letting her in, the danger to her, and that terrified him

Sorrel’s allies would find her and exact vengeance for the terrorist and white slaver’s death The thought of the hell they would put her through before they killed her was enough to give hihtmares