Page 2 of Too Lethal to Love

Nic made the sign of the cross with his steel hand. “Thank you for your service.”

Kane echoed his words as he stroked Jenna’s swollen cheek. Tears stung his eyes, which felt as bloodshot as her lifeless gaze. Yeah, they’d retrieved the intel they’d come for,but in a few hours, someone would knock on Jenna’s door. Only one glance at the person’s stiff posture and somber expression would be needed for Jenna’s husband to know his wife was never coming home again.

A memory of two men in uniform, another doorstep, crept into Kane’s mind. Futile wishes that they’d gotten to Jenna earlier mixed with his past. He swallowed the bitter concoction along with his waning adrenaline. It erupted in his gut like one of the explosions he’d caused in the jungle. Jenna’s last words whispered through his mind as he closed her eyes and covered her face with the emergency blanket.

No regrets.

Would her husband think that when he learned about her brutal demise? Fuck, no. She’d been scheduled to be permanently extracted tomorrow, alive and well, and in time for the holidays, with critical information that could help save millions of lives. Now, her husband’s Christmas gifts would be a bottomless box of jagged pain, soul-slashing torment, and the regret Jenna thought he shouldn’t have.

But he would have regrets. Kane knew firsthand that grief was the gift that never stopped giving. Closing his eyes, he sent up a silent prayer for Jenna’s soul and for her husband who was about to have his world blown to smithereens. He glanced at his teammates as he fought to wrangle his spiraling thoughts, but the super strength VIPER had engineered him with only applied to his leg, not his psyche.

Would Chris’s fiancé, Scarlett, think “no regrets” if the love of her life died on a mission? The genius who cybernetically engineered their brains with their prosthetics may have a mind like a machine, but she was still a woman in love. And what about Hudson? His role as medical support didn’t totally shield him from gun-toting mercenaries and other hostiles. And unlike Kane and his VIPER teammates, he didn’t have a weaponized limb to shoot lasers from. Kanedoubted Hudson’s pregnant wife would find comfort in “no regrets” if her husband came home in a coffin.

So far, Kane and his VIPER brothers had returned from their handful of missions in one piece. Even though their super soldier capabilities increased their chances of survival a hundredfold, death could still find them.

And grief would overtake the ones they left behind.

He held on to Jenna’s body as he succumbed to his memories that raced faster than the helicopter. Unlike Chris and Hudson, he didn’t have a wife, a fiancé, or even a girlfriend to mourn him if he died protecting his country. He only had Gran and his sister, and now his VIPER family. He didn’t intend to add any more to the list of loved ones who would grieve if he didn’t come home.

Serve first. Love Later.

He’d been born to serve. Duty to his country was woven into his DNA just as tightly as his love for his family’s land in West Virginia. At thirty-two, he still had plenty of military miles in him. Those miles would lead him to situations where the chances were high of winding up dead, like his buddies who hadn’t survived the IEDs that took his leg. Or Jenna, who risked her life to save others.

He’d learned long ago that relationships and the military didn’t mix, especially for someone who pledged to fight the worst of the worst. Loving a woman—even the one he couldn’t get off his mind—would have to wait until he parted ways with Uncle Sam and the dangerous existence he’d committed to.

A few hours later, Kane followed his brothers out of the conference area and into the hall at VIPER headquarters. He didn’t break his stride toward the locker room as he looked atthe comms unit strapped to his wrist. “That was the shortest debrief ever.”

Nic checked the unit embedded in his steel arm. “Thank God, because Scarlett will have our balls if we don’t get Chris to his engagement party on time.”

Chris chuckled. “And Beth will have your ass.”

Beth.

An image of Scarlett’s best friend danced in Kane’s vision. Everything about her shimmered, from her long, dark-brown curls to the colorful, sparkly clothes she wrapped around her sweet curves. Even the tight smiles she sporadically offered him beamed with an inherent, vivacious spark he itched to ignite. The man in him ached to learn why that spark didn’t awaken into a flame. His training demanded he know why she never sat with her back to the door and why she hid a gun in her giant tote bag. The super soldier he’d become needed to eradicate whatever gave her nightmares.

Nic nudged him in the arm. “Beth put me in charge of beer and making sure the happy couple gets to the party on time. What did she put you in charge of?”

“Nothing.” The petite research scientist whose head barely reached his chin had made it clear she didn’t welcome his attention. At least not the kind she knew about. He may not be able to get her out of his mind, but he’d damn well protect her from whatever she feared.

Beth Parker braced her hands on the glass bakery counter. “You gave my cake to someone else? It’s only a half hour past the time I said I’d pick it up.”

Well, it was ninety minutes past the time Beth hadwantedto pick it up, but the network in her lab at the National Agency for Health had been down half the day—again—and had royally screwed up her schedule. She needed that damn cake, but yelling at the teen behind the counter who kept glancing at her phone wouldn’t do any good.

Counting to five in her head, Beth clung to the last of her patience. “Maybe there was a mix-up. I’m here to pick up a vanilla pound cake with strawberry filling, red flowers, and silver-dusted buttercream frosting. It’s for an engagement party.”

More like a let’s celebrate your impending nuptials while the groom-to-be is between deadly missions kind of celebration.

Beth shivered. The sudden chill had nothing to do with the deep freeze blanketing the Washington, DC area and everything to do with her best friend marrying a literal super soldier. Scarlett, and Beth as her supportingbestie, didn’t take a full breath whenever Chris and his Project VIPER teammates deployed. Today had been a hard-to-breathe kind of day until they’d gotten word that the VIPER boys had returned safe and sound from their latest assignment.

What kind of assignment, she had no idea. Scarlett knew most of the details since she used to be Project VIPER’s chief information security officer and now headed up technology innovation across the military. She wasn’t at liberty to share what the guys did when the Department of Defense called them away at a moment’s notice, and Beth didn’t want to know.

The military hadn’t given them sleek, black artificial limbs that looked like they belonged on sci-fi superheroes for goodwill reasons. According to the public, the Department of Defense established the Veterans Integration Placement and Recovery Program to give special forces amputees a second chance at their military careers in security detail roles.

Security detail, my ass.

Last week, when she’d met Scarlett and the VIPER boys for dinner, the waitstaff was scrambling to move a massive table set for twelve. Chris and Nic had lifted it like it was a piece of children’s furniture set for a tea party. The waitress had been so appreciative of Nic’s bionic arm, she’d slipped him her number.

No, super arm.Super is what Scarlett said the VIPER boys liked to call the technological marvels they’d been outfitted with. And damn, they were a marvel to witness. They moved their enhanced parts more gracefully than she managed her flesh-and-bone ones.

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