“Was it?”

Oh, man…What if it hadn’t been? “I…I thought it was.”

Daniel stared down at Josie, trying to fathom the working of her mind and not getting very far. “Are you really that naïve?”

“I’m not naïve. I was raised around soldiers all my life. I heard things that would make most women cringe.”

He was beginning to wonder if she had understood any of those things, though. “You thought I got an erection to make our cover more believable?”

“I thought you were always…I mean…”

She’d thought it was his natural virility.

While her belief was better for his ego than her rejection, it staggered him. “Have you known many men who walk around with a constant boner?”

“Of course not?”

“Any?” He had to ask.

“Well…no, but some men do get excited when I don’t expect them to.”

He could just bet. “But none of them acted on their excitement, so you assumed it had nothing to do with you, right?”

She focused on something beyond his right shoulder, her expression a study in pretending to be somewhere else. “This conversation is getting uncomfortable.”

He’d spent hours in a state of uncomfortable arousal because of her; he didn’t have a lot of sympathy for her mental discomfort right now. Besides, he thought maybe she needed to be set straight on some things for her own benefit as much as his.

“From the time you started developing, your dad threatened to maim the soldiers who came through his school if they touched you. Knowing your dad, I think the men took it more as a promise.”

Her gaze jumped back to his face, her soft green eyes wide. “I didn’t know that.” She grimaced. “It sounds like something Dad would do, though. He was always pretty protective.”

Probably a lot more protective than other fathers, considering the man’s views of what it meant to raise a daughter who would not be at risk because of her femininity or size.

She pulled away and started walking again, her movements agitated. “By the time my dad thought I was old enough to date, I could beat any of the men I met in combat and knew more about weapons and explosives than they did, too.”

“None of the soldiers wanted to date a woman who could neutralize him.”

“No, and frankly, I wasn’t interested in connecting with a soldier. I’m still not.”

He ignored that. He could change her mind if she’d been honest about wanting him, but he thought it was interesting she had intimidated the soldiers as much as her father had. “You’re not that big.”

“You don’t have to be big or even all that strong to maim someone if you know where to hit and how to do it.”

That was true. There were blows that required a very light touch, but had a devastating effect on an aggressor. In order to use those techniques, a soldier had to be highly trained and disciplined. Tyler had made sure his daughter was the best.

“Dad taught me how to fight dirty, and I never hesitated to use that knowledge.”

“Good. You’ve been in a lot of dangerous places.”

“Yeah, I guess I have.”

She didn’t sound particularly bothered by that fact, and right now, it wasn’t the uppermost thought in his mind either.

“You said you wanted me, too.”

She stumbled, and he steadied her with his hand, then kept hold of her arm. She didn’t try to pull away, and he figured that was a major step forward for them.

“Yes.” She squared her shoulders as if she was preparing to face a major battle head-on. “I want you.”

An irresistible smile curved his mouth. “I’m not intimidated by your prowess as a soldier or by your dad.”

“You don’t think much of my soldiering abilities.”

“Not true.”

“But you said—”

“A lot of stuff born of frustration, not fact.”

“You said you never lie.”

“I don’t.”

“Then—”

“I’ve always seen you as more woman than soldier, no matter how good you are.”

She gasped, stopped, and turned to look up at him, her eyes glowing in a way that knocked the breath right out of his chest. “You did…You do?”

“Yes.”

Then her face fell. “Is it because I dressed up to look like Lise?”

“No. When I first met you, you were wearing combat fatigues and a machine gun, remember?” And he’d gotten the first boner he’d ever experienced in a battle.

“How could I forget? Your team saved my commander’s butt.”

“Hotwire was right.”

“About what?”

“Not swearing around you. You don’t do it yourself.”

“Mama told me ladies don’t swear. It’s one of the few things I remember about her. That and she was very soft.” The wistful quality in Josie’s tone made him frown.

“So are you.”

She shook her head. “I’m hard. I don’t know how to be any other way.”

“Sometime I’ll show you how wrong you are.”

“I’m a virgin. I don’t have any experience at all.” She blurted it out as if it were something he couldn’t possibly have figured out on his own.

Unlike her, he had no problem reading signs. “And you want orange blossoms and white roses to accompany the first time you make love?”

She shook her head, her expression resigned. “I’m not the type. That stuff is for the fairy-tale wedding, and I’m not anybody’s version of a princess. I’m a soldier.”

“You used to be a soldier. Now you’re a student.”

She shrugged. “Our circumstances don’t always dictate what we are.”

“Right. I met you in the middle of a battle and watched you fight better than most men, and I still saw you as an extremely desirable and feminine woman.”

“You wanted me then?”

What did she think he’d been saying? “Yeah. It’s become an obsession.”

“They say to get rid of an obsession, you have to starve it.”

He laughed, the sound harsh to his own ears. He didn’t know what Josie would make of it.

“It doesn’t work. We had our first mission together more than two years ago, and I still feel like an adolescent with my first major boner every time I’m around you. I can’t even get rid of it by going to bed with another woman.” He spelled it out in case she hadn’t gotten it the first time.

“You tried?”

“I tried.”

“It didn’t work?”

“I told you, I don’t want other women.”

“You don’t have to want a particular woman to have sex with her, do you?”

“Not always, no.”

“But…”

“But in this case, that’s not an option for me.”

She licked her lips, her gaze probing him as if he was some kind of alien being.

He felt like it. The level of physical need he had for Josie wasn’t something he was familiar with, and frankly, if he had been able to rid his body of the compulsion, he would have. The kind of reaction he had around Josie was a weakness, and he’d learned living with his parents just how destructive it could be to be that vulnerable to another person.

“Either I feed my obsession for you, or I keep sublimating my sex drive in work.”

“Is that why you’ve gone on back-to-back missions since we worked with Wolf and Hotwire on Lise’s mission?”

“Yes.”

An undecipherable expression crossed her face, but the frown that followed it was anything but. “It’s bad soldiering not to take leave between assignments.”

He shrugged. He’d been trying to starve the obsession like she said. It hadn’t worked.

The frown grew fiercer. “You’re saying if I don’t make love with you, you’re going to keep up that kind of activity?”