After spending three years driving a desk with the CIA, seeing very little action in the line of duty or beneath the sheets of his bed, Asher Boyce was happy to scratch off being a CIA agent. It was not the job he dreamed of all his life, and his craving for adventure and danger would only be sated when the Holden Agency came calling. Traveling the world, solving mysteries, and delving into dangerous scenarios was what kept him sharp. It was what made him feel alive.

Putting his long-honed linguistics skills to use, Asher was finally living his dream. It wasn’t with the CIA being an agent, it was being his own man, proving to his father that he didn’t have to be a policeman or fireman to be a hero and that he didn’t have to be a doctor to save lives. Besides, the travel and the women made all the work worthwhile.

Translating wiretaps in Brazil, deciphering cryptic emails in Hong Kong, or simply helping old friends in Paris rewrite brochures for their American customers, this was what he loved. Or at least that was what he thought until that earth-shattering day in Greece.

It had been an unusually and relentlessly hot day when she walked into his life, and that should have been omen enough. Tara Harriman was a stunningly beautiful, articulate, and well-trained agent sent to help him with a critical job that was quickly going sour. Rebels were threatening an insurgence and continued to undermine the government’s every move. There were two sides, but Asher wasn’t quite sure which he was on. What he did know was that Tara was more than a distraction. She was dangerous in a way that he could lose focus and would risk everything just to get one taste of her.

Spending days and nights in a bunker in the Grecian heat, her nearness made something in his gut burn. Her scent was enough to unnerve him, its spicy undertones making his mouth water even while the alluring curve of her body made his throat go dry. And if it weren’t for that rebel grenade, he would have been deep inside her smoldering heat growling her name into her hair. As it was, they were lucky to get out with their life and limbs intact. War had a way of changing people’s lives. That day changed his life forever.

Now, five years later as he sat in the back of a Russian sushi house, of all places, the cool air pouring in from the Bolshaya Nevka River, and he still felt a prickle of heat crawl up his neck when he watched Tara Harriman walk into the room and take a seat across from him. Her intoxicating scent stirred his blood like a delinquent flame catches fire in the desert, and it bloomed in his chest, racing south to set him on edge in the worst kind of way.

But this was Russia, where no one was safe and the task at hand was a perilous one. One they had to complete together. Losing focus now would be a death sentence...but never having her would be a death sentence he could never commute.