Excerpt of Explosive Combination by KaLyn Cooper

Rafe stood on Harper’s balcony and watched her sleep. He’d slipped undetected over the railing from his rooms next door. Christ, the Deputy Director of the CIA was involved. Rafe was now responsible for Harper’s safety and he vowed he’d die before he’d allow anything or anyone to hurt her.

Harper stirred. He crept to the bed and bent to shake her shoulder to awaken her.

She grabbed his arm and flipped him onto the bed face down, arms locked behind his back. She held a steak knife to his throat. His legs splayed, and her knee nudged his crotch.

“Harper,” he choked out in English, “I’m CIA. I’m one of the good guys. Let me up.”

She held her position. “You’re very high ranking in this organization to be CIA. How long have you been under cover?” She kept her face close to his and spoke in undertones so as not to alert the guards at her door.

Good. She wasn’t going to immediately blow his cover. “I started at the top. Narváez and I were college roommates. Now can you get off me?”

His heart beat rapidly for what seemed to take forever. The cold steel at his throat didn’t quiver. He heard her sigh and the pressure of her leg at his crotch ease. She finally removed the knife from his throat and slid off his back.

“I’d hoped someone was inside, but I didn’t think it was you.” She moved quickly away from him and braced herself on her knees, the knife still held in fighting position.

Rafe rolled onto his back and sat up. He rubbed where the blade had pressed, thankful not to feel any blood on his neck. “You’re good. I never saw you steal that knife from the supper table.” He glanced at the satisfied look on her face.

“Yes, I am good. The hardest part was to find some place under that dress that it wouldn’t imprint. The last thing I wanted was Narváez to strip-search me at the supper table.” She shuddered.

He fluffed a pillow and leaned against the headboard as he stretched out his legs that had gotten a nice little workout in the past two hours. The climb up the mountain wasn’t strenuous, but a gain of a thousand feet over two miles wasn’t a stroll on the beach. It was his crotch, not his burning thighs, that he wanted to rub. But he was too much a Southern gentleman to make such a crude move.