by Paige Tyler
Not that Khaki was really complaining. She’d enjoyed hanging out with Mac. It was always difficult to make friends in a new place, but after spending five minutes with Mac, Khaki felt as if she’d known her for years. She still couldn’t believe that Mac knew about the SWAT team’s superhuman abilities and accepted them. Khaki broke out in a cold sweat when she even considered the idea of telling her parents and sisters about what had happened to her.
“Yeah,” Cooper agreed. “Mac is a bundle of energy when she’s focused on something. You could have taken the day off to get moved in. I’m sure Sarge wouldn’t mind.”
Khaki shrugged and started loosening up like everyone else. “Sergeant Dixon told me to skip PT this morning, but I didn’t think that’d be a good way to start my first real day of work here.”
Cooper nodded as if he understood, but before he could say anything else, Dixon, Riggs, and Becker came out to join them. Dixon made a few quick comments concerning the day’s work schedule, then mentioned something about equipment that needed to be shipped out for repair, before turning the session over to Becker.
Eric Becker had struck her as something of a goofball the day before. An attractive, muscular, and hunky as hell goofball, but definitely not a guy who liked to be taken too seriously. Becker started them off with fifty wide-arm push-ups, followed by fifty crunches, followed by fifty more push-ups—close arms this time—and suddenly Becker seemed a lot more serious than he had the day before. Within minutes, everyone was sweating, including Khaki. Then the guys pulled off their shirts, and the serious workout started.
Khaki decided she should probably keep her T-shirt on, though she certainly didn’t mind looking at all the sweaty, rippling muscles on display. Among all the fabulous examples of male perfection available for her to feast her eyes on, the one guy that kept drawing her gaze the most was Riggs.
Yesterday, she’d told herself she was going to ignore anything and everything Riggs did and said that didn’t relate to work. That had seemed the most mature way to deal with him. Let him be a jerk if he wanted. She’d show him that she didn’t care.
Yet five minutes after seeing him whip off his shirt, she was having a hard time looking at anything but him. She had to force herself to stare at the ground just so she wouldn’t get caught ogling his sculpted pecs.
While Becker led them through an exercise he called “prison cell push-ups,” which involved a combination of traditional push-ups with squat thrusts in between, she mulled over why she was so attracted to Riggs. Well, for one thing, he was sinfully good-looking. He also had a really great smile. Not to mention a deep, husky voice and a killer body. And he smelled amazing too. So, okay, she could see why she was attracted to him.
But why did the guys she was attracted to have to be such assholes? What did that say about her?
She pushed the question aside and focused on the push-ups. Becker wasn’t playing around, but as he progressed from one demanding exercise to the next, Khaki realized that she was hanging tough with the guys. As well-muscled as they were, she harbored no delusions that she was anywhere near as physically strong. They all looked like they could bench-press a car. But she was strong as hell for her size—another gift after that night she’d gotten shot. She was also willing to bet that when it came to agility and speed, she might be able to give most of these hunks a run for their money. The notion made her forget all about Riggs and how late she’d stayed up last night thinking about him.
She expected Becker to lead them through some kind of cool down after all those sit-ups and push-ups, but instead he told Cooper and Max to take off. Khaki frowned as they jogged away to make a complete circuit along the compound’s fence.
She glanced at Hale. His dark blond hair was standing straight up like he’d just run his hand through it, and he was popping his neck from side to side so hard she could hear the bones cracking. “What’s up?” she asked.
“Rabbit.” He must have seen her confused look, because he laughed. “It’s kind of like follow the leader, except it’s for werewolves. Becker is going to be the rabbit. He’ll run around the compound, leaving a scent trail that we have to follow precisely. If any of us catch him, we win.”
That sounded kind of…juvenile. “What do we win if we catch him?”
Hale grinned, blue eyes dancing. “Bragging rights. What else?”
Khaki laughed. These guys might be SWAT cops, but they were still just guys. And guys could turn anything into a competition, even a game of chase. She was about to ask what Cooper and Max were up to when they came jogging back.
Cooper nodded at Dixon. “The perimeter is all clear. Nobody around for miles.”
Khaki didn’t have a clue what that was about, but she lined up with the others as Becker took his position out in front.
“How long of a head start does he get?” she whispered to Hale.
“Ten seconds.” Riggs’s silky voice was so close that his warm breath brushed her ear. Pulse skipping, Khaki turned to see her squad leader standing beside her. Even if Riggs was a total jerk, she still had to admit that he smelled amazing. The scent coming off his sweat-soaked body was so delicious, it was hard not to lean closer so she could breathe in more of it.
She licked her lips and got a handle on her out-of-control sniffer. “Ten seconds doesn’t seem like a very long time.”
Riggs’s mouth twitched. “Becker is really fast. Ten seconds is more than enough time for him. No one’s going to catch him without some serious shifting.”
Since the squad leader seemed to be in a talkative mood, she was about to ask him what the heck he meant when he said “serious shifting,” but Dixon gave the word to start the game. She turned just in time to see Becker take off running for the far end of the SWAT compound.
Wow. Becker wasn’t just fast. He was wild-animal fast. A wild animal with two-hundred-and-some pounds of muscle and a set of six-pack abs. He made it to the far end of the compound in eight seconds. She knew, because Dixon was standing in front of everyone with his hand up, holding them for the ten count.
She turned to ask Riggs if that was even possible, just to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. That was when Khaki realized she wasn’t in Kansas—or Washington—anymore. Half the guys on the team had…changed. Some a little, some more than a little. Right beside Riggs, Cooper was standing there with a feral grin on his face, long canines protruding from both his upper and lower jaws. Farther down the line, Max’s upper canines were even longer, and as she watched, she swore she saw the bones of his lower jaw broaden and push out like they were making room for even more teeth.
All along the line of shirtless SWAT officers, eyes were flashing yellow-gold, claws were coming out the tips of fingers, and deep low growls were filling the air.
Oh, crap!
Adrenaline surged through her body, demanding she go into fight-or-flight mode. When Dixon had told her they were werewolves, she’d thought it was simply the SWAT team’s way of coming to grips with their superhuman abilities. Like saying they had Spidey senses. She never imagined they were real-life werewolves—or that they would be scary as hell.
Dixon suddenly dropped his hand and she got to see what a dozen werewolves looked like as they tore after their prey.
And that was pretty damn scary too.
Instinct made Khaki race after them. She sensed Riggs fall in behind her. Maybe she was faster than he was. Or maybe he was hanging back to see how she handled this first challenge. Either way, he didn’t pass her.
Khaki’s keen sense of smell told her that Becker had already turned left through the obstacle course and was headed for the climbing tower. Her instincts screamed at her to angle that way to cut him off. But those weren’t the rules of the game. They had to follow the path Becker set.
Her teammates’ growls got louder as they neared the obstacle course. Her nose, which thankfully worked just fine without her having to go all werewolf, pointed her toward a series of telephone poles mounted horizontally at various
heights above the ground. She was impressed. Becker had selected an obstacle that would force the guys chasing him to slow down and go single file. As competitive and fired up as they were, she could only imagine what a cluster that was going to turn into.
Khaki glanced to either side of her as she neared the poles. Almost all the guys had shifted now, and while she didn’t have a clue how to do the shifting thing herself, her inner werewolf—she couldn’t believe she was thinking that—allowed her to keep up with them. How much faster would she be with all the fangs, claws, and growling?
But that wasn’t going to happen right now, so she pushed herself as hard as her body would let her and was surprised when she was rewarded with a burst of speed that got her ahead of more than half the team. She couldn’t beat all of them to the logs, but at least she wasn’t stuck behind the bigger guys. They would have slowed her down.
She raced across the logs behind Remy, Cooper, and Connor Malone, jumping from one narrow telephone pole to the next as easily as if she were running down a sidewalk. It was exhilarating to move so fast across something that was less than twelve inches wide and ten feet off the ground. It was also terrifying, especially when she thought about how much it would hurt if she fell off moving at this speed.
The last log had to be at least fifteen feet above the ground and she automatically slowed down. She immediately chided herself for being a coward, but it turned out that being careful was a good idea. Up ahead, Cooper threw an elbow back at Connor, disrupting his stride just enough to send the big sniper tumbling off the telephone pole. Connor hit the ground with a thud, which was immediately drowned out by the howl of triumph that Cooper let loose.
Khaki almost slowed to drop off the log to check on Connor, but the man was already on his feet, circling back to go through the obstacle again. If she didn’t know better, she would have sworn he was running with a broken arm. She realized there was another part of this game that Hale hadn’t mentioned—catching Becker might be the ultimate object of Rabbit, but apparently, making sure no one else caught him if you couldn’t ran a close second.
Footsteps thudded behind her. She stopped worrying about Connor and started hauling ass. She didn’t know if one of these guys would toss her off the log from behind, but she didn’t want to find out.
She launched herself off the end of the log and hit the ground rolling, surprised she was so comfortable with a move like that. She’d never done anything this crazy before, but it seemed to come naturally.
She chased Remy and Cooper to the next obstacle, then to the climbing tower after that, but she couldn’t make up any ground. Mostly because she wasn’t trying too hard. After watching Jayden practically shove Max right through a plywood wall, she decided keeping her head on a swivel might be the best way to do well at this game. As hard as some of them were going at each other, she might actually win—if she could just avoid being taken out by her teammates.
She followed Remy and Cooper through several fake building facades, jumping through empty window frames and running up stairs, then climbing down from roofs. She didn’t catch sight of Becker the whole time. Then again, none of them probably ever would. He was that damn fast.
She cleared the last building and turned for the finish line—the PT sandbox—where Becker was standing with a smile on his face. She was only ten feet behind Remy and Cooper, who were still battling for the lead. She might be able to catch up and pass them if she picked up the pace. Then she heard footsteps pounding fast behind her. She threw a quick glance over her shoulder and practically stumbled when she caught sight of Riggs on her tail. Like the other guys, he’d gone werewolf too, and his gold eyes glinted in the early morning sun.
How the hell had he caught up to her? She hadn’t seen him since the start of the chase. She pushed harder, trying to pull away, but Riggs closed the distance between them again. She might have been more agile on the obstacles, but she simply couldn’t run as fast as the guys when they shifted. All it would take was a shove from her squad leader to send her tumbling head over heels through the finish line like an idiot. As fast as she was going, she wouldn’t stop tumbling until she reached the parking lot.
What a way to make a first impression.
Khaki was so sure Riggs was going to take her out that she almost backed off and let him pass her. But something inside her refused to give in, and she pushed even harder.
She tensed, sure the shove was coming, but it never did. Her squad leader stayed right behind her the whole time. Werewolf or not, she was breathing hard and fast by the time she crossed through the sandbox and slowed to a walk on the far side. She resisted the urge to lean over and gasp for air and instead glanced at Riggs as he walked it out beside her. His fangs had retracted, as had his claws, and there was a light sheen of sweat coating his bare chest. It was all she could do not to reach out and run her hands over all that glistening muscle.
She bit her lip and dragged her gaze away from all that tanned perfection to find Riggs watching her. Had he seen her checking him out?
If he had, he didn’t call her on it. Instead, he regarded her with those dark, enigmatic eyes, then turned and walked back to the sandbox.
What the heck was that about? Khaki had a sinking feeling that her squad leader could have blown past her to the finish line if he’d wanted to, then gloated about it afterward. She couldn’t understand why he hadn’t. Maybe he wasn’t a complete asshole, after all.
Reaching up to push back the hair that had come loose from her ponytail, Khaki slowly walked over to join the guys in the sandbox. Cooper and Remy were about to come to blows as they argued over who had cheated more in order to gain the second-place finish. Remy’s Cajun accent came out more when he was angry, and it was hard catching everything he said, but she got the gist of it. These guys were even more competitive than she expected. Riggs stepped between the two men.
“Knock it off,” Riggs growled.
Khaki felt the hair on the back her neck stand up at the power in those deep, rumbling tones. It must have had the same effect on Cooper and Remy because they stepped away from each other, teeth and claws retracting.
“Okay, everyone,” Mike said. “Hit the showers.”
That sounded good to Khaki. She was covered in so much sand, she felt like a sugar cookie. Considering the guys were just as sweaty and dirty, she thought they’d be as eager for a shower as she was, but they were all standing there staring at her with weird looks on their faces.
“What?” she asked.
Hale rubbed the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “Um, we only have one set of open bay showers.”
Khaki frowned. Open bay showers? What the hell were those? Then it hit her. “There’s no way in hell I’m showering with all of you.”
Cooper’s mouth twitched. “Oh, come on. Think of it as a team-building exercise.”
“Yeah,” Becker agreed with a grin, then added, “We promise not to stare.”
Khaki doubted any of them would be able to keep that promise, especially Becker. And while the idea of seeing all the guys naked was definitely interesting, she’d never seriously consider it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Riggs studying her. “Not gonna happen,” she said firmly. “I’m all about team, but I draw the line at showering with a dozen men at once.”
“We can break up into groups of three or four if that’ll make you feel better,” Remy told her in that sexy Cajun accent of his.
She shouldn’t laugh at their juvenile teasing, but she couldn’t help it. “Forget it.”
“Bummer.” Jayden let out an exaggerated sigh. “So what do we do, play rock, paper, scissors to see who gets to shower first?”
Khaki was willing to gamble for the first shot at the showers, but Riggs stepped in and put an end to the negotiations before they even started.
“Blake, you’re showering first. And since Becker’s game obviously didn’t tire out the rest of you, how about we try a couple more laps around the obstacle c
ourse?”
The guys grumbled but fell in behind Riggs as he led the way.
“Don’t take all morning in there,” Hale called over his shoulder.
“And don’t use up all the hot water,” Cooper added.
Khaki laughed as she jogged to the admin building and ran upstairs. She grabbed her toiletry bag, then stripped off her T-shirt and shorts, and hurried into the open shower. Riggs would probably keep the guys running laps until she finished, but she didn’t want to take any chances. As she squeezed shower gel onto her pouf, her mind wandered to all those sweaty, hunky guys outside. They might be her teammates, and so full of testosterone that they were literally a danger to themselves and each other, but God, they were hot. She was looking forward to more of these early-morning PT sessions, especially if it included the aforementioned guys running around with their shirts off.
But as she ran the soapy pouf over her naked body partaking in a little harmless daydreaming about her studly teammates, she found herself thinking less about all the guys and more about one of them—Xander Riggs.
She tried to make sense of that, wondering if it was just a werewolf thing because he smelled so damn good and her nose was so freaky keen. But that didn’t make sense. She wasn’t fantasizing about his scent. She was fantasizing about his naked body all covered in sand—and her.
That made even less sense. It was obvious Riggs didn’t think much of her and she really wasn’t too fond of him, but thinking about her squad leader was doing crazy things to her pulse. Not to mention other parts of her anatomy. Her fingers dug into the pouf as she caught a whiff of her arousal. That was new. She knew she was excited, but she hadn’t realized her scent was so strong she could smell it.
If she hadn’t been in a rush, she would have touched herself.
Definitely not a good idea. All she needed was for one of the guys to come running upstairs to see what was taking her so long to find her bringing herself to orgasm in the showers.
