Twice the Pups: Paranormal SEAL Second Chance Surprise Baby Romance (Shifter Squad Nine Book 4)

by Anya Nowlan

  “Aw, come on, we thought you were a hardass,” Price mocked, leaning back with his chair precariously.

  The mess hall was empty now. Tatiana had left about twenty minutes ago and Roy had conked out after the third shot. The compound, hidden away in the pristine forests of Montana, was quiet and tucked away for the night.

  They’d received word that Rio was pulling through as they were finishing up for the night, and of course that had prompted another round of drinks. After that, it had been sort of easy to find reasons to keep going. Not the least of which was that Amy didn’t really want to leave her current company.

  After a while, she’d gotten over her dry mouth whenever being addressed by one of the Renard twins. She’d even found her capability to banter again and found both of them to be pretty damn interesting. Though they didn’t want to tell her much about where and with whom they had served in the SEALs – a surefire way to recognize guys who’d gone through a bit too much trauma during their deployments – they’d still found plenty to talk about.

  The little tingle that came every time either one of them looked at her still hadn’t dissipated though. Amy didn’t mind.

  “I never claimed to be one,” she said with an exaggerated shrug, reaching for the glass of water that sat next to her shot glass.

  “Well, you are, though,” Prowler said, gulping down his own shot.

  “You trying to get in good with the recoup squads so they won’t leave your battered ass on the ground when your day comes?” she joked, a little bit of morbid humor being more than common in their profession.

  “You could say that. I’d like to get in good with you, anyway,” Prowler said, suddenly falling serious.

  His green eyes met hers and she felt trapped in his gaze for a moment. The feeling was… entirely pleasant.

  Amy hid her blush behind the glass of water, taking a long sip.

  I’m getting drunk. That’s why I started imagining things. They’re not hitting on me.

  One look at Price, leaning forward on the table, his expression hard and his lips inviting, made her really begin questioning that.

  “Anyway,” Amy said, clearing her voice. “I’m sorry that shit happened to you guys today. If it’s any consolation, stuff like that’s been going on a lot lately.”

  Her attempt to change the subject was fumbling at best, but she had to work with what she had. It was sort of an unofficial motto for the mop-up crews. Thinking on your feet sort of came with the territory, whether you liked it or not.

  “Oh yeah? How come?” Price asked, leaning back slightly and teetering precariously on the back legs of his chair.

  It seemed to be something that both of the twins did. While Price was sharper and more controlled in a way, and Prowler the wilder one, they still seemed to share a few little quirks they may not even have been aware of. To Amy, it was clear that the two wolves were well in tune with one another.

  It was good to see, really. Lately, it had become far too common for Alpha shifter twins to sort of work on different wave lengths. The fact that Amy knew this made her smile to herself, if only to push away the thought of someone else she knew who had lost touch with himself, if you were to ask the rest of The Firm.

  This is what I get for spending all my free time around shifters.

  “Not sure, plenty of theories, of course,” she began, reverting her attention back to the conversation at hand. “Some keep insisting it’s because The Arctics are getting that much more active, but I don’t think it’s that.”

  She bit her tongue, cursing the alcohol. Sharing opinions that may or may not go against the status quo of your employer wasn’t exactly something that was strictly suggested in the line of work Amy was in. At best, you could bitch and moan around a table with your buddies, men and women you trusted. But she barely knew the two wolves she was sharing drinks with.

  So why was she finding it so damn easy to talk to them?

  “What do you think it is?” Prowler asked, frowning. “I mean, we see shit like that all the time, but I thought that just comes with our… well, status.”

  Amy gave him a long look and Prowler shrugged, twirling the shot glass around the table in slow circles. He wasn’t wrong, not necessarily.

  “You may have a point about that,” she started slowly, mulling over whether or not she actually wanted to say anything.

  The words seemed to flow as freely as the tequila that night.

  “Yeah?” Price urged on.

  They’re not making this easy.

  She took her hand off the shot glass and Prowler was right there to fill it up to the brim. Amy made no effort to bat his hand or the bottle away.

  “Well, I think it’s because there’s a coup being built up somewhere in the back rooms,” she said finally, finding herself reaching for the glass immediately and kicking it back.

  The liquid trickled down her throat like pure fire, but it was nothing compared to the feeling she got when the attentions of both of the wolves centered on her. Instead of feeling like prey, which had happened a few times when she’d felt like she was suddenly becoming a little too interesting to a couple of dangerous men, this time she felt like she had all the control she needed in this situation.

  It tasted good.

  Amy licked over her lips, choosing her words.

  “Okay, so this is how I see it. I’ve been around here for a while, longer than you guys, I think. I’ve worked recoup and mop-up the whole time. It’s easier to put someone who doesn’t get a whiff of blood in their nose and go storming off looking for kills to lead those missions, you know?”

  The wolves nodded in unison, pale green eyes drilling a hole through her.

  “Anyway, year by year, I’ve seen things sort of get messier. It wasn’t so bad a few years ago, but after Shifter Squad Six started tearing shit up, things started getting out of hand. Years ago, when I came, shit like going after private matters and turning a blind eye when someone needed to blow up a damn building for personal reasons would have never happened. Anyone caught doing that, using any Firm personnel or machinery for it, would have gotten their head put on a chopping block and they would have been gone faster than you can reload a rifle.”

  She accentuated that with a thumb dragging a line across her neck. In her day, she’d seen guys get kicked out and their wages garnished for petty little stuff like forgetting to lock in their rifle at the end of the mission. The ship used to be run a lot tighter.

  “Okay,” Price said evenly, sipping at his glass this time instead of shooting the whole thing down at once. “And who do you think is trying to overthrow who here?”

  “Well, what do you think?” Amy asked, arching a brow.

  Just talking about it made a cold trickle of discomfort go down her spine. Spade was nowhere near Montana but somehow, it felt like he was staring over her shoulder whenever she mentioned his name, and no one spoke of him that often. It was like calling on the devil – if you ask too many times, he might show up. No one needed that kind of hell.

  “You think it’s Spade?” Prowler scoffed, a grin breaking out across his features. “No way. I’ve seen that guy operate, he works messy as hell these days.”

  “Exactly,” Amy said, spurred on. “Messy. He’s reckless. I’ve seen a lot of the mission reports. I didn’t work on the Singapore case but a friend of mine did. He injected a pregnant woman with the virus to gain leverage. I mean, sure, he has always been a wildcard, but not that wild. No, I think he’s cooking something up and he wants it to look like he’s getting desperate and crazy.”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Price held up a hand, making Amy look at him. “Your theory is that the guy who basically controls our collective lives is doing it all in some ploy to take over The Firm and then… what? I’ve been working for him for a while now, doing his messy work and frankly I think he’s off his rocker and that’s that. Maybe the power got to his head or something and he’s unraveling at the seams. Couldn’t that be it?”

  A
my considered that for a moment before shaking her head.

  “You guys don’t know him like I do. Men like that, they don’t break. They get harder. You know those lackeys that follow him around everywhere now? They’ve been with The Firm for a decade both, joined before Spade did. They’re loyal to the colonels, but Spade isn’t. Everybody thinks that those guys are there to keep Spade safe because half the organization wants to dismember him, but I think they’re there to keep the establishment safe, to keep an eye on him.”

  She took a solid breath, the alcohol swimming around merrily in her blood stream. The fact that she was saying so much on the topic to virtual strangers should have sent her into high alert, but she didn’t feel like Price or Prowler would raise a hand against her.

  I couldn’t be that off about them, right?

  “You knew him before? Can you tell us anything about him?” Prowler asked after a moment of silence that seemed to linger over the table.

  Amy shook her head.

  “I think I’ve said enough. I can talk business but I knew him before he became what he is now and I don’t think that’s fair to him,” she explained. “Well, fair to him and safe for anyone who knew him before. I don’t think for a moment that if anything about him got out that he wouldn’t be able to find who spilled the beans.”

  “Self-preservation. Smart,” Price said with a grin, clinking his glass against hers. “How about we drink to staying alive, huh?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Amy responded with a smile, picking up the glass and clinking it together with the wolves.

  As soon as the tingle of the glasses touching reached her ears, she wished it had been her hand meeting theirs. Sure, she was a little bit too drunk and the day had been a little bit too damn hard, but she was a big girl and she knew what she wanted. Even as she was swallowing down the shot, she couldn’t help but think about how much she needed these two guys to be a lot less well-mannered than they currently were.

  “So, how about we make this interesting?” Prowler said suddenly, a wild glint in his eyes.

  Amy frowned, looking from one smirking Renard to another.

  You had to ask for it, didn’t you?

  Six

  Amy

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked before she could come to her good senses and shut herself up.

  “Oh, you know, a little friendly wager,” Prowler drawled, mimicking his brother’s casual lean, letting his gaze roll down Amy’s body.

  It was like wherever his gaze touched her, it left a scorching path in its wake. It was intoxicating and Amy was beginning to feel way overdressed in her combat slacks and the simple black tee she was wearing.

  She’d come out of the scuffle earlier in the day relatively unharmed, a few minor bruises. The wolves had been about as lucky, sporting no bullet wounds at least, only grazing hits that had almost healed already. The way they regenerated was really a marvel. Especially that sets of twins could get through seemingly any level of injury relatively quickly.

  You’re dawdling, she told herself, snapping her attention back to the men before her.

  “A wager?” she asked, her attention piqued.

  “Mm-hmm,” Price murmured, picking up where his brother left off. “How about this? You won’t tell us about our lord and savior, the great Spade,” he continued, rolling his eyes and Prowler doing the same with all the theatric clout of a high school performance of Don Quixote. “But we’ll bet you that we can get you to tell us just about anything about you that we want to know.”

  Amy cocked a brow, looking from one to another.

  They’re so full of themselves, aren’t they?

  She didn’t miss the look that passed between the twins, or the guarded smile reserved for situations where they knew they were going to win. Amy hadn’t served with guys like them for all these years for nothing – she could read that body language well enough.

  The rational part of her was telling her to stand up and get the hell out of there while she could. But the far less rational and so much more curious half of her told her to sit her ass firmly down and see what these damnable wolves were plotting.

  “I’m listening,” she said evenly, her gray eyes coming to life with interest.

  “Good. You promise you won’t chicken out?” Prowler asked, letting his chair touch down with all four feet, leaning his elbow on the table.

  Amy paused for a moment, smirking at these two. She got the feeling she knew where this was going but far be it of her to be that presumptuous, right?

  I can handle two wolves, she thought. I’ve dealt with worse.

  “I never back out of a fight,” she said, grinning and finding the twins doing the same.

  “Oh, but this won’t be a fight,” Price growled, his voice suddenly low and more gravelly than usual. “At least in the sense that there’s a winner and a loser.”

  Before Amy could question him on it, Price had kicked back his chair and gotten up. He pulled her up on her feet by taking hold of her wrist and then snaking an arm around her body. A moment later, she found her lips pressed against his in a deep kiss that made the haze and exhaustion of the day wipe away in a flash.

  The snarl that rose to his throat seemed to travel from him into her and then right through her, making her meet it with a groan. For a second, the world seemed to fall away and Amy couldn’t seem to care less about it. Only when she heard the telltale click of a lock being flipped on the mess hall door did she come up for air.

  Her chest was rising and falling heavily, looking up at the much taller Renard twin. His otherwise green eyes were swirling with gold now and there was a dangerous smirk splayed over his lips that she wanted to slap off of him as much as she wanted to lick it off of him. She couldn’t quite make up her mind about which option seemed to make more sense even when Prowler came up behind her.

  I can’t believe they’re so… fucking forward!

  Her cheeks were flushed red and Price looked down at her with an expectant look, as if waiting for her to come to the conclusion that he’d already known she’d end up on.

  “Well then, ma’am,” he said, dragging out the ‘ma’am’. “You feel like arguing with us or maybe telling us a lie or two? Because I bet we could torture the truth out of you.”

  At that instant, Prowler’s tongue flicked over the exposed skin of her neck and Amy’s knees buckled a little, throwing her only deeper into Price’s awaiting arms. She whimpered as he moved the chain of her dog tags, which she had put back on when they got back to the base, aside slightly on her neck, and laid several kisses there in a neat row.

  I should tell them to fuck off, right? That’s what I’m supposed to do…

  She knew what the right answer was. It wasn’t the first time that a soldier had been forward with her or tried to come onto her, but she could see it coming from a mile away usually and tell them to screw off. With these two, the thought of telling them to quit it and behave seemed like the last thing she wanted to do.

  “I think I’m done with your game,” Amy snarled finally, emotion flashing through her eyes that made Price loosen his grip slightly, his expression falling.

  But instead of stepping out of the hold that the two wolves had created around her, she simply twisted around and yanked Prowler’s mouth up to meet hers. Her tongue slipped between his lips and she tasted him eagerly, loving the feeling of raw heat coursing through her as if she was made of fire all of a sudden.

  The appreciative growls that sounded from those sexy as sin wolves made those familiar goosebumps prickle up on her skin again. She raised her hands up willingly when Price moved to take off her shirt and as soon as she could bring her hands down again, she was tugging on Prowler’s tee. He obliged easily and a second later, both of the Renard twins were standing before her, shirtless.

  Amy lost what rational train of thought she had managed to cling to before, looking at those perfect, sculpted bodies. She slicked her tongue over her teeth, admiring them with a slight shake of
her head.

  Both of them were riddled with scars of all shapes and sizes, neatly tucked between choice tattoos. Price only had the SEAL logo tattooed over the left side of his rib cage, but Prowler had a lot more ink on him. Though he only had designs on his shoulders and not the rest of his arms, she could see now that the swirling patterns on his shoulders converged into something on his back.

  Over his chest, he had a few names tattooed in cursive text that she was sure to ask about later.

  But not now.

  Oh my god, she thought.

  Rippling abs, tight pecs, massive arms and tucked Vs made up two perfect packages, their bodies almost mirror images of one another, even if Prowler was built slightly stronger. In any case, Amy knew full well that she would have a hell of a lot of fun tracing lines on both their bodies with her fingers and tongue that night.

  She didn’t even care that the only things they had to fuck on were tables and chairs. Comfort really seemed like the last thing to think about when faced with such utter… perfection.

  “I approve,” she said finally, seemingly bringing the men out of their private trances.

  She’d been so busy staring at them that she’d completely overlooked the fact that they were eating her up with their eyes as well. Amy had wide hips and a stockier build, made strong by the long years spent in the service. She was no blushing beauty or waifish damsel like Sirra was, for example, but the two men before her right now seemed to prefer her just as she was.

  Price was the one who stepped closer first, letting his fingertips glide over the SEAL tattoo she had tattooed over her hip bone.

  “Good,” he said, his voice oh so breathy. “Then we’re all in agreement that we approve.”

  She almost wanted to smack him for using that slight mocking tone, but before she could get anywhere with that thought, he was kissing her again and she was clinging to him for dear life.

  This is unfair, was all she could think about when Prowler unhooked her bra with one hand while undoing her belt with the other. There’s two of them and only one of me.