by Paige Tyler
He grinned. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
Triana unlocked the door, then closed and locked it behind them quietly, so she wouldn’t wake her mom. When she turned back around, Remy was already walking around the dimly lit shop, taking in the shelves upon shelves of knickknacks that had mesmerized her since childhood. The overhead lights were off, so the red, green, and purple neon tubes that edged the display windows were the only source of illumination, but it was more than enough to guide her steps as she moved to Remy’s side. She watched as he picked up the various dolls, candles, beads, tarot cards, potions, books, and other trinkets that filled the store. For such large hands, he handled everything with a surprisingly gentle touch.
“Everything is exactly the same as I remember it.” He turned to smile at her, a warm glint in his eyes. “Well, not everything. You’ve changed quite a bit.”
The heated way he looked at her made her tummy quiver. “Really? How so?”
Remy took her hand and tugged her closer. The tips of her nipples grazed his muscular chest, sending tingles spiraling through her. “I tend to remember you as a shy, somewhat awkward girl who was all knees and elbows back then.”
She laughed softly, a little embarrassed. Yeah, that was a pretty good description of her when she was in high school. She had been what her mom called a late bloomer, so everything had changed her freshman year in college, when her body had made up for lost time.
“And now?” she asked in a near whisper.
He bent his head until his face was so close to hers that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her skin. His left hand came up and found her hip, slowly gliding back and forth across the silky material and heating the skin underneath.
“And now, you definitely aren’t shy, you move like a cat, and all those knees and elbows have turned into some serious curves I’d love to explore, since I’m smart enough to know what I want.”
She blushed at hearing him put all that into words. “No one’s stopping you.”
The glint in his eyes flared brighter for a moment as the neon lights caught them. Then, one of Remy’s hands was in her hair and he was kissing her. A moan involuntarily escaped her lips as his mouth came down on hers and his tongue slipped inside. He tasted so delicious she couldn’t help it.
She slid her hands up the front of his shirt and grabbed his shoulders, squeezing hard as she pulled him even closer, urging him to kiss her harder.
Remy must have understood what she was trying to say because the hand in her hair tightened possessively and his tongue teased hers more aggressively. At the same time, his free hand moved around from her hip to her lower back, fitting her against him so firmly she could feel every ripple and bulge in that perfect body of his. And one of those bulges suggested he was enjoying the kiss just as much as she was.
Triana melted against him, surrendering to a kiss she’d been fantasizing of for over a decade. She’d heard women talking about going all weak-kneed from a great kiss, but she’d never experienced it or even believed it. She believed it now. If Remy hadn’t been holding on to her so tightly, she was sure she would have collapsed to her knees right there in front of him.
Isn’t that an interesting thought?
She whimpered as Remy’s hand slid down her back to cup a nice handful of cheek and squeezed. How had he known she loved having her bottom played with?
Jumping in bed with a guy after a few kisses wasn’t something she would ever consider, but Remy wasn’t just some random guy. He was the guy she’d crushed on all through high school, someone she considered more than a friend even if they hadn’t seen each other in years.
Besides, he was like no one she’d ever kissed before. Good heavens, he had her stomach doing flips and barrel rolls!
Triana was on the verge of asking Remy if he wanted to sneak upstairs to her old room when he pulled away so suddenly she almost fell over. She’d thought for a moment he must have read her mind, but then she realized he’d stepped back to put a disturbing amount of distance between them. At the same time, he reached down to rearrange the front of his jeans, which suddenly seemed too tight for him.
She opened her mouth to ask him what was up when a creaking sound on the stairs behind the cashier counter startled her.
“Triana, is that you down there making all that noise?”
Her eyes widened even as Remy gave her an apologetic smile. He’d pulled away because he’d heard Mom coming downstairs. Damn, he must have some seriously good ears. No shock there. The rest of him was frigging awesome, why not his ears?
She ran her hands over her little black dress as she heard her mom coming down the last few steps. It was a good thing, too. The dress, which was already short, had crept up and would have flashed a load of skin. From the knowing grin on his face, she imagined Remy might have had something to do with that.
Her mother wasn’t a prude by any means, and Triana wouldn’t have been embarrassed if she’d found her kissing a guy. But still, it was better to avoid the whole issue. Her mom was going to be shocked enough to see Remy as it was.
“Yes, Mom, it’s me,” Triana said. “And look who I ran into on Bourbon Street.”
Her mother reached the bottom of the stairs, grumbling about how Triana expected her to see anything with the lights off. When her mother flipped them on, Triana was shocked to see her standing there with a baseball bat over her shoulder like she’d been about to bean whomever she’d heard down here.
Tall and slender, her mother was a graceful woman in her sixties with a spring in her step and dark, curly hair she always wore tied back in a scarf.
Her mother’s eyes widened when she saw Remy, but then a warm smile spread across her face.
“Oh Lord! Remy, is that you?”
Her mother set down the baseball bat, leaning it against the wall, then hurried across the shop in a way that made Triana think she already knew the answer to that question.
“Yes, Mrs. Bellamy, it’s me,” Remy said with a laugh, stepping forward to give her mother a hug.
When her mother pulled away, she looked Remy up and down with a sharp eye. “Goodness, look how much you’ve grown. What the heck have you been eating, entire cows? And stop calling me Mrs. Bellamy. It’s Gemma.”
Remy chuckled. “I’ll try, but you’ve always been Mrs. Bellamy to me, so I’ll probably screw up a few times. I’m sorry we woke you up. Triana was showing me around the shop.”
Her mom threw a glance her way, a knowing look in her dark eyes. “Just showing you around the shop, huh? With the lights out?”
Remy didn’t even bat an eye. “We left them off so we wouldn’t wake you up. The glow of the neon in the display windows is more than enough to see by.”
The smile tugging at the corners of her mother’s lips suggested she knew Remy was full of crap. “Uh-huh.”
“Remy is a police officer in Dallas now,” Triana quickly said before her mother could ask what else they’d been doing down here in the dark, though it was obvious she already knew. “He and three of his fellow officers are in town for training, and I was lucky enough to run into him in a club. I just turned around and there he was.”
Her mother arched a brow, studying Remy thoughtfully. “You just walked into a random club on Bourbon Street and ran into Triana by pure chance? That’s…amazing.”
Remy’s mouth curved. “Right place at the right time, I guess.”
“Maybe,” her mother agreed. “Or perhaps the fates took a hand and made sure you two ran into each other tonight.”
Triana stifled a groan. She might have known it was simple, random luck that Remy had found her in the club, but her mom took this destiny-and-fate thing seriously. While Triana didn’t buy into any of that stuff, she also never mocked her mom for believing in it.
“Where are you boys staying while you’re in town?” her mom asked suddenly, catching Triana com
pletely off guard.
“The DoubleTree over on Canal Street,” Remy said. “The department was able to get a really good deal on the rooms, which is the only reason we’re not stuck in a cheap motel out by the airport.”
The DoubleTree was a nice place and close to a lot of the big attractions near the river, but it was also on the far side of the French Quarter from the shop. Triana winced as she realized Remy was going to have a long walk back tonight, unless he called a cab. Her mother must have been thinking the same thing because she frowned.
“Why don’t you and your friends stay here while you’re in town?” her mother suggested. “I have plenty of space, and it will save your police department some money.”
Triana blinked. Okay, she hadn’t expected that. Inviting Remy to stay was one thing, but letting three guys she’d never even met was out of character for her mother, to say the least.
Remy seemed surprised too, but he recovered quickly. “I appreciate the offer, Mrs. Bellamy—Gemma—but my commander expects us to use the rooms he put all the work into getting for us. Besides, we’ll be stomping in and out at all hours of the day and night. We’d only wake you up all the time.”
Her mother sighed. “I understand. But if you change your mind, tell your friends they’re more than welcome.”
Remy thanked her again and assured her he would keep her offer in mind.
Triana knew Remy was simply being polite. He might be willing to stay there, especially after the kisses they’d just shared, but she was betting his friends preferred having their own hotel rooms in the event they needed a place to take any girls they picked up. Considering how her friends had flirted with them at the club, needing the privacy of a hotel room was an extremely good possibility.
Her mom chatted with her and Remy for a few more minutes before announcing she was going back to bed. “It’s good seeing you again, Remy. I hope you make time to stop in a few nights and have dinner with Triana and me while you’re here.”
“I will,” he promised, glancing at Triana. “In fact, I think I might be spending quite a lot of time here.”
Triana couldn’t help noticing the tingle of excitement that ran through her at the thought of spending time with Remy.
“Oh, and you don’t have to rush off, Remy,” her mother said before disappearing up the steps. “You can turn off the lights and look around the shop for a while longer if you like.”
Remy chuckled as they listened to the bedroom door close. “Your mother is amazing.”
“Yeah, she is, isn’t she?” Triana agreed with a smile. She reached out and slipped her fingers into the waistband of his jeans, tugging him closer. “So, would you like to look around the shop for a while longer…with the lights on this time?”
He grinned, wrapping his arms around her and lightly touched his lips to hers. Triana moaned and buried her fingers in his short, dark-blond hair, intending to yank him down for a serious kiss, but before she could, he pulled away.
“You have no idea how much I’d like to spend the whole night kissing you,” he said softly, his eyes blazing with hunger. “But the first day of cross-training starts in a few hours.”
It was the same thing she would have done in his position, so Triana was surprised at how disappointed she was that he had to leave.
She forced herself to be mature and nod. “I understand. I had fun tonight.”
“Me too,” he said with a smile. “How about I stop by tomorrow after training? We can go out to eat or dance or just hang out and talk, if you want.”
She liked the sound of that. “It’s a date.”
Chapter 3
Remy strode down the empty hallway, Max, Brooks, and Zane at his heels in tight formation. When he reached the stout wood door at the end, Remy nodded his head rapidly three times, then quickly moved aside, making room for Brooks to come through with the battering ram.
Brooks slammed the thirty-pound cylindrical piece of metal into the door directly below the knob, shattering the wood and sending pieces of the lock flying. The moment it was open, Zane reached out and pulled Brooks back from the doorway, where the momentum of the ram’s swing had left him a sitting duck. Remy darted into the room, Max right behind him, each of them covering their respective quadrants. It was something they’d done so many times in training that it was as familiar to them as breathing.
By the time Brooks and Zane entered the room behind them, he and Max were already motioning that the space was clear. Remy gestured toward a door on the far side. As they approached it, Remy holstered his standard-issue SIG Sauer .40-caliber pistol and swung his tactical shotgun off his back. If the lock on this second door was as strong as it looked, the battering ram would probably bounce off.
Okay, probably not with a werewolf of Brooks’s size handling it, but the goal wasn’t to draw attention to themselves. It was to get through the house quickly using the most efficient breaching techniques available.
In the SWAT world, if you were worried about the lock being reinforced, you ignored the lock and went after the hinges.
Remy’s teammates took an extra step back as he pressed the barrel of the shotgun against the door, where the lower hinge was attached, and fired three shots into it. Without pausing to check the effect of his first shots, he repeated the process at the top and middle of the door, shredding most of the area along the edge. Pointing his shotgun upward, he kicked in the door, then hauled ass out of the way as Max and Brooks slipped through to clear the room beyond.
Shots immediately rang out as Max and Brooks handled the targets inside. Remy had his shotgun back over his shoulder and was drawing his sidearm when Brooks silently motioned that the furniture-filled room was clear and pointed toward a door on Remy’s right.
This one was heavy-duty metal, like something you’d see on the outside of an industrial warehouse. It wouldn’t normally be an issue for a werewolf to get through it using simple brute force, but he knew Gage would be pissed if they did that, so Remy went for plan B.
While the other guys covered him, he moved toward the door, reaching into the demo bag on his hip for the breaching charge he’d put together before coming into the building. Remy pulled the paper off the peel-and-stick back of the charge and shoved it against the door, in between the knob and the jamb, then unspooled the wires of the electric detonator he’d already hooked up to the firing device and gave Brooks a nod. The big man double-checked to make sure the other three members of the team were safely away from the charge and returned his nod.
Remy immediately flipped the cover on the firing device and pressed the red button, then spun around, putting his back to the door. The sound of the blast reverberated throughout the room, the force of it vibrating through him as plastic fragments peppered the back of his tactical vest and cargo pants. By the time he turned around, the dead bolt had been torn apart and the metal door was open.
Zane and Max stormed into the cloud of acrid smoke left in the charge’s wake, firing at the targets set up in the room beyond. Remy and Max had just followed them in when a voice rang out over the speaker in the top right-hand corner of the room.
“Cease fire! Course complete.”
Silence descended over the shoot house as Remy and the other guys complied with the command.
“You got through there in twenty-two seconds. That’s what I call frigging impressive as hell,” the man’s voice came through the speaker again. “Now get out here and tell us how the hell you did it.”
Remy chuckled and holstered his weapon, then led his teammates to the back door of the shoot house and out into the early morning sunshine, where Lieutenant Drew Thompson and the rest of the New Orleans SWAT team were waiting for them. The twenty men and two women had watched the whole thing on the monitors and were regarding them in admiration.
“Okay, so spill,” Drew said.
Tall with blue eyes and salt-and-pepper hair
cut military style, Drew had come up through the ranks on the Dallas SWAT team with Gage, and when Gage had been named commander, Drew had moved to New Orleans. According to Gage, Drew hadn’t been pissed or jealous Gage had gotten the job but had simply wanted to be in charge of his own team. They’d parted as friends and had stayed in touch.
“What we just did in there might look good, but some of that stuff would be impossible to do on a good portion of the calls our team in Dallas handle,” Remy said. As one of the more experienced breachers on the team, he’d volunteered to lead the training in this area. “The three breaching methods we demonstrated—the battering ram, shotgun breach, and explosive charge—all come with advantages and disadvantages.”
Remy walked over to a long table set up with all kinds of tactical breaching gear, stopping beside the battering ram that was similar to the one Brooks had used to take down the first door. “The ram is the simplest method to get through most doors, but it leaves the person using it standing in the middle of the doorway defenseless because they don’t have a weapon out.”
He moved farther down the table to a shotgun that was identical to the one on his back and held it up. “This can deal with doors that have been reinforced along the lock or hinge side, but it also exposes whoever uses it to someone firing through the door. Worse, the ammo you use, whether it’s buckshot or slug, will keep going and could hit civilians.” He placed the rifle on the table. “The same goes for the explosive breaching charge—it’s going to throw fragments everywhere when you initiate it. So, for either of those methods, you’d better know what’s on the other side of the door you’re going through, or you’re going to end up injuring, or killing, the people you’re there to save.”
That wasn’t anything the cops on the NOPD SWAT team didn’t already know. It wasn’t difficult to find a SWAT officer who didn’t live in fear of going through a door expecting to find a bad guy with a gun and instead finding a four-year-old in their pj’s.
“We’re going to spend the rest of the morning breaching all kinds of doors,” Remy continued. “But we’re not only going to worry about getting through the obstacles. We’re also going to learn where the fragment debris from different breaching techniques goes and how dangerous it can be.” He walked along the table until he came to a cardboard box filled with red balloons. He took one out and held it up. “You pop a balloon, it means you injured or killed a hostage or a teammate. Whoever pops the most balloons buys a round of beer for everyone.”