by Paige Tyler
Khaki turned the shower to cold and tried to immerse herself in as many nonsexual thoughts as she could.
It didn’t take long to come up with something. All she had to do was remember what it was like seeing the guys shift. That had been freaky. And amazing. The guys were fast, strong, and fearless as all hell in their human form. But when they shifted like they had, it was as if they turned into some kind of superheroes.
She frowned as a thought struck her. What happened if she had to play the rabbit next time and they found out she couldn’t do what they could do? Because in the three months she’d been like this, she’d never once sprouted fangs or claws, and she was pretty sure she would have known if her eyes had started blazing like theirs. Maybe female werewolves didn’t display the same kind of attributes that the males did.
Worse, what if they expected her to be able to do that werewolf stuff as part of her job? She’d done well keeping up with them this morning, but she’d seen the way they’d navigated the obstacle course. They used their werewolf talents to move in ways she couldn’t. What happened when they found out she wasn’t the same kind of werewolf?
Oh, crap. She was so screwed.
* * *
Khaki leaned back against a table in one of the training buildings, trying not to let her nerves show. Looking at all the chemical jars, glass beakers, Bunsen burners, and plastic baggies scattered around, it was obvious the place had been set up as a mock drug lab. And an impressive one at that. But she and her squad weren’t here to talk about taking down drug dealers. Riggs had brought them here to talk about integrating her into the SWAT team—and more importantly, what was expected of her.
Riggs grabbed a dusty wooden chair and spun it around, then straddled it, draping his muscular arms over the back and fixing his gaze on her.
“I’ll give you the same speech I give everyone when they join my squad,” he said. “When it’s just us working together, you can call me Xander. When Sergeant Dixon, other cops, reporters, or the brass is around, I go by Corporal Riggs.”
She nodded. “Understood.”
“Gage said you had some issues with your last job,” Xander continued. “He didn’t give me any details, and I don’t want them. I don’t care about any of that, and neither do the other guys. You bust your ass and lay it on the line for the rest of us, and every one of us will take a bullet for you.”
Khaki wasn’t quite sure how to respond to a speech like that. Should she growl or grunt…or something? In the end, she went with what came natural for her—being honest.
“Thanks. I’ll do my best not to let any of you down.”
Xander nodded and looked at the other guys. They all lifted their chins in a sign of approval that all men seemed to know how to do from birth.
“Okay, now that we’ve got the pleasantries over with, let’s get to the real reason we’re here.” Xander was the kind of guy who got right to the point. “As of now, our squad is on limited-duty status until we get you up to speed and off probationary training status. And we need to do that as quickly as possible.”
Trevor, the SWAT team’s armorer, frowned, his brown eyes wary. “How quick is quickly?”
“Gage wants Khaki ready for limited field ops in a week, fully qualified in two,” Xander said.
Khaki didn’t know much about SWAT, but that sounded a little ambitious.
Cooper must have thought so too, because he let out an expletive. “That’s bullshit. How the hell does Sarge expect us to get her trained that fast? The rest of us got a month to reach limited ops status. It’s like he’s setting her up to fail.”
“He’s not setting her up to fail,” Xander said. “He handpicked Khaki for the job against the wishes of people who have their own agendas and the power to make life hell for all of us. Gage has to prove he made the right decision, and he needs to do it fast.”
Great. No pressure or anything.
“What if I can’t get trained in time?” Khaki asked.
Xander fixed her with a look. “Then Gage is going to be in a tough position.”
Meaning Dixon might have to transfer her out of SWAT to make way for another female cop—one who wasn’t a werewolf. Despite just getting here, her stomach clenched at the thought of transferring out of the unit.
Xander must have seen the worry in her eyes because he shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking, Khaki, but don’t even go there. We don’t care about any of the political crap or the what-ifs. The boss wants you ready to go in a week, so you’re going to be ready to go in a week.” He leveled his gaze at her. He had really nice eyes. “To make sure you’re ready, I have to know what you’re good at and what your weaknesses are.”
Khaki hesitated. The idea of admitting how little she really knew about SWAT procedures to her squad leader was awkward enough, but saying it out loud in front of everyone was even worse.
“We’ve all been where you are, Khaki,” Xander said when she didn’t answer. “Gage found us, brought us in, and trained us. You can’t be any worse than the rest of us were when we got here.”
Khaki wasn’t so sure of that. But she’d have to own up to it sooner or later. Besides, it wasn’t like they weren’t going to figure it out when they saw all the things she couldn’t do.
“I’ve been a patrol officer for eight years, and while I can handle myself on the street, I don’t know the first thing about SWAT, other than what the acronym stands for,” she admitted.
Trevor leaned back in his chair, propping the sole of his boot on the edge of the table in front of him, his gaze approving. “Don’t sell yourself short. Eight years on the street is pretty damn good. And now that you’re a werewolf, you might have some skills you haven’t realized.”
“Ever done any rappelling or climbing?” Max asked. “Even if it was just for recreation.”
She shrugged. “I climbed around the rocks a couple times up near Mount Rainier. Does that count?”
“What about weapons?” Alex added. “Anything beyond your standard sidearm?”
She gave him a sheepish look. “A shotgun.”
“Hand-to-hand combat, wrestling, or martial arts?” Hale asked.
“Only what I learned in the academy.”
She braced herself for the grumbles she was sure were coming. But none of the guys seemed concerned about her lack of skills.
“Hell, I think you’re further along than I was when I started, Khaki,” Becker said.
“She’s further along than you are now,” Cooper said.
Becker flipped him the bird, chuckling while he did. Even though Khaki laughed along with the guys, she couldn’t resist glancing at Xander to see what he thought of her answers. But he didn’t look annoyed that they had to teach her most of those things. He was still sitting there with his arms casually draped over the back of his chair, regarding her with interest.
“We’ll start with the basic skills, then,” he said. “Pistol and M4 carbine qualification, then move on to rappelling, urban climbing, entry procedures, and basic hostage tactics. Those areas are our bread and butter. You get them down, and you’ll be ready for limited operations.”
Khaki’s head was already spinning. It sounded like she’d need a month just to get all that stuff down—and she had to pick it up in a week.
“What else do I have to learn to be fully qualified?” she asked.
“Hand-to-hand combat and takedown techniques, picking locks, bypassing security systems, first aid, demolitions, and hostage negotiations. Not to mention honing any specialty skills you have,” he said matter-of-factly. “But none of those things are as important as how we operate as a team. When we show Gage that we can all work together, then you’re fully qualified.”
Khaki was about to ask how Dixon would know when that happened, but Xander had already stood up and was handing out assignments.
“Trevor, you start her on our standard issue Sig 9 millimeter. She’s already qualified on a .40 caliber Glock, so it’s just a matter of getting use
d to a new weapon. Alex, you get to introduce her to the M4.” Xander looked at her. “After that, Becker will teach you urban climbing, then Max will show you how to rappel.”
Did he mean all today? Apparently he did because five minutes later, Khaki was standing on the firing line of the small pistol range, a loaded Sig in her hand. She took a deep breath and spread her feet wide in a shooting stance. She was skilled with a handgun, but that was a Glock. A Sig felt completely different. Besides that, there was the little issue of the seven huge guys standing there watching her, with Xander off to her right, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes locked on her like a pair of laser beams.
Time to show the guys on the SWAT team that Dixon had made the right decision in hiring her.
Khaki sighted in on the target and squeezed the trigger slowly, punching a hole through the center of the man-shaped silhouette at fifteen yards. Then she adjusted to the target half-hidden behind a fake door a little closer in and popped that one too. More confident now, she picked up speed, transitioning from target to target rapidly and hitting all of them. At least here was one thing she knew how to do well.
When she’d emptied the magazine, she lowered the gun and threw a glance in Xander’s direction to see him scowling.
“Stop screwing around with all the close targets and pick up the pace,” he growled. “Then give me a couple magazines’ worth of rounds with your left hand.”
Her left hand? She’d done that once, about three years ago. Khaki sighed. Maybe it was going to be even harder to impress her squad leader than she’d thought it would be.
Chapter 4
Xander was dog-tired by the time they finished the last PT drill and headed for the showers. For Khaki’s benefit, Gage had them doing PT every day this week. Xander wanted extra PT time whenever he could fit it in, but the last two days of training with Khaki had gone long, and all the guys on his squad were dragging to some degree.
It probably didn’t help that he hadn’t slept worth a crap the last two nights. But every time he closed his eyes to try, all he saw were images of Khaki running in her form-fitting PT gear, growling sweetly as she hit the obstacle course with wild abandon, or sweating as she climbed up the side of a building, then laughing as she rappelled down the other side way too fast for his liking. Since she’d arrived, Khaki had been bouncing around like a pixie with a caffeine addiction. You’d never know that he was doing his best to push her to within an inch of her life during every training session. She just kept smiling and coming back for more.
As he jogged upstairs, he yawned so hard his jaw cracked. He really needed some sleep. But that wasn’t going to happen, at least not anytime soon. Because Khaki had gone beyond invading his dreams. She’d taken possession of most of his waking thoughts as well. She had climbed into his head and he couldn’t get her out, no matter how hard he tried.
And now he braced himself for the hardest part of the day—walking into the locker room and the adjoining open bay shower after Khaki had been in there.
Xander felt his cock harden the moment he reached the top of the stairs and her scent hit him. God, it literally made him weak in the knees. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why he was the only one being affected by it. It wasn’t like this was just a passing scent lingering around the locker room either. It permeated every corner of the ten-by-twelve space, and it was overwhelming. Every time he breathed it in, his body responded in a way that was impossible to ignore.
The worst part? Knowing that her scent was so much stronger in the locker room because she’d been prancing around up here naked.
He tried to slam the door on that thought, but it didn’t work. The moment he let his mind wander even a few feet in that direction, his imagination took over and he was bombarded with images of Khaki standing in the shower with warm water streaming down that incredible, fit body of hers.
His cock’s reaction to those images was instantaneous and intense.
“Damn it to hell,” he muttered, checking to make sure none of the guys were around to see him fighting his way out of his own shorts.
Thankfully, the rest of the team had finished cleaning up and were already downstairs. As their voices drifted upstairs, he heard Mike’s guys talking about all the extra ops they’d been running the last few days while his squad had been off rotation getting Khaki up to speed. Hopefully they all stayed down there, at least until he turned on the cold water. Otherwise, he was going to look funny walking into the community shower with his dick leading the way.
Khaki’s scent was even stronger in the tile-enclosed space of the showers, and Xander forced himself to breathe through his mouth instead of his nose as he twisted the cold water on full blast and stepped under the icy spray. The frigid temperature helped a bit, allowing him to think about something else—like what kind of training the squad was going to do with Khaki today.
He’d spent a good portion of last night thinking about it. He sure as hell hadn’t spent it sleeping, so why not? His original plan had been to spend the week going over the basics—shooting, climbing, rappelling, and individual tactics. But Khaki was doing well enough in those areas for them to do team stuff now. It was probably a good idea to see what she could handle anyway. Even though Gage had promised that his squad would be on limited duty until Khaki was ready, they couldn’t depend on that. If something too big for Mike’s squad to handle on its own came up, Gage would be forced to put Xander’s squad back to work. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal. Xander could usually find a way to get the job done without putting the newbie in a bad position. But he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do that with Khaki. When she went out on a call with them, everything she did would be put under a microscope. He had to make sure she was ready for the spotlight when the time came.
Unfortunately, that meant pushing her harder than he already was. He didn’t like to do it, but he couldn’t see any other way around it.
He turned the water off and reached for his towel. At least his hard-on had gone down.
In the locker room, he put on his uniform, then sat to lace up his boots. A sweet scent immediately engulfed him. He jerked his head up to see if Khaki had come upstairs without him hearing her, but the room was empty. There was only one way to explain why her scent was so concentrated on this part of the bench. She’d sat in this exact same spot. The fact that she might have been naked at the time wasn’t lost on him. His body’s reaction was immediate and obvious.
“Damn it to hell,” he growled.
How the hell was he supposed to go downstairs like this? Worse, how the hell was he going to focus on training Khaki with his cock doing its best impression of a two-by-four all day?
Xander tugged his boot laces tighter, silently reciting baseball stats and hoping it would be enough to distract him. He spent an extra ten minutes upstairs, just to be on the safe side.
When he got downstairs, Mike and his squad had already taken off on an incident. Khaki was telling the other guys about a domestic violence call she’d gone on in Washington State. Her voice drifted off when she saw him.
“What’s on the agenda today, boss?” Becker asked.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” Xander said. “Follow me.”
He led them outside and down to the training structure closest to the admin building, the one they affectionately called the House of Doors. The windowless concrete block building was nothing more than a maze of rooms, hallways, and stairwells, separated by lots and lots of doors—hence the name. The place was a nightmare to maneuver through and search quickly, so they usually used it for hostage-rescue training. But today, Xander had another use for the haphazard collection of rooms—team movement drills.
Xander stopped at the entrance and flipped on the lights inside. When Khaki was ready, they’d do the exercise in complete darkness.
He turned to her, careful not to let himself focus on her big brown eyes and lush lips. He’d already learned how quickly he could become distracted when he d
id.
“You’ve done well with the individual skills so far, which means it’s time to move to the next level—small team tactics,” he told her.
Khaki nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to hear her heart rate pick up to know she was nervous. The look on her face said it all. He wanted to say something comforting, but was worried it might come off the wrong way. If she were a man instead of a woman—one he was seriously attracted to, at that—he sure as hell wouldn’t coddle the guy. Of course, if she were a man, he wouldn’t be having these thoughts in the first place.
Xander forced himself to ignore her racing heart and concentrate. “The hardest task for a newbie to learn in SWAT is how to move as part of a team. There are a lot of theories on how a three- or four-person team is supposed to move through a building, clearing each room in a schematic manner, covering each other’s blind spots and making sure you don’t miss anything, but they’re just that—theories.”
“And crappy ones at that,” Alex added. “Most of the people who claim to know how it’s done have never had to actually do it.”
Xander couldn’t disagree with that, but he still silenced Alex with a glare.
“The typical way a SWAT unit works a new member into the team is to train a lot,” Xander continued as he turned back to Khaki. “But even with weeks of hard training, you can still end up with a collection of individuals instead of a team. Luckily, you have an advantage that the average SWAT newbie doesn’t have.”
She thought a moment, then her lips curved. “I’m a werewolf.”
Her smile provoked a powerful response in him he hadn’t anticipated. Any attempt to maintain his stern, detached demeanor failed miserably and he found himself grinning.
“Yeah, you’re a werewolf. But more importantly, you’re a member of a pack of werewolves. You’re genetically designed to mesh perfectly into a pack. All you have to do is let it happen.”