by Paige Tyler
Khaki forgot that Mac was a reporter—apparently a damn good one. She didn’t miss a thing.
“It’s just that it’s tough working around a team full of sexy men,” Khaki said, trying to sound casual.
Mac laughed. “I can imagine. I love Gage like crazy, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m with you on that. Those guys aren’t hard to look at, are they?”
You have no idea. “The hardest part to deal with is the scent he puts off. It smells so damn good.”
Mac paused to give Khaki a questioning look, the glass of iced tea in her hand halfway to her lips.
“What?” Khaki asked.
“You said, the scent he puts off,” Mac said.
“I did?”
“You did.”
Crap. She’d stepped right into that one. What the heck was wrong with her? She never got this easily rattled—because she’d never been around someone like Xander before.
Was that why she hadn’t said anything when she heard him coming upstairs earlier that evening?
She could have hidden behind the tiled wall, but she hadn’t tried to cover up or even look like he’d caught her by surprise. She didn’t have a clue what she’d been thinking. All she could say for sure was that she’d been as aroused as hell. If Xander had taken one step closer, she might have dropped that towel to the floor and jumped him right there on one of the wooden benches.
A smile curved Mac’s lips. “There’s one guy on the team in particular who smells especially nice, huh?”
“I didn’t say that.” Khaki uncurled her legs from under her and went into the kitchen. “Do you want something to snack on? Because I, for one, am starving.”
Mac followed on her heels. “Uh-uh. You’re not getting off that easy. I know all about you werewolves and your noses. I also know how a scent can get you going. So, tell me, who is it?”
Khaki opened the fridge and stared at the shelves of yogurt, skim milk, fruits, and veggies. Part of her didn’t want to tell Mac. She was Sergeant Dixon’s fiancée after all. How likely was it that Mac wouldn’t say anything to the man she was going to marry? Especially when she found out that the team member Khaki was lusting after was one of Gage’s squad leaders? A squad leader who was Khaki’s supervisor?
But another part—the bigger part—told her that she could trust Mac.
Khaki closed the fridge and turned to face her. “It’s Xander.”
If Mac was surprised, she didn’t let it show. “Xander, huh? I can’t say I blame you. He’s more than a little attractive and a really amazing person. Well, once you get past all the perimeter defenses. But that kind of complicates things, doesn’t it?”
That was an understatement. “I can’t help it. I know it’s wrong. He’s my squad leader, for heaven’s sake. But he’s so hot, I can’t stop myself. When I’m around him, it’s hard to even think straight.”
Mac tilted her head to the side, regarding Khaki thoughtfully. “Do you think Xander feels the same way?”
Khaki let out a short laugh. “Good Lord, no. He tolerates me, that’s about it.”
“You sure about that?” Mac asked in surprise. “I find it hard to believe he’s not attracted to you. Heck, probably half the guys on the team are. You’re the only female werewolf they’ve ever met.”
“I get what you’re saying, but none of the guys act like that around me,” Khaki said. “They treat me more like their sister. And Xander isn’t attracted to me at all. I’m sure of it.”
Which hurt more than it should have. Her head might have known it was a good thing that Xander wasn’t attracted to her, but right then, with nobody but her and Mac around, she could be honest enough to admit that her heart, and a few other parts of her anatomy, really wished he was.
“Are you?” Mac asked. “Sure, I mean?”
“I’m sure.” Khaki opened the fridge again and took out whole wheat bread, sliced turkey, cheese, and a tomato, then gave Mac a questioning look. “Want a sandwich?”
Mac shook her head. “I’m going to have dinner with Gage when he gets home.”
Who said anything about dinner? This was more like an appetizer. That was another perk that came with being a werewolf. She could eat whatever she wanted and not have to worry about extra calories ending up where they shouldn’t.
Khaki set everything on the counter. “I asked Xander flat-out when I went over to his place last night. He insisted he liked me just fine, but I knew he was lying. I could tell he was really uncomfortable around me. He was tense and on edge the whole time. Which is nothing new. He’s like that all the time around me. I think he finds me irritating and a nuisance.”
Mac gave her a dubious look. “If you say so. But either way, you’d better be careful. If being with Gage has taught me anything, it’s that werewolves are extremely affected by certain pheromones. If you go walking around lusting over Xander, he’s going to pick up on it—and so is every other guy on the team. Then things will get really complicated. I learned that the hard way. Those guys can pick up on arousal like it’s barbecue and they aren’t shy about letting you know it.”
Khaki groaned as she grabbed a plate from the cabinet. “Oh God. I never thought about that.”
“Yeah. And it gets worse.” Mac shook her head. “If I’m even slightly aroused and Gage picks up on it, he gets crazy horny—like he-can’t-control-it horny. What do you think is going to happen if all the guys on the team pick up on the fact that the one and only female werewolf on the team is aroused? You’ll find yourself getting chased by fifteen out-of-control, horny werewolves going crazy with lust. And while there are some women who might find that entertaining, something tells me you wouldn’t.”
Khaki set the plate on the counter with a thud. “Oh crap. What the hell am I going to do?”
Mac offered her a small smile. “Take a lot of baths?”
Chapter 8
The mere thought of facing Khaki after walking in on her in the shower was enough to make Xander almost call in sick the next morning. There was only one problem—werewolves didn’t get sick.
Last night had been tough on him. Khaki’s scent was still just as strong in his apartment as it had been the previous night, only now he had a visual to go along with that scent. He’d lain in bed the whole night, staring up at the ceiling and dreaming about that shower scene he’d walked in on. If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought she was toying with him, trying to drive him crazy. Of course she hadn’t been. That was just wishful thinking on his part. But still, the look on her face, the way she had that towel wrapped around her body, the way she’d laughed—it was seared into his mind forever.
He hated having these kinds of thoughts about Khaki. She was one of his team members. It was flat-out wrong. But it seemed the harder he fought against his feelings, the stronger they became.
When Xander finally rolled in for PT, the guys were still talking about the shoot-out with the bank robbery suspects the day before, especially how Khaki had come down off the roof and saved those kids—and how she’d torn into the FBI agent. The story was already getting exaggerated. They practically had Khaki tearing poor Thompson to pieces. Max swore he saw the guy crying by the time Khaki was done.
Xander didn’t mind his squad exaggerating Khaki’s exploits. That meant she was becoming one of them and they wanted to brag about her like they would have done with any other member of the squad. Of course, Khaki wasn’t any other member of the squad. That became blatantly obvious about ten minutes later when she showed up wearing a pair of tight yoga pants with flared bottoms and carrying a whole box full of rolled-up rubber mats, then led them outside for PT.
“Cooper pulled a hamstring running yesterday during the bank robbery, so he asked me to fill in as PT instructor today,” she said as she handed out the mats. “Pulling a muscle like that is a perfect example of why we need to start working flexibility into our fitness program. And the absolute best way to do that is yoga.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,�
� Jayden muttered to no one in particular. “I’m a two-hundred-and-sixty-pound werewolf. I don’t do yoga.”
Cooper gave Jayden a sidelong glance. “Today you’re doing yoga. Your hamstrings will thank you.”
“Thank you, Cooper,” Khaki said sweetly. “Now, if everyone will unroll their mats and stand with their feet shoulder-width apart with their hands in a prayer position like so, I’ll show you how to breathe properly. And, Cooper, take it easy on that hamstring, okay?”
Xander rolled his eyes. Pulled hamstring his ass. Werewolves pulled muscles just like anybody else, but even a serious tear would heal in an hour or so. No, if Xander had to guess, Cooper was doing someone in the squad a favor. And judging by the appreciative look Becker was giving Cooper, Xander knew exactly who it was.
Xander shook his head as he put his hands together in the prayer position, palms together and fingers pointing up. Becker’s plan wasn’t a bad one. Khaki looked really hot in those pants. And if there was one person who could get these guys to work on their flexibility, it’d be Khaki. If any of the guys had tried to come in here and pull this off, they would have been dog-piled by now.
Even so, most of the guys were eyeing Khaki dubiously as they mirrored her position. This was going to be…different. Some relaxing stretching would be a nice break from the ordinary.
Xander had to admit, watching Khaki bend and twist in those tight pants as she led them through various poses definitely made the wasted PT session worth it. He could finally see why Becker thought so much of those yoga pants. Though if Becker didn’t stop staring, Xander was going to walk over and punch him in the mouth.
Xander pushed the thought aside with a barely suppressed growl. As long as he didn’t leer or act like an ass, Becker had just as much right to look as he did. That didn’t quell the jealousy surging though him though.
After a few minutes of the gentle stretching, Khaki put them into positions that weren’t quite as relaxing. That’s when Xander really started to feel the workout. Damn, some of these things were hard.
“Get a little deeper in bound side angle, Alex,” Khaki called out. “Really reach under your leg and grab the other wrist.”
“Shit, I’ve got too many muscles to be bending this way,” Jayden grumbled. “I’m going to damage something important down here.”
Max snorted. “You don’t use it anyway.”
The other guys laughed, including Xander. But if they were like him, it was probably more to cover up the fact that they were having problems with bound warrior. It was like being a pretzel. The next pose was even worse. Something about a crow or a chicken. Either way, yoga was tougher than he’d thought. Props to whoever did it regularly because he was sweating like crazy.
He wasn’t the only one. Every guy on the team was grunting and swearing as Khaki led them through moves that stretched parts most of them hadn’t even known existed. Even she was sweating.
That was when he noticed something that almost knocked him out of his twisted triangle pose—a scent so strong he had to bite down on his tongue to keep from growling. What the hell?
Xander took a deep breath, trying to identify where it was coming from. When he did, he almost howled. That delectable scent hitting him so hard was coming from none other than Khaki’s glistening, sweat-slicked body. He was downwind of her, so as she led them from twisted triangle into a straight-legged hamstring stretch, the aroma kept getting stronger and stronger. She always smelled good, but for some reason, today her scent was even more powerful than normal.
Stopping his hard-on from uncomfortably filling his shorts wasn’t even an option. But this was more than simply an arousing scent. It was as if he’d been struck by lightning. Every cell in his body was tingling and alive. If his heart had stopped beating right at that moment, he wouldn’t have been surprised. But as agonizing as it was to stand there and inhale Khaki’s pheromones without pouncing on her, the thought of walking away was too painful to even consider.
He tore his gaze from Khaki and looked around, trying to see how everyone else was dealing with this mind-numbing sensory assault. But other than some swearing and complaining about how long Khaki was keeping them in this last pose, it didn’t seem like any of the guys noticed the scent rolling off her like a tidal wave.
How was that possible? It was the most amazing thing he’d ever smelled in his life. There was no way the other guys couldn’t smell it.
But obviously they didn’t or they’d have gone nuts. What the hell was happening to him?
Then, as he knelt there trying hard to breathe through his mouth and not his nose, the answer came to him. There could be only one reason he was affected by Khaki’s scent like this. And that one reason scared the hell out of him.
Khaki Blake must be The One—capital T, capital O—for him. If Xander hadn’t been kneeling right then, he would have fallen over.
As he watched Khaki flexing and twisting in mind-boggling grace, he realized that every single legend about The One was true. He may have found his soul mate.
But then a far more painful truth hit him. While he might have found his soul mate, she was one of his squad members. She’d also just gotten out of a crappy workplace romance that had blown up in her face and driven her out of her last job.
He wasn’t too intoxicated by her pheromones to know what both of those things meant. Khaki, and all that could be, was out of his reach.
Suddenly, that amazing scent of hers didn’t seem so sweet. In fact, it seemed more like a kick in the balls.
* * *
Khaki had no idea what she’d done during PT to piss off Xander, but when the rest of the squad headed downrange to get in some target practice, he’d announced he was staying in the admin office to write some reports. But from the way he’d avoided her gaze as he said it, she knew he was lying. Clearly, he didn’t want to be around her any more than he had to be.
She tried to forget about Xander and his issues as she walked down to the shooting range with the guys. She laughed with them, even when they called her “yoga wolf” and ribbed her about this morning’s PT session. She knew their teasing was just good-natured fun. She was part of the Pack now. The change from the previous day was subtle, but she could feel it. Between yesterday and today, they had become a family. It was nice to be part of something so special.
But no matter how much she laughed and joked with her teammates or how secure she felt with her new place within the Pack, she still wrestled with her relationship with Xander. The sense of disappointment welling up inside her when he stayed in the admin building instead of joining them was overwhelming. The worst part was she didn’t even understand why it bothered her so much. She’d known she wasn’t Xander’s favorite person since day one. Heck, she’d said as much to Mac last night. But after how well her werewolf lesson at his place had gone, not to mention the way she’d handled herself yesterday during the bank robbery, she’d thought she and Xander were in a good place.
Obviously, she’d been wrong.
She knew it was juvenile to get caught up in trying to understand Xander and whatever problem he had with her, but it was hard to pretend it didn’t matter when he acted like he’d rather be flossing his teeth with barbwire than spend even five minutes in her company. It physically made her chest hurt if she thought about it too much. It was like she’d lost something she’d never even had.
Khaki wished she could talk to another female werewolf about it. Mac was great, but there was stuff going on that Mac couldn’t understand or explain. Khaki knew in her gut that her werewolf nature had something to do with these feelings she was having. This wasn’t just a matter of being attracted to Xander. She’d been attracted to men before enough to know that what she felt now wasn’t normal. No man had ever taken hold of her soul the way Xander had. Even now as she was busy loading magazines for her M4, her head was somewhere else—like remembering how good Xander had smelled this morning during PT. The urge to walk over in the middle of the workout and rub her bo
dy up against his had been almost impossible to resist. If the other guys hadn’t been there, she probably would have done it—then thrown him down on his yoga mat and jumped him.
The image made her fingers tingle and her gums throb. She knew from last night what that meant and she quickly glanced at her fingertips to see if her claws were out. They weren’t, which meant her fangs weren’t either. But she carefully ran her tongue over her teeth just to check. How the hell would she have explained that, by saying loading 5.56 mm magazines got her excited?
What was wrong with her? How could thinking about Xander make her want to shift when she didn’t even know how to do it yet?
* * *
Khaki was on her fourth magazine when Trevor’s cell phone rang. Just when she’d finally gotten Xander out of her head and was able to think about something other than her squad leader.
Trevor had been putting them through a wounded-dominant-arm scenario with their M4s, making them go through the process of shooting, clearing a jammed weapon, and reloading—all with their nonshooting hand. Doing those things with an M4 was tough enough with both hands. With just her left, it was challenging as hell. Which was why it had required all her attention.
“We’ve got an incident,” Trevor said as he hung up.
Khaki grabbed her M4 and followed the guys, jogging to keep up with their long strides. She got to the admin building just in time to hear Xander asking if Gage was sure he wanted to do this.
“After how she handled herself during the bank situation and what you’ve been telling me about her training, I think she’s ready,” Gage said. “Don’t you?”
Khaki held her breath. She didn’t know exactly what they were talking about, but she’d come to expect the worst.
Xander didn’t even hesitate. “She’s more than ready.”
She hadn’t expected that. Just another indication that she didn’t have a clue what went on in Xander’s head. Then again, what woman could understand men anyway? Their logic rarely made sense to anyone but themselves.