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?
