Mac forced herself to play it cool while they talked about her newest obsession—pita chips—and the sweet older lady who lived in the apartment next door to hers. But it was nearly impossible not to sigh with pleasure as Gage made slow, little circles on her knee with his finger. He never ventured more than an inch or two up her thigh—even though she silently prayed he would—but it still felt heavenly. The tingling she’d felt before had disappeared, replaced by a warm rush of heat between her thighs.
She bit her lip. Damn, she really needed to get out more. All Gage did was caress her knee and she got wet. If he touched her anywhere else, she’d probably pass out.
But she was willing to risk it.
It was in that moment of bliss that Emile decided to come over and wish them a pleasurable evening. Mac had to bite her tongue to keep from telling the man that she and Gage were already in the pleasurable part of the evening—thank you and please go away. She almost groaned when Gage took his hand off her knee so he could shake the man’s hand again. She pushed herself up on weak legs to do the same.
“Dinner was delicious,” she told him. “I loved every bite.”
“I’m so glad you enjoyed yourselves.” Emile hugged her, putting his mouth to her ear. “You make Gage happy, Mackenzie. And it would make me very happy if you came with him the next time he eats here.”
She laughed. “I might just do that.”
Mac glanced at Gage out of the corner of her eye to see him flush beneath his tan. She didn’t know how he could possibly have heard Emile’s whispered words, but apparently he had.
Emile put his beefy arms around both of them as he walked them to the door. “Don’t do anything foolish with this one, Gage. She’s special.”
They didn’t talk much on the drive to her apartment, so Mac relaxed back in the seat and used the quiet time to replay the evening. Between the fantastic food, intimate conversation, and sexy footsie under the table, she wasn’t sure how the night could have been any better.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She knew exactly how it might get better. And it’d start with inviting Gage into her apartment. Once inside, they might make it to her bedroom, but they might not. If they didn’t, the floor anywhere along the way would be just fine, too.
She smiled to herself. This was turning into the most unusual story she’d ever worked. And there was a story here—she was sure of that. But there was also a hell of a man involved. One who distracted and aroused her like no one she’d ever met before.
It was almost enough to make her consider putting the story on the back burner. Maybe after tonight, she just might.
When they got to her apartment building, Gage came around to open her door for her, then rode up in the elevator so he could escort her to the door. She took out her key and slipped it into the lock, then turned to invite him in. But Gage spoke first.
“I had an amazing time tonight. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time.”
She smiled. “Me, too.” Then she took a deep breath and jumped in the deep end. “The fun doesn’t have to end yet, you know.”
“I know.” The hot look in his eyes almost set her on fire right there in the hallway. She wasn’t sure they’d make it as far as the entryway once they got inside. But he shook his head. “We’ve got an early day tomorrow. PT starts at 0630. You need to get your sleep if you’re going to be all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for it.”
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?
But Gage was already heading for the elevator.
“Wait!” He turned. “What’s PT, and why the hell does it start so early?”
He pushed the down button for the elevator. “It’s short for physical training—exercise. We do it three days a week, and we start early so we can get it over with before it gets too hot. You said you wanted to see us train, remember? So you’ll have proof that we’re not using PEDs.”
“But—”
Crap. After all the flirting, touching, and heated looks across the table, she’d been so sure he’d spend the night with her.
The elevator door opened and he stepped inside. “No buts, Mackenzie. See you tomorrow at 0630 hours.”
The doors closed and just like that, her chance of seeing the hunky SWAT officer naked disappeared.
She stood there staring at the elevator for a long time, sure that Gage would change his mind. But he didn’t. Sighing, she unlocked her door and walked into her apartment. What the hell had just happened? She’d been turned on, and so had Gage—she was sure of it. Why hadn’t he stayed?
Because Gage had been playing her the whole night. The answer was so obvious she almost laughed. She should be angry, but she wasn’t. She was so sure she’d been the one running the show tonight, but he’d been the one in charge the whole time. They’d spent almost the entire evening talking about her, while she knew next to nothing about Gage or the members of his team.
She kicked off her shoes, then slipped out of her dress and hung it up. If she was angry at anyone, she was angry at herself for giving up so much information. Gage knew almost everything there was to know about her—where she’d gone to school, where she’d worked, who her friends were, what kind of stories she liked to pursue. On top of all that, he’d figured out her story about the PEDs was just a front for another, more serious investigation—that was why he’d asked the question about whether she’d be willing to hurt innocent people to get a story.
All he’d had to do was gaze at her with those dark, smoldering eyes of his and she’d told him everything. The worst part was that Gage also knew how much he turned her on, and that he could use it against her.
Mac finished brushing her teeth and stripped off her underwear. Oh damn, her panties were a complete mess. She usually didn’t get this wet even after an orgasm—or two. Gage had done it with nothing more than a hand on her knee.
She tried to ignore the throbbing between her thighs and climbed into bed, absently wondering if Gage could have made her come just by caressing her thigh. She groaned. Talk about safe sex.
She was going to have to be extremely careful around him. Someone with his looks, his body, his obviously clever mind, and the ability to drive her to sexual distraction with only a touch was a very dangerous man.
“You think she’ll show up?” Becker asked for the third time.
Gage looked up from his email to give the young surveillance expert a frown. “I told you—she might, she might not. Either way, PT starts in”—he looked at his watch—“ten minutes. Don’t you think you should get everyone out there and ready to start?”
Becker had been assigned the task of setting up and running this morning’s PT session, but while the man nodded at Gage’s obvious nudge, he didn’t move. “Yeah, probably. But I was just wondering if maybe she might join us?”
“Why would you think that? She’s not here to work out with us. She’s here to write an article about us.”
Becker nodded again, still lounging against the doorjamb. “Yeah, that makes sense. Still…it’d be nice if she wore yoga pants.”
“What the hell are yoga pants?”
“What women wear when they do yoga. You know—those tight pants that flare at the bottom a little.” Becker grinned. “I bet she’d look hot in them.”
Okay, that was more than Gage wanted to hear. He growled. “Officer Becker, get outside. Now.”
Becker might have been fantasizing about Mackenzie’s curvy ass in a pair of yoga pants, but he was still aware enough to know when he was close to mortal danger. He gave his boss a startled look, then took off running for the back door.
Gage shook his head. Sometimes he wondered if the amount of time Becker spent playing with electricity had damaged him beyond repair. Then again, the guy had a point. Gage wasn’t exactly sure what yoga pants even looked like, but he figured Mackenzie would look good in anything tight.
He felt his cock immediately harden…again.
Shit. He hadn’t slept worth a damn last night because of the hard-on Mackenzie had given him during dinner. It had taken an hour in a freezing cold shower this morning to finally get the damn thing to go down. He’d been lucky to even get to work on time. And now, with a single semi-sexual thought about the dark-haired beauty, he was hard all over again. Thank God he was wearing a loose pair of shorts. It would have been damn embarrassing doing PT with the team otherwise.
He looked down at his watch. He still had a few minutes before he had to go out. Maybe he could think about something else for a while and get his erection to relax.
He tried to focus on what he needed to do that day, but that proved to be a stupid idea because he was going to be spending it with Mackenzie Stone. The purpose behind it might be serious—making sure she didn’t figure out he and his men were werewolves—but all his cock cared about was that he’d get to hang out with that sexy body of hers.
He practically heard a thud as his hard shaft pressed against the underside of the desk draw.
Damn, the woman was going to be the death of him.
It had hit him like a sledgehammer when he’d gotten in his car with Mackenzie last night. She’d smelled really nice at the compound earlier in the day, and her scent had been even more delicious when she’d opened the door of her apartment. But that all paled in comparison to what it was like to be in a small, enclosed space with her. The perfume she’d worn combined perfectly with her natural scent to create a fragrance so alluring he’d almost driven off the road he was so distracted.
And that had just been the beginning. The entire dinner with her had been one long, slow tease. The way they’d been squeezed into that tight booth, the way her knee had brushed up against his leg most of the night, the way she’d leaned in close and nibbled her dinner in that slow, sensual way she had, the way she’d answered all his questions in that sexy voice of hers. He’d been so turned on he hadn’t realized he’d started caressing her leg until the thundering of her heartbeat couldn’t be ignored. She’d had that distant, glassy-eyed look of a woman in some serious pleasure.
Then the smell of her arousal hit him, and he’d almost come unglued.
Thank God Emile had shown up at the table just then, or he wasn’t sure what he would have done.
He’d never displayed more discipline in his life as he had when he walked away from her invitation to come inside. But he’d needed to get some space between them, get his head screwed back on right, and get his freaking lust under control. This was the safety of his pack, and he was losing it like a horny teenager.
He’d done it, but it had been damn hard.
Even now, sitting at his desk willing his hard-on to go down in the few minutes he had before PT, Gage still had no idea what the hell was going on with his out-of-control sex drive. There’d been a couple times last night while he’d laid in bed staring up at the ceiling that he wondered if maybe Xander had been right. Was Mackenzie Stone some kind of cosmically assigned perfect woman for him, genetically designed to push him over the edge with nothing more than her scent?
In the frustrating darkness, it had seemed more than possible.
Of course, an hour-long freezing shower, a lot of coffee, and the bright light of daybreak had made those thoughts seem ludicrous. Until Becker had forced the image of Mackenzie wearing skintight yoga pants into his head. Now, as he pleaded with his erection to go away, he wasn’t so sure.
“Hey,” Mike’s voice sounded distant even though he was standing in the doorway. “We’re about to get started. Stone is here, too. And she has a guy with her.”
Gage growled low in his throat. Well, he’d finally found something that would make his cock relent—anger. Simple, irrational, jealousy-induced anger.
***
“So, why did you need me to come with you today?” Zak asked drily as he snapped pictures in what could only be called a halfhearted manner.
Mac was too distracted by the sixteen sweaty, bare-chested men running around on the obstacle course. While they all looked scrumptious, she found herself focusing mainly on Gage.
God, the man would make a Greek god feel inferior.
She had no idea if all the crawling, jumping, and climbing made for good exercise, but it sure as hell was fun to watch. She especially liked the way his muscles bunched and flexed as he scrambled up the various towers and ropes. Damn, their rippling movement was downright sensual.
And if all those bulging muscles weren’t enough to make her stare like a kid in a candy store, the incredible matching ink that every one of the men had tattooed on the left side of his chest sure as heck was. She’d never been one to look twice at a man’s tattoo, but the one of the wolf with its long teeth, menacing eyes, and bristling ruff of fur that each of them had in the center of his left pec was just freaking cool. Emblazoned in arching letters over the top of each wolf was the acronym
SWAT
. The work was expensive looking and had obviously taken a lot of time. She had no idea what a wolf had to do with SWAT, but she one hundred percent approved of the artwork.
Anything to provide another reason to look at a sexy man’s chest was okay with her.
Zak cleared his throat, interrupting her musings. If she didn’t love him like a brother, she’d smack him right now.
“I need pictures of the SWAT team training,” she told him.
“So these pictures of sweaty, muscular men running around in nothing but a pair of shorts are going to be in your article?”
More
likely
on
my
personal
laptop.
She gave Zak an angelic smile. “It’s possible.”
Her effort probably would have counted for more if she’d been able to resist asking Zak to make sure to take lots of pictures of Gage flexing those beautiful muscles of his.
“I should be getting paid overtime for this,” Zak groused, but he dutifully snapped more photos.
Mac leaned back against one of the telephone poles that were part of the obstacle course. She and Zak had picked out a good vantage point for this morning’s PT session. Gage and his team had been going at it hard for almost an hour and didn’t look like they were anywhere near wrapping it up. Muscles and stamina—what more could a woman ask for?
“So now that we’re in, what’s the plan?” Zak asked.
“I don’t really have one,” Mac admitted, again staying away from any mention of a super drug. “I’m just going to play it by ear and see where it takes me.”
“What do you want me to do?” Zak asked. “Other than take pictures, I mean.”
He flipped his camera to automatic mode so he could get a series of rapid-fire shots of Gage and his two squad leaders leaping from the top of a tall tower. It had to be at least twelve or fifteen feet high—sure as hell too high for her to jump from. They hit the ground hard and rolled across the sand-filled pit under the base of the tower. Sand stuck to their sweaty backs and shoulders, and it took all of her willpower not to run out there and volunteer to brush Gage off.
“See if you can make friends with Becker and Lowry,” she said softly. The SWAT guys were now all the way down at the far end of the obstacle course, but she wasn’t going to take any chances. “They’re the newest members of the team, so they might not be involved in whatever’s going on.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Zak said. “But they seem like a really tight group to me.”
Mac didn’t need Zak to tell her that. After watching them work together on the obstacle course, it was obvious they trusted each other completely. It was unlikely any of them would rat out one of their own to an outsider, but she and Zak needed to try.
By the time Gage and the other men finished PT, Mac was worn out, and all she’d done was watch. The SWAT guys, however, looked as if they’d just woken up from a refreshing nap.
“Well, I’m out of here,” Zak said. “I’ll be back in about thirty minutes.”
She reluctantly tore her gaze away from Gage’s sweaty body to give Zak a frown. “Where are you going?”
“I saw a donut shop a couple of miles back. I thought after a workout like that these guys might appreciate some quality junk food.”
Mac took in all the ripped muscles and flat abs, not to mention the tight buns as the SWAT officers loped casually up the slight hill toward the admin-slash-dorm building she’d toured with Gage.
“I hate to tell you this, but I’m pretty sure these guys don’t eat donuts.”
Zak laughed. “Right. You keep believing that. Just a word of advice—don’t get between these guys and the boxes when I throw them down on the table or you might get run over.”
She shook her head as Zak headed toward the front gate. He was going to be embarrassed when he bought a half-dozen boxes of donuts thinking it’d get him in good with the guys, only to have no one touch them.
Mac started for the admin building, wondering what she should do while Gage cleaned up, when he suddenly appeared at her side. She jumped.
“Crap, you scared me!”
“Sorry about that.” He grinned. “I wanted to let you know it’ll only take me about twenty minutes or so to get cleaned up. Feel free to roam around the compound if you want. Or you can watch TV over in the training building.”
Mac was about to tell Gage to take his time and that she’d go watch the morning news when she got a whiff of his sweat-soaked body. The scent immediately transported her back to the lusty state she’d been in last night when he’d left her alone and unsatisfied at her front door. She’d never found men particularly sexy after a workout, but Gage was a completely different story. He smelled so scrumptious she thought she might drool.
“Thanks,” she finally managed to spit out. “I’ll probably walk around some, then head over and look at the news.”
“Okay. I’ll be quick,” he said, then turned and jogged toward the admin building.
Mac didn’t realize she was following him until she was halfway to the admin building. She stopped short, swearing under her breath. What the hell was she going to do in there, watch him shower and ask if he needed help getting all that sand off his back?
She shook her head. She needed to get a grip on herself, and fast.
She turned to head toward the training building, but stopped again. She’d wanted to get a look at the filing cabinets she’d seen yesterday. What better time to do it than while the entire SWAT team was showering?
She stepped into the building all prepared to give Gage some story about needing to use a computer, but he was already upstairs with the other men. Of course, this would be a waste of time if the file cabinets were locked. But they weren’t. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Sure, she’d be able to rifle through them, but if there was something incriminating in them, would they leave them open? Only one way to find out.
The first drawer she looked in held personnel records. She skimmed through a few, including Gage’s, but there was nothing in there she didn’t already know. It wasn’t as if they were going to maintain a list of drugs they might be taking. She closed that drawer and opened the next.
This one held more personnel records, but these were specifically related to training and weapons qualification information. Other than the fact that all the files were thick as heck—SWAT guys trained a lot—they were otherwise pretty dull.
She moved to the next cabinet and opened the top drawer. It was full of what looked like incident records for each call the team had responded to, complete with officer statements, photographs, diagrams, and procedure review documents.
Now this had potential.
She picked a folder at random and started flipping through it when she heard the sounds of laughter coming from upstairs. That was when it hit her—there were sixteen attractive, muscular, naked, and probably soap-covered men in the showers not more than a few feet above her head. The thought was almost enough to make her say the hell with these old files and sneak upstairs for a peek.
But she had a job to do—and secrets to uncover.
Mac checked the door, listening for footsteps coming down the stairs. She didn’t have a lot of time to snoop around.
She tried to focus on reading between the lines of the reports, looking for any details they might have glossed over, or even left out completely. But it was hard not getting caught up in what she read.
The first report chronicled a hostage situation involving a rape victim and her brutal attacker. The next was a father who’d killed two of his own children before Gage and his men had gotten there just in time to save the mother and a newborn baby.