In the Company of Wolves(50)

She smiled and went back to kissing him. He buried his free hand in her hair, tipping her head to the side and tangling his tongue with hers. He slid his other hand from her ass, along her thigh, and back again, giving her bottom a gentle squeeze. Jayna let out a sexy sound of approval as she trailed kisses along his jaw and down his neck. She pressed her lips to his chest, exploring his pecs with her tongue. When she gently nipped him with her fangs, he thought for sure he was going to lose his hold over his inner werewolf.

Okay, that was enough of that. He tightened his hold on her hair, urging her head up. As she sat back on his thighs, Becker closed his eyes and got himself together. He couldn’t believe how fast Jayna could make him lose control. She was like his kryptonite.

When he finally got his heart rate somewhere back under a hundred, he opened his eyes to see her regarding him with an amused expression. She must have decided he was okay, because she leaned forward again. For a second, he thought she was going in for another round of teasing with her fangs, but instead she trailed her claws across his chest.

He stifled a groan. Dammit, you’re an alpha. Act like it, would you?

She traced the tip of one claw over the barely discernable scar from the bullet wound he’d gotten yesterday. “I can’t believe how fast this healed.”

It took a second for him to change gears, and by the time he had, she’d already moved on to the wolf head tattoo inked over his heart. “This is really cool. Did you get it when you became a werewolf?”

Becker didn’t answer right away because she was busy destroying his concentration by running one of her claws around the outside of said tattoo. He bit his tongue—literally—and finally managed an intelligent answer.

“I got it when I joined the SWAT pack. We all have them. To anyone who sees it, the acronym stands for Special Weapons and Tactics, but we call it Special Wolf Alpha Team.”

She smiled. “Clever. So how did you become a werewolf anyway?”

The sudden change in subject nearly gave him whiplash, and he had to wonder if Jayna was doing it because she’d realized how close he’d been to losing control.

“It happened when I was with the Secret Service—”

“Whoa, wait a second,” she interrupted, her eyes wide. “You worked in the same Secret Service that protects the president?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, that Secret Service. But I never served on a protective detail. I went through all the training necessary to be a special agent, but once the higher-ups in the Denver field office realized how much I knew about computers and electronics, I ended up spending all my time doing network security, white-hat work, and advanced computer surveillance, crap like that. It wasn’t exactly what I thought I was signing up for, but it’s likely why I was hired in the first place. It’s damn hard to get into the Secret Service without one hell of a résumé. Besides, it’s what I was good at.”

“So you were a computer geek?”

A smile tugged playfully at the corners of her lips as she said the words, making him stifle another groan. Damn, every time she smiled at him, he swore she released some kind of pheromone into the air that practically made him drunk.

He blocked out the endorphin rush her smile gave him and focused on her question. “Yeah, I was a computer geek. But my supervisor knew I wanted to get some field time, so he loaned me out to an anticounterfeiting team. The ring of counterfeiters they were after used these really expensive computers and printers to make their fake money, and I was there to make sense of the computer-based chatter going back and forth on the wiretaps. But when the counterfeiters started talking about bringing in a new computer guy, I went from IT expert to undercover operative overnight.”

Jayna regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m going to say this in the nicest possible way, but wasn’t that kind of a big jump, considering your lack of field experience?”

He grimaced. “I’d like to say that it wasn’t. I certainly didn’t think so at the time. I had the training, and the counterfeiters were supposed to be just college kids. The leader of the task force thought I was ready for the field and so did I.”

“What went wrong?”

Becker remembered it like it was yesterday. He’d been so eager to get into the field and do some real work that he’d never even thought about slowing down and making sure he didn’t go half-cocked into a dangerous situation. Not much had changed in that regard, he guessed.

“At first, nothing,” he said. “I got into the counterfeiting ring easy enough, which only convinced us more than ever that we were dealing with amateurs. After that, the plan was simple: figure out where they were stockpiling the counterfeit money; then get them to incriminate themselves on tape. But then I met the people the college kids worked for and realized we’d seriously underestimated the guys. The people in charge were mob connected, and they made me in two seconds flat.”