His K-9 instructor side appreciated watching her technique while working with the dogs. The purely male part of him enjoyed watching the way her pants pulled tight across the very nice curves of her butt and how her tee pulled taut against the swell of her breasts as she worked. She was the kind of woman who didn’t need to show skin to be sexy. It was in the way she handled herself. The subtle huskiness of her voice was sexy as hell, too. Her straightforward manner kept the other four vets smiling and at ease as she helped them understand the capabilities of their specially trained new service dogs. Except him. Him, she ignored.
Law smiled to himself. She must have read something predatory in his expression that first day. He couldn’t argue with her judgment. Jori gave him an itch.
Maybe it was the long honey-brown braid she wore, twitching down her back as she moved. Made him want to wrap that braid around his forearm and haul her in by it. Each time she touched his hand to loosen his grip on the leash or to adjust his position with his dog, he fought the urge to reach out and touch back. And then go on touching and holding, wanting to kiss and caress her until he had persuaded her to be naked under him.
Law pushed an impatient hand through longish thick black hair. He probably shouldn’t be thinking dirty thoughts about his instructor. Jori didn’t look like an easy lay. He didn’t have time for anything else.
He knew what women said about him: Good in bed but impossible to love.
True enough. He was insensitive, untrustworthy, possessed of a quick temper, and selfish. He’d enjoy the company of any willing woman. But he never let it get personal, or stand in his way. In that, he was his father’s son.
“Nothing short of all fucked up,” he muttered to himself.
He picked up the liner to sheathe his stump, rolled and smoothed it on, then picked up his prosthesis. Now, this baby was worth being excited about. This techno wonder was going to get his trooper job back. Without that concrete measure of his worth as a man, his struggle to get better was worthless.
Three months ago, he’d succeeded in getting his old prosthetic leg swapped out for one with sophisticated military-grade microprocessor-controlled devices. With gyroscopes, accelerators, hydraulics, and sensory points to turn muscle contractions into device response, the new leg gave him great stability and mobility. With it he could walk, climb stairs, even run without thinking about it—as long as he remembered to strap it on.
He stood up, this time with the expected results. As close to good-as-new as he was going to get.
If he hurried he could get in some gym time before he left for Richmond, Virginia, the nearest airport to where Yardley lived. The best cure for a PTSD episode was to push himself, hard, until his heart was pumping like a jackhammer and his muscles trembled with fatigue. Only at the peak of exhaustion did his mind sometimes shut down long enough to give him peace.
Unless … he could convince Jori to do the dirty with him before he left. In and out? A one-off in their lives?
He shook his head at his unruly thoughts. Bad, Law. Phooey, Law. She’s not for you.
*
Samantha watched with concerned eyes as her Alpha dressed himself. She knew he was Alpha because of the tone of his voice and the strong virile scent that labeled him the dominant partner.
She smelled others things on him as well, like anger, fear, and anxiety. She didn’t like those smells. They made her uncomfortable, much like the veterinarian’s office. The cloying odors of injury, sickness, and fear from other animals could not be scrubbed away by antiseptics. Those smells were worse than the shots she occasionally received.
As the Alpha passed her, Samantha pushed her nose forward and sniffed his pant leg.
“Don’t.”
She drew back. His tone was harsh. As if she’d done something wrong. Didn’t he know? She was trained to pay attention, and to find ways to make the fear and anxiety stop when those pheromones emanated from him. She had done that this morning, even if he didn’t seem to understand at the time why she had woken him. That was okay. He would learn. He was her chosen Alpha.
Three days ago five men and their family members had come to WWP. Each brought a reek of smell fragments from his daily life. Some were familiar, others the unique combination of their own bodies, homes, and habits. One man was ill. Two had had coffee and cigarettes for breakfast. She even knew by their shared smells which humans belonged to the same pack.
But one man’s scent was different. His odor was a cocktail of emotional markers that included anger, pain, and sadness. And more. He smelled alone. There were no other human scents on him. No animal scents, either.
Most of the people Samantha had encountered in the twenty-five months of her life carried the scents of their companions, human and/or pet. This Alpha smelled of isolation. That was not good for a pack animal.
The only time Samantha had felt this way was when, as a puppy, she’d been abandoned at a shelter. All the smells were strange. None of her litter or her mother. She was fed and watered, but otherwise left alone in a cage that prevented her from running or playing with the other dogs. Until Alpha Kelli found and brought her to WWP.
She loved being in the WWP pack. There were lots of dogs to play with, and human Alphas to love and teach and protect her. Even when she moved from Alpha to Alpha for training, she was always treated as part of the pack.