Val couldn’t have been more delighted to try out this new working relationship with several partners and to have a mate while she did it. Still, she was serious about returning to her job as an Enforcer if she didn’t feel she fit in with the team. The rest of them had already worked together on several missions. Would she truly be able to contribute?
If she returned to the Enforcer branch, would Howard come with her? She didn’t know, but she had decided that more than anything, she wanted him in her life. She wasn’t going to wait for him to propose to her in a special way. This was special enough—snorkeling together in the pristine waters of the jaguars’ playground, Belize, while watching for the perps.
When she returned to the surface so suddenly, she was afraid Howard would believe something was wrong. He might not like her proposing to him instead of the other way around, but she suspected he would be thrilled. At least she hoped he would be.
As soon as she reached the surface, the waves carrying them up and down gently, she grabbed hold of him and let him be her flotation device while she readied herself to ask the question. She’d never imagined she’d be doing this with a jaguar someday. Certainly never with one who was as brawny, interesting, funny, and clever as he was. Or here, in the Caribbean, the warm waters lapping at their naked skin.
He kept her back to the beach while he switched his gaze from her to the beach, watching the situation there.
“If having me with the USF doesn’t work out, for whatever reason, then I’ll return to the Enforcer branch. I don’t expect you to do that. You make a great USF agent, and I can see how much your team members love working with you, so I wouldn’t want to take that away from you,” she said.
It looked like it was killing him not to respond, but he nodded, waiting for her to finish what she had to say before he did, and she appreciated him for it. In fact, that was what she loved so much about him. He was really attuned to her feelings, just as she was to his, and that made all the difference in the world to her.
“So when I ask you if you want to be my mate—” she said.
“Hell yeah, under any condition,” he quickly said.
She laughed. “Don’t try to act like you’re Mr. Nice Guy and go along with everything I say. I know you better than that.”
He chuckled. “Okay, let me put it this way: if we’re working as USF and as mates, we’ll have each other’s backs, as usual. Only…it will be a little different.”
“We’ll be mated.”
“Right. Because you love me.”
“And you love me.”
“So much. Now, if you work this mission and you really don’t feel like you can work with a team, that’s completely up to you. I respect your wishes. You have to feel right about your partners and about the job we’re doing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do your best, and you and your teammates could suffer.”
“What about you?” She wrapped her legs around his hips while he kicked to keep the two of them afloat, her hands caressing his shoulders.
He settled his hands on her hips. “We’ll see. If you don’t want a partner as an Enforcer, I’ll stay with the USF. Though it will kill me, I have to admit. I’ll be like Vaughn is with Jillian, making a total nuisance of myself, texting or calling you constantly to see if you miss me. Or what you’re doing next. Or how things are going. Or when we’re going to be together again.”
She smiled. She loved when he was being honest with her.
Howard kissed her wet cheek. “That’s completely your choice. If you want me as a partner, I’ll make sure someone takes my place in the USF, and then I’ll join you.” He glanced again at the shore.
“I wouldn’t want you to have to leave them when I can see how well you work with them, but I would want you as my partner wherever I work.”
“A mate takes priority. I’ve worked both jobs, so I know something about them. I prefer being a USF agent because of the partners I have now, and with you on the team, it would be even better. If I’m an Enforcer with you as my partner? I’ll be just as happy. You’re the one who makes me complete. Not just the job. You. Yet, if you decide at some point you don’t want to work as my partner, I’ll let you have your space. As long as we can make up for it when we’re together again.”
“Okay, then that decides it. I want you to be my mate. Will you be?”
He shouted out with glee.
She laughed, glad he wasn’t shy about letting others know how he felt. “I think all of Belize knows it now.”
They looked around to see Jillian and Vaughn’s location, and she wondered if they’d heard them.
“Hey, since we’re going to be mates, I wanted to ask you about being so distressed in the car when Izzie told us she was going to have a baby boy. I worried about you.”
“I don’t know.” She kissed his chest. “I just felt bad all of a sudden about having bullied her to come with us—threatening to eliminate her if she didn’t. We didn’t know she was pregnant at the time. It just hit me when she announced she was having a baby boy.”
“Okay. I’m glad that’s all it was. One of us had to convince her for her own good. Everything you said to her was true, and you weren’t going to eliminate her. If nothing else, I would have knocked her out and carried her through the rain forest back to our resort. You were the one who convinced her to return with us without either of us having to resort to violence. I was proud of you, and she was grateful to you.” He hugged Val tight. “No worries. Next time, I can be the bad guy.”
She smiled up at him. “Thanks, Howard. I think with a guy, you would have more of an impact. With a woman, it worked out well with me taking on that role.”
“See? We’re already a great team.”
“Agreed. Why don’t you snorkel for a bit, and I’ll watch the situation on the beach and make sure we don’t drift,” she said.
“I like the way you keep bumping me below the water. Go ahead and keep swimming, and when you’re done, we’ll switch off with the Greystokes.” Howard hesitated to release her, his hands still wrapped around her back, but then he leaned down and kissed her mouth, lowering his hands to cup her buttocks to press her against his arousal. She rubbed up against him, and he bit back a groan. “You’re killing me.”
She smiled. “We’ll have to do something about that when we return to our place. All right. I’ll snorkel. I haven’t been down here in eons.”
“I can’t wait.”
They swam around for a good half hour, and then Val finally said she was ready to switch off with her teammates. She couldn’t believe she was actually calling them that, or that she and Howard had agreed to be mated jaguars. She couldn’t have been happier, except if they’d finish this business with Eric, Benny, and the rest of Eric’s henchmen.
They wrapped their towels around them, wearing their flip-flops, with goggles and fins in hand, and walked through the sand to the parking lot. They were talking about what to fix for lunch—Belizean tamales wrapped in plantain leaves filled with seasoned chicken appealed to everyone. But they needed to throw on their clothes over their swimsuits and drop off their gear at the car before they took Vaughn and Jillian’s place.
That’s when they saw three men talking together in the parking lot, wearing jeans and T-shirts and sneakers, not looking like part of the beach crowd. None of the men were Benny or Eric. But one of the men was passing a bag of something to another who was handing him cash.
They might not be dealing drugs, but it sure looked like they were. Even if they had nothing to do with the jaguars, Howard and Val needed to do something about the men. The three men suddenly looked over at them as Val hugged Howard and looked up at him, smiling as if she had no idea what the men were doing. He glanced down at her and kissed her forehead.
“There was supposed to be twice as much here,” one man growled, his voice low, but the jaguars could hear him.
“My supplier’s stuff was stolen. This is the best I could do.”
Supplier? As in Eric?
Howard and Val heard movement behind them and saw Jillian and Vaughn hurrying to catch up to them.
Dropping their beach gear, Howard and Val ran to intercept the men. Jillian and Vaughn pulled out their guns and hollered, “Undercover agents! Get down on the ground! Now!”
Of course, all three men ran, but it didn’t take long for Val to reach one of them and trip him, making him sprawl onto the pavement. Howard and Vaughn took down the others, while Jillian kept her gun trained on the men. They were all human, and once the men were tied up, Jillian called the police.
Then Jillian and Val searched the men for IDs. Vaughn took pictures to forward to Emmie to see if she knew them. She would be getting off her flight in a couple of hours, so they wouldn’t know until then.
One of the men had a driver’s license on him, and Vaughn smiled at the name. “One of the guys on the list of debts.” He turned to the drug dealer and eyed the other guy’s passport. “Where’s the other man who was supposed to show up?”
“BC? He set me up?” the drug dealer growled.
“Yeah, him,” Vaughn said.
BC? As in Benny Canton? That meant Benny had sent someone else in his place.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the police arrived, arrested the men, and took everyone’s statements. Since the jaguars and wolves all had Martin as their boss, the officers verified with him that the agents were here on vacation.
When one officer got off the phone, he eyed them with suspicion. “You work together and come down here on your time off to play together?” Gonzales sounded like he doubted that.
“Sure,” Val said. “And Howard and I love it here so much that we just got engaged.” She hugged Howard tighter and smiled up at him. “So it’s kind of a pre-honeymoon trip.”
“Congratulations,” the officer said. “Try to enjoy your vacation.”
“Thanks,” Vaughn said. “We will.”
When the police officers left, Val asked Jillian and Vaughn, “Okay, so do you want to get in some swimming and we’ll keep an eye on things now?”
“We were thinking we would, but since we probably took care of any action going down here, we could just return to the cabins and have some lunch,” Jillian said. “We can swim later.”
“Are you sure?” Howard asked.
“Yeah, I’m starving,” Vaughn said.
They packed their gear in the car, but when they arrived at Vaughn and Jillian’s cabin, they had a new problem. One of Jillian’s rental car’s windows had been smashed, and the door was wide open.
“Hell,” Vaughn said as they all hurried to exit the car and check out the cabin.
He reached the cabin first, the door wide open, and they heard someone still inside. Vaughn handed Val his gun and began stripping out of his clothes. Howard was removing his clothes too, but Val didn’t think Vaughn should be seen as a wolf out here.
Howard and Vaughn shifted and Vaughn raced into the cabin, while Howard ran around to the back door.
Val started to jerk off her long T-shirt and her bikini.
“You’re shifting?” Jillian asked, sounding surprised.
“Yeah, in case the guy makes it past Vaughn. We need to stop shifters without using bullets, if we can.” Val shifted, headed inside the cabin, and planted herself in the entryway, readying herself for action. She stared at the mess the perps had made of their place—couch and chairs turned upside down, throw rugs tossed about, decorator pillows in a pile on the floor. She could just imagine what they’d done in the other rooms.
Then someone cried outside at the back of the cabin. Val wanted to tear around and see what was going on or help Howard. Doing something was better than doing nothing.
Howard gave a frustrated jaguar roar. Vaughn barked at him, and Val assumed Vaughn had gone out the back door or a window after the culprit. Even though she wanted to join them, she stayed put in case they had more trouble on this side.
Then Vaughn loped into the cabin and shifted. “The man got away. He must have heard our voices and taken off before we could reach him.”
Jillian frowned. “Aren’t we going to chase after him?”
“Could be an ambush. I was waiting to see if Howard wanted to go, but he indicated no,” Vaughn said.
Jillian and Vaughn went outside, and he dressed.
Howard came into the cabin, rubbed against Val, then headed outside. She joined him so she could shift and dress alongside him. “No going after him?” She pulled on her bikini bottoms.
Howard pulled on his board shorts. “Nope. It wasn’t Benny or Eric either. The guy took off as a jaguar, and by the looks of things, a jaguar tore some of the things up in the cabin, so they didn’t just ransack it as humans. Did you smell Eric’s and Benny’s scents in the cabin?”
“Yeah,” Val and Vaughn said.
“Well, going to the beach was a setup. Benny sent someone else to do his dirty work, and that gave the others time to ransack the car and cabin. Most likely to search for the drugs, money, and other stuff we took from the drug house. I didn’t want to leave the two of you here alone in case they’d try to take you out while we were off chasing the one guy.” He helped her fasten her bikini top.
Vaughn said, “Let’s check out the other place—I suspect it will look like this one—and then we’ll fix lunch.”
When they entered the other cabin, they found everything tossed about like at the other place.
“Benny and Eric were here too,” Howard said.
“Letting us know they’re onto us, and they aren’t taking this lying down,” Jillian said.
“They have to know that if they killed us, a ton more agents would descend on the area,” Vaughn said.
“Yeah. But Eric will want his stuff back, and he’ll want revenge. And then he’ll disappear. He had a nice little drug operation going here too.” Howard headed for the bedrooms to check them out.
Vaughn went with him. Val noticed how well they worked together, acting in sync, no one having to tell the others what they were doing, just doing it.
“Did they steal anything?” Val asked Vaughn.
“Doesn’t look like it. They were just looking for their stash.”
“They won’t find it here.” Val was glad they had sent it with the Guardian agents, who had turned it over to their chief when they arrived home.
“I opt for a quick shower,” Howard said.
“Jillian and I can wash off in the outdoor shower since we didn’t get in the ocean. We just need to rinse off our sandy feet and legs.”
“Okay, sounds good,” Val said. She and Howard were sandy, salty, and needed to wash up and change. “Does everyone feel safe enough with two to a cabin for now? Or should we post guards?”
“I’d say post guards. You can buddy up in the shower to make it quicker,” Vaughn said.
Jillian and Val laughed. “You think it would be quicker that way?” Val asked.
* * *
Smiling, Howard took Val’s hand and led her to the bathroom while Jillian and Vaughn rinsed off outside and watched over the place.
Howard turned on the shower, and Val hurried to pull off her shirt and bathing suit in the bathroom. She carried them into the glassed-in shower stall and rinsed them out before setting them on a faux marble shelf. He yanked his board shorts off and followed her into the shower, rinsing his suit out like she’d done and setting it on top of the shelf too. If it had been just him, he would have tossed his board shorts on the floor and washed them later. And gotten down to the most important business first.
Since they had agreed to a mating, what better way to enjoy their first mated lovemaking than in the shower? Howard was eager to enjoy every minute of it with Val. They first rinsed off some of the salt water covering their skin. Then he poured peach body soap on his hands and she did the same with hers. They began to wash each other, warm hands stroking over heated flesh. Her skin was satiny and smooth even without the soap, but with it, his hands just slid down every inch of her body with silky caresses. She was doing the same to him, and every lingering touch was sending his pheromones into a tailspin. His cock was already stretching out to her, straining with need.
“I’m crazy in love with you,” he breathed out, his voice rough with desire, his heart and hers thudding in overdrive.
“I’m crazy about you too, you big ol’ cat,” she purred against his mouth.
He kissed her mouth with passion and craving. Her lips and his were still salty from the sea, hers soft and malleable beneath his. Their tongues tasted and teased each other’s as he pressed his cock against her belly, showing her just how much she aroused him.
He moved his hands down her back, lower, until he reached her buttocks, cupped them, and pulled her tight against him.
She moaned against his mouth and ran her hands down his sides, kissing his shoulder, licking his wet skin. His hands shifted to her breasts, and he massaged them before moving his hand lower between her legs and beginning to kiss her. Her hands shifted to his cock, and she began to stroke him as he was stroking her. She was a slice of heaven on earth and all his.
He was already wringing her out, her hands stilling on his arousal. Then she transferred her hands to his hips and clung to him as if she was ready to collapse on the tile floor.
She kissed his mouth with exuberance, and he thought she was struggling to be as quiet as she could be, but she needn’t have been. The others would understand.
He stroked her clit faster and harder, knowing she was close to reaching the pinnacle, and she came apart under his touch, crying out, dissolving. He quickly lifted her against the tile and sank his cock deep inside her as she wrapped her legs around him and he began to thrust.
* * *
Howard was so good at this. He had already pushed Val to the limits, his finger stroking her clit, his other hand caressing a breast, their tongues mingling before they pressed their lips together again and kissed. Her fingers dug into his hips to keep some semblance of control, but when it came to him, she was lost in his ministrations. She’d felt the climax rising and then slamming into her. She’d tried to stifle the cry that had bubbled up but only partly managed it. Howard quickly kissed her, lifting her so that he could embed his cock deep inside her. Then he thrust.
Ohmigod, he was an amazing lover, and she treasured every new experience with him. She loved being mated to him and kissed his jaw as he settled her against the wall and continued to thrust into her. She reveled in the powerful feel of his hot cock sliding inside her, loved the way his hands gripped her buttocks to support her, the way his muscles strained with the effort, the way his face was tense with concentration and pleasure.
She could tell from the strain on his face that he was about to come, and she kissed his chin, right before he growled low with relief and his hot seed bathed her deep inside. “You…are…amazing,” she gasped out, then licked his chest.
He groaned, then hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head. He finally set her down on the tile floor, pulling out at the same time. “You are too, honey. Just beautiful.”
They took their time washing each other again, exploring, getting to know each other.
Once they were done, Howard turned off the water and smiled down at her, and she chuckled. “So much for a quick shower to clean off.”
He laughed. “Hell, the wolves would have expected no less from us.”
They hung up their bathing suits and her shirt to dry, grabbed towels, wrapped themselves up in them, and hurried out of the bathroom to go to the bedroom and dress.
As soon as they were wearing jeans, boots, and T-shirts, they left the bedroom. Val and Howard checked all their stuff and didn’t find anything missing. “Nothing missing that I can see,” Val said to Jillian and Vaughn when they joined them outside.
“Let’s have lunch and plan our next move,” Vaughn said, and everyone agreed.