Title: Wolf Rising
Author: Paige Tyler
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Release Date: October 30, 2018
Just when he’s found The One…he might lose her.
SWAT Officer Jayden Brooks doesn’t believe there’s a soul mate out there for him—The One. But when he saves high school teacher Selena Rosa from a hostage situation, he knows he’s in big trouble. Her scent is irresistible.
Selena finds the big cop irresistible, too. In fact, the buttoned-up teacher gets a little carried away—during a steamy make-out session, she bites him. Turns out, the traumatizing events at the school triggered her werewolf gene. Fangs and claws are appearing and her aggression is out of control. The change is happening, and Selena doesn’t understand.
It’s going to take everything Brooks has to pull her back from the edge…and ultimately win her heart.
Excerpt: Wolf Rising (SWAT)
“You live in a Warehouse?” Selena asked in disbelief as Jayden steered his classic Chevy pickup truck into a small parking lot behind a metal-and-brick building with no windows and a distinctly industrial look.
“It’s not a warehouse,” Jayden said with a laugh that seemed to indicate lots of people asked the exact same question. “It was an electronics repair shop about ten or twelve years ago.”
He shut off the engine, then got out and walked around to open her door, lending a hand to help her slide out of the high truck. His gaze immediately went to the length of thigh she exposed slipping off the seat. Okay, maybe she’d done that on purpose.
“Of course, nobody gets electronics repaired anymore,” Jayden continued, dragging his eyes back up to her face as they walked toward the building. “They just replace them. Throw in the fact that this whole area got rezoned into a residential area about the same time, and the owner was sort of screwed. The place couldn’t be used as a business anymore, and no one was interested in buying it for residential purposes, because the lot is too small. It went into tax foreclosure, and I ended up getting it for next to nothing. I got it into livable condition for barely over twenty thousand.”
Selena tried to take that all in as Jayden led her to the back door. The tiny lot surrounding the building was well maintained, with more grass and hedges than one would expect from an industrial building. But still, it was obvious the place wasn’t a normal house. Then again, Jayden wasn’t a normal guy, so she wasn’t surprised.
He unlocked the big metal door, then reached inside to flip on the light switch. Stepping back, he held the door open for her.
Selena stepped inside, steeling herself. She had visions of cinder block coffee tables, yard sale couches, and rust- covered walls. She was so ready to be underwhelmed that when she walked through the short entryway hall and into the big open space of the central room, she gasped. This was so not what she’d been expecting. She handed Jayden her coat and purse, barely paying attention as he hung them on a coat rack by the door, then tossed his keys on the shelf above it.
The main room had to be over a thousand square feet. There was still a very industrial feel to the place, with lots of concrete, brick, metal rafters, exposed lights, electrical conduits, and air vents. But the space was put together in such a way, it seemed like it was meant to look industrial instead of left that way by accident.
The concrete floor had been stained different colors as part of the effort to subdivide the big space into different functional areas. It was a creamy terra-cotta off to one side where the kitchen was and a relaxing caramel along the back wall where she saw a king-size bed, dressers, and wall units. The entire middle section, encompassing the living room and a sweet home gym, was a deep, glossy slate blue. There was a huge TV mounted on the wall near the matching sectional sofas, with the rest of the wall space taken up with football memorabilia and pictures of cop-related activities. She had no doubt that most of those photos would be of his SWAT teammates or, as he called them, his pack. There were big potted trees positioned here and there around the space, and at first, she was sure they were fake. But then she saw the skylights in the roof and thought maybe they were real.
Besides the one they’d just come in, there were only two other doors in the entire place, one that looked like a second exit and the other leading into a walled-off corner area, the bathroom most likely.
“This place is amazing,” she said, turning to face him. “If you tell me you decorated the entire thing on your own, I’m going to cry, because that would mean there isn’t a single thing in the world you aren’t perfect at.”
Jayden chuckled. “No need to cry. My mom helped with a lot of it, but also some of the guys on the team. Zane is really good at decorating, though he’ll deny it if you ever suggest it. How about we head for the kitchen and those PB&J sandwiches before I give you the fifty-cent tour?”
Selena nodded eagerly and followed him through the living room and gym to the kitchen, getting a good part of the promised tour on the way. This place was awesome. She couldn’t wait to spend the night here. She immediately blushed a little at the audacity of that thought but then pushed the silly concern aside. Something told her she was going to be staying here a lot.
It wasn’t until they walked behind the granite counter in the kitchen space that Selena saw the first thing that seemed completely out of place—two doggy bowls on the floor. She looked around, thinking she’d smelled a familiar odor when she first walked in, though she hadn’t placed it as a dog’s scent until now. It was very faint.
“You have a dog?” she asked, gesturing to the bowls as Jayden took the bread and peanut butter out of the cabinet. “Technically, Tuffie belongs to the entire team.” Jayden reached into the fridge for a jar of grape jelly. “She was shot by one of the men who broke out of prison today. Our team medics kept her alive until they could get her to a vet, and after that, there was no way we could let her go. So we adopted her. Now she takes turns staying with different members of the team each night.” “That’s so perfect!” she squealed, pretty sure these SWAT guys might actually be angels in disguise and not just amazing cops.
As Jayden made the sandwiches, he talked about how they figured out who Tuffie got to stay with each night. Selena laughed when Jayden suggested some of the guys on the team tried to tweak the Tuffie duty roster so they’d get extra time with the unit mascot.
“They all try to act like they’re big and tough, but when it comes to Tuffie, they’re a bunch of pushovers.”
“Might you be one of those pushovers?” she teased. Jayden chuckled as he poured two glasses of milk.
“Maybe. Not that you’ll ever get me to admit it.” Normally, Selena never ate anything this late at night, but for some reason, she was nearly starving right then. And the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were calling her name.
“Sorry about how the date turned out tonight,” he said as they stood at the counter eating a little while later. “CPR and overdoses weren’t exactly on my mind when I imagined how the evening would end.”
Selena polished off the last of her sandwich faster than she would have thought possible. The scary part was that she couldn’t stop eyeing the big jar of peanut butter, wondering if she should have another.
“While I agree the last part of the evening was something I never want to experience again, I wouldn’t say the whole night was a waste,” she said. “In fact, parts of the night were pretty nice. Actually, better than nice. And as for how the evening ends, I think that’s still to be determined.”
Jayden lifted a brow as he popped what was left of his sandwich in his mouth. “Are you implying our date isn’t over yet?”
The heat in his gaze as he asked the question immediately reignited the fire that had been burning in her tummy earlier when they’d been dancing…and kissing. She gave him a smile while fighting the urge to reach out and pull him close, to press herself tightly to his muscular body and rub herself all over him like a cat.
“You really think the only reason I came here was for the PB&J?” she asked in a husky voice, taking a half step closer to him.
Selena was kind of shocked she was being so bold. It wasn’t like her. She tried to tell herself Jayden was to blame for the change, but at the same time, part of her knew that wasn’t the truth. This was all her…the new her. Jayden laughed as he took a step toward her, closing the distance between them. She swore she could feel the heat of his body bathing her skin. “So, if it wasn’t my amazing sandwiches that brought you here, what was it?” Selena placed her hands on his abs, moving her fingers upward, feeling the ripples and indentations under his shirt of what could only be the most amazing set of six-pack abs on the planet. “Maybe it was because I wanted another chance to get close to you and feel you against me again. Like when we were dancing.”
This time, she wasn’t shocked at how bold she was being. It seemed this was the way things were going to be between the two of them.
Open.
Real.
She couldn’t describe the sense of freedom that came with knowing that.
