You Had Me at Jaguar Read online

  Also by Terry Spear

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2019 by Terry Spear

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover art by Craig White

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  A Sneak Peek at SEAL Wolf Surrender

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Carol Smith, who loves my bears, books, and photos! Thanks so much for being a friend, and give all the little bears a hug for me.

  Prologue

  Outfitted in black cargo pants, shit-kicker boots, and a black T-shirt, Valerie Chambers was ready to take on physical training with the rest of the Enforcers. Their job was taking down the worst rogue shifters, and sometimes the humans who were killing jaguars or shifters in the wild, so they had to be fit.

  Valerie always thought of the training as a challenge, but also viewed it with a fair amount of dread, knowing that if she failed an activity, she’d have to repeat it several times. Which meant she was wired as she went through the various stages of the multiday training.

  She was going through her paces: rappelling off the seventy-five-foot tower, making her way across a rope to reach the other side of the “ravine,” and low-crawling under wire. It was all strenuous work, meant to keep the agents in shape and test their skills, to help them learn their weaknesses and strengths and work on them. A couple of the guys were giving her a hard time, in a joking way, about moving too slowly under the wire. But she moved at her own pace. If she got hung up under there, she’d have to do it again, ten more times. The low-wire crawl was what she hated most of the individual training components. No matter how hard she pushed herself, she could never beat the clock.

  She noticed a group of male jaguars fighting each other in a different area, trying to pin their opponents down without really hurting each other. She’d have to do that in the training tomorrow.

  Next, she had to do hand-to-hand combat with different opponents. She was petite, like many of the female Enforcers. But even the taller ladies had the same problem. They didn’t have the muscle strength to handle the male jaguars. Instead, they had to use deception, feints, distractions, any tricks they could to incapacitate their opponent. In the field, it would be different. The shifter would often be unprepared for the female Enforcers’ combat maneuvers, so the agent could take them down that way. In training, the Enforcer males were prepared to take the women down. No male shifter wanted to be the butt of jokes if he failed to do so.

  After having successfully thrown a woman, Val moved on to her next opponent. Howard Armstrong was rough edges and hard angles, and had stern blue eyes and a growly voice. Muscular build, black hair, and a brooding expression defined him. Yet even before they tangled, he gave her a small smile, the corner of his mouth turning up just a hair, his eyes sparkling. She didn’t know if he was so cocky because he thought she would be easily defeated, or because he appreciated having a woman to tackle this time.

  She’d seen him tackle three men to the mat individually before she was paired with him, so she knew he wasn’t going to be a pushover. She was trying to think positively and not let feelings of defeat sabotage her efforts.

  At least twenty other agents were paired up all over this part of the Warehouse, men versus men, men versus women, women versus women, standing on gray gym mats, ready for the signal to begin.

  Val really, really tried to relax. She was already sweating from some of the other training she’d done, and so was he. Sweat dribbled off his brow, his biceps gleaming. He was beautiful in a dark, predatory way. The thing she noticed most was that he stood perfectly relaxed, as if he had nothing to worry about.

  Despite trying, she couldn’t shake off the stress she was feeling. Her muscles were taut with tension.

  His smile grew, as if he knew
she was afraid of how this was going down.

  She lunged for him. She didn’t remember hearing the bell ding. Maybe it had. Maybe it hadn’t and she’d made it up in her mind because she was so wired. It was too late now to stop her action. And it worked! He wasn’t ready for her, and with one quick sweep of her leg, her hands grabbing his strong wrists, she managed to unbalance him enough to slam her body against his and take him down. Pinning him down with her body wasn’t part of the program, but they were always taught to improvise when necessary.

  He was actually grinning at her! Maybe because she was grinning back at him, delighted she had bested him, feeling the tension leave her all at once. Not bothering to extricate himself from underneath her, he didn’t seem to mind where she was resting against him.

  Then a chorus of woots and hollers filled the Warehouse. No one else had tackled their opponents in the hand-to-hand combat arena yet. They were all standing where they had been when she’d taken Howard down. Well, except that they had turned and were all watching her and Howard.

  “That’s how it’s done,” one of the testers said, smiling.

  Val quickly moved off Howard, but before she could get to her feet, he did and offered his hand in friendship. She couldn’t believe he wasn’t angry with her. She took his hand and pulled herself up.

  Then the bell rang. Now the bell rang? And the others quickly tried to take their opponents down, with thuds on the mats following.

  “You’re quick,” Howard said. “No one has ever taken me down. Ever.”

  She smiled and patted his steel-hard abs. “There’s always a first time for everything.” And then she hurried off to navigate one of the water-hazard trials, though after getting the best of Howard, she was going to have a hard time keeping her mind off just how sexy he was.

  * * *

  Watching Val head to her next training, Howard chuckled, thinking how much he’d like to date the spirited woman. She was trying to tuck her red hair back into its bun, while loose, silky strands curled down her back.

  He liked a woman who could throw him off-balance, give him a challenge, and do the unexpected. Val taking him down before the bell rang had shocked him, which was the only way she could get the best of him. Though he had to admit to himself, once she’d made her maneuver, he hadn’t tried very hard to take charge of the situation. He had wanted to see just where she would take it.

  Her landing on top of him was definitely unexpected. All he could think of were the straggles of red hair framing her face and her beautiful green eyes, mixed with aqua and a hint of amber, staring down at him in disbelief.

  He always felt he didn’t need the extra training and would rather be taking care of the bad guys. But today, one smart female Enforcer agent had made the whole week of exercises worth it.

  * * *

  The next day, Howard had training mixed with other branches: Enforcer, Guardian, and JAG. It was something they’d never done before, and he really hadn’t wanted to do it. They needed it as a way to improve communication and work ethics between the branches though.

  He’d started out as an Enforcer. Then before he knew it, he was working with a Guardian and a JAG on a case. Not long after that, he became a member of a team on the United Shifter Force. His only regret had been that he would most likely never see Val again, in Enforcer training or otherwise.

  Until he’d been assigned his current mission. He suspected she wouldn’t like it one little bit when she learned he was assigned to watch her back.

  Chapter 1

  Drinking a beer at the San Antonio Clawed and Dangerous Kitty Cat Club, Howard Armstrong looked more relaxed than Val had ever seen him. Although she’d only seen him working vigorously in training exercises. Why was he here? She should have known she’d run into him again—they were working for the same jaguar police force, after all. He made her think of long, hot nights and impossibly sexy dreams.

  She had been astonished to learn he had left the Enforcer branch to work with the JAG’s new United Shifter Force unit. And a little disappointed. She’d thought she might see him again during training. She had wondered if he’d gotten as much ribbing about her taking him down as she had.

  “He let you so he could get close and personal.” A couple of the women she worked with had made that comment or something similar. “Good move to take him down as if we were in the field and not in training,” one of the guys had told her, impressed with her wiliness. “He must be getting soft,” another male Enforcer had joked.

  Howard was all hard muscle, nothing soft about him.

  The Enforcer branch was a specialized jaguar policing force that eliminated jaguar shifters who were guilty of committing violent, deadly crimes against humans and shifters alike. The agents of the USF worked as a combined force of wolves and jaguars. Howard had made a great Enforcer because he did things on his own, a loner. Many of the Enforcers were like that, which was why Val couldn’t understand why he changed jobs to be a team player with a mix of shifter types.

  Howard still worked out of the Houston office, as far as she knew. She’d wondered if he was working on a case in San Antonio. When she’d spied his vehicle here for days with no sign of him, she’d asked her boss—and Howard’s—if he was on a mission. They’d both denied it. She didn’t think the USF agents went solo on missions. Was he really just on vacation?

  Sipping a margarita at a table across the club from him, Val watched Howard snack on chips. Then he was joined by a brunette—pretty, petite, and wearing a short red dress and low red heels. Was the woman a jaguar or a wolf? Maybe a date?

  When Val had seen Howard’s black pickup truck with the distinct jaguar in a jungle painted on both sides and smelled his scent around the vehicle, she’d figured he still owned it. Even so, she had run his license plate to make sure someone else hadn’t bought it. She had learned it was still his truck. She suspected Howard was after someone. But this was the first time she’d actually seen him or the woman, which meant he had to be undercover.

  The jungle music made Val involuntarily tap her boot on the tile floor, and she had the greatest urge to get up and dance. The smell of sweet mixed drinks, beer, humans, jaguars, and a few wolves drifted to her. Palm trees in pots, vines stretching to the ceiling, and a skylight way above simulated a jungle scene like most jaguars loved. The summer sun was still high enough to spread sunlight through the windows filtering down through the living foliage.

  Since she couldn’t get away to the jungle very often, she enjoyed going to these places to immerse herself in the jungle feel from time to time, more so when she wasn’t on a mission. Here it was air-conditioned, with a light mist spraying the plants and water droplets collecting on the leaves. Jaguar shifters wearing leopard-print fabric danced on elevated stages, and bright lights flashed across the stages and dance floor, making the scene appear otherworldly.

  She glanced again at the tables that were cast more in the dark, in case Benny Canton had already arrived and she’d missed seeing him when she had walked through the place earlier searching for him. This was the kind of job she loved. Eliminating rogue jaguars, the murdering kind. She hadn’t heard of a case like this in a good long while—a jaguar who’d murdered his wife, just because she threatened to leave him. That was one of the differences between the wolf shifters and jaguars. The wolves mated for life; jaguars could divorce.

  She watched the door open when someone new arrived—two single males, neither of them her perp. Benny was known to frequent this club, having left his job as a construction worker after murdering his wife. He had no family, and she hadn’t found any other place he could have holed up. So she’d staked out the club for the past three days, watching for him or some of his friends, who’d proven to be just as elusive as he was. She’d had no luck running into him or the others. But this club was the only lead she had.

  She’d considered that he might have gone across the border,
because the shifters often did so to play in the jungle as wild jaguars. And for a rogue, he would have extra incentive to leave the country.

  * * *

  Taking another swig of his beer while the jungle beat seemed to raise the roof of the club, with its loud drums pounding and the surround-sound amplifying the effect, Howard tried his darnedest not to look in Valerie Chambers’s direction. Not that he ever would have revealed that he’d been attracted to her from the first time he’d actually seen her in advanced training as an Enforcer a year earlier. He still couldn’t believe his boss had asked him and gray wolf Jillian Greystoke to watch Val’s back surreptitiously. He’d much rather be up-front about what he was doing when helping out other agents.

  As soon as he’d seen the striking redhead again, he was reminded of how she’d pinned him down during training. She’d cast him the wickedest smile. With his back on the floor and her on top of him, he couldn’t help smiling back at her. Of course, after her unorthodox move, the testers had made a new rule—no one was to move before the bell rang—because they were afraid they’d have chaos otherwise. When they’d mentioned the new rules, Howard had glanced in Val’s direction, and she’d given him a cat-that-ate-the-mouse look similar to the one he’d given her when she was lying on top of him at the training. He’d smiled back at her, thinking they might really have had a chance to date.

  The three branches—the Enforcers, JAG, and Guardians—all had a common mission: deal with jaguar shifters who posed a threat to humans and shifters alike, though each handled different situations. The Guardians focused more on providing aid to injured jaguars, while the JAG went after the rogues, or humans who were dealing in jaguars. The end result—incarceration or death for the rogues—depended on the situation. The Enforcers were sent to terminate murdering jaguars. Period. They didn’t consider jail time for the offender.

  Howard and Jillian were now with the USF, a special section of the JAG that took care of jaguars and wolves creating trouble or in trouble. They were currently the only two agents who had a break between cases. Since Howard was a former Enforcer, his boss felt he would be right for the job. The branches worked together when necessary, but usually all the agents involved would be well aware of the situation.