“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
Then Trey was slipping a hand into her hair and tugging her closer on the bench, his very warm mouth coming down on hers. The kiss stayed casual and chaste for all of two seconds before his tongue slipped between her lips. She couldn’t stop the moan that came out. He tasted delectable. And it had nothing to do with ice cream or what they’d had for dinner. There was simply something there she couldn’t seem to do without.
He deepened the kiss with a groan, nipping and biting lightly on the tip of her tongue and her lower hip, tugging and teasing until she had to wonder if lip-gasms were a real thing.
She had no idea her fingers were in his hair, yanking and pulling him exactly where she wanted. Not until she heard him growling. Crap, he was growling. A deep, rumbling sound that vibrated up through his chest and right into her soul.
No. Actually, those vibrations settled between her legs—right there where all good vibrations belonged.
Samantha was damn close to climbing into his lap right there, on a busy street in front of the ice cream shop, when Trey suddenly pulled back. He was breathing as hard as she was, his eyes reflecting the yellow glow of the nearby streetlamps. It only made him that much more mesmerizing.
“Tomorrow night…five o’clock?” he whispered, his warm breath tantalizing against the sensitive skin of her lips. “I’ll pick you up at your place again?”
It took a few moments for her rattled mind to figure out what he was even talking about, but when she did, all she could do was nod. He wanted to see her again tomorrow night. Yes, that was exactly what she wanted, too.
Grasping her hand, Trey stood, taking her with him, and they walked back to his Jeep. As he helped her into the passenger seat, then walked around to the driver’s side, Samantha realized Crystal had been right. She was being absolutely stupid to risk the chance of being with Trey simply to learn a few secrets that probably didn’t matter anyway.
Chapter 5
“You going to fill us in on how the date went last night, or did you think we’d let you slide without telling us anything?” Connor asked from the far side of the tables they’d shoved together in the training room.
Trey looked up from the STAT file he’d been reading for the past few minutes to see Connor, Trevor, and Hale sitting in front of file folders of their own, scribble-filled notepads near at hand. Tuffie, the team’s resident pit-bull-mix mascot, sat off to one side, while Kat perched on the table beside Connor, looking over his arm like she was actually reading the documents Alyssa had left them. Which, considering this particular cat, was a distinct possibility.
The four of them had come to the SWAT compound early that morning to go through Alyssa’s files on the three dead victims, hoping to find some kind of connection between them. Trey didn’t know about the others, but so far, nothing obvious was jumping out at him.
“The date was amazing,” Trey said, unable to keep the smile off his face.
“What’d you guys do?” Trevor asked.
“We went out for burgers and then ice cream.”
His buddies regarded him expectantly, clearly waiting for more details. But there was no way he was going to tell them about the kiss on the bench in front of the ice cream shop. No, that memory—of the most perfect kiss he’d ever had in his life—was for him alone. He still had a hard time believing it had been real, even if it had left him lying awake all night reliving it. Even now, all he could think about were Samantha’s pillow-soft lips and the way her skin had smelled like cherry blossoms and spring air after a light rain.
Of course, he had no idea how to explain the fact that, in all the time he and Samantha had been around each other over the past two years, the moment on that metal bench had been the first time he’d picked up that scent. Considering the way everyone else in the Pack who’d found their soul mate had made such a big deal about picking up their unique scents right away, he didn’t quite know what to make of his experience.
“Sounds like the perfect date,” Hale observed.
“It was perfect,” Trey said, what he knew was a dopey smile slipping across his face again. “Oh, who am I kidding? It was better than that. I haven’t been able to think about much of anything but her since dropping her off at her place last night.”
Connor exchanged looks with the other guys before leaning forward. “Do you think Samantha is The One for you?”
“Dude, they’ve been on a grand total of one date,” Trevor pointed out. “How is he supposed to know if she’s his soul mate yet?”
“Because he’s been crushing on her since the first day he saw her,” Connor said, as if that should explain everything. Then he looked over at Trey again. “So is she?”
Trey almost laughed at the eager expressions on his pack mates’ faces. He should have known the question was coming. Over the past two years, more than half of the Pack had found their soul mates—aka that one person who could love a werewolf in spite of what they were. Every time he or any of the other single guys went out with someone, everyone automatically assumed they’d found The One. That was the way it seemed to work lately. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been wondering the same thing when he’d knocked on Samantha’s door last night.
There was just one problem.
“I wish I could tell you definitively that she is,” he said, shocked at how true that statement really was. He hadn’t realized until then exactly how much he wanted what most of the other members of his Pack had already found: a future of more than merely searching and hoping.
“But?” Hale prompted.
“But I think Samantha might be playing me.”
Trey sighed, his gut twisting at the notion of thinking something like that, much less saying it out loud. He hadn’t gone to bed with these doubts floating around in his head, but they’d relentlessly started popping up as the morning dragged on and he began to overanalyze every single minute of last night’s date.
“I can’t shake the horrible feeling that the only reason Samantha wanted to go out with me is because she’s looking for dirt on the Pack,” he continued. “You know she’s been sniffing around our crime scenes for years. And after all the crap that got swept under the rug with that delirium case, I have no doubt she knows we’re hiding something.”
His pack mates looked at him dubiously.
“You think she knows we’re werewolves?” Trevor asked.
Trey shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope not, but you have to admit, the timing of all this is strange. The two of us have been flirting with each other forever, and then out of the blue she asks me out? You don’t find that at least a little curious?”