Free Her Lone Wolf by Paige Tyler Page A

couldn’t miss the tantalizing aroma lingering in the air as he headed down the hallway. It was so exquisite he stopped walking and inhaled, letting his wolf out just enough to pinpoint where the smell was coming from. After a few slow circles, he figured out it was John’s office. Hot damn.
    He picked up his pace, suddenly eager to get there. Usually getting called to John’s office meant something bad was coming his way—a reprimand, an attempt at a motivational pep talk, a briefing for a mission he didn’t have any interest in, a partnership pairing that had no hope of succeeding. But if that delicious scent was coming from John’s office, he didn’t care what the hell the man wanted.
    He walked in without knocking and almost fell to his knees as the full impact of the fragrance hit him. As sweet as peaches mixed with the unmistakable—and delectable—touch of feminine musk. Which meant it could only belong to the woman John was talking to. She was seated on the couch at a slight angle to the doorway, so he couldn’t see her face, but the sleek column of her neck exposed by her upswept hair made him lick his lips. Another minute and he was going to start drooling.
    He’d smelled a lot of humans in his life, and none of them had come close to the intoxicating scent this woman was putting off.
    “Clayne, there you are.” John rose from the wingback chair. “Sorry to drag you off the range, but there’s someone I want you to meet.”
    The woman got to her feet and turned to face Clayne, and he had to force himself not to stare. Daaaammn . Whoever she was, she not only smelled amazing, but looked it, too. With big, brown eyes; smooth, creamy skin; and wide, full lips—not to mention one hell of a body—she was the stuff fantasies were made of. His, anyway. And though he couldn’t tell how long her dark hair was since it was up in a bun, he’d guess it reached past her shoulders. His fingers itched to pull the clip free to see if he was right.
    If meeting this fine woman was the reason John had yanked him off the range, he’d have to tell his boss to do it more often.
    As she walked around the coffee table and came closer, Clayne realized she was taller than he’d thought, maybe five ten or eleven. That still made her small compared to him, but at least she could look him in the eye without craning her neck.
    Up close, her scent was even more powerful and it was all he could do not to bury his nose in the curve of her neck and breathe deeply. Yeah, he might want to control that particular urge.
    He tried to focus on John instead, but he couldn’t take his gaze off her. There was a rebelliousness in her dark eyes and a stubborn line to her jaw he hadn’t noticed before. His gut told him she wasn’t the kind of woman who backed down from anyone, and that made her even more attractive in his book.
    “Clayne Buchanan, meet Danica Beckett,” John said. “You’re going to be her partner.”
    Clayne was so busy thinking how beautiful her name was that he almost missed the last part. He jerked his gaze away from her to scowl at John. Unlike everyone else at the DCO, his boss didn’t even blink.
    “What the hell do you mean—partner?”
    John regarded him the same way he would a dog who’d just figured out the thing he’d been chasing for the last few minutes had been his own tail. “Partner. As in someone you’ll work with on a permanent basis to accomplish the DCO mission. That kind of partner.”
    Clayne clenched his jaw to keep from letting out his inner wolf and biting John’s head off—figuratively, of course. This was the tenth time the DCO had tried to set him up with a partner. And it would be the tenth time he showed them he didn’t want or need a partner.
    He hated working with other people, especially humans. And while the idea of spending some quality time between the sheets with Danica Beckett appealed to him, the idea that they could be partners was ludicrous. Men couldn’t put up