“I know she’s right, but . . .” She looked at the ground again.

“Honestly, I don’t like coming down here when there are this many of the guys either.”

She looked up at me, hopeful and suspicious all at once. “Really, or are you just trying to make me feel less like a pussy?”

“I swear that this is a little too much testosterone in one place, at one time, even for me.”

She grinned suddenly and it made her look even younger than I knew she was, but it was also a good smile. She was suddenly pretty, and not just muscle that happened to be a girl.

“We’ll go in together; that way at least neither of us will be the only girl.”

The grin turned to relief. “Thank you, Señora Blake, thank you so much.”

“Anita, call me Anita.”

She nodded, smiling. “Okay, Anita, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet, we still have to brave the locker room and run the gauntlet of naked guys to get to the covered shower stalls.”

She laughed then. “If you can do it, I can do it.”

“Then let’s do it,” I said.

We walked into the locker room together, and because Peppy needed me to be brave, it was easier to do it. Yay for easier.

43

THE ROOM WAS so full of men in various states of undress that we had to thread our way through them like a maze of naked guys. It might have been erotic, but they were also joking and doing that rough talk that passes for sweet nothings between guy friends. I kept my head down and studied the tile floor like we were going to be graded later.

“Fuck, Ricky, your dick is going to fall off if you keep using it that much.” I couldn’t tell who said it, but the Ricky in question was beside us as I pushed my way between them to one of the weapons lockers, because he answered.

“Hey, can I help it if the ladies can’t get enough of this?” and he gyrated his hips, making his junk swing. I did my very best to ignore it, but since it was damn near hitting my elbow, it was harder to ignore than it might have been.

I willed myself not to blush and opened the locker.

“Jesus, Ricky, stop shaking your junk at the new girls,” a third voice called out. I realized that with my head down, my hair plastered to my head from the drying goop, and me wearing the black on black that was damn near the guards’ uniform, they’d mistaken me for one of the new female guards from L.A. Perfect.

“Hey, she’s not complaining, are you, baby?” Ricky said, and he actually leaned his shoulder against the closed lockers, arms crossed, in that popular-jock kind of way. They start doing it in high school, or earlier, but I’d never had anyone do it while they were naked. Life is just full of new experiences.

I froze with the door open on the locker, and looked up. I had to look way up, because Ricky was over a foot taller than me. I finally met the handsome, arrogant face, his shoulder still leaning against the lockers, arms crossed over the muscular chest, so high school jock. His eyes were big and brown with thick eyelashes, and the nearly perfect arch of black eyebrows that women want but never seem to have naturally. His hair was a brown so dark that calling it light black seemed more accurate. He’d already blow-dried his hair back in feathering on the sides as if the 1980s had never died, but hey, maybe it was coming back in style.

I glared into those big brown eyes. My glare is pretty good; I’ve had really bad people flinch at the sight of it. Ricky was unimpressed; in fact, he grinned at me. He didn’t recognize me. Maybe we needed an introduction to the new troops; I’d suggest it to Claudia later.

“First, don’t call me baby.”

“Anything you say, darling,” he said, still grinning.

“Second, leave the ‘darlings’ to Bobby Lee, he’s southern and I can’t seem to break him of it.”

“Okay, sugar britches,” he said, still so pleased with himself. But the other men had started to go quiet; not all of them, but it was spreading through them. Someone had recognized me and shared with the class.

I smiled and knew it was the unpleasant one, the one I couldn’t seem to keep off my face when I was unhappy with someone. Ricky just saw a smile, because he started to lean down toward me.

“You’re not very bright, are you?” I asked.

He stopped leaning down and had a moment of puzzlement, but then the grin came back and he was all arrogant recovery. “Oh, sugar britches, I’m smart enough to rock your world.”

I laughed then; I couldn’t help it. “Jesus, please tell me that line never works for you.”

He was back to softly puzzled, and his eyes were finally showing that he knew something was wrong, but not what, yet.

“God, I hope you shoot better than you think,” I said, as I unbuckled my belt so I could begin to unthread all the holsters.

“Well, sugar britches, I think well enough that you’re starting to take off your clothes.”

“Before I decide to nickname you, dumbass, let’s have a quiz.”

“No need to be mean, sugar britches.”

I held up my Browning BDM. “What’s this?”

He smirked. “A gun.”

“What kind of gun?”

“A nine-millimeter.”

“More specific,” I said.

“I don’t have to play ‘what the fuck is this’ with you,” he said, finally not happy with himself, because he didn’t recognize the Browning. A lot of the newer guards didn’t.

“Too hard for you? Let’s try something easier.” I took out my backup gun, the Sig Sauer P238.

He frowned at me and turned to his locker. He got his underwear on, a pair of black fitted briefs. The underwear wasn’t bad.

“Come on, just the make, not even the model; you can do it, Ricky-boy.”

“Fuck you,” he said, wiggling into a pair of tight jeans, but hey, I wore my jeans tight, too.

“What, if it’s not a Glock you don’t know what the fuck it is?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“Dumbass it is,” I said, putting the Sig in with the Browning.

He turned and glared down at me, trying to use his height to intimidate. The first trickle of energy eased out from him, his beast peeking out with his anger.

I sniffed the air near his chest, invading his personal space, but he didn’t tease me about it now. He’d decided not to like me. I was okay with that.

He smelled like wolf, but out loud I said, “You smell like puppy.”

He leaned over me again, but this time it was supposed to be menacing, not seductive. It managed to be neither. “Werewolf, I’m a werewolf.”

“Great, since you obviously don’t know guns, let’s try something that werewolves are supposed to be really good at. What am I?”

He drew back from me, forgetting he was trying to loom menacingly. “What?”

“I could smell that you were a puppy; tell me what I am.”

“I’m not a puppy, I’m a wolf,” he said between gritted teeth.

“Prove it, what am I?”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you, chickie.” He pulled his T-shirt on without spreading the neck open, so his carefully styled hair was mussed. He was mad.