“Train. Run through the course. See if we can beat our times. A little bit of everything,” he said as he passed the ropes.
My hand curled around one of the ropes, and I dropped my bag off my shoulder, settling it on the floor by my feet.
“Can you climb this?” I asked, taking a running jump and pulling myself up.
I curled my feet around the long rope and started to climb hand over hand.
I got about ten feet off the ground before I decided that I really couldn’t go any further.
My hands were already killing me.
And I was fairly sure if I got all the way to the top, which I wouldn’t, that I’d fall to my death.
Looking down, I saw Bennett smiling up at me.
“That all you got?” He asked, curling his massive hand around the other rope and raising his eyebrow at me.
I nodded. “I don’t have much upper body strength.”
He held the rope underneath my butt steady as I started to come down, but didn’t move his hand when my ass started to get close to it.
“Uhh,” I said, nodding my head towards his hand. “You think you can move that?”
He grinned. “Sure I could.”
I slipped until his hand rested against my ass, and I visibly jolted at the contact.
If Bennett hadn’t had his hand there, I would’ve been swinging.
I glared. “Move it.”
He grinned, baring his teeth, and laughed before moving it.
I slid the rest of the way down, and rubbed my hands on the back of my shorts to try to work out the sting.
“Can you climb that?” I asked in challenge.
He raised his brow at me, then nodded.
“Yeah. It’s a requirement to be on the SWAT team,” he said simply.
“Prove it,” I declared.
“And if I do? What do I get?” He rumbled softly, moving in close.
I licked my lips, suddenly very aware at what his words were doing to me.
My heart was beating fast and my palms were sweaty. And we wouldn’t even mention the other places.
“What do you want?” I breathed.
He moved his head forwards until he was less than a hairsbreadth away from my lips, and said, “You.”
I gasped, getting a huge lung full of the air he’d just breathed out, and said the only thing I could.
“We’ll see. You’ll have to do more than climb a rope to get me. But I’ll at least consider it…that is, if you can even do it.”
He chuckled before backing away.
Placing both of his hands onto the rope as high above his head that he could, he started to climb.
And he didn’t even use his legs.
It was all in his upper body.
Every single bit of it.
Holy. Shit.
“Holy shit!” I breathed.
“Such a fuckin’ show off,” a male said.
I turned to see a man directly behind me.
He was gorgeous.
Tall with brown hair, and the most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, he could easily be a cover model for a magazine.
He was wearing faded light blue jeans, black boots, and a black long sleeved shirt that covered him from hands to neck.
I smiled at him. “I bet him he couldn’t do it.”
He raised a brow at me, surprised, I’m sure, that I’d done so.
“It takes a lot to get Bennett to do much of anything. It must’ve been some payout,” he laughed, starting forward.
“It’s totally worth it,” Bennett yelled from above us. “Introduce yourself, shit head.”
I covered my mouth with my hand to keep the laughter from bubbling forth.
Jesus, these men acted like they were twelve year olds!
“I’m Michael,” the man at my side said, extending his hand.
Before I could extend my own hand, though, Bennett was there.
He dropped down in between us, officially cutting off our contact before it even got started.
“I said introduce yourself, not touch her,” Bennett said.
There was no venom in his tone, yet I could tell something was taking place in front of me.
A silent admission between the two.
“Jesus,” I said. “He didn’t offer to fuck me as an introduction. It was only his hand.”
He turned his honey eyes to me and smiled. “I know.”
Simple as that.
I know.
What the fuck, Batman?
“So are we just early, or so late that they’ve already left?” Michael asked, taking a look around.
“I don’t know. I guess they’re just not here yet…” he trailed off as his eyes fastened on a sound, and then dropped me down, covering me with his body.
The movement was so fast that I hadn’t even had the time to scream, let alone draw a breath before it was all knocked out of me.
Bennett’s body lay heavy on mine as he covered me, and my heart was pounding.
“What…what…what’s going on?” I whispered loudly.
Bennett grunted and levered himself up off me, then offered me his hand.
“Sorry about that,” he said, offering me his hand.
I extended my own and looked around warily.
“What the hell was that?” I gasped.
Michael was grinning, wiping at his shirt with a rag he’d magically produced.
“I told you I’d get him!” A woman yelled loudly.
“No, I told you that you couldn’t get both of them, and you didn’t,” a man’s triumphant voice shot back.
The two of them appeared at a balcony above our heads, and I tilted them up to see a man with red hair, and a woman with what looked to have black hair, standing beside him.
The woman had a wicked looking paintball gun in her hand, and she was waving at Michael and Bennett frantically.
“Sorry,” she said. “He told me I couldn’t do it.”
The men beside me snorted, deciding to be amused rather than ticked.
“I wouldn’t have let you do it had Bennett’s woman not been here,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder to indicate me.
I waved at them, and the woman’s face went startled as her mouth turned into a big O of surprise.
“I’m so sorry,” she apologized, tossing the gun at her husband. “I didn’t know anyone was coming with them.”
She hurried down the ladder, much to the red haired man’s consternation, and hurried over to me.
She was pregnant, and I could now see why the man had been upset about her going down the ladder.