Ignoring my offer for a second round, he looks down at his hands like they hold the answers to the universe, then grumbles, “Are we even now?”
Are we even?No. Hell, I’m in a deficit now; my puny little blow job has nothing on the proper rogering that man just gave to me. Fuck, he hit every button I’ve got. “I doubt I’ve got the ability to keep score anymore—you fucked it right out of me. But I’ve still got plenty of gas in the tank.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t,” he says, pulling on his pants, no humor in his tone at all.
“Okay, but, I’m only at the pizza shop and the gym tomorrow, hashtag Bear Night, so if you want to hate-fuck again, I’m down. You’ve got my number.”
I yank my shirt over my head and s-l-o-w-l-y pull my jeans up over my ass. I pick up my shoes and walk out to my car barefoot, trying to not think too much about the fact that, for the first time in forever, I’m sad that a man didn’t want me to stay.
Chapter Twelve
Roly
Damn, that was some good fucking. I’m in my driveway, half reliving the last hours, half-sad that I couldn’t stay, half-worried about what my little monster has done.
I brace myself as I unlock my front door, knowing that some kind of horror awaits me on the other side. My beautiful girl, Audrey, has been picking up on my stress lately and has been demonstrating that stress in a number of unpleasant ways.
Slowly I open the door, and… yep. She’s definitely been at it again. My living room looks like a snow globe, and there is, swear to god, toilet paper fluff everywhere, two to three inches deep. It takes just a quick walk-through to realize that the winter wonderland theme has been extended to my entire house. It’s everywhere. I suppose I should be grateful that it’s toilet paper fluff and not the inside of my couch, again.
I remember belatedly that I went to Costco and got an enormous case of toilet paper, and when I go to investigate, there are little doggy teeth marks on the corrugated box, and several, nearly half, of the rolls have been removed from the box and shredded, one by one.
I search everywhere for the menace that has taken over my house, and I can’t find her anywhere.
“Audrey!Audrey!”
Little shit. She’s smart enough to know that she’s in a whole heap of trouble, and she’s not coming out anytime soon. Fine. I go and grab the bag of dog food, which I’ve had to put on top of my refrigerator. Now, I’ll remind you that I’m not the tallest person in the world, and getting this up and down from the refrigerator is a massive pain in my ass, but entirely necessary. Otherwise, I’d come home to an overstuffed Build-A-Bear.
I grab the dog food, measure out her little portion, and give the cup a shake. Sure enough, she pops right up out of a small mound of fluff in the corner. The world’s biggest mess from the smallest goddamn dog in the universe.
What really sucks is that… she’s fucking adorable.
She’s a blonde Brussels Griffin, and the agency I work with, Texas Sweeties, picked her up from the local animal shelter. She’s a very, very sweet dog, but nervous, too. Poor thing—I bet being around my anxietous ass these last several days has been hell on her.
Honestly, the hardest thing is making sure she’s warm enough, which is why I always dress her to the nines. Currently she’s wearing something from our Princess collection, a beautiful pearl pink sweater with a stiff lacy collar, just like Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately, as she looks up to the fluff with her big, big eyes and her tiny little nose, I can see that she’s ripped the collar off.
She looks very worried, likely because she knows that she’s destroyed $30 worth of bathroom tissue and a $40 sweater, but she’s so tiny and sad and nervous-looking I can’t stay mad at her for long.
I pick her up, and she climbs up to my shoulder, where she likes to stay and nuzzle into my jaw.
I start bagging the enormous mess but am interrupted by a knock at the door. I check the peephole and Heath’s there, rubbing the back of his neck, checking for witnesses. I open the door with a flourish and a dog on my shoulder, and he’s got my wallet in his hand.
“Hey. Didn’t realize I’d left that behind,” I say, plucking the wallet from him. “Sorry. Promise I wasn’t trying to force another interaction on you.”
“I didn’t think that you had.” Spotting Audrey, he gently boops her nose with a thick, manly finger. “Well, who do we have here?” he asks, his voice about three octaves above his usual sexy baritone.
I bite my lips to prevent the cackle from bursting out of my throat. Looking past my shoulder, he whistles. “Someone was very, very busy.”
“Yes, she was. This is Audrey, named after my favorite person in the whole wide world, the incomparable Audrey Hepburn. And right now she’s in trouble.”
Heath’s gentle smile is… wow. Too powerful for just standing in my entryway. The way his eyes twinkle, I know what’s coming.
“Youlike Audrey Hepburn? I thought you were a SEAL.”
His tease is gentle, which, ugh. And also: “Are you saying that Navy SEALs can’t appreciate the glorious and incandescent Audrey Hepburn?” I ask, arching an eyebrow. There is only one correct answer to that question, by the way.
Stroking his beard, he ponders. “No, I’m guessing Navy SEALs can do whatever the hell they want to. And I love Audrey Hepburn, I’m just shocked that a guy who can lift three times his body weight likes her as much as I do.”
Not totally sure why, but this gentle teasing that he’s doing is making me jittery. Maybe because my teasing always drew blood where he was concerned.
