I laugh because it’s funny, but also to cover the fact that I’m seriously smitten with this version of Dax. The gentle giant and clever animal handler. The guy whose hands are the size of small skillets and whose fingerprints I still feel all over my body.
I scoop up the dog and hand him to Dax so he can bundle him into the gray towel. Then he hands Deathmetal back to me, and I set to work rubbing down the wiry little body.
“You’re right, this is much better,” I say. “He’s already mostly dry.”
“Sorry I didn’t remember earlier,” Dax says. “I was distracted.”
The way he’s watching me makes me forget I’m soggy and bedraggled and smelling like wet dog. There’s admiration there, surprise, even.
And also desire. I don’t think I’m reading it wrong, but I concentrate hard on toweling off the dog so my knees don’t buckle. Seriously, how is this getting to me? I don’t understand at all.
“Dax,” I murmur, needing to break the tension. “I want you to know that?—”
“Okie dokie!” Jell-O girl bursts through the door and bustles over to us, her perky ponytail swaying from side to side. “Looks like I timed that out just right.”
“Perfect,” I murmur, still dizzy from Dax’s closeness.
“The second crew just got here for cleanup, so you two are free to go now that this last little guy is done.”
“Last one?” I turn back to the stacks of cages, amazed to realize they’re empty. “Wow. We’ve been busy.”
“Great work, you two,” she says. “Will we see you again next week?”
She’s talking to Dax, but he looks at me. “I’ll be here for sure. And maybe now that Lisa’s gotten a taste of it, she’ll keep coming back for more.”
“That would be awesome!” Jell-O girl says with a forced chipper tone that says it’s as awesome as herpes. I can’t blame her for wanting Dax to herself.
But right now, so do I.
I wait until Jell-O girl has bustled out of the room with Deathmetal before turning back to Dax.
“I think I’m ready for a shower,” I say.
His eyes flash with interest as he steps closer, then slips a hand under my super-sexy rubber apron to skim my hip. “You need some help with that?” he murmurs. “I’ve been told I’m quite proficient with the shampoo.”
My stomach flips, and I meet his flirtatious tone with my own. “I promise to shake if you blow in my ear.”
Okay, that sounded sexier in my mind.
But he grins back anyway and leans close to graze his lips over my earlobe. His breath is warm against my neck, and the way he’s touching my hip leaves no doubt he wants me as much as I want him.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.
Chapter 8
Dax
Nothing today is going quite like I thought it would.
First, Lisa agreed to forego her spa day to wash thirty smelly, homeless dogs. Color me impressed.
Is it wrong that I kinda expected her to walk out the door the second she got a whiff of wet canine? But she hung in there like a champ, putting those immaculately manicured nails to good use scrubbing flea dip into matted fur and soothing scared pups with murmured assurances that had me edging closer just to hear her voice.
It’s the first time I ever got a hard-on at the damn dog shelter.
But my plan to bring her back to my place for a steam shower and a soak in the Jacuzzi went sideways when every damn drawbridge in the city was up for an incoming Coast Guard vessel. The Hawthorne, the Broadway, the Burnside, even the Morrison were all conspiring to keep me from getting laid. When the bridges are up in Portland, there’s no getting from the industrial east side to the residential west side of the river.
In other words, we were trapped in the ghetto.
