Jill Shalvis - Strong And Sexy

“Still on that?”

“Well nothing ruffled you tonight, so, yeah. I guess I’m wondering…”

With a little smile, he took her hand and led her up a gorgeously paved walk, pulling a key out of his pocket with his free hand.

“Maybe you lose control over food…” she said, fishing for insight. Also fishing for something to soothe her sudden nerves.

Laughing softly, he unlocked his front door. “Yeah. A fully loaded pizza really throws me over the edge. Oh, you should probably brace yourself.”

“Um, what?”

But as he opened the door, a huge brown ball of fur launched itself at Shayne, knocking him back several feet with a pair of paws to the chest. A pair of paws the size of polar bear paws.

“Bella.” Shayne stroked the animal, who panted happily and drooled. “Miss me, huh?”

Bella panted some more, then dropped to the floor in a boneless heap of joy and exposed her belly.

Shayne obliged her, hunkering down with a smile, giving her a long, hard rub. “Sorry I was gone so long. But Jan came and walked you twice.”

“Jan?”

“My neighbor, and dog walker. There, Bella, that feel better?”

Dani had never been jealous of a dog in her life until that moment. Stepping close, she crouched down too. “Is that a dog or a bear?”

“Yet to be determined.” But Bella let out a welcoming doggie smile, and with a huge tongue, licked Dani’s hand.

“She’s sweet,” she murmured, staring at the biggest paws she’d ever seen. “Aren’t you something?”

“Something,” Shayne agreed.

Unable to help herself, Dani petted the dog, who panted with great cheer. “She must be a great watchdog.”

“She’s an attention slut is what she is. If a burglar came to the door, she’d show him all the good stuff for a belly rub.” But he smiled affectionately down at the dog as he said this, still stroking, sending Bella into fits of moaning ecstasy.

A guy who melted over a dog…“Sports?” she whispered, trying to get back to their conversation instead of nursing a sudden and dangerous crush on an out-of-reach playboy pilot. “Do sports make you lose control?”

“Love sports,” he said. “Play them when I can.”

“But they don’t make you lose it.”

With a smile, he shook his head.

Nodding, her thoughts raced as she tried to find a foothold on a slippery slide right into Serious Crush-ville. “Nothing makes you lose it. Got it.”

Straightening to his feet, he tossed his keys into a little bowl on a table in the foyer. Then he pushed the door closed and turned to her.

Oh, boy.

Bella scrambled up to her feet just as Dani’s stomach did a little tap dance. Other things tap-danced, too.

Like every single erogenous zone she had.

With Bella running circles around them, Shayne leaned in until his nose just touched Dani’s.

She opened her mouth to press on the whole losing-it thing, but he crooked his head to the side, then rubbed his jaw to hers. And then his mouth was near her ear, and he was breathing into it. “So you want to see me forfeit control?”

“I-” God, she couldn’t think when he was breathing in her ear. “I think so.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No.”

She felt him smile against her skin, and then for the briefest second in history, his mouth slid against hers in a far too fleeting kiss. “Don’t ask until you’re sure.” Then he stepped back.

She concentrated on gulping in air while he told Bella it was time for food. The dog barked with happiness, while she? Stood there trying to control her body’s needs.

Note to self: don’t stir the beast unless you’re ready to tame it.

She didn’t plan on doing that.

But a small part of her so wanted to.

Shayne walked into his kitchen to feed Bella, incredibly, erotically, aware of the woman who followed him.

He was also incredibly, erotically aware of her inner struggle.

Do him.

Don’t do him.

She was giving him a damned complex, but he didn’t mention it as she watched him feed the dog or as he led her through his house.

He’d only purchased the place about three months ago, and hadn’t exactly made it a home yet. There was nothing in the living room but a huge-screen TV and an even more huge soft comfy couch and chair. He had only bar stools in the den, which opened to the kitchen, where Bella was busy chowing through five pounds of food. He hadn’t gotten around to finding a table he liked.

He had a bed, though, a large, lush bed that he wasn’t having any trouble picturing Dani sprawled across, her wild hair all around her head, his sheets smooth beneath her lovely, hot bod, and then that same body beneath his…

“I can’t.”

He tore his brain away from the fantasy and looked at her.

Eyes glued to his bed, she swallowed and shook her head. “I’m not taking your bed.”

It was barely dawn and they needed a few hours’ sleep. He especially needed a few hours’ sleep, since he had a full schedule ahead of him for the day, including a flight to Santa Barbara. “You’re the guest,” he said firmly. “You get the bed.”

She stared up at him, her face unreadable. “Have you ever had a woman in your bed that you weren’t sleeping with?”

“Uh…”

“Have you?”

“No,” he admitted.

“That’s what I thought.” She sighed. “At least your mom taught you good manners.”

“More like they were beaten into me by my father, but yeah.” He smiled, hoping to see her smile in return. “Come on. Just a little shut-eye.” He crossed to his dresser and pulled out a T-shirt and sweat bottoms, handing them to her. “Help yourself, if you want to be more comfortable.”

Though personally, he’d be imagining her sleeping in the nude. She’d wanted to know what it would take for him to lose his control? That.

That’s all it would take.

She hugged the clothes and continued to just look at him, her eyes filled with a longing and a hunger that made him close his.

Distance. They both wanted it.

Not going to be easy. “’Night,” he said a bit hoarsely, and left the room. Behind him, he heard her shut the door, and at the sound of the lock clicking into place, he let out a long, serrated breath.

There.

Safe.

Though who was safe from whom, he had no freaking clue. Tugging his shirt off, he went into the living room and looked at the couch as he kicked off his shoes.

Bella came out of the kitchen still licking her chops and smelling like dog food. She eyed the couch, which she considered hers.

“Not tonight, babe,” he told her.

But Bella leapt up, turned in a circle three times on the cushions, then plopped into them with a blissful sigh.

With a sigh of his own, Shayne padded into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. Two beers, leftover pizza, leftover Thai, and leftover Italian.

Maybe he ought to see if he could pay Jan to keep him in some fresh food as well as walk Bella, because if his mother could see this, she’d just sigh.

She’d done a lot of sighing over the years for Shayne. There’d been his inability to deal with his older brothers and his father’s constant ribbing and roughhousing. There’d been his trouble in school, not grade-wise, but attitude-wise. Mostly his father had beaten that out of him too, but it’d been a long haul because he’d been pretty attitude-ridden.

By the time he’d hooked up with Brody and Noah in seventh grade, he’d been pretty damn tired of being picked on. Then two things had happened simultaneously; he’d grown ten inches in four months, and he’d bonded with two boys who were also misfits, also different, and better yet, they got him. Over their mutual love of planes, they’d made promises-that someday they’d run their own private airline for the rich and famous, flying all over the world on someone else’s dime.

A fantasy, nothing more.

But they believed in that fantasy, and they’d made it happen.

It hadn’t been easy. It had nearly sent them each spinning into bankruptcy, several times, and no one had as far to spin as Shayne. Several times through college, and in the years since, they’d lived together because there hadn’t been a spare dime, but that had worked too.

And in the end, the three of them had pulled it off.

And this year they’d paid off their last big creditor, celebrating their first month solidly in the black. A few months later, he’d bought this house for himself.

“Nice to know you didn’t completely blow your trust fund,” his father had said when he’d gotten his first look at the house. His mother had seconded that with “because we weren’t going to replace it.”

They meant well, he knew that. He also knew that he hadn’t been easy on them. But all he’d ever asked of them was to believe in him, and they hadn’t been able to do that, not once, not ever. So he’d gotten over it. He had Sky High. He had Brody and Noah, and now by extension, Bailey and Maddie. And he was good.

His life was full.

Very full.

With a sigh, he moved back into the living room and nudged Bella.

She cracked open one eye.

He nudged her again.

She closed her eye.

“Damn it.” Snagging the blanket off the back of the couch, he sprawled out on the carpet, turning over a few times before he could get even quasi-comfortable.

Just as he drifted off, Bella jumped off the couch and stretched out at his side with a groan. She had his back and would keep him warm. She might be a bed hog with some really bad breath, but she’d never judge him, that was for sure. She’d always be there.

No man needed more than that…

The phone rang, jarring Shayne awake. The machine on the other side of the room clicked on, telling him he must have been sleeping pretty damn hard if the phone had rung four times, which is what it took for the machine to come on. Because he was so exhausted, he lay there, content to let whoever it was calling him at six in the morning to leave a message.