Still chuckling, he said, “I assure you, when no one is coming over here, it’s not this pulled together. Drop by unexpected and you’ll see.”
Was that an invitation? “Maybe I will one day.”
Mischief pulled at his mouth and glinted in his eyes. “Could be scary.”
Oh, fuck, he had no idea. “I’m a pretty tough girl,” I said, breathing through the flips my stomach was doing. “So no guilty pleasures you’ll admit to? No secret stash of gun and car magazines or Internet porn?”
Duncan laughed again, leaning back in his chair. “Only computer is at work, so Internet porn is kind of out of the question.” He crossed his arms. “Not much on magazines, but I do love violent adventure movies.”
“Ah, here we go,” I said. “Things that blow up?”
“The louder the better.”
I laughed. “And no computer here? Really?”
He shook his head. “Not even a smart phone.” He held his up. “It texts but none of that other stuff.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How do you survive?”
He chuckled. “I email from work. Pay my bills, all that. Life is out here,” he said, gesturing around us. “I don’t want to waste it focusing on a little box in my hand.”
I smiled. “Good point.” And I’d make sure I didn’t look at my phone. I took a long drink of water instead.
“So, you ready to get dirty?” he said.
I damn near choked on my water.
Chapter Seven
“Sorry?” I said, trying to recover through the burn in my nose and the sputter I’d spewed into my hand.
“Your boots?” he said. “Time to change. It’s a little muddy where we’re going.” His eyes danced a little as he laughed, however. It would have been sexy if I weren’t sucking air. “You’re adorable when you blush,” he said.
I tried to redeem myself with a smile. “Water went down the wrong way.”
“Mmm, so it seems,” he said, pushing his chair back with something slightly wicked in his amused tone and unblinking gaze. Something that made the room a little warmer.
The suggestive amusement in his expression was both embarrassing and intriguing. Why it embarrassed me, I had no idea, as I was no sweet little flower petal.
Maybe he wasn’t the flower petal I pegged him as, either.
“Let’s do it,” I said, pushing my chair back and meeting his gaze with a more assured one. One without coughing.
The walk around the grounds of Duncan’s house was beautiful, all lit up with landscape lighting.
“I don’t think I’d ever go inside if I had a yard like this,” I said as we strolled along a path inlaid with stone and brick. “Then again, if I had a house like yours, going inside wouldn’t be a downside.”
He chuckled and his fingers linked with mine, warm and slightly rough. The sensation sent a little zing through my arm and spread goose bumps along my back. It gave me a rush to find out he wasn’t soft and manicured. With teeth like his, it was a fifty-fifty shot.
“I’m glad you like it.” We left the path and headed toward a group of trees equally lit in front but not behind. “You know, I don’t share this with many people.”
I wasn’t sure what sharing he meant as we approached the blackness of the dense treeline. His house? His yard? The fact that we were about to walk into the woods at night?
“Um, really?” I said, concentrating on his hand in mine. The warmth of his skin. How intimate that could be if I wasn’t peering at the ground for snakes. He would protect me, right? Then again, he was a vet. He might take the snake’s side.
“But you strike me as someone who’d appreciate this,” he said. We crossed the treeline into darkness, and I faltered. His grip on my hand tightened. “Just hold on to me, Savanna, it’s just a few seconds of this, we’re almost there.”
And then again, he could be a serial killer. That I was following blindly—literally—into the woods at night. Far enough from the next house that no one would hear me scream for help. Had I told anyone where I was going—like the actual address? No, but Lily and Dad knew I was going to Duncan’s house. They would look it up and start looking. Tomorrow. After I was chopped into dog food for Ella. And if he was any good at being a serial killer, he’d be long gone. What did we really know about Duncan Spoon, anyway?
“You okay?” he said, his voice breaking into my panic attack as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. “You were kinda breathing heavy.”
“I’m good,” I said, hearing the not-so-good in my tone.
Something snapped up ahead. A twig, a tree limb, maybe a bone—giving me a visual of mad wolves, when suddenly we were in a clearing and the moon shone down like a spotlight.
On two donkeys.
“Meet Dolly and Max,” Duncan said.
I blinked in the moonlight and stumbled over my own thoughts as they came back down from Crazy Town and started laughing at me.
“Dolly and Max,” I echoed.
“I rescued them a few months back,” he said, letting go of my hand and walking toward an old wooden fence. “They were living on an abandoned farm in Louisiana, neglected and forgotten after the owner died. Nobody knew he had them, evidently, and they were fending for themselves.”
I stared at him in the moonlight. He rescued donkeys, too? Here I was thinking he was a serial killer about to carve me up and he was a
donkey and dog rescuer?
He crooked a finger. “Come on,” he said. “But be careful over here, it gets muddy.”
I moved toward him, shaking my head. Dolly and Max moved along the fence to be closer to him, too. Jesus, he was like the donkey whisperer.
I reached the fence, grabbing at it as my foot slid a little in the slimy earth, and one of them—the gray one—shoved his nose up at me and snorted.
“Okay!” I exclaimed, taking one step back from the fence and nearly busting it.
Duncan’s laughter was deep and genuine, and he reached for me. “That’s just him saying hello,” he said. “He wants you to pet him.”
“He needs to work on his approach,” I said, tentatively touching his forehead. It was bristly and warm, and his ears moved like little radar beacons as I rubbed between them. “Blowing snot is not a way to impress the ladies.”
“Dolly doesn’t seem to mind,” Duncan said, reaching over to scrub Dolly’s neck.
“You and I need to have a conversation,” I said conspiratorially to Dolly, the dark brown curly-haired one. “You need to up your expectations.” I grinned as she nuzzled his hand. “They are so cute.”
“Sad to think how they were living,” he said. “Because they had absolutely no fear of people. Someone clearly loved them.”
He reached into a bag I hadn’t even noticed he was carrying and pulled out two apples.
“I feed them in the mornings, but I come give them a treat each night,” he said, holding one out to me. “Want to give them one?”
I felt like a kid. “Sure,” I said, taking an apple. “What do I do?”
“Just hold it, bottom up, with your palm flat—like this,” he said, holding out his apple to Dolly. Her lips and large teeth worked over his hand, chomping up the fruit. Max nudged at her and threw his nose over the fence, sniffing, looking for his.
I palmed my apple, but it fell off when I jerked my hand back at the last minute.
“Ah, those teeth make me nervous,” I said, picking it off the ground and wiping the mud on my jeans.
“It’s okay,” Duncan said. “That’s normal, but he really won’t hurt you. Just keep your hand flat. Here.”
Duncan put his hand under mine, and we held out the apple together. Max’s lips tickled my palm as he took his treat, and I giggled like a little girl.
A little girl?
That was new.
He didn’t let go of my hand, though, and I was suddenly very aware of how close he was. I could feel him against my back and arm.
“Look at you, an expert now,” he said, his mouth just above my ear.
The good guy likes you! Turn around!
I turned slightly, my boots sliding a little in the muck, and Duncan caught me at the waist. It was a little overkill, I suppose. I wasn’t headed for a face plant or anything, but finding myself held tightly against his body was not a problem.
So what did I do? I laughed like a maniac. Nervous laughter bubbled up and all I could do was beg him for forgiveness with my eyes. To his credit, he didn’t throw me in the mud for foiling his romantic move. One eyebrow lifted as he watched me lose all self-respect.
“I’m—s-sorry,” I managed, my body still hiccupping with giggles. I buried my face in his chest and prayed for good sense.
“You are a hard one to read, Savanna Barnes,” he said, his voice rumbling through his chest.
“Oh, I’m really not that mysterious,” I said, looking up at him, a little drunk on delirium and the yummy smell that had just filled my nose. “I’m just a mess.”
His hands moved up my back slowly, his fingers finding my hair and threading into it.
“You’re a beautiful mess,” he said, his eyes dropping to my mouth.
I licked my lips in anticipation, acutely aware of Dolly and Max stomping around and snorting for attention. Of the crickets chirping all around us. The bugs making some kind of funky noise to my right. The smell of the mud and the mosquito having dinner on my left arm.
What the hell? I wasn’t one to go all schoolgirl nervous with men. Why was I noticing all these completely ridiculous random things at the very moment I’d been fantasizing about for months?
“There’s one I haven’t been accused of before,” I whispered nervously, just before his hands found my face and his lips brushed mine.
And oh—the bugs went away. The mud went away. Dolly and Max could watch all they fucking wanted, because his mouth was glorious. Soft and searching. Kissing my top lip and then my bottom one. Slow. Sexy. Yum. I let my arms wrap around him and he followed suit, pulling me in closer, tasting me with a flick of his tongue, finding mine, and bringing one hand behind my head to delve deeper.
My insides tingled as I let myself fall into the sensations of his mouth, of his body against mine, of the heat of his skin warming the fabric under my hands. His muscles were tight and hard, his arms strong, one hand traveling an excruciatingly slow path down my back. All my important parts woke up and stretched, coaxing my heart a little faster, heating up the air around us. As his kiss intensified and that hand stopped at the top of my ass, it was everything I could do to keep my breathing calm. He was going slow. My blood wasn’t. I curled my fingers a little, letting my nails lightly rake his back. Testing his reaction. Controlling mine.
On command, he sucked in a breath and pulled me tighter against him, rocketing my blood in excitement. A tiny sound came from my throat, one that caused him to twist his fingers in my hair and crush me to him. Oh, hell yes, this was good. I felt all resistance begin to melt and all sensation begin to focus southward before he reversed the action.
“This is a first,” he said against my lips when he pulled back. His voice was thick with that thing that had me lightheaded. That thing that tempts you past your boundaries. As much as he was pushing all the right buttons, I was glad of the pause—sort of. I didn’t need to go there just yet. Ugly thong and all that.
“What’s a first?” I breathed.
“Making out at the donkey pen.”
I chuckled and brushed my lips against his again. “I’m sure Dolly and Max won’t tell.”
“I hope not,” he said. “Would totally ruin my reputation.”
“Can’t have that,” I said.
“No,” he agreed, kissing me again. Moving to nuzzle the spot just in front of my ear and sending delicious tingles down the side of my neck.
Oh, yes, keep doing that.
“So have you ever made out in the woods?” he asked.
Have I ever made out in the woods.
“Well, I did grow up here.”
Cold, like someone turning the faucet on full blast, cooling my jets, washed over me. I pulled him closer to stop it.
Duncan chuckled silently against my cheek. “Ah, so that’s a yes. Ever do anything crazy out here?”
Full fucking blast.
Images flooded my brain. Of wild rides on the back of a motorcycle, leading to sweaty sex against the rough bark of a tree, and sharing a stolen joint while lying naked in the cool grass.
“Oh, here and there,” I said, trying to push it all away. “You know—typical teenage stuff.”
Duncan was intrigued. I could see it in his face in the low light. Damn it.
“Ever get caught?”
“Mmm, once,” I said, feeling the icy dampers clamp down.
“Oooh, do tell,” he said, his voice still flirty, still sexy. He was getting more turned on by my apparent misspent youth.
“Me and . . . a friend of mine were smoking something we shouldn’t once, and the sheriff drove by.”
While we were lighting matches and throwing them in the road to burn, on the way back to Ian’s bike. We’d ended up in the backseat of Sheriff Lasiter’s squad car, being lectured on drugs, until we told him we’d gotten the weed from his daughter Macy. Which could have technically been true—she was rumored to supply an occasional joint back then, just to keep her sheriff’s-daughter rebellion act in play, but it worked nonetheless. He let us go and took our stash.