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"What look?" I asked, reaching under the counter for one of the specialty biscuits we kept just about everywhere for Coop. Milk Bones comment aside, Peyton refused to let Coop eat the 'mass produced crap' you would get at a local pet store. She actually spent one of her days off every week baking homemade dog treats, dehydrating meat for his bedtime snacks, and making a special dog stew that she read about in some veterinarian's book.
I might have brought him home, but Coop was every bit hers as he was mine.
"Is that in the shape of brass knuckles?" Eli asked as Coop jumped clear off the floor to take it from me.
"Peyton has an interesting cookie cutter collection."
"I believe it," he agreed, watching Coop devour his food.
"He's a bottomless pit. I swear he has thirty treats a day on top of his food. But he never sits still, so he burns it all off. The vet said his weight was perfect."
"He got huge," he agreed, giving the dog a bit of a sad smile.
And, hell, every ounce of me wanted to find a way to take that look off his face.
Even if that meant stripping naked and demanding he do as he pleases.
Okay, so maybe that was just my libido talking, not my common sense.
But yeah.
I didn't like seeing him sad.
He spent six years inside; he should have been over-the-moon to be out.
"Do you want to come with me to take Coop on a walk? If I don't tire him out now, he'll be pacing my apartment all night, chasing shadows, and waking everyone up."
There was a second of hesitation, something inside him seeming to have a battle before he nodded and reached for the leash. "What about the store?"
"Closing early is a perk of ownership," I told him, reaching for my purse under the counter.
"But what if there is a flogger emergency?" he asked, deadpan, making me let out a mildly embarrassing snort/laugh hybrid as I made my way through the main aisle of the store, letting him lead Coop out onto the sidewalk.
I turned to flip the sign on the door and lock up. "Then I guess they will have to experiment with bare-handed spanking for one night. It's not the same, but it will do in a pinch."
When I turned, I realized I needed to pay more attention to the things I said around this man. My life revolved so much around throwing out sexual comments all willy-nilly. It hardly ever occurred to me to temper what I said, around adults at least. If you couldn't handle some dildo talk, then we probably had no business being around one another.
But, yeah.
Sex talk around this particular adult was, ah, problematic.
Because those hypnotic eyes of his got just a bit deeper, went heavy-lidded.
Noticing it did this dropping sensation in my belly followed by a pressure on my lower stomach that everyone who had ever been turned on before would know for a deep desire.
"So, what direction?" I asked when he said nothing, as I tried to remind my body that we didn't do casual sex. Not even if the guy was as hot as this one.
Eli jerked his head to the side, surprising me when he didn't want to go toward the center of town where there might be storefronts to look in.
Maybe, at this point, I should have been wary, I should have been hyper-aware of the fact that this man was a violent criminal fresh out of jail, and that the streets toward the side of town he was indicating were somewhat dead thanks to many abandoned storefronts.
That being said, I had researched his case.
He hadn't hurt the woman. He had been defending the woman against her abusive husband. Normally, he would be hailed a hero for something like that. It was just his bad luck that the husband was the son to a prominent politician who had way too many connections, and who was able to force the battered wife to testify against him at trial. To, ugh, as the disgusting phrase went - stand by her man. As if any woman should be made to feel like she didn't have any other choice but to lie on the stand and convict the man who had tried to save her.
But anyway, yeah, I didn't figure this man was any threat to me.
That being said, I owned a sex store that I often was in alone a lot of the time, and left late at night.
So my bag was like a mini self-defense store.
Mace? Check.
Mini expandable baton? Check.
Taser? The best one on the market. I wasn't even sure it was legal in Jersey, but I didn't care.
And, for about six months, I took self-defense classes at the local gym.
So, yeah, even if his intentions weren't honorable - though I very much doubted that - I was prepared to take him down.
