by D. D. Ayres
“Oh.” Jori twisted open her water bottle and took a long swallow. The cold hit her stomach like icicles. Battise was military K-9 police! Compared with his experience with dogs, she was a rank amateur. That certainly explained his attitude toward her. Even worse, he’d let her make a complete fool of herself, thinking he didn’t know or like dogs.
Jori could feel her pulse begin to beat in her temples. Privacy was a top priority at WWP. But Kelli, who personally conducted all intake interviews, would know Battise’s history. She could have told her a little about Battise this morning. Instead, she had told Jori to get to know him. As if she’d had the time before and deliberately neglected to. Or had she?
Jori glanced at Abe. She knew the names of his grown children and that he had six grandkids. She knew Seth had gone to college on a baseball scholarship. She also knew that James had fathered two children since losing both legs. And that Joshua was about to get married. But Battise had made her too uncomfortable to make small talk with.
Or maybe she’d avoided getting to know him because she couldn’t keep her own emotions under control when he was around.
Furious with herself for letting her issues get in the way of doing her job, Jori turned to find that Battise and Sam had followed her into the hallway.
She gulped, feeling guilty for no good reason. Nothing in his attitude said he had overheard her conversation with Abe. That didn’t mean he looked happy to see her.
“You done with your break yet?”
His tone went straight through her, sparking anger she didn’t pause to identify. “No, we get two whole minutes per break, Mr. Battise. We’re civilians.” She took another long sip from her bottle to cool her annoyance.
Abe grinned, looking from one to the other. “If you lovebirds will excuse me.” He rolled on down the hallway, chuckling.
Jori waited until Abe was out of hearing before she leaned in toward Battise. “You’re rude.”
“I know.” He reached out and took her hand, placed Sam’s leash in it, then folded her fingers closed with his other and squeezed. Strong even teeth appeared in the middle of his beard. “But you’re curious.”
He bent down and grabbed Samantha under the chin and scratched her behind the ears. “You take care of yourself, Sam. I’m sure a nice new owner will be along any day.” He leaned in to kiss her between the eyes and stood. “Give Kelli my thanks but tell her I have somewhere to be.”
“You can’t just walk out.” Jori took a step after him. He didn’t pause, sliding on his shades as he strolled toward the exit door.
“Mr. Battise.”
He didn’t even look back.
Jori stopped herself from following him, aware that nothing she could say now was likely to turn him around. But watching him push through the glass doors was an exercise in frustration. Back erect, shoulders squared. The slight limp was subdued once more by sheer willpower. Even from behind he looked good enough to lick.
Jori looked down at Samantha, who was staring after him and whimpering as she strained on the leash. “You, too? We must be out of our minds. Out of our minds.”
She fed Samantha a couple of treats to distract her from the stress of losing her handler, then marched them both straight into Kelli’s office.
“Mr. Battise just walked out.”
Kelli cocked her head to one side. “Where did he go?”
“He didn’t say. Just to tell you he had somewhere else to be.” She stopped short of voicing her opinion that he wouldn’t be back. What little she knew about him made him unpredictable.
To her surprise Kelli just smiled. “Have Maxine put in a request to one of our puppy raisers to take Samantha until he returns.” WWP seldom left their dogs in kennels on the property overnight. Service dogs needed the constant reinforcement of home and family life.
“I could take her for tonight.” Jori wasn’t sure why she offered but there it was.
“Suit yourself.”
“One other thing. I’d like permission to read Mr. Battise’s file.”
“It’s in there.” Kelli pointed to the row of tall file cabinets then reached for her purse. “I have a meeting in Little Rock this afternoon so I’ll be out the rest of the day. See you in the morning.”
When her boss was gone Jori shut the office door, not wanting to be disturbed. She searched until she found the folder she wanted from the wall of files. Propping a shoulder against one of the metal cabinets, she began to read.
She skipped the personal information, flipping the sheets until she came to Battise’s injury assessment. It was more thorough than she expected.
Amputee, above the left knee. Battise, like many soldiers wounded by a blast that had a thermal element, had spent seventeen months in and out of hospitals, while surgeons dealt with additional injuries, did skin grafts, and reduced heavy scar tissue, all while initially attempting to salvage his leg. Just reading about it made her ache in sympathy for him. He had suffered so much.
In notes added in the margin she read how he had fought the doctors, wanting to maintain all of his ruined leg if he could. Only after he gave in to the need for amputation did his pain become manageable.
Jori paused to catch her breath. Managed pain. That meant there was still pain. All the time. That could erode a man’s attitude. She hadn’t made room for that possibility in her assessment of him. Maybe because he wanted it that way. Better to be thought an asshole than needy? Sounded like Battise. She glanced back down.
Instead of checking individual boxes, he’d made one big checkmark on top of the list of PTSD symptoms. In the area where he was asked to describe his symptoms, he’d written HELL. That covered a lot of ground.
She flipped to his work record. Right after college Battise entered the police academy and was then hired as a K-9 officer with the Arkansas State Police, Troop L, handling drug interdiction. Jori frowned. K-9 officer slots were at a premium in nearly every law enforcement department in the country. Even with the bushy beard, Battise didn’t seem much older than thirty. She flipped back a few sheets. Born in Polk County, Texas, 1984. Yep. Thirty-one next month. How had he gotten into a K-9 unit position right out of the academy?
She flipped the pages back to his personal information. Name: Lauray Bronson Battise.
“Oh crap.” Why hadn’t the name clicked in her head before? He was the son of Bronson Battise, one of the most famous trainers of military and police K-9s in the United States.
She had read everything she could find online about professionally trained K-9s once she was accepted in the WWP service dog program at the correctional center. Bronson Battise’s name came up often. As the founder and original owner of Harmonie Kennels, he had developed methods now used by other facilities to train specialty dogs for law enforcement, government agencies, and the military.
Jori blew out her breath and reached for her water bottle. A dozen questions chased around in her thoughts. For instance, why had he come here for a service dog when he could have trained any animal he wanted from the famous Harmonie Kennels?
“Find anything interesting in there?”
Jori hadn’t heard a sound but looked up and right into the black-gold glower of Lauray Battise, aimed at her from the open doorway.
CHAPTER FOUR
Samantha sprang to her feet and woofed happily, her long Cheez Doodle tail swishing back and forth as she padded over to greet him. Battise bent and scrubbed under her chin with both hands, murmuring words only they understood.
Jori’s reaction to his arrival wasn’t nearly so welcoming. When he straightened and looked at her, her voice was cool as ice. “Why are you back?”
Law wasn’t about to tell her about his sister’s text. She had sent him three words as he was climbing into his truck: Bring the dog. Yardley was spooky.
Instead, he looked down at Sam, who was leaning against his pant leg. “Sam. Down. Stay.”
Samantha plopped down on her belly but continued to look up at him with adoring eyes.
&nbs
p; Law glanced again at Jori and pushed the door shut behind him.
When he closed the gap between them he could see his name typed on the tab of the folder she held. She was checking up on him. He couldn’t decide whether that was a good or a bad thing. He poked the file. “Know enough now?”
Jori shook her head. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re Bronson Battise’s son? Your family’s famous!”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that important to you?”
“It’s important that you’re a professional dog handler.” She smacked the folder against his chest. “You let me spend three days instructing you as if you’ve never owned a dog. I want to know why.”
“Maybe I was curious about your technique.”
“But other people knew. I must look like a fool to them.”
“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” Those dark eyes of his were shifting over her again, as if he thought he had missed something the first two times he’d stared at her today. This time his gaze dropped all the way to her feet, where it stayed for a few seconds. “Well, maybe there’s something. Your shoes don’t match.”
“So what?” She deliberately wore one red sneaker and one yellow one.
“You wear mismatched shoes or socks every day.” His accessing gaze came back to her face. “That must mean something.”
“Only to me.”
“As long as you aren’t ashamed of it.”
His expression softened a bit. With humor? It was the closest thing to a real conversation they’d ever had.
He took the file from her hand and closed it. “Anything else you want to know about me? Ask.”
“Okay.” There were things. Lots. She just couldn’t think of any of them with him standing so close.
She backed up a step, trying to be casual as she draped her elbow on top of the file cabinet. She gained only six inches. “With your background, you could have gotten a service dog from any breeder in the country. You came here. Why?”
His lids lowered to half-mast over the dark-gold brilliance of his eyes. “I was blackmailed.”
Jori couldn’t imagine anyone who could force this man to do something he didn’t want to do. There had to be another reason. “Is it because we specialize in PTSD dogs?” She glanced at the file he held. “The extent of your injuries indica—”
“—I got blowed up. That’s not exactly news to me.”
He dropped the folder on top of the file behind her and braced his hand beside her arm on the file cabinet, effectively enclosing her between his body and the cabinet. “Next question.”
Jori tried to ignore his attempt to dominate her space. “Samantha’s specially trained to help with PTSD episodes. I’ve been working with her for four months so I know she’s good at her job.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Do you think she’s well trained?”
“Very.”
Jori thought about that one-word answer for a second. The only way he would know that was if he had seen her in action, too. “Did you experience an episode last night?”
He stared at her, every muscle in his face gone Mount Rushmore hard. Then he jerked his head to the left, as alert as if Kelli’s desk had reared up on hind legs and snarled at him.
For a split second Jori didn’t understand his reaction. Then she realized she’d heard the sound, too. A pile of papers on the desktop had shifted. Nothing to alarm even Samantha. But Battise was blinking as his head swiveled slowly right and left to scan the corners of the ten-by-twelve-foot office space. Though he wasn’t touching her, she could feel the tension making his body rigid.
She’d read about and watched other trainers working with service dogs simulate it. But she’d never seen a real exaggerated startle response in anyone.
Samantha, ahead of Jori in processing what was going on, had risen and come over to Battise. Immediately she pushed in close to him, wedging her heavy body behind him at knee level. Battise didn’t seem to notice.
Wanting to help, too, Jori reached out and touched him just above the elbow. His biceps was more than warm. It was almost scalding.
“It’s okay, Mr. Battise.”
She watched his whole presence change in the wake of her words. His attention snapped back to her. He looked first at her fingers curled lightly on his biceps and then up at her face. His blinking slowed.
“I don’t need your help.” His voice was as hard as the muscles under her touch. His gaze seemed to repel her by force of will.
Determined not to lose him, she clamped her fingers tight on his arm. “I can see that you’re very capable in many ways, Mr. Battise. But this isn’t war. You don’t have to gut it out alone.”
He didn’t answer but he didn’t pull away from her touch.
Maybe she just needed to change the subject. “Look, if you don’t like Sam—”
“I never said I didn’t like Sam.” He didn’t move yet he suddenly seemed closer. “I said I don’t want her.” The words came out as if each one were a whole sentence.
“Okay. Tell me what you do want.”
“What I want?” When his rough and ready gaze rose to tangle with hers, a surge of pure lust burst through Jori. Sexual heat radiated off him like waves from glowing coals. And his eyes. Direct, penetrating. Pure Alpha in search of every advantage against a perceived opponent. At the moment it was all aimed at her.
Self-protection was telling her to run like a scared little rabbit. Not that there was anywhere to go. She was cornered between the file cabinet and his rather impressive body. Another part of her wanted to lean in to him, to touch and taste that heat. Yet the biggest part was urging her to bark back at the Alpha invading her space.
She slapped a palm flat on his chest. “Back off, Mr. Battise. I’m not your enemy.”
Something glinted in his gaze. “Then why do I feel in jeopardy whenever you’re around?”
As if. There was too much male presence in his stance to make her feel safe enough to enjoy his brand of humor. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t thinking, fast, about her next move.
She removed her hand. Her palm went cold from the loss of contact.
“Know what I think, Mr. Battise? You wouldn’t recognize what you needed if it was standing in front of you.”
“You want to know what I think?” He lifted a finger and touched her two inches below the hollow of her throat where the skin was exposed above the vee of her T-shirt. “I think you’re curious as hell about what we’d be like together.”
Jori couldn’t lie. The raw heat surging through her was his doing. She was playing with fire. But, she reminded herself, there was only so much he would dare in a public place with a dozen people within the sound of her voice.
She straightened up, suddenly aware that a file cabinet handle had been poking hard into her back. “No thanks. I’m busy.”
“Boyfriend?” He said the word all snarky and dismissive of the imagined man.
She shrugged, trying to see past his shoulder. “I’m just not interested.”
“Liar.”
He leaned in until his beard tickled her left cheek and his voice was a deep dry gush of male temptation in her ear. “Let’s get the hell out of here and go somewhere we can satisfy our … curiosity.”
“Not going to happen.” She again put up a hand to push him away. Yet when she encountered the contours of hard warm muscle beneath his shirt, instead of shoving him away, her fingers curled reflexively into the fabric.
One side of his beard hitched up in what could only be a smile. He leaned toward her, applying the pressure of his chest until her hand retreated and there was no space left between their bodies. His chest crushed her breasts.
He was watching her, no doubt trying to determine just how far he could go before she screamed. “Don’t worry. I just want a taste of what I can’t have. Call it a consolation prize.”
For about a tenth of a second Jori thought, What if someone sees us? Then she stopped thinking of anything else but the man locking
lips with hers.
Law just meant to touch his lips to hers, to brand her with a taste of what she’d be missing if she didn’t take him up on his offer. But then she surged in against him, her fingers grabbing fistfuls of the front of his tee as she opened her mouth under his.
It was like waving a red flag at one very touchy bull.
He had long ago outgrown having a teenage omni-directional dick that any passing pretty girl could make painfully hard. Yet all it took was Jori’s lips parting and her tongue sliding out over his lips to stretch his cock full-length. She wasn’t supposed to kiss like this. Like she knew what he wanted, and how he wanted it, and was ready to provide it as long as he needed it.
Even so, he knew what she was doing. Teasing herself, and him, with possibilities she had no intention of making good on. That was her mistake. Because right now he wanted her. Bad. And he wasn’t going to let her off easy.
He hadn’t forgotten about the fact that anyone could walk in on them at any time. This was just his one and only chance to scratch, if only a bit, his itch for her. He was going for it for as long as the opportunity lasted.
A low male sound came from somewhere deep in his chest as he gathered her in his arms and slanted his mouth, hard, against hers.
One of his hands gripped her braid near her nape and pulled until her head was tilted back under the power of his kiss. His other hand hauled her in by the waist; then his fingers dived down the back of her pants, under the waistband of her panties, to grasp one full mound of womanly ass.
Under the assault of his mouth Jori felt every cell in her body react. Her nipples tightened. Her sex clenched, hard, seeking satisfaction that required the participation of a male body. In no time he had taken apart every scintilla of resistance, with only a kiss, and she was sagging in surrender.
Jori held on, fingers flexed on his chest like a climber trying to find a hold on the face of a sheer rock cliff. He kissed like he was on fire, all desperate need laced with the absolute control of a man who knew what he wanted and exactly how to get it.
Law felt her surrender. Her body went soft in his arms. His hands slid lower, one to embrace her shoulders while the other curved down deeper under her butt to lift and mold her body to fit his. She helped, rising up on tiptoe. He was home free.
