Animal Attraction: Buckhorn Ever AfterImagine Me and YouGimme ShelterPartner in Crime

by Lori Foster

  Like some sort of weird stalker, she watched him until he went in the back door before turning to see Fluffy right next to her. Apparently the dog even had good taste.

  What was she thinking? She’d already decided not to pursue anything of a physical nature with Abel. But she’d taken one look at all those muscles with water sliding off them, and she’d become rooted in her spot, mouth open and probably a bit of saliva on her chin.

  Saige blew out a breath. “I need a life,” she told the dog. “I’m pathetic.”

  But she was happy, minus that slight area where she hadn’t had a man in her bed in...

  Yeah, she was pathetic.

  She turned to go into the house, taking Fluffy with her. First she needed to call about a new home for Toby; then she needed to pack her car properly for tonight’s events.

  As she put both dogs inside and closed her back door, she leaned against it and sighed. She wasn’t set in her ways, but she did have obligations that she simply wouldn’t budge on, and rescuing animals was at the top of the list.

  God, her life was so weird, she doubted any man would even want to live in her crazy world. Those sheets were just going to have to stay cold.

  Chapter Four

  Clearly he was losing his mind. Abel sat in the dark on his porch and was enjoying the tranquility of the warm summer night when he saw his neighbor, once again dressed in that body-hugging black spandex, get into her car and slowly back out of her drive.

  And like the cop who still lived inside him, he wanted the rest of this story, and he sure as hell wasn’t getting the truth from her.

  Seriously? He couldn’t just sit back and relax on this. The investigator in him wouldn’t allow it.

  Neither would the man who was attracted to the mysterious side of this woman.

  He reached inside the house, grabbed his keys from the hook and locked the door behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, Abel saw her turn right out of the development. Hopping into his full-size truck, he quickly followed but stayed back enough she wouldn’t suspect. Everyday civilians usually didn’t pick up on being followed and the whole “be watchful of your surroundings” was another topic he didn’t want to infiltrate his mind. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  After about twenty minutes, Abel was even more curious when Saige turned into one of the rough sections of town. What in the world was she doing here? His stomach sank and dread filled him. Not that he was scared, at least not for himself but for her.

  Another night, another female flashed through his mind.

  Abel hadn’t been back in this section since that night not so long ago when he was overseeing the raid of illegal dog fighting activities when he’d been injured, nearly ruining his career and putting him on a path where he was still not sure he’d found level ground.

  Dog fights. God, if she was involved in dog fights, he’d haul her ass, no matter how sexy, to jail so fast. There was one thing as a cop he refused to put up with, and that was abuse of any kind be it woman, child or animal. Hell, no. Not on his watch.

  Images of the wounded dog on her living room floor last night flashed through his mind. Surely someone as sweet and friendly and...innocent looking wasn’t involved in something so heinous and evil.

  He knew, though, looks could be deceiving and never to take anything for granted. But she’d taken such great care of the animal with her delicate touch and tender care. Surely she wasn’t just nursing him to health to throw him back in the ring.

  When she slowed her car and parked, Abel killed his lights and pulled over a block short, so he could watch and go undetected. For several moments she sat there, and Abel wondered what the hell she was doing.

  Finally she got out and did a tiptoed, hunkered-down run toward a ramshackle old house where they’d not only taken down the fights, but had found several pounds of marijuana and kilos of coke.

  Dear Lord, this beautiful woman couldn’t be involved in drugs...could she? Dog fights, drugs? Few things in life surprised him, but right now, he was speechless.

  Abel slid down in his seat when Saige glanced over her shoulder. The woman couldn’t look more suspicious if she tried, between her throwing fast peeks over her shoulder and tiptoeing to her destination.

  When she jumped to hook her arm over the fence, Abel jerked up in his seat. Was she seriously going to commit a B&E right here? What the hell could be on this property that she could want?

  That pit in his stomach deepened. Had to be drugs. There was nothing else of value here.

  Abel tugged on his truck handle and quietly closed the door, then pocketed his keys. As he drew closer, he noticed Saige tugging her arm against the top point of the fence.

  “Damn it,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  Abel stood just below her, getting a rather nice, tantalizing view of her ass. But all that wiggling from her was making him forget she was technically a criminal right now.

  Her last tug had material shredding and Saige falling backward. Abel tried to reach her in time, but they both went down as he lunged and didn’t quite get under her.

  She screamed, but Abel was fast enough to put his hand over her mouth, even though he felt like joining her. Pain shot through his damn knee, and he knew he’d have to ice it when he got home. He only prayed to God he hadn’t just caused a major setback.

  “Quiet, or we’ll both be in trouble,” he whispered through gritted teeth into her ear.

  She nodded and he removed his hand. When she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widened, then turned to slits.

  “You followed me,” she growled.

  “I wanted to know what you were doing, and I happened to see you slinking out of your house.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “You don’t want to have this conversation here.” He came to his feet with zero finesse and a lot of cursing through the pain radiating along his leg, then extended his hand to help her up. “We’ll talk at home. And this time you’ll come clean, or I’ll haul your ass in for trespassing.”

  She swatted his hand away and stood. “You wouldn’t dare have me arrested.”

  Abel stepped closer. So close he could see the whites of her eyes shining from the streetlamp, which was thankfully across the road and not directly above them. Her warm breath came out in pants, and he knew she was nervous...or aroused.

  “Try me,” he whispered against her lips before turning to head to his truck.

  He knew she’d follow, and right now his knee was screaming for him to sit down and take a pain pill...not that he would do the pills, but he could at least get off of it. Damn bullet wound.

  By the time he’d limped back to his car, Saige was getting in hers. This time he didn’t bother trailing too far behind. He followed and pulled right into her drive after her. For one thing he didn’t want her to lock him out before he could get into her house. And if he parked next door, he truly feared he wouldn’t be able to make the walk with this blasted knee. Thankfully it was his left one, or he would’ve had to ride with her.

  When he got out, Saige slammed the door to her car and stomped, yes, stomped, like a toddler up her steps and jammed the key in her door. He didn’t wait for an invitation; he merely walked, or rather hobbled, in behind her.

  Fluffy came up and rested her paws on Saige’s slender shoulders. Saige patted her head and kissed her nose before gently setting the dog down.

  “What the hell were you thinking following me?” she whirled around and asked. “What part of ‘this is none of your business’ do you not understand?”

  Pain and the thought of her getting involved with the wrong crowd doing drugs and going to dog fights nearly had launched him past the boiling point.

  “You made this my business when you called me here to help you with a wounded animal.” He stepped closer, refusin
g to cringe from the shooting pain. “And when I see someone sneaking around after dark, wearing all black and afraid to answer simple questions, I have to assume they’re breaking the law.”

  Saige rolled her eyes. “You just have no clue. I don’t give a damn if I’m breaking the law, and right now I have other things I need to see to. My arm is killing me, so if you’ll show yourself out, I’ll lock up behind you when I’m done in the bathroom.”

  She turned to head down the hallway, but the gaping hole in her torn shirt had him hissing and limping to keep up.

  “Your arm is bleeding,” he told her as he followed.

  “No kidding. I need to get it bandaged before I make a mess all over the new carpet the owners put in before I bought this place. Can’t afford to replace it.”

  Fluffy followed them and curled up on the bright yellow bath mat. Saige reached beneath the vanity and pulled out a tote full of medical supplies.

  “Do you have to bandage yourself often?” he asked, taking note of all the bandages and gauze she had in the clear container.

  “More often than I’d like to admit.” She pried the lid off with one hand and started shuffling through. “Besides, some of this is also for the dogs.”

  Abel needed to do something to keep her talking and something to keep his mind off his own pain. Surely he could just rest the knee and still be up to par for his doctor’s appointment on Monday. He hadn’t come this far with months of grueling therapy to let some eccentric vixen crush his goals.

  “Sit down,” he demanded. “I’ll pull out what you need and fix your arm. There’s no way you can see what the hell you’re doing.”

  She hesitated for about a second before taking a seat on the commode. He nearly fell over when she didn’t back talk. Obviously she was too tired or too hurt. This night had gone to hell real fast, and he hadn’t been kidding about having her arrested. If he so much as thought she was mixed up in drugs or dog fights, he’d have her booked before she could peel out of this second-skin spandex...no matter how sexually attracted he was.

  Abel pulled out butterfly bandages, cotton, peroxide and some antibiotic ointment. After setting everything on the counter, he went to examine the wound.

  “You’re going to have to remove your shirt,” he told her. “Some of the material is sticking to the blood, and I can’t see how deep the cut is.”

  She eyed him over her shoulder and smirked. “If I see your phone come out of your pocket for a picture, I’ll kill you.”

  Abel smiled. “I believe you.”

  He really tried to act like he was opening the supplies, but he’d be a total liar if he pretended he wasn’t sneaking a peek as she tried to pry the shirt up over her head, which got stuck, because she couldn’t lift her arm very well.

  Mercy. This must be what hell was like. A near-naked woman, a horny guy and absolutely nothing they could do about it, because the near-naked woman got on horny dude’s nerves, and he was pretty sure she was a near felon.

  “Damn it, you’re going to hurt yourself,” he said, moving over to take the hem that was stuck around one armpit. “Lift your good arm.”

  He pulled that side of the shirt off, slid it over her head and then carefully pulled it down the injured arm and afterward flung it over the old claw-foot tub. Fluffy was oblivious to any tension, because now the dog was snoring.

  “God,” Abel groaned as a familiar, pungent smell filled the enclosed space. “Is that just like a trigger? When the eyes close, the ass opens?”

  Saige laughed. “Something like that.”

  Abel tried to block the smell and focus. He refused to admire the way the pale pink bra stood out on her tanned skin. He also refused to think that she either sunbathed in a bikini or topless for her back to be so tan. Or, she could go to the tanning bed. Nah, he liked his original image. And this was the second time he’d questioned her lack of tan lines.

  Well, he’d wanted something to distract him from the pain of his knee...a shirtless Saige should do it.

  “How bad does it look?” she asked, resting her good arm on the towel rack beside and above the toilet. “Does it need stitches?”

  “I can’t tell. Let me clean it up first. Do you have an old washcloth?”

  “Under the sink.”

  Abel found a stack of neatly folded rags with frayed edges. He wet one with cold water and gently applied it to her arm around where the wound appeared to be the worst. After wiping off the dried blood, he looked closer.

  “It looks like a few butterfly bandages will work, unless you’re worried about a scar. In that case, you may want a professional to do stitches.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll take the scar. My insurance isn’t the best, so I think I’ll stay away from the E.R.”

  Admiration for a woman who didn’t shy away from imperfections had his attraction growing stronger. He didn’t have time for this. Sexual attraction was one thing, any emotion beyond that was unwelcome at this point in his life.

  He poured some peroxide on a cotton ball and dabbed at the wound to clean it. Then he put some ointment on another cotton pad and slid it along the jagged tear. When she hissed he jerked away.

  “Sorry.”

  “Not your fault I got caught on a fence.”

  “Care to tell me what you were doing hanging on a fence in that part of town this late at night?”

  Saige sighed, resting her head on her bent arm over the towel rack. “Are we back to that again?”

  He didn’t say a word. Best on-the-job training was when he learned to wait out the suspect. Eventually they would start talking, and most times they didn’t know when to shut off their speaker. He hoped that was the case with Saige, and he sure as hell hoped he wasn’t going to have to have her arrested. The image of her in cuffs wasn’t pleasant, unless the other end of the cuff was hooked to his headboard.

  “I was going to get a dog,” she muttered.

  He froze. “Excuse me?”

  “A dog,” she said louder. “I was there to steal a dog.”

  Questions ran together in his head, and he had no clue which one he wanted to start with first. Good thing this wasn’t an actual perp, or he’d look like a total moron. Apparently a year off the force had damaged the working part of his brain.

  Of course, he’d never interrogated a sexy woman without her shirt on, either.

  “I will so regret this,” he muttered. “Why were you stealing a dog?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  He applied a total of five butterfly bandages and stood aside to examine his work. Not too bad for a retired cop with only a little medical training.

  Abel took her by the shoulders, careful of her wound, and turned her fully around to face him. “Why don’t you try me?”

  Saige looked up at him with those mesmerizing green eyes, and he tried his hardest to keep focused and not be a typical male and allow his eyes to venture down to her rack, which was now mocking him. Before, when he was looking at her back, he was fine. Well, not fine but better than being face-to-face, or face to tits with...

  God, this hellish night was never going to end.

  “I steal dogs.”

  Abel rested his hands on his hips and glared down at her. “Want to explain in further detail?”

  “Not really but I have a feeling neither of us are leaving my bathroom until I tell you.”

  “Yeah, and this is literally turning into a gas chamber,” he said as Fluffy exhaled a huge breath. He shifted, wincing when his knee protested at the extra weight. “Actually, I need to sit.”

  “You were limping quite a bit after the fall. Did I hurt you?”

  She came to her feet, and because the bathroom was so narrow, she was nearly chest to chest with him. His damn eyes betrayed him, and he glanced down, then up again.
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  “My injury is a year old. It’s usually fine, but falling didn’t help. I just need to get off of it.”

  “Abel, why didn’t you tell me you were hurting that bad?” she asked, her brows drawn with worry. “You’ve been standing in here, and we could’ve done this on the bed where we could both sit.”

  Yeah, because on the bed would’ve been so much less painful. For the knee maybe, not so much for his erection pressing against his zipper.

  “I’m okay,” he told her. “I needed to see to your arm first, and I didn’t want you to kick me out.”

  Saige laughed, and he noticed her face was void of any makeup, any gloss on her lips. She was truly beautiful. Of course, that could be the part of his brain talking that was admiring her lacy bra, but he really didn’t think so. She was beautiful; the bra part was just sexy as hell.

  She reached up, her hand resting on his shoulder. “Thank you for patching me up.”

  That delicate hand had his breath hitching. When was the last time he’d been touched by someone who was so gentle, so delicate? And his sister didn’t count.

  “It was the only way I could get you to talk,” he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  Her smiled faded, but her eyes remained locked on his. “I imagine in your line of work you have no trouble getting people to talk. Especially women.”

  “I couldn’t get you to talk last night.”

  She slid her hand away but not before it traveled over his pecs and sent a racing course of shivers through his body. This, all of it, was a bad idea. He should’ve ignored her when she had snuck out of her house, should have never, ever offered to patch up her arm and never offered to stay. He could go sit in his recliner, damn it. He needed to leave ASAP. But the sexually charged dormant man in him refused to beat feet and go home.

  “I wasn’t comfortable with you last night.”

  “And you’re comfortable now?”

  Her eyes darted to his lips. “Comfortable isn’t the word I’d use to describe what I’m feeling.”

  “I agree.”