The head cocked to the opposite side this time.
“Look, buddy. I really don’t want to drive into town, grab a hook, and come back here to scare the hell out of you. It’d be a lot easier if you’d just tiptoe your scruffy ass over here.”
The matted mess of fur stared back at me, nonplussed. Then it took a tentative step forward.
“That’s a good dog.”
“Nash!”
I heard my name a split second before something warm and solid barreled into my torso. The impact had me rearing up, smacking my head off the top of the pipe.
“Ow! Fuck!”
The dog, now thoroughly terrified, jumped backward to cower in its nest of filth.
I scrambled out of the pipe, my head and shoulder singing. Operating on instinct, I got a hand on my attacker and used my momentum to pin them to the ground.
Pin her.
Lina was warm and soft beneath me. Her eyes were wide with surprise, hands gripping my shirt in tight fists. She was sweating and wearing earbuds.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, yanking one of her earbuds free.
“Me? What the hell are you doing lying on the side of the road?”
She shoved against me with her fists, her hips, but even with the weight I’d lost, she couldn’t dislodge me.
It was right about that moment when I realized the position I was in. We were chest to chest, stomach to stomach. My groin was settled solidly between her long, shapely legs. I could feel the heat of her core like I was facedown in a furnace.
My body reacted accordingly, and I went stone hard against her.
I was both relieved and horrified. Horrified for obvious respectful and legal reasons. The fact that my equipment seemed to be working was good news, seeing as how I hadn’t taken it for a test drive since the shooting. So many things about me were now broken, I hadn’t wanted to have to add my cock to the list.
Lina was panting under me and I could see the flutter of her pulse in that slim, graceful neck. The throb of my hard-on intensified. I hoped to God for a miracle that would prevent her from feeling it.
“I thought you were dead in a ditch!”
“I get that a lot,” I said through gritted teeth.
She smacked me in the chest. “Very funny, you ass.”
Her hips shifted almost imperceptibly. My dick took immediate notice, and no amount of mustered professionalism, no manners could stop the images of what I wanted to do to her from flooding my mind.
I wanted to move, to thrust into that heat, using her body to bring myself back to life. I wanted to watch her lips part, her eyes drift closed as I powered into her. I wanted to feel her tighten around me, hear her whisper my name in that husky, sex-soaked voice.
I wanted to be buried inside her so deep that when she let go, she’d take me with her, wrapped up in all that heat.
This was more than a crush, a run-of-the-mill attraction. What I felt teetered on the line of uncontrolled craving.
The visuals flashing through my mind were enough to put me in actual danger of an even more humiliating situation. I took the frayed reins of my control and willed myself back from the brink.
“Fuck me,” I muttered under my breath.
“Here?”
My eyes snapped open and focused in on hers. Those deep brown depths held hints of amusement and something else. Something dangerous.
“Just kidding, hotshot. Mostly.”
She shifted under me again and my jaw locked. My lungs burned, reminding me to take a breath. There was nothing cold about my sweat now.
“Your gun is digging into me.”
“That’s not my gun,” I said through clenched teeth.
Her mouth curved wickedly. “I know.”
“Then stop moving.”
It took another thirty seconds, but I managed to peel myself off her. I regained my feet, then reached down to pull her up. Flustered, I pulled harder than necessary and had her crashing into my chest.
“Whoa, big guy.”
“Sorry,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders and then taking a very deliberate step back.
“Don’t apologize. I’d only ask you to apologize if you didn’t have a very healthy biological reaction to pinning me down.”
“You’re welcome?”
From the looks of her, she’d been out for a run. She wore tights and a lightweight long-sleeve top, both fitted like a second skin. Her sports bra was turquoise and her sneakers bright orange. She wore her phone strapped to one arm and a small can of pepper spray in a holster tucked into her waistband.
She cocked her head and returned my silent once-over. I felt her gaze like it was a caress. Good news for my dead insides. Bad news for the erection I was trying to will away.
We stood like that, closer than we should, with gazes roaming and breath strained, for a long, heated beat.
Those sparks in my gut had flared to life and spread, warming me from the inside out. I wanted to touch her again. Needed to. But just as I raised my hand to reach for her, a shrill beeping cut through my awareness.
Lina jumped back, slapping a hand over her wrist.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just…an alert,” she said, fumbling with her watch.
She was lying. I was sure of it. But before I could demand answers, a pitiful whimper echoed from the pipe.
Lina’s eyebrows rose. “What the hell was that?”
“A dog. At least I think it’s a dog,” I told her.
“That’s what you were doing?” she asked as she stepped around me and headed for the pipe.
“No. I wedge myself in drain pipes two or three times a week. It’s in the job description.”
“You’re a funny guy, hotshot.” Lina called over her shoulder as she dropped to her hands and knees in front of the pipe.
I stabbed at the skin between my eyebrows and tried not to pay attention to her provocative position, seeing as how my arousal was on a hair trigger already.
“You’re gonna ruin your clothes,” I warned her, looking up at the blue sky and not down at her as she crawled forward on all fours.
“That’s what laundry and shopping are for,” she said, ducking her head into the opening.
I glared down at my erection, which was digging into my zipper and belt.
“Hi there, sweetheart. How’d you like to come out of there so I can make it all better?”
She was talking—crooning—to the dog. I knew that. But something stupid and desperate inside me responded to her soothing, throaty tone.
“Let me handle this,” I said, mostly to her shapely ass in slate-gray tights.
“What a good boy or girl,” Lina said before popping back out. She had smudges of dirt on her cheek and sleeves. “Got any food in your vehicle, hotshot?”
Why hadn’t I thought of that? “I’ve got some beef jerky in the glove box.”
“Mind sharing your snack with our new friend? I think I can get him or her close enough to grab with something tempting.”
She was something tempting. I’d have belly crawled through frozen mud just to get a better look at her, but that was me, not some half-frozen stray.
I headed back to my SUV, willing the blood to vacate my groin. I found the beef jerky and gathered a few more necessities out of the emergency kit in the back, including a slip leash, dog bowl, and water bottle.