The Fox and her Bear (Mating Call Dating Agency, #2) (11 page)

“I know I already asked you once, but do you think I’m crazy?” Angie asked.

“Yes,” Colton replied flatly. “You have to be to be as interesting as you are. But do I think it’s
bad
crazy? Hell no, not at all. I think you should roll the dice on this guy because unless you’ve made up all these stories like I did when I pretended I was dating a wolf girl from California when I was in sixth grade, I think he’s a keeper.”

“You
what
?”

“It’s a long story. Okay not really, but it is embarrassing as hell and I already told you the most important part of it, so there we go. Angie,” he grabbed her shoulders. “Stop questioning yourself. You know how badly you’ve wanted this. You know it’s your turn to have something good. God knows you’ve earned it.”

Listening to her friend say that made Angie’s cheeks burn. “Really? Why?”

“For all the things you’ve done for this town? For the people you’ve helped and the lives you’ve saved with that steely nerve and quick brain of yours? For the fact that in the five years I’ve known you, you haven’t said anything negative about anyone?” He paused for a moment, considering. “Okay, well I’ll amend that by saying – nothing negative about anyone that wasn’t both true and constructive in the long run – which is far more accurate.”

She laughed at that, and the smile lingered on her face afterward.

“You remember that guy from the donut shop date? Whatever his name was? Jamie Danish or something?”

Again, she started snickering. “Uh, Jake Lamar? That poor guy. I hope he ends up with some nice girl who acts submissive so he doesn’t feel like he’s being bossed around. Jamie Danish sounds like the lamest mobster in history.”

“Right,” he said. “See? See what you just said? Anyone else would have something like ‘oh yeah, that asshole,’ or ‘right, that guy was a creep.’ But you? Of course not. You say that you hope he ends up with a nice girl who suits him. And you’re asking me why you deserve something good for once?”

She sat back in her chair and interlaced her fingers behind her head. Her curls became a toy for a moment; she twisted her fingers among them, then pulled her hair and let it spring back into place. “Yeah,” she said, “I guess I do.”

What she was thinking though was that she didn’t think anyone
deserved
anything. Everyone takes different things from college, and for Angie, it was existentialism. Well, existentialism and a lifelong love of Malbec and dark, stout beer. Those were the two things she couldn’t physically drink enough of to get a hangover of any note, so she had always felt pretty proud of herself for discovering those things.

“Ange?” Colton asked. “You’re drooling.”

“Oh,” she laughed and wiped her face. “Just thinking about beer.”

“O-okay,” he said. “So when are you going on your honeymoon? And are you gonna invite me to the mating ceremony? The part before the actual mating, I mean. I don’t want to watch that. Because you totally should. I want to see the thing, er I mean not
that
thing, just the vows part. And then you can tell your grandkids that the only reason they exist is that Uncle Colton told you to jump at the chance to find a good guy instead of being a baby and running away.”

“That was... oddly specific,” Angie said with a laugh. “But yeah, sure. Whenever it happens I’m sure you’ll be there.”

Immediately, like she’d just been shot in the brain with a lightning bolt, she went starkly still. A million thoughts – did she really just say that being chief among them – bounced around in her skull. Echoes that reminded her of shouting down the mouth of a sinkhole blanketed her mind. She just let herself admit something she’d been afraid to allow – she
was
thinking about this guy as a mate. She hardly knew him, but it seemed like they’d been together for an eternity. They’d been through a hell of a lot in the three days since they met, and they hadn’t even had a proper date yet.

Her phone buzzed again.
“Look out the window
,” his text read. She stood up and did. The sun was just beginning to peek up above the horizon. Underneath it was White Lake, the town’s namesake body of water. Orange fingers shimmered across the surface of the lake, warming her face just at the thought of sharing a sunrise with Dawson.

“
Looking
,” she texted back. “
It’s beautiful
.
Are you looking too?
”

Her house was facing more or less the same direction as the windows on the top floor of the police station where she was currently staring out the window. If he was, he’d see the same thing.

It took a few moments before he responded, during which she let the twinkling rays of sunlight on the water ease her fears and her worries.
If anything happens I can always just start over
, she thought
, again. I don’t want anything to happen though. This is what I want. He – Dawson – is what I’ve been looking for, even if I hadn’t known it until I met him
.

When her phone finally buzzed again, it reminded her she wasn’t actually standing at a beautiful cliff staring out over the ocean with her apparently beloved bear by her side. “
I was looking at it and thinking of you. Your hair. How you felt when I touched your face
.
I can’t wait until you get off
.
An hour now
?”

He almost took her breath. Not only is he a musician with a golden spoon, he also sweet talks with the best of them. “
How the hell did I find you
?” she replied. “
I know we’ve known each other for less than a week, but—”

She was half done when he continued his message. “
It doesn’t matter if it’s an hour or a year. You’re the one for me, and somehow I know that. I’m not going to lose you, no matter what
.”

Her finger hung over the touch screen, trembling slightly. How the hell do you respond to that? Do you even try? She asked herself over and over again what it all meant, what it was that drew them together. Instead she decided just to continue her text. “
But it all feels so right
.
Let’s just let it be whatever it is
.”

She paused again, waiting for some divine inspiration to spark her to action, but none came. It was all her and Dawson, nothing else in the world mattered right then. Colton’s chair was squeaking as he turned back and forth, and the computer bank behind her was clicking out its standard rhythm. It was all so familiar, but at that moment it felt purely alien, like the first time you go into a building that’s completely empty when before you’ve only seen it full.

“
Deal
.
I’ll never ask any more than for you to be you. And see? I’m not fat-fingering anything this time. Not yet anyway.
”

The hint of levity was very welcome and the naughty joke was good too. She cracked a smile and extemporaneously decided to turn around and snap a picture of herself in front of the window.

“Oh Jeez, it’s selfie time?” Colton said. He was grinning. “You have no idea how happy I am for you. If you want to run, no one will know. These hours are dead time. I can cover you.”

She hit send without adding a message. “You sure?” she asked. “I’ll owe you one.”

“You owe me about thirty at this point. Get on out of here, you have a bear waiting to see you.”

For a moment, Angie pondered telling him she was on the way, but decided to surprise him. She loved surprises, and given how things had gone so far, she thought he probably would too. And even if he didn’t, it’d be fun to stroll in the door naked and see how he reacted. His ribs were getting better, he could stand a good wrestling match, or at least some nudie snuggling.

“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I know it’s really, really good.”

What she didn’t see as she left the Batcave were Colton’s twinkling eyes and the email he had started to a certain [email protected]. “It worked,” he wrote. “I have no idea how to thank you, but... yeah, I think we have a winner.”

He clicked send.

––––––––

I
t took about five minutes for Angie to get home from the Cave and about five more for her to work up the courage to strip off her clothes in the car. There was so much natural greenery around her house that being spotted by either Mrs. Eldwood to her left, or Mrs. Bridger to the right wasn’t much of a fear. And anyway, Mrs. Bridger at least enjoyed naturist hikes, so she wouldn’t think a single thing about it.

What took building up courage though was the fact that she was doing something she hadn’t ever even
thought
of doing. This was something straight out of a rom-com, something that people only did in college and then told horror stories about how they were expecting their boyfriend but forgot he was having a Super Bowl party with a dozen guests who all got an eyeful. That was stupid. Dawson wasn’t the party type, and anyway it wasn’t even seven in the morning.

One by one, she dispensed with these fears by reading and re-reading Dawson’s incredibly sweet, panty-melting text messages. She’d heard of people being heartbroken over callused text message breakups, but she’d not yet heard of someone falling in love because of one. Although she thought maybe she’d fallen for him the second they caught eyes over that pan of fried chicken.

“I’m being an idiot,” she announced to her car. “I am sitting in my driveway, without any clothes on, and I’m probably leaving a sweaty spot on my seat. Time to put up or shut up, girl. Get out there and do something wild and crazy.”

Her mirror didn’t respond, and neither did the steering wheel, but as it always did, her little out loud pep talk worked wonders for her bizarre brain. She decided to reapply some lip gloss, and put her socks and shoes back on because there
were
some goathead stickers in her lawn last time she mowed, and nothing in the world would be less sexy than a naked girl appearing in the doorway of a bedroom hopping around on one foot and picking at stickers. She wished her driveway connected to the walkway up to her door, but that was no time to think about pouring concrete.

The mental image of her doing that gave her a little shot of laughter, and that was all it took. One last look toward Mrs. Eldwood’s house confirmed that the octogenarian ferret-shifter wasn’t gardening. Giggling madly, Angie kicked open her door, ran halfway to her house, ran back to the car to shut the door she’d accidentally left open, and then back to the house.

She grabbed the door handle, and then remembered that her keys were in her jeans. She gave it a tug anyway, hoping it was open, and when the door swung to greet her, she was so surprised she just about fell over herself on the ground.

Aside from the sizzle of bacon on the stove, her bear was standing there, tending the skillet and singing along to some sexy, slightly-dirty sound of Thin Lizzy’s
Dancing in the Moonlight
that emanated from the radio on her windowsill.

He waved back over his shoulder, but didn’t turn. Jeans hung loosely about his muscled waist. Dawson’s sides were wrapped in thick bandages, but from the way he was moving back and forth from foot to foot, he was in vastly less pain than he by all rights should have been.

“You’re up early,” she said as she came up behind him, purred softly and buried her face in the muscles of his back. “And... oh my God your pants are undone. You are straight out of a Chippendale’s show.” Without a second’s pause, she kicked her shoes off, and used her toes to slip off her socks.

Angie slid her hands down Dawson’s stomach and into the tuft of hair that would have been hidden if his jeans were buttoned. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked. “Make me kill you with desperation?” she bit him softly on the shoulder and dragged her teeth down his arm just a bit. The groan Dawson let out thrilled her to the core of her being.

“Oh, just figured you’d be hungry. Just about to put the pancakes on. But,” he paused, and an unseen smile spread across his lips. “You’re naked, aren’t you?” The heat of his back spread through her. “Holy shit, you are.”

She just hugged against him for long enough to fill her nose with his scent. “You are a man that I cannot believe has wandered into my life.”

Just as the raspy chorus of the song lilted into life, a smile danced across Dawson’s lips, like it was coming home to roost. He grabbed her hands, both in one of his, and his fingertips danced against the small of her back. “It’s just pancakes,” he said with a smile. Somehow, just those words, and the gentle way he watched her eyes got Angie’s knees a little weak in the sweetest way. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she whispered as her bear swayed back and forth in tune with the sexually-charged saxophone’s moaning. “But I think the pancakes can wait.”

Dropping to her knees and trailing her fingernails along the ripples of Dawson’s muscled stomach, she dripped them along his bandages and down further where his jeans lay open. The thick hair, attached to that on his chest by a long trail, was soft as she buried first her fingers and then her face, against him.

Her breath tickled his cock to life. Thicker and harder, as the seconds ticked by, he swelled in her hands. She held him like an axe, hands one atop the other. “God,” she moaned, sliding her lips along his shaft, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Believe it,” Dawson whispered, punctuated with a gasp as Angie took him into her mouth. Her tongue flashed across his tip, then swirled around his head before she backed off for a breath. His scent, and his taste, filled her entire body. The warmth radiated out from her center, sending goosebumps and a hot, red flush, up her neck. Involuntarily, she squeezed him and then slid her lips around his tip again.

“Teeth,” he whispered. “Just a little... just... yeah... God yes,” he sucked a breath between his clenched jaws. “More... more.”

Angie moved her hands around to her bear’s thickly muscled ass, and pulled him hard into her. The deeper he slid into her mouth, Dawson’s groaning grew louder, hungrier, more desperate. He tangled his fingers in her hair and took a deep breath.