When the large shadow leaped from inside the house, Mac’s instincts kicked in…
First thing: Protect the girl. He grabbed Delilah around the waist and lunged off the porch, landing on the hard ground on his back—Ow! Sonofa—before rolling Delilah beneath him and covering her with his body. Second thing: Acquire the target. He reached into his waistband, grabbed his Glock 22 .40 caliber pistol, pulled back the side, and lifted the weapon to stare down the night sights.
Just as he’d been taught at the Academy, he scanned the yard in front of him. Acquiring target. Acquiring target. Acqu—There!
“Don’t shoot!” Ozzie yelled. “It’s just a dog!”
And, sure as shit, Mac’d already figured that out for himself. He glanced over his shoulder to see Steady sprawled on his back in the middle of the porch, his neck wrenched back, his arms over his head aiming his handgun into the front yard. Ozzie and Zoelner had taken up positions behind the front pillars supporting the porch’s roof, their weapons drawn, their fingers on the triggers.
Well, good to see we’ve all still got it, he mused, turning back in time to witness—oh, goody—the big, yellow dog squatting down in order to take a mammoth dump on the lawn.
“Well, that’s not exactly what I was expecting,” he heard Ozzie mutter, amusement in his tone.
“Mac?” A muffled voice sounded from beneath him. Ah, shit. He’d jumped on Delilah quicker than a duck on a Junebug, and now the poor woman was probably suffocating under his not unsubstantial weight.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he apologized, pushing up on his elbows and staring down into her pretty face. There was a smudge of dirt on her chin, and her cheeks were flushed. But other than that, she appeared unscathed. He should have rolled off her. He should have.
He didn’t.
Because she was soft and lush, and for a moment, during which time he was quite sure he’d up and lost his cotton-pickin’ mind, he allowed himself to revel in the sensation of her beneath him. “It was a…” Holy crow, was that his voice? All low and growly? “…a false alarm.”
She nodded jerkily. But it wasn’t fear he saw in her eyes. Hell, no. Fear would not have had every cell inside him screeching to a stop. Awareness would. And that’s exactly what was plastered all over Delilah’s face. Her awareness. Of him. As a man…
And just as every cell inside him came to a grinding halt, so, too, did the rest of the world. The eerie sounds of the downtrodden neighborhood vanished. His teammates and the big, goofy dog appeared frozen in place. It was just the two of them. Just Mac and red-hot Delilah—her lush breasts brushing his chest on an indrawn breath, her green irises speckled with tiny flecks of gold. Up close like this, he could see that he’d been right all along. Her skin was completely, damnably flawless. Her lips plump and smooth. And speaking of… She opened her mouth on an exhale that tickled his chin and allowed her sweet breath to tunnel up his nostrils.
The stupid things flared of their own accord, and when she saw his reaction, she shifted. Just a little. Just enough so that her leg slipped to the outside of his. Just enough for her fun parts to directly align with his. Little Mac, never one to miss this kind of opportunity, swelled and strained against his zipper. His balls instantly tightened and began throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He was lost. Lost in the sight of her. In the feel of her. In the wondrous—
Slurp! A warm, wet tongue curled under his chin, then journeyed the length of his face to tangle in his hair. Slurp! The action was repeated, and he looked up into the bright brown eyes of the Labrador.
Hello, reality. Where the hell have you been the last twenty seconds?
“Cut it out, you big goofball.” He pushed the dog’s massive head away as the world around him once more skipped into action. The Labrador sat back, thick tail thumping the grass, a doggy grin splitting its face. Then the beast let loose with a gleeful, “Yorp!”
The bark sounded like something that would come from the throat of a pubescent boy, cracking up an octave somewhere in the middle.
“Well, that’s a pathetically wimpy excuse for a bark if ever I heard one,” Steady muttered, turning over to rub his tailbone—the thing no doubt bruised from the ass-plant he’d done onto the boards of the porch.
“Yorp!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Mac pushed at that big, yellow head again when it started nosing in his direction, long, pink tongue poised to strike. “We heard you the first time.” He squinted at the flashing, silver pendant attached to the dog’s blue collar, and thought, really? “Fido, huh? I guess ol’ Charles isn’t real creative when it comes to pet naming.”
“His name is Fido?” Ozzie called from the porch, having holstered his weapon.
Mac was about to turn and nod over his shoulder when he felt movement beneath him. A soft, seductive sort of wiggle.
For the love of Christ! He was still sprawled atop Delilah!
Now, he really wished he could say he nonchalantly, just oh-so-casually rolled off her. That would’ve been the acceptable way to handle the situation. But considering he remembered, at that precise moment, that he’d gone and sprung the world’s hardest boner—the thing could’ve been used to cut glass—it should’ve come as no surprise that the jackknife maneuver he used to propel himself upward was one for the record books. The World’s Most Ludicrous and Uncoordinated Dismounts record books…
“Well, yeehaw, cowboy! Did that pretty filly buck you off?” Ozzie called. “And you call yourself a bona fide Texan? Pssht.”
Mac chose to ignore Ozzie because, really, how the hell was he expected to think of a comeback at a time like this? Instead, he reached down, offering Delilah a hand, and hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t noticed the spruce tree he’d been packing inside his pants while lying atop her.
No such luck. When he hauled her to her feet, the surprised, slightly speculative look in her eye—not to mention the deep flush staining her cheeks and that deliciously overripe chest of hers—told him she hadn’t missed a damn thing.
Well…hell…
Chapter Eight
“Holy hemp balls, Batman! Look at the size of this thing! It’s Goliath’s bong!”
Delilah was sitting at Charlie’s kitchen table and frowning at the personal income tax returns and financial records she’d found in the filing cabinet acting as an end table in the nearby living room. A needle in a haystack…that’s what she was looking for. Something nefarious in Charlie’s dealings that might tell her why he was missing along with her uncle. And Charlie was missing. Gone for at least two days, by her guess. You know, given the state of the dry, crusty food on the dishes stacked in the sink and the general mayhem the dog had created when he began to worry his owner wouldn’t return.
The cushions on the brown, threadbare sofa in the living room were shredded, cotton sticking out everywhere and littering the space in great, white wads that glimmered in the light of the two lamps flanking the front window. Toilet paper was strewn around the downstairs bathroom and glued to the wet linoleum floor—glued because Fido had been using the toilet as his water bowl and he hadn’t been very fastidious about it, dropping big, sticky blobs of drool and potty water everywhere. And then there was the bottom of the front door… It looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a wood chipper and lost. The wood chipper being Fido’s teeth and claws in his frantic bid for freedom from the house.