Page 15 of On the Run
“She hates when I turn the light on. She reallywouldbe a murder cat, then.” The giant hesitated, then held out the hand with the flashlight—which turned out to be his cell phone. “Just hold this so I can see what I’m doing, ’kay? And don’t shine it in her eyes.”
I nodded silently, and I wasn’t sure he could see, but he seemed to understand.
I could not think of a single life experience more lowering than this. Hunted by paparazzi to the wilds of Florida, abandoned and alone, attacked by a house cat, forced to accept help from an intruder… though, yeah, an intruder who’d given me his cell phone, so maybe not even a verygoodintruder. I wondered where my life had gone wrong.
“No more VIP parties,” I swore. “No more parties at all.”
“Wanna play fetch, Marjorie?” The guy reached out a hand and petted the cat, who batted his hand away. “Let’s go for a walk?”
She pointedly ignored him and clawed me.
“Eeep.” I cleared my throat. “Um. Not to tell you how to do your job, but fetch is for dogs. Are you sure she’s yours?”
“Know a lot about murder cats, do you?” he asked in that same mild voice.
He reached for the edge of the sheet, and the cat hiss-coughed again. I shuddered.
“I’m just saying—” My voice was mortifyingly high. “If you could maybe find her a mouse to chase or a bowl of cream to eat before she de-peni-fies me, that would be great.”
The guy gave me a stern glare I could sense more than see. “I’m tryna make sure she doesn’t de-peni-fy either of us. Now, hush and let me do this.”
“Excuse me? I am not your servant. I will not hush. I will continue to—” I moved the flashlight to get a better look at the guy and shut my mouth with a clack becauseholy shit, it seemed the rescue-intruder was naked also.
What the hell? Did he run around naked with his cat, invading people’s homes? Was that athingin Florida? Or had Mason left out important details about life on this little island?
First things first, I reminded myself sternly. When the bomb squad rolled up to defuse your bomb, you didn’t ogle them or wonder why they were in the neighborhood. To be fair, I was pretty sure they didn’t generally show up naked, though, and they sure as fuck never looked like this guy did.
He was tall—and not just tall, honey, I meantaaaalllll—and beefy, but not like those gym rat muscle daddies who were so swole one wondered how they could bend their arms far enough to brush their own teeth. Maybe it was because this guy’s shoulders were wide enough to accommodate his pectoral muscles. Maybe it was because his thighs were so tree-trunky. Who cared? Everything about him was perfectly, wonderfully… proportional.
Which naturally made a person—me—wonder how proportional his other… proportions were. Right? If I were about to bleed out from a dick wound, I figured I deserved one last glimpse of a cock besides my own, especially since it was the intruder’s fault I was about to be a murder victim anyway. I casually nudged the beam of light closer to his waist, just in case this might be my last chance on earth to catch a glimpse, and—
“… your penis,” the guy concluded in that same deep voice.
I fumbled the phone and caught it again. “Sorry, what?”
“I said, stop looking at me and put the light on the cat if you want me to move her before she claws off your penis.” He sounded annoyed now. No longer mild. “Or mine.”
Ooops. Busted.
“But remember not to shine it in her eyes.”
“I was just trying to get a good look at you so I could identify you,” I sniffed as I obeyed. “When I report this incident to the police.”
“Me? I’m not the one who… Wait. How would that even work? You’re going to put my dick in a lineup?”
“Hardly,” I said haughtily, but I was momentarily caught by the idea of me saying, “I just don’t know for sure, Officer. Can you make them all turn for me again?” and I snickered.
“Is this funny?” the guy demanded.
“No! And I didn’t even see anything.” I sounded pouty. Iwaspouty. But in my defense, these were trying circumstances, and I was not at my best.
The giant sighed. “Okay. On the count of three, I’m going to reach my hands under the sheet and lift her off you, to minimize damage. You ready?”
“Under the sheet.”
“Yes.”
“Where my junk is.”
