Page 32 of Taming Grumpy Dr. Beast
I shrugged. Her candid responses didn’t bother me. I loved that she challenged me.
Lily dropped her hand from my arm and scanned the area. Another whimper, and then a whine sounded off to our left, near a patch of rose bushes getting ready to bloom. “Do you have a pet?”
“God, no,” I answered.
She glared at me. “Of course not. You’d have to care about someone other than yourself.”
Apparently, the pleasant portion of our tour had come to an end.
Lily tilted her head. Another weak cry filtered through the flowers. She took one slow step after another in that direction. I shook my head. What was she doing? I hurried to her side, ready to pull her back. Who knew what was out there?
She shoved my hands away, ignoring my concerns. “What is wrong with you?” she whispered sharply.
“Excuse me?” No one dared to speak to me like that.
She placed a finger to her lips and shushed me. “If there’s an animal behind these bushes, we don’t need to scare it with your loud, plodding footsteps. Or your voice.”
Her hand reached for my arm, this time to tug me behind her in a crouched position. “We can call animal control,” I attempted to whisper.
She gave me a look that indicated I had not succeeded. “No. We don’t know if we need to. Let’s check it out first. At least see what it is before we make any calls. We don’t even know what we’re dealing with. Now, be quiet!”
We snuck closer to the flowers, the sounds of distress getting louder. Lily pulled apart the bushes. Just beyond them lay a black and white dog stuck within the thorns of an unbloomed rose bush. It was hard to tell how old it was. Maybe a year or two and I doubted it had eaten recently since it was painfully thin. When the dog saw us, it gave a half-hearted growl as if to warn us away.
“Oh, Jaxon. Look at him.” Lily’s voice caught. She leaned forward to untangle the dog, only to have it snap at her hand. “The thorns are digging into his sides.”
“What the fuck, Lily. That dog could hurt you.” The idea of her getting bitten didn’t sit right with me. I grabbed her hand and pulled it back, away from harm.
“He’s just scared.” A soothing, shushing sound came out of her mouth. She moved to the side of the dog once again, tugging me behind her. “We don’t want to face him head on. That’s too threatening.”
What did she really know about dealing with wild animals? “Let me call animal control. They’ll take care of him.”
“No, Jaxon, he’s shaking.” She gave me a sad, disappointed look.
I frowned. I hated how my insides twisted at the thought of disappointing her.
She continued to stare at me, and I at her. My eyes dropped to her mouth, and she licked her lips. Most likely an unconscious action, but it caused my cock to thicken. This was not the time to think with my dick, but being close to her like this, tucked behind her luscious ass, was messing with my mind.
She sucked in a breath, then shifted her eyes to my mouth. It would be so easy to kiss her right now. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, and I lost whatever control I had. I leaned in closer. She didn’t pull away, but that didn’t mean she wanted to kiss me. Another few inches, and I’d claim her mouth. But before I made a move, the dog yelped, and Lily turned her head, diverting her attention away from me.
Internally, I cringed at the dog’s painful utterance.
“We have to help him,” she whispered, sounding unaffected by my closeness.
“How?” I growled, shaking my head to clear away my thoughts of kissing her. “If we grab him, he’ll try biting us again.” Why was she risking herself for a dog? It wasn’t worth it.
Lily bit her lip again, and my cock responded with a twitch. “We just need something to wrap him in. He’s not that big.” She shrugged out of her sweater.
There was no way her sweater would adequately cover the dog. While the animal was small, the sweater wasn’t thick enough to protect her if it lashed out. My chest tightened at the thought of her getting hurt. I shoved the feeling away, not wanting to examine it too closely.
“That won’t work.” I waved my hand impatiently at her garment. Ignoring me, she crept closer to the dog, stretching her curled hands out toward it. It bared its teeth, growling, and tried to shift further away from us. A pained yelp came from it as the thorns thrust deeper into its body.
She was going to get hurt. Or the dog was going to further injure itself.
Damn it.
I drew my hand down my face. “Put your sweater back on.”
Lily stood and marched over to me. Her finger jabbed at my chest, a repeat of yesterday, and she said in a threatening whisper, “You can’t stop me from helping him.”
