Page 38 of Twisted Shot
And not the sexy, whiskey-scented kind from last night. No, this one is damp and slightly fishy, accompanied by a snort and a full-body sneeze that sprinkles her cheek like morning dew.
“Gordie,” she groans, pushing the squat little bulldog away from her pillow.
Gordie Howl pants happily and plops his considerable weight directly on her stomach, clearly thrilled she’s alive.
Her skull pulses with a dull, wine-soaked throb. Her mouth has a sour taste, like she’d licked a penny.
As she blinks fully awake, pieces of the night before start clicking back into place, soft and disjointed at first, like flickers of a dream she’s not sure she actually had. The hush of the night air. The press of a body against hers. The glint of firelight on a black mask.
His voice.
His hands.
And, oh God, what she let him do with those hands.
She groans into the pillow covering her face.
What was I thinking?
Flirting with a stranger was one thing—that was manageable. But letting him touch her? Kiss her? Grind her against the wall like she was a damn sorority girl in a costume and not a grown woman with a condo and a mortgage?
She should be ashamed. Deeply. Profoundly.
Not to mention, she has no idea who that man was. Because she still doesn’t know his name.
He could be anyone. A trainer. A staffer. Hell, he could be on the team.
And if she scores this contract, if she ends up working directly with the Whalers, then she might have accidentally kicked off a business relationship by dry-humping a client. Which would officially be strike two on the “don’t hook up with people you work with” scoreboard.
Her stomach knots. Stupid. So, so stupid.
But then her brain—traitorous, unbothered—hands her a flash of him.
The press of his body. His breath at her ear. That voice, all rough edges and dark promises, murmuring “Say yes, sir.”
Heat curls between her thighs like a match dropped on dry leaves.
Mila groans and fans herself with the duvet, cursing her body for being so dramatic.
Okay. So maybe shame and propriety are overrated.
Because that orgasm? That wasn’t just sex. That was a spiritual experience. Like he’d hacked into her nervous system with nothing but his voice and the weight of his hands and flipped some hidden switch she didn’t know existed.
Which is now officially a problem.
Because Mila Anderson is many things—brand whisperer, breakfast cereal aficionado, high-functioning over-thinker—but a woman who can hook up with a masked stranger and then go about her life like nothing happened?
Not a chance.
She tosses off the duvet and winces when her bare feet hit cool hardwood. Gordie waddles after her as she grabs her phone from the nightstand. No new messages.
Downstairs, the kitchen smells like bacon and coffee. Natalieslumps over the island in Jake’s hoodie, a pair of sunglasses on despite the gray, overcast morning, with a thin wash of light filtering through the windows.
Jake, on the other hand, is chipper and irritatingly well-hydrated, flipping pancakes like a man who’s never known pain.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says, grinning. “Sleep okay?”
“Like the dead,” Mila mutters, heading straight for the coffee pot.
