Paws and Prejudice

by Alanna Martin

  No, they shouldn’t be doing this, but at the moment, Kelsey couldn’t remember why. She could reproach herself later when her brain was functioning again. “It’s for your therapy.”

  “This is probably the sort of behavior that makes therapists lose their licenses.”

  “Good thing I’m not actually a therapist.”

  Ian rolled on the condom and kissed her hard, backing her into the couch, and Kelsey dug her fingers into his sides, holding on to stay upright. “A very good thing,” he agreed. “Turn around.”

  Kelsey raised an eyebrow and turned her back on him. Warm arms wrapped around her as Ian slid between her legs, and whoa. As much as she didn’t like not being able to see him, being bundled in Ian’s long, strong limbs was pretty nice too. And when he kissed her neck and buried his face against her from behind, it might even be as good as being able to watch him. He moved slowly at first, the pressure building up inside her until she was gasping for breath.

  “Good?” Ian raised one hand so that his fingers could toy with her breast, and Kelsey closed her eyes with pleasure.

  It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see him. She could feel him so much—inside, outside. She was drowning in him, high on the scent of his skin. “God, yes. More.”

  She could feel his other hand slip down, and Ian’s fingers pressed between her legs, seeking out her most sensitive skin. Pleasure, so strong it ripped a scream from her throat, almost overtook her. It was too much more. It was perfection.

  She came a few seconds later, Ian’s fingers moving in rhythm with the rest of him. She caught her breath, listening to him cry out, feeling his body convulse against hers soon after. She still wished she could have watched him, but the heft of him against her back, the way he squeezed her almost painfully tight, was bliss too.

  Shit, shit. Shit. They weren’t supposed to do this a third time—or a fourth or more—but now all she was going to be able to do was contemplate other positions for sex with Ian. Sometimes having a potent imagination was a curse.

  * * *

  * * *

  PULLING OUT OF Kelsey sucked as much the second time as it had the first. And this time, Ian was aware that they had an audience. Juliet was in the kitchen, stretched out on the tile floor, eyes barely open. Ian wondered if they’d woken her from her post-dinner snooze.

  He also wondered how he’d managed to completely forget that she was there, probably no more than twenty feet away the entire time. Her leash could have gotten loose.

  If it had, he wasn’t sure he’d have noticed. And if he had noticed, he wasn’t sure he’d have stopped with Kelsey. Apparently, his lust was stronger than his fear. Was that good or bad?

  Also, was it any kind of lust, or did Kelsey simply arouse him more than his anxiety could bring him down? Oy. He hoped it wasn’t that, because if this was all Kelsey . . . Ian shook himself mentally. No, he didn’t have time for that. Besides, they agreed this wouldn’t happen again.

  Of course, they’d agreed that last time, too, and as he tore his gaze away from the dog and focused it back on the far more appealing woman next to him, Ian doubted his willpower. A naked, flushed Kelsey with red, swollen lips and skin shiny with their combined sweat was one hell of an aphrodisiac. He already wanted her again.

  Kelsey seemed to notice Juliet as she was pulling on her underwear, and she cast him a questioning glance.

  Ian did his best to ignore these heavy thoughts by offering her a light smile. “Told you I could last.”

  “Impressive. There might be hope for you yet.”

  There might be. But dinner was cooling off on the kitchen table, and Ian was far less certain about getting through it without his cock seizing control of the situation a second time.

  Ten minutes later, though, Kelsey had reheated their dinners and brought them into the living room. Since the original plan had been for Ian to eat and watch a movie with Juliet nearby, they were combining those two activities. Kelsey said it was because they’d spent too much time doing unapproved and unexpected things, but Ian wondered if it was because she thought they were less likely to use the couch for sex again if they had dinner on it. If so, he was fine with that. It was smart. Disappointing as well, but he had to stick to the no-more-sex-with-Kelsey plan as well as he’d stuck to the how-I-want-to-bang-Kelsey plan. For some reason, the former seemed like it was going to be way more difficult.

  “Movie?” Kelsey turned on the TV.

  Juliet had crept into the living room while Ian got dressed, but as long as she kept to Kelsey’s side of the couch, he wasn’t too antsy about it.

  “Sure.” Ian watched her pop a fry in her mouth and couldn’t stop from remembering how she’d taken him into her mouth. He might get over his dog issue thanks to her, but he was going to need a Kelsey intervention next. “Something with explosions.”

  Kelsey groaned. “Of course you’d want that. How about something with a story?”

  Ian actually didn’t care too much about what they watched, but he did need something compelling enough to keep his eyes on the screen and not on the woman next to him.

  Or her dog. Funny that the dog was an afterthought.

  “String enough explosions together and you have a story,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Just because you write romance . . .” Ian wasn’t sure where he was going with that, but it didn’t matter, because Kelsey smacked him with a throw pillow. “All right, that’s what we need—a compromise.”

  Kelsey turned to Juliet, who was gnawing on something that might have been a bone. “Men. You know what it’s like, don’t you, girl? We both have two brothers.” She ruffled the dog’s head, and Juliet barked once in solidarity.

  “Here we go, the perfect compromise.” Ian had been scrolling through the movies available on Kelsey’s streaming service.

  Kelsey glared at him. “Terminator? Isn’t that an old Arnold movie?”

  “It’s a classic. Have you really never seen it?”

  “Before my time, and I don’t go seeking out old movies about killer robots, and before you ask—I haven’t seen the more recent ones either. I like movies with plots, and they get bonus points if the people in them are dressed in uncomfortable-looking, historical costumes.”

  Terminator was before his time too. Ian wasn’t sure exactly how old Kelsey was, but he couldn’t be much older than her. He did, however, go seeking out classic movies about killer robots. And tended to avoid those with historical costumes.

  “Yes, Arnold is in it, and so are killer robots.” He held up a finger to cut her off. “But so is Linda Hamilton. You will like Linda Hamilton. Trust me. Especially when we watch T2.”

  Ian could totally see Kelsey becoming Linda Hamilton’s badass character if the situation ever called for it. She was secretly kind and caring, but she also had the take-no-prisoners attitude down flat. Any woman who bought him—a guy she supposedly disliked—a snowbrush for no good reason would totally threaten to kill a man with a pen if he stood between her and someone she loved. In fact, if he had to place bets on the winner between Kelsey and a killer robot, he’d probably go with Kelsey.

  “We’ll see about that.” Kelsey grumbled something, but selected the movie. “And I never agreed to a sequel.”

  “We’ll consider it for my next dog therapy session.”

  “You’re being so presumptuous again.” She was smiling as she said it, and a strange little ache awakened in Ian’s chest.

  He liked seeing her smile that way far too much.

  18

  KELSEY SCOOPED SOME of the whipped cream off her caffè mocha and closed the to-go lid. Sweetness melted against her tongue, and she would not . . . would not . . . Too late. She thought of Ian. Licking him. Sucking on him. Coating him in whipped cream.

  Damn it. She should never have let herself get carried away the other night. They’d star
ted texting each other over the past several days. Texting—like they were friends!

  They couldn’t be friends, because then this situation would mean they were acting like friends with benefits, and there could be no more benefits. She’d messed up majorly, and she feared doing it again.

  She also craved it. Her entire life was currently a disaster. Hence the need for chocolate and coffee.

  At least for the next half hour or so, she wouldn’t be able to think about Ian. Kelsey was meeting Josh for their afternoon walk, and she had a list of questions to ask him about his relationship with Taylor Lipin and what was going on with the feud. Usually Kelsey would be the one to have the inside scoop, but she’d been too preoccupied with other topics lately—cough, Ian—to pay much attention. She’d also been avoiding her parents, who were her primary source of information—also because of Ian, and more specifically, because of the memory of her father suggesting she date Ian, which still pissed her off.

  More so now than before, because she’d done it against her will.

  And there went her thoughts, circling back to Ian.

  Kelsey took a sip of her drink and burned her tongue on the hot coffee. That was a relief. For a second while she cursed the temperature, she thought about something else.

  Her respite, however, was short-lived. The Espresso Express’s door opened, and in walked Tasha McCleod.

  As she was part of the Lipin family, Kelsey wouldn’t normally pay Tasha any heed, but Tasha was no longer just a Lipin. She was a prominent voice in the Save Helen Society and was making Ian’s life miserable. Merely one of those two sins, Kelsey could have ignored. Put them both together, though, and an irrational anger simmered in her veins. It was one part normal dislike for her enemy and one part irritation on behalf of a friend.

  Irritation that was, honestly, completely out of proportion to what she should have felt. She and Ian were barely friends, yet the way she felt protective of him was like the way she would feel protective of her family. Or her dogs. If someone messed with them, they messed with her.

  It was absurd, and yet Kelsey couldn’t stop herself from sending a nasty glance in Tasha’s direction.

  “What?” the other woman snapped.

  Kelsey pointed to the SHS pin on Tasha’s jacket. “That. The way you’re pretending to have some high-minded ideals about preserving our town culture when it’s really an excuse to attack Northern Charm Brewing over a personal grudge. You make those of us who care about the town look bad along with you.”

  Tasha crossed her arms. “I do care about preserving the town, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. You’re pissed off that Ian and Micah bought the old warehouse property from my father. I know your husband wanted to buy it to expand his garage, and I know my father chose to sell it to the brewery instead. So you’re taking it out on Ian and Micah.” Kelsey was very conscious of including Micah’s name. That meant it wasn’t only Ian she was thinking about.

  To her credit, Tasha didn’t deny these facts. “Your father’s an asshole. We put an offer in first, but that’s beside the point. Expanding DJ’s business would have kept things local. Wallace sold to outsiders.”

  Just a couple of weeks ago, Kelsey would have agreed. She’d been annoyed for years by the way her father was determined to sell off Helen. What had gotten into her?

  Oh right, Ian. In pretty much every sense of the phrase.

  “What is it to you anyway?” Tasha bounced on her feet as she glanced toward the dwindling line at the counter.

  “It’s nothing to me, but I’m writing a piece on the brewery for the paper, and the topic came up. I thought I’d give you a chance to defend yourself.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what you thought.” Tasha stormed over to the counter to order.

  As much as she despised letting someone else get in the last word, it was best to drop the subject. Kelsey had nothing else worth saying anyway. All she had were thoughts, and she’d had an epiphany during the conversation that required serious contemplation.

  Kelsey took a second sip of coffee, which was no longer as scalding, and tried concentrating on the sweet mocha flavor, but it didn’t calm her nerves. Worse than discovering she was feeling protective of Ian (and Micah by extension) was the discovery that part of the problems they were having were indirectly attributable to the feud.

  Would Tasha and others be focusing so much of the SHS’s ire on the brewery if Kelsey’s father hadn’t refused to sell the property to a Lipin? Kelsey thought not.

  There had always been a niggling sensation in the back of her mind about why the SHS had chosen to direct its resources toward harassing Northern Charm Brewing when there were more logical targets. The brewery might not be owned by people who grew up in Helen, but it was an independent business, owned by two guys who’d moved here. It wasn’t a franchise or a chain store putting one of the local families out of business. And yet, it was taking the brunt of the SHS’s punches. The only reason that made sense was that Wallace Porter had pissed off the Lipins, and the Lipins were venting their anger on the convenient target—the brewery. Possibly, they even thought that if they could drive Ian and Micah away, Tasha’s husband would be able to buy the building from them.

  Once again, the feud was catching innocent outsiders in the cross fire. And that made her partially responsible for any problems Ian and Micah had to deal with.

  * * *

  * * *

  ONE WEEK LATER, Kelsey still didn’t know what to do about her revelation regarding the brewery and the feud. Really, she wasn’t sure there was anything she could do about it, and yet guilt weighed on her.

  Just as problematic was the question of whether she’d have felt that guilt if she hadn’t been spending so much time with Ian. Before Ian, she’d probably have said something flippant, like Every war has its casualties. Now those casualties had been made into flesh-and-blood people. Kelsey could tell herself all she wanted that she didn’t care about Ian, but each time she saw him, that lie became harder and harder to hold on to.

  She’d seen him twice since the evening he’d returned her table and they’d broken their no-more-sex vow over her sofa. Both times, Ian had grown more comfortable with Juliet. He continued to tense up when she entered the room, but he relaxed over time. And although he hadn’t started spontaneously petting her, he would when she was being calm. Ian had even started speaking to Juliet like she was a friend. Kelsey had therefore decided Ian was ready for the next step in his dog therapy—spending time with all three of her babies.

  What the next step for the two humans was—that was another dilemma. It was occurring to Kelsey that calling these get-togethers “dog therapy” was as much for her own mental health as they purportedly were for Ian’s. They had dinner together. Watched movies together. And yes, got naked together. Each time. If it weren’t for Juliet, the more proper label for what they were doing would be dating. Or friends-with-benefitting, if that was such a thing. Kelsey didn’t know, because she didn’t want to find out. Anything with Ian other than a cursory acquaintance had been against her rules since the beginning. She was just apparently terrible at following her own rules, though she liked to believe she was emotionally astute enough to know that if she didn’t start soon, she was heading for trouble. But how was she supposed to start when they’d fallen into a comfortable—and enjoyable—routine?

  On a positive note, this whatever-it-was with Ian had gotten her on track with the book she was writing and given her a great idea for the next one in the series. What if the fated mate of a husky shifter had a phobia of dogs?

  Kelsey grinned to herself, hoping her readers would find that setup as hilarious as she did. Then she jumped in her chair as someone knocked on the door below her office. Immediately, all three dogs began barking. With a sigh, she saved her file and peeked out the upstairs window, hoping she could ignore whomev
er had come to bother her.

  It was her father, and so the answer was no. He would know she was most likely home if the dogs were.

  Swell. Wallace had been texting her for the past two days about something he claimed he needed to discuss, and Kelsey had claimed to be too busy to go to family dinners and have that conversation. She felt bad about ignoring her mother, but she was too pissed off at her father to want to pretend everything was normal. It appeared her father had gotten tired of waiting.

  Wallace knocked again as Kelsey tromped down the stairs. Good God, this must be where she got her impatient streak from.

  “Back, back. You, too—back!” She herded all the huskies aside with one arm while opening the door with the other.

  “There are my pups.” Her father scooted in and showered the dogs with affection. “What were you doing? You took forever.”

  Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Working. The thing that pays my bills? What I’m supposed to be doing this very minute?”

  He grunted. “Since you haven’t made time to come to us, I made time to come to you. I need you to do something.”

  Another something? Wasn’t it enough that she’d done something for him already by donating time and energy to the brewery? Sure, that had worked out unexpectedly well, but her father didn’t know that, and she had no intention of sharing it. She still wanted to punch someone when she remembered him hinting about her developing a relationship with Ian or Micah for the good of the family. There was no way in hell she was giving him the satisfaction of knowing how close she’d come to doing that.

  Truly, she needed to dwell on this point more often and with greater intensity. The way it was raising her blood pressure might be the best defense she had against falling for Ian’s insufferable cheekbones.

  “I’m working on the last mission you assigned me,” Kelsey said, crossing her arms.

  Her father chuckled. “ ‘Mission’—I like that.”