by Kilby Blades
“Now, Klaus is three weeks old, but our protocol for transitioning her to you would be a bit different. Domestic pets usually stay with the breeder for six to eight weeks. Since we train for law enforcement, we usually keep our dogs longer. We provide them with the foundations to become strong working dogs.
“The training Klaus might need would be less extreme. Even if you’re just looking for personal safety, I’d want to work with you and Klaus for a while.” At some point, Shea tuned Jess’s exhaustive detail out. And it was fine that Shea did. Jess ended up volleying dog talk back and forth with a very excited Dev.
“That’s one fine-looking pup,” Dev said once they finally reached their mark.
All the while as Jess was talking, she was walking them toward the shade of a tree where a set of gates had been arranged to form a pen. There were blankets at the base and Shea couldn’t help but to bend over excitedly to peer in. To her surprise, she was met with not one, but two, dogs.
“How many in the litter?” Shea heard Dev ask from somewhere in the corner of her mind. She didn’t pay long enough attention to hear Jess’s answer.
The small one had to be Klaus, and he was a lively one too—every bit as cute as the Belgian Malinois puppies Shea had perused online. The other dog, a Golden Retriever, looked older—maybe at the end of her puppy days—but still relatively young. Klaus was playing tug with a rope bone held in the mouth of the other dog, who gently indulged the smaller pup.
For a solid few minutes, Shea watched them play. Jess and Dev faded into the background, standing behind her and carrying on a conversation as they gave her a chance to meet Klaus. Watching the Retriever made Shea fall just a little in love. They both had puppy energy—both a little wild and excited—only, the Retriever seemed sweet and Klaus seemed kind of like a jerk.
“Who are you?” Shea asked, reaching her hand out into the pen, to let her hand be sniffed by the Retriever. Both dogs took an interest in Shea and came up. Jess fell in line next to where Shea was standing. Dev came in on the other side.
“The Retriever? That’s Butterscotch.” Jess looked at the dog like she was a piteous creature, a hint of shame creeping into her bubbly voice. “She’s supposed to be a therapy dog. I took her in as a last-ditch favor to a friend.”
“Supposed to be?” Shea asked.
Jess lowered her hand toward the Retriever. Butterscotch rose up to sniff her and lick her hand, then angled her body in a way that asked to be pet.
Jess shook her head in sorrow. “Even I couldn’t train her into doing what she needed to pass. She’ll be a fine pet to someone, though. But for service purposes, we’re gonna have to fail her. Service dogs aren’t supposed to do that.”
“So you’re saying she’s available…” Shea baited.
Dev said “no” at the same time Jess said “yes.”
“There’s a process, but it can be done. You would have to adopt her through the agency who sent her here for training. But I have it on good authority, if she doesn’t pass for service, she’ll be looking for a home.”
Dev swooped in and cautioned Shea with a look before pointing out, “She’s not a guard dog if she can’t be trained.”
But Shea had done her reading. “Dev...being a guard dog owner is intense—a lot more intense than being dog mom to a regular pet. I keep telling you—I just need a companion.”
Shea could tell already, Dev thought taking Butterscotch would be a mistake. Mentally, she prepared her arguments and geared up for a fight, only his argument never came.
“Don’t know why you’re looking at me,” he finally said, then tipped his head toward their hostess. “You’d better ask Jess to get you what you want.”
One full hour, a pitcher of lemonade and two phone calls later, Jess had called the organization of the friend who had engaged her to attempt to train Butterscotch and received confirmation that Shea could take the dog. There was still more paperwork, and Shea’s official status was as a foster, but Shea was already authorized to take her home.
As they waved their goodbyes and loaded their precious cargo into Dev’s truck and settled themselves into their own seats, Dev looked over at her before he turned the key. It seemed like he was trying not to, but even he was smiling.
“You like your dog?” he wanted to know.
Shea was beaming as she glanced back at the crate.
“I think I’ll call her Butters.”
27
The Hammock
Dev
Dating a woman with a brand-new pet came with unexpected benefits Dev soon realized he’d been a fool to resist. Butters needed bonding, and companionship, and stability and routine. What it meant for Dev was that Shea wanted to spend days outside, getting Butters used to local hiking trails and the paths and smells around her house. Dev, of course, was eager to tag along.
But Butters was still too new to her surroundings to be left alone for long, It meant that Shea couldn’t go out as much, which—in turn—meant staying in. So far that week, staying in had led to lots of kissing and time with Shea in the kitchen as she’d compelled him to try little dishes she cooked. She was on a crusade to persuade him that food was for pleasure. He was only partially convinced, but he sure did love to watch her in the kitchen.
Tonight, “staying in” meant relaxing at Dev’s place. Sun was setting over a gorgeous afternoon, meat was slow-roasting on the grill and he and Shea were relaxing. It was very likely this would be one of summer’s last warm days. Fall came early in the mountains and Labor Day was around the corner. The water rushed faster than it normally did at this time of summer owing to yesterday’s overnight storm. Dev could feel the healthfulness of negative ions from its flows revitalizing him.
“You’re usually snoring by now…” he began, then enjoyed when her lips formed a tiny smile, one of the few he’d seen from her that day. Her hand was on his chest and she was tucked under his arm. Her eyes were closed and she was still as they swayed.
“You know I don’t snore,” she came back with mock indignance.
“I know every time you climb in this hammock, you can’t stay awake.” His voice got serious. “I know something’s bothering you. This is a stress-free zone, but I can tell something’s eating you up. You want to tell me why you’re stewing?”
Shea opened her eyes to look up at him. It was the other thing he loved about lying with her in his arms: she took off her glasses whenever she put her head on his chest. It meant that he could look into her eyes, unencumbered. There was something he adored about how they were slightly unfocused as she looked back up at him. It was a dumb thing to adore, but that’s how being in love worked.
“Regrets,” she said simply. “I’m thinking about my dad. I’m just having one of those days. You know how things are between me and him.”
Dev knew some of it. It wasn’t good.
“What do you regret?”
Shea pinned him with a lazy smile and a sidelong glance. “Apart from everything?”
“C’mon,” Dev coaxed.
“Rebelling,” Shea said finally. “Resisting every good choice my parents tried to get me to make because I wouldn’t let them just care about me. And respect,” Shea continued. “I never showed them enough of that. I regret getting married without my father’s blessing. But, other stuff, too—talking back when I was young.”
“Every good kid regrets that kind of stuff,” Dev protested. “If you sucked, you wouldn’t feel remorse for anything you put your parents through.”
When Shea seemed unswayed, he tried a different tack.
“My mom used to tell me it wasn’t her job to be my friend. It was her job to raise a good man. And that she’d rather I grow up into a decent person who hated her than a son with crooked values who loved her but did wrong.”
“Sounds like she would’ve been proud,” Shea murmured, still looking miserable.
“Maybe,” Dev said. “But that’s not my point in saying it—it’s that, maybe a parent’s only true goal is
peace of mind.”
“Trust me…” Shea scoffed a little. “That ship already sailed. I’ve been a constant source of disappointment.”
“That’s only true if you were right about what they wanted for you. You look at your dad and all you see is that he wanted you to run the restaurant. Maybe his peace of mind was all wrapped up in you having stability.”
Shea stiffened a bit. “I would’ve been more stable if he’d accepted me for who I wanted to be.”
“And I would’ve been more stable if my mom was straight with me about my dad. Both of us were half-right and both of us were half-wrong. At some point, you have to see your parents as human, and fallible.”
Dev quieted then, reflecting that he, too, had spent time of late thinking about his father. He’d hardly had time to reconsider the opportunity to go meet the man. Maybe it wasn’t just Shea who needed to pick up the phone and give his father a call. Maybe Dev ought to be brave enough to practice what he preached, because the same advice ought to apply to him.
“Think about it like this.” Dev sat up a little and angled himself to rearrange Shea in his hold. “How old were your mom and dad when they got pregnant with you?”
“Late twenties,” Shea said, doing the mental math.
“My mom was eighteen.” Dev let out a little laugh. “I can’t even imagine raising a teenager right now and not fucking it up. I have a lot more going for myself than my mom ever did and I’ve barely got my own shit figured out.
Shea appeared to consider this. “My dad turned fifty the week before I left the house,” Shea said.
“So think of it like that—think of how naive nineteen is, and how people who are fifty still have a lot to figure out.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Shea hedged, even though an explanation was exactly what she’d just launched into. “Me and my dad just…we always fed off of each other in a really bad way. When we talk, we fight—at least when we’re estranged, the fighting’s stopped.”
“And you’ve said everything to him you’ve ever wanted to say?”
Shea put her head back down on his chest and quieted.
“Look. I’m not trying to bust your chops. But I’d give a lot to be able to say a few things to my mom. Forever comes a lot sooner than you think.”
28
The Storm
“The Shining, Deliverance, or Scream?” Dev called over his shoulder from the sofa as Shea strode back into the room, popcorn in one hand and opened bottle of a red blend in the other. The remote was in his hand and the enormous TV with its parabolic screen was lit up with the on-demand menu that offered a virtual feast of horror.
“Scream,” Shea decided easily. The idea to stay in on a rainy night and watch a movie with Dev was born of a sheer, selfish desire to snuggle—not from any natural tendency to seek hair-raising thrill. Shea was a woman living alone, isolated on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. The last thing she needed was a horror film so convincing it would actually make her scared.
After navigating to Scream, Dev tossed down the remote and extended his arms to relieve her of her popcorn and her bottle of wine. Two stemless glasses sat on the table, waiting. He filled and set them down in short form. Then, as if neither the popcorn nor the wine existed, he pulled Shea with him in settling back on the plushy microfiber sofa, spreading a throw blanket over them and tucking her into the crook of his arm.
Seriously. Why does he smell so good? Shea couldn’t help thinking as she reveled in the result of her nose being so close to his chest. Before the opening credits, her head was already on his shoulder, his strong arm holding her to him in a delightfully possessive way. Five minutes into the movie, and her attention was already split between following the plot and enjoying the movement of his body—his groaning at the writing and his laughter at the camp of the Drew Barrymore scene.
The blanket felt good on her lap and, before long, she’d tucked her legs beneath her, which only caused her to settle further into him. He held her tighter through the scary parts—brought up the popcorn and wine halfway in.
Halfway through the movie was also when the real rain began. Until then, most thunderstorms Shea had seen had been during the day. The afternoon ones had always felt a bit routine—a purging of clouds so that the mountain could get on with this beautiful day. But this storm—more like a lightning storm—felt fierce. So much so, that Shea reflexively jumped from being spooked—not by the movie, but the brightest bolt of lightning she’d ever seen. It earned her one of Dev’s amused smiles.
“Want me to find the remote and close the blinds?” He asked, more grace in his voice than on his face.
“No making fun of the New Yorker,” she chided. “We’ve got thunderstorms, too. And I wasn’t really scared—just startled.”
“I wasn’t making fun,” he insisted in his disarming voice. “Just looking for any way to be accommodating.”
She relaxed back into his arms. “No need.” She nestled in. “I’m fine exactly where I am.”
With her ear against his chest, the low growl of his voice shook her with vibrations. “Good. Because I like a good storm.”
Shea stopped pretending to track the movie, stopped pretending the real experience wasn’t being in his arms. At some point, her senses became as heightened as her awareness of the intensity of the storm.
At some point, Dev must have stopped watching the movie, too. The credits were rolling and neither had said a word in acknowledgment of the close of the final scene. The show out the window had turned out to be much better. The storm was frightening, and awesome, and so intense that merely sharing the moment of witnessing it held an intimacy that she didn’t expect.
Yes. Being there, in that house, on that hill, and sharing it only with Dev, made her feel as if they were the only two people in the world. Nothing about the notion scared her. Shea was falling into something that felt a whole lot like love. Even if it wasn’t, being with a man who made her feel this way was good for her. And this last new development had given her some sort of permission she hadn’t known she was waiting for. It felt as if Keenan was finally out of the picture.
It felt surreal and liberating to say, “Stay here tonight.”
She didn’t bother to follow her bold statement with any of at least five logical rationales: the storm was too bad to drive in; better to wait it out at her place; no need to take a risk and drive home. She also didn’t bother with the pretense of offering to put him up in the guest room. And she didn’t follow it with some quip to lighten it up.
“Are you asking as a kindly neighbor, or are you asking as a woman?”
She felt his heartbeat race at the same time as she was pinned by the intensity in his eyes. Something even changed in his breath. This was more to him than comfort and attraction. There was something as intense in this for him as there was for her.
“Technically, both…” She tipped her chin upward, wanting him to see it in her face. “Mostly, I’m asking as a woman.”
Thunder, which had been absent for the majority of the storm, cracked on the ends of her words. When answering lightning burst, the furious gales could be seen in the tops of the trees. The rain continued to pelt on the deck, beating percussion that she would not soon forget. Nor did she think she would ever forget the hitch of his breath a second before he leaned in.
What happened next was so surreal that Shea might never know whether it came from the sheer thrill of breaking her twelve-year streak of sleeping only with Keenan, the fact that her partner was Dev, or some strange magic that came from the storm. The sublime anticipation of having Dev that night promised to be otherworldly. Later, Shea would reflect that there was no name to describe the perfection of what they had done.
Dev pulled her into his lap in a single smooth motion and she twisted her body to face his. He wasted no time threading his fingers in the back of her hair and craning his neck to rise in a hungry devouring of her lips. This kiss was different. They’d kissed before and each previous
kiss had been amazing. This kiss felt as if it spoke: his body speaking to hers and hers to his, giving voice to their current of electricity.
As the kiss brought them impossibly closer, soft and delicious but urgent in its desire, she got lost in other little things—the way his thumb stroked the side of her neck, the sounds of his sighs as he breathed, and the fresh aroma of his beard. Kissing him then gave new meaning to the concept of taking time. Slow lovemaking, indeed. He was insistently hard beneath her, but nothing distracted him from getting his fill of her lips.
“You got any religion about doing this in a bed?
Dev asked her the question in between sensuous bites to her neck that had her nearly delirious with bliss. She was ridiculously wet for someone who had barely been touched and was still fully clothed.
“Beds are for amateurs,” She managed a second before the hand she had cupped on the back of his neck dropped to his shoulder to grab a fistful of his shirt. She couldn’t help it—his tongue had just done the most delectable thing to her ear.
It was a good thing she was holding on, one arm around his shoulder and the other around his waist from sitting side saddle in his lap. In an effortless motion, he stood, picking them both up and holding her bridal style as he walked her forward. As promised, he did not take her to the bed.
Once upon a time, Shea had made fun in her mind of Kendrick’s overabundance of rooms. Who needed a game room and a mini art gallery on the top floor? But she and Dev made full use of all but the bedrooms that night. Relieving her of her sweater and bra when he had her sat atop the poker table, he fondled her breasts and licked her nipples as she arched back. And he wasn’t even greedy about it. He caressed her waist and touched up to her back between licks and nips in the softest and most reverent of ways. He had stood in-between her legs and she hadn’t been able to help herself from rubbing her center into him, just to create that friction. It hadn’t prompted him to speed things up, but she’d enjoyed the filthy curses that her teasing had drawn from his lips.