by Grey, Helen
Was I over trusting? I didn’t think so. While some might question my decision to go to his house with the spare tank in the first place, I also knew that I couldn’t go through life being suspicious of everyone. That wasn’t living. That was being afraid. At the same time, I knew that the world could be cruel sometimes. I wasn’t naïve.
So why had I abandoned my common sense to help Ash Bascom?
You know why.
He was cute. More than cute. He was drop dead gorgeous and that grin of his… I felt a tingle run down my spine as I imagined those lips on mine. I hadn’t been kissed in a long time. Hadn’t had a boyfriend in a long time. Last time I had sex was… well, in the distant past. I wasn’t one to play it loose, but there wasn’t anything wrong in imagining, was there? I wasn’t going to act on it or anything. Besides, there was no way he’d be interested in me, I was the opposite of a biker chick.
While I slightly questioned my judgment — okay, so I questioned my judgment a lot — I nevertheless continued toward the pet store. After all, if he was going to do something to me, he would’ve done it in the isolation of the warehouse. I didn’t want to think the worst of someone before getting to know them. I had no intention of getting to know Ash Bascom.
I didn’t expect us to be in the store longer than ten minutes as I knew exactly where to find the small snake enclosure in the back storage room that wasn’t being used. Call it a loaner. We would go into the storage room and get it, load it into the back seat of my car, take it to his loft, and he could take it from there. I didn’t even have to get out of the car again.
I should still be incredibly annoyed that he put me in this situation. And what did that say about me? I felt like I was, in a sense, being blackmailed. If I didn’t do this, Ash would tell my boss and then I might lose my job.
I pulled into the parking lot of the mini mall and then drove slowly around the building toward the back. The loud rumble of Ash’s motorcycle followed. As I turned off the engine and stepped out of the car, he pulled up beside me. Bracing both feet on the ground, he turned off the engine, yanked down his neckerchief, and maneuvered the kickstand into place with his boot heel. He dismounted — is that what you called it when someone got off a motorcycle? — his ass nicely filling his jeans as he swung one leg over the back of the seat. Then he glanced down at me.
Before he could say a word, I spoke. “Just for the record, I want to emphasize again that I don’t find this at all appropriate.” I paused. Might as well say what was on my mind. “And I don’t think it was very nice of you to threaten to tattle on me to my manager. The only reason I’m doing this is because I can’t afford to lose this job.”
He gave a short nod. “Understood.”
No apologies, no nothing. Whatever. I moved toward the back door of the pet store, pulled the keychain from my pocket. I found the right key and then turned to unlock the door. I spoke to him over my shoulder as I pushed it open. “There’s a small enclosure that you can use until you get something better. It hasn’t been used in a while so I don’t think the manager will notice. But it would be best if you returned it as soon as possible.”
“I will, thanks,” he said. “I’ll try to find something appropriate this weekend that can be delivered. If not, I’ll have to order one online.”
He followed me into the building. I groped along the short hallway until I found the light switch. I felt his presence behind me, hovering over me. The hair on the back of my neck tingled, but not with dread. He smelled good. Despite his rough exterior, the one or two-day growth of stubble on his cheeks, he didn’t stink. At his loft, I noticed that his fingernails were clean, which I hadn’t expected, what with him riding a motorcycle. Then again, I had no idea what he did for a living.
Talk about being judgmental. He could’ve been an accountant for all I knew. Not everybody who rode a motorcycle like his was a rebel.
“In here,” I said, gesturing. As we rounded the corner of the short hallway, the animals out front heard my voice. The puppies immediately began to yip, eliciting alarmed bird calls and Charlie’s typical mantra.
I heard a low rumble of laughter from Ash. “I do believe you’ve woken the menagerie.”
I grinned over my shoulder at him. “They know me. I’ll have to go out and get them settled down. Then we can load the enclosure into my car, okay?”
He nodded and followed me into the pet store proper. I headed immediately toward the cages with the puppies, smiling and saying hello, placing my hand against the glass as the puppies scrambled to greet me. I truly wished that I could adopt all of them. It was one of the downfalls of working in a pet store. After paying attention to the puppies for a minute, I headed down the aisle and checked on the birds and the reptiles.
“Love me! Love me! Love me!” Charlie cooed.
“I do love you, Charlie,” I replied, laughing and the bird settled down.
I quickly glanced in the aquariums to make sure there were no dead fish floating in them, then turned to check on the cats against the far wall. To my surprise, Ash hung back.
“You okay?”
He offered a lame shrug. “You don’t like snakes. I don’t like cats.”
Now that took me by surprise. Didn’t like cats? I was just about to ask him about it when I noticed that one of the cat cages was open. “Uh oh,” I muttered.
He stopped dead in his tracks at the end of the aisle, right in front of the shelves stocked with kitty kibble bags and an assortment of cat food tins. He warily eyed the cages holding the cats and a few kittens. I did a head count and realized that a Berman kitten I’d nicknamed Precious had escaped.
I shook my head and turned toward Ash, a fake, somber expression on my face. “I hate to tell you this, but one of the wildcats has gotten loose.”
He made a face at me and I smiled. “Turnaround is fair play, don’t you think? I helped you catch your snake, so now you get to help me catch Precious, the wayward kitten.”
I couldn’t have timed it any better. While Ash gazed at me, his eyes narrowing with disgruntlement, I saw a slight movement over his left shoulder. Somehow, the kitten had made its way up onto one of the shelves and was hovering on the edge, whiskers tentatively exploring Ash’s scent. Then, just as I was about to warn him, the kitten leapt off the shelf and landed, his upper half on Ash’s head, the lower half scrambling for a foothold on his shoulder.
Ash let out a startled yelp and dropped into a half-crouched position, arms outstretched, clearly uncertain what he should do. I didn’t want the kitten to get hurt, so I hurried toward them.
“Don’t move a muscle!”
Much to his credit, he didn’t. Nevertheless, it seemed as if every muscle in his body thrummed with tension, ready to react. I quickly reached his side, wrapped my hands around the kitten’s small body and attempted to pull her from Ash’s shoulder. The problem was she didn’t want to let go. Her rear claws had dug into his t-shirt but good.
“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to pull the kitten away. “Her claws are caught in your shirt.”
“They’re digging into my scalp too,” he muttered.
“I’m trying not to hurt her,” I told him. “Just a second.” I managed to get one of the kitten’s rear paws untangled from his t-shirt but the other one dug in even tighter.
“Ow!” he yowled. “She’s trying to scalp me!”
I couldn’t resist teasing him. “Don’t be such a big baby! Her claws are about an eighth of an inch long. She couldn’t draw blood if she tried.”
He glared up at me from his half-crouched position. “She’s trying. Get the damn thing off me.”
I spoke to the kitten, making soft soothing sounds as I managed to get both her rear claws untangled. It was only a matter of lifting her straight up to get her completely off him. The minute she was lifted from his shoulder, Ash stood, glowering down at me while I cuddled the frightened kitten under my chin, stroking her head softly with my index finger as she trembled in my hands.
“Look, you scared the poor thing,” I accused him, but he was busy scratching at the little claw marks in his scalp. I didn’t say anything more as I headed back toward the cages.
Which of the associates had been careless enough to leave one of the cages unlocked? These animals were expensive, especially because most of them were purebreds. If one of the animals got hurt or died due to carelessness, it could very well come out of our paychecks. My paycheck.
I got Precious back in her cage, and after watching her for a moment to make sure she was all right, I gestured for Ash to follow me into the back. “Come on, let’s get your enclosure.”
I still couldn’t believe that someone as big and tough looking as Ash Bascom was afraid of a little kitten. Then again, who was I to judge? I was afraid of snakes and bugs. I wasn’t going to make fun of anybody for being afraid of anything, even if it was illogical.
We turned toward the storage room, where we kept extra supplies we didn’t have room for out front. It wasn’t particularly organized, but I headed for the far end of the shelves and began to move some of the supplies. I had seen the enclosure back here only the other day.
“Here, let me help,” Ash said, stepping beside me and reaching for the twenty-five-pound bag of wild bird seed I’d just grabbed.
“Thank you,” I said and peered into the shadowed darkness against the wall but didn’t see the enclosure. I stepped around to the side of the shelving, looked up, and saw that it was on the next shelf up, just above my reach. “It’s up here,” I said, pointing. I glanced around for the footstool that we always kept back here. I got the stool, stood on it, and began to move items around to make it easier to retrieve the enclosure. While I moved items, Ash took them and placed them on a different shelf.
“You won’t need anything too tall, but you want to have an enclosure that allows your Python to stretch out once in a while.”
“Got it,” he said, taking another bag that I pulled off the shelf.
Reaching for the top of the enclosure, I pulled it closer to the edge. “This one will be okay for your snake for a couple of days, but promise me that you’ll get something that’s appr—”
I reached too far. I felt myself tipping, tried to regain my balance, but it was too late. I squealed as I began to teeter. I tried to reach for the shelf with one hand, but the other immediately reached for Ash. I fell and closed my eyes, anticipating a rather harsh impact onto the tiled floor beneath me. To my surprise, I didn’t land on the hard tiles. Nevertheless, the two strong and well-muscled arms that had caught me were definitely hard. So was his chest.
Oh my God.
“So embarrassing,” I muttered. Here I was, cradled in his arms — again — one hand grasping his shoulder, the other instinctively wrapping around his neck. After all, what was I supposed to do with my other hand? Just let it dangle there? “We really need to stop meeting like this.” I waited for him to laugh, but got nothing. I wiggled and continued, “Sorry. And thank you, but you can put me down now.”
He hesitated for just an instant, and in that instant, a myriad of emotions and sensations ran through me. His bulging biceps, his solid chest, his scent… a nice deodorant combined with the faint hint of… of motorcycle, I don’t know, oil or gasoline?
And then the look on his face as he gazed at me. My eyes automatically dipped toward his mouth. Again, I wondered how it would feel to kiss those full lips. To feel his stubble rubbing against my cheek—
My eyes didn’t leave his lips as I repeated myself. “You can put me down now.” He did, but it was a very slow and sensual descent. His left arm wrapped tightly around my upper torso, his palm clutching just under my breast. He slowly released his grip on my legs, allowing my body to s-l-o-w-l-y slide down the length of his. Every inch of my decline left me burning with sensations.
Did he do that on purpose? I glanced up into his face but couldn’t tell what he was thinking… but as he slightly turned his head and the lightbulb in the storage room illuminated his face, I saw that his pupils were dilated. Okay, he was doing it on purpose. The way his lips tilted upward was proof.
I should’ve protested. I should’ve smacked him, kneed him in the balls, given him a piece of my mind, a good tongue lashing— now there was a thought. I mentally shook myself. Standing there, my body pressed against his, feeling every ripple of muscle, the bulge in his pants, the hard length of his dick along the inside of his thigh, I knew exactly what I was thinking. I should’ve been ashamed of myself. I should’ve been outraged. I should’ve been appalled and shocked at his behavior, but I wasn’t. My hands still grasped his shoulders. Large, firm, muscular ones. I let go of those shoulders as if I’d just been scalded. The movement elicited the same reaction in him and he released his grip on me, backing up a step.
Neither one of us said anything for several moments. Finally, his deep voice broke the silence. “You okay?”
I nodded. Trying to reestablish my composure, I gestured toward the shelf. “You’re taller, you get it.”
We got past the incident, although I doubted it would be something I’d forget anytime soon. I didn’t know the guy, but during those brief seconds in his arms, I’d felt an immediate sense of protection, just as I had at his loft. Not that I needed a guy to protect me, far from it. Maybe it was instinctual, that reaction.
I got the impression that despite his outward appearance and that swagger of his, there was a lot more to Ash Bascom than he presented to the world. I stepped out of his way and watched as he pulled the enclosure from the top shelf. It was about four feet long, a foot or so wide, and a foot deep.
I tried not to stare at the rippling muscle fibers in his forearm as he clutched the enclosure, nor the area on the back of his arm where his triceps muscle made a dent just above his elbow. I tried to ignore the way his broad chest narrowed to a tight, narrow waist and hips. He had an incredible ass, not flat like a lot of guys, but not too big either — it filled his jeans perfectly. I had already gotten a distinct impression of the musculature in his legs.
My heart was pumping, my pulse trip-hammering. I forced my gaze away and tried to focus on the task at hand. So what, I had fallen into his arms? So what, I was obviously sexually attracted to him. So what? It didn’t mean I wanted to jump his bones for crying out loud. Okay, maybe I did, but I wasn’t going to.
“Can you hold the door open a little bit more so I can get this out of the room?”
He was speaking to me. I blinked, then nodded and stepped toward the storeroom door, which had half closed. I held it all the way open while he maneuvered his burden out of the room. He tilted the enclosure sideways as if it weighed nothing while he made his way down the short hallway toward the exit door.
“Wait a minute,” I said, squeezing past him. I pushed against the metal bar of the back door and held it open as he exited the pet shop and headed for my car. I quickly closed the heavy door, locked it, and then hurried toward my car, where he waited by the rear wheel well. I reached for the back door and he maneuvered the enclosure into the back seat. Thank goodness I had just cleaned my car out this past weekend or I would have been dealing with another bout of embarrassment.
“I don’t need anything else?”
“You’ll need an appropriate heat supply, as I mentioned earlier, but we don’t have any in stock. You’ll have to use the lamp you have at your house for now.”
“Okay, thanks. You remember how to get back to my loft? Or you can just follow me.”
I nodded, opened my car door and slid inside, latching my seatbelt while he straddled his bike. Less than a second later, my ears were filled with the sound of heavy rumbling. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. He pulled the handkerchief back up over his nose and mouth, transforming him again into one scary dude.
There wasn’t much traffic on the road for a Friday night, but I wasn’t usually out and about after I got off work to be able to gauge whether this was normal or not. I followed his bike as he made his way back toward the old warehouse. I
was tired. Confused. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to deal with these strange senses or feelings.
At a stoplight, I noticed the way people in nearby cars glanced at Ash and his chopper. An old man frowned. A young teenager in another car stared at him with unabashed curiosity. Did I appear like that when I looked at him? I couldn’t blame either one of them. The motorcycle was loud, as if shouting look at me! Ash definitely cut a striking figure, even with the skull faced bandanna. It gave the impression of a rebel living on the edge, a dangerous man, an outlaw. But I knew better now. He was also a gentleman. He was afraid of kittens for crying out loud.
The light turned green and he roared off, me following, once again contemplating my life. I tried to convince myself that I liked my dull existence. I’d had enough drama to last me a lifetime. I was busy working two jobs, going to school, trying to keep my head above water all on my own. After tonight, I would never see Ash Bascom again, which suited me just fine. Sure, he was tempting, but definitely not my type. Not someone I wanted to get tangled up with.
By the time we pulled back into his parking space at the warehouse, I was anxious to get rid of the enclosure and Ash. I put the car in park but left it running. I unlatched my seatbelt as he turned off his motorcycle. Blessed silence. He dismounted and headed in my direction.
I’d gotten out and was reaching for the back car door by the time he got there. “I’m not working tomorrow,” I informed him. “We’re closed on Sunday, but I’ll be at work Monday morning. Call the pet store and ask for me. We’ll make arrangements to get this enclosure back as soon as you get something permanent set up.”
He nodded. “Thanks for all the trouble you went to—”
“You didn’t give me much choice, did you?”
He made a face. “I didn’t and I apologize. I took my frustration out on you. You’ve been more than helpful.” He reached inside the car and maneuvered the enclosure out. Holding it in his arms, he looked down at me. His apology had taken me by surprise.