by Tricia Lynne
She slipped her tongue into the dip below the base of my neck and my jeans got way too tight. When she swung a leg across my thigh and settled on my lap, my breath hitched. “I can do baths.”
“I don’t know, have you tried to get a 150-pound dog into a dog wash when they’ve never had a bath? It can be tricky.”
My girl punctuated the sentence with the slow drag of her hips over the seam of my jeans.
“I...uh, shit, that feels good. I, um, bench...weight. A-a lot. I meant to say a lot of weight. I’m strong.”
“Well, then, Mr. Shaw, you have yourself a job.” Scooting back, she unzipped my fly and pushed her hand in.
“Lily. Out here? Are you sure?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Eh. Zero fucks. I quit.”
“Christ, that feels good.”
With that I dug a hand into her hair and gripped it firm, bringing her mouth to mine.
Standing, she kicked off her sneakers before she shimmied her pants off.
“Lily! We’re gonna get caught.”
“I don’t care.”
Oh my God, this woman. I shifted my jeans down my ass and Lily settled astride my hips, her core slick and so hot against me. “It should be illegal how good you feel.”
A smirk spread over her face and with a tilt of her hips, I was buried inside her.
I could already feel the throb in the base of my spine. “Not gonna last long, darlin’.”
I guess I’d have to wait till later to tell her about the ring in my glove box. Bonus. I’d likely get rewarded by sinking into her again.
Lord knew she was all about the positive reinforcement.
When she shifted back so we could both see down the front of our bodies, I knew I wasn’t going to last more than a couple minutes. Pushing a hand between us, I brushed her nub with the tip of my finger. “Liliana. Look at me.” She gave me those deep purple eyes, and I fell in love all over again. “I love you, darlin’.”
Her channel fluttered around me, her little muscles squeezing as her body shook and her lips brushed against mine and just as she started to come down, I followed her over the edge.
She bracketed my jaw with her hands as my legs shook, and I emptied inside her. “Brody. I love you so much.”
We exchanged heavy breaths and mischievous smirks, a tender kiss before she stood and started to dress while I tucked myself in my jeans. It was a miracle we didn’t get caught out here in broad daylight. “CC will be happy to see Mack.”
“Mmm. Laila will be happy to see you. She comes home next week.”
“You adopted Laila?” Sheer joy filled me.
“I adopted Laila.”
Swinging my arm around Lil’s waist, we headed for my truck as I thought about my little family. All my girls and Mack under one roof. That was my happily ever after.
Then it dawned on me. Mack and I were outnumbered.
“Lil, I think we need another male.”
She pushed out a sigh. “No more dogs, Brody.”
Eh, she’d come around.
There were always dogs out there that needed good homes and a second chance.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Happily Ever After
Lily
I dried the Boxer pup with a towel to stimulate its breathing and settled it back in the whelping box where its mother and siblings waited. The smallest of the litter, he had been sluggish to breathe and I was checking on him often. Soft cries and grunts danced over the air in the small room dedicated to mothers whelping their pups.
Iris nosed her baby as it wrestled with the other four to find a nipple. She’d be a good mama.
She’d been a handful when she came in.
Skinny, hungry, with wounds on her shoulders and sides I was sure were cigarette burns. She’d been dumped, likely because she was pregnant, and she’d attacked her male rescuer but had gone to a female rescuer with relative ease.
It wasn’t hard to figure out her abuser was a man.
The whelping room had a temporary sign on it that said Women Only. We’d start Iris’s socialization once her pups were older. For now, she’d hang with the girls.
Shutting off the light, I closed the door behind me, and regarded the shelter I’d named the Unlovabulls Canine Rescue Center. It was smaller than I’d originally hoped. We were set up for thirty-five dogs at a time, but we never turned one away. Somehow, we always found room for the dogs that needed us most. There wasn’t a fancy ribbon cutting or a glitzy celebration, either.
No, the money went where it was needed most—the dogs.
I walked over to the fold-up cot that would be my bed and prepared myself for a long night. I needed to stay close to Iris tonight to make sure she didn’t have any complications. She wasn’t a spring chicken. Dr. Avalos—Regina or Gina, as most of us called her—thought she was at least eight, and this definitely hadn’t been her first litter.
Our shelter didn’t adopt many dogs out directly. They came here to get the care and skills they needed to be companion animals, and when I was sure they posed no more risk, they went back to the rescue organization that brought them to us to be adopted out. We’d adopted out only forty-three dogs directly. Dogs from the mill that weren’t suitable for other rescues.
I scanned over the Original Unlovabulls wall. Each survivor we’d rescued from the mill had a framed picture up there. The ones that hadn’t made it out with their lives had a plaque in my office with their breed type and a name we’d given them. The top of the plaque read You Were Loved. It was the truth.
Brody’s picture had yielded results.
Officer Johnson was able to identify who the pickup truck was registered to.
The red and black Ford F-150 Raptor belonged to Devon Taylor.
I scrunched my pillow under my head, trying to get comfortable, when the soft padding of doggie feet and tennis shoes down the hall made me smile. I glanced up to see Brody toting an air mattress.
“What are you doing here? You don’t have to sleep down here with me. Go upstairs with the dogs, Shaw.” I started to sit up. “You’ve got an agility trial tomorrow.”
Discovering Devon was one of the guys behind the mill had come as a shock, but after a little digging, it all made sense. Brody had never told him we slept together. Devon knew because they’d been keeping tabs on me since they got spooked at the rental house. It wasn’t only the sticker on Everett’s car that had spooked him that night, either.
He’d recognized Brody’s truck.
Devon had flipped on his cousin in exchange for a reduced sentence. They’d moved the dogs to a rural warehouse a couple of towns over. Mrs. Davis turned out to be their grandmother, and the farm manager. He took a cut in exchange for letting Devon and his cousin, Colton Andrews, use the barn.
The letters in the brand finally made sense. DA. Devon Taylor and Colton Andrews. The ASPCA, SPCA of Dallas and Collin County Sheriff’s department had joined forces once we had a location. We rescued 104 breeding dogs, most of the females pregnant or nursing. That number didn’t include the pups.
“We’re not sleeping upstairs when their mom”—he pointed to the dogs—“and my fiancée is down here on a cot. Now, come on down on this mattress. It’s a lot more comfortable than that cot. I’ll be back, I’ve got to get a dog bed.”
Fiancée. It wasn’t a title I’d ever thought I’d wear again. I admired my modest engagement ring for the millionth time. This time, I had the right man. The only man. The wedding would be small. Out on our ranch outside the city, nothing fancy. Picnic tables and straw bales. A band in the barn and an open bar. Dogs welcome, people tolerated.
It’d be fun to watch Hayes and Olive dance around each other all night, given their history and their statuses as best man and maid of honor.
That man was relentless when it came to her.
Laila’s happy
little face made me smile as she tried and failed to jump up on my cot. She was full grown, but she was still a bulldog, with short little bulldog legs and a chubby bulldog butt. Smiling, I slipped down to the air mattress, where she buried her big wrinkly head under my arm.
Hearing Brody’s steps and more doggie feet coming down the hall, I kissed her snout. “Your daddy spoils you rotten, little girl.”
“Damn straight. My princess deserves it. All my girls do.” He put the dog bed down at the head of our makeshift bed. Jet crawled in, and CC snuggled in half on top of her, half in our bed, with her butt in my face.
Such is life with dogs. I reached up and patted my girls.
Brody kicked his shoes off and got situated on the other side of the mattress, and Mack jumped on top of him, rolling on to his back and pushing my fiancé to the edge.
Chuckling, I nodded at my good boy. “What’s your excuse for how spoiled that one is?” Mack snorted and wiggled his head under Brody’s hand.
“That’s all you, darlin’.”
“Oh, you’re full of shit, Shaw.” He and Mack were buds, best buds.
“Hey, he’s the only other guy in the house. We need each other. We bond.”
“You feed him off a fork.”
Brody closed his eyes and true to form, he and Mack were snoring in a matter of minutes.
Nineteen.
That was the number of breeding dogs we couldn’t save, and the number of names on the plaque in my office.
Six.
Six dogs I deemed unfit for adoption. Two Corsi. One Pit Bull. One Bull Mastiff. A German Shepherd. And a Bull Terrier.
We sold my house and bought the ranch for them. They’d never be trustworthy around most humans because most humans didn’t know how to read them, how to handle them. But I did, and Brody had learned. And Officer Johnson—David—he knew how to channel their work ethic into something productive that gave them peace. They had good lives with us on the ranch. Full lives, with fresh air and sunshine. A pond and plenty of food and water and trees to sleep under and climate-controlled housing. Warm beds, and goats and ducks and chickens to guard—for those who’d mastered their prey drive.
They would live that way until they went over the bridge.
There was no doubt the life of a rescuer was hard. The lows were very low. But the highs...the dogs that went to good homes or into working dog programs. Seeing them explore grass for the first time and feel the sun on their faces. Pick up a toy and bring it to me. The pictures that covered the other three walls of my office—successful adoption stories and updates from families.
I’d take a hundred of the bad days in exchange for the feeling I got when one of our dogs found a home.
Because they were our dogs. All of them.
I reached over, tapped my snoring husband-to-be.
“Huh.”
“I love you.”
“Mm, love you, too,” he mumbled.
“Shaw, thank you.”
He opened his eyes, and he reached over to squeeze my hand. “For what, darlin’?”
“For loving these Unlovabulls every bit as much as I do.”
* * *
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Acknowledgments
Authors say it’s always harder to pen your second book than the first. For me, it absolutely was. Beyond the crippling imposter syndrome and the constant anxiety that I couldn’t do it again, the actual words-on-paper part never seems to get easier.
But I had an exceptionally hard time with Protective Instinct.
In 2019, while I was writing this book, my husband and I said goodbye to my five-year-old Clumber Spaniel quite unexpectedly. In fact, he was the second dog we lost last year. I also held the sweetest Basset Hound ever born while he went to the rainbow bridge, too. After losing my boys, it was nearly impossible for me to write about dogs. My dogs are my children, you see. And I couldn’t dig into this book without finding myself awash in a new wave of sadness and loss... In fact, I’m still grieving. But I know I never could have finished Protective Instinct without a rock-solid support system to see me through.
I am forever grateful to Carina Press and my editor, Stephanie Doig. You were beyond understanding of how losing my dogs, combined with the current state of the world, affected how quickly I wrote. Thank you so, so much for nursing me through. I’m lucky to call myself a Carina author. I’m also beyond thankful to my agent, Saritza Hernandez, who stayed true to her principles in this difficult time, and for sticking with me when I struggled to get through the sophomore slump.
My All The Kissing family—Shannon, Lindsay, Maxym, and Alexa—who helped with early brainstorming, I don’t know what I’d do without you all. An extra special shout out to Gwynne Jackson, who not only read the early stuff for this book, but was there when I needed both feedback and a really good friend. Thank you, my sister. I’m in your debt.
A huge thank you to my beta-readers, Haley, Paris, Janet, and Cassie. I’m lucky to have had your eyes on my words and your invaluable notes to guide me. I’m even luckier to call y’all my friends and peers.
A huge thanks to my own agility instructor, Ryan—you are so much stronger than you know. I’m so blessed to have access to a wonderful training center in Frisco, TX. The staff and facilities at What a Great Dog are unparalleled. Your knowledge of dog training and canine behavior is only second to how you treat us like part of the family.
To Shutt’er Down Ranch, thank you for choosing us to adopt Brennan from the extensive pile of applications for her. We can’t imagine our lives without her. Simply put, she’s my best friend.
To Mom and Dad. Thank you for being proud of me, and for letting me adopt my first pound puppy. Dad, I’m sorry Orion ate your Gortex boots and stole your socks.
To my dear friends and OG agility crew—Kim and Antoine, Michele, and our very own Yoda, Connie—I’m so grateful to have met you all and made life-long friends who are crazy dog people like us. I wouldn’t have gotten through the last year and a half without you...and the wine. Let’s not forget the wine, or Cards Against Humanity.
To my husband. Thank you for putting up with my moody ass, eating too much fast food when I’m on deadline, caving when Brennan chose us to be her forever home, and for not getting too pissed when I randomly bring home another dog. I’m also grateful for your linebacker shoulders and your football turned cycling butt. Love you.
Orion. Guinness. Sadie. Jake. Murphy. Gus. Jock. Sugar. Holmes. Each night I look up into a starry sky and feel grateful you were a part of my life. Thank you for being our stand-in children and bringing us such uncomplicated love and joy. Each of you has taken a piece of my heart with you when you went to the bridge, and I’m better for having had you in my life. You will always be in my heart.
Last but not least, to my Velcro Corso, my precious, goodest girl who has come so far in the last two years. Brennan, my inspiration for The Unlovabulls. Thank you, sweet pea, for being so patient with your new little brother, Smitty, for all the Corso snuggles, and each and every night you sleep curled into my legs.
Mama loves you forever, Brennie Lynne.
About the Author
Tricia Lynne is fluent in both sarcasm and cuss words and has little filter between her brain and mouth—a combination that tends to embarrass her husband at corporate functions. A former competitive cyclist, she’s a tomboy at heart who loves hard rock, Irish whiskey, her Midwestern roots, and will always prefer her Vans to her heels. She’s drawn to strong, flawed heroines, and believes writing isn’t a decision one makes, but a calling one can’t res
ist.
Tricia lives in Dallas with her husband, a rescued Cane and a Clumber Spaniel. She is a co-founder of the All The Kissing blog for romance writers, #FridayKiss—a Twitter writing prompt, and #KissPitch—the Twitter pitch event for romance and women’s fiction. In addition, she contributes to The Curvy Fashionista blog, was a 2016 Pitch Wars mentee, and is constantly trying to talk her husband into more dogs.
To stay up-to-date on what Tricia’s working on next and get awesome doggie content in your feed, you can follow her at:
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Keep reading for an excerpt from Operation K-9 Brothers by Sandra Owens.
“Stupid me. I trusted you,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.
Jack Daniels, Whiskey to his SEAL teammates, blinked sleepy eyes at his bedside clock. Three in the morning sucked for getting angry calls from women. What the hell had he done to this one?
“Who’s this?” That was the wrong thing to say. Jack held the phone away from his ear in an effort to save his hearing. He didn’t recognize the number on the screen. Her voice wasn’t familiar either.
“Sweetheart,” he said, interrupting her tirade. “You sure you have the right number?” Even though her voice and phone number didn’t ring any bells, he couldn’t say for sure he wasn’t the douchebag—along with some other impressively creative names she was calling him—in question.
Ah hell, now she was crying.
“How could you?” she said, her words slightly slurred. She hung up on him.
After thirty minutes of trying to go back to sleep, Jack let out a long sigh. How could he what? That question was going to bug him until he got an answer. Although her voice hadn’t been at all familiar, he’d liked it, even when she’d been calling him names. He grinned. Sewer-sucking slimeball and twatwaffle were good, but his favorite was doggy doo. That one had a nice ring to it.