Total pages in book: 254
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 240032 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1200(@200wpm)___ 960(@250wpm)___ 800(@300wpm)
I wheezed as he threw himself across my stomach, belly to belly, chewing on a stick he’d found at some point that was stripped of bark.
“I’m going to have to buy you a treadmill, man.” I gasped some more, reaching blindly for him so I could run my fingers through his coat.
He was breathing normally. Show-off.
“I think I pulled my hamstring jumping over that log back there,” I told him in between trying to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth to calm down. Maybe I needed the treadmill too. Two treadmills. I might have to start doing some weightlifting because it seemed like we were going to get to the point soon where carrying him around was going to be impossible at the rate he was growing.
His tail swished through the air, resembling a shooting star.
I ran my fingers through his coat again, admiring its softness.
“Donut,” I told him, letting my eyes settle on the full pie of a moon still visible through a gap in the towering trees surrounding us. “If you don’t like it here, tell me, okay? I’m serious. I want you to be happy.”
“Love,” he told me, and it hit me the same way it had from the first time he’d projected that emotion. It choked me up.
“I love you too. With my whole heart. You know that, don’t you?”
Duncan stopped chewing. A second later, he dragged his body the rest of the way over mine and jumped over my shoulder to stand beside my head, his ears so long they almost grazed the ground. My little black hound that was no puppy. He licked my cheek.
“Yes,” he answered.
I framed his face with my hands and kissed his nose, knowing we were on the same page. Just as I let go, his body suddenly tensed and he spun around, a tiny growl erupting from his throat. I jackknifed into a sitting position. I hadn’t heard anything, but I trusted him enough to know that he sensed something.
Duncan’s tail stuck straight up in the dark just as a low voice murmured, “All is good, pup.”
He sat, but his frame was rigid, and a long, low growl rumbled in his throat.
Matti had sworn we were safe here. There were tall layers of fencing closer in to the clubhouse. Plus, the scent of big predators should have marked this entire territory off.
But we were out at night, in an unfamiliar place, with strangers who held no allegiance to either of us. Anticipation and nerves came to life in my body as I caught sight of three figures moving through the trees toward us. Two were men and the other was a woman still a hundred feet away, their movements dead quiet as they crossed the ground.
No wonder I hadn’t seen or heard them until the last second, they practically hugged the shadows and walked on air.
My puppy growled louder, staying in his seated position.
“Ah-ah,” the deep voice corrected him. “You’re safe. We’re not going to do anything to you.”
It was Henri, I realized, setting my hand on the bristling hairs of Duncan’s back. That husky, bossy voice could only belong to him. “It’s okay, but good job sensing them, Donut,” I praised him.
His tail swished back and forth once, his whole frame tense and focused on the strangers approaching so dang silently. It was kind of impressive considering the fact that I’d put Henri at around six foot five or six, his build stocky and muscular. The man to one side of him was shorter and also well-built. The woman trailing behind them wasn’t exactly small in comparison to either of them.
How long had they been creeping through the woods? They weren’t exactly walking fast.
I’d tripped over a branch a little while ago—not that I cared if anyone saw me bust my ass playing with my pint-sized partner in crime, but I was kind of glad they hadn’t arrived three minutes earlier, when I’d been on my back moaning and clutching my leg.
“Why are you bleeding?” the familiar-ish voice asked, somehow sounding even more gruff in the dark… and confirming that chances were, they’d witnessed my very fine moment.
Too bad for me. “My shin got assaulted by that branch you just walked by,” I called out. It was the same leg Matti had kicked earlier too. When I’d rolled up my pant leg to see why it had hurt so much, there’d been a pretty good scratch there.
Matti’s cousin slipped through the trees, clear, bright moonlight occasionally illuminating the shape of his frame as it moved through them in a way someone half his size shouldn’t have been capable of.
But it was more than that, I thought, that kept my gaze riveted to him—stealth aside.
How was he so huge? I wouldn’t call him burly exactly, but it was close. Thick neck, thick chest. Biceps? Thick. Thighs? Thick. He was….