Sugar on the Edge (12 page)

Oh my God! I think I may be absolutely and completely obsessed with Gavin Cooke. I hate myself for it¸ but it’s completely true. I feel like a completely different person when I’m around him.

When he’s taunting me.

Goading me.

Seducing me.

I’m so far out of my league that my natural inclination is to turn tail and run, but there is a dark part to me… way deep down, that wants to explore the feelings he’s conjuring up inside of me with his voodoo magic.

Last night… oh God, last night!

I have never… ever… been so turned on, so sexually aware, as I was when he was speaking dirty words to me with his fingers on my leg.

He pushed and pushed at me, and I wanted to roll over and give in. I wanted to tell him the dirty word he was looking for so he could push those fingers into me. I wanted it so bad I could taste it, and yet I let my fear and common sense prevail.

When he pulled me back down onto his lap, and I could feel that huge erection pushing into my leg, I wanted to rub up and down on it and beg him to do something to me. I want to change time right now, go back, and demand it of him, like he wanted and I refused.

I obsessed about it for an hour after I got home, still exhausted, yet too wired to sleep. I even sent him a lame ass text, giving him the address of The Haven and telling him,
Just in case you change your mind. I’ll be there all day.

He never responded, but that wasn’t a surprise to me. Gavin is so closed off in his own world that I don’t think he bothers with societal conventions.

Pushing the wheelbarrow back into the supply room of the main kennel, I check my watch and see it’s only nine AM. It’s taken me just a little over an hour to feed all the dogs and cats. I make my way back through the kennel, making note that most of the dogs have left their runs because it’s nice and cool out. It should warm up a bit, which will make it perfect for me to start bathing them outside.

Heading over to the stable, I mentally go over the rest of the chores I need to do today. After I finish feeding the horses and clean out their stalls, I have to bathe the dogs, clean out the cats’ litter boxes, and re-stock the indoor supply room from the small shed that houses the bulk feed supply. Then Brody asked me to run a few errands, which should still give me plenty of time to get back for the evening feeding.

It’s a tough day of work, and I only do a full Saturday once a month, but it’s my pleasure to do so to give Alyssa and Brody some time together away from The Haven. They devote their entire life to their work here, so their Saturday’s off are well deserved.

Just as I finish cleaning out the stalls, I hear a vehicle pulling up behind the kennel. I decide to leave the horses out a bit to stretch their legs in the small paddock, and head out to see who it is.

Possibly Gavin?

As soon as I step outside of the stable, I see, with utter disappointment, that it’s Brody pulling up. Not that I’m not happy to see him, because, hello… it’s Brody, but because I had been hoping—in my heart of hearts—that Gavin would come and spend the day with me.

I wanted to get to know him better, because his dark allure was pulling at me hard. He also has me fascinated by this concept of how he views me, and I feel the burning need to make him see that I’m so much more.

Brody gets out of his car as I walk across the grass that is just starting to turn brown with the cooler weather. “What are you doing here?” I call out to him.

“Alyssa’s getting girlie shit done to her nails with Gabby and Casey, so thought I’d come hang out here today,” he says with a smile.

I follow him into the kennel and he heads for the office he and Alyssa share at the front of the building. “Come on, Brody. It’s your day off. You should be out having fun.”

“Yeah, like what?” he asks as he sits down at the desk and fires up the computer.

“Oh, I don’t know… get your brother and go surfing.”

“Yeah… sorry, but when it gets chilly enough you have to wear a wetsuit, I don’t go in the water anymore.”

“Wuss,” I tease him.

“Absolutely,” he affirms, clicking on the Outlook button to pull up his mail. “So what all still needs to be done today?”

“Most everything. I just got the animals fed and the stalls cleaned.”

He browses the emails for a moment, and then turns to me with a serious look. “Go ahead and clean the litter boxes and then run those errands for me. I’ll handle washing the dogs.”

“No freakin’ way, dude,” I tell him with a stern look. “I’m volunteering my precious time here, and you are not taking away the one fun thing I look forward to all week.”

Brody gives a bark of a laugh and stands up from the desk. Chucking me under the chin with his knuckles, he says, “Fair enough. Didn’t think I’d be able to pull that one over on you. Let’s go split the work, and then I’ll take you out to lunch before we run our errands.”

I follow Brody out of the office, back through the kennel, and out a side door that takes us to the cats’ building. “We need to stop by the feed supply store and pick up some probiotics,” I tell him. “That new lab mix, Nelly, has some loose stools.”

“Got it. And we need to hit the lumber supply store. I saw one of the fence posts on the paddock is cracked near the bottom. I think one of the horses kicked it.”

We start to work cleaning out the litter boxes, and yeah, I get sidetracked playing with the five new kittens that came in last week. It takes so little to amuse them, nothing more than the string from my hoodie that I wave in front of their fuzzy little faces.

“So, what was the deal with that English dude you were talking to at the bar last week? He said something that pissed you off.”

Picking up one of the kittens, I hold it above my face and watch its little paws try to swipe at me. “That’s Gavin Cooke. I clean his house, and he can be a bit prickly.”

“What did he say to you that made you practically run out of the bar?”

“I didn’t practically run out,” I grumble, although I did have an insane urge that night to flee from his sexual innuendos. “He just asked if you and I were lovers.”

“No way,” Brody exclaims as he dumps fresh litter into on one of the boxes. “Why would he think that?”

“I don’t think he really did. I think he was just trying to get under my skin, which is something he apparently enjoys doing.”

“Maybe he was trying to get under your skirt and was checking to see if you were single,” he muses.

“Not his style,” I tell Brody adamantly, and I’m amazed I know Gavin well enough to know exactly what his style is. If he wanted to get under my skirt, he would have said something like,
I want to fuck you, and I could care less if you’re fucking someone else.

Yes, that was Gavin’s style.

“Well, he seems kind of full of himself,” Brody says casually. “Besides… he got under Tanya Stokes’ skirt that night, so I’m sure he was a happy camper.”

I spin toward Brody fast, bringing the kitten down to my chest to cuddle. “How do you know that?”

“Because she was hitting on him pretty hard prior to that. He bought her a few drinks. They left together that night. Pretty obvious, right?”

“I guess,” I mutter as I put the kitten back in his cage.

Man, that bothers me. I mean, I sort of figured Gavin was a player, but he’s kind of a grumpy recluse, so I never figured him to hit a local establishment and then hit the local talent so quickly. I know deep down that there’s really nothing special he sees in me. He’s a man with certain proclivities. I fascinate him for some reason, and he wants to exercise those proclivities because I was opportune. And I have no right to a feeling of betrayal, because we have no relationship… no exclusivity… no expectations to be broken. In fact, I’m betting if anything were to ever happen with Gavin, it would only be on the terms that there was no relationship… no exclusivity… no expectations.

Not that I’m expecting anything with him.

But still… the prospect of a hot, one-night stand with him is a thrilling prospect. It’s so not me… the anti-heroine.

Do I have the daring to do it? It’s something I need to consider, but one thing is for sure, if I do… I’ll have to do the pursuing, because he made it clear that I had to voice what I wanted. The thought of doing something so outrageous, so beyond the limits of my comfort, makes me slightly nauseated.

Oh, who am I kidding? I don’t have it in me. He’s exactly right. I’m always going to be the woman that waits for the guy to make the move… to save me… to give me an orgasm. I don’t have it in me to be the seducer.

Sighing in frustration, I open up the last cage and reach in past a sleeping black and orange tabby to pull the litter box closer to me.

“What’s with the dramatic sigh?” Brody asks.

“Nothing,” I say absently, and then I change my mind. Brody has hard life experiences, and from those experiences, untold amounts of wisdom which I intend to tap into. “Actually… have you ever felt like you were just stagnating… just running in place without any idea of where you’d go if you could ever get off your hamster wheel?”

“I’m happy to say ‘no’ to that answer,” Brody says as he closes the last cage that he was working on. Turning to me, he leans up against the metal housing and shoves his hands in his pockets as he waits for me to enlighten him.

“Never?” I ask in slight disbelief. “Not even after you got out of prison?”

“Not even then,” he confirms. “I didn’t have any ambitions or goals at that point, so there wasn’t anything to stagnate. I was satisfied with just
being,
if you know what I mean.”

I don’t know what he means, but I could imagine. Brody’s charmed life of medical school and a prosperous future were ripped away when he went to prison. Since getting out last spring, he was absolutely content to just sling drinks at Last Call and hide himself away from the rest of the world. Thank God Alyssa reached through to him… got him to want to live life again to the fullest. Now he runs The Haven with her and couldn’t be happier.

It’s what I want.

To be absolutely happy with my profession… my life… my world. I want to get off the freakin’ hamster wheel of mediocrity.

“So I take it you feel like you’re stagnating?” Brody asks as he pins me with his eyes.

“Think about it,” I tell him in a rush. “I have a degree that’s practically useless, I got laid off from my job with which I had hope to put said degree to use, I clean houses for a living now, and oh, yeah, I work for a sleazy photographer who comes on to me every chance he can, and I have to put up with it because I need the job too damn bad. On top of that, I haven’t even started looking for something else, because I don’t know what the hell to do with my life. No fortitude… no drive. I’m an anti-heroine.”

Brody’s eyebrows rise high, and he gives me a smirk. “That’s a mouthful. Got anything else?”

“I’m done,” I mutter quietly, feeling dejected over the lameness of my life. We both walk out of the cats’ housing and head to the large supply shed so we can load up on restocking supplies in the kennel room.

As we reach the door, Brody reaches out and touches my shoulder to stop me. “Savannah… you have more fortitude and spine than most people I know. Don’t forget what you did… one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard of in my life,” he murmurs.

My skin prickles at his pointed reminder to me of a past that is filled with fear, pain, humiliation, and oddly… achievement.

“That was so long ago,” I protest as I turn to step inside the supply shed.

“Not so long ago,” he argues softly. “It speaks of who you are at the fundamental core of things.”

His words press in upon me. Really? Is he right? Do I have more resolve and moxie than even I give myself credit for?

He’s talking about a secret I once shared with him and Alyssa… that’s really not a secret, because it was splashed all through the newspapers back in Indiana. I went through hell during my senior year of high school, taking on a predatory monster and his super wealthy, socially connected family. I was bullied, berated, and mocked for my actions. I lost my closest friends and caused my parents’ untold anguish what with the eggs being thrown at our house and the late night, threatening phone calls. I was called a whore, a liar, and made into a public spectacle.

But in the end, I stuck to my guns and I won. I was vindicated, and I went through untold torture to get to the finish line. I stuck my chin out, stiffened my spine, and I never gave up.