The Marine's Pet

The Marine’s Pet

By

Loki Renard

Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

Copyright © 2015 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

www.StormyNightPublications.com

Renard, Loki

The Marine’s Pet

Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

Images by iStock/Lorand Gelner and Bigstock/Kasha Malasha

This book is intended for
adults only
. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

Chapter One

“Nunu! No! Come back here!” Sarah Digby chased her little curly black dog down the street, slipped leash in her hand. Nunu was not coming back; he was having far too good a time, bounding and bouncing all over the pavement, leaving Sarah in his wake.

She didn’t catch up with him until he stopped, sniffed, and peed. Sarah took the opportunity to crouch down and try to get his collar back on. The clasp was fiddly and Nunu managed to squirm and pee at the same time, which made everything much more difficult than it needed to be.

“You need to get that dog under control before someone gets you under control.” A deep masculine growl interrupted Sarah’s attempts to get Nunu back on his leash. She looked up and found herself under the ice-blue stare of her neighbor, Austin Black. Crouched next to Nunu, Sarah was momentarily frozen as Austin leaned over his fence, all six foot plus of him creating a shadow that completely eclipsed the sun.

Sarah scowled up at him. “He’s just having fun.”

“He’s running amok,” Austin said, his handsome face hard with judgment. “He needs a harness, not that silly diamante collar you insist on putting him in.”

It was a pity her neighbor was such a pain, because he was damn hot. He was in his late thirties, a decade or so older than her, but not suffering at all for the additional age. His face was a blend of the product of good genes and clean living. He had dark blond hair, meticulously but stylishly cut. His macho masculinity was predicted by the broad, hard jawline, and not at all softened by the rakish set of his eyes or the hard, high planes of his cheeks. She imagined he was just as at home shouting orders at hundreds of soldiers as he was… well, shouting orders at her.

He had military written all over him, and for good reason. Austin Black had spent years in the Marine Corps. He’d worked his way up to sergeant, seeing his share of combat along the way based on what she’d heard. But it turned out that as good as he was at leading men in battle, he possessed a more unique skill. Even with all the high-tech gear available these days, a well-trained canine was still the best way to sniff out explosives, and Austin was one of the best dog trainers in the Corps.

His job sometimes required him to be away from home for long periods of time, which meant that although he’d bought the house next door to Sarah a year ago, it had only been the last three months that he had actually lived there.

That had been when the trouble started. First it had been a complaint about the state of her hedges, then he’d not liked it when Nunu did his business on his front lawn. Not a week had gone by since Austin moved in that Sarah hadn’t run afoul of him in some fashion.

She stood up and let Nunu finish painting Austin’s fence a slightly yellowed shade. Spiteful, perhaps, but she strongly suspected that he was the one who had called noise control about her party.

Standing at her full height, she was still only about chest level for Austin. He was still looking down at her with an exasperated expression. He was exceptionally handsome when he smiled his broad smile and his eyes lit up with warmth. But Sarah almost never saw that side of him. She’d seen it once, but only from afar, when someone else was talking to him.

“Are your ears painted on?” Austin inquired. “You don’t ever seem to take my advice.”

Sarah bristled. “Yours aren’t painted on, are they. Yours are so sensitive you have to ruin everyone else’s fun.”

Nunu finished peeing, looked up at their neighbor, and let out a shrieking bark that emphasized Sarah’s point.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Austin replied.

“You called the fun police on me. I know you did,” she said. “And that’s rich considering you have a dozen people around every week, cluttering up our street with their cars, staying to all hours.”

Austin snorted. Apparently he found her amusing. “I did not call the police on you, fun or otherwise.”

“Bull,” Sarah said, going on the attack. “Nobody ever called them until you moved in. Now my friends and I can barely whisper without someone coming around and telling us to break it up.”

“Maybe the tolerance of your other neighbors happened to erode at around the time I moved in,” he suggested. “Or maybe someone else has moved into the neighborhood.”

“Or maybe it’s the man who snaps at me every time I pass his front gate,” Sarah said. By this time, Nunu had bounded forward on his back paws, put his front paws on the fence, and was doing a decent impression of a Rottweiler, growling and yapping with little white flashing fangs.

Austin didn’t give him a second glance. He kept the full intensity of his glare on Sarah as he replied. “If I were to do something about your raucous parties and ill-disciplined dog, it wouldn’t be to call the police. I’d take you over my knee and give you a damn good spanking.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped. In all her days, she’d never been spoken to in such a direct and embarrassing manner. Even Nunu fell silent in the aftermath of the statement.

“W… what?”

Austin’s cheek dimpled as he took in her shocked, red-faced reaction. “You need a spanking, Sarah. And if you’re not careful, one of these days I’m going to give you one.”

“You…” She cut her eyes at him. He had to be the most authoritarian, overbearing… the longer she stood there, the more she felt his eyes boring into her and the more she blushed.

“Come on, Nunu,” she said, finding her voice. “Time to go home.”

* * *

Austin’s threat echoed in her ears long after she had gotten home. It followed her for the rest of the day, lingered in her mind. Austin was such an overbearing pig of a man. What right did he have to go around threatening corporal punishment?

“Asshole,” she muttered under her breath as she put on her painting smock and went into her studio, where a blank canvas had faced her for most of the month.

A mirror hung inside, and she caught sight of herself in it. Austin’s lecturing made her feel like a little girl, but she damn well wasn’t. She was a grown woman with a natural elegance completely divorced from cosmetics or baubles. Her blond curls were breaking free of the scarf she’d tried to tame them with and cascading over her shoulders in a way that framed her round, almost heart-shaped face very sweetly. She had wide brown eyes framed with blond-ish lashes and her nose turned up at the end in a sweet snub. There was a smudge of pink paint on her left cheek and a daub of something white on her chin—marks all painters tended to bear.

A heavy knock at the door broke her concentration and made her jump. She turned around to see Austin standing outside the sliding glass door, Nunu in his arms. Nunu was a small dog at the best of times. Held by a tall Marine, he looked positively tiny.

“What the hell?” She scowled and stamped forward, throwing the door open to confront Austin. “What are you doing with my dog?”

“What was your dog doing on the street, is a better question,” Austin said, putting Nunu down. “That gate of yours wasn’t shut.”

“Oh.” That took some of the wind out of Sarah’s sails. She couldn’t really be mad at him for getting Nunu off the street.

Before she could say anything else, Nunu started barking. Although he had apparently been quite content to sit in Austin’s arms and be carried about the place like a little prince, the moment he was on the floor between them he started acting up, yapping and darting at Austin’s legs.

“He’s very protective,” Sarah tried to explain through the high-pitched canine shrieks. “He doesn’t like it when other people get close to me, especially men. He bit one of my dates.”

At that moment, as if cued, Nunu darted forward and grabbed the hem of Austin’s pants, yanking and growling with all the fluffy fury at his disposal.

“Nunu, no!” Sarah squealed her annoyance and bent down to try to pull the little dog away. She received a nip for her troubles. She swore and shook her hand while Nunu returned to the destruction of Austin’s jeans.

“Leave him,” Austin said calmly. “When you squeal like that, he thinks you’re joining in. Did he break the skin with that bite?”

“No,” Sarah said, holding her hand close to her chest as she glowered at Nunu. The little beast had never snapped at her before. How dare he!

Austin held his hand out, wanting her to put hers in it for examination. When she hesitated, he took it gently and examined it closely.

“He didn’t break the skin, but he did give you quite a nip.”

Austin’s hand was so large, hers looked diminutive in comparison. Sarah let her palm rest in his a little longer than was strictly necessary, enjoying the way his thumb massaged across the site of the nip.

“Something’s not right with that dog,” she said in dark tones.

“Nothing’s wrong with him. He knows how to be a dog. You don’t know how to be an owner.”

Sarah snatched her hand away. “I didn’t ask you for your opinion.”

“Well, you’re getting it anyway,” Austin growled. “Someone has to take charge around here, and you’re too busy splashing paint around to notice that your dog is having a breakdown. He’s, what, all of five pounds and he thinks he has to defend you and this whole property. No wonder he’s a nervous little guy.”

Sarah looked down at Nunu, who was standing there panting with a broad grin, apparently pleased with himself.

“He doesn’t seem nervous. He’s smiling.”

“He’s not panting like that because he’s happy. That’s stress.”

“Look at that grin!”

“It might look like he’s happy, but given he just tried to take a chunk out of my leg and he did get you, I think it’s safe to say he’s not smiling.”

“Well,” she insisted. “I think he’s happy.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Austin said. “But you’re not stupid. I can help you, if you want. Neither of you have to live like this. It’s not necessary and it’s not healthy.”

She looked at him suspiciously. He said everything as if it had been carved on a stone tablet somewhere, with complete and total authority. Maybe Nunu wasn’t happy. She wasn’t happy about being bitten, that was for sure.

“Come inside,” she sighed. “I’ll make us some coffee and you can tell me how much I suck, which seems to be your favorite pastime.”

She pulled her smock off over her head and led Austin and Nunu to the main house. It was a gorgeous old wooden affair painted mint green with white trim. It featured arches and an attic with a stained glass window and tall trees growing all around. Sarah had fallen in love with it the moment she saw it.

Followed by Austin and Nunu, Sarah pushed her front door open, climbed over the vacuum cleaner, tiptoed around a couple of trash bags that hadn’t quite made it outside, dodged some discarded pantyhose, then tripped over several discarded wine bottles and ultimately landed on her large orange puffy couch, giggling amid squishy pink pillows. “Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t cleaned up from last night yet.”

Nunu barked and jumped on top of her, putting his paws on her head and wagging his entire rear. He seemed to have already forgotten that he’d put his teeth on her.

Austin looked around the house with a perplexed expression. “This explains quite a lot.”

“It’s usually tidier than this,” she reassured him. It wasn’t entirely true, but he was looking rather concerned. His brow had furrowed and his mouth was set in a firm, hard line. One would have thought he had walked into a heinous crime scene, not a perfectly normal home.

“So what do I need to do?” Sarah turned over to lie on her back. Nunu climbed on her chest and licked her face. “Do I need to show him that I’m the alpha?”

“Dominance theory has been more or less disproved in domestic canines,” Austin said. “But it holds surprisingly true for people.”