Ultimate Surrender: The Surrender Series, Book 2 (7 page)

She used the opportunity to look for a cab again and still nothing. “First, I didn’t call you a freak. That would be presumptuous and rude. Second, staying in your bachelor pad literally makes me want to bathe in antibacterial hand sanitizer.”

“Hey, I’m no slob.”

“Sure you’re not. The only thing that makes me even more squiggy than you staying in my place is me staying in yours. That’s not even a remote possibility.”

“So be it, but I did give you a choice. That needs to be put on record right this very moment.”

She rolled her eyes. Couldn’t help it.

He growled and it took every ounce of self-control not to laugh.

“I want to hear it out loud.”

“You want to hear what?”

“That you’re agreeing to let me stay until we find the bad guy.”

Something akin to delight and dread filled her chest and it took her a few tries to get the words out but she finally got there. “On the couch.”

He nodded. “With my dog.”

Imagining some kind of behemoth Great Dane or Gigundous Pyrenese invading her condo didn’t do anything to help her mood. “Fine, but he’d better be housebroken.”

What finally helped her decide to say yes? She couldn’t have gone to stay anywhere without her Angel coming with her. So she understood it, and would have loved it if he were going to stay anywhere else but at her place.

What had she gotten herself into?

Only time would tell.

Of the sixty or seventy thousand for-hire vehicles in the city they were all deserting her in her time of need. The longer they stood there the closer she wanted to get to Campbell. Not a good sign. And the street was pretty much completely deserted as well. One couple walking along the other side of the street was all she’d seen since they’d been standing there.

“Let’s get you home,” he told her. “Let me look around and get the lay of the place and I’ll know what I need to bring. We’ll get you secured inside and I’ll go back out to get what I’m missing from home and back here if there’s anything. No use in me schlepping you along if I don’t have to.”

A compliment or a dig. She had no clue.

One of the elusive yellow vehicles finally appeared coming around a corner and Natalie raised her hand to signal it. Thankfulness and dread warred inside her on what was going to change in her life after agreeing to let Campbell stay with her. She already knew coming out unscathed wouldn’t be an option, but she just hoped to mitigate the damage as much as possible.

“Oh and I need to bring my snake Rufus along, too. He’s afraid of spiders so just don’t get within striking distance if an arachnid shows up.”

Natalie’s arm dropped as a taxi pulled up and she turned around to stare at Campbell.

“What?”

Chapter Seven

Campbell

Later that night, Campbell flopped onto Natalie’s couch.

“It was just a joke,” he shouted two seconds before a door slammed on the other end of the condo.

His dog jumped onto the couch next to him, staring at him with his ears alert. His tail wagged expectantly.

“It was supposed to be funny, Killer. You got the joke, right?”

The six-pound Papillon yipped and turned in a quick circle. Campbell lifted him onto his lap where he promptly planted his front paws on his chest and licked his chin.

“We don’t really have a python in the second suitcase, do we? Of course we don’t. ’Cause who would do that?”

He yipped again then flopped over to have his belly rubbed.

Campbell rubbed his furry stomach and behind his ear simultaneously.

Natalie had been pissy when he’d come back with his stuff before he’d even unloaded Killer from the crate. Seriously, simple physics should have told her right off the bat some one-hundred-fifty-pound mastiff wasn’t gonna pop out of it like it was a clown car.

Then instead of being relieved when she saw he was no bigger than a sack of flour, like any rational human being, she huffed away mumbling about stupid men or something else he tried not to hear.

Didn’t take thirty seconds after that for the barking to start. High-pitched, annoying-as-shit barking. Two heartbeats later and another Papillon came screaming around the corner from what he learned earlier on his tour was the laundry room.

She skidded to a halt as soon as she caught a whiff of Killer, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Killer nearly pulled a header to get to the ground so he could get to her. Campbell safely evac’d him from his arms and Killer made a beeline for the other dog of the same breed.

“Her name’s Angel,” Natalie told him and then he wondered if she hadn’t been talking to Killer.

The two dogs circled each other and then Killer made the same mistake Campbell’d made earlier. He licked Angel then lolled his tongue out of mouth. Happy. Content. Then Angel chased him around the living room as fast as they could go, yipping at him the whole time.

Yes. Campbell may have made a comment about like mother like daughter.

She may have gotten offended at the truth.

He might have made some statement about the truth hurting sometimes and he distinctly remembered her not taking that too well.

They got everything somewhat sorted out on them cohabitating until he could get to the bottom of the attempts on her life. She was still acting all kinds of grouchy even after the dogs became friends and started lying on the same dog bed together in the living room.

They argued some more. Campbell and Natalie, not the dogs.

Shocking.

Then he’d told her he needed to stay in her guest room to be closer to her if something happened. She hadn’t wanted him in it earlier because she’d said she needed to tidy up.

She said no can do to bunking in there, he wouldn’t like the décor, wouldn’t fit, something else about sparing him a heart attack.

He’d growled something about frilly lace girly shit and strode right in the room to see for himself. It was a freaking nursery.

Killer whined and yipped at him, dragging him back to the present and out of that panic-inducing moment when he thought all of his background checks had missed one hella vital piece of info.

Campbell shivered at the memory. Natalie said he totally freaked out.

Complete exaggeration.

She laughed for at least twenty minutes.

Not an exaggeration.

Long story short, she was an approved foster parent and took infants in that needed immediate placement.

The saint description Clay had used earlier was looking more and more accurate, which for some reason pissed him off. Probably had something to do with the raging hard-on he was still sporting.

So he’d made some comment about Slytherin staying there and he could just curl up in the corner and she’d never even know he was there.

Of course she’d asked who that was and he told her it was the python in the second suitcase.

Natalie snatched up her little Angel dog so quick you’d have thought he was a serial killer wielding the bloody murder weapon.

It was kind of comical.

Well.

If “kind of” equated to so fucking hilarious he almost pissed himself when she jumped up on the coffee table and told him to stay back when he’d opened the suitcase, then yeah, it was definitely kind of funny.

He was pretty sure she hadn’t forgiven him yet if the door slam from a few minutes ago was any indicator.

Killer flopped around some more, got up, shook from head to toe, jangling his bone tag collar, and whined in the direction Natalie had taken Angel.

“Infatuated much, Casanova?”

Unable to settle for even a few minutes, Campbell swore to the heavens then sighed. Talk about love struck.

Campbell was pretty sure dogs weren’t supposed to express that much bemusement, especially not after having met another dog a handful of hours beforehand.

Unfortunately, he totally understood since he seemed unable to quit thinking about her owner. “At least I know what I’m missing.” He petted Killer again, who flopped down next to him, half lying across his thigh.

There they sat. Two bachelors, pissed off and horny, thinking about the ladies that did them dirty.

“We should just give them up. Cold turkey.”

Killer glanced at him when he touched his paw but then he went right back to the stare-down of the hallway. As if he might be the deciding factor on whether or not they appeared he didn’t want to look away too long.

“Cold turkey, buddy. Come on. We can do it. Shake on it.” He held a hand out to shake and Killer put his paw up though he didn’t even give him the decency of glancing in his direction.

“Really, man? You’ve known her all of two seconds and you’re already dissing me. That’s not even right.”

His answer was another whine.

“All right. Let’s get you up and outside. Shake it off, Killer.” Campbell got up, shrugged on a jacket, and attached a leash to Killer’s collar. Taking him outside was supposed to clear his head. Both of theirs. Killer did his business, and Campbell ran through the facts he knew about Natalie’s assailant again.

Earlier he’d brought up the fact it could be more than one person to Wyatt and Clay just to play devil’s advocate. He didn’t believe it for a second but the other two men had been brought up to speed sooner and he wanted to hear their thoughts.

They dissuaded the notion quickly with several pieces of evidence he wasn’t aware of yet. One of the incidents had been caught on video, which Wyatt shared with him later via email.

His gut rolled over thinking of how close she’d gotten to getting killed.

So close.

And in the middle of the day.

The angle of the camera wasn’t good enough to get a plate. It only showed the general area next to the park where she’d been walking. Make and model were easy to determine, but Wyatt had told him with not even one letter on the plate it would be easier to find a fart in the wind.

Staring down her street, first one direction and then the other while Killer sniffed around made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He didn’t have the sense someone was watching him, but he also didn’t think Natalie would be safe on her own. Although she was prickly he didn’t want to see her hurt.

Killer pulled on the leash, heading back toward the door with a high-pitched woof.

“Doesn’t sound like you cleared your head any better than I did. Okay, okay, let’s go back inside. I’ll give you a bath and take a shower. I’ll actually get us clean and you can bite at the water like it’s a ninja come to attack. Sound good?”

Less than an hour later Campbell stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs, rubbing the towel over his hair to dry it a bit more. Killer’s nails clicked on the hard wood as they headed back toward the living room where they were going to bunk down for the night.

Sleeping of course meant they would lie there and stare at the ceiling and whine.

Killer would handle the whining part, leaving Campbell to the hours of counting the bumps above him. Not being anywhere close to tired was not going to work in his favor. As he laid the towel on the bar in the kitchen, he actually thought about hitting the treadmill he’d seen in Natalie’s office earlier. His cock throbbed behind his boxers as he sat down on the couch, reminding him he was up for the exercise but preferred a more horizontal type activity.

Plus, Natalie was probably one of those girls who preferred sweet sex, with the lights off, and only wanted it to last for two point five minutes.

He almost growled out loud.

That was not his kind of sex.

And he honestly didn’t believe that was her kind either, which made his cock throb again.

Sex was supposed to be dirty. Kinky. Wild.

If done right sex should leave both parties dazed, satiated, and somehow eager for more.

“Killer, come here and distract me. Let’s play a game of fetch. I’ll toss your toy across the floor, then you attack it and play with it and totally forget to bring it back to me. Deal?”

Killer didn’t come.

“Killer?”

At the head of the hallway leading to the bedroom, Killer stood, the hackles raised on the back of his neck. Campbell didn’t hesitate. He grabbed his gun from the end table he’d put it on earlier and padded soundlessly toward the hall.

He and the dog stalked farther toward the end of the hall. Natalie’s bedroom.

A struggle.

Natalie cursed, something fell.

Fuck. That.

She wasn’t going to be hurt on his watch.

He threw the door open, gun aimed level with where an assailant would be standing, and three things happened at once. The door bounced off the wall because he’d thrown it open so hard. Killer ran in the other direction, back down the hall. No clue what that was about. And a distinctive “fuck” came from somewhere on the floor beside the bed.

With his gun still in position to aim and shoot, he stepped to the side of the bed, expecting to see Natalie in a tussle with some dude as big as a linebacker.

Instead all he found was Angel sitting beside the nightstand and the lower half of Natalie’s body sticking out from beneath her king-sized bed, cursing. She was definitely cursing. “What are you doing?”

Bonk
. The f-bomb accompanied what sounded very similar to a head hitting something under the bed. And then sniffles…sniffles?

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Well from here?” Bare legs that looked a mile long stuck out from cute rainbow panties that said,
Kiss me, I’m Irish
. “Looks like you’re tempting a saint.”

“What are you talking about?” she grumbled and then more sniffles with more bashing of stuff.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you doing under the bed?”

“I dropped something, okay?”

More bashing.

Then Killer ran back in with his toy and squeaked it. Enticing Angel to desert her owner in her time of need for an impromptu game of tug-of-war was apparently Killer’s tactic. It worked like a charm and then they were playing as if they’d been friends for years.

“Traitor,” he grumbled at the dog.

“What?” Natalie asked. More struggling and something distinctly hit the wall behind her bed twice.

“Nothing.” He lowered his weapon and stood to his full height. Most completely it was not him trying to think of what toy he could squeak at Natalie to get her to play with him. Completely. Not. “What in the world are you doing under there? Do you need help?”

“No I don’t need help. I’m a grown woman and I can do anything I put my mind to.” Another smack. Sounded like wood on metal. She whacked something else that sounded like she might be losing some kind of battle and then hit something else a few times under the bed. Progress was made if her “Finally,” was any indication. One more hit and a remote flew out from under the bed.

It landed about a foot in front of Campbell, so he scooped it up and tossed it on the bed. “Knock the remote off the bed?”

“Duh.” One of her legs bent at her hip and her knee as she attempted the backing out portion of tonight’s entertainment. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“What?”

Her other leg bent, something was going on under the bed, but she wasn’t moving anywhere.

“Are you stuck?” he asked as he moved around behind her. It wasn’t just to stare at her rainbow-covered ass. He wanted to stare at her legs too. Fuck, they went on forever.

“I’m not admitting to anything. Just pull me out.” She stuck her legs out straight and looked like she was completely relaxed.

Fuck if it wasn’t sexy. Her trusting him even if just a tiny bit totally turned him on. Which normally wouldn’t be an issue except he was standing in his client’s bedroom with nothing but boxer shorts on and a Taurus handgun in his hand.

He set the gun on her nightstand and grabbed her ankles.

“Gently…please,” she seemed to add as an afterthought.

Pulling her out actually took a bit longer than he’d expected, took more force too. “What in the world were you stuck on under there?”

Her head finally cleared the bed and she kind of collapsed on the carpet next to the bed. “Whoever decided giving big tits to girls was a good idea was a complete moron.”

“I beg to differ and are you shitting me? You got stuck under the bed getting the remote because of the size of your tits? Epic.” His cock getting any harder was not ideal at that moment yet the fates decided to shovel a little more shit onto his shit pile and his cock throbbed again.

Watching the yardstick appear from under the bed as she pulled her arms clear pushed him a little higher on the need-to-fuck-o-meter. Seeing the marks of the wood against Natalie’s bare ass and thighs totally seemed the most logical thing to think about it as she pushed up to her knees and then stood with his help.

He turned her to face him and his mind went blank.

Seeing her red-faced and teary eyed, kicked up all sorts of neon flashing signs saying, Abort! “Have you been…crying?”