Chapter 15
Logan
The bathroom mirror had disappeared behind steam ten minutes ago. I stood under the spray in Lark’s shower with my hands braced against the tile, in no hurry to move.
I’d slept through the night. All of it. Fell asleep beside her and stayed under until morning without a single dream taking me somewhere I didn’t want to be. Tova was in her kennel at the barn. Nobody had needed to pull me out of anything.
I didn’t know what to make of that, so I let the water run and didn’t try.
The shower door opened.
Lark stepped in behind me. No announcement, no hesitation. Just the rush of cooler air and then her palms flat between my shoulder blades, warm and deliberate.
“Morning,” she said, voice husky.
“Morning, yourself.”
I turned to face her. The shower was barely big enough for both of us, and turning put us so close that the water ran between us where our bodies almost touched. Her wet hair clung to her neck, and her skin was flushed from the heat.
“You know,” she said, running her hand along the tile wall, “I have not had a hot shower in this bathroom in six weeks. Six weeks of barn showers before dawn and rushing back to this house in the cold. And now I’m standing here with actual hot water that an actual human fixed with twenty-three dollars’ worth of parts, and I need you to understand that this might be the single greatest moment of my life. ”
“Greater than last night?”
She grinned. “Different category entirely.” The grin softened into something less guarded. “For the record, I liked last night considerably more than the overhang.”
I reached out and tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “The overhang was sexy as hell, little bird. I need you to know that.”
“Little bird?”
“That’s what a lark is, right?”
“Yes.” She gave me a soft smile. “You really think what happened in the overhang was sexy?”
“Absolutely.”
“The overhang was a panic attack that turned into—” She paused. Color rose in her cheeks, which was something, given she was standing naked in a shower with me. “Whatever that was.”
“What it was was that you trusted me with something real, and the sounds you made have been living in my head ever since.” I let my hand settle against the side of her neck, my thumb resting along her jaw.
“I went back to my cabin that night and got in my own shower and couldn’t think about anything except you. ”
She blinked. “You’re telling me you—”
“Yeah. I did.” I was getting hard again just thinking about it. Hell, everything about this woman made me hard.
The flush spread down her neck. Her mouth opened, and nothing came out for two full seconds, which might have been a first for Lark Monroe.
“I’m standing in my own shower for the first time in six weeks,” she said, “and you just told me you thought about me in yours, and I—” She pressed her lips together. “I have too many feelings happening right now and not a single joke for any of them.”
“That’s probably the hot water. Twenty-three fifty is a life-changing investment.”
She laughed, bright and real, and her forehead tipped against my chest. I felt the vibration of it against my skin. When she lifted her head, the tension I’d grown used to seeing behind her expression was gone, and what was there instead was warm and unhurried and open.
Her hand found my hip, fingers tracing along the ridge of bone.
“May I?”
Her hand moved lower. She wrapped her fingers around my cock, and my breath left my chest in a way I hadn’t planned for.
May she? I might die if she didn’t.
“Yeah.” The word came out rough.
She watched my face while her hand moved, slow at first. She was figuring me out, reading every shift in my expression and adjusting her grip when my breathing changed. Her thumb traced the underside of the head, and my hand went to the tile wall because my knees were making their position clear.
“There,” I said when she found the rhythm that made my vision go soft while everything else in me got harder. “Fuck yeah.”
She stayed. Her free hand came to my chest, palm flat over my heartbeat, and I wondered if she could feel how fast it was beating because I could sure as hell feel it behind my eyes.
The water ran down my back, and I stopped being able to think in complete sentences. My forehead dropped against hers and my breathing fractured, and I could feel it building at the base of my spine, tightening through my thighs, my balls. My bracing hand pressing into tile hard enough to ache.
“Lark—”
“I’ve got you.”
Three words. Quiet and certain, and they undid me more than her hand did. I came hard, my body locking against hers, my hands gripping her hips tight as I pulled her to me. The sound I made lost in her wet hair because my face had found her neck somewhere in the last few seconds.
She held on until my breathing slowed. Her hand gentled. Her lips pressed against my shoulder, once, twice, and stayed.
I lifted my head and looked at her. She was smiling with nothing held in reserve.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t thank me. It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird.”
“It’s a little weird. You don’t thank someone for—” She gestured vaguely with her free hand. “That.”
“I just did.”
She laughed and pressed her forehead into my chest, and the sound vibrated against my ribs. I put my arms around her, and we stood under the water until it started to cool. She kicked us both out, threatening bodily harm if that was the last of the hot water for good.
I left her house half an hour later. She had fundraising calls to make, and I headed down to the barn to start morning rounds.
Tova was on her feet the second I crouched at the kennel door, her whole body swaying with the force of her tail. She nudged her head under my hand when I got the latch open and leaned into my leg hard enough that I had to brace against the frame.
“All right, all right. Yeah, I missed you too. Come on.”
We worked through the rounds together. Dogs first, then cats.
“Frank already had his, so don’t let him guilt you with that face, Tova.
He does this every time.” I moved to the next bowl.
Tova followed, her nails clicking on the concrete.
“Princess Whiskers gets the filtered water. Yeah, I know. She’s high-maintenance.
But you’re in no place to judge, given how you like to eat tennis balls. ”
Tova looked at me as if to say filtered water and tennis balls were not even remotely the same thing.
“What?” I scratched her head. “We all have our guilty pleasures.”
I was scooping guinea pig food and explaining to Tova why Frank couldn’t be trusted around the treat shelf when I turned around and Lark was leaning against the barn door with her arms crossed.
I stopped. The silence was immediate and thorough.
“Don’t stop on my account.” Lark didn’t even try to hide her grin. “I was enjoying the part about the tennis ball.”
“Tova needs to hear it. Repetition is how you learn.”
“You’re narrating feeding rounds to a dog, Logan.”
I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow. “So? She’s a good listener. Much better than Clarence.”
Lark chuckled. Tova sat between us, tail going in wide, lazy arcs across the concrete.
“Don’t act surprised,” I said. “You got her into my cabin on purpose, and we both know it.”
Lark tilted her head, eyes wide in mock surprise. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Tova has a documented fear of thunder.”
“Documented where?”
“In my head.” She tapped her temple. “Where I keep all the important records.”
“She slept through the entire storm without moving.”
“Some dogs internalize.”
“Lark.”
The act crumbled. She didn’t fight it very hard. “Fine. She doesn’t care about storms. She once slept through hail that cracked a window.” Lark uncrossed her arms and then crossed them again. “You wouldn’t have taken her if I told you why.”
“No. I wouldn’t have.”
“And?”
I looked down at Tova. Then back at Lark. “And she’s not going back to her kennel. She’s staying with me.”
Something quieter moved in behind Lark’s expression. The humor stayed, but it wasn’t alone anymore.
“Good,” Lark said. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. I’m spending today working with Gimbal on the hEDS training. Her new owner will be coming for her soon.”
Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome was a connective tissue disorder that affected someone’s joints and skin. Lark had received a request for a service dog for someone with the condition. Gimbal would help brace during falls, retrieve dropped objects, and track changing medical symptoms.
Watching Lark work with Gimbal had been amazing. She turned and walked out of the barn, Gimbal right by her side.
I looked down at Tova. “She’s something, you know that?”
Tova exhaled through her nose, as if I was just catching up on something everyone already knew, and put her chin on my boot.
The back section of the property had a different quality in afternoon light.
The ridgeline threw long shadows across the pasture, and the tree line along the south boundary was thick enough that the access road disappeared into it within fifty yards.
Tova walked ahead of me along the fence line, nose down, investigating whatever dogs found worth investigating in the grass.
I was checking the fence repairs from two weeks ago.
The posts Lark and I had set were holding solid, the new wire taut, the staples seated.
She’d been proud of those posts. Had tested every one by grabbing the top and pulling, her boots braced in the dirt, her whole body committed to the effort. She’d grinned when they didn’t budge.
The old equipment shed sat in the back corner of the property, screened by a stand of pines, well out of sight from the barn and the house.
Lark had mentioned it once as a leftover from the previous owner, full of junk she’d never gotten around to clearing.
I’d walked past it a dozen times without much thought.
Today, the door was cracked open about six inches.
I stopped. “Well, that’s not right.” Tova circled back to me, and I put my hand on her head without looking down. “Stay here.”