8. Bruce
CHAPTER 8
brUCE
Lilly looks down bashfully at the dog, and her blushing face makes me think of spanked butt cheeks—for some unknown reason.
Damn it. The last thing I want is to turn into a spanking-obsessed billionaire cliché.
“You’re right,” she says. “Setting down the box with the toys was an oversight.”
She has a whole box of this stuff? I’ve never been this simultaneously infuriated and turned on, not even when I saw a naked woman in the crowd of Occupy Wall Street protestors years ago.
Taking a calming breath, I thrust the toy into Lilly’s tiny hand. “Make sure this never happens again.”
I would forbid her from masturbating completely, but I don’t need the HR rulebook to know that is not something that is under my control… unfortunately.
“I’m sorry,” she mutters, her face turning even more gorgeously red.
Was that an apology? From her? I’d better sell all my orange juice futures because it’s going to snow here in Florida.
Lilly takes a decisive step back. She must’ve realized we were standing so close to each other that she was at risk of inhaling polluted-by-me air.
With a loud gulp, she shoves the toy into her pocket.
Finally. Seeing her hold it was much too interesting for my cock—which is all the more inappropriate given that the thing put Colossus’s life at risk.
“I have treats now.” She shakes a box in a clear attempt to discharge the tension in the air. “If I need to get something out of his mouth—something that will not be my fault next time—this will help.”
Colossus looks up at her with that expression he’s mastered: a mixture of starved and worshipful. I have no doubt he can smell the oat cookies inside the box and wants them. Badly.
Resisting the urge to snatch the box from her hands, I force calmness into my voice as I say, “Do not overfeed him.”
She hides the box behind her back. “Bob already explained your thoughts on this—which are sound. I’ll keep track of the treats and coordinate with him to adjust the little one’s calories.”
I’m annoyed that “Bob” talked to her about something that was on my agenda.
Wait, am I jealous?
No. This is a lot like when Bob looks glum whenever I tell him I’ve cooked something. No one likes their job encroached on.
“So.” I sit on the nearest barstool. “You started to talk about your plans for the training. What are they?”
She climbs onto a stool near me. Once she’s seated, her legs dangle well above the floor. “I imagine potty training is your top priority?” She gestures at the pads that surround us.
“Correct.” Poor Mrs. Campbell could use a break from having to change those things every couple of hours. “How does that work?”
She glances at her small student. “Puppies go after meals, playtime, and naps. They also have certain tells before they need to go. I’m going to learn Colossus’s tells so that I can take him outside as soon it’s needed. I’ll use treats after he does his business, which should help him learn that going outside is best.”
Sounds annoyingly reasonable. “Will this stop him from having accidents inside?”
“It will help,” she says. “But we also want him to feel like this whole mansion is his den because dogs have an instinct not to go to the bathroom in their den.”
Huh. “How do we do that?”
She looks around. “We can restrict his access to all but a tiny part of the house, then slowly open it up. Maybe use baby gates, or a crate, or?—”
“No.” I rejected another trainer because he insisted on this “crate training” business, which sounds too much like dog jail for my tastes. “Colossus will have access to the whole house from the start. End of story.”
I like to pace the mansion, and the stupid dog whines if he can’t reach me.
She sighs. “Will you micromanage the whole training process?”
I shrug. “Only if you have stupid training ideas.”
Her signature eyebrows meet in the middle of her forehead. “I guess we could create a bunch of safe spaces for him throughout the house. Put a doggie bed in every room, with some toys. He might get the den idea that way.”
“Good,” I say. “Come up with more solutions like that.”
“Sure,” she grits out, looking like she might grab the nearby steak knife and reenact a scene from Scream … on my privates.
Speaking of danger. “Follow me,” I say to Lilly and risk turning my back to her despite the knife.
She and Colossus follow me all the way to the garage.
“This is where I keep everything related to walking the dog,” I explain as Lilly scans my car collection with boggled eyes.
“Oh?” She checks out the storage unit I’ve dedicated for the task. “What’s that?” She points at the special talon-proof vest I had made for Colossus—one with Mohawk-like spikes.
“That’s for his safety. Eagles, hawks, and owls have been spotted on the estate.”
“Ah.” She examines the vest, looking surprisingly approving.
I guess now is as good a time as any to show her the other gizmo I had created earlier today. It’s for her: a shiny child’s bike helmet with a Mohawk that matches the one on the dog’s vest.
“This should further deter the birds.” I hand her the helmet.
She gapes at it. “Is it for me?”
“Yes. It should keep both of you safer.” And if a certain someone looks ridiculous wearing it, that’s just a bonus.
She keeps staring at the helmet without taking it.
With a sigh, I walk up to her, gently place the helmet on her tiny head, then strap it under her dainty chin.
Fuck. She smells like cherries and incense again, and I finally identify the flowery scent—roses.
She stares up at me, her lips parted. Lips that are like sirens singing their devilish songs. My breath speeds up, and heat moves through my body as some magnetic force draws me down toward her.
My lips are mere inches from hers when I realize she’s holding her breath like she’s afraid I might choke her, and her eyes are wide and filled with something suspiciously like panic.
Shit.
What am I doing?
I straighten abruptly and pointedly examine how she looks in the cursed helmet—as though that’s what I was doing all along.
Unfortunately, despite looking like an extra from Mad Max , she’s still unfathomably sexy.
She blinks up at me and touches her lips, as if on autopilot. Then she takes out her phone and uses the front camera to look herself over.
An annoyed huff escapes that tempting mouth of hers. “Anything else?” she deadpans. “Maybe I should be tarred and feathered before every walk, so the birds think I’m one of their own?”
“Actually, yes.” I pick up an air horn and thrust it into her hands. “Use this if you see so much as a shadow. It should scare the birds, and I’ve instructed security to come to your rescue if they hear it.”
I’ll come too, with a shotgun, but she doesn’t need to know that.
She shakes her head in exasperation, causing the spikes on her bird-deterrent helmet to jingle. “What else?”
“Don’t go near the lakes,” I say. “They have gators.”
She scoffs. “Unlike you, I’m a native Floridian.”
There. Much easier not to think about kissing that mouth when it spouts things like that. “How do you know I’m not a native?”
She winces. “If I told you I read up on you, would it boost your mastiff-sized ego?”
“No.” Yet the idea that she was interested in learning about me is appealing.
“All I know is you worked on Wall Street for most of your career,” she says. “Since that’s in New York, I figured you’re not a Florida man.”
“That may be for the best,” I say. “‘Florida man’ conjures up an image of someone getting a DUI on a lawnmower… and then trying to sell the officer meth during the arrest.”
She narrows her eyes. “Just like ‘New Yorker’ conjures up an image of a rude, miserable, loud, snobby workaholic.”
I scoff. “Rude? That’s just what outsiders call the efficient way New Yorkers speak. Miserable? Never heard that one. Loud? It’s a noisy city. Snobby? That’s just what people without taste say about people who have it. As to ‘workaholic’—that’s precisely what a lazy person would label someone who’s hardworking, driven, and ambitious.”
The latter I know from personal experience. Just because I work eighty hours a week doesn’t make it right for anyone to compare me to an addict. Hell, if the people around me were more competent, I would gladly not work so much.
“Right,” Lilly says snidely. “I forgot ‘argumentative.’”
She’s got the stones to call me argumentative? “Seems like some Floridians are like proverbial pots. Us New York kettles have a term for that: ‘putz.’”
“Isn’t that term usually applied to males?” she snaps.
I shrug. “Yes, but when the tiny shoe fits, exceptions can be made.”
Did she just stomp said tiny shoe?
“Anyway,” she says, and I can see she’s making an effort to stay civil. “If you’re done with the insults, I think Colossus and I will go for that walk now.”
“Great idea.” I open the garage door. “And remember, stay away from those lakes.”
She rushes off, leash in tow and without so much as a thank you.
I wasn’t teasing her with the gators bit. We’ve got some that are so big they wouldn’t just eat the dog—they’d have her too, for dessert.
An unwelcome image of me eating her sneaks into my brain—and I don’t mean cannibalistically.
Fuck.
Just like that, I’m hard again.