The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil #1)(94)

She spoke no words, just nodded.

He kissed her neck. Her shoulder. Slid out and rolled her around to gather her to him and take her mouth in a deep kiss.

When he finished it, she looked into his eyes, hers blinked lazily, and when she opened them again, they were smiling.

“Be back,” she whispered.

He nodded.

She pulled away and he watched her move around naked, searching the floor.

She found what he knew she was looking for when she bent to pick up his tee, straightened and moved toward the hall, pulling it on over her head.

She didn’t bother with panties.

Ranger followed her to the bathroom.

Johnny grinned.

They’d left Dempsey and Swirl with Addie and Brooks because Izzy wanted them there for her sister’s protection.

So now it was just Ranger.

And it was not lost on Johnny that even in his absence Ranger had always been his dog. It didn’t seem he mourned or was even confused about Shandra not in his life anymore.

He was just home.

That said, being all Johnny’s, his dog hadn’t bonded with Izzy. He liked the attention she gave him when she gave it. He was a dog. That happened.

But he’d never followed her anywhere when he’d be leaving Johnny behind.

Now he was in the bathroom with Johnny’s woman.

Still grinning, Johnny angled out of bed, found his shorts, his jeans, tugged them on and then went to Izzy’s wineglass.

He nabbed it, took it to the kitchen, got the bottle out of the fridge, yanked out the cork he’d wedged in and refilled it.

He got himself another beer, and when he moved back to the bed, he set her glass on his nightstand with his bottle.

He was just stretching back out in the bed when she and Ranger returned.

She came right to his side. Crawled over him, set her hip beside his, and collapsed onto him, curled close.

He slid a hand over her hip, hiked up his tee, and cupped her bare ass as he found the remote and hit play on the TV.

Ranger dropped his jaw to the side of the bed.

Johnny threw the remote on the nightstand, reached out his other hand and rubbed behind his dog’s ears.

In a time in the program where it didn’t seem she would miss too much action, he murmured, “You need space, baby, take it.”

She pushed farther into him, twisted her neck and kissed his chest then rested her cheek there again and murmured back, “Thank you, honey.”

“You have that, feel safe in it,” he told her. “But just to say, you need to talk shit out, even if you’re pissed at me and we got something to work through, hit me with it. I’m here. I’ll listen. If you’re talking to me, snapping at me or yelling at me. I’ll listen. And we’ll get to the other side.”

To that, she didn’t kiss him.

She turned her head and nuzzled her face against his skin like a sleepy cat or a newborn baby.

Johnny’s chest constricted and only did it more when she settled with her cheek back to his chest and whispered, “Okay, h?schen.”

She remembered.

She remembered what his grandmother called him.

And she gave him that back.

He was staring at the TV and not seeing a thing, just trying to remember how to breathe.

When Ranger licked his wrist it came back to him and Johnny murmured, “Right, boy. Down.”

Without delay, Ranger slid with a dog groan down the side of the bed and disappeared.

“Want your wine?” Johnny asked Iz.

“In a sec,” she answered.

He started tracing patterns on her hip and the cheek of her ass.

She sighed and curled in closer.

This was more like it.

Johnny smiled at the TV.

Then he watched a great program cuddled in bed with his woman.





A New Member

Johnny

“YOU’RE GOING TO do what?”

Johnny wasn’t altogether there.

It was the next morning and they both needed to leave. Him, to go deal with the horses, her, to go to work.

Ten minutes ago, he had heard her heels on his floors as she walked down the hall to appear in his kitchen fully dressed for work.

He turned from scrambling some eggs for her to see Iz in a navy dress that hit her at the knee and had short sleeves.

The thing about it was, it hugged her figure close and had a stripe of sheer navy across her upper chest and another one a couple of inches above her hem taking class and making it sexy.

She was also in beige pumps with spiked heels that looked professional but still called to him to fuck her.

Even though he had that overwhelming desire, since they had to get their shows on the road, he instead launched into his plans for her sister while scraping her eggs on a plate with the toast and bacon he’d made her, handed it to her and made his own plate then stood there shoveling it in while telling her how things were going to go.

She held her plate in front of her while he did this, her eyes on him getting bigger and bigger and he vaguely noted she’d quit eating halfway through him talking. She was just standing there, holding her plate and staring at him. But he needed to get her down with this so they could talk to Addie about it, and when they did, both of his girls could have a couple weighty things off their minds.

The problem was, throughout all this, all he could see was Iz in that dress and those shoes, and in the back of his mind he was thinking about what he’d do to her in them, so he wasn’t paying close attention to her eyes getting bigger and bigger and her not eating.