“Your dog, and I use the word loosely, bit me when I was trying to cut her free.”

“Probably because you gave her a bad fringe cut,” I yell.

“Those feet better be clean by the time I get up there, princess.”

I smile and head into my bathroom, where I run some lukewarm water. With a deep breath and clenched teeth, I force myself to put my ragged feet under the flow.

I hiss, but it doesn’t hurt as badly as I’m expecting. Once all the mud’s gone, I look closer, seeing mostly just a bunch of shallow scrapes.

Still, I keep my feet under the stream of water for a good long while as the events of the past half hour settle under me. I still feel as though my heart’s ready to jump out of my chest at any moment.

“When was your last tetanus shot?”

My head whips around, and my heart catches at the sight of a disgruntled Noah holding an even more disgruntled Dolly in a fluffy white towel, her fur all spiky and cute from the impromptu bath.

She starts to wriggle, and I hold out my arms, thinking she wants to see her mama, but instead it’s all about Ranger. The two of them chase each other around the playpen that is my bedroom.

“Tetanus shot?” Noah asks again.

“A couple years ago,” I say, turning off the water. “I’m good. Anyway, nothing’s that deep.”

I stand, but he’s beside me in two steps, scooping me up once more and taking me and my dripping feet into the bedroom before carefully depositing me on the bed.

Even with the sting of my feet and the lingering terror of nearly losing my dog, my mind flits back to the last time we were in this bed together, him commanding and intense, me writhing and wanting…

Tonight, though, he’s all business as he unceremoniously pushes me back onto my elbows, lifting one of my feet, then the other, inspecting them thoroughly but gently.

“You’re fine,” he says finally, carefully setting my leg back down.

“I know,” I say, maneuvering back into a sitting position. “That’s what I said.”

Noah glances over at the dogs, and I follow his gaze, smiling when I see that Ranger’s helped himself to one of Dolly’s bones—or maybe it’s one of his bones, left here, I don’t even know anymore. The two of them are nestled side by side, contently gnawing on their respective bones, Dolly small and wet and fuzzy, Ranger big and a little dirty and protective.

When I turn my head back to Noah, I find him watching me.

“You okay?” he asks gruffly.

I swallow. “Yeah. I am. And so is Dolly, thanks to you.”

He shrugs.

“No, don’t do that,” I say. “You didn’t have to help me. It was above and beyond the call of duty.”

His eyes narrow slightly, and he comes to sit beside me slowly, as though he’s not sure he should or that he wants to. “Above the call of duty for whom?”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“Did you mean it was above the call of duty for a property caretaker? Or a guy you’re sleeping with sometimes? Or…”

I desperately want him to finish the sentence, but he doesn’t.

I’m not even sure how I’d want him to. Noah Maxwell is not my boyfriend. I can’t imagine him as anyone’s boyfriend, truth be told.

And yet he’s more than a freaking caretaker.

And more than a lover too.

He’s…

Crap. I don’t know.

“You never kiss me,” I blurt out.

He stills before slowly turning his head to meet my gaze. “What?”

We’re sitting close on the bed, our hips a few inches apart, but not so close that my shortness of breath is warranted.

Still, I’ve come this far.

“You never kiss me,” I say, my voice small.

He blinks. “I kissed you that day in Home Depot. Thoroughly.”

I smile. “I know. But that wasn’t really you kissing me. That was you trying to stop that wretched woman from taking a picture of me. And let’s not forget that you told me you’d had better.”

He turns away, leaning forward, feet on the floor, elbows on his knees, as he stares at his hands. “That may not have been entirely true.”

My heart soars, but only for a minute, because it doesn’t change the fact that the guy’s got zero problems tweaking my nipples and screwing me senseless but avoids kissing me.

I want to know why.

We sit in silence for a few minutes before he turns his head, looking at me over his shoulder with an amused expression. “You’re going to be stubborn about this, huh?”

I lift my eyebrows, and he laughs, then looks back at his hands. “Fine, it’s like this. I got out of a relationship. Recently. And not the good kind.”

This is…not what I expected.

“Wait. Am I a rebound?”

“No,” he says quickly. “Maybe. I don’t know what this is. Fuck, do you?”

Good point.

Noah rubs his hands over his face before sitting up and turning his body to face me. “That night when I wanted to go down on you, you wouldn’t let me. Why?”

“Because it was too intimate,” I say, the answer rolling right off my tongue.

He stares at me, not saying a word, and abruptly I realize what his steady gaze is trying to tell me. “Wait—are you telling me that’s why you won’t kiss me? Because it’s too intimate? What are you, Pretty Woman?”

His brow furrows. “What?”