to look at her.
Like the sun, I’m afraid she’s going to burn me right up.
“He’s a beautiful dog,” she says. “How old is he?”
“Three,” I tell her. “I … got him when he was four months old.”
“Dad,” Fiona says, rolling her eyes. “Do you really have to be so annoyingly humble all the time?”
“What?” Sadie asks.
Even her voice sends primal instincts coursing through me, my heart like a beast in my chest trying to break out of the cage of my ribs, hammering with claws and teeth and snout, growling, howling.
Take her, fuck her, put your seed in her womb where it belongs and give Fiona a little brother or sister.
“Dad rescued Jasper and a few other dogs from Marchway—that’s the closest town over. He was in the bar when he overheard these men talking about it. So he followed them and found this basement full of stolen puppies and dogs, and he, well … Let’s just say the dogs went free and the men ended up in prison with a few cuts and bruises.”
“Anybody would’ve done the same,” I grunt.
“Maybe,” Sadie says, glancing at me again, biting her lip in a half-shy, half-brave way that has my manhood pulsing at the base. “But not everybody could have, Mr. Sykes.”
“Call me Saul,” I say before I can stop myself.
She shouldn’t call me Saul.
She shouldn’t call me anything.
I should send her far away from this house before I do something I’ll regret before I fall upon her like the feral beast she’s already turning me into. Before I press up behind her and grind my rock hard manhood against those lovable buns she has for ass cheeks, round and grab-me-now sexy, the sort of ass cheeks I could spend hours exploring with my hands and tongue, making her shiver and tingle in anticipation before sliding down to her soaked, needy hole—
Before I know it, I’m moving toward the door, my fists clenched tightly.
“Dad?” Fiona calls after me. “Where’re you going?”
“You don’t want your old dad hanging around, spoiling the atmosphere,” I mumble, hardly hearing the words.
I walk down the hallway, clenching my fists so hard I can feel the sinews in my forearms pulsing and tugging.
I end up in my study, a large room lined with a towering bookcase on one side, a trophy cabinet on the other, and a big flat-screen TV where I review racing tapes.
I pace to the window and look out on the rear garden, the fountain frozen, the world already falling dark despite the early hour.
My eyes refocus and I stare at my reflection, at this man whose every desire is already tuned to Sadie, to my daughter’s best friend.
I see the tension in my jaw and the flaring need in my eyes.
I clench my jaws and turn away, definitely not thinking about the way she gazed at me wide eyed, the sexy-as-hell way she bit her lip.
Yes, yes, I’m not thinking about her on her knees, biting her lip before she opens her mouth wide for me, ready to take my throbbing manhood.
Or bent over my desk, those curvy hips screaming for my hands, shifting side to side, wriggling her hips, tempting me to grab her juicy meaty ass and lose my hands there, bury them in her fuck-me-now flesh, take her, own her, dominate her—
Fuck.
I let out a growling, shivering breath.
No, I’m definitely not thinking about that.
Nor would I.
She’s my daughter’s best friend.
Nothing more.
But even as I try to assure myself of this, a voice mutters in my mind, sardonic and knowing.
Keep telling yourself that, it says.
Chapter Three
Sadie
“I told you he was a bit grumpy,” Fiona says, a loving smile touching her lips. “I’m surprised he even hung out with us, to be honest. He spends most of his time in his study reviewing racing tapes when he’s not out teaching.”
“I don’t mind,” I say, remembering the way he seemed not to be able to look at me.
Why?
Confusion whirls through me when I try to pinpoint why he wouldn’t want to look at me, as though I’ve made him angry in some way I don’t understand.
And then more confusion knives into me when these thoughts rise unbidden into my mind, of Saul Sykes slowly unbuttoning his shirt, showing me inch upon inch of his carved, honed flesh. Then he’d lean down and his breath would whisper warmly over my skin, making me tingle, making my sex ache and pulse with the closeness.
Now I’m the one who can’t look at anyone.
I stare into the flickering