“No, I think I might stick with ‘I Have a Tiny Dick’ as my go-to Porsche graffiti. I feel like men who drive Porsches may have that same general problem no matter what their specific asshole actions are.”
Griffin pulled her even closer. “Probably a good thing he doesn’t have a Porsche.”
“For the record, I’m not sorry I got in his face.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to be.”
She swallowed. Griffin understood her. He was very much like her family in his general acceptance of her quirks. Whether it was her, okay, overreaction to certain situations or her over-the-top brainstorming ideas, he was generally resigned and amused. And accepting. She really liked that about him.
“Also, for the record,” she said. “I think your ideas for the special handling clinics with the kids are brilliant.”
“Yes, I noticed that it’s for the kids—plural—now,” he said dryly.
“I’m not really sorry about that either,” she said. “Except that, I do recognize that I could probably slow down a little bit and ask your input and opinion on things before I just throw them out there.”
“Charlie,” Griffin said, his voice low and a little husky. “I don’t want you to change a single thing. I want you exactly as you are. You are pushing me outside of my comfort zone, yes. But that’s a good thing. You’re amazing. I’m very happy that you got fired and ended up here as the marketing consultant to Boys of the Bayou.”
She swallowed hard. “Me too,” she admitted.
She could tell from his expression that he understood what that meant. Not only was she happy with how things turned out, but she wanted to stay and keep doing this.
“I think I’m even glad that I got fired from the National Zoo.”
And she understood that that meant a lot. He was now glad to be here. And from the look on his face, she thought that might have more than a little to do with her.
She wasn’t sure what to say exactly, so instead, she went on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him down for a long, sweet kiss.
When she finally let him go, she said, “And later tonight, at your place, you can practice your lemur lecture on me.”
“Unless that’s a very strange innuendo, that was not at all what I was thinking about us doing at my place later tonight,” Griffin said.
“Oh?” Charlie asked. “Because I was thinking that every time you tell me a fact about lemurs that I don’t already know, I’ll take a piece of clothing off.”
His brows went up. “How much do you know about lemurs?”
“I have been reading up about them,” she said. “But I was also thinking that every time you tell me something about lemurs that I do already know, you’ll take a piece of clothing off.”
“Strip lemur lecturing,” Griffin said thoughtfully. “I could get into this.”
“You’ll maybe even want to start doing more lectures,” she said innocently. She started to step around him. “I’m sure there are some things that I don’t know about sloths, and otters, and alpacas, and ostriches, and porcupines.”
Griffin turned to follow her to the barn door. “We don’t have any porcupines.”
“No, but Fiona does. And I don’t know much about them.”
She reached for the door, but Griffin caught her around the waist, his big hand splayed across her belly as he pressed her back into him. He put his mouth against her neck, sliding his stubbled jaw up and down the sensitive skin, before saying gruffly in her ear, “And of course, you found a way to make me even want to do public lectures now.”
She gave a happy sigh and leaned into him. “Is that a yes about the porcupine?”
“Maybe. But I think I’ll have to come up with a different game that you’ll have to play whenever you want to add a new animal to our collection,” Griffin said.
That sounded like a fabulous idea. “Oh, yes, please tell me more, Dr. Foster.”
Griffin groaned and let her go. But he was grinning widely as he pulled the door open and ushered her out of the barn.
“You know I can’t resist you. We’re going to have a freaking elephant, eventually aren’t we?”
She loved his use of the word ‘we’ and the idea of an ongoing, sexy game between them. She stepped through the door. “Oh, I don’t know. That’s a lot. But… maybe a camel? Or two?”
He groaned again but then said, “You better keep up with that otter yoga then. I’ve got elephant-sized plans for you.”
Charlie stumbled slightly at that, and Griffin caught her with a hand under her elbow.
He gave her a knowing look.
“I’m just always surprised when you tease,” she said. “It’s so unlike you.”
He lifted a brow. “I wasn’t teasing.”
Charlie felt a shiver of pleasure dance through her. It was a combination of desire and pure contentment. She was willing to do anything that made Griffin happy. But playful too?
Oh yeah, one of these days, she was going to have to let him in on all the things she’d be willing to do to get a kangaroo.
16
“Did you know that lemurs will lay around in the morning and bask in the sun? It’s even a group activity.”
Fiona laughed. “Yes, I did know that. In fact, I’ve witnessed it many times.”
Charlie grinned at her computer screen, where she had Fiona on a video call. They’d started making this a more regular thing over the past two weeks. Charlie had lots of questions about lemurs and sloths, for one thing. She had to study up for the strip lecture series that Griffin had going at his house twice a week.
Fiona was also very interested in all of the new community activities they had going.
“And did you know that the word lemur means ‘shadow tail’ in Greek?” Charlie asked.
Fiona was amused by the facts she was picking up, and so Charlie always shared a couple with her when they started their calls.
“Actually, that’s not true,” Fiona said with a tiny frown. “I think that’s squirrels. Lemur is Latin for ‘spirits of the night.’”
Charlie frowned. “You sure?”
“Completely sure,” Fiona said. “Where did you learn that?”
“Griffin told me.” After which, she’d had to remove her final piece of clothing—her panties.
“Griffin told you that?”
“Yeah, when we were… working on his presentation.”
Fiona knew that Griffin was doing a weekly presentation during the Lunch with the Lemurs but didn’t, of course, know exactly how Charlie helped him prepare.
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. Every time Griffin told her a fact about lemurs she didn’t know, she had to remove clothing. Would he have lied to get her panties off?
But she knew instantly the answer to that was yes, definitely.
They’d both been down to their underwear in their game of strip lecture preparation, and as soon as she’d been completely naked, he’d put her up on the dining room table and made her very happy to be completely naked.
The game truly was a win-win, but she couldn’t believe that he’d cheated.