Those muscles could not be real.
She had seen him in shirts, sweaty and not, but this was the first time she’d encountered naked, hard-blocked flesh. Add to that thick, corded muscle on those delicious, hairy forearms.
“I’ll have to run a bath. Could you help me out?”
A bath. Her skin tightened at the notion of soapy, sudsy water trickling down her body … or Reid’s body. Yes, Reid’s muscle-packed, perfectly-sculpted, lickable body.
“Help you?” She felt a touch dizzy.
“With the bath? Only, I don’t know if regular soap is okay for dogs.” He frowned at her. “For Bucky?”
Right. Bucky. “Sure! The bath! I bought some special shampoo for him earlier. There are oils in his coat that we don’t want to strip.” She headed to the bathroom, anxious for a task to occupy her dirty, dirty mind.
“Is he going to be difficult, I wonder?” Reid sounded a little pleased at the prospect. Like he had an image of how a dog should behave and mischief was preferred.
“He might be,” she called out from the bathroom. “Dogs don’t usually like it. But if they roll around in mud like this scamp did, they have to accept the consequences.”
True to his billing, Bucky was indeed difficult. He didn’t want to be a good boy and just get into the warm, soapy water. Kennedy sat at the side of the tub testing the temperature with drifting fingertips while Reid loomed over her with big hands on trim hips. There was something rather appealing about looking up at him like this, and not just because he was shirtless and the view was top-notch. Something in the nature of being a supplicant, she supposed, especially when Reid pointed at the hot tub.
“In, Bucky. You stink.” He said it so gently that he may as well have been telling the puppy that he loved him. Of course, every word Reid spoke to Bucky was love.
“Maybe lift him?”
Reid scooped him up, but he squirmed and yelped as soon as he got closer to the water.
“Perhaps he’s flashing back to his trauma in the lake.”
Reid’s concern was palpable. Kennedy loved how his whole demeanor changed around Bucky.
Later she would insist to the court of sex opinion that she wanted to help Bucky overcome any fears he might have about being deposited in a large body of water.
“He might feel better if one of us was in there with him.”
Reid’s brow wrinkled. “Really?”
“Yeah, it might put him at ease.”
At which point all Kennedy’s dreams came true and Reid Durand dropped his sweat pants. She didn’t even have to ask!
Not the underwear, though, but hell, wasn’t that a sight to behold. And remember, she was seated on the bathroom floor with the perfect view of this Adonis’s log-cracking thighs and quarter-bouncing buns. All of which was just the undercard to the main event: a perfectly-crafted ridge that bulged against the silky black fabric of his boxer briefs.
While he was distracted picking up Bucky, she took the opportunity to memorize for later. Because there would be a later, a time where she would be dreaming about this man’s body and that cock filling and stretching her good.
Reid stepped over the lip of the bathtub into the water and with absolutely perfect balance, sat down while holding the puppy safely until they were both submerged—Reid to his waist and Bucky to his shoulders. Reid held him firm, setting him carefully down until his paws touched the tub’s floor.
“Nice job!” Kennedy grabbed some of the shampoo, anxious to give her hands something to do. She knew what they’d be doing later under the cover of her bedsheets, but for now she’d try to be the good dog nanny. “Is it too hot in there?” Because it’s a sex sauna out here.
“No, the water’s fine. You should join us.”
She squinted at Reid, trying to ascertain if that amounted to flirting. Reid wasn’t the flirting type, or if he was, he had yet to grace her with his banter gifts. There was an appealing quirk to his mouth.
“Watch it, Reid. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were inviting me to get hot and wet with you.”
No response to that, except that she had only turned herself on even more. Top of the class, Kennedy!
Reid’s hands moved with assurance over the puppy’s body and in the process, his thumb brushed across her palm and wowza, that was quite the zing. Pushing thoughts of talented thumbs deep, she focused on the job at hand: getting Bucky clean while trying to avoid staring at Reid’s chest. The pectoral muscles appeared to be chiseled from marble. No wonder he only ate the best foods and worked so hard—look at the results.
Yet all she could think was what a crime that he wasn’t sharing that body with someone.
Screw someone. With her.
“So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” When he hesitated, she said, “Not being nosey. I’ll be headed over to see Edie at Larkvale so I wanted to know if you needed me to look after Bucky.”
“Actually, I can take him. One of my teammates, Levi Hunt, volunteers at Uptown Mission, a homeless shelter on the North side of Chicago. He asked some of the guys if they wanted to help out.”
Not what she expected at all. “That’s amazing. Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“To be honest, I thought you’d try to muscle your way in. You’re always helping out and volunteering for stuff. They have an animal shelter attached to it because some of the homeless have pet companions. I’ll bring Bucky along to give you a break.”
“I don’t need a break.”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been working every day nonstop for as long as I’ve known you. You hardly ever relax and when you do, you’re still on the clock because you’re looking after this guy.”
“But it’s not even work.” She peered down at Bucky, who appeared to be finally enjoying himself. “You’re no trouble at all, Buck. Don’t listen to the mean man.”
Reid smiled, and so did she, and the combination of all the things—that smile, a half-naked Reid in the hot tub, the man fixing her car, and now that same man spending Thanksgiving with the homeless—made her teary again.
“Kennedy,” he whispered.
“It’s okay, just some soap in my eye.” She wiped away the moisture with the back of her hand.
“About earlier, when you got upset about me fixing your car,” he said. “Was there more to that than just unexpected kindness?”
“Just a bit of bad news about my visa for Thailand. It might be delayed. Some paperwork mix-up.” She raised her eyes from Bucky to find Reid staring at her with nuclear bomb-level intensity. “But don’t worry, I won’t impose on you for any longer than a few more weeks.”
“You can stay as long as you want. This is your home.”
Was he trying to make her dissolve into a tearful puddle? Earlier she’d been thinking of those creature comforts she was starting to enjoy, and home was as good as any word to describe it. But it couldn’t be replaced. She had lost it ten years ago in a fiery blaze that destroyed everything she loved.
“Good to know, but I promised Edie I’d stick around Chicago through the holidays and then I’ll be off traveling again, visa or no visa. By that time, Bucky should be a bit more settled but you’ll have to figure out a plan for overnights. I can look into finding someone, assuming you’re keeping him.”