Page 28 of Housebroke

Maybe she did need a nice day out at the beach. It would help clear her head—and her mood.

She packed her backpack with essentials for the day, then headed downstairs and went into the garage to grab all the dog leashes and harnesses. She got those ready and tossed her backpack in the trunk.

Linc came downstairs wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt, looking tan and delicious and, wow, did he ever smell good. She had the sudden urge to follow him around and just breathe him in. Or maybe lick his neck. Maybe hump him a few times.

She stopped and inhaled and exhaled.

Fine, so maybe she needed to take a weekend off sometime and have awesome sex, because she was so easily distracted by good pheromones right now. And Linc? His were outstanding and definitely calling to her. Spending time in the car with him should be delightfully distracting.

Maybe she should let him drive. Then she could take her time looking at him. And breathing him in.

Deciding to focus her attention on the dogs, she called them inside and put on their harnesses, took them on a walk to wear offsome of their excited energy, then, after they all got a post-walk drink, loaded them up in the back seat of the car.

“How do they do in the car?” Linc asked as he peeked his head into the back seat while Hazel was getting them all tethered to the seat belts.

“Mostly fine. Gordon has his blanket and will go to sleep. Penny and Freddie will look out the windows, and Lilith will want to be on my lap because she still gets a little nervous in the car, but she’ll be fine after about five miles.”

“You’ve got this all down to a science, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Okay.” She scooped Lilith up in her arms, then handed Linc the keys. “You drive.”

He arched a brow. “You sure?”

“Yes. It’ll be easier for me to keep my eye on the pups.”

“You got it.” He clutched the keys in his hands, immediately making anoofnoise as he slid in. “I could have sworn you had long legs.”

She got into the passenger side, rolling her eyes while he grunted and made adjustments to the driver’s seat.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s not that bad.”

“You wouldn’t say that if your balls had just gotten crammed up your ass.”

She laughed. “Well, when you put it that way, it does sound that bad. Sorry about your testicles. I hope you’ve stretched out enough now. Though when you put your seat far back like that—”

Before she could warn him, Penny licked the side of his head.

He swiped away the slobber. “Aww, come on, Penny. That’s gross.”

Hazel turned around and smiled. This trip was going to be so much fun.

•••

Fortunately, it only took a little over an hour to get to the beach. But really, the dogs were fairly chill. Freddie was excited at first, and Linc could see why they were strapped in, because between Freddie and Penny, if they’d had the full run of the vehicle they might have been jumping into the front seat. But they finally settled after about twenty minutes and spent most of their time looking out the window. Freddie occasionally barked at a car next to him, which then got Penny’s dander up so she had to bark at whatever she saw out her window.

Quite the competition between those two. And Gordon? He slept through it all.

Lilith started out kind of shaky, trembling and trying to climb into Hazel’s armpit, but after a few miles she settled down on Hazel’s lap, content to just be chill and pretend she’d never been nervous in the first place. He admired her ability to fake it. All in all, a fairly peaceful drive.

Since it was the fall, finding a parking space wasn’t hard at all, and they were able to park close to the beach. Once he and Hazel attached leashes to all the dogs, they got them out of the car and headed straight for the beach, the dogs excitedly lunging ahead.

“I think they really want to be in the water,” he said.

She nodded. “They love to play in the ocean. The good news is they’ll exhaust themselves and sleep the whole way home. The bad news is they’ll exhaust us, too.”

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