Page 3 of Inked Adonis

And then he does the last thing I expect.

He smiles.

His chiseled face cracks in a perfect grin—pearly-white teeth amid a thick black beard and a dimple in his right cheek, like a little kiss from the gods that obviously handcrafted him.

I literally have to grab the back of the bench to keep myself upright.

Apparently, Rufus agrees, because he rears back on his hind paws and attempts to summit the man like Mount Everest.

“Rufus! No, stop?—”

“Sit.” That voice again. Pure dark velvet wrapped around steel. It leaves no room for misinterpretation.

One word and Rufus is back to being grudgingly obedient.

“You have to show me how you do that sometime,” I mutter, glaring at Rufus, who still only has eyes for his new favorite human.

“It’s all about showing him who’s boss. You have to be the alpha.”

“Rufus has at least sixty pounds on me,” I point out dryly. “I think we both know who the alpha is.”

He clicks his tongue, the sound dripping with disapproval that shouldn’t turn me on but absolutely does. “It’s not about physical size. It’s about strength of character.”

I shift my measuring hand from my head to somewhere in his stratosphere. “I think it’s at least a little bit about size...”

He chuckles and my heart does an acrobatic routine that I haven’t experienced since Miles Hertz chose me as his Juliet in tenth grade.

I thought I’d outgrown that particular brand of teenage stupidity.

Apparently not.

“Again, I really am sorry,” I press on, hoping to get out of this interaction with at least some of my dignity intact. “But, on the bright side, Rufus doesn’t warm to people easily.”

“Are you telling me I should be flattered?” His large hand drops to Rufus’s head, and I try not to imagine those fingers elsewhere. “Well, I appreciate your enthusiasm, Rufus, but I don’t usually go for public sex on a first date.”

“You shouldn’t ask me out then.”

The moment the words are out of my mouth, I freeze.

Did I actually just say that?

Out loud?

To this walking wet dream?

The man’s silver eyes glimmer with a terrifying mixture of surprise and amusement that has me praying for the pavement to open up and swallow me whole. “Is that so?”

I sweep a hand over my face in an attempt to hide my raging blush. “No! I didn’t mean that like that. It came out wrong… It was just a joke!”

“I’m sure it was,” he purrs, his tone suggesting he doesn’t believe a single syllable.

I bite my tongue to keep from shouting,I’ve never had sex in a public park before!With the way things are going now, he’d probably misinterpret it as an invitation.

I map out the breadth of his shoulder and the catcher’s mitts he calls hands, and I don’t know… maybe it is an invitation…

But no. Definitely not. Bad idea. The worst idea. The kind of idea that ends with my mug shot on the evening news.

He pats Rufus again, scratching him behind the ear until his leg starts thumping the ground. “Next time you take this ogre out for a walk, a studded leather collar might give you more control.”

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