Spring Fire. Vin Packer

choking her. After a brief inner debate, Dom rolled her over. He had the blouse unfastened and was easing it off when she opened her eyes to a groggy squint and mumbled at him.

      “Whatryoudoin?”

      “Making you comfortable.”

      “Mmm.”

      She was asleep again before he got her out of her blouse and skirt. Her panties were plain, unadorned white cotton but, Dom discovered, covered slender hips and a nice, trim butt. Nobly, he resisted the urge to remove her underwear and merely tucked the sheets around her. That done, he popped the cap on a bottle of a pilsner for himself, opened another for the hound and settled in for an all-night vigil.

      * * *

      He rolled her over again just after midnight and pried up a lid. She gave a bad-tempered grunt and batted his hand away, but not before he saw her pupil dilate and refract with reassuring swiftness.

      He woke her again two hours later. “Natalie. Can you hear me?”

      “Go away.”

      He did a final check just before dawn. Then he stretched out on the leather sofa and watched the dark night shade to gold and pink.

      * * *

      Something wet and cold prodded her elbow. Her shoulder. Her chin. She didn’t come awake, though, until a strap of rough leather rasped across her cheek. She blinked fuzzily, registered the hazy thought that she was in bed, and opened her eyes.

      “Yikes!”

      A glistening pink mouth loomed only inches from her eyes. Its black gums were pulled back and a long tongue dangled through a set of nasty-looking incisors. As if in answer to her startled yip, the gaping mouth emitted a blast of powerful breath and an ear-ringing bark.

      She scurried back like a poked crab, heart thumping and sheets tangling. A few feet of separation gave her a better perspective. Enough to see the merry eyes above an elongated muzzle, a broad forehead topped with one brown ear and one white, and a long, lean body with a wildly whipping tail.

      Evidently the dog mistook her retreat for the notion that she was making space for him in the bed. With another loud woof, he landed on the mattress. The tongue went to work again, slathering her cheeks and chin before she could hold him off.

      “Whoa! Stop!” His joy was contagious and as impossible to contain as his ecstatically wriggling body. Laughing now, she finally got him by the shoulders. “Okay, okay, I like you, too! But enough with the tongue.”

      He got in another slurp before he let her roll him onto his back, where he promptly stuck all four legs into the air and begged for a tickle. She complied and raised quivers of ecstasy on his short-haired ribs and speckled pink-and-brown belly.

      “You’re a handsome fellow,” she murmured, admiring his sleek lines as her busy fingers set his legs to pumping. “Wonder what your name is?”

      “He doesn’t have one.”

      The response came from behind her. Twisting on the bed, she swept her startled gaze across a huge, sparsely furnished area. A series of overhead beams topped with A-frame wooden trusses suggested it was an attic. A stunningly renovated attic, with gleaming oak floors and modern lighting.

      There were no interior walls, only a curved, waist-high counter made of glass blocks that partitioned off a kitchen area. The male behind the counter looked at home there. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he wore a soccer shirt of brilliant red-and-black stripes with some team logo she didn’t recognize emblazoned on one breast. The stretchy fabric molded his broad, muscular shoulders. The wavy glass blocks gave an indistinct view of equally muscular thighs encased in running shorts.

      She watched him, her hand now stilled on the dog’s belly, while he flicked the switch on a stainless-steel espresso machine. Almost instantly the machine hissed out thick, black liquid. Her eyes never left him as he filled two cups and rounded the glass-block counter.

      When he crossed the huge room, the dog scrambled to sit up at his approach. So did she, tugging the sheet up with her. For some reason she couldn’t quite grasp, she’d slept in her underwear.

      He issued an order in a language she didn’t understand. When he repeated it in a firmer voice, the dog jumped off the bed with obvious reluctance.

      “How do you feel?”

      “I…uh… Okay.”

      “Head hurt?”

      She tried a tentative neck roll. “I don’t… Ooh!”

      Wincing, she fingered the lump at the base of her skull.

      “What happened?”

      “Best guess is you fell off a bridge or tour boat and hit your head. Want some aspirin?”

      “God, yes!”

      He handed her one of the cups and crossed to what she guessed was a bathroom tucked under one of the eaves. She used his brief absence to let her gaze sweep the cavernous room again, looking for something, anything familiar.

      Panic crawled like tiny ants down her spine when she finally accepted that she was sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed. In a strange apartment. With a hound lolling a few feet away, grinning from ear to ear and looking all too ready to jump back in with her.

      Her hands shaking, she lifted the china cup. The rim rattled against her teeth and the froth coated her upper lip as she took a tentative sip.

      “Ugh!”

      Her first impulse was to spit the incredibly strong espresso back into the cup. Politeness—and the cool, watchful eyes of the bearer of aspirin—forced her to swallow.

      “Better take these with water.”

      Gratefully, she traded the cup for a glass. She was reaching for the two small white pills in his palm when she suddenly froze. Her heart slamming against her chest, she stared down at the pills.

      Oh, God! Had she been drugged? Did he intend to knock her out again?

      A faint thread of common sense tried to push through her balled-up nerves. If he wanted to drug her, he could just as easily have put something in her coffee. Still, she pulled her hand back.

      “I…I better not. I, uh, may be allergic.”

      “You’re not wearing a medical alert bracelet.”

      “I’m not wearing much of anything.”

      “True.”

      He set the pills and her cup on a low bookshelf that doubled as a nightstand. She clutched the water glass, looked at him, at the grinning dog, at the rumpled sheets, back at him. Ants started down her spine again.

      “Okay,” she said on a low, shaky breath, “who are you?”