Can't Touch This by Pepper Winters, Tess Hunter Read Free Book Online

hope.
    “Of course, I’ll go. What’s the address and what am I collecting?”
    “Oh wow, that’s amazing of you—” She paused. “Wait, are—are you sure? I know you dealt with a rescue yesterday. I can get someone—”
    “Don’t. I’m happy to. Truly. Now, cough up the details.”
    The girl (I vaguely remembered her name was Cora from meeting her last month), said, “It’s about a four hour drive. I can’t stand the thought of them in that monsters care anymore. The sooner you can collect them, the better.”
    “Consider it done. What am I looking for?”
    “Two Chiweenies.”
    “What the hell is a Chiweenie?”
    “A Chihuahua Dashund hybrid.”
    “How does that even happen?” I jerked a hand through my hair. “Know what—doesn’t matter. Text me the address and I’ll leave right now.”
    Cora’s relief was a physical thing, fluttering through the phone into my ear. “Oh, you’re the greatest. Truly. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
    “Don’t mention it.” I hung up with a grin. Nice to know I’m appreciated by one female at least.
    Then my grin broadened.
    Talking of that particular female.
    In a few hours, I’d have another two dogs that would need excellent health care.
    And I knew just the vet to do it.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
---------------------
Vesper
     
    “I’M SICK.”
    I pressed my cheek against the cold stainless steel of my patient table and closed my eyes on the spinning room.
    Ugh, make it stop.
    Polly came up behind me. Her cool hand landed on the back of my neck. “Oh, you are a bit hot.”
    I groaned, hauling my aching body upright and pressing the back of my hand to my forehead. “Think I have a temperature?”
    She pursed her lips. “Either that or you’re flushed because Ryder Carson hasn’t been in today.”
    I scowled. “I’m glad about that. Not sad.”
    “Uh oh, the rhyming has started. A sure clue to the flu.”
    I rolled my eyes. “You annoy me every day.”
    She grinned. “That’s my job. And don’t try to change the subject. I heard you two flirting yesterday.”
    “What?” I dropped my hand to my chest, acting the perfect damsel. “I was not flirting.”
    Was I?
    Okay, maybe a teensy tiny bit.
    “There was a lot of wiener and cock talk.” Polly giggled. “If that wasn’t the pre-dance to some seriously hot and filthy sex, I don’t know what is.”
    The room spun faster as an image of Ryder naked and bending me over a table erupted in my flu-foggy brain. “Oh, stop.” I groaned. “I’m not feeling well. And that just makes me feel worse.”
    “Worse because you want it so bad?” Polly jiggled her eyebrows. “Go on. Think of me as your therapist. I’m sworn to confidentiality.”
    I wanted to slap her.
    I truly did.
    If only the floor would obey and stop trying to mimic a boat on a rolling ocean. “You are nothing more than a sexually repressed woman who is deflecting her fantasies onto me.”
    Polly laughed, leaving me to sway unsteadily as she returned to finishing up on the computer. “Unlike you, I don’t want to touch his wiener.”
    “Oh my God, you heard that?”
    She smirked. “Every word.”
    “We seriously need to get better soundproofing in this building.”
    “Or you need to bang him and get it out of your system.”
    “And I’m supposed to take advice from a woman on an eight-month sex-Sahara-spell?”
    She held up her hands. “I’m just being the voice of your neglected pussy.”
    I scrunched up my face. “You just dropped down the totem pole of friendship. Who are you with this dirty talk and where did my post-it loving stuck-in-the-mud go?”
    Polly waved me away, her concentration sucked back into work graphs and order forms. “Just trying to help my bestie out.”
    I swallowed, testing the awful scratch in the back of my throat. All the symptoms of the flu had hit me over the course of the day. I’d woken with a headache, sneezed twenty times since lunch, felt hot and sticky, then cold and shaky, and now my