Like Cats and Dogs by Kate McMurray (scary books to read TXT) 📗

the most of losing contact and took off his own pants and underwear. When Lauren straddled him again, they were both naked.

“Feels like we need more foreplay,” Caleb said, sitting up slightly and taking one of her nipples into his mouth.

“Nope. I’ve been thinking about this since dinner. I want you inside me now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll ride you like a motorcycle.”

He laughed softly and shifted their position slightly on the bed. “Have you ever ridden a motorcycle?”

“Well, no. It was an expression.”

“Lauren?”

“What?”

“Kiss me.”

Lauren leaned down to kiss him, and as she slid her tongue into his mouth, she felt his erection poking at the entrance to her body. She shifted her hips slightly, and one of his hands went between them, and then he entered her slightly.

She stood up, taking him inside her in one fluid motion.

“Oh, god,” he said.

That’s what she wanted. She wanted him messy and panting and out of his mind with lust. She moved against him, bracing her hands on his chest and lifting her hips on and off him. He bucked his hips a few times, as though frustrated he couldn’t set the pace, but this was hers. She was in charge here.

He thrust his hands into her hair, brought their lips together to kiss her, cupped her breasts in his hands. When she sat back up, he put one hand on her hip to try to control the pace and the other danced over one of her nipples.

This. This right here. This was what she wanted. He filled her up, touched all the best places, made her feel like the only thing in the whole world that mattered was the connection made by their bodies. She could likely come just from the way he touched her chest, but the fact that he was also bucking against her as she rode him was creating exactly the kind of friction that would get her there even faster.

And suddenly, all that mattered was getting to that orgasm, was tumbling over the cliff with him. She rode him hard, fast, loving the way his body rubbed against hers. And just when she was about to fly apart, he said, “Holy shit, I’m gonna come.”

She got there first, the orgasm bursting within her. She threw her head back and settled her knees into the mattress as she rode it out. A moment later, he grasped her hips and seemed to stop breathing as he shook a little. She felt him come inside her, just as her fingers and toes uncurled.

Later, when they were lying beside each other, sated but still out of breath, she said, “We do that pretty well.”

“We do. I never expected this.”

“Good sex?”

“Good sex with a woman who I find incredibly sexy and also sometimes challenging.”

“Is ‘challenging’ your nice way of saying ridiculous?”

“Maybe. Don’t hate me.”

She patted his chest. “Fortunately for you, I don’t.”

And she really didn’t. But she was starting to feel things that were troubling considering they weren’t in a real relationship.

So where did that leave them? The sand was running out of the hourglass. She rolled onto her side and draped her arm around him, determined to hold on to this for as long as it lasted.

Chapter 17

The Whitman Street Spring Festival was an annual harbinger of the impending spring, falling in early April when winter’s clutches finally loosened. Ten blocks of Whitman Street shut down to give the space to food trucks, tables for local businesses and independent vendors, and carnival rides.

Paige manned the Cat Café’s table. She’d found a bedsheet covered in cats at a discount store and used it as a tablecloth. Then she set up plastic display containers and filled them with flyers and brochures advertising the café’s regular events—Paige had just started after-hours movie nights once a month with cat-themed films—and cat adoption opportunities. She’d also let Mitch come by with flyers for his own organization, and he hung out around the table to answer questions about how people could volunteer to catch and tag feral cats in Brooklyn.

Sunday had been chosen as the feline ambassador—Sadie couldn’t handle outside noise and would have panicked the whole time—and she was in a huge kennel set up on the table so that people walking by could be lured in by the very cute cat. Sunday seemed very mellow now, lying on her little cat bed and occasionally yawning and stretching like this was no big deal.

Lauren walked back and forth between the table and the café. Monique was in charge inside, with Victor slinging lattes at the counter, and they were getting a fair number of customers who had indeed been lured in by the table and wanted to check out the space. Lauren struggled a little to figure out where she’d be the most useful.

When Lauren went back outside, Caleb walked out of the vet clinic with a Tupperware bin the size of a shoebox that appeared to be full of paper. He looked infuriatingly handsome today, his skin a bit flushed, his hair neat aside from one thin tuft that had escaped and draped over his forehead. He had on his white doctor’s coat over his standard uniform of a button-down shirt and khakis. That Lauren knew what he looked like under all that clothing made her flush a bit.

If Caleb felt any of that, he didn’t show it. “Olivia said you said we could put some pamphlets for the clinic on your table.”

“You could get your own table, you know,” Paige said. “All businesses on Whitman Street are allowed to put one table out on the street here. The fee is waived just for the street fair.”

Caleb said, “There’s no one to man it. We all have patients today. It’s Saturday.”

Lauren supposed the “Saturday is our busiest day” was implied. Caleb’s haughty tone irritated her like a bugbite, though, so she said, “Oh, well, I didn’t realize you all were so important.”

He leveled his gaze at her. “Oh, you know. No big deal. Just the lives of