LITMIR.BIZ

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he had his own rules regarding women like Elise—women who were all about commitment. To their families, their relationships, themselves. He left them alone—and he’d already broken his rules once just to get a taste of her. Only that taste merely whetted his palate for more and it had been a near miracle that he’d finally let her go. Which was why, as much as he might like another foray into the kind of compelling distraction she’d offered, he veered off to the opposite path from the one she occupied. Pushed his thoughts to the rising skyline reaching wide ahead of him. Michigan Avenue … still a good distance from Elise’s Printer’s Row apartment.

      He didn’t remember a dog.

      That one would have been tough to miss.

       Turn it off, turn it off, turn it …

      Of course, now that he’d seen her, now that he knew she was right over there, she was back in his mind, daring him to revisit the details of a night he hadn’t quite had enough of. Thinking how he’d gotten lost in her body … in her laugh … in that hellfire hot kiss when she’d been pinned against the steering wheel—

      Damn. He was watching her again too, jogging backwards like a total jackass. His body reacting in a way that wasn’t wholly conducive to running.

      He needed to run.

      Only he didn’t really like the look of that Great Dane dragging her down the path.

      What was it about these little women with dogs so big they couldn’t handle them?

      And Elise definitely wasn’t handling this one.

      The dog bounded right, nearly tripping her. Then cut back left, jerking her forward. Levi’s brow drew down as he headed toward the canine fiasco in action. If someone didn’t take control, Elise was going to get hurt—

      That was when the dog stilled, head snapping around at the sound barely permeating Levi’s consciousness.

      Fire truck.

      The dog took off like a flash, his powerful haunches pushing beyond Elise’s strength and taking her down hard into the grass. She bounced once—damn, that couldn’t feel good. And whoa, was that mud?—before the leash jerked free of her wrist and then the dog was speeding away even as she scrambled to her knees. “Bad dog, Bruno!”

      By then, Levi’d already pushed into a dead run. As distractions went, apparently, Elise was the kind that couldn’t be ignored.

      CHAPTER TWO

      HEART racing, Elise shoved up from the wet grass, taking off as soon as she’d found her footing.

      Oh, yeah, she got a list, all right. And the dog was on it.

      Just as soon as she got him back.

      Only she was losing ground at a rate that didn’t bode well for capture. Bruno tore across the open grass, then raced headlong through the “Agora” sculptural installation, giving Elise an instant of relief. Of the one hundred and six nine-foot cast-iron pieces, one of those freaky sets of legs was bound to catch the leash whipping behind Bruno with every wild lope.

      Except then he’d broken free and without any signs of slowing. Not even as he closed in on the street …

      Oh, God.

      The Roosevelt/Michigan Avenue intersection surged with six lanes of downtown city traffic—buses, taxis, and cars, all gunning it to make their turn, catch the light, get where they were going.

      She was too far behind.

      “Bruno!” she called, panic slamming through her with the knowledge there was no way she could get to him in time.

       No. Please don’t let this be happening. Please, please, please …

      And then, suddenly it wasn’t. Two feet from the curb, Bruno wheeled around, jerked back from the street by the man who’d snared his leash at the last second.

      “Bruno, heel!” The harsh command boomed with enough force to cow the puppy beast to the ground at his feet.

      She couldn’t believe it. Bruno was safe. Saved. By some stranger she hadn’t even seen coming.

      “Thank you,” Elise wheezed, only her voice came thin through lips that had gone as numb as the legs that had carried her that final distance to where they’d stopped. Dropping into a crouch, she buried her face in Bruno’s neck, sucking air in deep gulps until after a minute or two the buzzing in her head subsided and she tried for her voice again. “Thank you … So much … I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you did.”

      Lifting her face from Bruno’s warm fur, she squinted up at her rescuer, who was standing bent over, legs apart, hands on his knees. Breath ripping in and out of him in savage draws. Sweat-soaked hair hung in front of his brow, obscuring his face from view as he gave a short nod of acknowledgment.

      Returning her attention to Bruno, she rubbed her fingers through his short hair, each stroke another reassurance that this sweet, sleekly powerful dummy was okay. His tongue spilling out of his giant, toothy mouth, she could swear he was grinning at her.

      “Yeah, you’re fine,” she said, the tremors within her easing. “Which means … you’re so on my list.”

      Beside her, her savior chuckled, straightening to his full height. “He’s a dog. You can’t put him on your list.”

      That voice. Low, deeply masculine. Distinctive with the kind of roughed-up character a woman didn’t forget. Especially when the seductive rumble of it had punctuated the high points of her sexual existence just one week before.

      Oh, God, it couldn’t be him. And yet that same frisson of awareness she’d felt at the first bookstore bump told her it was. That and the sheer size of him. The man was big enough that before she could make it past his bare chest to his face she had to start again, beginning back at his oversized running shoes, working up the solid cut of his calves to where the powerful slabs of his thighs flexed and bunched beneath his shifting weight.

      Wow, he had a lot of leg. A lot of well-muscled, cut-from-stone, chase-down-a-Great-Dane, Clark-Kent-out-for-a-jog leg, braced in one of those uber-masculine stances that somehow combined total fatigue with a readiness to go again. Leg that ended beneath a pair of steel-gray mid-length running shorts that were just the right amount of loose to—

      “Elise … you’re looking up my shorts.”

      “What? No,” she gasped, shocked. First, in hearing her name, which confirmed her rescuer’s identity, and then, because—oh, God—she totally was! Only it wasn’t some creepy, salacious leer. Not really. It was just that this was the first time she was seeing the details of the body she’d been wrapped around—had explored with her hands and mouth, had lain awake each night since thinking about—in the light of day. Sure she’d had an idea of what he was built like. Touch was a powerful sense and there’d been enough diffused light from the streetlamps outside for her to see the general dimensions, but this—

      Not asking him to leave a lamp on had been a monumental mistake.

      That powerful musculature bunched again, showcasing yet another hypnotic set of furrows, planes, and ridges. Her belly tensed, tightened with the knowledge that she’d had this.

      Even his knees were nice—

      “Yeah,” he said with a gruff chuckle. “Except you are. Right now. Still.”

      Elise slapped her hands over her eyes. “No … well, okay, yes, I was … b-but it’s not like you think,” she stammered, humiliation—hot and intense—knocking her onto her backside as she grappled for a recovery from what, in that moment, seemed mortification of the unrecoverable variety. “You’re just so big and …”

      This time his laughter burst out, full and robust. Unrestrained. And the hands she’d only seconds ago dared to release from her eyes instantly clapped over her

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